The Tucker Carlson Show - Troops Being Dragged Into Iran, How It Will Cripple the US & the Real Goal of Israel’s Violence

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00:00:30.000 It's universally recognized at this point pretty much that continuing this war with Iran is not

00:00:36.300 in the identifiable interest of the United States. We don't get anything out of continuing it

00:00:41.900 by anyone's measure. And if you doubt that, ask yourself, when was the last time someone

00:00:47.280 explained, coolly and without emotion, maybe with bullet points or a PowerPoint,

00:00:52.300 how exactly we win if this goes on longer? There's no real argument to be made. The United

00:00:59.320 States does not win if this goes on longer. And no one can claim otherwise. People can jump up

00:01:05.660 and down and attack you for asking, but they can't tell you rationally how you're going to be safer

00:01:13.240 and more prosperous, how your children will lead better lives here in the United States

00:01:17.600 if this goes on. So everybody knows it's in our interest to wrap this up in a way that protects

00:01:25.320 core American interests, of course, that avoids a necessary humiliation,

00:01:29.560 that brings some stability to the region, as they say, but wrap it up.

00:01:36.200 And the administration understands this. The Trump administration clearly understands this

00:01:39.620 because news reports just in the last 24 hours have told us that the president is thinking about

00:01:46.620 or planning to, depending on who you believe, dispatch the vice president to hammer out some

00:01:52.660 kind of deal with the Iranians. And if that happens, and we don't know, just repeating what

00:01:59.520 we read, then that's a pretty clear sign that the administration wants to declare victory

00:02:06.460 and move on, certainly to move on. And they probably couldn't pick a more credible person

00:02:12.220 to do it. Ideology aside, the vice president is smart, he's honest, he's not one of the people

00:02:18.620 who's gotten richer in government service. He's probably one of the people who got poorer in

00:02:22.060 government service, which is a pretty good measure of someone's moral rectitude. And he understands

00:02:29.160 power dynamics. And so we are praying for that, praying that that works, that the two sides or

00:02:36.540 multiple sides really can come to terms and end this and stop the death of innocents or combatants

00:02:43.640 for that matter, and stop the destruction of critical infrastructure and restore stability

00:02:49.000 to global energy markets and basically make peace. Anyone who doesn't want that should

00:02:55.320 answer the question, like, why don't you want that? So we're very much hoping that J.D. Vance

00:02:59.140 can get that done sometime soon. But in order to do that, he's going to, or the administration

00:03:06.800 will have to, do one thing first, which is a prerequisite to any kind of settlement or really

00:03:11.420 any kind of ending to this conflict that benefits the United States, and that's constrain its

00:03:15.780 partner in this war, apparently its full partner, which is Israel. You can't get what you want

00:03:23.300 unless you constrain Israel. It's not an attack on Israel. It's just noting what's very obvious,

00:03:28.640 which is that every nation has unique interests. And when you pair up with another nation in a war,

00:03:35.240 particularly one that could flower into a global conflict, you're probably hoping for different

00:03:41.020 outcomes because you're different countries. There's nothing weird about that. Israel is not

00:03:44.780 the same as the United States, despite what they may tell you, it's different and they have

00:03:50.360 different goals. And so as we assess this 15 years from now, hopefully in a prosperous,

00:03:57.400 thriving country, we try to figure out how'd that happen. The two decisions we probably should be

00:04:02.760 zeroed in on and most anxious to apportion blame for are number one, killing the Ayatollah in the

00:04:11.240 very opening moments, which immediately limited the possibility of a negotiated settlement,

00:04:17.940 turned what could have been a narrow objective, get rid of Iran's nuclear program,

00:04:27.060 constraints ability to build more missiles, whatever, into something much larger,

00:04:31.320 potentially a war against a nation itself or a war against a religion itself.

00:04:36.740 So no sober person would have recommended that, and we probably should find out how that happened.

00:04:41.240 not because we love the Ayatollah, but because we love the United States.

00:04:45.020 And it's hard to see how that was good for us.

00:04:47.000 And the second decision, maybe even more important,

00:04:48.860 was the decision to go into this joined at the hip to another nation,

00:04:52.840 in this case, Israel.

00:04:53.760 That was never going to work.

00:04:55.580 It couldn't work.

00:04:56.920 It doesn't make any sense.

00:04:58.920 So whoever made that decision, well, the president, of course, made the decision,

00:05:01.560 but who advised the president to do that?

00:05:03.300 How did that happen?

00:05:05.660 You're, of course, discouraged from asking how anything happened.

00:05:08.460 You're supposed to just accept things, be shocked by them, get over them,

00:05:11.040 get with the program and no one no one is encouraged to ask why how it's almost like a

00:05:17.740 father a hungover dad brushing off an inquisitive five-year-old stop asking why but we're not five

00:05:23.560 year olds we're american citizens we have an absolute right to know why our country was put

00:05:28.300 to bad use to our detriment and so don't be intimidated when people tell you shut up or

00:05:33.900 that's classified no we have a right to know how that decision was made because it didn't help us

00:05:38.180 at all. And as a product of that decision, we're putting an awful lot at risk. So constraining

00:05:44.080 Israel, bringing it to heel, it's a much smaller country than the United States. We pay for most

00:05:50.260 of their military. We make all of this possible. So it shouldn't be hard to tell them to get in

00:05:54.600 line, at least for the purposes of this conflict. Don't do things that violate our core interests.

00:05:59.940 But so far, no one's been able to do that for some reason. Again, that's another why proposition.

00:06:05.180 Why? Why would that be so hard? If Ghana was doing this to us, we'd say, hey, Ghana, stop it.

00:06:13.360 But we're not doing that with Israel. And because we're not doing that with Israel,

00:06:18.500 the Israelis feel completely free, not simply to make public announcements that they're going to

00:06:25.640 pursue their own interests to the detriment of ours, but to humiliate the U.S. government and

00:06:31.740 our nation by so doing. This is a feature that may be unique to Israel, hard to know exactly,

00:06:41.100 but it's certainly the most obvious feature of our relationship with Israel, which is

00:06:46.220 an ongoing humiliation process. We spoke two days ago to the former interim president of Israel,

00:06:52.020 Afrin Berg, former Knesset leader, a guy who knows Israeli politics and culture. He's in his 70s.

00:06:58.200 He's born and lived there his whole life, knows the country well.

00:07:02.040 And he noted unprompted that a feature of the way that Israel deals with other nations is humiliation.

00:07:09.380 It's not simply enough to come to terms.

00:07:12.380 You know, we're both a little bit dissatisfied.

00:07:14.040 That means it's a good deal.

00:07:14.940 You often hear that.

00:07:15.840 That's not the Israeli view.

00:07:17.860 The Israeli view is I have to crush you.

00:07:20.180 I have to put my boot in your face.

00:07:22.500 I have to diminish you.

00:07:23.580 I have to humiliate you.

00:07:24.820 Now, who knows where that comes from?

00:07:25.920 but you should know it as you watch the interplay between the United States government and the

00:07:31.560 Israeli government because there's a whole lot of that and here's a perfect example

00:07:35.880 and this is both a problem like a tactical problem for the U.S. government like how do

00:07:42.620 you strike a peace deal with this kind of stuff going I'll show you in a second but it's also a

00:07:46.540 deeper problem for us watching your country get humiliated by a tiny country in a faraway place

00:07:55.560 and getting no explanation for why they're allowed to do that humiliates you and discourages you.

00:08:04.200 And if you watch it long enough, you start to lose faith in your own nation.

00:08:09.080 You start to become humiliated yourself.

00:08:13.700 So we could pick a million examples of this, but here's one.

00:08:16.380 So Monday, the president before markets open, which was interesting,

00:08:20.560 announces that the United States is pulling back from his promise to start hitting civilian

00:08:27.740 infrastructure, energy infrastructure in Iran. And we're doing that because we're going to try

00:08:32.840 and find some negotiated settlement. And we've been talking to the Iranians and there is a way

00:08:36.840 out of this. We don't have to get to the point where we're waging total war, not just against

00:08:42.080 the government of Iran or the Ayatollahs or the theocracy or whatever we say we're doing,

00:08:45.480 But against the people of Iran, turning off their electricity, ending their drinking water, letting them die of exposure or whatever, total war against a country of almost 100 million people.

00:08:59.860 And nobody wants that, or at least no one should want that.

00:09:03.760 So the president announced, hey, we're in talks, we're pulling back.

00:09:08.040 But within just a couple of hours, our partner in Jerusalem, Benjamin Netanyahu, the guy we're in this war with, issued this statement. Listen carefully.

00:09:38.040 We're safeguarding our vital interests, the Prime Minister of Israel said, our vital interests.

00:10:02.580 Now, what are those vital interests?

00:10:04.200 Well, no one's really explained that.

00:10:07.260 Not even clear the Israeli public really knows the extent of their own country's, quote, vital interest as envisioned by their prime minister.

00:10:13.300 We're not really sure.

00:10:15.440 But clearly they entail territorial expansion, moving the borders of Israel outward, taking other people's land.

00:10:25.800 And they're saying that in the Israeli government.

00:10:29.520 This is a win because we've moved our borders outward.

00:10:33.260 So we're paying for that.

00:10:35.020 We're making that possible.

00:10:36.280 as Americans die and a number have died in this war, Israel is using that opportunity,

00:10:43.740 our money, our weapons, the lives of our soldiers to expand its territory.

00:10:49.780 So that's not our vital interest. You can agree or disagree with that.

00:10:53.880 By the way, if you've been yelling about the Russian invasion of Ukraine,

00:10:57.620 you should probably yell about this because it's even less defensible, really.

00:11:01.680 but they're saying that and no one in the U.S. government has told them to stop

00:11:11.020 and so what does that mean for us well it means that Israel somehow is in control of the course

00:11:21.340 of this war and they have been since the beginning we learned this week for example

00:11:24.580 that the decision to go into this war

00:11:28.720 and to kill the Ayatollah

00:11:30.880 in the opening hours of this war

00:11:32.860 was made on intelligence,

00:11:35.980 on the basis of intelligence

00:11:36.820 supplied to the U.S. government

00:11:37.940 by Mossad, the Israeli intel agency,

00:11:40.520 not from the CIA.

00:11:41.480 CIA, which no one wants to defend,

00:11:44.540 but in this specific case,

00:11:45.920 was, sounds like,

00:11:46.580 was a voice for restraint.

00:11:49.060 Again, that's why we have intel agencies

00:11:50.560 so they can advise the president

00:11:52.040 about what to do next

00:11:53.040 on the basis of the best available information.

00:11:55.860 That's the idea anyway.

00:11:58.160 And apparently CIA was telling the White House,

00:12:01.520 no, you can kill the head of Shia Islam,

00:12:04.940 but that probably won't topple the government.

00:12:06.540 And there probably won't be in the aftermath

00:12:07.900 of that killing this spontaneous creation

00:12:10.180 of a liberal democracy in Southwest Asia.

00:12:13.340 Probably not going to happen.

00:12:15.380 But Mossad had another scenario.

00:12:20.660 They believed or said they believed

00:12:22.620 that knocking off the religious leadership,

00:12:27.120 the head of the snake in this theocracy

00:12:29.980 would result in spontaneous regime change.

00:12:33.580 And we wouldn't have to really get involved

00:12:35.200 beyond just the initial bombing campaign.

00:12:38.780 And that's very appealing to Americans

00:12:40.680 who fought war from the air for a long time.

00:12:44.280 And that's at this point,

00:12:45.180 pretty much the only thing

00:12:46.540 that the American public will accept.

00:12:49.660 You know, a low risk, very expensive,

00:12:51.560 but low-risk operation that doesn't take very long where you achieve your objectives by killing the

00:12:57.180 right people with bombs. But nobody in the United States, well, almost nobody, has any great desire

00:13:06.960 to send U.S. troops. In fact, in June, when the government of Israel and its many paid spokesmen

00:13:17.780 in the United States were pushing for what became the 12-day war, we're just going to take out the

00:13:21.480 nuclear sites, there were people who said, no, that's not what this is. This is a regime change

00:13:27.580 effort. And if pursued, it will wind up with boots on the ground, with the commitment of American

00:13:33.180 troops. And once that happens, it's kind of hard to see how to extricate them. And a lot of them

00:13:37.280 could get killed. And anyone who said that at the time was denounced as crazy, a conspiracy theorist,

00:13:44.160 a grifter. Well, yeah. Nine months later, that's exactly where we are. Today, the head of Mossad,

00:13:57.460 smart, seasoned guy, said that he believes, apparently said this, that he believes regime

00:14:03.940 change in Iran, which is apparently another stated goal, will require at least a year

00:14:08.080 to change the regime in Iran.

00:14:11.500 So that right there is Israel saying,

00:14:14.920 we're going to need the commitment of American troops.

00:14:17.540 Americans are going to have to go there.

00:14:20.680 And surprise, surprise, Americans are going there.

00:14:24.280 There's not been an invasion of Iran,

00:14:26.640 of the mainland or any of the islands in the Persian Gulf just yet,

00:14:30.740 but there is clearly preparation for that.

00:14:35.360 There are many thousands of U.S. troops headed there right now. Some are already stationed in the area. And this looks like the kind of preparation that you would do if you were planning a land assault on a huge mountainous country that's surprisingly cohesive and very well armed.

00:14:56.400 and from what we can tell there's not a lot of enthusiasm for doing this among people who spend

00:15:05.340 their lives thinking through military tactics and strategy this doesn't seem like the kind of move

00:15:12.280 that's going to end the war in our favor quickly it seems like the kind of move that could result

00:15:17.300 in disaster we pray it doesn't but that once made will almost certainly result in a long-term

00:15:25.120 commitment to fighting on the ground in Iran. The very thing we were told we were insane to

00:15:31.040 worry about. Now everyone's going to say, oh yeah, it's going to take some boots on the ground.

00:15:35.680 And one of the things you learn as you watch this change, where something that was totally

00:15:40.660 unimaginable and insane, it was space aliens level crazy just nine months ago to suggest

00:15:46.780 this could happen. One of the things you notice as you watch people now advocate for it, those

00:15:51.440 very same people advocate for this thing that was never going to happen and you were crazy to worry

00:15:55.640 about, is the kind of blasé insouciance they display, the kind of, you know, boots on the

00:16:02.500 ground, as they call for it. And there's no place where you see this more. The world headquarters

00:16:10.040 for boots on the ground would, of course, be Fox News. So here is Keith Kellogg, retired general

00:16:19.940 Keith Kellogg, who will be 82 years old in a month, telling you that, yeah, boots on the ground,

00:16:26.280 not a big deal. Watch. I'm a big believer in putting boots on the ground, not necessarily

00:16:30.960 into Iran, but taking Carg Island and also taking the Strait of Hormuz. Look, we kind of need to do

00:16:37.700 it the way the Romans used to do it. You know, you need to put, you know, your legions on the ground

00:16:43.060 to secure the territory and give them confidence that they can do it, that we can open up the

00:16:48.240 straight. Look, I know there's risk involved. There's always risk involved. But those kids,

00:16:51.740 those young men and women, they understand the risk involved on taking both Karg and opening

00:16:56.640 up the Strait of Hormuz. Just got to put boots on the ground. Now, what's interesting is the last

00:17:02.720 line. What's interesting, by the way, that it's Keith Kellogg. Keith Kellogg is one of the reasons

00:17:09.520 there has been no settlement in the conflict between Ukraine and Russia. So Keith Kellogg

00:17:15.300 was appointed by the new administration very, very early in January to be the emissary from

00:17:21.620 the White House to Eastern Europe to try and get some kind of deal between Russia and Ukraine.

00:17:27.100 And without getting boring about it, Keith Kellogg is one of the main reasons that we

00:17:31.740 don't have that agreement. And hundreds and hundreds of thousands of Eastern Europeans,

00:17:36.760 Slavs, Russians, and Ukrainians, probably decent kids with nothing to do with starting this war,

00:17:41.720 are dead, and Ukraine is totally destroyed. And Keith Kellogg was never, having talked to him

00:17:51.420 at some length, ever in favor of settling that. And that may or may not be connected to the fact

00:17:59.080 that his daughter works with the Zelensky government. You never want to blame people's

00:18:02.420 relatives for anything, but she's on the record saying, I'm working on my dad to make sure he

00:18:06.680 days on Ukraine's side. Well, you can't have a side in a foreign conflict if you're an American

00:18:15.080 emissary charged with settling that conflict. The only side you can have is the United States.

00:18:22.760 And Keith Kellogg didn't. So that's shameful. And he's not responsible for that war. And he's

00:18:29.160 not wholly responsible for a failure to settle it. But he's definitely partly responsible for

00:18:36.440 helping to destroy American diplomacy and making the United States globally not a trusted partner

00:18:46.140 in any discussion about anything. Because when you're dishonest with other countries, when you

00:18:51.460 don't state up front your biases, when you don't do your job, which is to bring resolution to the

00:18:56.780 conflict, people start to figure it out. And all of a sudden, your diplomacy doesn't work. Now,

00:19:02.460 why does this matter? There are a lot of people in the United States who think diplomacy is stupid.

00:19:06.440 why would we have diplomacy? Are you liberal? No, because diplomacy is a kind of power.

00:19:14.080 In fact, it's a key form of power. In fact, it's the main form of power that big countries get to

00:19:19.420 exercise globally. And it's the power to settle disputes on their terms. So if all of a sudden,

00:19:27.380 no one trusts or believes you because you've lied too much, you've been sneaky and tricky and

00:19:34.240 actually working for some third country as you pretended to work for the United States,

00:19:38.340 which has happened, no one wants to deal with you. So why is that bad? Because you're unpopular? No.

00:19:46.040 It's not about popularity. It's about power. Once you lose the power to settle conflicts

00:19:53.760 by negotiation, the only power you have left is armaments. So you better have overwhelmingly

00:20:00.120 superior weapon systems in order to protect your interests, because that's all you have at that

00:20:04.700 point. And it looks like we may not have, short of nuclear weapons, overwhelmingly powerful

00:20:12.280 weapon systems in this or any other theater. Lots of other countries have sophisticated

00:20:17.320 weapons too, conventional weapons. A shockingly large number of US military aircraft apparently

00:20:25.620 have been damaged or downed

00:20:27.740 just in the last month over Iran.

00:20:30.300 That's not good.

00:20:32.280 It's not good at all.

00:20:33.940 But when you don't have credible diplomacy,

00:20:36.580 that's all you have.

00:20:38.460 And Americans get killed

00:20:39.580 and your power ebbs really fast when they do.

00:20:43.860 And those lives are ended.

00:20:46.600 Not an insignificant problem.

00:20:48.720 Keith Kellogg doesn't seem to be that interested in it.

00:20:51.760 Just put boots on the ground.

00:20:53.400 But the key line in the clip you just saw

00:20:55.560 is the end. He's like, no, these people are really eager to do it. Well, has anyone explained to them,

00:21:00.000 to the people massing in the Persian Gulf, the Americans in uniform,

00:21:04.360 massing first special operators and 82nd Airborne or whatever, any part of the gun-toting US

00:21:11.320 military that's massing for whatever's coming, assuming something is, don't know that, seems

00:21:16.000 like it. Has anyone explained to them why we're doing this? Not at the tactical level, like your

00:21:21.360 job is to go in and secure this land, this island or this part of the Iranian mainland.

00:21:27.980 But the strategic goal, like why are we doing this? Probably not. And we know that because

00:21:35.660 no one's explained this to the American population. No one has bothered to explain what the point of

00:21:39.440 this is. And that's a huge problem, not only because it shows that democracy doesn't really

00:21:45.400 work and that the people we thought were in charge probably aren't really in charge.

00:21:50.160 They're taking orders from Benjamin Netanyahu, who got us into this war.

00:21:54.140 They're trying to erase that from history.

00:21:56.060 You'll never see that on Wikipedia.

00:21:59.240 But it's true.

00:22:00.560 That's a fact.

00:22:02.140 And they admitted it.

00:22:04.320 Don't let them steal the truth from you.

00:22:06.480 Ten years from now, they'll be like, what are you talking about, anti-Semite?

00:22:08.420 No, that happened.

00:22:11.180 But is there something in it for us?

00:22:14.200 And has anybody explained to the guys risking their lives and to the rest of the country paying for it and grieving over the loss of our troops, like, what's the point?

00:22:25.720 And no one has.

00:22:28.260 So at that point, you have to wonder, like, is that legitimate?

00:22:32.660 Can you just tell people go do this without explaining why?

00:22:36.260 Well, they signed up for it.

00:22:37.920 No, you still don't treat people like that.

00:22:39.860 You don't treat countries like this.

00:22:41.120 and in the course of all of this you have to wonder what happens to our country if there's no

00:22:49.240 stated benefit to us from this war

00:22:52.380 ask yourself would would you ever do something like this

00:22:58.060 if it didn't help the country you represented you probably wouldn't right what does that say

00:23:06.980 about how the people in charge

00:23:09.040 feel about our country.

00:23:10.000 Well, you don't have to guess.

00:23:11.160 Look around the country.

00:23:14.740 Been to an airport recently?

00:23:18.100 TSA going on strike.

00:23:19.780 Of course, there are reasons for that

00:23:20.860 and the Democrats are responsible.

00:23:22.260 Fine.

00:23:23.700 But in a country the size of a continent,

00:23:26.380 you need internal air travel, period.

00:23:29.280 Not simply for commerce,

00:23:30.560 but so people can see their kids, etc.

00:23:32.880 So you can have a functioning country.

00:23:34.580 and all of a sudden we don't and then it turns out oh my gosh someone sent an ambulance across

00:23:40.800 a runway and a plane hit it and people were killed well how'd that happen

00:23:43.680 because there was inadequate air traffic control well that's been known for a while has anyone

00:23:48.820 fixed it apparently not then a barge runs into the key bridge in baltimore kind of a critical

00:23:56.240 piece of infrastructure and as of this morning it's like not even close to being rebuilt that

00:24:01.760 was a long time ago then you drive around the country and you think wow looks kind of shabby

00:24:06.620 not all of it very pretty places the landscape's amazing to the extent it hasn't been destroyed

00:24:11.300 by solar farms and cbd outlets

00:24:16.400 but the actual infrastructure of the country it's not great our airports are not great

00:24:23.900 when you fly internationally you're amazed including to poor countries like wow why do

00:24:29.020 have such nice airports here in Mumbai or Bombay or whatever they're calling it now? I thought this

00:24:33.760 was a poor place. I read about Calcutta. I thought people were dying of starvation. Why is their

00:24:38.820 airport nicer than LaGuardia? What is this? And what it is, is neglect. It's neglect. It's what

00:24:45.700 happens when your leaders are so outwardly focused managing their empire and stoking their dreams of

00:24:51.940 power that they forget to tend to the country they run. And at this point, it just absolutely

00:24:59.720 couldn't be clearer what's going on. Our leaders, bipartisan basis now, are so distracted by what's

00:25:06.300 happening outside of our borders that what's happening inside is becoming dire, maybe an

00:25:10.560 overstatement, certainly depressing. What are the unemployment numbers? We could do an hour on this,

00:25:18.520 maybe we will. It depends how you read them. So if you got here from West Africa or Somalia or

00:25:26.020 Punjab or Bangladesh, you probably have a job, probably make it a lot more

00:25:31.900 than you made in the country you grew up in. But if you were born here, you're less likely to have

00:25:38.200 a job. These are the numbers right now. The unemployment for native-born Americans is going

00:25:43.740 up. And that's before the energy shock and the rollout of AI. Really? How could that happen?

00:25:53.500 And if you didn't know that, how did you not know that? That's not picking a fight with anyone or

00:25:58.600 criticizing anybody. That's like a baseline measurement of how your country's doing.

00:26:02.140 The people who were born here, not the immigrants to whom you're offering the American dream,

00:26:05.540 but the people who thought they would live the American dream because they were born here,

00:26:09.220 there's birthright citizens, and they're paying for everything. How are they doing? Not great.

00:26:15.480 And by that measure, it's not improving. So, okay, how much are we spending on this work?

00:26:23.240 Unclear, of course. Nothing is clear in war. You can't get an accurate count of anything,

00:26:27.820 including the dead. But it seems like about a billion a day, probably more. It's classified

00:26:35.580 God, a billion a day. You see the point. You give up a lot when you wage a war. And when you wage

00:26:44.860 a war in return for no promise of a return, other than the theoretical safety you feel because Iran,

00:26:52.260 which you probably thought about like four times in the last 10 years, doesn't have nukes, which

00:26:56.920 they told us in June they didn't have anyway. Do you feel better? No, it's the whole thing's

00:27:01.600 ridiculous. So I think the rest of us probably need to pay pretty close attention, as we're

00:27:11.700 tempted to be distracted by following what's happening in Iran and the Persian Gulf, pay

00:27:16.080 close attention to what's happening here in this country, because things change fast in war. That's

00:27:21.140 the number one thing to know. Societies are completely transformed by war. In fact, every

00:27:26.400 major societal change the big ones have come during war and the bigger the war the bigger

00:27:32.840 the change and some changes have been good like all change and some changes have been well really

00:27:37.560 bad but whatever changes in progress is likely to be accelerated during wartime so if the country

00:27:47.720 is feeling a little weak in some area it's likely to become very weak in that area and then things

00:27:54.320 will happen that nobody expected, but all of it is likely to happen during war. So this moment

00:28:05.920 is profound, but also kind of hard to read. So there are a couple of things you should be aware

00:28:13.080 of that are happening that you might not know about, and they're going to have long-term effects

00:28:17.480 for the world and for the United States. And one of them is the destruction of Europe. Now,

00:28:22.340 why should we care about Europe? Well, in the United States, most of our ancestors came from

00:28:27.220 Europe. And so there's that sentimental attachment, that cultural attachment, that

00:28:31.960 religious attachment. That's the Christian West that we sometimes talk about. Christian West,

00:28:37.300 what is that? Well, it's like Istanbul in this direction. That's the Christian West.

00:28:42.600 And Europe is the bulk of it. But maybe as important, certainly geostrategically as

00:28:48.960 important. If China rises and takes the East, what do we have here in the West? Well, we have Europe

00:28:54.340 and we have the Americas. And that's our world. That's what we influence. Those are our actual

00:29:00.720 allies because they live close to us. As much as you might like the Philippines, in 30 years,

00:29:06.700 will the United States have a lot of influence in the Philippines? Probably not. Anything in the

00:29:10.720 South China Sea is going to belong to China. Whether you want that or not is totally irrelevant.

00:29:15.520 end. So what happens to Europe really, really matters to us here in the United States.

00:29:24.000 And despite having a lot of silly leaders, we basically are aligned on the level of values.

00:29:29.820 I mean, they're like liberal and annoying and cheese and all that stuff. But ultimately,

00:29:33.700 if you're looking around the world and trying to figure out who are my real allies,

00:29:36.780 my baseline allies would be the Europeans. Well, one of the things you notice if you pay

00:29:41.340 any attention to this at all, is that the main victim of this war after the six Gulf states

00:29:47.560 is Europe. Because it's their energy that's being destroyed, both by Iran and probably also by

00:29:55.260 Israel, despite a lot of lying about it. It's their energy. And by the way, if you're paying

00:29:59.660 any attention, you may have noticed that just the other day, the Ukrainians, really a proxy for,

00:30:05.820 if there was ever a proxy for the American deep state, it's the Ukrainian government,

00:30:08.420 just went and hit a Russian energy installation.

00:30:13.320 Really?

00:30:14.520 So who's the victim of that?

00:30:16.320 Europe.

00:30:17.100 Now, why would Europe be the victim?

00:30:20.320 Too little has been written

00:30:21.580 and very little even is noticed about this,

00:30:23.820 but the hostility that Israeli government leaders

00:30:26.280 feel toward Europe

00:30:27.140 whenever they speak about it

00:30:28.760 is very, very obvious.

00:30:31.320 Here's the former leader of Israel,

00:30:32.620 Naftali Bennett,

00:30:33.240 talking just the other day,

00:30:34.360 maybe I think yesterday,

00:30:35.960 about Europe.

00:30:37.000 Watch this.

00:30:37.620 Had we not acted, all of Europe would be under a terrible nuclear ballistic missile menace.

00:30:46.180 So we're fighting your war and we expect not to be, you know, criticized in and on, but we expect your backing.

00:30:55.920 That would be the decent thing to do. I think any European leader who sort of says this isn't our problem.

00:31:02.420 so when will it become your problem when they have a nuclear weapon when the missile is on

00:31:08.460 its way to madrid when it hits madrid or barcelona is that when you're going to wake up

00:31:13.120 so we're doing the fighting we didn't ask you for any help nothing all we're doing is fighting

00:31:19.060 against this horrible radical islamist menace we're reducing and hopefully eliminating this

00:31:26.660 threat. And instead of thanking us, you're criticizing us. We're the victims. Why haven't

00:31:33.940 you thanked us enough, Europe? We pushed the United States, which has bases in all your countries,

00:31:41.780 a fellow NATO member of the United States, we pushed the United States into a war that shafts

00:31:45.760 you completely to end a threat that was not actually a threat to you. And in so doing,

00:31:52.700 we constricted your energy supply to the extent that you're going to have a depression in Europe.

00:31:58.440 And by the way, in case that's not enough, we're going to give you a migrant crisis.

00:32:02.440 We're going to give you a migrant crisis because Iran is pretty far from Milwaukee,

00:32:06.220 but not that far from Paris. And the aftermath of every Israeli-inspired war over the past 30 years

00:32:15.060 has been to send desperate migrants into Europe. So if you're one of those people who consumes

00:32:21.400 dumb stuff. The internet's like, how did this happen? London's becoming Muslim. Well, it happens

00:32:27.000 because the Brits hate themselves, of course, and masochistically want to import people who don't

00:32:31.580 show their values. But it also happens because we have wars in the Middle East that have downstream

00:32:37.220 consequences. And this war, the biggest country in the region, watching its infrastructure get

00:32:43.720 destroyed, will inspire mass migration. And ultimately, a lot of those people are winding

00:32:49.720 up in Europe. But Naftali Bennett is saying to Europe, you haven't thanked us for that.

00:32:55.040 So what you have here is the never-ending battle, the real battle, which is over the moral high

00:33:01.180 ground. That's the real battle. Who occupies the moral high ground? And high ground is a real thing.

00:33:09.220 If you're in the high ground, you aim down at people. You've got a clearer field of fire.

00:33:13.040 You're in charge. And if you control the moral terms, if the conversation begins with, hey,

00:33:18.100 hey, you've wronged me, I'm the victim, there's really no way to win that fight.

00:33:23.600 And that's what Naftali Bennett was just doing.

00:33:27.680 And that's what Bibi does, Benjamin Netanyahu does, in every sentence.

00:33:32.840 Hey, no one suffered like Israel has suffered.

00:33:36.820 Therefore, shut up and do what we want and don't complain about it.

00:33:40.300 In fact, thank us for it.

00:33:42.140 So you should know that Europe is in very serious trouble.

00:33:48.100 because of this, and that matters to Americans. But the concerns that we're going to have to deal

00:33:53.960 with, we pray not, here in the United States, are not limited to the slow death of our true allies.

00:34:01.220 They would include attacks here. Both acts of terror that are pretty predictable when you kill

00:34:07.980 religious leaders in foreign countries, it does tend to inspire extremism. It's not an excuse for

00:34:13.440 it's horrifying but that's why you don't want to do anything to encourage religious extremism

00:34:19.060 particularly if you pretend you don't like it maybe don't kill ayatollahs and you'll get less

00:34:23.620 of it obviously but that's not just it the united states has never

00:34:30.960 engaged in a policy openly of targeting other heads of state because countries don't do that

00:34:40.840 Why don't they do that?

00:34:42.120 Because it's not a precedent they want to set.

00:34:45.560 It's one of several precedents that countries hesitate before setting in warfare.

00:34:51.420 Don't assassinate the head of state because we don't want our head of state to be assassinated.

00:34:54.900 Don't openly target civilian infrastructure, of course.

00:34:59.600 And if you can help it, don't call for absolute, total, abject surrender.

00:35:05.540 Because that's a lot to ask of any nation.

00:35:07.700 and it tends to inspire people to fight to the bitter end when you start talking like that.

00:35:12.960 And when you start talking like that, you are opening yourself up. And maybe most of all,

00:35:18.020 don't say out loud that we're replacing a government in order to control it and steal

00:35:23.660 its resources. Now, why wouldn't you do that? Two reasons. One is a kind of abstract moral reason

00:35:28.760 because it's wrong. That's why theft is illegal in every country in the world. You can't just say,

00:35:35.540 I want that, I'm going to shoot you. We have laws against that. And those laws are rooted

00:35:40.280 in the understanding that you're not allowed to just take something because you want it by force.

00:35:45.320 We think that's immoral. That's the basis of our legal system

00:35:48.340 and of our religion and of most religions, by the way. So there's that.

00:35:54.880 But the other reason is because you don't want it done to you.

00:35:58.980 and it might be a good time just to remind ourselves that the united states has a lot

00:36:05.700 of resources in fact by some measures it's the most resource dense nation in the world

00:36:09.960 and it's also by say nigerian standards pretty lightly populated 350 million people spread out

00:36:16.720 across a continent the prettiest continent on the planet with abundant everything now we don't

00:36:21.420 extract a lot of it because we decided we're just too rich to mine things but it's still here we

00:36:27.740 also have the largest fresh water reserves of any country in the world. Maybe after Russia,

00:36:35.380 but certainly close. Massive amounts of fresh water, most fertile farmland in the world,

00:36:42.220 abundant oil and gas. So we have resources too. And so if you set up a precedent, because we make

00:36:50.620 the rules, because we have been the beneficiary of this unipolar system, we're in charge of the

00:36:54.100 world. And the new rule is, if you've got a lot of resources and we want them and we can just

00:36:59.640 overthrow your government and kill the people who run it and take them for ourselves, is that the

00:37:03.480 standard? Apparently. Then at some point it's at least conceivable that we would have to suffer

00:37:10.260 that standard. And you just pray that that never happens, but it's worth thinking past like next

00:37:15.000 Wednesday and acknowledging that it could. And if we're blowing up other people's civilian

00:37:20.900 infrastructure, which we have done for a while now since we blew up Nord Stream because we don't

00:37:27.260 like Putin because he's bad. He's just bad. But that was the vital energy artery into Europe,

00:37:36.320 our supposed allies, and we just blew it up, proving simultaneously that we didn't care

00:37:43.100 about global warming, of course, because that was the largest man-made emission of CO2 in

00:37:47.680 history, but that we're disregarding our own rules. Okay, so we have to live by the new

00:37:53.200 standard. It's a very long way of saying there could be consequences to this.

00:37:59.060 Consequences, you don't have to be some sort of liberal who loves the UN or whatever.

00:38:03.880 Is pro-French? Stop. If you care about the United States, you should be worried.

00:38:10.420 so there was a valero refinery in port arthur texas on the gulf coast of texas with a lot of

00:38:18.680 refineries where a lot of our refined petroleum products come from those include jet fuel gasoline

00:38:23.480 diesel all the way down to asphalt and there was a massive explosion in it two days ago on a cloud

00:38:30.520 and they had a stay in place order and it was high drama and now they're saying it was just a

00:38:35.240 It was just an industrial accident.

00:38:38.280 No one was killed, thank God.

00:38:40.580 But it happened.

00:38:41.940 And maybe it was an accident.

00:38:43.920 Accidents do happen.

00:38:45.080 And just because a whole bunch of food processing and energy and ammunition plants in the United States seem to be blowing up over the past five years doesn't mean they're not all accidents.

00:38:53.160 They absolutely could be.

00:38:54.060 Have no information to the contrary.

00:38:55.720 but if we're blowing up other people's civilian infrastructure and partnering with the with a

00:39:03.640 country that blows up other people's infrastructure as a matter of course just took out a ton of

00:39:08.740 bridges in lebanon yesterday for some reason israel and we think that's fine then at some

00:39:15.180 point you have to wonder about our infrastructure in this giant largely unprotected country could

00:39:19.500 there be blowback that hurts us that's not a liberal position that's like a common sense

00:39:25.240 position, if you're trying to protect your own country, you have to keep that in mind.

00:39:29.440 But no one is keeping it in mind at all.

00:39:35.580 So there is a potential physical threat to the United States without going on and on and on and

00:39:41.700 on about it. You should know that it exists and it's one of the downsides of this war.

00:39:50.700 the other downside that people are not considering in any great detail

00:39:56.640 mentioned a minute ago but are the long-term effects of israel's strategic goal in this war

00:40:04.760 which as known it differs from ours completely which is territorial expansion what exactly

00:40:11.480 does israel want we don't know but they clearly want to extend their borders or at least the

00:40:18.020 buffer zone around post-67 Israel, whatever their actual goals are, while the rest of us are

00:40:25.280 focused on whether we're going to invade Karg Island, probably not, by the way, who knows?

00:40:30.620 The Israelis are tending to their own agenda using the cover of our military and our tax dollars,

00:40:37.080 okay? It's just a fact. So one of the things they're doing is trying to grab southern Lebanon.

00:40:43.060 Now, why does that matter?

00:40:44.320 What's Lebanon?

00:40:45.220 Who cares?

00:40:45.760 Well, I don't know.

00:40:47.680 If you're a Christian, you care

00:40:49.080 because Lebanon has the largest population

00:40:53.460 of Christians in the region by far.

00:40:56.300 In fact, it was a Christian country for centuries.

00:41:00.740 There's a Christian president of Lebanon.

00:41:02.940 Did you know that?

00:41:04.780 Every time Lebanon is mentioned

00:41:06.020 is through the lens of Israel's interest.

00:41:07.980 But if you're a Christian,

00:41:09.220 you don't have to hate Israel,

00:41:10.620 but you may have different interests.

00:41:11.640 like, what about the Christians? Well, Lebanon is a Christian president. The head of the military

00:41:16.340 in Lebanon is Christian. And there are a lot of Christian villages, ancient Christian villages,

00:41:21.580 villages Jesus probably walked through, been Christian ever since, only 2,000 years.

00:41:27.420 And they're being destroyed because under the cover of this war paid for and led by us,

00:41:32.960 Israel has decided to take a big chunk of Lebanon. Watch.

00:41:41.640 Israel's defense minister on Tuesday said the country's military will control

00:41:45.120 southern Lebanon up to the Litani River.

00:41:50.460 The remarks are the first time Israel has clearly spelled out its intent to seize swaths

00:41:55.200 of territory that make up nearly a tenth of Lebanon.

00:41:59.140 Israel has been trading fire with Iranian-backed Hezbollah fighters in Lebanon.

00:42:02.940 That's after Hezbollah struck Israel following joint Israeli-American attacks on Iran.

00:42:07.540 Rockets damaged buildings and vehicles in northern Israel on Tuesday.

00:42:10.520 Katz has previously threatened Lebanon's government that it would lose territory if it did not disarm Hezbollah.

00:42:16.700 Israel has destroyed five bridges crossing the Litani River

00:42:19.540 and has accelerated the demolition of homes in Lebanese villages close to the Israeli border.

00:42:25.580 Katz said, quote,

00:42:26.480 The principle is clear.

00:42:27.920 If there is terror and rockets, there will be no homes and residents, and the IDF will remain inside.

00:42:33.940 Did you know that was happening?

00:42:35.960 And why does it matter?

00:42:37.040 Well, it matters because this episode in history is going to end at a certain point.

00:42:41.760 This war will end.

00:42:43.720 Pray it sooner rather than later.

00:42:45.120 But at some point, all wars do end.

00:42:47.000 And at that point, the truth comes out.

00:42:49.720 Because the truth about everything will come out.

00:42:53.300 Everything.

00:42:53.860 Just a matter of where on the timeline it does.

00:42:56.300 But at some point, we will know what actually happened in this period and over the last two and a half years.

00:43:01.820 So if you look at the Internet and you see pictures of war crimes committed in Gaza or the West Bank or now in Lebanon, you can't be certain they're all real.

00:43:12.080 And of course, the shills on the Internet will say they're all fake, but they're not all fake, actually.

00:43:17.780 Some of them are real.

00:43:19.500 Tens of thousands of people, noncombatants, women and children, have been killed by the Israeli military using our weapons, American weapons paid for by the U.S. Congress.

00:43:28.560 and there will be a reckoning over that and there are indications real indications not

00:43:36.180 anti-semitic propaganda but actual indications that war crimes have been committed

00:43:42.280 torturing people killing people unarmed non-combatants kids on purpose there's a lot

00:43:49.340 of that and some of it's probably fake some is propaganda undoubtedly but some of it isn't

00:43:55.360 and in the end we're going to know because we always know in the end and so you have to ask

00:44:03.060 yourself the people who are defending this and paying for it would you want to be one of those

00:44:09.380 people when we find this out how about the religious leaders the american evangelical

00:44:16.340 leaders not rank and file evangelicals who if they knew would be horrified but the people who

00:44:22.480 run the biggest evangelical associations in the United States? The people who are in Liberty

00:44:28.680 University, for example, or Franklin Graham, these are household names. Have they said anything

00:44:33.740 about the destruction of churches and ancient Christian villages in a country

00:44:38.020 in the Middle East with a Christian president? Do they even know Lebanon had a Christian

00:44:44.140 president? Who knows? They haven't said word one about it. Why? Well, that's a good question.

00:44:53.580 That was the question that a lot of people asked the Reich Church after the Second World War ended

00:44:57.900 in Germany. How could you have gone along with that? And there was not a good answer other than,

00:45:03.200 I don't know, didn't want to offend the powerful. There is going to be a consequence to this,

00:45:09.520 and one of them is very easy to predict. Big evangelical institutions, which have done good

00:45:15.100 things, by the way, if you're for the family and you're pro-life, you're grateful for what they've

00:45:21.220 done, for their personal decency of the people in the pews, a lot of really decent people.

00:45:25.780 But the leaders of American evangelical Christianity, not all, but some,

00:45:32.100 will have no legitimacy at all when this is over. Where were you when a country that

00:45:39.260 you pledged fealty to was murdering Christians, your brothers in Christ in the Middle East.

00:45:45.980 Where were you when people were starving, when kids were starving in Gaza?

00:45:50.680 And the Gaza aid program was run by some kind of crypto Christian preacher.

00:45:55.000 Like someone's have to answer for that. These people will have to answer for that.

00:46:00.080 And if you're wondering in this moment where there's a religious awakening

00:46:04.480 underway in the West, there's really no question about that.

00:46:06.960 if you're wondering why, not a lot of new converts are going to the evangelical institutions.

00:46:15.920 This may be why. There's going to be big change. Because remember, once again, the truth always

00:46:21.780 comes out. Always. And this will affect American politics, maybe more than anything we've seen

00:46:27.820 over the past 20 years. It'll change the Republican Party forever, that's for sure.

00:46:32.020 most of the polling you see about the attitudes of the Republican Party toward this war

00:46:37.080 polling Fox News viewers, polling MAGA people. How do you find MAGA? Well, people who agree

00:46:43.700 with anything the administration does. Well, by definition, they agree with this.

00:46:48.340 But people under 50 also vote. In fact, because they did vote in the last election,

00:46:53.300 Donald Trump is currently president. And it's not close there. Try to find one who supports this.

00:47:00.780 good luck. Unless he works at Liberty University, probably not for it. So that will have massive

00:47:08.460 consequences. Massive. Is the Democratic Party going to absorb all those people? Who knows?

00:47:14.760 But there will be big political change because of this. And the reason is really simple,

00:47:20.540 because the people who endorse this and lie to us about it and selectively ignore the suffering of

00:47:28.680 other human beings, including their fellow Christians, have lost their moral authority.

00:47:33.380 And they will not regain it anytime soon.

00:47:38.140 And you just hope that this ends soon enough that the nation itself doesn't lose its moral

00:47:43.160 authority, because that is, in the end, the most compelling kind of authority.

00:47:48.560 That's where your actual power comes from, is from your decency,

00:47:54.080 which is far more powerful than nuclear weapons.

00:47:58.680 in the end, is more powerful than anything. And it is one of the main reasons, more than Coca-Cola

00:48:03.180 and Marlboros and Blue Jeans and capitalism and the democracy agenda, the decency of the American

00:48:09.160 empire, often indecent, but compared to what other empire, it was the decency of America's

00:48:15.580 stewardship of the world that made it powerful. And now it's very fashionable to say, oh, it was

00:48:22.480 always bad and threw up Mosaddegh and it was always bad. But the rest of the world didn't

00:48:27.560 Didn't feel that way about the United States for most of that time,

00:48:30.280 most of the Cold War, for example.

00:48:33.880 But a lot of the world now does feel that way.

00:48:36.240 And that's a loss for the United States.

00:48:38.200 It's not a matter of caring what foreigners think,

00:48:40.040 though an awful lot of people care what Israel thinks,

00:48:42.780 but they don't care what anyone else thinks.

00:48:45.360 But it's a loss of power and authority for us.

00:48:48.940 It's a huge loss.

00:48:50.440 It makes us weaker and more endangered.

00:48:53.640 And the final thing to remember,

00:48:55.860 maybe the thing to meditate on,

00:48:57.560 about this moment, and you may not catch this because you're breathlessly watching Fox News

00:49:03.100 to find out if we're going to invade the Isle of Karg, the thing that you should be paying attention

00:49:10.100 to is the change in American authority and the level of power our authorities domestically here

00:49:18.200 in the U.S. feel like they can assume because that always expands during war. Wartime leaders

00:49:23.620 become authoritarian, every single one of them, every single one of them. And authorities below

00:49:31.400 the executive also become authoritarian. Did you know that in 1942, when Franklin Roosevelt issued

00:49:40.100 his famous executive order to intern about 120,000 Japanese Americans, mostly in the West,

00:49:47.020 Oregon, Washington, California, in concentration camps, did you know the most interesting fact

00:49:52.360 of that decision is often omitted from it. The overwhelming majority of them were American

00:49:58.880 citizens, actual citizens or legal residents. But two-thirds were American citizens with full

00:50:06.020 citizenship who'd been convicted of no crime, hadn't even been charged with a crime.

00:50:11.900 But they were thrown into concentration camps for three years and lost their property.

00:50:18.240 And there was some effort in the 80s to be like, oh, we're so sorry.

00:50:22.360 And also, who really cares?

00:50:23.860 Imperial Japan was bad.

00:50:24.900 But these people weren't actually subjects of Imperial Japan.

00:50:28.220 They were American citizens.

00:50:31.480 And they were thrown into concentration camps with their families and no one really said anything.

00:50:36.040 I mean, it's complicated.

00:50:37.060 It's complicated.

00:50:38.100 That's not complicated, actually.

00:50:39.120 That's totally wrong.

00:50:40.500 You can't treat American citizens that way if you're the U.S. government, ever.

00:50:45.040 And yet, Roosevelt was able to do it because it was 1942 and the war wasn't looking good.

00:50:50.000 And that's the other thing to remember.

00:50:52.360 That as wars get tougher, say if you commit ground troops and find yourself stuck in a place and can't get out.

00:51:01.600 It's happened many, many times.

00:51:05.440 As things get tougher and leaders become less popular and people become more enraged and discouraged and sad and distracted, governments can assume powers unimaginable in peacetime.

00:51:21.240 even more dramatically than they did during the COVID epidemic, that can happen.

00:51:29.300 And it may be starting to happen. Speaking for myself, I've been

00:51:32.160 threatened with more FBI investigations in the last month than during the entire

00:51:36.340 Biden administration. So maybe that's an indicator of something. Two more than during

00:51:40.940 the entire Biden administration, which I criticized every single day for its duration.

00:51:44.620 So there's that. But here's one pretty specific example, a piece of tape that should tell you

00:51:53.760 what to be on guard against. And that's at the local level, not the level of federal law

00:51:59.720 enforcement, but like your local sheriff, assuming powers that no man short of God possesses, and

00:52:06.420 certainly no one in the United States possesses. In flat, obvious contradiction to our founding

00:52:12.420 documents to the Bill of Rights, this sheriff, Sheriff Bouchard from Michigan, has decided that

00:52:21.180 he's going to arrest and imprison people who make memes mocking him. This is real from last Friday.

00:52:29.580 Watch this. I give you this by way of example. Some pond scum felt empowered and emboldened enough

00:52:38.520 to put this picture of me up to try to threaten and intimidate me,

00:52:44.180 which, of course, he didn't do because I signed up for this.

00:52:48.420 And, by the way, the person that did this said a bunch of terrible things,

00:52:52.320 not just against me but against a lot of groups and individuals,

00:52:58.240 who, by the way, was arrested today in Wisconsin.

00:53:01.240 My point is this, though.

00:53:02.660 If this person is emboldened and empowered enough or feels safe enough to do this for me, what does he do to a kid?

00:53:14.060 What does he do to a Jewish family walking down the street?

00:53:17.600 He didn't do anything.

00:53:19.660 He made an ugly meme.

00:53:23.180 But the sheriff's not intimidated.

00:53:25.600 I signed up for this.

00:53:27.180 I knew the risks of the job when I became your sheriff.

00:53:29.280 This guy's like some former Republican, Republican politician in the state of Michigan.

00:53:34.340 I knew the risks.

00:53:35.360 I signed up for this.

00:53:37.180 Someone made a funny meme about you or an ugly meme about you.

00:53:40.060 It's a meme.

00:53:40.760 It's an image on the internet that was on Instagram, not on the battlefield.

00:53:45.260 You faced no physical risk.

00:53:46.420 You just admitted that.

00:53:49.300 And you had the guy arrested in another state and he's in jail.

00:53:54.320 How is this not?

00:53:56.240 How is this not leading to mass protests?

00:53:58.300 Why did they not shut your sheriff's department down?

00:54:00.200 Where's the Department of Justice?

00:54:01.560 Where's the Civil Rights Division?

00:54:04.120 Are you allowed to just arrest people who make fun of you?

00:54:07.980 Oh, it's so ugly.

00:54:09.120 It's anti-Semitism.

00:54:10.000 Okay, well, it's racism.

00:54:13.660 You're mocking the vaccine.

00:54:14.900 It's all the same.

00:54:16.260 These are all pretexts that we take literally because we're dumb.

00:54:21.080 And no one wants to be an anti-Semite or a racist or deny science,

00:54:24.840 whatever they tell you your crime is.

00:54:26.640 the actual crime is always the same it's mocking and impeding the authoritarian impulses of the

00:54:33.740 people in charge it's making fun of the sheriff which is exactly what this criminal did but the

00:54:40.420 sheriff's okay tonight he's going to be all right he signed up for this the rest of us did not sign

00:54:45.760 up for this this is illegal under the first amendment to the united states constitution

00:54:51.660 It's also totally incompatible with what it is to live in this country.

00:54:57.240 You get to say what you think.

00:54:59.280 There is no legal category of hate speech.

00:55:01.980 There's only speech the people in charge hate.

00:55:05.480 So this guy should be the subject of a federal investigation like in about one minute after

00:55:09.920 that hits the internet.

00:55:10.900 Don't think he has been.

00:55:11.860 Let's hope he will be.

00:55:13.640 But that's exactly the kind of change that can bubble up in your country during war.

00:55:20.740 And it's like some kooky sheriff Republican.

00:55:23.780 That's the Republican?

00:55:25.000 That's the free speech party guy?

00:55:26.800 Really?

00:55:28.320 And it's in Michigan.

00:55:29.640 And who even knows?

00:55:30.360 Some county in Michigan.

00:55:31.840 And all of a sudden you wake up

00:55:33.320 and you get arrested for a meme

00:55:36.220 because it's hate speech,

00:55:37.960 which means it's speech

00:55:41.600 the people in charge hate.

00:55:44.960 And then if this goes on long enough

00:55:46.720 or if the United States

00:55:48.660 are to really suffer,

00:55:49.560 it gets more extreme. They're already neocons saying if there's a terror attack in the United

00:55:55.080 States as blowback from the war that they pushed for, that they will make certain that people who

00:56:00.640 oppose the war are arrested for the terror attack. Follow the logic chain. Oh, you can't because

00:56:04.980 there isn't one. They're openly saying we will use the deaths of Americans to settle

00:56:10.660 our political scores using your government law enforcement. Not so different from we will settle

00:56:17.700 are ancient tribal disputes on another continent

00:56:20.780 using your military, kind of the same principle.

00:56:23.420 But it's not acceptable here.

00:56:26.420 If the Iran war was bad,

00:56:28.660 allowing the U.S. government to arrest,

00:56:32.260 persecute, investigate, spy on U.S. citizens

00:56:35.780 for exercising their God-given rights is worse.

00:56:40.120 And you'll know it's bad

00:56:41.700 when they start talking about a draft.

00:56:45.600 Now, what is a draft?

00:56:47.700 Well, of course, it's the definition of tyranny.

00:56:50.680 It is somehow the right of a government to take the fruit of its population,

00:56:59.040 its young, fit citizens, the ones who are supposed to build the civilization,

00:57:02.520 continue the country, take them and force them to risk their lives,

00:57:08.640 and in some cases die, for a decision they didn't make.

00:57:12.420 And in this case, they don't support at all.

00:57:13.980 what percentage of 18 year old american men support the war in iran haven't seen the polling

00:57:20.740 imagine it's quite a bit below 30 percent maybe even lower than that and by the time we get to

00:57:27.260 a draft you can be assured it'll be even lower than that so that would be tyranny if there's

00:57:34.700 another definition of tyranny forcing people to die for a war for another country when your

00:57:43.740 country is not even conceivably in peril of like invasion, except the long-term kind created by

00:57:49.740 immigration, but an imminent invasion of foreign troops. But, you know, we went into this war

00:57:55.820 because Benjamin Netanyahu wanted us to, and it's not going well. And you need to fight that war

00:58:03.940 at the risk of your life, even though you hate it and have never really understood what it's about

00:58:09.100 because everyone lied to you about it.

00:58:11.120 And if you don't do that,

00:58:13.080 we'll arrest you and put you in jail.

00:58:14.720 I think that's the definition of tyranny.

00:58:16.600 And simply because it's happened in the past

00:58:18.260 doesn't make it any less tyrannical.

00:58:21.360 But don't take my word for it.

00:58:23.460 So I want to bring you now an interview

00:58:27.240 that we did a short time ago

00:58:29.880 with a man called Jim Webb, James Webb III.

00:58:33.740 And if the name sounds familiar,

00:58:34.820 that's because he is from one of the most famous

00:58:36.700 military families in the United States. His father was Navy Secretary, a U.S. Senator.

00:58:43.420 And Jim Webb, the man we're about to speak to, was himself an enlisted United States Marine,

00:58:50.160 third in a row in his family, a family that, as I will tell you, has fought in every American

00:58:54.300 conflict since the French and Indian Wars. And we thought we would push him a little bit on what it

00:59:00.620 would look like if those fabled boots on the ground that Fox News so badly wants to commit

00:59:06.000 actually came to pass. What would that look like? And why are we doing this? And how would it work?

00:59:10.840 And most critically, what would the end result be? And we thought it was a pretty interesting

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01:00:52.700 Now streaming on Paramount+.

01:00:55.000 my center my soul is gone from academy award nominee taylor sheridan mine is not a family

01:01:03.080 designed to withstand tragedy starring academy award nominee michelle pfeiffer and golden globe

01:01:10.120 nominee kurt russell the worry is what you do next you will have as much life to live as you

01:01:16.120 allow yourself the madison new series now streaming only on paramount plus tucker here

01:01:23.780 he is, Jim Webb. Jim Webb, thank you for doing this very much. One of the many reasons I wanted

01:01:30.220 to talk to you in addition to the fact that you're knowledgeable and honest is that you're a veteran

01:01:34.140 of the last big American military effort, the Iraq war, and you grew up steeped in this world

01:01:42.580 and have some perspective on it. So first to the question of likelihood of ground troops,

01:01:49.340 we don't know, of course, we're kind of trying to figure out what's going to happen, but what's

01:01:53.600 your view, do you think the United States will commit meaningful ground forces? I'll start by

01:01:57.620 saying I hope not. Yes. Judging by all of the indicators that are out there, the Marines

01:02:03.940 floating in, there's, I guess, not even rumors. There's reports that elements of the 82nd have

01:02:09.860 already been deployed forward, their command element. I think Jennifer Griffin confirmed

01:02:13.860 that today. It's looking like it is. And it's looking more and more likely. And I got to say,

01:02:20.800 I mean, what really concerns me is sort of the piecemeal fashion that we're going into this from a from a ground fighter perspective.

01:02:27.840 Yes.

01:02:28.860 And then the bigger picture is that there has been no real debate about our involvement in Iran at all.

01:02:36.660 At the congressional level, there was never really a case made to the American public, and we are charging into an environment that has not effectively been cleared according to our Constitution, nor is there consensus among the American people that this is necessary for our national security.

01:02:55.360 While at the same time, it's very, very clear through the statements of the administration, such as Marco Rubio, that we are doing this because Israel decided that we should do it.

01:03:05.620 Therefore, by virtue of that, it's not in our national interest. We are committing our treasure and our blood to fight somebody else's war. And it would be really great if we could have a debate about that before that happens. But I mean, you look at it, it may be too late.

01:03:21.700 it's i think one of the reasons that there hasn't been you know a real debate there hasn't been

01:03:29.240 any meaningful demonstration anywhere against this is that people are having trouble believing

01:03:35.240 it could be true that we'd be committing ground troops to a war with iran can you just explain a

01:03:43.940 little more fully why you think that might be in progress sure uh well the complicated thing about

01:03:49.680 that right out of the gate is that, I mean, as an American citizen, we have not been given

01:03:53.880 any type of tangible objectives for this entire operation. Is this a regime change? Is this to

01:04:02.800 reduce their military capacity? Is this to reopen the Straits of Hormuz, which is actually probably

01:04:09.140 the biggest imperative right now? So without an end state objective, at least even at the

01:04:15.680 operational level it's it's very very difficult to find a justification for it i mean that's it

01:04:23.080 what you're saying is clearly true i haven't heard anything i pay close attention but what

01:04:28.800 does that mean for the guys who are sitting at home thinking i'm about to head over you said

01:04:33.320 there were elements of the command of um regular army units headed over do they know why they're

01:04:42.480 doing this? Ultimately, if we don't know the long-term plan or even the interim plan,

01:04:53.720 the medium-term plan, I doubt they know. They have an operation in front of them,

01:04:57.600 which they've more than likely been briefed on that they're going to execute. They may know that,

01:05:03.860 but what's the tie-in? How does this further the interest of the country? How does this further

01:05:08.660 our strategic objectives around the world or even in the region. And I look at the prospects of

01:05:14.800 ground troops in particular to reopen the Strait of Hormuz as an indicator that we do not have

01:05:20.040 the initiative in this fight. The straits are closed, gas prices are going up, and we are

01:05:26.740 looking at a scenario by all accounts, you can talk to any number of economists about this,

01:05:30.900 where if this goes on for much longer, the entire global economy could potentially be brought down,

01:05:37.180 But we're already feeling the ramifications of it. So, in effect, what it appears that we're doing is we are committing people to regain the initiative, to open the straits. It would be a quote-unquote bold or over-the-top stroke in order to put the Iranians on their back foot.

01:05:57.320 But myself, as a former Marine, grew up in the Marine Corps, I have had a relative or

01:06:04.840 ancestor fight in every single American conflict going back to the French and Indian War.

01:06:11.040 You know, it's kind of...

01:06:12.420 The French and Indian War?

01:06:13.760 Correct.

01:06:14.400 That was not on CNN.

01:06:15.620 No, it was not on CNN.

01:06:16.580 It may have been on OAN, but I doubt it.

01:06:21.000 Oh, that's amazing.

01:06:22.680 Oh, appreciate it.

01:06:23.420 And we've never been really career soldiers or Marines or airmen, with the exception of

01:06:29.320 my grandfather, who was a career Air Force officer, or people who step up and who fight

01:06:34.080 because it's, I mean, you can read one of my dad's books, you know, it's in our nature.

01:06:39.120 Yes.

01:06:39.500 But at the same time, it's a sense of honor and duty to the country.

01:06:43.500 When the country calls, you know, you step up and you do your part in my family.

01:06:48.060 Yes.

01:06:48.360 And then for whatever reason, you go back to civilian society and you live your life.

01:06:52.340 The career aspect has never really, you know, appealed.

01:06:55.920 You're not in it for the free healthcare.

01:06:57.680 Not at all.

01:06:58.340 Not at all.

01:06:58.780 It's okay.

01:06:59.480 It's fine to, you know, find private healthcare somewhere else.

01:07:02.040 Yeah.

01:07:02.460 But when you're inside of that, right, when that's your mindset, you know, you're going to go fight because, you know, I can use my own experience with the Iraq war.

01:07:14.320 I didn't agree with it when we went in.

01:07:17.100 Um, I had a unique perspective due to the way that I grew up about the inner workings and the lack of a strategic objective, but it was clear that something was going on.

01:07:28.700 Our country needed young men to go fight and I volunteered to go, uh, dropped out of college to go do it.

01:07:35.600 Um, but, uh,

01:07:37.060 So you enlisted.

01:07:37.900 Correct.

01:07:38.240 You were not ROTC.

01:07:40.200 I was in ROTC.

01:07:41.500 Um, and then I went to Afghanistan with my dad in 2004.

01:07:44.820 I had a chance to do some photojournalism there.

01:07:48.040 Liked it so much that I came home and decided to sign up and be a Marine Corps infantryman.

01:07:54.440 So you could have been a Marine Corps officer, but you decided to be a Marine Corps infantryman.

01:07:57.160 Correct.

01:07:57.780 Correct.

01:07:58.740 I've not met a lot of people who turned down the chance to be a Marine Corps officer in order to enlist in the Marine Corps.

01:08:06.860 Well, you're pretty enthusiastic, it sounds like.

01:08:08.820 I was.

01:08:09.280 I was.

01:08:09.880 It just seemed like the natural place for me to be.

01:08:11.780 I was amongst my peers, guys the same age, walking around Helmand province and up on the Pakistani border.

01:08:17.400 How long between, you went to Penn State?

01:08:19.920 Correct.

01:08:20.740 So one day you're at Penn State, you know, holding a plastic beer cup.

01:08:25.200 And then how long between that and finding yourself with a rifle in a foreign country?

01:08:31.460 About 18 months.

01:08:32.960 Yeah.

01:08:33.660 Roughly 18 months.

01:08:35.560 So your classmates were still at school when you were?

01:08:38.060 Correct.

01:08:39.140 They were graduating the summer that I was in Iraq or, you know, getting ready to go.

01:08:45.700 Wow.

01:08:46.020 Most of them.

01:08:46.720 Wow.

01:08:47.500 Why did you do that?

01:08:49.720 Duty.

01:08:50.900 Patriotism.

01:08:51.580 I love this country to death.

01:08:54.220 Also, it's...

01:08:55.520 Literally unto death.

01:08:56.840 I mean, that's what you're saying.

01:08:57.580 Right.

01:08:58.860 It's been my family's home for 400 years.

01:09:03.120 On my dad's side, on my mom's side, they came over in the early 1900s from Eastern Europe.

01:09:08.400 and they did the same thing.

01:09:10.520 My mom's dad, my grandfather, was on Iwo Jima as a Marine.

01:09:14.040 She was an Army nurse in Vietnam.

01:09:16.380 It's just...

01:09:17.940 Your father was in Vietnam,

01:09:19.200 and your mother was an Army nurse in Vietnam?

01:09:20.360 Correct.

01:09:21.040 Both your parents are in Vietnam?

01:09:22.220 Correct.

01:09:23.300 Huh.

01:09:23.860 And it's, you know, from my mom's side,

01:09:26.600 she was, both my parents were the first in their family

01:09:31.180 to go straight through college.

01:09:32.420 My grandfather on my dad's side graduated college

01:09:35.600 when my father was a senior in high school.

01:09:38.400 He was an officer in the Air Force and in a different time when you could, you know, you could, you could fly an aircraft as a pilot because you had a high enough GT score.

01:09:46.360 And he flew in World War II, he flew bombers, and then he flew in the Berlin Airlift.

01:09:51.000 And then he went into the missile program after that.

01:09:52.880 He was a test pilot in between for jets.

01:09:54.900 Very accomplished man.

01:09:56.700 Wow.

01:09:57.100 Absolute legend.

01:09:58.860 You know, but the military gave him that opportunity.

01:10:02.740 Um, and also the country gave him that opportunity to advance, um, you know, advance up into

01:10:07.800 society.

01:10:08.220 My mom used the army for the same, the same reasons.

01:10:11.760 My, my father came, or my grandfather came back from world war II and got a job as a

01:10:16.740 foreman in a factory in a small town outside of Pittsburgh.

01:10:20.240 Um, and you know, it was, it was light years ahead of where their family had been.

01:10:26.380 Um, and the military was, you know, not only a vehicle to get out, but it was also a way

01:10:31.680 to, to kind of pay back, um, you know, the opportunities that they had had.

01:10:36.540 And, uh, my dad, same cut.

01:10:39.800 Um, his mom was a sharecropper, uh, in Arkansas and, uh, my grandfather didn't come from any

01:10:46.000 kind of means in Missouri.

01:10:47.600 Um, and, you know, they had found a way to succeed and, and part of that was being part,

01:10:54.280 being in the military.

01:10:55.080 amazing

01:10:56.900 thank you

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01:11:53.600 veteran founded, American roasted, still standing, still brewing. What's so interesting is that you're

01:11:59.300 at Penn State in 2004. You don't, the Iraq war has been in progress for a year. By that point,

01:12:05.640 it's clear that we're not getting out anytime soon. It started to get squirrely there. We can't

01:12:11.620 really pacify it. And it's not just liberals who are starting to say, wait a second. And you're one

01:12:17.540 of them. You're not a liberal in a conventional sense, but you think this war is bad. But you

01:12:22.440 drop out of college to go anyway enlisted in the Marine Corps.

01:12:26.040 Figured I would get it over with.

01:12:27.060 It was coming anyways.

01:12:28.020 But you didn't have to.

01:12:29.180 No, absolutely did not.

01:12:31.580 The catalyst was the Battle of Fallujah in 2004.

01:12:35.340 I, of course, had been in Afghanistan over the summer.

01:12:38.040 Yeah.

01:12:38.280 In the fall, Fallujah happened.

01:12:40.060 I had friends who were involved in that.

01:12:42.200 And I found myself thinking.

01:12:44.720 So you knew guys who were serving there.

01:12:46.260 Correct.

01:12:47.120 Right.

01:12:47.520 Correct.

01:12:48.680 And, you know, I figured it was my turn.

01:12:52.440 I was going to do it anyways, but the war was really picking up.

01:12:56.840 College would be there when I got back.

01:12:59.900 And so just decided to get up and go and do it.

01:13:03.120 What did your parents say?

01:13:05.780 As you can imagine, they were proud.

01:13:08.800 I'll say that.

01:13:09.980 But my dad always told me never enlist for a war, and I went ahead and did it.

01:13:15.300 So I'm sure that there was a little consternation.

01:13:18.540 And that was largely based on the fact that, you know, he had been wounded twice in Vietnam and understood what it meant to do that.

01:13:29.120 I had no clue.

01:13:30.460 Well, and not only understood it, I mean, you know, for people who don't know, I mean, he was like a legit war hero in Vietnam.

01:13:35.800 He was also a public intellectual who explained not just that the war was bad, but why it was bad in a way that, you know, non-liberal peacenik types could understand because it was rooted in an American understanding of what war is for, I think it's fair to say.

01:13:53.580 So, like, is it fair to say your parents were, you know, not pro what happened in Vietnam?

01:14:01.060 I don't think that's a fair assessment.

01:14:03.020 um my father you know always we've talked about the same number of times and we have we had an

01:14:10.120 agreement with the south vietnamese to defend them yes against communism um you know and we

01:14:15.000 went and we did it and in a sense in a very real sense it was a it was a just cause um and i i i

01:14:22.460 agree with oh no that's what i'm saying i'm saying the view was that the u.s government had not

01:14:27.880 made good on its promises to its people and to the south vietnamese yes oh that yeah absolutely

01:14:35.260 right that's what i'm saying like there were a lot of people who joined in vietnam especially

01:14:39.920 early on who thought they were doing this good thing and the and our government basically didn't

01:14:43.920 back them up at all right they or honor their service at all at all at all um there was there

01:14:49.580 was no safety net for those guys when they came home i know um you know i think of our experiences

01:14:54.260 or my experiences, I'll say R is, you know, collective veterans with the GI Bill, with

01:15:01.320 the way that the VA takes care of disabled veterans. You know, it's, it's one thing that

01:15:07.900 we did learn after Vietnam. We've been really, really well taken care of because they were not.

01:15:13.380 Yes. And I'm thankful for that. So, but your dad had told you don't enlist for any war.

01:15:20.000 Correct. Correct. He gave me a story of, I think, a mutual individual we know who enlisted for the Cuban Missile Crisis. And by the time he got out of boot camp, it was over.

01:15:33.580 Interesting. So what was your experience like in Iraq?

01:15:36.780 um violent is a good way to put it um i saw the warts up close of our policy and once again i was

01:15:49.220 in a really unique place to see that because of all the discussions that my father and i had i had

01:15:55.200 before i went yes um he was very much opposed to the war um in all you know in all all phases of

01:16:02.020 going in. But it was very disorganized. For example, they brought in a bunch of Shia troops

01:16:09.580 to Sunni Ramadi and tried to put them in the middle to do security. And those rivalries

01:16:16.900 bubbled to the top any number of times. It was kind of wild to watch in person when some Sunni

01:16:25.620 policemen and some Shia troops, both on the same side, get an intramural firefight.

01:16:29.320 um it happened on occasion um yeah but uh but overall um it was very informative

01:16:38.120 um in all kinds of different ways um it's probably the best way to put it uh you could see

01:16:45.680 that uh fairly early on and i don't want to speak for everybody you know in my unit who was there

01:16:52.420 but most people came around by the end of the deployment to understand that what we were doing

01:16:58.340 was completely temporary. We didn't really have a coherent plan. The biggest event that happened

01:17:05.160 on the ground there was the SUNY Awakening. And that changed the nature of our battle space

01:17:09.800 virtually overnight in a way that really rubbed a lot of people the wrong way. Not in the sense

01:17:15.160 that we wanted to keep getting out there and getting shot at and blown up and the rest of it.

01:17:20.500 But one day, you know, we would be fighting, you know, military age males in track pants.

01:17:28.540 And then literally the next day, those same guys around the corner, you know, saying they're on our side, but at times taunting, saying, you know, they had been on the other side.

01:17:38.480 And we had no control over that.

01:17:39.900 That was not forced by any policy that we were doing.

01:17:42.700 It was just the result of internal politics within the Sunnis out in Anbar province.

01:17:48.360 yeah um you know deciding to make the switch um and it was uh i watched as a a city was you know

01:17:58.720 it was already pretty torn apart was effectively torn down to the studs um while we were there

01:18:03.220 and it was uh you know that it was a rack um but at the same time you know it's uh i kind of made a

01:18:13.560 I made a mental note. It'd be too strong to say it'd be a promise that if I found the same kind of diddling, non-strategic focused situation happening again, that I would do whatever I had in my power.

01:18:30.680 I mean, and there's no way to gauge that when you're 20-something years old, to speak out against it, to try and find a way to convince whomever I could to look for a saner option.

01:18:43.560 So you actually thought that while you were in Anbar province, Iraq, when I get older, if I'm still around and I have any influence at all, I'm going to do everything I can to make sure we don't do this kind of thing again.

01:18:53.780 Right. 100%.

01:18:54.860 Now, when you were in Iraq, did you have any sense of what the strategic objective was?

01:19:01.700 No, none whatsoever.

01:19:03.440 Did anybody?

01:19:05.000 I'm sure somebody might have. They might have drank the Kool-Aid and decided that, hey, this is the strategic objective.

01:19:10.380 Maybe it was bringing democracy to Iraq.

01:19:13.640 You know, we're going to fight here until the Arab Thomas Jefferson stands up and, you know, writes a bill of rights for the Iraqi people.

01:19:21.940 But if you truly bought into that, I would say you're at best delusional.

01:19:26.580 It's just a different society, not for better, not for worse.

01:19:29.380 That's obvious now.

01:19:30.240 But, you know, in Washington, where I was most of that time, people said that.

01:19:34.840 I don't know if they actually believed it or not.

01:19:36.440 They did say it with a straight face, including from the White House briefing room.

01:19:40.380 But you didn't meet many men fighting the war who thought that.

01:19:44.080 No, not at all.

01:19:45.960 Conversely, we had several true believers, as I would refer to them, who flipped the other direction.

01:19:53.480 It's just the way it was.

01:19:56.200 And strategically, the reality was that we tied down the greatest maneuver force in the world into a counterinsurgency fight that we were, you know, it wasn't necessary.

01:20:09.040 And at the same time, we weren't really trained to do it.

01:20:14.700 I mean, we got trained to do it.

01:20:16.020 We got better at it as we went along.

01:20:17.840 But when we went to Iraq in 2003, we were still designed to take down a major conventional force rapidly, which is what we did right out of the jump.

01:20:29.260 And then over the arc of Iraq, we reoriented all of our forces.

01:20:33.480 And this is, you could say, Iraq would be a little short-sighted, but the entire global war on terrorism.

01:20:36.880 We reoriented everything to fight counterinsurgency, stripping out many, many, many things, many, many different capabilities that are highly effective in a conventional fight.

01:20:47.660 And we found ourselves over the past probably five or six years trying to reorient the force towards a conventional fight.

01:20:57.480 And we're not quite there yet, but in terms of strategic force projection and our presence, if you want to take that into account, it's been very detrimental.

01:21:06.880 You've seen the South China Sea open up.

01:21:11.060 China's become more aggressive.

01:21:12.980 The Russians have really cut their teeth in the next generation of conventional warfare in Ukraine.

01:21:17.480 And we're still trying to figure out how to pull ourselves out of the muck of the GWAT.

01:21:21.800 And now we find ourselves at war yet again.

01:21:24.400 In a pretty conventional-looking face-off.

01:21:29.100 Right.

01:21:29.680 Yeah.

01:21:30.660 So I think what you're saying is our force isn't necessarily ready for this kind of war.

01:21:38.800 No, I would assess that it is not.

01:21:41.500 We are in the middle of a major overhaul at multiple levels.

01:21:46.020 And to accent that, I think one thing to really look at right out of the gate is drones.

01:21:54.060 The war in Ukraine has been effectively defined by drones for the past few years.

01:21:59.020 we're still trying to figure out how to field equipment to counter drones.

01:22:03.840 Our tactics, our operational methods are infantile compared to, say, the Russians.

01:22:10.920 And you might ask yourself, okay, why is that important?

01:22:13.380 It's like, well, a large bulk of what the Russians are doing in Ukraine is with Iranian shaheds

01:22:21.560 and other technology that we may or may not know about.

01:22:24.860 So they are very, very, very far ahead in their development.

01:22:30.320 And they're undoubtedly passing that back to the Iranians.

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01:24:07.320 getting ready for a game means being ready for anything like packing a spare stick i like to

01:24:17.700 be prepared that's why i remember 988 canada's suicide crisis helpline it's good to know just

01:24:23.860 in case anyone can call or text for free confidential support from a trained responder

01:24:28.660 anytime 988 suicide crisis helpline is funded by the government in canada

01:24:33.640 exceptions. Well, how can that be? We've been on the other side of that conflict.

01:24:40.260 We still, our intel services are still deeply involved in that war, though I guess Congress

01:24:46.080 isn't funding them directly. We are still, American dollars are still going to Ukraine

01:24:49.560 right now as we speak. And we've had a front row seat to it for over four years. So how could we

01:24:54.780 not have adjusted our force based on what we're seeing there? So I think the best way to examine

01:25:02.440 in this is to take a look at, say, World War I.

01:25:06.120 Oh, gosh.

01:25:06.940 Yeah.

01:25:07.620 So the opening rounds of World War I,

01:25:09.840 you had a whole bevy of new technology on the battlefield.

01:25:14.060 Yes.

01:25:14.380 And the bloodiest parts of that war were on the front end.

01:25:19.640 Yeah.

01:25:20.340 The front and the back end, but primarily the front end.

01:25:22.940 People didn't understand the impacts of, you know,

01:25:25.200 high explosive artillery, machine guns.

01:25:27.580 Exactly.

01:25:28.300 Gas.

01:25:29.080 Gas.

01:25:29.480 and there's a very steep learning curve

01:25:32.760 that you pay for in blood

01:25:34.520 whenever you're trying to adjust.

01:25:35.980 Yeah, the whole British ruling class died.

01:25:37.640 Yeah, yeah, yeah, 100%.

01:25:40.460 So you can kind of look at it like a sine wave, right?

01:25:43.300 Where on the front end,

01:25:45.980 you run into these technologies

01:25:48.100 and your ability to deal with them

01:25:50.900 is at its lowest point.

01:25:52.380 And eventually you adjust the top of sine wave

01:25:54.280 and become much more operationally effective.

01:25:57.280 um you know and that's where i would peg the russians are at right now like we've been observing

01:26:03.040 they have been practically applying and using iranian shaheds for example and they understand

01:26:09.460 how to counter our equipment we have put a lot of defensive equipment out uh patriot missile

01:26:14.680 batteries anti-aircraft fire probably some signals and jamming equipment um in overall kind of a

01:26:21.860 piecemeal fashion, is probably the best way to put it, where we're not massing these types of

01:26:27.740 fires. If you take a look at, say, the HIMAR system in an offensive capability, you're not

01:26:33.240 massing these fires in the way that we're supposed to use them or massing, say, ELINT capabilities in

01:26:40.500 a way that we would use them. But we put just enough out there to give the Ukrainians cover.

01:26:45.700 And then what the Russians can do and have been doing is engaging them piecemeal, building a profile and taking those lessons and then incorporating them into their own doctrine and undoubtedly passing those off.

01:27:00.400 So one of my fears at the big picture level, we can talk, we can drill our way down into, you know, possible contingencies, operational stuff in a second.

01:27:11.380 But, you know, my big fear is that they, the Iranians, understand how their systems work against our equipment.

01:27:20.700 And there's evidence all over these last couple of weeks that that is the case.

01:27:25.140 And if we commit ground troops without the appropriate countermeasures to defend them against, say, suicide drones, larger drones, ballistic missile systems, we could be positioning ourselves for a lot of bloodshed unnecessarily.

01:27:42.220 and you're telling me that none of those guys who are preparing to do this assuming it happens

01:27:51.120 has any idea why we're doing this just as you had no real idea in iraq why you were

01:27:57.380 risking your life like nobody's you're no commanding officer sat you down and said just

01:28:01.880 so you know here's why we're here here's how we'll know when we've won here's when we can leave

01:28:06.460 no that never happened in iraq um how can that not happen i don't understand how can you ask

01:28:11.800 someone to risk getting killed without explaining why you're doing it well it ties into i mean it's

01:28:18.340 first of all it's your job to go out there and do it um but it's not like other jobs i mean you can

01:28:22.680 get killed in any job but the likelihood is very low and the expectation is zero i don't expect to

01:28:26.780 get killed as a talk show host okay if i do i'll be very surprised i would not be surprised to be

01:28:30.840 killed as a marine in anbar because that's just part of it that's a risk that you understand when

01:28:34.480 you sign up it's it's bad policy um it's no but just like as a like how i didn't i wasn't aware

01:28:40.800 i mean i thought someone would make up like a story at least like we're doing this for

01:28:45.820 i don't know what to remember the main right whatever right yeah i mean we certainly don't

01:28:53.080 have that right now i mean you had all kinds of so what do the guys think what do you tell your

01:28:58.180 wife? That's a great question. I can tell you what some of the people that I know who are out

01:29:06.360 there doing this think. They are confused. I know people who have told me that they can't believe

01:29:16.840 we're doing this. They don't want to do it. And they're not talking about their, you know,

01:29:20.820 it's not individual cowardice. They're talking about the broad opinion of the units that they're

01:29:26.280 because there hasn't been a stated American interest in this.

01:29:30.280 That's the bottom line.

01:29:31.120 Everybody sees it.

01:29:32.240 When you have Marco Rubio stand up in front of a bunch of reporters

01:29:35.280 and say, we did this because Israel was going to do it.

01:29:38.280 So then therefore we did it.

01:29:40.820 That is not inspiring.

01:29:42.460 That's not exactly, you know, MacArthur out there.

01:29:44.980 Well, it's the opposite of MacArthur.

01:29:46.360 It's a betrayal of the country.

01:29:48.400 We're not doing this for us.

01:29:49.740 We're doing it for somebody else

01:29:50.960 who gives us campaign contributions to say that out loud,

01:29:55.160 which is what they did makes it it puts the guys who are away from their families risking death in

01:30:02.560 a very weird position like they know that they have internet access right so and i'm sure if

01:30:10.340 any of them refuse to fight they'll be called cowards or anti-semites or whatever they'll be

01:30:14.220 called but um they'll be slandered but it still leaves unanswered the question why are we doing

01:30:20.320 this and don't you owe the guys who may die in the next week or two an explanation for why they

01:30:25.920 may die you would think that um and i think this is a good point to bring up your interview with

01:30:33.560 joe kent the other week where you know he was shocked by that interview and i don't in the

01:30:39.180 slander of joe kent or the fbi investigation into him and me i mean no i mean okay fine

01:30:45.680 you know let's have an FBI investigation but how about you answer the question nobody ever

01:30:51.440 answered the question right were you shocked by that interview yes and no I was shocked by the

01:30:56.940 response to the interview um and you have this incredibly bifurcated view uh about Joe Kent

01:31:03.400 those of us who have been out there and done it uh to a man applaud him for getting out there

01:31:08.880 and they applaud his courage back him a thousand percent really yes um so Joe Kent is popular with

01:31:15.080 the troops. Insanely. Well, he's popular in the veterans community. I imagine he's popular with

01:31:19.560 the troops as well. Yeah, but he is popular with the veterans. Big time, big time. And what it

01:31:26.120 also gave everybody was a view under the hood, right, about how you are viewed and treated

01:31:33.140 should you step out of line, should you question what is going on. You know, it's okay. It reminds

01:31:38.700 me of like the poem Tommy by Richard Kipling. You know, it's, it's, you know, everybody wants,

01:31:46.140 you know, Tommy when the guns begin to shoot. Tommy is a slang term for British troops.

01:31:50.920 Exactly. Right. Right. But should you step out of line and question and say, hey, we need some

01:31:56.520 clarity. We need to understand why this is in the American interest. You know, they come for you.

01:32:01.600 They come after you. And it's very illuminating to this generation of veterans, I believe,

01:32:07.100 myself included.

01:32:09.340 And a lot of people come

01:32:10.180 if you aren't even American.

01:32:11.600 And they certainly know

01:32:12.260 none of this country's interest at heart.

01:32:13.500 And they can't point to relatives

01:32:15.280 who fought in the French and Indian War.

01:32:17.240 So it's actually one of the most

01:32:18.440 insulting things I've ever seen

01:32:20.000 in my entire life.

01:32:21.160 Agreed.

01:32:21.460 The attacks on Joe Kent.

01:32:22.540 Agreed.

01:32:22.920 And if you disagree with Joe Kent,

01:32:24.000 tell me how.

01:32:25.140 But they won't.

01:32:26.160 They won't debate him on

01:32:27.040 anything he says.

01:32:29.280 They will go after him.

01:32:30.160 And so veterans see this.

01:32:32.380 And so what's their conclusion?

01:32:34.660 Their conclusion is that,

01:32:36.280 You know, you can connect the dots, you know, people, just because you're in the military, you know, and you don't go to Harvard doesn't mean you're stupid.

01:32:45.980 You know, you can read the room, you can see what our elected officials and our cabinet officials say about the justifications for this war.

01:32:55.820 And then you can turn around and see what happens when somebody else mentions that out loud as if it's negative, as if it's a bad idea, or it's perhaps dishonorable as a country to send your military to fight on behalf of somebody else.

01:33:12.980 So they put it all together and understand what that full picture is, if you will.

01:33:19.960 um and it does not make the war more popular let's put it that way

01:33:26.740 um i mean i guess the bet is that these are guys who are so duty oriented and so focused on tactics

01:33:36.200 and good at their jobs in a lot of cases like you know you're trained to do this thing go ahead and

01:33:40.840 do this thing they'll be so focused on that that they'll be compliant and then i assume the guess

01:33:45.820 is if there's, you know, domestic resentment against us, that technology will somehow

01:33:50.760 allow them to stay in power by, you know, crushing that dissent?

01:33:54.220 Perhaps. And I think I would take it a step further. I think that we have slipped into

01:33:59.740 somewhat of a caste system or are attempting to be pushed into a caste system. It's like,

01:34:05.480 like I'm a, I'm a third generation Marine, third generation in a row Marine. And well,

01:34:11.680 That's great.

01:34:12.300 That's your family business now.

01:34:13.860 And the people in power, the elites, the hyper-wealthy, you know, they get to call the shots and then we have to carry the water for them.

01:34:24.480 And that's not what this country was founded on at all.

01:34:27.980 No.

01:34:28.760 Citizen soldiers, citizen legislators.

01:34:31.440 Mm-hmm.

01:34:32.480 Yeah.

01:34:32.940 And that's literally a caste system you're describing.

01:34:34.820 Right.

01:34:35.220 Right.

01:34:35.620 Yeah.

01:34:35.780 Yeah.

01:34:36.240 My dad was a digger, so am I.

01:34:38.080 So can I ask about the attitudes?

01:34:39.820 You said the most revealing part of the reaction to the Joe Ken interview was the contempt that a lot of the people sending troops into battle have for the troops.

01:34:50.620 They don't want to hear it.

01:34:51.780 They don't want to hear any disagreement at all.

01:34:54.900 I've noticed that contempt also.

01:34:56.560 And it came out in an interview I did with the U.S. ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee.

01:35:00.480 And I asked him about what's happening in Gaza and the murder of all these children.

01:35:04.560 And it is murder.

01:35:05.760 It was done on purpose, obviously.

01:35:09.820 well now they're just saying it let's just kill the kids i mean israeli cabinet officials have

01:35:13.980 said that so we know and he said well they're more humane than american troops were in iraq

01:35:20.460 and afghanistan and i've heard others say this too comparing the israeli military to the us

01:35:27.420 military and saying the israeli military is more humane there are more war crimes committed by our

01:35:32.780 troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. As a Marine who served in Iraq, A, is that true? And B,

01:35:41.140 what do you think of that? If it wasn't so insulting, it would be completely laughable.

01:35:46.120 I'd want to just laugh out loud at the... It's completely baseless. We did everything in our

01:35:52.020 power in Iraq, at least in my AO, which was Ramadi in 2006 and 2007, described by an intel officer

01:35:59.100 when we got on the ground is the most dangerous couple of square miles in Iraq in a very densely

01:36:04.840 built up urban environment. We did everything in our power to avoid civilian casualties

01:36:10.420 to the point where, you know, our heavier weapons at the infantry level, 50 caliber machine guns,

01:36:17.720 for example, were cut off a lot of the time because we didn't want to risk responding to,

01:36:22.960 you know, us being attacked. And this is not even at the individual level. This is

01:36:27.820 at the battalion or division level.

01:36:30.760 Yes.

01:36:31.340 You know, it wasn't worth risking

01:36:33.540 hitting a civilian or hurting civilians.

01:36:36.320 And that applied to 50 cals.

01:36:38.140 Correct.

01:36:38.520 And that's a rifle type,

01:36:40.100 a heavy machine gun,

01:36:40.900 but it's not artillery.

01:36:43.200 Right.

01:36:43.620 We, you know,

01:36:44.380 if we called in attack helicopters

01:36:47.300 to back us up,

01:36:48.620 they would do a show of force,

01:36:51.680 which means they would fly around

01:36:53.200 and, you know,

01:36:54.540 just kind of try to scare the bad guys

01:36:57.300 or scare the insurgents into going away.

01:37:00.120 Same thing with aircraft.

01:37:02.860 Granted, it's one of the cooler things you could ever experience

01:37:05.220 is an F-18 coming in above the speed of sound,

01:37:07.580 like right above your head.

01:37:09.460 But they weren't dropping ordnance.

01:37:13.620 On occasion, they would.

01:37:15.120 But the situation had to be unique for that.

01:37:18.500 And that gets into the way that the American military fights its wars.

01:37:26.220 Um, it's, it's based on, you know, enlightenment principles.

01:37:30.800 Um, it gets, it rolls all the way back, um, you know, into, I would very eagerly argue

01:37:37.760 Christian ideals.

01:37:39.000 Yes.

01:37:39.400 Um, where you avoid unnecessary death all the way around civilian combatant.

01:37:47.040 Um, you engage with proportionality, um, you know, with the enemy.

01:37:51.780 You don't drop a 2,000-pound bomb on one guy because of the collateral damage that can cause, and that is the way we fight. That's the way we fought, and that is why in conflicts such as World War II, Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, the civilian population of those countries, and even the enemy combatants to a large degree, viewed us favorably.

01:38:19.640 our tactics on the battlefield

01:38:22.300 in the European theater

01:38:24.760 in particular of World War II

01:38:26.640 shortened the war

01:38:28.080 where millions of Germans

01:38:29.840 surrendered to us

01:38:30.760 rather than kind of risk it

01:38:33.320 with the Russians

01:38:33.860 because the Russians went

01:38:35.300 pure total war

01:38:36.780 crushed the ant with a sledgehammer

01:38:39.620 no quarter

01:38:40.480 and it's that actually

01:38:43.540 in the long term

01:38:44.560 when you apply those principles

01:38:46.380 saying hey we're here

01:38:47.500 to solve a problem with violence

01:38:48.860 but we're going to limit it to the absolute minimum that we have to inflict it sends a

01:38:56.380 very clear message that you know you can be approached that you have good intentions you're

01:39:03.020 not there you know spreading around evil um and it it enables somebody on the other side who may

01:39:10.960 not believe in their cause to put down their rifle and say you know what like actually i'm out and

01:39:15.980 And that's just as effective, if not far more effective than killing somebody on the battlefield.

01:39:19.400 People, yeah, it's an unrecorded fact of history that a lot of those German POWs went up in the United States in refugee camps across the country, including in downtown Nashville, Tennessee.

01:39:28.720 There was a German prisoner of war camp in downtown Nashville during the war because so many surrendered because they knew they wouldn't be tortured to death, shot on sight, sold into slavery.

01:39:40.620 They knew that they were dealing with a humane opponent.

01:39:42.920 And the flip side, so I, we talked about this before, I resigned from the RFK campaign over a statement that backed up the perception you just talked about.

01:39:56.440 And when I look at-

01:39:57.980 What was the statement?

01:39:59.660 That the IDF and the American military in Iraq conducted themselves the same way.

01:40:08.880 Or, as you said, the IDF was actually more humane than the American military, that they avoided civilian casualties more so.

01:40:16.280 It's such a slander against American troops.

01:40:18.680 I don't understand how anybody could say that.

01:40:20.880 Yeah.

01:40:21.380 And, I mean, all you got to do is take a look at the conduct of, say, IDF operations in Gaza or the war on the people of Gaza to get a glimpse of that.

01:40:30.660 They killed between 50,000 and 70,000 noncombatants in a couple of years by just, you know, blanket bombing, bulldozing, working their way through.

01:40:42.220 So Mike Huckabee told me to my face that U.S. troops killed more per capita noncombatants in Afghanistan and Iraq.

01:40:51.960 False.

01:40:53.240 I mean, it's just false on its face.

01:40:55.060 Not even in the realm of real.

01:40:56.500 Not even in the realm of real.

01:40:58.840 A lot of, a lot of...

01:41:00.980 What do you think when you see an American official

01:41:02.860 say something like that about you?

01:41:07.700 Shameful.

01:41:08.500 I mean, first of all, I think they're ignorant.

01:41:10.660 That's the first thing that comes to my brain.

01:41:12.460 It's like, that guy is like,

01:41:14.640 probably both stupid and corrupt.

01:41:17.120 Yeah.

01:41:17.820 And the other part is like, how can you do that?

01:41:20.240 How?

01:41:20.660 If you're an American,

01:41:22.160 how can you slander, you know, your own people?

01:41:27.040 Even more so, the people who volunteer to fight these wars were not conscripts.

01:41:31.280 Exactly.

01:41:33.180 Why do you think that—and he's not the only one who said that, as you just pointed out.

01:41:36.460 A lot of them have said that.

01:41:38.320 Why would they say something like that?

01:41:41.140 It's pretty clear that the way the IDF operated in Gaza is very below board, and they deliberately targeted civilians.

01:41:48.240 So you have to find a way to deflect that from being the narrative.

01:41:53.800 But why, if you're an American official or politician,

01:41:56.920 why are you in the business of covering for some other country's war crimes?

01:42:00.300 I would love to know the actual answer.

01:42:01.720 No, I'm serious, though.

01:42:02.860 Why couldn't you just say, I like Israel?

01:42:04.540 You know, I want to protect Israel.

01:42:06.080 They're our friend or ally.

01:42:07.680 That's disgusting, and we're not backing that.

01:42:09.660 I love my country.

01:42:11.200 I'm not into the firebombing of Tokyo or Dresden.

01:42:13.560 Okay.

01:42:14.140 Yeah.

01:42:14.340 Doesn't mean I hate America.

01:42:15.260 That's beneath us, and I'm against it.

01:42:16.740 Why can't they say that?

01:42:20.500 Might get them fired.

01:42:22.180 They might be...

01:42:23.460 Or what?

01:42:23.960 What is this?

01:42:24.700 Yeah, it's the million-dollar question.

01:42:27.240 I mean, I would love to peel back the onion on the base rationale for so many of our recent decisions as a country.

01:42:37.980 Who is allowed to be in power?

01:42:40.380 Why do, when they get into power, their views change so rapidly?

01:42:45.900 And then why is there this undying need to refuse to discuss what is out in the open

01:42:54.040 in a logical and straightforward fashion?

01:42:57.420 It's not a slander on anybody to want to discuss the goings-on in Gaza in a, shall we say,

01:43:04.280 an academic way.

01:43:06.360 It's not a slander to want to discuss why we're in Iran or what our objectives are or

01:43:14.520 have this go through congress like if you if you ask these questions you're immediately attacked

01:43:19.220 um and it makes very little sense other than what could possibly be the uh you know unfortunately

01:43:28.740 the the the open glaring reality in the room which is those at the top are being suppressed

01:43:36.920 deliberately from that debate for whatever reason is it corruption probably um who knows

01:43:44.140 But without answers, without a public discussion, people's opinion default to that. It's like, okay, well, you are deliberately screening and running interference for another country. Therefore, what's the incentive? What's the natural incentive? That country perhaps has dirt on you somehow. And I think there's a lot of different things that have happened in the past 20 years, possibly further back, that need some light shown on them in order to ameliorate ourselves from that.

01:44:14.760 In the meantime, I see two obvious effects.

01:44:17.960 One is to destroy people's faith in their own nation.

01:44:21.680 If you wanted to dispirit a country and make people feel like it wasn't worth defending.

01:44:26.040 If you wanted people to lose confidence in their ancestors and what their ancestors built here and the whole idea of being American, this is exactly what you would do.

01:44:34.640 You'd shake people's confidence in their own country and in the virtue of its mission.

01:44:38.400 and the second thing that jumps out is the malice the loathing of the american population by the

01:44:45.800 people in charge like it's not enough you could just lie and say idf's doing nothing wrong in

01:44:50.780 gaza but to say actually with the idf it's doing in gaza is better than what we did that tells me

01:44:57.560 that you hate me and that i should be afraid of you you're accusing my country of war crimes

01:45:03.440 You're supposedly one of its leaders.

01:45:04.540 You're accusing my country of war crimes.

01:45:06.980 I don't know.

01:45:07.920 I think you might hurt me.

01:45:10.360 I'm serious.

01:45:11.900 It's hard to disagree with that, Tucker.

01:45:15.280 If you're willing to do all of this and say aloud, no, we're not doing this for us.

01:45:20.400 There's no potential upside here for you.

01:45:22.460 Right.

01:45:23.440 But we're doing it anyway.

01:45:24.620 And if you don't like it, you're a terror sympathizer.

01:45:27.340 And we're going to think about putting you in jail.

01:45:30.480 I don't know.

01:45:31.360 I think anyone who expresses those views is probably willing to hurt you.

01:45:37.660 I would agree completely.

01:45:38.940 Whether it's physically, whether it's...

01:45:41.100 I mean physically.

01:45:41.700 Physically, character assassination, the whole gamut.

01:45:43.880 If I talk that way about somebody, you could be certain that I wish that person a bad end.

01:45:50.060 You're not wrong.

01:45:51.180 I wouldn't talk that way about someone unless I was willing to hurt them.

01:45:55.880 Would you?

01:45:56.900 No, not at all.

01:45:57.800 No, it's, I think you've pretty well hit the nail on the head. But I think what we need as citizens in this country, you know, is to get rid of the people who would be, you know, who are being held hostage in that situation.

01:46:16.400 because I don't believe for a second

01:46:18.960 that someone like Mike Huckabee

01:46:20.720 really believes the words that come out of his mouth

01:46:23.360 when he mentions that.

01:46:24.200 He is being puppeted to say that

01:46:27.860 at expense of his career, perhaps other things.

01:46:33.600 And to be governed effectively,

01:46:35.940 you can't have those people in power

01:46:37.580 and, you know, or in positions of influence.

01:46:40.580 And I'm not speaking,

01:46:42.560 and I'm not calling for any kind of revolution.

01:46:44.620 What I'm saying is that—

01:46:46.240 You're calling for a hostage rescue operation.

01:46:48.020 Absolutely.

01:46:48.720 Absolutely.

01:46:49.280 To be done at the ballot box by putting the correct people in charge.

01:46:55.360 To the military for a second, you said we basically created a caste system where I think a lot of people watching will be amazed by the number of people in your world who've served in the military.

01:47:06.480 You said, I know people who are getting ready to deploy right now.

01:47:09.100 Right.

01:47:09.800 Most Americans don't know anyone who's getting ready to deploy right now.

01:47:12.460 Just because the division between the people who serve, which is mostly young white men from far away from the coasts, in general.

01:47:22.760 Fly over country.

01:47:23.360 Fly over country, the South, deep South.

01:47:26.280 You know, it's just like separated from everybody else.

01:47:29.300 But this is, and you already said, you joined up, you joined to fight in a war you didn't agree with without knowing why we were doing this.

01:47:38.740 Right.

01:47:38.920 But you did it anyway out of love of country, which is kind of beautiful.

01:47:44.540 But now people are so discouraged about their country that who's going to join the military?

01:47:55.600 It's an interesting question.

01:47:57.020 I mean, yeah, I've talked to a number of people who have decided that they are the last of their line to serve.

01:48:05.420 And it gets into the demoralization part.

01:48:09.760 I'm one of those, right?

01:48:11.780 As of right now, I hate to say this.

01:48:14.400 I love this country.

01:48:16.520 I am not as proud of anything as I am as my service in the Marine Corps.

01:48:21.940 But I will not let my kids join because of the way that we went to war with Iran.

01:48:30.620 because if you look at it philosophically,

01:48:33.940 we have gone to war on behalf of another country

01:48:37.220 to further their interests.

01:48:38.820 That is, those are not my words.

01:48:41.480 The administration has said as much.

01:48:44.200 Speaker of the House has said as much.

01:48:46.280 And when that's the case,

01:48:50.200 you have reduced our military

01:48:52.220 to effectively a mercenary force.

01:48:55.400 And there's no honor in that.

01:48:58.560 You know, this is an offensive war of choice.

01:49:03.000 One of our allies was not being run over by an outside power.

01:49:09.760 You know, the democracy is not being destroyed.

01:49:12.220 All the different ways that you can frame this.

01:49:13.460 We're not even liberating Poland.

01:49:14.880 No, we're not.

01:49:15.800 We are simply trying to, I guess, I mean, it depends on the day of the week,

01:49:20.580 eliminate a regime, get nuclear weapons, reduce capabilities,

01:49:24.700 all these different pieces.

01:49:25.740 not because that they have, there's any threat to America, you know, not because of anything

01:49:32.960 other than it threatens one of our key partners in the region. And that is, I don't think there's

01:49:39.260 a whole lot of honor in that. And I don't want to see my kids go do it. And I know a lot of people

01:49:43.460 feel the same way. And, but I will say that I don't feel that people in my peer group are

01:49:49.380 necessarily demoralized by this. I mean, it's heightened their awareness of how we're viewed,

01:49:57.500 what's going on, and it's zeroed in on these specific needs for change in this country.

01:50:05.880 Can we get there? I don't know. We have to get out of what we're doing in Iran first before we

01:50:11.160 start talking about that, just because it's such a huge deal. It's impacting our global standing.

01:50:17.680 It's impacting our economy.

01:50:19.140 It's impacting our alliances.

01:50:21.480 I mean, you name it, it's having a detrimental effect on the American way of life and the way we've done things for the last 70 years, at least.

01:50:29.700 So you described the motive for going into where the impetus is dishonorable, inherently dishonorable, because it was not done in defense of the United States or its interests.

01:50:38.300 So, like, by definition, it's illegitimate.

01:50:41.560 What about the conduct of the war so far?

01:50:43.480 Is it honorable?

01:50:44.020 well i mean we can start with the way it opened up um by killing the ayatollah and saying this

01:50:53.380 may not be very popular but that is the absolute worst thing we could have done for any number of

01:50:58.020 reasons uh first and foremost uh assassinating a uh the leader of another country has been taboo

01:51:06.540 since at least the treaty of westphalia um you know almost 500 was that in the 70s

01:51:11.740 It was just before the 1670s.

01:51:16.040 In doing that, one of the things that we did was we violated one of the fundamental principles of humanity.

01:51:24.820 We killed an unarmed man and his family who were effectively out in the open.

01:51:31.060 The second tier down from that.

01:51:32.660 I agree with you really strongly, but back to the Treaty of Westphalia.

01:51:38.500 Yeah.

01:51:38.940 You're being serious, I happen to know.

01:51:40.580 Yeah.

01:51:40.680 Now, why did the civilized world decide that we're not going to assassinate each other's leaders in wartime?

01:51:48.080 Practically, it makes it difficult to negotiate.

01:51:51.840 That is the first bullet point on that.

01:51:56.060 And by doing so, when we assassinated the Ayatollah, and if I'm correct, it was not the Americans who assassinated the Ayatollah, it ensured a number of different things along those lines.

01:52:10.360 We took away somebody who could be considered comparatively a moderate to the rest of Iranian society as a talking, as someone we can talk to.

01:52:20.600 And then we created him into the martyr of martyrs, if you will.

01:52:27.140 You know, we killed, this is going to be a little bit of a paraphrase here, but we effectively killed the Pope during Lent while he was standing on a street corner.

01:52:36.300 With his family.

01:52:36.940 With his family, including a grandkid.

01:52:40.360 And that would be bad enough in the Catholic religion, but when you take into account the nature of Shia Islam, where there is no greater honor than to die in defense of the faith, and then layer on top, it was in defense of Iran, we emboldened the entire civilian population to stand up and fight us.

01:53:03.120 Had we taken a step back, and not that I would have agreed with this as a policy move, and hit targets and decided just to reduce their capabilities and cause, say, the IRGC pain in a large area, then at some point, we probably would have had a pretty decent chance of, once again, sitting down with Iranians and discussing off-ramps.

01:53:27.140 But by creating a martyr right out of the gate with effectively a cheap shot that also is completely taboo in terms of international law and international relations, we have cemented these people's will to fight and their need to protect their own honor.

01:53:45.540 And this creates a huge problem long term.

01:53:47.060 Do you know, so World War II, which is, you know, whatever you think of World War II or the truth of World War II is the largest conflict in human history, provably.

01:53:55.740 Were there documented persistent attempts by our side or the other to kill one another's leaders?

01:54:04.140 I'm not aware of any.

01:54:04.960 Assassinate?

01:54:05.300 Right, okay.

01:54:05.920 Yeah, I mean, there was obviously an internal attempt by the Germans.

01:54:09.160 Of course, right.

01:54:10.780 There was dissent within Germany against Hitler and they tried to kill him, tried to blow him up.

01:54:14.940 and failed.

01:54:17.320 But there's no,

01:54:19.400 in the 80 years

01:54:20.460 of declassification efforts,

01:54:22.340 nothing.

01:54:22.780 Nothing I've come across.

01:54:23.980 I mean, if it's out there,

01:54:24.980 I'd love to see it.

01:54:25.620 So we're waging total war

01:54:27.500 against a couple of different enemies,

01:54:31.300 several different enemies,

01:54:32.400 and we don't plot

01:54:34.780 to assassinate their leaders.

01:54:36.040 Correct.

01:54:37.080 Okay.

01:54:38.180 Just trying to establish

01:54:39.160 how far out of precedent this is.

01:54:41.020 Oh, yes.

01:54:41.520 It's way outside precedent.

01:54:43.200 Why did nobody say that?

01:54:44.940 I didn't hear, not that I hear everything,

01:54:47.860 but I didn't hear anybody prominent stand up and say,

01:54:50.180 whoa, wait a second.

01:54:51.820 We're killing an 86-year-old leader of the country?

01:54:55.880 Was, by the way, also the religious leader

01:54:57.220 of an entire religion?

01:55:00.360 I didn't hear anybody say that.

01:55:01.300 It was like, he was the most evil man who ever lived.

01:55:03.860 Anyone who's against us is also evil.

01:55:06.180 You're on the Atola side if you have questions about this.

01:55:09.600 Yeah, it's a fantastic question.

01:55:11.620 I mean, that gets back to the need for leadership.

01:55:14.060 I mean, if we had, you know, more leaders in the legislature, they would have forced an AUMF vote, at least, let alone talking about this.

01:55:24.020 Someone, you know, the people we send to Washington should be bringing this up.

01:55:29.120 Why they're not saying it, you know, it could be any number of things.

01:55:32.620 Like, you're familiar with DC, just like me.

01:55:35.660 It's, you know, you may just have a problem with, you know, with low IQ in some areas.

01:55:41.980 They just don't understand or know, but also don't have a thirst for the knowledge to understand.

01:55:47.440 But also, you know, possible ramifications for stepping out and saying something like that.

01:55:53.840 Maybe they consider it political suicide, but at the end of the day, it's ultimately just cowardice, in my opinion.

01:55:57.800 Of course it's cowardice.

01:56:00.300 One thing I've noticed is that whenever you talk to people who fought in Iraq or Afghanistan or Vietnam or World War II

01:56:07.480 or anybody who's actually pulled a trigger on behalf of the United States,

01:56:11.400 There is a notable absence of bloodthirstiness, at least in comparison to, like, Lindsey Graham.

01:56:18.560 Right.

01:56:19.320 You know, or Mike Johnson or any of these performers on the right or left.

01:56:23.840 You know, they're always very excited about someone being killed.

01:56:26.280 I almost never hear anyone professionally under arms express that.

01:56:32.300 Have you noticed this?

01:56:33.320 Yeah.

01:56:33.880 It's pretty ubiquitous.

01:56:34.860 What is that?

01:56:35.440 when you've seen it up close it's something that a never leaves your mind um and b something you

01:56:44.680 can do without i mean it doesn't mean you're not capable of it um you can never ramp up and do it

01:56:48.840 again but it's once you've been to the extreme you just prefer not to go back um because it's

01:56:55.060 war is the most horrible of all things um it's not clean like it's on tv or a video game you know

01:57:01.760 there's no respawn point. And when people die, whether they're your friends, whether they're

01:57:08.820 civilians, whether the guys on the other side, it's rarely clean. And it's just a horrible thing

01:57:14.660 to witness. So once you see that, I think it becomes part of your psyche to just, you know,

01:57:22.420 you understand that you can go to that point, but you really want to do everything in your power to

01:57:26.440 avoid it. Conversely, when I see people out there who have never done it, such as Lindsey Graham,

01:57:33.940 there's a certain bloodthirstiness that comes off basically as evil, straight up. I'm not calling

01:57:40.980 Lindsey Graham evil straight out, but I'm saying if you think that killing is a good thing,

01:57:48.460 double tapping boats, killing for the sake of killing is good, then you should probably

01:57:55.700 re-examine your entire moral ethos. Because generally speaking, it's unnecessary and it's

01:58:02.380 not, you know, it's not effectively human in its own, in its core nature.

01:58:09.620 I've noticed even since the war began, a lot more talk like that.

01:58:14.920 President saying he's glad Mueller's dead, good.

01:58:17.880 Right.

01:58:19.000 And I thought as someone who, you know, vocally opposed the Mueller investigation, like every

01:58:23.920 night that it was ongoing every single night so obviously not for the muller investigation yeah

01:58:30.060 it was more opposed with than anyone else but when a man dies even if it's someone you disagree

01:58:34.900 with or even hate like there's a certain reverence in death that's required if you're going to have

01:58:39.820 reverence for life absolutely there's something um awful about that yeah you judge society uh by

01:58:47.820 how it remembers it's dead, like straight up. And people can have any problem they want with

01:58:55.260 Robert Mueller. But at the same time, he has a grieving family. He has a wife. He has kids.

01:59:01.720 This is a man who served the country honorably for decades, starting in Vietnam as a Marine.

01:59:06.920 He was wounded in combat. His first child was born. While he was deployed, he flew to Hawaii

01:59:13.780 and got to see her for a brief minute

01:59:15.900 before he flew back and went back to war.

01:59:19.760 And then after all of that,

01:59:23.100 he decided to stay in service to his country

01:59:24.920 for another few decades.

01:59:26.300 And that is incredibly honorable.

01:59:29.640 I disagree with the Mueller investigation.

01:59:31.860 I remember watching you every night talk about it.

01:59:34.120 You were my touch point for my daily...

01:59:37.260 I don't think Mueller had a lot to do with it,

01:59:39.060 to be totally blunt.

01:59:40.100 And I think everyone attacking Mueller

01:59:41.380 knows that Mueller was not driving

01:59:42.740 in that investigation at all.

01:59:44.020 And they're too afraid to say

01:59:44.920 what was actually happening.

01:59:45.920 But a lot of evidence

01:59:47.000 that Mueller was incapacitated by illness.

01:59:50.380 So whatever.

01:59:51.220 And everyone knows that.

01:59:52.100 So just watching the disingenuousness,

01:59:54.060 Mueller did that.

01:59:54.840 I don't think Mueller was really...

01:59:56.520 I mean, there are lots of reasons

01:59:57.500 to criticize Mueller.

01:59:58.560 I'm happy to.

01:59:59.400 I'm not defending Mueller, but like...

02:00:00.900 Nobody's perfect.

02:00:01.600 Just the lying is driving me insane.

02:00:04.700 But that was one of his deputies

02:00:06.800 who drove that,

02:00:07.660 who I think is like an MSNBC contract now,

02:00:09.700 but he never gets attacked.

02:00:10.700 But anyway, I noticed that, like, it's very easy for a society to become a death-worshipping society.

02:00:20.800 And I feel like the U.S. has made a real effort generationally not to become that.

02:00:26.880 But no one seems to be making an effort now.

02:00:29.740 Am I imagining this?

02:00:30.980 I don't think you're imagining it at all.

02:00:32.100 You know, when you have daily Pentagon press briefings, which focus less on successful hits, you know, you can compare Pete Hegsatz briefings to, say, Donald Rumsfeld.

02:00:49.720 I'm not a huge fan of Donald Rumsfeld.

02:00:51.420 I bet you're not.

02:00:52.020 Yeah.

02:00:52.300 But at the same time, there was at least an attempt to be somewhat transparent in his briefings, right?

02:00:57.700 um you know we now see the we see hegseth talking about no quarter and like how incredibly lethal

02:01:05.300 and like we have we need 200 billion dollars to kill bad guys um you know that's uh that's a

02:01:13.940 it's beneath the station it's beneath his office to talk like he's a lance corporal quite frankly

02:01:20.420 But also, it's always focused on killing.

02:01:23.640 And, you know, that's not a headspace where I think, you know, people who have participated in that a whole lot usually sit.

02:01:32.660 And honestly, it worries me.

02:01:33.900 But what worries me even more about it is the message it sends our enemies or adversaries.

02:01:39.280 And we have few enemies right now.

02:01:41.400 We have one country which we have created into a massive enemy that we're trying to muck our way out of a fight with.

02:01:47.260 but uh to tell them to to glorify the killing of its citizens of its people and then to tell

02:01:55.200 the press that we're giving them no quarter um also backfires um you're gonna see that on the

02:02:01.900 battlefield um you're gonna see that in the way they approach fighting us like okay cool like i

02:02:06.500 mean i can you know i can i can speak as a fighting man here where if i knew that the people on the

02:02:11.540 other side if they got their hands on me um were gonna finish me off no matter what and we talked

02:02:16.900 about this a minute before, you better believe that I would be amped up in doing everything in

02:02:22.020 my power to take as many of them with me. I'm not even going to think about surrender. It's very

02:02:28.140 much, I think, like the attitude of the Marines in the Pacific during World War II. That was the

02:02:32.560 Japanese approach. And they deliberately told their own troops, this is the Japanese, that

02:02:38.440 the Marines were the same way. You had to commit atrocities in order to become a Marine, murder

02:02:44.000 your family all kinds of random stuff and it creates this fight to the end mentality which

02:02:48.800 is not conducive to allowing any kind of diplomatic space well and they convinced you know hundreds if

02:02:56.120 not thousands of civilians on the pacific islands famously on okinawa to kill themselves right

02:03:00.980 rather than surrender because they were going to be eaten or raped or sold into slavery or whatever

02:03:06.020 um so that is the message that we are sending or command is sending clear to the iranians

02:03:15.640 i want to get back to the question of honor and what is honorable and what is not and why you

02:03:22.500 would fight for your country in the first place since the pay isn't that great so what are you

02:03:26.120 fighting for when you when you leave penn state to enlist in the marine corps in a war that you

02:03:32.980 don't agree with what you say loyalty to america you love america but why would a patriotic young

02:03:40.480 man love america more than lichtenstein pick a country like what is it about america that we

02:03:46.240 are fighting for what is worth fighting for corn dogs baseball yeah and church on sunday um but

02:03:52.980 in all in all in all seriousness like decency right decency yeah it is you know the city like

02:03:59.280 The Shining City on a Hill, the different aspects of this country, the whole story of this country, people pouring in and carving out an entirely new way of life, throwing off the bonds of being under repressive kings and governments from all over the world for incredibly long periods of time and reforming this under ideals that are stipulated in the Bill of Rights.

02:04:29.060 and the Constitution.

02:04:31.060 You know, nobody has the right

02:04:32.640 to prevent you from defending yourself.

02:04:34.960 You can always speak your mind.

02:04:37.240 You can't incriminate yourself.

02:04:38.860 And I think a lot of people

02:04:40.800 take this for granted here.

02:04:43.300 And a lot of these are slipping away, by the way,

02:04:45.260 which is very troublesome.

02:04:47.240 But those are why, you know,

02:04:49.900 that's what motivated me

02:04:51.040 is seeing the historical arc of this country growing up,

02:04:54.440 knowing that my dad, my grandfather,

02:04:58.500 You run it all the way back.

02:05:00.700 People served to defend those ideals and the quality of life that you have here, the freedom of movement that you have.

02:05:10.040 I mean, you can move wherever you want.

02:05:11.880 You're not constrained to an area by a repressive government or forced to repopulate an area like the Soviets did.

02:05:21.220 It's all of those things.

02:05:23.220 It's a gift.

02:05:23.860 You know, it is truly a gift from God that we have this experiment occurring in such a rich, rich piece of land on earth.

02:05:35.200 And the flip side of that is coming from different areas where you didn't have that.

02:05:41.900 So that's, you know, the contrast, if you will.

02:05:45.720 Now, when it comes down to actually fighting on the ground, you know, you end up doing that for the guy next to you, for your peers.

02:05:53.860 You know, and one thing that was always evident in the Marine Corps is that there's a deep sense of institutional history.

02:06:02.680 You know, we are in the fight.

02:06:04.480 Did, you know, I could sit there and, you know, turn to a 19-year-old.

02:06:09.040 What did they do on Iwo Jima?

02:06:10.440 And they know.

02:06:11.140 You know, they may not know the entire historical arc of the battle, but they know those guys didn't run.

02:06:15.160 They knew they stood there and fought because Marines at Bellow Wood stood there and fought.

02:06:19.800 And it's, you know, it goes all the way back through history.

02:06:24.220 It's, you know, you hold yourself accountable through your peers.

02:06:27.660 Well, they wear decorations from previous wars.

02:06:29.800 Right.

02:06:31.460 My unit had the French forage, which they earned in World War I.

02:06:35.800 And we had to memorize why that was.

02:06:37.620 That's the cord.

02:06:38.100 Correct.

02:06:38.500 Yeah, my dad had that.

02:06:39.420 Yeah, green cord.

02:06:40.680 Yeah.

02:06:42.060 Interesting.

02:06:43.660 So you're fighting for the man next to you.

02:06:46.620 You're fighting for the institution of the Marine Corps, but you're also fighting because you think on some moral level, you're on the right side.

02:06:57.380 Absolutely.

02:06:57.760 You're better than they are.

02:06:58.660 Absolutely.

02:06:59.100 For all of our faults, this is still a better country than theirs.

02:07:03.580 If you got to a place where you no longer thought that, it'd be pretty hard to fight the war, correct?

02:07:08.680 It would be, yeah.

02:07:10.080 Right.

02:07:10.320 So I guess my concern is we're tampering with the secret sauce here.

02:07:12.900 Like, for example, what is your read on the bombing of the girls' school next to the IRGC naval base?

02:07:20.260 Gut-wrenching.

02:07:21.360 Of course, gut-wrenching.

02:07:23.220 I mean, any normal person would feel that way.

02:07:26.220 But what are we to make of that?

02:07:28.740 I would love to know where that target package came from.

02:07:32.340 That was my thought.

02:07:33.400 Yeah.

02:07:33.800 Who gave us that target?

02:07:36.260 How was it generated?

02:07:37.160 because I know that our uniformed services

02:07:42.400 would never deliberately target a school.

02:07:45.680 I believe that.

02:07:46.700 100%.

02:07:47.300 I mean, could it be as something as simple

02:07:50.000 and perhaps nefarious as an AI targeting program,

02:07:52.820 you know, deciding that because there was a key word

02:07:54.880 that we were going to launch a missile

02:07:56.160 at that particular building?

02:07:58.200 Perhaps.

02:08:00.300 But I would think, and I would like to think,

02:08:03.960 that that was verified beyond just like, you know, a blip on a screen. Hey, this, this says

02:08:10.600 Shahed, therefore we'll hit it. Um, so, you know, I will say that, uh, at every point in turn in

02:08:20.120 this conflict in Iran so far, every time that, uh, we seem to be headed for an off-ramp, um,

02:08:26.740 there has been some sort of, uh, obfuscation, interference, interjection by the Israelis,

02:08:32.180 to prevent that. And it started with the killing of the Ayatollah right out of the gate. I mean,

02:08:38.100 we got blooded right out of the gate. We got put in a situation where it was

02:08:43.300 impressed upon the Iranian people that this was total war by basically our very first action.

02:08:50.300 And in conjunction with that, I believe the girls' school was hit. That's another message

02:08:56.020 being sent, I think, by somebody. Unless we could have transparency and say, hey,

02:09:01.880 how did this mistake happen? Who gave it to us? And traditionally, that would be a very easy

02:09:06.140 decision to make. I mean, I know there's probably a number of officers in the military who were

02:09:09.780 involved in that strike who would love to step forward and say, they gave us the information,

02:09:15.160 and that would be the right thing to do. Where are they? Good question. Being muzzled,

02:09:21.500 maybe it wasn't even that. But these are the things that we need to have that we've traditionally

02:09:26.740 had with our military is a little bit is transparency on what we're doing as far as

02:09:33.120 objectives go, how it's going on the ground. And why did the mistakes that we made, you know,

02:09:40.240 why did they happen? You know, we got, we probably had more clarity out of John Calley or Lieutenant

02:09:47.340 Calley in Vietnam. A lot more. Yeah. Than that. But can I say, I mean, I grieved when I saw that

02:09:55.320 because it's awful.

02:09:57.520 But I also was not entirely surprised.

02:09:59.860 I assumed the target package

02:10:01.880 came from the Israelis.

02:10:02.780 I don't know that.

02:10:03.760 But it fits a pattern of behavior

02:10:06.080 designed to keep the United States

02:10:07.560 in far beyond our own interests.

02:10:10.940 But I don't know if that's true.

02:10:13.060 But what really bothered me

02:10:14.640 was the official response to it.

02:10:17.160 All kinds of people get killed in wars.

02:10:19.020 Non-combatants get killed.

02:10:19.820 Innocent people, children get killed.

02:10:21.080 That's why I'm generally

02:10:22.020 not that in favor of wars

02:10:23.540 if we can help it.

02:10:24.240 but I'm not surprised by it.

02:10:26.520 But when you do something like that,

02:10:29.160 you have to apologize like immediately.

02:10:32.240 Right.

02:10:32.940 Don't you?

02:10:33.560 That's the right and just thing to do.

02:10:35.960 Isn't that what we demand of our children?

02:10:37.660 Yeah, 100%.

02:10:38.580 I don't understand how you wouldn't just apologize

02:10:41.660 and say, look, we're not sure how this happened.

02:10:44.000 No American would do that intentionally.

02:10:45.620 I believe that because I've lived here my whole life.

02:10:48.460 I know what Americans are like.

02:10:49.440 They're not bombing girls' schools on purpose.

02:10:51.480 I don't believe that.

02:10:52.400 everyone knows that

02:10:54.660 but like

02:10:55.880 how could you not say

02:10:56.900 we're going to find out

02:10:57.480 what happened

02:10:57.820 but in the meantime

02:10:58.580 holy smokes

02:10:59.480 I'm so sorry

02:11:00.820 did anyone say that

02:11:02.780 not that I heard

02:11:03.520 well damn them then

02:11:04.520 yeah

02:11:04.780 how could you not say that

02:11:06.520 hubris

02:11:07.400 does it diminish you

02:11:08.900 to apologize

02:11:09.660 for a mistake

02:11:11.120 that killed children

02:11:11.780 I don't think it does

02:11:12.640 yeah

02:11:13.000 not at all

02:11:13.580 absolutely not at all

02:11:15.640 you know it's the

02:11:16.560 that's when I started to think

02:11:18.380 you can't do this in my name

02:11:19.520 I'm from here

02:11:20.740 right

02:11:22.580 No, it's, I'm right there with you, Tucker.

02:11:24.760 You know, it's the combination of that

02:11:26.320 and the opening strike on the Ayatollah

02:11:30.940 combined with the lack of objectives.

02:11:33.660 We're doing something in our name,

02:11:35.300 which literally makes no sense

02:11:36.720 and has the attachments, you know,

02:11:39.220 or the riders of evil attached to it.

02:11:41.760 Killing a bunch of kids

02:11:43.400 is quite possibly the absolute worst thing

02:11:47.200 that someone can do.

02:11:48.800 Killing a kid is the worst thing.

02:11:50.880 I couldn't agree more.

02:11:52.580 So can this be solved with ground troops?

02:11:54.700 No.

02:11:55.660 Why?

02:11:57.720 So go back to what I was talking about earlier.

02:12:00.720 If we thought that we could drop the 82nd Airborne over Tehran and overthrow the government, we would have already done it.

02:12:09.580 What we're looking at is an operation or a series of operations to effectively reopen the Straits of Hormuz,

02:12:17.160 which is a problem that we created due to our operation there but to roll it back a little bit

02:12:24.840 more it's also because we didn't have the contingencies in place to deal with the most

02:12:29.920 obvious thing that a iranian regime that was fighting an existential fight would do

02:12:35.600 um this is their trump card shut off global oil supply there you go hard yeah and the rationale

02:12:40.640 behind it is quite simple. One, in primary, it puts global pressure on the United States or

02:12:49.480 whomever is attacking them to come to the table and resolve this quickly because if it goes on

02:12:54.520 for long enough, it can crash the entire economy of the world. So the fact that we didn't have

02:13:00.840 people in place to even address that contingency or moving into the region to address that

02:13:07.200 contingency tells me this whole operation in Iran was not our decision. We are following along

02:13:13.460 with somebody else, the Israelis. And that is not how America fights its wars. We are not known

02:13:23.200 to fight wars in an unprepared fashion, quite bluntly. American leaders made these decisions

02:13:30.560 to go to war in Iraq, to wage war in Afghanistan, as we did, and to go into Iran. So it's the fault

02:13:36.160 of American leaders,

02:13:37.000 just to be completely clear.

02:13:37.900 It's the fault of the commander-in-chief, okay?

02:13:40.100 However, it's also a fact

02:13:41.500 that the Israelis pushed us

02:13:42.600 to go to war in Iran

02:13:43.880 that some of the fake intel

02:13:45.240 came from them.

02:13:48.520 Did you know that

02:13:49.300 when you were serving in Iraq?

02:13:51.980 Was there a record?

02:13:52.660 Okay, you had no idea

02:13:53.380 that Israel had anything

02:13:54.060 to do with the Iraq war

02:13:54.900 when you were fighting it.

02:13:55.900 No, I mean, it was a rumor,

02:13:57.140 but, you know, it's...

02:13:58.320 It seemed kind of crazy.

02:13:59.100 Yeah, it's one of those things.

02:14:00.100 It just seemed like there was...

02:14:01.360 I mean, it was very clear

02:14:02.700 there was ulterior motives in place,

02:14:05.120 but how that was being governed and driven was you know way outside of what yeah i get it i get it

02:14:13.260 but now there's not a single person awaiting deployment who doesn't know that i mean it's

02:14:17.740 literally the plan is literally in writing and it's been there since the since the 90s right a

02:14:22.800 clean break right written by the same policy makers in the pentagon who pushed the iraq war

02:14:27.000 um and in six pages you can go through it seven pages maybe um and read the entire arc of uh the

02:14:33.840 different conflicts that they felt were going to be beneficial to enhance uh the israeli state in

02:14:40.620 the region um iraq was in there iran was the big one um so how do the troops feel about lindsey

02:14:49.640 graham would you say if you had to guess i would say the opinion is probably not very high really

02:14:54.840 he's not a hero to the troops no um in at least the circles i run in which are pretty broad he's

02:15:01.580 a he's a bit of a laughingstock yeah um he's a caricature of himself um people from all over

02:15:07.980 the country that i know are hoping that you know he loses his election finally yeah um and part of

02:15:14.360 that you know the big part of it is uh he gets out there and and talks a tough game and flexes

02:15:19.260 his military creds which have nothing to do with combat and everybody sees it um and in the context

02:15:26.640 of the war on Iran, it's so clear that he is pushing a narrative that has nothing to do with

02:15:31.860 the American people. It's all about Israel and the Israeli government and furthering their

02:15:38.100 objectives. It has nothing to do with advancing American prestige because it's costing us all of

02:15:45.060 our prestige. It has nothing to do with American troops because American troops are going to be

02:15:49.320 dying on behalf of another country um so on and so forth um if ground is do you believe are you

02:15:57.480 i'll just let you guess do you think that there there's anybody from the service chiefs chairman

02:16:03.680 of the joint chiefs who's telling the president we can actually fix this problem with ground troops

02:16:09.900 fixing the war no um opening the street opening the street i would hope that they're cautioning

02:16:19.060 against that um you know there is plenty of data out there that uh speaks to the folly of trying

02:16:27.620 a headlong assault into the straits of hormones um and everybody start keeps talking about karg

02:16:32.420 island um that's probably not the target but before we get into that i think it's important to

02:16:38.180 go back and uh talk about uh millennium challenge in 2002 with the general van ryper um he's a

02:16:45.940 legendary ring corps general who was the head of the red force aka the iranian force in a in a

02:16:53.300 massive war game multi-million dollar war game in 2002 where this exact scenario was gamed out

02:17:01.380 at a very very large level um it was a 14-day war game that he ended on day one as fighting

02:17:08.580 as the iranians came after the american force stepping into the street um and annihilated it

02:17:14.500 causing i think it was 20 000 uh simulated casualties in one day just ended it like

02:17:20.880 straight out of the gate and the services were so upset by this that they reset the war game

02:17:28.840 limited the capabilities that the iranians could use and then progressively why rigged their own

02:17:35.200 war game oh yeah i mean come on it happens all the time but uh but why would you that's like

02:17:43.060 rigging an MRI.

02:17:44.920 Why would you do that?

02:17:47.200 We're giving you a lung x-ray, but we're

02:17:49.240 scrubbing out the spots.

02:17:51.780 Hey, look, full bill of health.

02:17:53.980 You might want to talk to a coroner

02:17:55.340 on the way out the door.

02:17:56.880 But no, yeah, they rigged it, and they

02:17:59.120 redid it, and he hung

02:18:01.180 around as an advisor for the rest of the

02:18:03.140 game for 13 more days

02:18:05.220 under protest, but

02:18:07.060 it was designed

02:18:08.960 to produce a result

02:18:11.440 that people wanted to see within DOD.

02:18:15.160 It was not designed to take a look

02:18:17.100 at a particular problem set.

02:18:19.320 And I'm sure there's a PAO out there

02:18:20.740 who's having heartburn right now

02:18:22.020 for me saying it like that

02:18:23.300 and is going to refute it.

02:18:24.380 But the reality is,

02:18:25.460 is you can talk to the man himself

02:18:26.820 about what exactly happened.

02:18:30.200 And this is not the first time.

02:18:31.440 I have a number of friends

02:18:33.080 who went through high planning levels

02:18:35.960 as senior warrants and staff NCOs

02:18:40.340 talking about different types of war games,

02:18:43.420 how if they didn't rig it

02:18:45.460 in, say, a scenario where I know specifically of

02:18:49.400 where you're dropping a unit into the fight with Russia,

02:18:53.740 if you didn't rig it, we would be annihilated.

02:18:56.460 And that doesn't demonstrate the capabilities.

02:18:59.120 And the overall justification

02:19:01.420 coming out of Millennium Challenge was,

02:19:03.500 well, we had a 14-day exercise planned

02:19:05.840 and we spent all this money,

02:19:07.880 So why should we end it on day one

02:19:10.320 when there's plenty more to experiment with?

02:19:13.140 But that's data point one.

02:19:15.000 We have wargamed this and it didn't go well.

02:19:18.580 The other parts of it are,

02:19:20.600 if you look at the terrain of Iran,

02:19:23.800 it is Afghanistan, but worse,

02:19:27.420 with a larger population

02:19:29.200 that is obviously well more equipped

02:19:31.920 than any other war we fought in recent memory.

02:19:35.020 That's why it's the oldest empire in the world, probably.

02:19:37.320 geography matters absolutely um and their traditions matter like they have survived for

02:19:43.320 two millennia uh you know and a lot of that was by having to fight um you know they're not

02:19:49.800 pushovers i'm not a fan of their policies i don't want to live in iran but at the same time you have

02:19:56.240 to to recognize realistically who you're dealing with um and they're they're not a they're not a

02:20:02.680 backwater. They are a very advanced philosophical mathematical society. They've given the world a

02:20:11.300 lot. And if you don't take that into account, you rely on hubris to make your planning,

02:20:16.660 you're going to walk into a trap. So when you start looking at the actual Straits of Hormuz,

02:20:22.760 which is our current problem that we are trying to fix, opening that is not going to crash the

02:20:28.300 Iranian government, that moment is gone. That moment was probably dead the second we killed

02:20:33.660 the Ayatollah. And thinking otherwise is folly at this point. There's a lot of talk about taking

02:20:40.280 Karg Island. The problem with taking Karg Island is twofold. One, that it lies a long way on the

02:20:47.220 other side of the Straits of Hormuz, where we have no ships. We have no logistical capabilities.

02:20:53.200 It is closer to Kuwait than it is where our current troops are located or Marines are located.

02:20:58.300 um there's another place which is called kesham uh which is located literally right in the middle

02:21:04.800 of the straits of hormuz but that is a 600 or so square mile island uh that is effectively

02:21:13.300 in a u in the strait um if i was going to try and reopen the straits of hormuz and you know i'm not

02:21:20.220 some grand tactician i would think that's a pretty good spot to go um which also means your opponent

02:21:25.300 knows exactly that. That being said, is there the potential for us to land troops in either

02:21:34.180 one of those places? Yes. Could we do a contested landing into those areas? Possibly. There would

02:21:40.920 be casualties in my assessment. But speaking to CARG first, if you drop a bunch of guys into CARG,

02:21:49.100 which is, I believe, eight square miles, it's a small spot, you are assuming that they can hang

02:21:55.040 out there and shut down the Iranian oil exports without receiving any kind of counterfire.

02:22:04.640 You're banking on the Iranians deciding not to destroy their own infrastructure when you've

02:22:11.680 already signaled to them that this is an existential fight. So to me, that makes no sense.

02:22:17.340 You can rebuild infrastructure, but you can't take your country back after it's been taken down.

02:22:22.480 So that math problem seems very, very, very simple.

02:22:26.980 That would be, I would think that if we landed there,

02:22:30.880 we would get ashore one way or the other,

02:22:33.380 whether we're led on,

02:22:34.700 whether we have some fighting that goes on.

02:22:37.360 This is not going to be Iwo Jima.

02:22:38.600 This is not going to be force on force, uniformed.

02:22:41.220 The Iranians have fought us asymmetrically the entire way.

02:22:44.660 They understand our vulnerabilities

02:22:47.540 in an asymmetrical environment.

02:22:48.800 They sat right next door and participated in Iraq

02:22:50.960 to a degree.

02:22:53.900 But what they will do

02:22:55.800 is let us stop moving

02:22:58.840 and then make us a giant sponge

02:23:01.780 for drones, missiles, and indirect fire.

02:23:04.300 I think that's your game plan

02:23:05.700 for either island.

02:23:07.780 Kesham, much bigger problem

02:23:09.660 to try and solve.

02:23:11.040 But I think the scenario

02:23:12.560 is rather similar

02:23:14.460 where if we got ashore,

02:23:17.820 that's not the end of our problems.

02:23:19.300 You're not going to end the war

02:23:20.400 by doing that.

02:23:21.660 You're going to have

02:23:22.460 massive problems

02:23:23.400 trying to resupply these guys,

02:23:25.120 trying to evacuate wounded.

02:23:27.260 And it builds from there.

02:23:30.260 Their capabilities

02:23:31.120 in drone and ballistic missiles

02:23:33.360 are immense

02:23:35.620 as have been demonstrated.

02:23:38.340 So it's not a question of taking,

02:23:39.460 it's a matter of holding.

02:23:40.260 Exactly.

02:23:40.940 Yeah.

02:23:41.840 So my last question,

02:23:44.120 hoping to bring these threads together

02:23:46.680 into a tapestry of hope.

02:23:48.120 Okay.

02:23:49.420 Realizing that's unlikely.

02:23:50.760 But how would, were you the commander-in-chief, you get out of this right now?

02:23:55.980 The first thing I would do is put our partner in their place.

02:24:03.780 Recognize that between us and Israel, we are the senior partner in this relationship.

02:24:09.960 Without us, they have a very hard time existing in that neighborhood.

02:24:15.960 So we snatch the initiative back from them and say,

02:24:18.700 listen, you're on our time.

02:24:20.160 And at any point in time, we can walk away from this

02:24:22.020 and you're going to have big problems.

02:24:23.680 So, you know, act like the grownup in the room.

02:24:26.580 That's what we're supposed to be.

02:24:27.680 We are the superpower.

02:24:28.700 We dictate the terms.

02:24:31.080 The second piece is through diplomacy.

02:24:34.780 You know, it's one thing we've lost sight of in this country

02:24:36.840 is in order to have an agreement of some kind,

02:24:40.920 you have to have an exchange.

02:24:43.220 We have gotten way too comfortable

02:24:44.800 with dictating terms to other countries

02:24:50.280 backed up by the use of force.

02:24:52.460 And that's not diplomacy at all.

02:24:56.420 That's just bullying your way around the world.

02:24:58.500 You don't have any diplomatic relations.

02:25:00.560 But I will say that the president has an opportunity

02:25:05.100 to do something super duper bold

02:25:07.260 that I believe he's the only one who can pull it off.

02:25:12.040 He managed to steamroll the process

02:25:13.660 and get us into this mess.

02:25:14.800 and he can steamroll the process to get us out.

02:25:17.940 The one thing the Iranians, I believe,

02:25:20.780 want more than anything else

02:25:22.400 is the removal of Americans from that region.

02:25:29.600 I think that is a very effective card that can be played.

02:25:32.700 That's also the same card that much of his base,

02:25:35.540 which has abandoned him to this point,

02:25:37.440 where you can see 62% of independents,

02:25:40.760 and I think that's a very presumptive number.

02:25:43.940 I think it's high.

02:25:45.220 I mean, pardon me, it's very low.

02:25:47.000 Disapproved of this war.

02:25:47.780 I think it's way higher than that.

02:25:50.420 And many of the independents, myself included,

02:25:53.200 voted for him because he was the president

02:25:56.080 of no more stupid wars.

02:25:57.300 He was going to get us out of the Middle East.

02:25:58.920 He wanted to get us out of Syria.

02:26:00.440 All these different things going back in 2016.

02:26:03.120 So there's an exchange there that I think can be made.

02:26:06.640 It's a bit of a Hail Mary.

02:26:08.000 Some people might call it ludicrous.

02:26:09.220 But if we were to talk to them and reduce our footprint across the region, pull out of some of the areas that we no longer have an interest in, right?

02:26:21.860 Large basing in Iraq, I don't know why we're still doing it.

02:26:25.900 Large basing in Kuwait, well, that's the counterbalance Iran.

02:26:30.420 So on and so forth around the region.

02:26:32.440 The Fifth Fleet headquarters in Bahrain, that's probably an important piece for us for protecting commerce globally.

02:26:37.920 We could probably keep that.

02:26:39.220 but give them the option to save face by having them turn to their people and say,

02:26:43.940 we had all this sacrifice and look, we drove these guys out of the region.

02:26:47.480 President Trump can turn around and say, my promise was to get us out of the Middle East.

02:26:51.580 Iran is no longer a threat.

02:26:54.060 I'm bringing these troops home.

02:26:56.980 You're welcome.

02:26:58.120 And I think that is probably the best hope that we have right now.

02:27:03.000 but unfortunately the situation looks like it is careening out of control in

02:27:09.100 the opposite direction.

02:27:10.640 So somebody's got to make a decision.

02:27:12.120 Where could it go if it continues on its current course?

02:27:16.780 Unfortunately,

02:27:17.960 nowhere good,

02:27:20.780 but if it continues on its current course,

02:27:23.040 we are going to have the commitment of ground troops and we are going to amp

02:27:28.040 up our involvement.

02:27:29.320 it. It's going to be a Vietnam-like push of more and more men and materiel into the region in a

02:27:38.640 ground war or a conflict that we are not going to be able to win. They're not going to quit.

02:27:44.600 And there is no real way that I believe that we can drive them from power. They're not going to

02:27:50.340 leave voluntarily and we're not going to be able to snatch it from them. And every time that we

02:27:54.880 commit a new unit into theater, it weakens us in other parts of the world. It weakens us in the

02:28:01.300 Pacific. It weakens us in Europe. And it provides larger freedom of movement for adversaries in

02:28:07.600 those theaters. And quite frankly, you give them enough space and enough bad will towards the U.S.

02:28:13.940 for what we're doing. And what happens after that could be unbelievably catastrophic and global.

02:28:20.640 What do you mean?

02:28:20.980 well um i think you could legitimately have a world war three type of scenario um you know it's

02:28:31.680 if we are if we are once again tying our military down in the middle east to deal with a uh a

02:28:39.720 regional nuisance which is what the iranians are which is what the iraqis were um however

02:28:44.960 This time, it's costing the global economy in all kinds of other nations.

02:28:53.740 Their economic prowess is costing our reputation.

02:28:56.880 We could align the rest of the world against us in, I'm not going to say short order, but not over a long enough arc, or not over a very long arc.

02:29:05.820 It could cause other countries to consider using a different currency, which would be the kind of the kill shot for the American empire and the American experiment.

02:29:17.980 And I'm not convinced that the Chinese want to take Taiwan by force.

02:29:22.380 But if there's nobody home, what's to say they don't walk across the strait in an administrative manner and just say, okay, now you guys are part of us.

02:29:29.520 And then what?

02:29:30.300 But we wouldn't have the ability to do anything about that.

02:29:34.160 Beyond that, you have our reduced footprints in places like Japan and South Korea.

02:29:40.640 That's right.

02:29:41.220 And those are very important economies to keep aligned with the United States.

02:29:45.060 Like militarily, okay, that's one thing.

02:29:48.120 But economically, we need them.

02:29:52.340 And if-

02:29:53.120 Japan is the biggest buyer of our debt.

02:29:55.240 Yeah.

02:29:55.720 I think, yeah, number one.

02:29:57.280 So, in essence, the wheels fall off is the worst case scenario.

02:30:06.740 Jim, thank you very much for spending all this time and explaining.

02:30:12.080 I hope all the predictions are wrong.

02:30:14.600 I agree with you, Tucker.

02:30:15.860 Thank you so much for having me.

02:30:17.200 Thank you.

02:30:18.420 And thank you.

02:30:19.340 We'll be back next Wednesday.

02:30:21.860 Thanks for watching the Wednesday edition of the show.

02:30:25.440 We stream live every week, Wednesday, 6 p.m. Eastern on tuckercarlson.com.

02:30:31.400 Members can watch the show live, join the members-only chat, and take part in the conversation in real time.

02:30:37.740 We're grateful to be doing it and grateful that you watch it.

02:30:40.960 Thank you.

The Tucker Carlson Show - March 26, 2026

Troops Being Dragged Into Iran, How It Will Cripple the US & the Real Goal of Israel’s Violence

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