Understanding America's Goals in Iran, with Erik Prince and Mark Geist, Plus Team USA Star Matthew Tkachuk, and Bill Clinton's WILD Epstein Comments ο½ Ep. 1264
00:02:06.420And what you're seeing now is support falling basically along partisan lines.
00:02:11.880Republicans, a majority, support the president.
00:02:15.460Independents and Democrats are totally against the president on this war, which makes some sense because, look, I've told you guys for the past 20 plus years, I'm a registered independent.
00:02:25.820I haven't been a registered Republican in more than two decades.
00:02:28.540And I'm with the independents, you know, as I told you yesterday, most of my Republican audience is supporting the president on it, although a lot aren't.
00:02:36.120And actually, there's an interesting poll showing it's breaking down more severely along gender lines where a hefty majority of women are against it and men are split almost 50-50.
00:02:49.280So that's that's all very interesting.
00:02:50.980But there is no question that the American people don't understand why we're doing it.
00:02:54.400So they're kind of resorting that the hard partisans, Dems and Republicans, are resorting to their, you know, their their partisan stripes like I support Trump.
00:03:07.440It's also hard to follow what's actually been happening on the ground.
00:03:10.500After all, we have no ground troops in Iran yet.
00:03:13.540But here's the latest as we understand it.
00:03:15.740According to multiple reports, the Israeli Air Force struck a building where senior clerics had gathered in Iran to elect the new supreme leader.
00:03:27.360The Assembly of Experts has 88 members, though it's not known how many were in the building at the time or if there were any casualties.
00:03:34.280I mean, why are they still meeting like above ground?
00:03:38.440You have to ask yourself, like, that doesn't seem smart.
00:03:41.680Not exactly sure what they're thinking over there.
00:03:43.500Iran is also fighting back outside of its borders and somewhat effectively.
00:03:49.460Both the U.S. embassies in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait are now closed after they came under drone attacks.
00:03:55.200As of now, thank God, no reported casualties.
00:03:59.500But they are definitely causing trouble for the United States and for Israel.
00:04:03.540Before we get into the details of that, the State Department not taking any chances, officially urging all Americans in the region to, quote, depart now due to serious safety risks.
00:04:36.300And there are a lot of Americans over there who are starting to panic that they may not be able to get out as the interceptors that stop the missiles from falling on these areas are running low.
00:04:49.180And that's one scary piece of all this.
00:04:53.020Iran, while it may or may not have been building up its nuclear arsenal since we devastated it or obliterated, to use Trump's word, in late June, it certainly has been building up its missile storage capacity thanks to, in part, China.
00:05:08.560China, we read, and Russia, we read about Russia shipping it a bunch of missiles that were intercepted by the United States on one Navy vessel not long ago.
00:05:19.760But plenty more have gotten through because they seem amply supplied to be targeting all of these U.S. outposts, our military bases, not to mention all over Israel.
00:05:29.200And both the U.S. and Israel are running low, reportedly, we'll get into it, the president's disputing it, on these interceptors, which would make the missiles ineffective.
00:05:39.020And by the way, the interceptors are extremely expensive, extremely expensive.
00:05:44.180But you know what we were doing, giving them to Ukraine for the past few years and giving them to Israel over the past year or so, and using them to fight the Houthis in what turned out to be a rather brief conflict, using them ourselves when we went into Iran over the summer.
00:06:03.420I mean, we're low, according to an independent analysis of where we are.
00:06:07.340The president, I'll tell you exactly what he's saying.
00:06:09.400And he's admitting some of it and denying others.
00:06:12.200But the point is, do we have enough interceptors?
00:06:15.020Because if we don't and if we let these military bases sit as exposed targets who can't stop the missiles, that's a deep problem.
00:06:23.680We start today with one of the brightest minds in the defense industry.
00:06:27.900Eric Prince is co-founder of Unplugged Technologies.
00:06:31.300Eric Prince is on the record warning President Trump against sending ground forces into Iran and was against this conflict.
00:06:38.560But now that it's started, definitely has thoughts, having been all over the previous Middle East conflicts that we've experienced these past 25 years.
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00:07:42.180Okay, so let's just start with your overall view on whether this was a good idea.
00:07:47.820I know you've said you don't really think so, but explain why.
00:07:51.400Look, I am no fan of the Iranians or of the Mullahs and glad to see the Supreme Leader gone.
00:07:57.760I mean, I've been on the Iranian hit list for years.
00:08:00.460I was personally denounced by the guy twice, but I don't necessarily agree with this approach to doing it.
00:08:06.780And I definitely do not understand how we allowed ourselves to be dragged in by the Israelis.
00:08:14.000And their problems are not necessarily our problems.
00:08:19.320I think how we got to that decision, that certainly there'll be books written about that.
00:08:29.560I am all in favor as America comes towards 250 years.
00:08:35.100We probably need to re-declare our independence from what Washington warned about, overseas entangling alliances that drag us into the situation.
00:09:01.800I don't have that kind of information, but I can't imagine anybody that thinks this is a fantastic idea other than the typical neocon chorus.
00:09:10.380The last big push last summer, right, the 12-day war, it burned through 16 years worth of interceptor production.
00:09:22.300And now we're having to pull a huge amount of supply out of Indo-PACOM, war reserve for that.
00:09:36.240So we're pulling down magazine supply from there to try to defend all these U.S. facilities in the Gulf for being smashed.
00:09:46.540The Iranians are really good at asymmetric warfare, meaning high payoff, low cost for them.
00:09:53.140They built that $20,000, $30,000 drone, which costs the United States a million to $3 million per drone to shoot down because our interceptor missiles are so expensive.
00:10:04.760The Iranians have built thousands and thousands and thousands of those.
00:10:10.400There's 44,000 mountains in Iran, and they've been busy tunneling for years.
00:10:18.700I would have hoped that a lesson was taken from the conflict against the Houthis.
00:10:27.180They're shooting a lot of missiles at ships passing by, jamming up the southern end of the Suez Canal.
00:10:33.880And for all the billions of dollars of precision weaponry we tried to do, never really degraded the Houthis' ability to keep shooting at ships.
00:10:42.180And now to go into Iran, into their prepared homeland.
00:10:50.140You know, Iran does not have an Independence Day because they've not been conquered since Alexander the Great, hundreds of years before Christ.
00:10:58.540So I just don't, look, I think it's great.
00:11:04.600I appreciate what the president said two days ago when he said,
00:11:09.820I have paid a great gift to the Iranian people in killing the mullahs, the leadership of the Iranian government that killed all those thousands and thousands of protesters.
00:12:25.500Let that be the message to the Iranians to say, behave, be decent to the Iranian people or we'll come back and do it again.
00:12:33.900I think the other construct that should be offered to the mullahs is to give them a city like Mashhad and let that be their holy city, their Vatican.
00:12:45.000They can go whatever strict super Shia supremacy, Islamic fundamentalism there.
00:12:52.180Let the rest of the Iranian people breathe free.
00:12:54.280But Trump is the president is is not well, not well advised if people are telling him to go deeper and deeper and deeper into this for weeks, because our interceptors are exceedingly expensive.
00:13:07.640Iranian weaponry is relatively very cheap and they have built lots and lots of those and they will smash not just U.S. facilities, but the other Gulf infrastructure, which they've been very active at.
00:13:21.300And this is not going to go so well for the United States.
00:13:26.980So I would encourage him to declare a punitive raid.
00:13:30.620Deliver the lesson and it's clearly unprecedented, amazing intelligence that they were able to to strike that many high value targets at one time.
00:13:41.820But this idea of trying to foment regime change to the perfect person and the idea of putting ground troops is extremely bad, extremely bad.
00:13:58.860The United States had a hard time pacifying Iraq.
00:14:02.440Iraq has effectively been lost to Iran as it is.
00:14:05.340There's a 250,000 man Shia militia that is loyal to Iran.
00:14:12.220Those are the guys that have been shooting missiles and drones at U.S. facilities just over the last few days.
00:14:19.160But it took us trillions of dollars and thousands and thousands of lives to try to pacify Iraq, which was less than a third, almost a quarter of the size of Iran.
00:14:30.040So the idea that we're going to do it to a much better prepared Iran with the RGC is it's a it's a 10x worse decision than going into Iraq was.
00:14:45.960And yet the president said yesterday he doesn't get the yips when it comes to putting ground troops in.
00:14:52.100And, you know, even Tom Cotton was on the Sunday shows suggesting, yeah, well, maybe a small ground force if we need to.
00:14:58.280But clearly they're opening that possibility because everyone, experts like you, who have been neck deep in warfare for a long time, have said there's not really going to be a regime change unless you actually do put boots on the ground.
00:15:13.000Like, that's not something we can do from the air, not at least in a country like Iran, which doesn't have just like, I don't know, 40, the 40 leaders who were there running the country or who were hit at that meeting weren't anywhere near to, quote, the regime.
00:15:30.100There are tens of thousands who make up the regime.
00:15:54.640And the Iranians have really gone to a dispersed command and control system, figuring that the West would smash their command and control infrastructure.
00:16:03.620They dispersed that authority and responsibility out to the various regional commands to maximize the mayhem that they can spread.
00:16:15.260So this is a exceedingly difficult situation.
00:16:43.620And I find it really ridiculous to think of sending U.S. troops when Benjamin Netanyahu's own son, 34-year-old able-bodied male, is hanging out in Miami Beach, hasn't even gone back to serving the IDF himself.
00:17:08.800He'd be perfectly happy to see any American military service personnel go over there and give his life so that he can feel better about having defeated Iran and having used U.S. troops to do it, Eric.
00:17:24.180I understand the people's argument that say, well, Iran's been at war with us for since 79.
00:17:29.920Yes, they've been taking shots and pushing back and all the rest.
00:17:42.220Just like the French helped us, the French fleet showed up for a couple months around Yorktown in 1781.
00:17:50.180But it was the American people that did the fighting that took on then the most powerful empire in the world, the British Empire, and got our freedom.
00:18:02.460And if people want to do action, fine.
00:18:04.600All the super hardcore hawks on Iran, they can volunteer.
00:18:10.660They can go be trainers and train and work with the Iranian people to help them gain their freedom.
00:18:16.360It does not have to be active duty U.S. forces at an extremely, extremely high cost of delivering energy, whether it's defending themselves from incoming weapons or the weapons that were sent.
00:18:31.340I am confused by the messaging because I thought all the strikes last summer took out their nuclear program.
00:18:39.940Now Netanyahu is saying, wow, they're still just weeks away from a nuclear program.
00:20:08.000And that we thought it would make more sense if that were the case, that we went in there first in tandem with Israel and sort of started this thing on our terms.
00:20:17.280I don't know what to believe there, to be honest, Eric, because we could easily have looked at Netanyahu and said,
00:21:17.900The fact is, an aircraft carrier battle group that deploys every six months loses people.
00:21:25.040The military is a dangerous job, but we have, we must be exceedingly cautious with the blood and treasure of America.
00:21:36.580And the president can, can look great as the statesman to say enough.
00:21:42.820We have killed the, the bad mullahs, the guardian council, the supreme leader.
00:21:48.300We have taken them out that killed all these protesters, figure out you Iranian people, what that next government is going to look like.
00:21:56.380But it's not, it's not going to be dictated and we're not going to bomb them into oblivion until then.
00:22:01.660The other thing the Trump administration could do is there is real change afoot in Afghanistan now because the Taliban, most of the Taliban and of course all the former part of the normal, you know, free government are all really sick of the five crazies that have been running the country.
00:22:20.920And even the Pakistanis are also really sick of the Taliban government because they've been supporting the Pakistani Taliban.
00:22:30.600There is a real opportunity to remove the crazies from the Taliban government and have a more reasonable one, which would at least let us go back into Bagram to use as a deportation center.
00:22:41.700And as a, as another, let's say position on the Eastern flank of Iran, if you're going to, if you want to do regime change in Afghanistan, in Iran, fine.
00:22:54.060You don't have to do it with all kinds of U.S. troops or aircraft going over the border.
00:22:59.680You can actually take Iranian people that want to defend and, and, and, and fight for their liberty, train them in Afghanistan and send them back in.
00:23:08.800And if you, if you remove the Islamic crazies who have now allied themselves fully with Iran next door.
00:23:18.060I'm sure Trump is thinking he can't, he can't be going back in an Afghanistan.
00:23:21.720I mean, like given the reaction he's had so far from a large faction of his base, that's the last headline they want to see.
00:23:27.720And now we're back in Afghanistan and we're doing regime change there too.
00:23:30.340Oh, no, no, those are that, that's, that's, and that's my frustration.
00:23:34.160Um, when you have a CIA that's not willing to do their job, if you think of the continuum of foreign policy, you have diplomats and embassies on one end of the spectrum and you have aircraft carriers and B2 bombers on the other end.
00:23:47.140The 80% of the middle is the intelligence space and what should have been done in COVID with covert action.
00:23:57.560I don't think the Iranian opposition has been prepared, um, in organized, not just in protest, but you have to give them just enough kinetic capability to take away the inevitability of the regime.
00:24:08.700So that when you had millions of people in the streets, just a few months ago, when the regime forces came to, to kill people, that you have the means on the ground by Iranians to push back and to defend and to take away the inevitability of the regime.
00:25:00.760I mean, you, you spent more time than in Iraq and places like it than anybody I know.
00:25:06.200And there's a report out today, uh, that I think in Axios, that Trump has called Kurdish leaders to help in the Iran war effort, calling Kurdish leaders in Iraq.
00:25:19.060So, uh, saying the Kurds have thousands of soldiers along the Iran-Iraq border and control strategic areas that could be significant as this war develops, that Iraq's Kurds have close ties to Iran's Kurdish minority.
00:25:33.240And I guess, according to this article written by Barack Ravid and Mark Caputo, the Israelis came in, Netanyahu promising big things with the Kurds.
00:25:43.240He came in and said, oh, they're, they're going to come out of the woodwork.
00:25:47.700He's, quote, been relentless in urging strikes on the regime in Iran.
00:25:51.560And he first advocated for the Kurds in a White House meeting, saying, this is the quote in the article, when he first came over and sat with Trump for hours, you would have thought Netanyahu had it all figured out, said the official.
00:26:00.520He had the successor planned out, he had the Kurds all figured out, two sets of Kurdish groups here and there.
00:26:06.600This many people are going to rise up, thinking that they could get them from Iraq to go into Iran, help their fellow Kurds and be the fighting force, because the people have no arms, you know, the regular Iranians, to fight the IRGC.
00:26:19.720See, Trump's plan yesterday, as he suggested, was he was just hoping that they would put down their arms and join hands with the patriotic Iranians in saying, no, forget it.
00:26:29.820We're not going to be the people we've been for all these decades.
00:26:32.580But in any event, what do you make of the Kurds as a possibility here?
00:26:36.500See, to me, look, Iran is not Iranians.
00:26:41.240It is ethnic Persians, ethnic Azeris, Akwazi Arabs, some from Balochistan and, of course, Kurds.
00:27:45.080I don't know of anywhere in history, however wonderful and spectacular the precision weapons are.
00:27:51.460Air power alone does not change a regime.
00:27:54.140And it certainly doesn't create spontaneous order.
00:27:57.360I mean, heck, I met Reza Pahlavi for the first time six weeks ago and they were talking about a.
00:28:03.800Just FYI, that's I think most of our audience knows, but he's the son of the deposed Shah who's been living in America for all these decades and is Iranian, but not really.
00:28:14.340He's kind of more American than we are at this point and doesn't have a lot of support amongst the Iranian people.
00:28:19.060But he gets mentioned as a possible next gen leader, even though he's he's not doesn't sound like Trump has a lot of faith in him.
00:28:29.940But but but if if if that if no one has gone through the steps of, hey, how are we going to set up defense committees inside of Iran so that when you have a city, how do you defend it?
00:28:46.380How do you take away the Quds Force IRGC capability town by town?
00:28:52.300I don't know of anybody that's done that and maybe I'm just not informed, but my God, when you have millions of people in the streets over the last decade, plus would have been a good time to roll out that capability or having seen the absence or the need for those.
00:29:08.500Because you'd think the intelligence community would have been building that capacity on the ground or next door in Afghanistan or in Kurdistan, northern Iraq to be ready for this day.
00:31:01.180Look, a sliding door moment in that conflict.
00:31:04.020In fact, the head of Iraqi intelligence came to see me early in 2004, like February.
00:31:13.820So we'd been the U.S. had been there for about nine months.
00:31:16.660And, you know, you get the initial pause and calm after the invasion and then the chaos starts.
00:31:23.260And he said, we're seeing all kinds of evidence of the Iranians sending agents into Iraq, building cells to kill opposition, to exert force.
00:31:37.240And we want to we want a capability to drive them out.
00:31:43.060So he said, yes, this is back in my Blackwater days.
00:32:01.760We have to respect the political process, all the rest.
00:32:04.740If we had severed and prevented the Iranians from getting their hooks into Iraqi society, we wouldn't have had all the problems in Iraq.
00:32:12.860But now to think we're going to wade into Iran, into the IRGC's hometowns and say we're going to impose regime change and consider U.S. troops, please.
00:32:30.880They can train the Iranian people, carve out some part of Iran that they conquer and free and build from there.
00:32:41.000But it does not have to be done by our active duty forces, period.
00:32:46.800Here's what the report is on the munitions problem today.
00:32:51.380It's written by Kelly Bukhar-Vlejos of ResponsibleStatecraft.org.
00:32:58.240She spent some time working for Fox News.
00:33:00.900She's got the right background for this reporting.
00:33:04.980She's taking on the president's true social overnight on Monday, which reads in part as follows.
00:33:11.980The United States munitions stockpiles have, this is Trump, at the medium and upper medium grade, never been higher or better.
00:33:20.520So medium and upper medium, never been higher or better.
00:33:23.420As stated to me today, we have a virtually unlimited supply of these weapons.
00:33:26.660Wars can be fought forever, he writes, and very successfully using just these supplies, which are better than other countries' finest arms.
00:33:35.020At the highest end, we have a good supply, but we're not where we want to be.
00:33:39.540Much additional high-grade weaponry is stored for us in outlying countries.
00:33:44.160Sleepy Joe Biden spent all of his time and our country's money giving everything to P.T. Barnum Zelensky of Ukraine, hundreds of billions of dollars worth.
00:33:51.040And while he gave so much of the super high-end away, free, he didn't bother to replace it.
00:33:55.600It says, fortunately, he's rebuilt it.
00:33:57.940But this is Trump saying we're good on medium and upper medium grade, and that we can basically raid our outposts if we need more on the high-grade weaponry, which we are low on, he admits, thanks to Ukraine.
00:34:23.100But in the case of today, after four years of emptying our stores for Ukraine and then more than two years for Israel, fighting the Houthis, defending Israel twice in Operation Midnight Hammer in June, and now Operation Epic Fury.
00:34:35.660Well, you remember the nursery rhyme, she writes, old mother Hubbard, the cupboard is bare.
00:34:39.520Perhaps what is most absurd, she writes about Trump's words, other than the lack of truth, he did not rebuild the stockpiles in one year following Biden.
00:34:48.780The missiles are still being sent to Ukraine under previous agreements.
00:34:52.060And then he told the Europeans they could buy them, depleting the stores even further.
00:34:55.640But she says, but his Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman, Dan Cain, also warned that an operation, especially an extended one, could be risky.
00:35:02.540Washington Post reporting last week, we brought this to you yesterday as well, Dan Cain expressed his concerns when they were planning this at a White House meeting last week, that any major operation against Iran will face challenges because the U.S. munition stockpile has been significantly depleted by Washington's ongoing defense of Israel and support for Ukraine.
00:35:21.640Trump immediately went to Truth Social to contradict the story, but as we reported here, she writes, the military was already raising the alarms last summer about the shocking, that's in quotes, number of missiles that had been depleted from the stockpiles.
00:35:35.820She writes, the standard missile variant was down 33%.
00:35:39.960Those cost $12.5 to $28 million a piece.
00:35:44.360Each interception attempt requires at least two missiles, and often more than that, thwarting a few missiles can easily end up costing more than it does to buy an F-35.
00:35:55.940According to reports, the U.S. used a quarter of its THAAD missile interceptors during the 12-day war in June, the one in Iran, alone.
00:36:04.640The Guardian reported in July, the U.S. only had 25% of the Patriot missile interceptors it would need for the Pentagon's future military plans, with many already sent to Ukraine and more promised.
00:36:16.400She talks about how we were expending Tomahawk cruise missiles air-to-air to counter the Houthis, which one of the reasons why Trump ended that so abruptly is we were running out of those.
00:36:27.400The Tomahawks lost at an extraordinary rate in operations around the globe, not just that one, but in the Middle East against Iran, against the Houthis, and against Nigeria on Christmas Day.
00:36:40.960The point she's making here, Eric, is we don't have the military defenses and weaponry that we need to defend against an Iran that's not just rolling over.
00:36:54.240Correct, and if what's more strategic value to the United States is keeping the CCP from rolling over Taiwan, because they make all the computer chips that we need to run a modern economy.
00:37:12.300We don't need anything in the Middle East for oil, because we're independent, thanks to Texas fracking.
00:37:20.520So, yes, it's a math problem, and it's a production problem.
00:37:24.400Over the last 20, 30 years, you've really allowed a cartelization of our defense industry.
00:37:31.400You have the five super majors, which make super exotic, very high-end weaponry that, as you just listed, is ridiculously expensive.
00:37:41.680And so the cost of delivering energy, right?
00:37:43.820There's two things a military commander does.
00:37:45.380You coordinate information and release energy, move that airplane from here to there, move that ship, or put that warhead on a forehead.
00:37:54.200The cost of doing a warhead on a forehead in the United States is grotesquely too high.
00:37:59.900And Trump administration, to their credit, is trying to bring reform there and bring more competition to it, but haven't been able to go nearly fast enough because they have a lethargic, worthless Congress, which doesn't really change procurement rules to open up the throttle on production and procurement.
00:38:18.760But those are, yes, what you just listed are very real math problems, and if we deplete stocks further, now you leave the entire Pacific theater and the West Coast of the United States extremely open to incoming attack from anybody, really.
00:38:38.440This amidst reports as follows, that the U.S. embassies in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait have closed after drone attacks.
00:38:46.220You mentioned that the Iranians are using not only missiles, but drones very effectively, and they've got some untold number of them, and they're using them against U.S. embassies in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, and now we've closed those after they were attacked by drones.
00:39:01.080The U.S. are urging Americans in the region, depart now.
00:39:09.320Then there's a report that the UAE and Qatar are having interceptor issues, that the United Arab Emirates and Qatar, via Bloomberg, are privately lobbying allies to help them persuade Trump to reach for an off-ramp that would keep U.S. military operations against Iran short.
00:39:27.600Privately, both the UAE and Qatar are working to quickly improve their air defense capabilities.
00:39:32.060The UAE has requested assistance from its allies with medium-range air defenses, while Qatar has asked for help to counter drone attacks, which have emerged as a greater-than-ballistic missiles threat.
00:39:45.140Qatar's stocks of Patriot interceptor missiles will last four days at the current rate of use.
00:39:52.920Not for nothing, but the U.A. and Qatar denied these claims when contacted by Bloomberg on them.
00:40:00.760But the Wall Street Journal has similar reporting.
00:40:03.340They read, a crucial variable is whether these monarchies start running out of interceptors before the Iranian regime runs out of projectiles.
00:40:11.860At current burn rates, it could be very soon.
00:40:14.520The UAE, they write, by Monday evening had been targeted by 174 Iranian ballistic missiles, eight cruise missiles, 689 drones in three days, with no missiles and 44 drones actually hitting.
00:40:26.160Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, these are all Gulf allies, came under heavy barrages, with Bahrain reporting 70 incoming ballistic missiles.
00:40:33.520It usually takes two or even three interceptors, such as missiles, for the Patriot or THAAD systems to shoot down one ballistic missile.
00:40:41.740And we talked about how expensive those are.
00:40:43.960So these are all our Gulf allies who are taking the brunt of it right now, of course.
00:40:50.160You know, Israel's getting attacked, but so are all of our Gulf allies, and so are our embassies.
00:40:55.360And in the meantime, the question is whether we've gone to Iran to say, hey, do you want to talk?
00:41:17.220In fact, all the administration keeps saying is, you haven't seen anything yet.
00:41:20.600We're about to unleash a much bigger, fuller, heretofore unseen barrage.
00:41:28.360Yeah, Megan, I've not had a security clearance in more than 15 years.
00:41:35.480So maybe I'm just not very well briefed.
00:41:37.600But at the end of the day, I think it's a math problem when you have an enemy like Iran that can field weapons that are $20,000 to $30,000, like a Shahhead drone.
00:41:48.760And we have to shoot it down with, I thought the standard missiles were $1.2 million.
00:41:53.940What you just read, they were in the $10,000 to $12 million per copy.
00:42:23.360And if Israel wants to stay over there and do something, although I guess that's fraught too, because that's kind of how we got into this mess.
00:42:29.040You know, Israel, I mean, look, there's two roles for Israel here.
00:42:32.080Number one, Bibi has been lobbying President Trump for the better part of a year to do this.
00:43:28.680And I think that reverts back to point A, that he'd been getting convinced by Bibi for a year that this was necessary.
00:43:34.320And we had this chance, especially Bibi was reportedly arguing, especially after the nuclear facility strike in June, their weekend, you know, now's the time.
01:18:50.420the lawyer defending the deponent is not supposed to do a bunch of speaking objections, but man, it was, and so was the male.
01:18:59.380She had, he was flanked by two lawyers, a female and a male, and both of them were completely trying to telegraph to Bill Clinton the answers.
01:19:05.880He's asking you to get into Jeffrey Epstein's mind and opine on what he may or may not have been thinking.
01:19:11.880You know, like, you're supposed to say objection to form at a deposition.
01:19:15.460That's all you're supposed to say so that you can observe, sorry, preserve your substantive objection for when this case ever proceeds to, let's say, a trial if somebody got indicted.
01:19:27.520So these speaking objections were inappropriate and ubiquitous yesterday.
01:19:32.360You didn't see much of it there, but trust me, because I watched a lot of this.
01:19:35.960There's another one here about whether he thinks Jeffrey Epstein killed himself.
01:21:07.120What was he thinking the day he heard that Epstein allegedly killed himself?
01:21:10.620Like, after all the hours they'd spent together?
01:21:13.040I mean, I'm sure Bill Clinton was like, oh, shit.
01:21:15.140This is going to turn into a nightmare now.
01:21:17.760Because when there's no actual resolution in a court of law, as there ultimately would have been against Jeffrey Epstein, you know, the unanswered questions are sometimes the most dangerous ones.
01:21:29.420And that's, I think, proven true in the Epstein case.
01:21:38.240The following clip has gone a bit viral because he was smiling as he looked at Epstein documents showing, for example, a photo of him framed in Epstein's home in Manhattan.
01:21:52.560This is the pictures from a New York Times piece in 2025.
01:21:56.420Some had mistakenly thought it was that same picture that we just showed of him in the pool.
01:22:35.060What's interesting about it is because he's all smiles for the listening audience.
01:22:38.320He's like ear to ear with a smile as he looks back over the New York Times article and his lawyer takes it from him.
01:22:44.700Clearly, she doesn't want him getting too interested in this subject.
01:22:47.980And Ben sees the picture of himself and Epstein.
01:22:51.360And by the way, for the listening audience, it's a picture of the two of them looking like BFFs, just looking at each other like bros in a picture.
01:23:20.360OK, so overall, it wasn't, you know, earth shattering that he denied any knowledge of Epstein's sex crimes when asked if he ever had any communications with Epstein related to young women or girls.
01:23:34.880He said, no, he briefed lawmakers on the backstory of his history with Epstein and denied having any knowledge, again, of the sex crimes before he was prosecuted.
01:23:43.740He denied having sex with a mystery woman pictured next to him in that hot tub.
01:23:48.020Again, he explained it was taken at a lavish hotel in Brunei with the sultan inviting him there.
01:23:55.960He said, my team was working on the AIDS issue and Epstein was there, as was Ghislaine Maxwell.
01:24:00.880The sultan of Brunei was a man I had gotten to know well.
01:24:03.700I wanted I want you to stay at this hotel and I hope you'll use the pool, he said.
01:45:55.940We felt we had the characters to do it.
01:45:57.780We felt we were the perfect team to break the streak, the 46-year streak.
01:46:02.160And so many proud Americans in there that the sacrifice from what I saw guys on our team
01:46:08.940do, like everybody's the best players or one of the best players on their team back at home.
01:46:13.700And to see like the sacrifice that guys would make, playing less minutes, playing different role, not playing power play, less five-on-five minutes, maybe not even playing at all.
01:46:24.200And that's, when I first saw the sacrifice in that first practice, I knew we had a real, legit shot.
01:46:30.620And I mean, it took to overtime in the gold medal game to do it.
01:46:34.920It took probably the best goaltending performance of all time by Hellebuck.
01:47:28.480I just think it's like a group of guys that are so selfless, and like I just talked about the sacrifice, like willing to do whatever it took.
01:47:37.800Like put their bodies on their line for the country, play a different role.
01:47:41.960Just, I thought what was really cool that we've talked, I've talked about a little bit since, but kind of going back to like the alumni and the guys that have come before us.
01:47:49.420Like I obviously talk to my dad like every day.
01:47:51.860He was a four-time Olympian and played for 20 years, and we've become close over the years with guys like Chris Chelios, Jeremy Roenick, like Brian Lee.
01:48:01.560So, for example, like before every single game, there would be like five or six of us out in the hall taping our sticks or getting our skate sharp or tying like laces, whatever we were doing to warm up.
01:48:12.880And we would FaceTime Chris Chelios, talk to him for a few minutes.
01:48:17.100We'd FaceTime Brian Leach, talk to them for a few minutes.
01:48:19.740So, I felt our team did a great job of keeping the alumni of USA Hockey like involved.
01:48:25.580And then we'd go into the dressing room, and they all sent us like these huge letters that we had like plastered all over the walls of messages.
01:48:32.420So, like we just have such a tight brotherhood, whether you're Mike Ruzzioni, who's however old, or you're Jack Hughes, who's 24 years old.
01:48:44.660And we're so lucky to have guys like Mike Ruzzioni on the 1980 team, who they were really the guys who influenced guys my dad's age, and then my dad's age, guys with Chris Chelios, Jeremy Roenick, Brian Leach, Mike Madonna.
01:48:58.100All these guys influenced, you know, the Patrick Haynes, and then us.
01:49:01.940So, it's really just a trick-of-the-down effect.
01:49:04.000And who knows, hopefully our team right now is influencing the next generation or generations, because that's really what it's all about in creating the greatest culture around it.
01:49:21.380We're so proud to represent our country.
01:49:24.000And, like, that was the greatest honor I've ever had in my entire life, is representing the United States, wearing the red, white, and blue at the Olympics at the greatest stage ever.
01:49:33.880And I don't know if you're ever going to get a greater honor than that, you know, other than maybe being in the military or a first responder.
01:49:41.980It was when I saw Mike Ruzione say that, and it really hit home when I put that jersey on over in Milan for the first time.
01:49:53.360And just realized, like, you're playing for everybody in the United States, and just a special feeling.
01:50:00.760So you're in the finals, you're up 1-0 for virtually the entire match, and then right at the end of the game, toward the end, well, the end of the second period, the Canadians scored.
01:50:24.560Do you, at your level, because now you're a professional hockey player at this point, do you feel nervous when this is happening?
01:50:31.860Maybe a tiny bit going into the game, but once the game happened, I was totally fine.
01:50:35.780And before overtime, I thought our coach, Mike Sullivan, gave an unreal speech where he was really just talking about, like, there is a hero in this room that's going to change the course for generations to come with this goal.
01:50:48.660And, I mean, at the end of the day, I just looked to the right, and we had Connor Hellebuck there, and I just calmed right down.
01:50:57.420He was in a zone that no, it was probably the greatest goaltending performance in the history of hockey.
01:52:16.920Somebody in this room is going to, you know, make the difference and change the way hockey's looked at in the United States forever.
01:52:23.780And a couple great saves by Hellebuck, and the guys that were out there did an amazing job.
01:52:28.140I don't think it can be stressed enough, like obviously Jack Hughes being the overtime golden goal hero.
01:52:34.500But the play he made defensively on McDavid, who's the best player in hockey before, that was absolutely unreal.
01:52:41.200And then the play Zach Rensky made to beat Nathan McKinnon, who's probably like the second best player in the world, at a puck battle, gave it to Jack, and then Jack did the rest.
01:52:50.540So, so many things that led to that goal.
01:53:53.180He was the most important piece for us.
01:53:55.840And just put such an all-world performance, like having that save right there, that stick save will go down in history as one of the best saves, if not the best ever.
02:04:04.380Like, to me, it was very charming that there didn't need to be a focus group meeting before you gave your answer.
02:04:08.640But did you feel any hesitation before you said yes?
02:04:10.740No, I mean, just β and going off, like, winning the last few Stanley Cups, like, getting invited to the White House, no matter who's there,
02:04:18.780it's just the greatest honor as an American, one of the greatest honors as an American.
02:04:22.800So everybody on our team was so excited and honored and shocked to get the invite.
02:04:29.200And then they said the State of the Union was that night, which I guarantee you nobody on our team has been to.
02:04:39.300And then β so we had that experience, and it was just getting a call Sunday to go to that on Tuesday back in the U.S., being like, how are we going to get there?
02:04:52.440All right, they're sending Air Force Two.
02:04:54.840Like, it was just β they couldn't believe it.
02:04:59.500So now, if the president makes this joke about the women's team β and by the way, we've played it on our social media, it's gone totally viral β President Barack Obama made a joke about the men's team when he called the women's hockey team β or, sorry, soccer team after they won.
02:05:15.380And I think it was the World Cup or some big match.
02:05:19.200But in any event, President Obama did the exact same thing.
02:05:23.340It seems we have experience of all hockey teams and soccer and sports teams being able to have a friendly laugh at a presidential joke about members of the opposite sex.
02:05:33.720But with you guys, certain people on the left tried to turn it into a capital offense.
02:05:38.860So how did you learn that this was blowing up into something some very bizarre people wanted to take offense at?
02:05:45.380Listen, we're β I was just telling a story this morning about how close we were with the women's team, how we were sharing the same floor on, like, the third floor of the USA building was us in the women's team room β or, sorry, floor.
02:05:58.600And, like, we became super, super tight with them over the few weeks.
02:06:04.380We had, like, watch parties for other events.
02:06:07.960A lot of people knew each other from before, but getting to know the rest of them.
02:06:12.200And, yeah, like, I think it's just all, like, completely blown up into something that's just not true because we were great, huge supporters of them, and they were of us.
02:06:21.960And being able to sweep both gold medals for the first time ever is such an honor.
02:06:26.700And one of the highlights β honest to God, one of the highlights of the whole experience was after we got back from the Winter House, which is where our post-gold medal party was, we went for β because a bunch of us had, like, the late-night munchies, so we wanted to go in the dining hall.
02:06:42.340It was, like, 2 a.m., and the buses were picking us up at 4.30 to go to the airport.
02:06:47.360So a bunch of us were like, let's just go eat something quick.
02:07:09.380Everyone's eating lava cakes, having beers, telling stories.
02:07:15.020I mean, we were probably a little bit more drunk because we just, like, had the big party, and they were at the closing ceremony.
02:07:21.380So they probably thought we were outrageous with some of the stories.
02:07:24.920But might be the highlight of the whole experience was celebrating with the women's team, all of our team, all the gold medals on, like, just looking at everybody and just β can you believe this?
02:07:44.080Everybody just going around and talking about how special this was, how special both of our teams were, just how β what a great honor it was to represent the United States at the greatest single venue Olympics.
02:08:07.700What I like to call a classic ripping defeat from the jaws of victory, the United States men's hockey team, in their utter moment of glory, childhood dreams come true, once-in-a-lifetime accomplishment, sensational.
02:09:24.340I've got nothing really to say to that.
02:09:25.980Yeah, I think that's probably the right β that's probably the right attitude.
02:09:29.940By the way, she took a call from the president herself, personally, who congratulated her after a big win and accepted his invitation for a visit to the White House.
02:09:40.640So, literally not one word of what she said was sincere.
02:09:44.060It was just an opportunity to rip on a bunch of white guys, which is very much in favor amongst some on the far left, but not amongst normal Americans.
02:09:52.020So, now you go back and you resume life at the NHL.
02:09:54.740And my understanding is guys to your left and to your right are on the Canadian team you just defeated the previous couple of days, right?
02:10:03.560So, you're playing with some of your β with some of your adversaries who are Canadian.
02:13:55.180It was the only way we could celebrate the right way and honor it the right way.
02:14:00.840Winning the gold medal was having him be a part of it.
02:14:03.580And even though it just sucks so much that he's not with us because he would have been on that team and a big part of it, we felt we have β I mean, his family was there.
02:14:12.740We wanted to include all of them, but just logistically, it was so hard to get them all down.
02:14:16.240So, Wierenski and Larkin grabbed Noah and little Johnny.
02:14:22.300And that picture is one of the most special, emotional, just times of my life.
02:14:28.920And skating around with his jersey, doing the lap with the American flag and his jersey, it was just β I mean, there weren't many dry eyes in that stadium in that moment, including us players.
02:14:41.020It was just so β it was just emotional.
02:14:43.180And, yeah, we miss him very dearly, and he had to be part of that celebration with us.
02:14:48.560Oh, sweet Noah was shown in that picture there.
02:14:52.780So innocent and not yet aware of all she's lost.
02:14:57.060But, boy, she did gain a bunch of great uncles, and you could see that as you guys kept him in your thoughts and prayers the whole time.
02:15:26.580That's like β that's exactly what you think they're going to be like.
02:15:29.760Like, humble, patriotic, cool, no nonsense, no bullshit.
02:15:35.800We're so lucky to have had that team play for us and to have them out there still available for our enjoyment and our support.
02:15:43.100So we should get out there and support teams like the Panthers and the others that keep our guys employed and on the ice every day such that they can do miracles for us when the big four-year Olympics come.
02:15:54.700Anyway, thanks to all of you, too, for watching, and we'll see you soon.
02:15:59.540Thanks for listening to The Megyn Kelly Show.