00:18:30.620And in that context, I was leaning in even more vigorously than I had on Air Force One and was saying, listen, this is a moment in time which we've never had like this before.
00:18:46.080You know, dictatorships, and this is true, this is true of the Soviet Union, this is true of Communist China, this is true of Hugo Chavez and Nicolas Maduro, this is true of the Communist regime in Cuba, and this is true of Iran.
00:18:59.620And dictatorships, and dictatorships depend upon convincing their citizens they're invulnerable, that nothing can defeat them.
00:19:06.820And that's part of how you keep 92 million Iranians subjugated is the feeling that it's hopeless.
00:19:16.060And understand, the Ayatollah was a tyrant.
00:19:19.240He regularly murdered his own citizens, tortured his own citizens, stripped them of their freedom.
00:19:24.280I mean, the abuses were horrific directed to his own citizens, much less the murder and terror that he projected outward.
00:19:31.460And last year, when the 12-day war happened, you know, it's interesting, some folks in politics behave like everything is communications, everything is comms and messaging and spin.
00:19:44.640There are very real-world effects when you lose a war.
00:19:50.020There was a war for 12 days, and Iran utterly and completely got its ass kicked.
00:19:56.060And if there's anything worse, if you're an Islamist dictator, if you're trying to envision a world that is worse than losing a war, it's losing a war to Israel.
00:20:08.300It was Israel that completely and totally decimated them, that took out their air defenses, took out the leadership of the IRGC.
00:20:15.900And by the way, day after day, the Ayatollah would appoint a new leader of the IRGC, the next day that guy was dead.
00:20:21.920He'd appoint a new one, the next day that guy was dead.
00:20:24.060It demonstrated complete and total penetration by the Mossad and by American intelligence of Iran, knowing where everybody was.
00:20:36.540And that, and obviously it culminated with President Trump launching the bombing run, taking out the underground nuclear facilities.
00:20:44.280That, when that happened, you and I on this podcast said in the wake of that, we predicted this regime is going to fall.
00:20:51.000And I said, they are so weak now, the Iranian people rose up, rose up in massive numbers, over a million Iranians in protest.
00:21:00.660And by the way, the response of the Ayatollah was to order his soldiers just to fire machine guns at them, killing anywhere between 10,000 and 40,000 protesters.
00:21:10.740We don't have, I haven't seen really firm estimates.
00:21:25.000President Trump's actions this weekend levels the playing field and has taken out.
00:21:33.180By the way, it's also an illustration of exquisite intelligence.
00:21:38.640The early bombing strike that occurred that killed Ayatollah Khamenei, the reporting we're getting, and this is open source.
00:21:49.740I don't have any classified information on this, but the public reporting is that there was a meeting of the Ayatollah along with basically his National Security Council, his top military advisors.
00:22:02.260And that's the meeting that Israel struck and took him out.
00:22:05.800And so they knew exactly where he was.
00:22:08.500They knew where his senior leaders were.
00:22:11.560That is, and so when I was riding in the beast with the president, I was urging him, this is the moment.
00:22:17.540And he's like, well, what do you think of the negotiations?
00:22:20.040And I said, Mr. President, they're just dragging it out.
00:22:42.720But I really don't like a war where Iran starts it and Iran has a nuclear weapon and Iran kills countless innocent people,
00:22:48.940whether it is a dirty bomb or Israel or wherever they decide to do it in the world or have one of their proxies.
00:22:53.460That was the biggest thing that I don't think people understood about Iran.
00:22:57.200Iran getting a nuclear weapon center is not just them having it.
00:23:00.000It's that they have these proxies they could also give them to and dirty bombs could go.
00:23:04.860That's a major concern that a lot of people don't think understood in the complexity of Iran.
00:23:10.160They're not the one that always has to shoot.
00:23:12.200They may give the supplies needed to someone else to do it for them.
00:23:15.240Well, that's right. And that's one of the real risks of escalation in the coming days is those proxies, Hamas and Hezbollah and the Houthis,
00:23:24.080engaging in acts of violence, engaging in acts of terrorism and targeting Americans.
00:23:28.420We have three American servicemen who have already been killed.
00:23:31.300And listen, military conflict, tragically, casualties can be part of military conflict.
00:23:37.280We also have the shooting that occurred in Austin, Texas, and it is still early.
00:23:47.320But but from the preliminary reports, it certainly appears that this was terrorism and terrorism directly related to what occurred.
00:23:56.820So here here's what we know right now. The shooting took place at 159 a.m. on March 1st at Buford's Backyard Beer Garden,
00:24:07.080which is on West 6th Street in downtown Austin.
00:24:10.440And you and I have both been in in in an Austin bar at two in the morning on a Saturday night many, many times.
00:24:17.860The the the Austin 6th Street scene is is a lively scene.
00:24:22.560Yeah. Yeah. Here's what we know so far.
00:24:25.860Three individuals are dead, one of whom is the shooter.
00:24:29.800Fourteen people were injured and transported to local hospitals.
00:24:34.720Three of the injured as of right now remain in critical condition.
00:24:39.500Two weapons were were recovered from from the scene, a pistol and a rifle.
00:24:44.940And and evidence from it from the SUV, SUV and nearby cameras is still being processed.
00:24:51.340Law enforcement and FBI agents at the scene has gone to this to the residents and two different residences of the individual that was the shooter.
00:25:04.100Now, what's been publicly reported is the shooter is a man named in Diaga Diagne, who is a 53 year old naturalized U.S. citizen born in Senegal and residing in Pflugerville, which is a town just north of Austin.
00:25:23.800Uh, he he came to the United States during the Obama presidency.
00:26:11.520They're examining phone calls that they're putting the evidence, putting together the evidence to determine what went on.
00:26:19.780If he acted alone, what the precise motivation was.
00:26:23.040That being said, given the sweatshirt and shirt he was wearing and given given his origin from Senegal, I think it is very likely this is terrorism.
00:26:33.100That that it is not a coincidence, I believe, that he's wearing an Iranian flag while he is opening fire.
00:26:41.500That evidence is not conclusively been proven yet, but I expect that it will be.
00:26:46.100Interestingly, he did not enter the bar.
00:26:48.540He opened fire from outside, from from the street and sidewalk, open fire and shot into the bar and three Austin police officers took him out, killed him, shot him on the street.
00:27:01.940The mayor told me that the Austin police was there within a minute.
00:27:06.440So it was a very fast, very fast response and took him out.
00:27:12.500You know, and I'm told the video, there's videos that will be released, show chaos, show people running.
00:27:19.220And in fact, some of the people are running actually towards the shooter because they heard gunshots, but did not know where they were coming from.
00:27:27.680And so they were running, but but accidentally running the wrong way.
00:27:30.720I think it is very clear if if law enforcement had not acted quickly, many more people would have been killed and injured.
00:27:43.920It certainly appears this is terrorism.
00:27:46.020And tragically, this may not be the last incident of terrorism that occurs.
00:27:51.500That's one of the real dangers of escalation, either from Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis or from sympathizers in the United States.
00:27:59.100Well, let's go back to the Middle East for a moment.
00:28:01.820One of the things that we talk about, you know, the Ayatollah and his team, they're homicidal.
00:28:07.260And you could also even say suicidal in their obsession with with killing, you know, innocent people in their own country, going after Americans, going after Israelis as well.
00:28:18.140But one of the things that I was even a little bit shocked by was how quickly they decided to bring in every other country on the side of Israel and the U.S.
00:28:25.360by attacking these other Middle Eastern nations around them that weren't involved.
00:28:39.460I mean, the list is pretty long now of countries they've attacked.
00:28:41.760And now they brought them into the fold. I mean, that that to me just seems like a suicidal mission on their part.
00:28:49.200Yeah, I will admit I was surprised by that.
00:28:52.680There's been a lot of public reporting that suggested that other Middle Eastern nations were discouraging President Trump from going after Iran.
00:29:03.240I have not recently had those conversations with other Middle Eastern nations, but I've had many conversations with the Saudis, UAE, Bahrain.
00:29:14.160And they have always been very focused on, number one, doing everything necessary to stop Iran from getting a nuclear weapon.
00:29:22.320The Saudis have said publicly if Iran ever got a nuclear weapon, that they would do everything possible to get a nuke themselves to defend themselves from Iran.
00:29:29.860And so I don't know if it's true or not that in the recent weeks Saudi Arabia and other Middle Eastern countries were urging Trump not to attack.
00:29:41.700But I do know that Iran's behavior – so they fired missiles and sent drones and had attacks at almost every single Arab country all throughout the Middle East.
00:29:59.240And we've seen statements from many of those other Middle Eastern countries, mostly Arab countries, expressing – condemning Iran's response.
00:30:11.640And, you know, in my view, they're just indiscriminately firing abroad.
00:30:21.000And I think their reasoning was that if the United States and or Israel hit them, that they wanted to make it as painful as possible for the entirety of the region.
00:30:30.600And what they have ensured is that there's basically nobody standing up and siding with the Iranians.
00:30:38.680They're demonstrating essentially they're willing to kill anybody and everybody.
00:30:44.100I've got to say that's also a really powerful illustration.
00:31:12.360And I always said, look, that's the best-case scenario.
00:31:15.780The best-case scenario is a horrible situation.
00:31:18.320The worst case is that they would actually use the nuclear weapon.
00:31:21.980And everyone operates under an assumption, well, having a nuclear weapon doesn't mean you use it.
00:31:27.760Listen, when the Ayatollah chants death to Israel and death to America, I believe him.
00:31:34.840When he calls Israel the little Satan and America the great Satan, I believe him.
00:31:40.800And I think the odds are unacceptably high.
00:31:43.040I don't know what they were, but they were unacceptably high that the Ayatollah, if he had a nuclear weapon, would detonate it.
00:31:49.400Maybe in Tel Aviv or maybe in New York or Los Angeles.
00:31:54.320And I don't want to wake up and discover, uh-oh, the predictions were wrong because we have a mushroom cloud and hundreds of thousands or even millions of Americans being killed.
00:32:06.280The reason – and by the way, I've got to say a lot of the news reporting is challenging.
00:33:15.680The reason we are striking Iran right now is because the odds are unacceptably high.
00:33:21.880Iran has already killed nearly 1,000 Americans, and they have every desire to kill more.
00:33:26.420As I told the president, driving in the beast, I said, if the Ayatollah could kill the two of us right now, he would.
00:33:33.420The only thing that is preventing him is that he's not able to because he is trying.
00:33:38.520And so if we have an opportunity to take out this regime – and look, my hope is we see a new government in Iran that wants to be friends with America.
00:33:50.300That would make this country massively safer.
00:33:54.440Removing these psychopaths from power and replacing them with anything resembling a normal government would massively improve the safety of every American.
00:34:05.420This year marks a critical moment for our country.
00:34:08.980As the opposition grows more aggressive and unapologetic, the fight now reaches into the everyday decisions we make.
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