Tucker on the Devastating Cost of War and What It Means for American Politics With Saagar Enjeti
Episode Stats
Length
1 hour and 17 minutes
Words per Minute
191.51831
Summary
What does it mean to be a religious Jew in a religious war? And why does the Third Temple in Jerusalem belong to Chabad in the U.S. and why do they want to see it built there? This episode is brought to you by the Electronic Intelligencer, and edited by Annie-Rose Strasser.
Transcript
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So in just a second, we're going to talk to Sagar and Jetty, who's one of the smartest and most honest analysts of American politics.
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We think about the effect of the war in Iran here in the U.S. on our politics, on our economy, on our life.
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But first, just a couple of quick things, which is no matter what you think of this war, you've got to be rooting for the United States, your country, and particularly for the people fighting this war.
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This country produces people who voluntarily joined to defend the United States, who are often put to bad use and badly treated by our political class.
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And you've got to be rooting for them, for us collectively, and saying prayers both for the country and for the people fighting on its behalf and in its name, our troops.
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The second thing concerns the show that we did two days ago about the efforts to rebuild the third temple in Jerusalem and on at some length about this and why, at its core, for some of the people fighting in this conflict in the United States and Israel and Iran, this is a religious conflict.
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And that we should be aware of the effects of that long term.
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Religious conflicts are not typically resolved quickly.
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In fact, they're still ongoing for over a thousand years in some cases.
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In some ways, this may turn out to be a religious war.
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In others, it's just inherently a religious war.
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So you should know, and at the center of that conflict is this thing called the third temple, which does not yet exist, but some people would like to rebuild.
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So we did a whole show on this, seemed important and true.
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And in the course of that show, we described patches that some soldiers in the Israeli military, the IDF, are wearing that show an image of a temple, the third temple.
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And it seems like from accounts that we read from those soldiers online, that they got these patches somehow from a group called Chabad.
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In the United States, it's a global group, but it's headquartered here in New York, in Brooklyn.
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And we said, and you can check the tape, it was like, Chabad, they seem like really nice people.
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Met a bunch of people in Chabad over the years.
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But apparently, these patches came from Chabad.
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Chabad and Chabad, check their website, is in favor of rebuilding the third temple.
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And the temple is at the center of Judaism as described in the Torah, what Christians call the Old Testament.
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And all sacrifices, all public worship takes place in the temple in Jerusalem, built on the foundation stone.
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And that's where God resides, according to Judaism, to Torah Judaism.
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And all of that ended in 70 AD, when the Romans, as predicted by Jesus, destroyed the temple.
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Now, from a Christian perspective, God destroyed the temple.
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Jesus destroyed the temple and became himself the temple.
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But the Jewish view of the temple is very different.
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And it's what I just described, which is this is where God lives.
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So if you're a religious Jew, you want to see the temple rebuilt.
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That's a religious perspective, which is internally coherent.
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Our only point was you should know that this is happening and that U.S. taxpayers are paying for it.
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And apparently, these patches came from Chabad.
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That was the that was the kind of sum total of my observations about Chabad.
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Well, the next morning, which is to say yesterday, wake up and there are all these attacks, you know, Chabad, you're attacking Chabad.
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No, didn't really pay too much attention to it.
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Of course, these are organized by these attacks are part of a propaganda campaign waged by Israel and its proxies here in the United States, who are many, at least online.
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And the idea was to make this seem like an attack on Chabad, which it wasn't and not intended to be and wasn't not inherently an attack.
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And then Bill Ackman gets in and says, you have potentially blood on your hands.
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I know Bill Ackman because nothing to do with Israel, because I once pointed out that Bill Ackman is a thoroughly mediocre intellect.
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That's not the American dream I was told about, that people with very little talent become the richest people in our country.
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But he wound up with a billion dollars and his own island.
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And I made that point about Bill Ackman because anyone who knows Bill Ackman knows, you know, not a genius.
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Not like a moron or anything, but clearly not a brilliant person at all.
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No one's ever answered the question, by the way, how did he get rich?
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And so he accuses me of, you know, stoking violence or something.
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But then I get two phone calls from friends of mine, people I know and I've known a long time, who are involved with Chabad, both good guys, and both have kids at Chabad schools.
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And the first calls and says, you know, people are really upset that you're calling for violence against Chabad.
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And I said, well, I'm not calling for violence against anybody, including Chabad.
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And he said, well, it would be very helpful if you would issue a statement disavowing violence.
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And I said, well, gosh, I mean, I've done like 100 shows on that.
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I hope my life is an ongoing disavowal of violence against innocence.
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And I will continue to say that because I sincerely mean it from the bottom of my heart.
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And then just to be kind of mean, I said, I will issue a statement disavowing violence against innocence in tandem with Chabad's statement disavowing violence against innocence.
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Knowing, of course, Chabad does not disavow violence against innocence, of course, Gaza.
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And they can't because they don't believe that.
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I think, you know, I would be surprised if Chabad issued a statement disavowing all violence against all innocence.
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And, of course, if they do, I will, you know, join them for dinner to celebrate because that way I will praise them for doing that.
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And anyone who does that will get praise from me, heartfelt.
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And then I get a call from another friend of mine, like an actual friend of mine saying,
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I don't mean to bother you, but I've got kids and they're closing the school because if your calls for violence,
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and I thought, oh, my gosh, now you're now I'm upset because I don't want to add at all,
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even inadvertently to an environment where people are afraid or feel like they're going to get hurt.
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And so I guess what I would say is, of course, I'm totally opposed to violence against innocence again.
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But moreover, this is the product of the war that is underway now
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and evidence of the point that this is fundamentally a religious war whose effects are already being felt here,
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which is to say groups are in fear of other groups.
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And at the center of it are the most innocent of all, which are kids who are being told by adults
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Think about a PR campaign or a propaganda campaign designed to make people terrified for their lives,
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which is what the Israeli campaign is, telling Americans that they could be killed,
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that anti-Semitism in the United States is so terrible, being ginned up by people like me and other people online,
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But imagine being so unscrupulous that you would terrify kids in order to silence criticism
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of your territorial expansion campaign, which is exactly what this is.
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They want their regional rivals out of the way.
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They want to weaken the United States, get us out of the Middle East,
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and they want to weaken Western Europe, which they just hate for whatever reason.
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They truly hate Western Europe, which is one of the reasons the Israeli government
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has helped move migrants into Europe to weaken and destroy it.
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I don't really know the answer, but it's demonstrable.
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And so whatever their bizarre agenda is, in order to stop criticism of it,
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they're telling Americans, including children, that they could be killed
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And imagine, moreover, playing along with it with your own kids,
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telling your own kids that people hate them and will always hate them
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no matter what they do because of how they were born.
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And I say that not just as an American, but as a father of many kids.
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Like, that's the worst thing you could ever do to children.
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It produces unbalanced people like Mark Levin, whose mother clearly told him that.
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That is not a fair description of the country we live in.
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We live in a, still now, for all its flaws, a very decent country
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And there is an organized campaign underway this moment to foment religious hatred in this country.
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Hatred of American for American on the basis of religious identity.
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And that is totally wrong morally, but more than that, it's completely destructive.
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If you want to wreck the United States, and some people do want to wreck the United States,
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weaken the United States, people behind this war want to do that.
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Again, that's one of the reasons we're having this war is to weaken the United States,
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both economically and destroy its social cohesion.
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And so I would just hope that all Americans can resist that,
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deal with each other as individuals, as fellow Americans, as citizens,
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And the rest of us should call it out when we see it.
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So I hope everyone connected to Habad understands that the last thing I would ever do
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is call for violence against them because they're part of a religious group.
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Well, Tucker, unfortunately, and I'm very sad to say this,
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is that our very sovereignty is in question right now.
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The Secretary of State made perhaps one of the most remarkable statements of my entire life
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and perhaps in modern history when he declared unequivocally that we are involved in this war
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as a result of the either inability or the adherence to an Israeli strike
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This reveals a lot of different things about our government, our structure.
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We were either unable to exert pressure on Israel to avoid such a war.
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We either acquiesced to it and both are terrifying in their result because we are,
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of course, the global superpower in Israel is a client state.
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I've also learned, very unfortunately, having spent my entire career trying to repudiate the
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lessons of the Iraq War, of Syria and of Libya, of an overwhelming propaganda effort
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on both sides, both parties, the mainstream media, but still, unfortunately, very alive
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and well, it seems, in the Republican Party and in the White House, cheering on regime change,
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demands of unconditional surrender made to the Iranians just this morning,
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the endorsement of a Kurdish civil war campaign.
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It really does feel as if things are accelerating,
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even with the perspectives in modern history of literally 5, 10, even 15 years ago,
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to learn that these are exactly the moves that we should not be making.
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And so I'm really terrified right now to be saying that our sovereignty itself
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remains in question at the behest here of Israel, our very own government,
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which seems complicit and is, of course, involved in these very strikes.
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And then watching the way that this is all going,
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I do not see a single way that this will make the life of any individual American better.
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I unfortunately agree with that, and you could feel it in the days leading up to it.
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I saw Trump three times in the month before, and it was obvious to me that he didn't want to do it.
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It was, I think, obvious in every TV appearance that he made.
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He never made the case that this was going to help us in any way.
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He did make the case that Iran shouldn't have the bomb.
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But he understood the risks, and it was obvious to me from talking to him that he didn't want to do this,
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And the American president just has less room to maneuver than voters imagine he does.
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And it's just a horrible burden on every president since John F. Kennedy.
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You can feel it, and I think we should all go back and look at the tapes at pivotal moments,
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and, like, these guys just don't have the latitude they thought they did,
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and they're bumping up against immovable objects and pressure that just can't be resisted.
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I will say, I mean, we can't take away the individual action of our commander-in-chief
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And let's be honest here, Tucker, promises were made.
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You and I sat in many rooms over the years where we were explicitly told
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that this is the one thing that we are going to avoid, war with Iran.
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And I do want to make very clear that it's not just about war with Iran.
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This is a regional war with Iran, which has now engulfed our Gulf allies.
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This is now a war which is depleting our interceptor stockpile,
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calling in the very alliance structure of the United States.
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We are potentially pulling interceptors away from South Korea,
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which we, of course, do 400 percent more trade with than Israel.
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the Gulf Arab nations with the United States compared to Israel.
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And you have Gulf officials who are furious going on national television
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Their very ministers, at this moment you and I are speaking,
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are talking about withdrawing their economic investments in our companies,
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And all of that belies the very people who I think you talked about,
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And I've been thinking all week about Declan Cody.
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He was 20 years old and he perished in that attack on our base in Kuwait.
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I'm literally in this business to trying to make sure
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It breaks me to watch somebody who is just that young,
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Not to mention including one of the servicemen,
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And I have to say, you know, I cannot let our individual leaders off the hook here.
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Secretary Hegseth recently made a statement at the Pentagon podium
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and spending too much time on the dead American soldiers
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trying to highlight that as if it's some sort of political prop.
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that we cannot support our troops without supporting the war.
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whenever it came to the Trump election in 2024.
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And it is tragic actually to have to be able to sit here
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But I voted absentee for Trump and was happy to do it.
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And I think a lot of people who don't normally vote did the same.
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And they did it in part as a vote for sovereignty.
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does the United States have a right to make decisions
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in its own interest, in the interest of its own people?
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Our alliance structure in the Gulf Arab nations
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These are allies which pump billions of dollars
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The very morning that you and I are taping this,
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of what Donald Trump wanted on the campaign trail.
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in Donald Trump's entire presidency now so far.
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So you can see very clearly for the individual pocketbooks
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of every American, they will feel the result of this war.
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And then geopolitically, when you say sovereignty,
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which Trump and many of his officials talked about.
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It's not about subsuming our national interests
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I've been trying to make this point to the neocons,
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And they're not very high on the priority list.
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and trying to project power in the South China Sea,
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the interceptor stockpile that we are using right now
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is a joke compared to what some potential conflict
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We are not stronger as a result of this action.
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Tucker, you and I, we bonded often over history.
00:21:25.960
to an invasion of Europe and the Battle of Berlin.
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floating hundreds of thousands of American casualties
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for an entire year-long period to get to that point.
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And that is what the president has been demanding.
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Unconditional surrender, if that is the true demand,
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That can only be enforced with a ocean of American blood.
00:22:10.380
And that is not something in our national interest.
00:22:14.420
We are walking every single day closer to that possibility.
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Unconditional surrender means foreign troops get to rape your wife and daughter,
00:24:43.680
foreign troops get to rape your wife and daughter.
00:24:49.100
That's like the most atavistic instinct there is.
00:24:54.860
And so that's why it requires that level of force
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of course, we don't have the ground force necessary.
00:25:07.820
I don't think Americans would voluntarily participate in it.
00:25:38.480
We thought we could just decapitate the Ayatollah
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to see the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
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Well, then we now get to unconditional surrender,
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which is only enforceable with massive weapons,
00:27:21.180
in a stable Iran because of the Straits of Hormuz,
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and potentially put all of our Navy sailors at risk
00:27:36.720
moving through the Straits of Hormuz goes to Asia?
00:27:54.820
As long as they can no longer pose a regional threat
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But this president has fees them with Bibi Netanyahu.
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And by doing that, he has sold us truly into Pandora's box.
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which, by the way, Mr. President, please do so,
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that you have ever made in your entire presidency.
00:28:26.880
Unfortunately, I don't think that's going to happen.
00:28:28.380
Even if he did, think about all the fundamental questions
00:28:30.920
of U.S. alliances that were already in the minds
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of these Gulf leaders of Japan, of South Korea, of Taiwan,
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Hundreds of billions have already basically been put
00:28:43.720
The war is costing internal Pentagon projection
00:28:46.200
$1 billion per day every single time that this goes on.
00:28:51.460
And extraordinary measures are already being taken.
00:28:55.660
the Russians are providing intelligence to the Iranians
00:29:02.120
That's how the Pentagon runs the entire Ukraine war.
00:29:14.200
which has immense risk for the global energy markets,
00:29:32.940
one-third almost the size of the United States of America,
00:29:40.900
which again looks currently potentially likely,
00:29:53.240
Turkey is already, I mean, you have Naftali Bennett,
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the former Israeli prime minister, already saying,
00:29:58.940
oh, actually Turkey is already now a threat to Israel.
00:30:02.100
A friend of mine predicted the dissolution of NATO
00:30:08.980
And I hate to say it, it looks even more likely today.
00:30:19.580
as long as it's in Israel's national security interests.
00:30:40.800
But if they feel unprotected by the United States,
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because I don't think it's fully under U.S. control.
01:15:35.660
been to iran and i'm certainly not an anti-semite
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especially in wartime and wartime more important
01:16:18.080
two from the civil war and i literally based my
01:16:25.880
it it won't happen again and then it did happen
01:16:49.780
they want and to that for them to be harassed we
01:16:58.420
you're going to be at the center of it and um i
01:17:01.040
know you will understand it before most people so