The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters - Breakfast With Beau ｜ Monday 4th May 2026 ｜ w⧸ Radical Liberation

00:00:00.000 radlib for short radical liberation is my channel yeah yeah cool thanks for coming in

00:00:04.020 just to let people know it is monday the 4th of may in the year of our law 2026 and it's been

00:00:10.420 been about four years since i was in england so it's really good to be back yeah okay cool yeah

00:00:15.140 i once saw you you're you're you're recalling that you'd met me when i was here last yeah you

00:00:19.480 spoke at a witton or shieldings once you was the only person to get a standing ovation i remember

00:00:24.320 yep yeah i was kind of amazed remarkable no it was great it was a really really interesting talk

00:00:29.620 It was arguably, I would say, the best talking.

00:00:32.360 So if people might not have heard of you, you're sort of one of the more,

00:00:35.720 I would say, one of the more eminent people, like the dissident rat.

00:00:39.740 I've just been around, I think, as part of it.

00:00:42.320 Tell us about a bit of your background, who you are,

00:00:44.600 if people might not have ever heard of you.

00:00:46.340 Yeah, so I got interested in political matters 30 years ago

00:00:53.260 or something like that.

00:00:54.540 A friend got me interested in libertarian ideas,

00:00:56.760 and then i i just kind of kept digging from there reading history reading political philosophy legal

00:01:02.520 philosophy i mean all kinds of stuff right and then eventually and i was writing articles back

00:01:07.180 then but then i had eight children that's the thing everybody needs to know about me eight

00:01:11.260 eight yes sir you didn't pronounce like the eight it's eight i was just in italy ocho

00:01:17.000 okay um right so so we had eight children so i kind of dropped out for a while so i feel like

00:01:22.800 my political life has had two phases you know one i was writing basically 20 years ago or whatever

00:01:28.800 and then i came back you know the children got to the point where they weren't all babies

00:01:33.080 and i started to think about getting re-engaged and i was like oh youtube's pretty interesting i

00:01:38.420 saw carl benjamin for example etc uh and i was like oh there's a really interesting conversation

00:01:43.940 going on there so i started a little channel with the help of academic agent right he had me on as

00:01:48.460 a guest enough that people knew me so that when i started a channel i solved the major problem with

00:01:53.660 having a youtube channel which is having more than five followers right right yeah getting off the

00:01:58.060 ground is the hardest bit of it anyone out there wants to do a channel i'm going to do a channel

00:02:01.420 one day right yeah good luck getting to like the first thousand exactly first five thousand i got

00:02:06.220 my first thousand like instantly right cool cool so so i i have a small channel and i um in fact

00:02:13.820 since you're kind of the history guy right i should say i a lot of what i do really is history

00:02:19.980 at this point um it's more recent history sometimes uh for example a recent series on

00:02:25.740 my channel was about the us and israel relationship which it turns out now was very timely because

00:02:32.140 everybody's thinking about it but we'll get we'll get to that later yeah okay cool cool so okay what

00:02:37.740 i usually do on the show is talk about the the front pages in the british print media fleet

00:02:42.380 street uh but because you're american you're from somewhere in middle america i understand

00:02:47.360 st louis missouri that's right okay go rams no wait no i think battle hawks i think you're right

00:02:53.460 no rams sounds right was it i'm not much into sports but i believe it's right i think they

00:02:57.220 went back to la anyway i'm only joking i barely follow american football but uh missouri from

00:03:02.500 missouri so uh right right in the middle of the country so hopefully some of your opinions and

00:03:08.720 takes and your knowledge of what the feeling is in america is not just the coastal the coastal

00:03:15.300 elite view but what real americans think it's not the coastal elite view that's for sure okay good

00:03:20.180 great interesting i don't represent that brilliant so what i think is we'll whip through a little bit

00:03:25.640 of the of the british uh print media yeah uh but mainly i want to ask you about more americans mr

00:03:32.640 trump and his wine iran and all sorts of things like this rudy giuliani's been taken to hospital

00:03:37.220 so things like this you didn't hear that yeah yeah and i and i have to say um of any country

00:03:43.660 in the world besides america uh britain is what i would know the most about simply because

00:03:49.220 through youtube i have friends and i kind of keep up a little bit okay i'm not totally coming in

00:03:54.900 with nothing okay on this cool so we'll whip through just the front pages because also as

00:03:59.320 well today it's not a fantastically interesting day uh so the among the headlines are no money

00:04:05.300 for new weapons that's just a british military we underspend in fact most people in the world

00:04:10.020 underspend on their military the united states is an outlier in so far as that they spend tons and

00:04:16.560 tons and tons of money oh yeah most of the world don't i've seen that and even comparisons to like

00:04:21.200 a country like china which probably people think of as like heavily militarized american spending

00:04:26.080 is like 10x it's right it's way more yeah way more per capita or however you want to measure it

00:04:31.360 Do normal Americans, or do you, are you sort of really proud by that?

00:04:38.400 Worried about that?

00:04:40.160 Well, I myself am very anti-American empire and have been for decades.

00:04:45.360 But, you know, it's just woven into our life.

00:04:48.960 There was a place called McDonnell Douglas, now Boeing, that employs a lot of people in my field in St. Louis.

00:04:56.240 and so everyone i work with or a lot of people i work with have worked in the defense industry

00:05:01.760 right okay it's just part of everything you know but you i mean it's in other words it's not so

00:05:07.780 much for most of us it's not how we feel about it it's just there all right you know there's not any

00:05:13.640 real concern of like you know giant black budgets for example we're like what are they spending

00:05:19.380 those hundreds of billions every year on i i would say there's a general sense that there's

00:05:26.420 wasteful expenditure all right there was the whole 500 hammer scandal back when i was a kid

00:05:32.040 they found that the military was paying ridiculous amounts for common everyday things

00:05:37.260 when you somehow when you look over and you see countries most other countries but you know

00:05:40.960 somewhere somewhere like sweden or france or germany or united kingdom where we're paying

00:05:44.660 very very minimal on defense do you guys look at that and sort of tuck with school

00:05:50.100 or or do you just or you're like we get it we get it they're not super rich countries like we are

00:05:55.500 uh i don't know i i can't speak for anyone else i would just say that for myself

00:06:00.980 it seems nice i i don't want spending all this money for no purpose okay right fair enough okay

00:06:07.940 so in britain no money for new weapons apparently we won't be able to buy new weapons until the

00:06:14.260 2030s says one of these headlines and the cost of a pint of beer uh hits 10 pounds in london

00:06:20.380 that seems um well the thing is oh look there's some there's some gals enjoying a brew a bevy

00:06:26.940 10 pounds thing is i've paid way more than 10 pounds for a pint of beer in london before

00:06:30.980 years ago depends where you go no so it's not like the first time ever look cost a pint hits

00:06:36.580 10 pounds in london for the first time no no they may might mean on average or something yeah i

00:06:41.100 guess so yeah i remember going to some some stupidly expensive place in like hoxton or

00:06:46.660 something and they wanted like 18 pounds for a beer years ago anyway anyway stupid you were

00:06:52.320 paying for the atmosphere yeah it's stupid money okay uh welfare pays more than work for 600 000

00:06:58.120 households that's true everywhere in the united states there's a debate around live on welfare

00:07:04.420 right there is an endless debate of just why are we paying people just to scrounge off the state

00:07:10.740 essentially yeah right all right yeah okay well so we'll whip through this uh zendaya there for

00:07:17.220 some reason they've decided she's the most beautiful woman in the world she's not britain

00:07:20.700 talks pay one billion pound a year to eu after reset i don't know if you watch aa stuff up or

00:07:26.120 down from i'm confused what's that so so that's more than britain would have been paying into the

00:07:31.200 eu oh yeah loads more loads more yeah because we were we were when we were in the eu before the

00:07:39.500 the referendum uh we were a net contributor and paid loads and loads and then when we came out

00:07:44.180 part of the idea was that we don't pay them anything anymore i would think that we still

00:07:48.400 do and anyway the current labor government want us to be closer or a reset with europe

00:07:53.140 and part of that is europe now asking for and just another billion pounds so it's a soft on

00:07:59.340 brexit yeah but there's been a lot of that yeah of kind of unwinding the of the brexit thing yeah

00:08:05.120 oh yeah yeah and of course people here with that on load seaters and our sort of uh end of the

00:08:11.720 spectrum yeah hate all that you know yeah we were arch leavers so any sort of reset or any sort of

00:08:17.920 getting closer to europe again is just frustrating and annoying to us it was the opposite of what we

00:08:22.180 wanted what we voted for yeah um the other thing is the the state pensions in britain going forward

00:08:28.720 almost certainly won't be able to afford it i won't bore you with what the triple lock means but

00:08:33.000 basically pensioners might not well in decades to come anyway probably won't get as much as they

00:08:38.840 thought they would is there much problem with state pensions in the united states is that

00:08:42.640 a political football that comes up perennially or is it not much of a talking point

00:08:48.360 normal americans wouldn't have a state pension really not at all okay i'm sorry i'm sorry

00:08:53.660 social security okay we have this thing called social security and and we're constantly being

00:08:58.620 told that it's a pyramid scheme it is and it's not gonna it's just you know fiscally it's just

00:09:05.580 not gonna work out right eventually there's just not gonna be enough young people paying into it

00:09:09.340 because the original idea was oh it's like you're investing in a retirement fund and the money you

00:09:14.840 put in grows and then you get it back well that's not how it works at all they just spend it all

00:09:18.540 constantly and get more money out of the young workers and hand it to the old people which is

00:09:23.960 fine when the young people outnumber the old people right but when it flips you get the

00:09:28.700 inverse triangle population triangle right right uh then then uh population pyramid then then uh

00:09:35.020 suddenly it doesn't work out so well so it sounds like a really similar sort of debate as here

00:09:40.500 shrinking populations everywhere right yeah that's what we're headed towards certainly certainly in

00:09:45.380 the west yeah and we're just not going to be able to afford it almost certainly okay so the guardian

00:09:50.120 you may or may not be aware of sort of one of the most left-leaning yeah like horrible horrible

00:09:55.340 thing they're saying something about ai facial recognition systems but we're not all that

00:09:59.260 interested in that this morning uh the again the the triple lock pension thing yeah let's just move

00:10:05.320 on from it there was a big explosion yesterday where two people died and a couple two or three

00:10:09.980 other people were wounded uh but we don't the details of it the police called it suspicious

00:10:15.280 but not a terrorist incident okay some sort of domestic i don't know it's weird whatever that

00:10:22.060 is i guess maybe we'll find out about what really happened there in the coming days but

00:10:25.320 some sort of weird explosion happened there um yeah park of it's not it's not a fantastically

00:10:32.300 interesting down the front of the paper there we go talking about parking fines that labor

00:10:36.540 obviously being socialists just want to squeeze the kulaks for every last penny they possibly

00:10:41.440 can this will really help them in the upcoming local elections right stance right right exactly

00:10:47.840 people are going to be really excited to vote for that they're going to get they are going to get

00:10:52.000 do regular folks vote in the local elections the turnout's usually really bad i was going to say

00:10:57.360 yeah the turnout's usually sort of pathetically low which means it's easy to win if you can just

00:11:01.360 get a few more people to turn out than the other guy right yeah yeah yeah quite often i mean i

00:11:06.080 I think this time round will be a bit different

00:11:08.280 simply because Labour's so unpopular

00:11:11.560 that a few more people are going to turn out just to...

00:11:14.100 To vote against them.

00:11:14.820 Yeah.

00:11:15.540 But often it's the way that local councillors,

00:11:17.740 sometimes you get like an independent

00:11:18.860 or you get like a local residential committee type person

00:11:23.200 who's completely independent

00:11:24.080 and they just happen to genuinely be a personality

00:11:28.280 in their little area.

00:11:29.760 People know who they are and they get a few hundred votes

00:11:33.060 and that's enough and they're a councillor.

00:11:35.380 that's not unheard of at all so why would labor be so unpopular that you'd vote against your local

00:11:40.080 guy that you know in the labor oh well local labor guy in your town yeah well just because

00:11:45.860 labor since they've been in what nearly two is it two years 18 months now just nearly everything

00:11:50.760 they've done nearly everything they've done seems to have been at odds with the interests of the

00:11:56.400 nation and the people they're just deeply deeply unpopular um keir starmer is the least popular

00:12:02.320 prime minister of all time oh really of all time like going back to terms of polling yeah yeah

00:12:09.340 right so a good couple of hundred years worth of p.m. but but but would this be the first time that

00:12:15.340 that poll on popularity would be demonstrated at the polls you know in the voting yeah i mean not

00:12:22.360 the first time i mean i know there's been little by elections or whatever right but this would be

00:12:25.600 the first major time yeah yeah you could really see it yeah yeah yeah we did have that one by

00:12:31.400 election where it was supposed to be a labor in galton denton it was supposed to be a labor safe

00:12:36.140 seat super safe seat and labor i think i think they came third yeah it was close to run between

00:12:40.740 the greens and reform and the greens won it right but that that's that doesn't necessarily it's

00:12:45.420 indicative but doesn't necessarily tell you what's coming up in a week i guess no true yeah people

00:12:50.380 always always massively over exaggerate the the importance of a single by-election they think oh

00:12:56.960 this pattern is going to play out across the country at the next general election or the next

00:12:59.860 local elections yes not usually the case at all having said that you wouldn't be totally stunned

00:13:05.780 if starmer gets a bit of a slap in the face in the local elections yeah and labor turns to him

00:13:11.300 and says you're screwing this up for all of us right right yeah it's expected some people are

00:13:16.480 saying that he's a dead man walking particularly um that all the polls are showing that they're

00:13:22.860 going to get really badly trounced on thursday um sort of an historic all-time trouncing right

00:13:28.280 lose maybe something like 75 percent of all their councillors get completely wiped out um you know

00:13:35.820 maybe 17 18 1900 councillors and the vast majority of those flip straight to reform the only issue

00:13:42.280 is that the storm bob will not care well that's the next thing when that happens i think that's

00:13:47.060 baked in now that's sort of certainly going to happen right the next real thing next we'll talk

00:13:50.960 about is what happens then will starmer actually get stabbed in the back or the front by his own

00:13:54.920 people right and we get a new prime minister or does he just march robotically on yeah if it was

00:13:59.900 up to him he will do that of course it's just a question of whether there's enough big beasts in

00:14:05.340 the party and enough enough um enough support coalesces around the right person uh but yeah

00:14:12.280 we've got the the bench isn't all that deep yeah there isn't an obvious heir apparent right yeah

00:14:19.400 exactly that they're two or three people and none none of them are like particularly charismatic or

00:14:25.780 a brilliant mind or or anything at all or got the vast majority who is brilliant and charismatic

00:14:31.460 is what you were saying right right um you know sometimes someone doesn't have to be brilliant

00:14:36.620 and charismatic look at gordon brown who took over from um tony blair but what gordon brown

00:14:41.140 did have was just a giant giant support of the parliamentary party and the membership of the

00:14:46.160 party so when tony blair finally stepped down he was quote-unquote coronated in he was just he

00:14:53.340 really was just the designated heir apparent and there was no question no one tried to yeah but

00:14:58.600 he really had the support within the party yeah and that allowed him to govern right yeah yeah

00:15:03.260 yeah whereas where now there isn't a single person like that yeah they could they could put someone

00:15:07.960 up there but the party might just be fractured afterwards yeah perhaps the front runner i think

00:15:12.720 the book is at the moment saying the front rungler is a woman called angela rayner i've heard that

00:15:16.860 but there's a big chunk of people within at least the parliamentary labor party that are talking

00:15:21.180 about anyone but rayner so you get the you get it's a fact it's a fractured thing but okay back

00:15:26.740 to the papers in the mirror this is pure slop now this is the tabloids um you even do the tabloids

00:15:32.220 on breakfast with them yeah just all right just a quick look anyway broad-minded um yeah so the

00:15:37.960 old manchester united football coach was taken ill so that's big news there you go now what does

00:15:44.220 this mean reform and new race race rail yeah so that's aaron banks who's been a big friend of

00:15:51.620 nigel for years like all through the brexit and the ukip years okay so this is the game where they

00:15:56.040 rich man he gives him millions of pounds from time to time not trying to be pro-reform or anything

00:16:00.000 but just anti the other the other people this is the thing where they are wanting to tear you down

00:16:05.360 and so they find something you said once years ago or or whatever yeah and then make a big deal out

00:16:10.980 of it yeah i mean this one is one of those kinds of things exactly this is one of those things

00:16:14.640 where it's it's not even that long ago aaron bank said something which i think is completely

00:16:18.800 reasonable and normal but some people think it's racist yeah and so it makes the front page of the

00:16:24.860 mirror yeah he said something so reform put the story is real quick say reform put forward some

00:16:29.560 candidate or other who's black in wales oh no plied cumbry the the the welsh probably

00:16:35.840 mispronouncing that sorry um the welsh nationalist party although they're not nationalists but

00:16:40.100 anyway they put forward some black candidate and aaron bank said welsh lad question mark

00:16:46.380 never said yeah yeah and now there's a new race row oh my goodness

00:16:52.760 i mean you can't be black and welsh you just can't you can have a bit of paper saying that

00:16:59.140 but you're not actually welsh are you right right because of you know reality heritage and just just

00:17:05.200 with the headline you would think like he used the n-word or something oh no he just said welsh

00:17:09.660 yeah yeah that's it welsh lad question what is he you know and yeah and so that's a race row now

00:17:16.200 that's sad reformer embroiled in a brand new race row because aaron banks noticed reality

00:17:21.180 all right the financial times not much on there really well there are interesting things but

00:17:26.440 But I think we should move on.

00:17:27.960 There's our pure slot again there.

00:17:29.320 Alex Ferguson.

00:17:30.580 He's in his 80s, I believe.

00:17:32.540 Yeah.

00:17:33.860 So you might not have ever heard of him,

00:17:35.140 but he was one of the most successful football managers of all time,

00:17:37.920 basically.

00:17:38.900 Won the Champions League and things.

00:17:40.340 We have a friend who talks about football managers.

00:17:42.620 So yeah, I've heard the name.

00:17:44.300 Academic agent.

00:17:45.100 Oh, right.

00:17:45.480 Yeah.

00:17:46.120 He likes football a bit, doesn't he?

00:17:47.760 Oh, yeah.

00:17:48.040 I've heard him talk about 90s football.

00:17:49.240 Well, back then.

00:17:49.700 Yeah, 90s football.

00:17:50.680 Yeah.

00:17:51.000 I'm the same.

00:17:51.800 I'm the same.

00:17:52.260 When I was young, when I was a kid, a teenager in my 20s,

00:17:55.260 football was massive it was like my whole life I just it was yeah I just loved football but

00:18:00.520 into my 30s and now 40s I don't really pay all that much attention but back in the 90s Man

00:18:05.100 United in the 1990s I won't talk about this much because my audience are not really into sports

00:18:10.220 ball yeah but anyway just to say this chap here won the Champions League and loads and loads of

00:18:16.160 Premier League titles with Manchester United in the 1990s and now he's really old and was taken

00:18:20.800 hospital yesterday so i'm sorry just asking about the audience here bo yeah so how do you know

00:18:25.280 they're not into it we asked them if you talk more than 30 to 60 seconds yeah tell you to shut up they

00:18:29.840 start doing yawning emojis they move on no we did a poll one time and i said as we do a poll every

00:18:35.520 day and a couple of times i've said do you care about football at all like and they're like no

00:18:40.640 like do you care about any like slop celebrity news no you care about formula one no boxing no

00:18:46.080 They don't, they're not interested in that.

00:18:48.220 It's fair enough.

00:18:48.580 It gives your show focus.

00:18:49.480 It's fair enough.

00:18:50.020 Yeah, right.

00:18:50.560 Yeah.

00:18:50.840 Let's keep it as serious as possible.

00:18:52.520 So we'll move on from The Sun that has got a story about how people that make footballs

00:18:57.460 for the World Cup only get like 26 pounds a week because it's like some sort of sweatshop

00:19:04.700 type thing and FIFA, but FIFA make millions out of it.

00:19:07.620 So, okay.

00:19:08.200 They're the nonsense front pages today.

00:19:11.000 Let's talk about, let's talk about things that are a bit more, a bit more serious.

00:19:15.220 or on this show i quite often look at the price of oil so real quick just check in with that

00:19:20.560 it's down from the last few days but still kind of high so west texas is just over a hundred

00:19:26.260 dollars a barrel and brent is at 107 dollars a barrel so you know expensive the trick is to look

00:19:32.020 at the sixth month or the year and and see how it right right um yeah i mean let's do that there

00:19:39.440 go so volatile is the is the word i mean what period is that that's a year that's a year yeah

00:19:46.160 oh it doesn't seem up that's three months it's it's it's uh i thought it would be more up because

00:19:52.640 the war yeah it looks like it's about what it was a year ago well it's higher but it's not

00:19:57.680 fantastically higher i say that every morning like not every morning but um so when the war started

00:20:02.400 it was roughly about 78 79 a barrel and now it's like what 100 or 107 in and around that ballpark

00:20:08.480 So a lot more, 15%, 20% more.

00:20:13.000 Yeah, but you look at the year view and it's about what it was a year ago.

00:20:16.740 Yeah.

00:20:17.540 Yeah.

00:20:18.120 So the thing is, though, isn't it, that doesn't translate into how much people actually pay at a petrol station to fill up their car.

00:20:26.700 It does have an impact on it, right?

00:20:29.280 Oh, no, I'm saying, yeah, of course it has an impact on it.

00:20:31.440 But you pay more at the petrol pump than what crude has gone up.

00:20:36.280 Way more, right?

00:20:37.400 Oh, I see.

00:20:38.480 it has an outsized effect yes if crude goes up 20 percent price of the pump goes up 30 percent

00:20:44.160 right yeah or way more or even yeah yeah okay is is gas expensive in the united states at the moment

00:20:51.280 it's a little bit more i mean i feel it because we have a big family and so we have bigger cars

00:20:57.200 right are not fuel efficient right right so yeah so instead of filling up for 50 i've been filling

00:21:03.440 up for like 80 right so that's not fun yeah right but it's not apocalyptic right if you follow me

00:21:10.180 that's sort of the angle i take some people talk like you know the world is coming down around

00:21:14.540 their ears it's like yeah not yet that's the angle i've been saying a lot on this is that it's more

00:21:19.920 yeah but it's not sort of apocalyptic more having said that though it's all relative isn't it if you

00:21:24.920 can afford it if an extra 30 doesn't mean a great deal to you okay but for some people a lot of

00:21:30.380 people 30 is a be on end all that means things don't add up anymore and i can't eat now yeah

00:21:36.940 yeah you know so they're really pinched yeah yeah so i've got a lot of sympathy for obviously of

00:21:42.600 course for people like that where they're already on the bread line right and now you have to pay

00:21:46.740 extra 30 every few days it's like oh right that's all my money yeah that's it that's all my money

00:21:51.380 now right so yeah worrying okay let's have a we got a poll harry we did a poll

00:21:57.680 okay if you bring that up we'll do that now let's have a quick look at what we what we asked oh we

00:22:04.640 asked do you like rudy giuliani and i see one or two people in the um in the chat saying who's

00:22:11.080 rudy giuliani so we'll get into that in a moment but just to say the poll says 40 said yes 30 said

00:22:18.420 no and 31 said a little bit so if we add the little bit to yes to be generous that sort of

00:22:27.600 70% of people liked him to some degree.

00:22:31.440 On the positive side.

00:22:32.400 And 30% didn't, yeah, yeah.

00:22:34.580 So for one or two people who might not have ever heard of him,

00:22:37.180 he's America's mayor, isn't he?

00:22:40.960 Yeah, I lived in New York briefly before he was mayor,

00:22:45.920 if I'm remembering correctly, and it was a bit rough.

00:22:49.960 And he evidently did a good job of cleaning it up.

00:22:53.620 Or that's the reputation.

00:22:55.220 I'm not deeply into New York politics.

00:22:57.080 and he was mayor during 9-11 wasn't he that's the that's the reason he would be famous about it

00:23:02.620 so there you go anyone involved with anyone involved with 9-11 in terms of the the firemen

00:23:08.300 and the policemen and you know because so many died and yeah in the towers and stuff there's a

00:23:12.940 certain uh civil religion sacredness around those people and i guess he got he got a bit of that

00:23:18.860 himself yeah so a bit of his story was that before he was mayor he was like a prosecutor

00:23:23.380 and he was fairly fearlessly went after the mafia that's true in new york because all through

00:23:29.380 obviously going back to the 50s and 60s and 70s new york crime families but even into the 80s it

00:23:35.760 was still there like john gotti and john gotti jr and stuff there's still right there's still

00:23:39.660 mafia in new york and he went after them fairly fearlessly and so people liked him for that and

00:23:45.260 as you say cleaned it up there's just new york in the 80s and even 90s was a lot more rough than it

00:23:50.600 is now although it's getting worse now but right and so people liked him for doing that being tough

00:23:55.280 on crime basically law and order law and order team and his career both as a prosecutor and then

00:24:00.280 as a mayor and then went on to be mayor through 9-11 and then also in the trump when the when

00:24:06.000 trump lost to biden in inverted commas in 2020 trump brought him in trump brought him in to try

00:24:12.980 and get to the bottom of things and try and prosecute and try and investigate all the

00:24:17.940 all the shenanigans i don't really know where any of that went that may or may yeah right yeah

00:24:22.000 kind of died with a whimper but now he's old now he's like 81 and last year apparently he was in a

00:24:27.500 car crash quite a bad car crash oh i mean look he's wearing some sort of like back brace thing

00:24:31.420 there oh my goodness and like he was quite a bad car crash um when you're in your 80s that's going

00:24:36.920 to be no joke yeah and so now like over the weekend yesterday or something he was taken to

00:24:41.540 hospital with an undiagnosed illness and people even trump are just saying sort of i'm paraphrasing

00:24:46.720 but like pray for rudy so he might be they might discharge him later today or he might be

00:24:53.840 really really dying we don't know but okay he was rushed so okay that's in the news today

00:24:59.620 just thought i'd since we've got an american here i thought we'd uh just throw that one in for the

00:25:03.640 poll um but there okay so let's have a let's have a quick let's talk about let's talk about trump

00:25:09.940 and Iran and the Straits of Hormuz and all that sort of thing.

00:25:14.220 So, first of all then, what's your thoughts and feelings

00:25:18.560 and people that you know and speak to in the United States?

00:25:23.840 IRL, how do you feel about Trump and the war in Iran and everything?

00:25:30.860 Well, it's an extraordinary moment for me because I've been, as I mentioned,

00:25:34.540 opposed to the US empire, opposed to the neocons for a long time.

00:25:39.200 I predicted 9-11 did you know that did you I did yeah really yeah the day it was happening one of

00:25:44.680 my co-workers said you said something like this was going to happen you and Tom Clancy did he

00:25:49.820 well kind of okay he wrote a story where an airplane was thrown flown into the Capitol

00:25:54.620 building yeah no it wasn't anything like that it was more just that I could I could feel that

00:25:58.840 something was coming and an attack was coming and a friend reminded me of that I'm glad he did I

00:26:04.140 might not have remembered I said it um so I foresaw 9-11 and so I had a very different

00:26:09.460 reaction afterwards because I had a sense of why it had happened had to do with the U.S. empire

00:26:13.740 and the neocons and what they were doing abroad and just horrible things they were doing and

00:26:18.160 backlash to that and so I had a very different view so I was not excited about going into Iraq

00:26:24.100 in 2003 I was opposed to it and this was uh very tense with my family who were totally caught up in

00:26:31.360 the sort of frenzied patriotism of the day you know um you know my family of origin um

00:26:38.780 and then uh so you know i'm used to being this outlier the radical outlier whereas right now

00:26:45.940 the ones who are aligned are like me and the normal guy so our we have a daughter who works

00:26:52.760 at a restaurant the guys in the back of the house the cooks and so forth right they're all like oh

00:26:57.640 yeah israel controls u.s foreign policy this is the normal man on the street view at this point

00:27:02.700 okay so that is what i thought of as like edgy like i wonder if i'll get fired for this opinion

00:27:08.640 like everyone says this now right so okay i don't have to be particularly brave to have the views

00:27:13.980 that i've had all these decades anymore because i'm i'm aligned with the man on the street at

00:27:17.880 this point and that surely is a shift in the i hesitate to say the overton window but a shift

00:27:23.300 in public perception because as you say back in 2003 2001 2002 2003 that would have been much

00:27:29.400 less so wouldn't it i was very alone back then right yeah i had a lot of static from people at

00:27:34.840 church people in my family you know that is conservative socially theologically conservative

00:27:41.340 type people around me were all on board for what the u.s was u.s empire was doing because you're

00:27:47.260 you're christian to make that clear if anyone doesn't know yeah my father was a pastor so

00:27:51.120 very involved with the church um and uh so i was really an outlier back then and felt it

00:27:56.980 and my wife remembers this you know some of the hostile comments we got uh whereas now i'm not

00:28:02.420 an outlier now i'm normal and the people who are all for this are the ones who are kind of weird

00:28:06.920 right okay because well i suppose if i ask you a question about for me yeah right yeah finally

00:28:13.880 yeah finally only took 25 years vindication yeah um but so like the specifically though then the

00:28:20.800 MAGA movement and Donald Trump himself um the people you know people you talk to is that sort

00:28:28.480 of waned I feel like I feel like after the Epstein stuff and some of the other things Trump has done

00:28:35.380 and especially this war that the the real hardline MAGA people do they seem on the way

00:28:42.780 Do you hear many voices of people saying, I used to like Trump a lot more than I do now, or not?

00:28:48.800 Okay, a couple of comments on this.

00:28:50.400 So first of all, you know, personnel is policy, right?

00:28:52.960 So one way to look at it is, well, it's Trump and whatever he does is MAGA, right?

00:28:58.240 Another way to look at it is there were all these people who were never Trumpers,

00:29:02.820 who were very, very opposed to Trump in 2016 and so forth, right?

00:29:06.520 He's now surrounded by them, right?

00:29:09.520 And the people who had been his big supporters, who really took the hits for being pro-Trump when that was considered quite controversial, they're out.

00:29:21.240 You know, Marjorie Taylor Greene, people like this, they're kicked out and they're at war.

00:29:25.520 So Trump, for example, wasn't Marco Rubio and never Trump to begin with?

00:29:29.220 Right, okay, okay, okay.

00:29:29.960 So many others, right?

00:29:30.800 I see what you're saying, okay.

00:29:31.480 So Trump is still there.

00:29:33.160 If you only look at Trump, you see a continuity.

00:29:35.580 but if you look at who's around him you see this massive shift and a lot of people have noticed

00:29:41.120 this right so so um again drawing from my daughter's work man on the street view uh he uh the

00:29:48.980 boss there he he had been very mega and trump and then just within the last month he he said i'm

00:29:55.140 out all right it's over i think in the last month i hate him yeah all right yeah okay i i would say

00:30:00.220 that the genocide in gaza had some people shifting uh over you know over that that trump continued to

00:30:08.860 support that but really this attack on iran has been a turning point you say that so many people

00:30:14.620 were like again you know i mean we had the war in iraq the war in afghanistan remember the withdrawal

00:30:20.460 from afghanistan just humiliating yeah right yeah i mean i mean and now and i trump had said we're

00:30:26.620 not going to do that under me and now here we go yeah now here we are and people are like come on

00:30:31.500 just to say real quick just uh you mentioned that the genocide in gaza just to say to characterize

00:30:36.060 it that way you're not pro israel and netanyahu right so yeah i i grew up in a christian zionist

00:30:44.860 church um my father was a missionary to the jews that was why he came to st louis originally um and

00:30:51.740 and then uh over time that became very aligned with israel and stuff um but myself being influenced

00:31:01.180 by libertarian ideas and various other things i moved away from that many many decades decades

00:31:07.180 ago you reject that very very heavily yeah now i'm now i'm you know anti-zionist number one right

00:31:13.020 right there you go based okay yeah so i mean all right so yeah with this war

00:31:20.620 than the never forever war guy that whole angle yeah um i mean so i was i was sorry quick comment

00:31:30.120 about sure americans have generally been anti-empire and anti-war whenever they were

00:31:34.520 given an opportunity to indicate it um this is not well remembered but uh woodrow wilson fdr

00:31:40.080 they both ran on anti-war platforms and then got the us into world war one world war two

00:31:44.980 respectively anyway right well this keeps happening right they they rhetorically say

00:31:50.520 what americans want to hear which at least tells you where americans are americans do want to hear

00:31:55.500 that right um and then they get into office and they do the bidding of the military industrial

00:32:01.600 complex or or israel or whatever you want to think it is but but somehow some way for a century now

00:32:07.860 americans vote against war and we get war anyway yeah yeah there's a there's the old thing i think

00:32:13.980 it was um john quincy adams not john adams john quincy adams said america shouldn't go seeking

00:32:20.680 abroad seeking monsters to destroy there you go we all know that quote we don't want to fight in

00:32:25.880 european wars for or against european wars and all that sort of thing stay out of it um but then you

00:32:30.820 look at like and just think about it practically the united states is massive just massive massive

00:32:37.500 natural resources we literally don't need to be involved yeah just practically speaking the

00:32:43.740 united states could just be the united states and not have troops all over the world and bases all

00:32:48.840 over the world and we'd be fine so we're not doing it because the american people need it

00:32:53.320 it's other reasons if you look at woodrow wilson in 1917 and world war one um that's something

00:33:00.760 different let's not go down that rabbit hole but when we look at fdr and world war ii yeah i'm no

00:33:06.000 fan of fdr i think a lot of people i imagine you're not no um however when you look at it in

00:33:12.520 detail um it would i feel like it would have been almost impossible for the united states to stay

00:33:18.040 i mean pearl harbor it would have been very very difficult for them to stay out at a certain point

00:33:24.020 another way to put it not that i want to play defense on behalf of fdr but the way i would put

00:33:28.400 it is that um the the largest anti-war movement of all time was the america first movement

00:33:33.880 opposed to entry into world war ii and it took pearl harbor right to get americans to support it

00:33:40.860 and and as we now know uh the book called uh day of deceit by dennett uh documented that fdr knew

00:33:49.360 that that attack was coming let it happen because he needed he needed something like that to get

00:33:53.760 into the yeah maybe i feel like some of that history is a little shaky i mean i know for a

00:33:58.640 fact that the british were aware that something was afoot whether it was that giant whether it

00:34:04.020 was actually that giant japanese uh armada specifically at pearl i think a lot of people

00:34:10.460 thought maybe something would happen at midway but not probably anyway let's not get into that

00:34:14.300 just real quick note on that real quick note on that dennis book day of deceit he's actually pro

00:34:18.560 fdr right and he says yeah fdr knew and the reason he's pro how does he justify being pro fdr with

00:34:25.620 that is he says well you the u.s needed to be pushed into the war and so it was okay for him

00:34:31.800 to do that deceitful thing yeah so that is this is a fan of fdr looking at the evidence and saying

00:34:37.940 yeah he knew yeah well i did a long form piece of content on my history themed show epox behind the

00:34:44.960 paywall consider joining for as little as five pound a month for honesty membership on there i

00:34:49.020 did a very very long form bit of content and i just called it the road to pearl harbor yeah and

00:34:53.180 it was talking about japan from the 19th century through to december 7th 1941 how they got there

00:34:59.820 and um there was a fair bit of intelligence flying around yeah i'm still not entire i'm not entirely

00:35:06.600 And I know all the arguments.

00:35:08.520 I'm just not entirely convinced FDR knew that exactly that was going to happen.

00:35:13.580 But they knew something was afoot.

00:35:15.900 He wanted something like that.

00:35:17.600 Yeah.

00:35:18.620 He was trying to provoke Germany, and they wouldn't do it.

00:35:23.740 And so it's called the backdoor to war.

00:35:25.960 So he used Japan to get into the war.

00:35:27.380 Well, you get a casus bella.

00:35:28.460 You've now got a reason for war.

00:35:29.740 That's right.

00:35:30.120 I think what actually happened on that morning at Pearl Harbor in December 1941,

00:35:36.600 the scale of it was a real shock genuine shock to him though he didn't realize that was going to

00:35:42.240 happen anyway anyway i hear you let's move on from that so back to back to trump on the straits of

00:35:48.820 homies so the latest thing is he's saying there was as you can see the head down there trump says

00:35:53.440 u.s military will guide stranded ships out of straits of homies because if anyone who might

00:35:58.060 not know they've been stuck there the whole time in the persian gulf yeah hundreds i think maybe

00:36:03.260 thousands of ships have just been just been sitting there and some of the crews have like

00:36:06.860 haven't been able to leave their ships for weeks and weeks and weeks right so it's like a little

00:36:11.140 bit of uh well some of the conditions on board must be terrible but right um so now he's saying

00:36:17.180 that's the latest thing in this news cycle that the u.s navy will and and uh air force

00:36:22.940 will escort them out calling it project project freedom oh geez i mean sorry just project freedom

00:36:31.960 I'm just the branding.

00:36:32.880 It's just ridiculous.

00:36:33.440 You think it's corny or cheesy?

00:36:35.060 Ridiculous.

00:36:35.420 Right, okay.

00:36:38.360 So what's your, as a Yankee,

00:36:41.700 what's your thoughts and feelings on that bit of news?

00:36:44.600 I'm more of a Southerner, but...

00:36:45.900 Oh, okay.

00:36:47.760 Well, first question I would have is,

00:36:50.740 what do you think of Trump's track record

00:36:53.840 of doing the things that he says

00:36:55.400 in regards to this conflict?

00:36:58.140 Because to me, it seems like he says something

00:37:00.620 And then, you know, he says, in three days, this will happen.

00:37:04.140 And then three days pass.

00:37:05.060 And he says, in two days, this will happen.

00:37:07.260 You know, it just seems like it's been that for months.

00:37:10.120 Yeah.

00:37:10.480 He just says stuff, but it doesn't result in action that aligns with what he says.

00:37:15.660 I think that's fair.

00:37:18.640 That's the pattern I see.

00:37:19.720 It does do...

00:37:21.240 Which is, I wouldn't put much weight on those words.

00:37:23.800 Okay, okay.

00:37:24.620 I'd wait.

00:37:25.160 Let's just wait and see.

00:37:26.480 Because he says lots of things about this conflict.

00:37:29.240 and very few of them seem to actually happen.

00:37:32.460 I agree with you.

00:37:33.020 In fact, there's no real way to disagree with that take.

00:37:35.440 But one thing I would say also, though,

00:37:37.620 to play devil's advocate,

00:37:39.100 is that he does actually also sometimes do stuff

00:37:42.200 and pull the trigger on stuff

00:37:43.120 that a lot of other presidents wouldn't have done.

00:37:45.040 Like, for example...

00:37:45.680 The attack on Iran itself.

00:37:47.720 Right.

00:37:47.980 That's for sure.

00:37:48.700 Right.

00:37:49.160 No other president had the chutzpah to do that.

00:37:52.520 And Netanyahu wanted this,

00:37:55.820 you know, officially put this out in a clean break in 1996.

00:37:59.240 so that's 30 years ago that netanyahu was one had iran on a list it's been his dream hasn't it and

00:38:04.280 and and uh the one by one he's knocked off countries off that list like libya for example

00:38:10.280 qaddafi's libya right done regime change syria recently um and iran's the last one on the list

00:38:16.760 right yeah and and he they they they weren't wanting them to be the last one it's just no

00:38:22.440 other president would do what we now see as foolish to do which is put yourself in a position where

00:38:28.520 where Iran controls the strait and has a stranglehold on world economy.

00:38:32.980 Yeah, yeah.

00:38:34.400 I feel like Trump is, I think a lot of people that criticize Trump

00:38:37.700 say he is sort of unpredictable

00:38:39.760 and you can't really tell what he might do or say next.

00:38:42.600 I think that's kind of true.

00:38:44.600 I can never really tell whether when Trump says something,

00:38:47.320 whether it's just bluster and saber rattling

00:38:49.500 or whether in like 24 hours some big stuff is going to go down.

00:38:54.240 For example, the Maduro raid.

00:38:56.780 mm-hmm that was something unprecedented that's something no other president in my lifetime would

00:39:03.080 have you know maybe someone like fdr or truman might have done something like that just said

00:39:08.020 yeah go try it do it but it certainly in my lifetime no president would have had the the

00:39:13.700 guts to sort of give that the green light right um so but but yet you're also true you make a good

00:39:20.000 you make a good point i was talking more about after the invasion of iran he's made a lot of

00:39:24.820 statements about you know it's true yeah he's gonna like control the situation and he clearly

00:39:29.980 doesn't control the situation i think three four maybe even is it five times he said i'm going to

00:39:35.420 unleash hell yeah in like 24 hours yeah and then he's back down from that yeah it's gonna be very

00:39:39.920 sad the end of a civilization right remember all that yeah it's definitely just a statement of fact

00:39:45.080 to say that that has happened yeah um now whether one of these times he threatens that and then

00:39:50.640 actually does it right there's evidence that he could do something extreme yeah yeah i feel like

00:39:57.340 at some point maybe if it's the sixth or seventh the twelfth time he threatens will be the time

00:40:01.900 when he does actually blow up all their bridges right but my point is you know the the headline

00:40:05.740 we just saw i'm just not i'm just going to wait and see what he does right okay where with other

00:40:10.280 people if they said something you'd be like okay buckle up here we go yeah right now trump says

00:40:15.080 something and you're like we'll see i feel like he's checking check in again in a week right yeah

00:40:19.780 i do feel like he's playing the the the game just in public if you like this stuff might have gone

00:40:26.820 on uh behind closed doors a lot more in the past but trump just his style of government his style

00:40:32.720 of leadership is that he'll just do a truth social about it he won't just tell the state

00:40:36.600 department to to warn these the iranian equivalent of their state department their foreign office

00:40:41.880 he'll just he'll just do a true social about it yeah so everyone the whole world just reads that

00:40:46.180 and it's like okay this is happening now right right but but that's not really a government

00:40:49.960 action that's just a trump tweet yeah right yeah so and so that is sort of a new way of doing it

00:40:56.340 isn't it that's a new sort of a new paradigm of government yeah but presidents have had times

00:41:02.640 where they just have rhetoric that has nothing to do with what's happening right yeah that's just

00:41:06.460 standard politics yeah true you just say stuff meanwhile something else is happening yeah true

00:41:12.540 it's the old uh it's the old uh you know look at my distraction over here while i'm really doing

00:41:17.920 something over here yeah yeah and maybe i mean when you look at the venezuela maduro stuff

00:41:23.900 yeah and the broader question of who controls crude oil and then you look at this iran war

00:41:31.520 thing and sort of nominally and i believe it at least from the israeli point of view it's about

00:41:35.660 uranium enrichment but actually it's much more i would have thought in the american mind

00:41:41.940 about oil who controls oil and things and then there's other stuff going on in southeast asia

00:41:49.300 about blockades in uh i just feel like trump and greenland the resources of greenland i feel like

00:41:55.640 trump or the people around trump perhaps are just thinking much more about maybe i'm wrong maybe i'm

00:42:01.340 giving them too much credit but thinking more about decades into the future about securing oil

00:42:05.680 for themselves ultimately that's very generous of you my own take is not so generous okay um as i

00:42:12.280 said there is a long-term plan here but it's netanyahu's look out look up a clean break from

00:42:17.400 1996 he gave a list of countries they've been working their way through the list iran's literally

00:42:22.500 the last one on the list that they haven't done a regime change on and and what what is the point

00:42:27.280 of the list, it has to do with Israel being completely dominant in its area. So it's

00:42:33.940 geostrategic dominance within the Middle East. Iran is an independent power, as we can all see

00:42:38.720 now, with its own arsenal, its own idea of what should be happening. And Israel doesn't like that.

00:42:44.320 It wants everyone around it to be subservient to it. They're almost there. Syria now is

00:42:51.680 subservient to israel after this assad is out um well they want the same with iran they want it to

00:42:57.940 be in chaos and civil war or they want a palavi puppet who uh you know says he's the king of iran

00:43:05.960 or whatever the shah but in fact is just serving israel right yeah so that's what they want that's

00:43:11.480 the real reason for the war and all the talk of oil and geostrategic stuff i think is a post hoc

00:43:18.100 justification or rationalization okay that's my view i mean what even clearly this has not been

00:43:24.660 good for uh oil control of oil by the u.s iran is controlling things not the u.s right now so at

00:43:32.120 least in the short term it's not working out if that was the plan i completely accept everything

00:43:36.880 you're saying in the middle east but then if you look at like the greenland thing and the

00:43:40.360 venezuelan thing surely that's uh a bit about the oil angle on venezuela well just in the whole

00:43:47.360 world the whole world if they if there are planners and strategists at the white house or

00:43:52.680 the state department or the pentagon and they're looking at the whole world right and of course

00:43:57.140 the middle east is you know absolutely pivotal thing and what israel want is a pivotal thing

00:44:00.940 in their minds yeah yeah but it's a whole world they're playing a game globally right so there

00:44:08.480 there was this doctrine of full spectrum dominance i don't know if you've yeah yeah right and and

00:44:13.580 And that is that the U.S. should be the dominant power in all regions of the world, right?

00:44:21.240 And in my view, we are seeing that unwind.

00:44:24.160 I think it was true in the 90s.

00:44:25.820 Effectively, the U.S. was the dominant power globally.

00:44:28.460 Well, that's the project for the new American century.

00:44:31.040 Right.

00:44:32.540 And this, I think, is falling apart.

00:44:35.760 China is clearly an independent power that calls the shots in its sphere to a greater,

00:44:41.060 slowly greater degree.

00:44:42.220 very patient um russia is clearly acting independently now iran is acting independently

00:44:49.100 it could be that the us empire will want to have one final uh power mode burst or something right

00:44:55.500 and and and dominate over iran china and russia but my own take is it's going to be a long slow

00:45:01.500 crumble of global dominance we're already on the way the us does not call the shots with china

00:45:08.140 russia and iran oh no that i mean that's fair to say yeah no that's no no that's absolutely fair

00:45:13.340 to say the ccp china absolutely doesn't answer yeah let me put it yeah let me put it one way

00:45:18.300 china russia and iran are not puppets of the us government you know i accept that i believe that

00:45:23.420 yeah and i don't think they're going to be puppets anytime soon yeah well well we'll see about if the

00:45:28.540 iran regime crumbles or not but no i absolutely accept that um the uh the kremlin and beijing

00:45:35.660 don't have to do anything that Washington says.

00:45:40.760 They follow their own path.

00:45:42.020 Absolutely, yeah.

00:45:43.160 Now, Kremlin has to pay attention to Beijing.

00:45:46.560 That's a different story, but not the U.S.

00:45:49.560 But whether that means U.S. hegemony

00:45:52.660 over big chunks of the rest of the world,

00:45:57.140 personally, I don't see it particularly crumbling anytime soon.

00:46:02.040 One piece at a time, right?

00:46:03.580 Yeah, I mean, who knows?

00:46:05.660 Light at a time and slowly, you know, I mean, some people thought that if there was any

00:46:10.260 geostrategic significance to Venezuela, the Maduro thing, it's that somebody in Washington

00:46:17.480 realizes that they are losing global dominance.

00:46:20.460 And so they're thinking, well, at least our own backyard should be secured, namely the

00:46:24.760 Americas.

00:46:25.640 Yeah.

00:46:26.020 And maybe Greenland.

00:46:27.640 Do you think there's lots of chatter that Trump's or the U.S. military is going to do

00:46:31.700 something in cuba next that that's next on the list as far as like the state department and the

00:46:37.740 pentagon are concerned yeah now i'm sorry who is the rubio rubio's cuban right am i getting him

00:46:44.240 mixed him personally his descent i believe he's got is he he's got something like that i might be

00:46:49.140 mixing him up with another figure but so there's someone who they're all about cuba right in the

00:46:54.780 administration because of their own background sorry fact check me chat please uh uh it's rubio

00:47:02.660 or another guy um anyway they they uh there's someone in the administration that is totally

00:47:08.320 everything you hear from them is about cuba right so they might get their way okay because some

00:47:14.480 people some um uh people who fled after castro took over have been wanting to you know regime

00:47:22.280 change all that time and that's the 60s right yeah well late very late 50s i'm sorry it was

00:47:28.940 late 50s thank you yeah i think so yeah the end of batista i think i think so yeah um so look

00:47:34.940 here's the thing trump in the in the washington post threatens retaliation iran threatens

00:47:40.780 retaliation after trump says u.s will guide ships and straight of homies whether they win or not

00:47:45.560 Look, Trump's disapproval rating reaches a new higher, the post-ABC and Ipsos poll

00:47:51.440 fines, for what that's worth.

00:47:52.720 I was going to raise that.

00:47:54.580 You talked about Starmer being historically unpopular.

00:47:58.740 I mean, Trump's on his way.

00:48:01.160 I haven't seen it compared to all presidents ever or whatever, but he's pretty unpopular

00:48:05.880 right now.

00:48:06.660 Yeah, it seems to be.

00:48:07.840 It seems to be.

00:48:08.780 I think that, yeah.

00:48:10.320 Including with, as I said, with a lot of the people who were the diehard Trump supporters.

00:48:15.560 especially since the attack on iran they're like okay yeah that's not what we wanted that's not

00:48:21.860 what we thought this was about for me personally just for me personally his handling of the epstein

00:48:27.180 various epstein things that came up uh changed my mind quite a lot that's interesting and then

00:48:33.540 this iran thing as well seems to me he jumped when israel told him to yeah but yeah my sense

00:48:42.620 for Americans is that for the Trump supporters, the ones who are really there for Trump in his

00:48:48.240 first term and everything. Well, in the three elections, right? They were supporting him three

00:48:53.000 times, right? And the Epstein thing raised question marks. And then the attack on Iran

00:48:59.940 sent a lot of people over the edge. Yeah. That's what I'm saying. Yeah. Yeah. I feel like that.

00:49:04.740 Epstein thing kind of softened support up, but I don't think he had lost the support.

00:49:09.160 but with the attack on iran he's people started being like okay i'm out okay yeah all right well

00:49:15.200 we've already got to almost 10 too so at the end of the show i like to do a little segment on this

00:49:21.240 day in history just have a quick chat about a quick look at things down through the centuries

00:49:26.500 or even occasionally the millennia of note that happened on this day um so let's do that real

00:49:31.380 quick what happened on the 4th of may well it was the battle of tewksbury um only two i think it's

00:49:36.860 only two weeks ago again on my history theme show behind the paywall epochs i've been doing a long

00:49:42.700 very very long form set of series all about the english monarchy and i was up to the i'm up to

00:49:47.300 the wars of the roses edward the fourth and his little brother richard the third and all that

00:49:51.740 sort of thing and only two weeks ago i covered the battle of cheeksbury there and uh 1470 on this day

00:49:56.860 in 1471 is in gloucestershire the final battle between the house of lancaster and york sees the

00:50:02.140 prince of wales edward of westminster uh who was the mad king henry the the sixth uh henry the

00:50:09.440 fourth's um son he was killed and edward the fourth sorry henry the sixth son edward and edward

00:50:17.040 the fourth uh becomes sort of undisputed king at that point so this is the end of the war of the

00:50:22.780 roses yeah or some people say the wars of roses don't truly end until uh 1485 at the back of

00:50:30.080 bosworth field but a lot of people say it ended there you could argue it ended there because at

00:50:35.040 least the house of lancaster was finally defeated at tewkesbury um so it's just a really really big

00:50:41.060 pivotal battle for english history is the battle of tewkesbury and if you want to hear about it in

00:50:45.120 long form detail by yours truly that is behind the paywall for this was five pound a month okay

00:50:50.220 on this day in 1493 spanish pope alexander the sixth decrees in the papal bull inter caetera

00:50:56.580 Is that how you pronounce it?

00:50:57.160 You know Latin.

00:50:57.840 Oh, it's enough.

00:50:59.480 Intercaitara.

00:51:00.200 You actually got Latin.

00:51:01.300 I've got very, very minimal Latin.

00:51:03.100 I had to do one year of it at undergrad

00:51:05.300 and did it very, very poorly,

00:51:07.900 but you've actually got some Latin.

00:51:08.980 I did six years of it.

00:51:09.660 Okay, well, there you go.

00:51:11.320 He decrees that all lands west of a line,

00:51:14.740 100 leagues west of any of the islands of the Azores

00:51:17.180 or the Cape Verde Islands belong to Castile, Spain,

00:51:20.440 ultimately dividing the Americas

00:51:22.160 between Spain and Portugal.

00:51:23.200 or quite often it's called the uh treaty of uh torticillias it's where the pope didn't know

00:51:29.900 didn't he thought he's drawing a line right down the middle of the atlantic turns out a big chunk

00:51:34.240 of brazil sticks out and and the rest was yeah so so we talk about latin america um uh because

00:51:41.420 it's mostly spanish speaking and then uh brazil is portuguese speaking yeah right it's because of

00:51:48.580 that it's because the pope thought that he was granting more or less everything to spain

00:51:52.980 turns out a massive chunk of brazil was it wasn't including that and portugal said okay we'll

00:51:57.420 colonize there then so why they speak brazilian portuguese to this day there and of course the

00:52:02.900 rest of europe all the big players holland the dutch uh the british the french we're like we're

00:52:07.780 going to ignore that anyway well you're saying we can't sail across the atlantic nonsense we're

00:52:13.220 going through anyway okay on this day in uh 1814 king ferdinand the 7th of spain signs uh signs

00:52:21.000 the decree of the 4th of may returning spain to absolutism so that was after the napoleonic era

00:52:27.080 there's a thing of um do you know the napoleonic era at all very well i'm pretty weak on it in

00:52:33.180 1808 there's the thing the the abdications of bayonne is basically where napoleon lured the

00:52:40.120 king of spain and his heir to have a treaty and then just arrested them took them to france he

00:52:45.300 said the monarchy of spain's just over now it's mine i'm in fact i'm putting my brother on the

00:52:50.560 on the throne um so that was in 1808 and by 1814 um the duke of wellington sir arthur wellesley

00:52:59.900 had booted the french entirely out of spain and so they brought the monarchy back and that's what

00:53:05.800 that is there okay on this day in 1904 the united states begins construction of the panama canal

00:53:11.100 what are your thoughts about teddy roosevelt and the panama canal issue what what did most

00:53:17.960 americans think about it are they even aware of it is it too too long ago now we we know that

00:53:22.840 we know that it's important because north america and south america if not for the panama canal

00:53:28.100 create a huge barrier between one side of the world and the other right right yeah a huge land

00:53:32.800 barrier sure and so the panama canal let it lets you get ships through so we know it's important

00:53:36.500 for commerce who controls the panama canal you know it got shifted under reagan they they like

00:53:43.360 gave it to the government of panama yeah well reagan took it back didn't he or after they

00:53:48.020 after they tried to after noriega noriega but that was later okay you're talking earlier than

00:53:56.220 that i'm wondering because by the way one of my most amusing you know there's always the hitler

00:54:01.440 of the day you know the guy who gets called hitler right um and uh noriego was briefly the hit all

00:54:07.940 right yeah i like bringing that up yeah he's the most evil man like two days he you know noriego's

00:54:12.860 gonna like take the world over which was absurd yeah i mean look at panama on the map yeah he's

00:54:17.960 the most evil man of all time he must be stopped at any cost yeah yeah yeah um so i wonder if uh

00:54:23.360 like teddy roosevelt in the turn of the 20th century where it was sort of it was basically

00:54:28.260 sort of an imperial project to just take well he in fact said a famous quote i took panama

00:54:33.240 and that's sort of in an imperial sense yeah i wonder if americans are just sort of

00:54:39.500 generally if they know of it at all whether they're sort of proud of that and it's like yeah

00:54:43.340 cool like we're or they're like oh that's a bit that is a bit it's pretty i'm very aware i i did

00:54:50.220 a whole series on my channel called the road to empire where i led up to 1898 the spanish-american

00:54:56.320 war right yeah right yeah where you first have concentration camps run by the u.s government in

00:55:01.700 the philippines and and all kinds of bad things and taking foreign colonies like the philippines

00:55:06.900 right uh well spanish rule just collapsed well with a little help from the u.s um and and the

00:55:14.380 u.s started having foreign territories under its control yeah and there were a lot of y

00:55:19.160 there were a lot of americans and i'm sort of ideologically descended from them uh who started

00:55:24.380 like the anti-imperialist league mark twain people like this uh who opposed it at the time

00:55:29.180 and they said this is not what america was supposed to be about we we left an empire

00:55:33.120 we just wanted to be an independent country and do our thing you guys have some big project for

00:55:38.900 some reason that doesn't even make sense to us so there and i would say that as you can see now

00:55:44.740 that impulse that anti-imperialist impulse has always been strong right but again to play devil's

00:55:51.160 advocate there is the argument of um like it's difficult not to do these things for example the

00:55:57.000 spanish-american war seeing spain's remaining overseas territories collapsing um wasn't there

00:56:05.220 a big movement in the philippines wanting america to take them over effectively i don't know they

00:56:10.980 always make it sound like we're coming to because people want us to be there and uh i'm skeptical

00:56:17.320 Okay, fair enough. All right. And on this day in 1979, Margaret Thatcher becomes the first woman to be elected prime minister of the United Kingdom. Old Maggie there. So yeah, ushering in, of course, the boom period of the 1980s. What do people think of Thatcher in the United States? Do they look back on her fondly? Do they not even know who she is?

00:56:38.120 I don't think most Americans would know that much about Thatcher,

00:56:41.960 except they would associate her with Reagan.

00:56:44.360 Right.

00:56:45.220 And that they were buddies, that they saw eye to eye on a lot of things.

00:56:48.500 Yeah, that they were largely collaborative, right?

00:56:52.140 Okay.

00:56:53.120 All right, then.

00:56:53.820 Well, let's do our Rumble Rants and Super Chats for a few minutes,

00:56:56.420 and then we'll close out the show.

00:56:57.440 So the first Rumble Rant we've got, who do you think it is?

00:57:01.360 It's only Mr. Global Church History.

00:57:03.260 It always is.

00:57:04.120 He says something here, which is too obscure for me.

00:57:07.640 i don't really know anything about it but i'll read it out anyway he says on this day in 1113

00:57:11.360 the year 1113 ad you say buried turkerman jihadists under zahir al-din toghetkin

00:57:20.660 of damascus massacre the monk monks of mount tabor i've not i don't know about that i'm afraid i'm

00:57:27.720 sorry i just quite most of the time i would say 95 percent of the time maybe he'll say something

00:57:32.340 i'm like oh yeah i know that and and make a few points but i don't know about that so

00:57:37.260 these would be eastern orthodox monks i don't know but it's it's to the east if it's in damascus

00:57:43.200 near damascus um yeah and the other thing he said is that on this day jesus was left in jerusalem as

00:57:50.260 a 12 year old boy and you say you know about that bit from the gospels that's in the gospels uh his

00:57:55.720 family accidentally leave him behind because they're part of a big you know group that's gone

00:58:00.380 to jerusalem for a high holy day they leave him behind they realize oh no where's jesus they come

00:58:05.520 back and he's debating with the the pharisees as a 12 year old he's meant to be he's intelligent

00:58:11.600 beyond no no knowing beyond his ears yeah sort of uh the point of the point of it yeah yeah right

00:58:17.100 okay great and for tim barber says morning all right yeah i'm all right you're right i'm all

00:58:22.040 right unbrexit unbrexit is a fantastic way to say exactly what they've done since minute one

00:58:28.860 yeah reform talk about new migrant centers shows they don't want to do the job that restore do

00:58:35.400 Yeah, I don't believe that reform are going to get the job done, i.e. deporting millions of people.

00:58:41.720 Right.

00:58:41.940 It should not be here.

00:58:43.280 Millions must go.

00:58:45.440 That's what we want, not just a few more migrant centres.

00:58:49.640 It's just not good enough.

00:58:52.000 Okay, we've got some YouTube super chats.

00:58:55.680 There's about a dozen or so, roughly.

00:58:56.960 Let's start reading them out.

00:58:58.880 Joseph Blackhall says,

00:59:00.560 Hi Bo, love the show, thank you.

00:59:02.960 Do you like Cormac McCarthy?

00:59:04.720 i just finished his blood mandarin um sorry sorry quite right blood meridian a semi-historical

00:59:12.300 novel on on the glanton glanton gangs scalping campaign and the u.s mech's border amazing read

00:59:19.940 i haven't i haven't read that have you read i don't know cormac mccarthy but my good friend

00:59:23.820 christopher sandbatch is a huge cormac mccarthy proponent and he's one of the smartest literary

00:59:29.260 guys i know so yes if you want to read something good give cormac mccarthy a try he comes highly

00:59:34.120 recommended was Cormac McCarthy did he do the road uh yes old country for I'm sorry country

00:59:40.160 no country for old men right yeah yeah I've not read no country for old men but I've seen the

00:59:44.200 film really liked it I have actually read the road oh okay and seen the film and it's good

00:59:50.940 but it's one of the most unremittingly dark novels I've ever read there's like not a glimmer of hope

00:59:57.520 or positivity at all yeah at the end you're thinking oh maybe the end of it there'll be

01:00:03.000 except no no no it's just horribly dark from start to finish but it was well written it was good

01:00:07.420 i haven't read blood meridian i'm afraid um glanton gangs it's not oh no it's kind of i do

01:00:14.860 not know about the glanton gang sorry that's interesting i'm not um there was the ones that

01:00:19.280 um that doc holiday and wire up for yeah it's not there weren't they the clanton gang well anyway

01:00:26.080 anyway all right thanks for that anyway joseph blackhall uh wooten19f says we cannot wait for

01:00:34.020 the politicians to save us everyone is mixing every single day by then we won't be european

01:00:40.060 anymore waiting and voting will condemn us all to extinction we have to do it ourselves a little bit

01:00:45.660 of a fed post i know but also i mean really let's get the channel deleted can't really let's say we

01:00:52.440 wanted to run with it i mean what what would you exactly do right yeah what do you want what is

01:00:55.860 the plan i'm open to ideas but you know what wooten you're gonna form a militia are you

01:01:02.340 you're gonna form a paramilitary are you they're gonna shut that down right i mean yeah what is a

01:01:08.180 feasible plan is is my point yeah uh the next one is the same person no political solution wake up

01:01:13.440 well you got you wake up you do it first yeah great bro show us how to do it yeah fed posting

01:01:19.300 all right mr gently benevolent says of mine great to see you getting the moon king on by

01:01:27.600 yeah so i'm i i it's a joke i made on my channel years ago i i said i'm the self-declared king of

01:01:33.780 the moon and it's meant to uh lampoon the things the governments do like the u.s government that

01:01:39.800 um i don't know if you know this there's huge portions of the west of the united states that

01:01:44.560 are controlled by just owned by the federal government and no one can build there no one

01:01:48.940 can do anything like teddy reservoir teddy roosevelt some of those mess no no i don't even

01:01:52.640 mean i don't mean like national parks all right i don't mean national park we all love the national

01:01:56.660 park there are millions of acres of those but not that okay no no no all this other land okay

01:02:01.760 that's just there's states that are the vast majority of the land in some of those states

01:02:07.760 is owned by the federal government so it just like i declare myself king of the moon they just

01:02:12.980 declare themselves to own all this territory that they've never done anything with in what

01:02:18.360 sense do they own it you know like massive chunks of nevada and new mexico and arizona places like

01:02:23.720 that yeah if you look at a map of land federal land ownership the western part of the country

01:02:29.060 is just when i say this giant chunk of nevada just you're not allowed to go there anymore don't

01:02:34.200 worry about what we're doing there or not doing yeah right just we own it so right okay next one

01:02:40.020 is wutan again says it gives us another fed post all right and uh thundercork2028 says uh we love

01:02:47.540 the american empire actually right of reply i don't know who we are right we americans don't

01:02:54.280 how about that how about that all right um kick you in the throat says america first that would

01:03:02.740 be nice it doesn't ever we hear the words but it doesn't ever actually happen uh same person

01:03:08.100 kick you in the throat says unite the anglosphere okay i'll comment on that real quick though okay

01:03:13.160 So I think that what you see online with sort of Europeans versus Americans type shit talking

01:03:21.140 back and forth, I don't think that that is authentic.

01:03:26.840 I'm not saying there's no Americans that feel that way or no Brits that feel that way.

01:03:31.420 But I just think that this is a psyop, particularly recently having to do with the perception

01:03:39.200 by the Zionists that Europe is not as

01:03:41.240 on board as they'd like it to be with attacking

01:03:43.260 Iran

01:03:43.680 I mean that Europe is allowing

01:03:47.380 American planes to fly and base in Europe

01:03:49.400 right? Yeah they fly from RAF

01:03:51.380 Fairford. Yeah. So in practice

01:03:53.500 Europe is supporting the war but

01:03:55.460 they're not supporting the war as

01:03:57.100 enthusiastically as the Zionists would like

01:03:59.200 and so therefore they're fomenting this

01:04:01.500 you know Twitter storm

01:04:03.560 of anti-European comments and stuff

01:04:05.540 Interesting. I don't think most Americans

01:04:07.380 think that way.

01:04:09.200 i'll just speak for myself i certainly don't i think that europeans looking at it globally

01:04:15.160 are really a small percentage of the population of the world right all right and and i think we

01:04:20.020 better figure out how to stick together pretty pretty darn quick that would be nice yeah unite

01:04:24.740 the anglosphere yes please the people i mean yeah yeah no i like that sentiment just unite the

01:04:30.800 anglosphere yeah yeah okay the last one king philip 1861 says how about spam fritters never

01:04:38.400 that's completely random okay but i'll share a random fact inspired by that a friend of mine

01:04:44.400 is uh likes to go to hawaii for vacation okay and uh during world war ii you know certain things

01:04:50.560 came out of world war ii because of rationing uh nutella is a world war ii thing it was like a

01:04:56.260 way to make chocolate by using hazelnuts right um well with hawaii it was spam and spam hawaii is

01:05:04.300 like the spam capital of the world i did not know that really i didn't know that 50 flavors of spam

01:05:09.700 really yeah yeah well i did not know that they love spam in hawaii i thought it was a british

01:05:14.680 thing i guess not i guess not how many do you have 50 flavors of spam on the no there's one

01:05:19.980 yeah well go to hawaii you'll you'll learn because anyone who might not know spam is just like a

01:05:25.600 really really really processed type of meat you get in a tin like a hand in a can yeah it's like

01:05:30.220 yeah pork yeah yeah and it's massively massively processed it's slop it's slop meat but but i

01:05:36.300 kind of salty yeah yeah yeah but i like it i grew up poor you like it i grew up poor as hell

01:05:40.860 and so we would sometimes have spam okay and sometimes we'd have chips beans and spam for

01:05:46.080 dinner i'm sorry you would have you would have spam if you were lucky right yeah yeah if we were

01:05:50.700 lucky if you were lucky so i quite like spam but um i know like some people think it's disgusting

01:05:57.200 interesting like but i don't mind it but spam fritters i could happily give it a try no problem

01:06:02.820 yeah all right well that's the show thank you very much steve for joining you will be on the

01:06:08.220 podcast later the main podcast today i hear i will yeah yeah i'm here for the day to to shoot

01:06:13.100 things right and and uh yeah you're going to record something with dan and maybe hopefully

01:06:16.680 me as well for later for premium content as well watch out watch out for radlib showing up on

01:06:21.880 lotus eaters all right over the next week or two yeah yeah yeah we've got you all day brilliant

01:06:25.320 thank you so much for coming in and sharing your thoughts and feelings and opinions and everything

01:06:28.840 really really appreciate it yeah okay that is the show you've been uh the glorious band the chosen

01:06:35.180 few my band of brothers and sisters thank you for joining me try and make the best of the day head

01:06:39.520 if you can i know it's not always possible but if you can carpe diem seize the day until tomorrow

01:06:43.380 morning then take care

The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters - May 04, 2026

Breakfast With Beau ｜ Monday 4th May 2026 ｜ w⧸ Radical Liberation

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