President Trump ends the "online circus" by firing DHS Secretary Christy Noam and Tucker Carlson, citing their promotion of "brain rot" and conspiracy theories regarding Chabad and Jewish tunnels. While Noam's tenure saw border security approval drop from 49% to 40%, her replacement Mark Wayne Mullen faces a war in Iran where US and Israeli strikes have reduced Iranian missile launches to near zero despite claims of American pilot losses. As Secretary Pete Hegseth warns of regime erosion, the host argues foreign policy remains secondary to the economy in the 2026 midterms, suggesting Trump's potential influence over Iran's next supreme leader could create a Venezuela-like scenario rather than resolving the conflict. [Automatically generated summary]
So, some pretty massive things happened yesterday that a lot of people missed.
Yes, President Trump fired Christy Noam over at Homeland Security, but he also fired Tucker Carlson.
He sent a message to the whole brain rot click whoring circus.
They are not MAGA.
He is MAGA.
There's a pattern President Trump sees.
Once you see it too, you can't unsee it.
This is the Bench Bureau show.
President Trump is not subject to brain rot.
Christy Noam was captured by Brain Rot, the online incentive structure that causes people to do dumb things for clicks and ubiquity.
She's not the only one.
Tucker Carlson, Megan Kelly, Gavin Newsom, all terminal brain rot patients, but Trump is not.
And so he fired Christy Noam yesterday, as we'll get to.
He also fired Tucker.
Well, Noam was a disastrous secretary of the Homeland Security Department.
That's just the fact.
She took the single most popular issue in President Trump's issue set and proceeded to run it directly into the ground.
In April 2025, President Trump's approval rating on his handling of border security and immigration was 49%.
Strong disapproval was just 34%, according to NBC News.
Well, by February 2026, according to that same NBC News poll, his approval on the issue had dropped to 40% and strong disapproval had jumped 15 points from 34 to 49%.
That takes some doing, but somehow, Christy Noam achieved it.
See, the problem wasn't Trump's actual immigration policy, which remains highly popular.
Americans still want large-scale deportations, but they would like to focus on criminals first.
The moment that Noam was replaced in Minneapolis by Borders Art Tom Homan, the Democratic hysterics stopped.
That's not because Democrats suddenly became good-hearted border hawks on this issue.
It's because Tom Homan does what administrators should.
He quietly goes about his job in calm and collected fashion.
He actually implements, and the story isn't about him.
Well, that's the opposite of Christy Noam.
Let's give some examples.
So you'll remember this rather famous clip of Christy Noam from last year.
This is her in El Salvador, made up for TV, standing in front of a bunch of criminals who actually were not American deportees.
I'm here at Seacott today and visiting this facility.
And first of all, I want to thank El Salvador and their president for their partnership with the United States of America to bring our terrorists here and to incarcerate them and have consequences for the violence that they've perpetuated in our communities.
I also want everybody to know if you come to our country illegally, this is one of the consequences you could face.
First of all, do not come to our country illegally.
You will be removed and you will be prosecuted.
But know that this facility is one of the tools in our toolkit that we will use if you commit crimes against the American people.
We're continuing to gather more information, but this goes to show the assaults that our ICE officers and our law enforcement are under every single day.
These vehicle rammings are domestic acts of terrorism.
We're working with the Department of Justice to prosecute them as such.
We will continue to protect our ICE officers and in cooperation with other law enforcement agencies as well.
The White House has labeled the man who was killed in Minnesota as a domestic terrorist.
Is that something you agree with?
And have you seen any evidence to do that?
When you perpetuate violence against a government because of ideological reasons and for reasons to resist and perpetuate violence, that is the definition of domestic terrorism.
This individual who came with weapons and ammunition to stop a law enforcement operation of federal law enforcement officers committed an act of domestic terrorism.
Now, listen, I think that both the good and the pretty shoots were legally justifiable, but do I think either of them was a domestic terrorist with mass murder on their minds?
I don't.
Most Americans don't.
But Christy Noam proceeded to put the administration in an unwinnable public relations position by going whole hog.
And then she blamed everybody else in the administration for it, and then she denied it.
So just a couple of days ago, Senator John Kennedy, Republican of Louisiana, grilled her about this.
And as I've said previously in this hearing, is that we're getting information from a chaotic scene on the ground and relaying information to the American people.
I mean, that's basically a presidential ad, right?
I mean, pretty clearly.
Well, she apparently put together a sweetheart deal for her friends to produce exactly those commercials.
According to ProPublica, the Department of Homeland Security has kept at least one beneficiary of the nine-figure ad deal a secret.
Records and interviews show, a Republican consulting firm with long-standing personal and business ties to Noam and her senior aides at DHS.
The company that ran the Mount Rushmore shoot, called the Strategy Group, does not appear on public documents about the contract.
The main recipient listed on the contracts, according to ProPublica, is a mysterious Delaware company, which was created two days before the deal was finalized.
No firm has closer ties to Noam's political operation than the Strategy Group, which played a central role in her 2022 South Dakota gubernatorial campaign.
Corey Lewandowski, according to ProPublica, her top advisor at DHS, we'll talk a little bit more about Lewandowski in a moment, has worked extensively with the firm.
The company's CEO is married to Noam's chief spokesperson at DHS, Trisha McLaughlin.
Well, that's awkward.
Noam testified in front of the Senate that President Trump had cleared this use of taxpayer funds, and Senator Kennedy of Louisiana was having none of it on Tuesday.
How do you square that concern for waste, which I share, with the fact that you have spent $220 million running television advertisements that feature you prominently?
Sir, the president tasked me with getting the message out to the country and to other countries where we were seeing the invasion come from, with putting commercials out that told them that if they were in this country illegally, that they needed to leave or we would detain them and remove them and they'd not get the chance to come back to America the right way.
I mean, to me, it puts the president in a terribly awkward spot.
And I just, I'm not saying you're not telling the truth.
It's just hard for me to believe.
Me, President, as I do, that you said, Mr. President, here's some ads I've cut, and I'm going to spend $220 million running them, that he would have agreed to that.
Well, yeah, especially considering the first 15 to 20 seconds of that ad is Christy Noam riding a horse.
I mean, like, yeah, I do not think that President Trump sat there and greenlit that commercial.
I don't.
Well, that was a dumb move by Christy Noam.
It's one thing to direct cash to your friends to make commercials to burnish your future presidential run.
It's another thing to then turn around and blame President Trump for that outlay.
And that wasn't Noam's only scandal, of course.
Obviously, the most salacious scandal involving Noam was her relationship with Corey Lewandowski, which pretty much everybody in D.C. knows likely goes well beyond the platonic.
It's been going on for years.
As the Wall Street Journal reported on February 12th, quote, within DHS, Noam and Lewandowski frequently berate senior-level staff, give polygraph tests to employees they don't trust, and have fired employees.
In one incident, Lewandowski fired a U.S. Coast Guard pilot after Noam's blanket was left behind on a plane, according to people familiar with the incident.
Noam and Lewandowski's close relationship had already made Trump and his top advisors uncomfortable.
Lewandowski had initially wanted to formally serve as Noam's chief of staff, but Trump rejected the idea due to reports of a romantic relationship between the two, which has continued to bring up, officials say.
Again, all this according to the Wall Street Journal just a few weeks ago.
After photos in the Daily Mail showed Lewandowski going back and forth between his apartment and Noam's across the street last year, the secretary moved into a government-owned waterfront house on a military base in Washington that is provided to the leader of the U.S. Coast Guard.
The Coast Guard falls under Noam's purview at DHS during peacetime.
Lewandowski also spends time at the house.
Lewandowski is married.
So is Noam.
They have publicly denied the reports of an affair, but pretty much everybody knows that that's a bunch of bunk.
The pair have apparently been using a luxury 737 MAX jet with a private cabin and back for their travel around the country.
DHS is leasing that plane.
Now they're trying to acquire it for $70 million.
So yeah, not great.
Well, actually, Christy Noam was asked the other day about her relationship with Lewandowski.
It was super awkward because her husband was sitting right behind her.
You will notice in this testimony, she does not actually deny that she and Lewandowski are sleeping together.
Because if she had, it is quite possible she would have made herself eligible for a perjury charge.
Here, she was being questioned by a representative named Kamlager Dove.
So, Secretary Noam, at any time during your tenure as director of Department of Homeland Security, have you had sexual relations with Corey Lewandowski?
Now, the proper answer to that question would be no.
Come on, come on.
If somebody asked me, Are you sleeping with people who work for you?
The answer is no.
Then you get to, yeah, that question is garbage.
And why are you?
But the answer would be no.
If you don't say no to that question and you just go right to that question is truly offensive to me, I think we can all spot that you didn't say no.
I'm sorry, them's the breaks.
Bottom line is: Christy Noam was not doing a good job, and it was past time for her to go.
So, President Trump announced yesterday he would be replacing her with Oklahoma Senator Mark Wayne Mullen.
He put out a statement on truth quote: I am pleased to announce that the highly respected United States Senator from the great state of Oklahoma, Mark Wayne Mullen, will become the U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security effective March 31, 2026.
The current Secretary, Christy Noam, who has served us well, wink, wink, has had numerous and spectacular results, especially on the border, will be moving to be special envoy for the Shield of the Americas, our new security initiative in the Western Hemisphere.
We are announcing on Saturday in Torrell, Florida.
I thank Christy for her service at Homeland.
Well, you know, the president has decided to upgrade his employees by getting rid of Christy Noam, and you need to upgrade your employees as well.
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Now, Democrats, of course, are trying to claim victory.
Gavin Newsom, fresh off of whatever anti-Israel podcast he can find to try to regain those hard left voters, is saying that Noam's firing represents a sort of retreat by the administration.
Today is a perfect example of that with the first firing of a high-profile cabinet member.
He's in retreat, places like Minnesota, because the steel spine of citizens that stood up, real patriots in this country, pushed back against all that.
Christy Noam was doing a bad job and now he's going to put someone in like Mark Wayne Miller.
You think Mark Wayne Mullen is now going to be soft on the border?
It's obviously the right move.
And it shows one big thing: addiction to the clicks and the giggles of the internet rots your brain and leaves you on the wrong side of normal Americans up to and including President Trump.
In one second, we'll get to people who have had their brains rotted, including Tucker Carlson.
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Okay, so back to the brain rotted.
Okay, so yesterday, President Trump went directly after Tucker Carlson.
He said, Tucker has lost his way.
I knew that a long time ago, and he's not MAGA.
MAGA is saving our country.
MAGA is making our country great again.
MAGA is America first, and Tucker is none of those things.
And Tucker is really not smart enough to understand that.
All of Of which is obviously true, except that Tucker is smart.
He knows exactly what he's doing.
But like so many in the commentary business, the clicks and the giggles have contributed to a terminal case of brain rot.
True, actual, undeniable brain rot.
After Tucker said just a few days ago that Trump's action in Iran is, quote, absolutely disgusting and evil, Tucker has now declared that Chabad, a Chabad, that is the Jewish organization most famous for their telethon and also their warm approach to Jewish outreach, Chabad, was responsible for the war in Iran and was also seeking to destroy the Dome of the Rock and the Al-Aqsa Mosque, which is, I'm sorry, totally insane.
I mean, there are no levels to describe how that is.
That is so crazy.
That is clinically insane.
That's like, put that dude in a straitjacket nuts.
Chabad basically exists so that Jews who are interested in Judaism have a place to go to shul, to synagogue.
They're the people who stand around at public events.
You'll sometimes see them with phylacteries asking Jews if they wrapped to fill in that day.
They drive around with cars labeled mitzvah tanks.
Their actual philosophy, by the way, on the rebuilding of the third temple is that the third temple is rebuilt by acts of loving kindness.
I'm not even kidding.
That's what they say.
And Tucker basically just slandered Chabad.
Again, I'm in a state of shock.
It is hard to shock me when it comes to the levels to which Tucker Carlson goes because he has been an ever-degrading show.
But slandering Chabad as basically Hamas.
Well, actually, worse than Hamas, since Tucker actually thinks Hamas isn't really a terror group.
This is legitimately psychotic stuff.
I mean, psychotic break insanity.
Here was Tucker Carlson finding the real culprit for President Trump's.
Again, he's such a coward because Trump's the one who made the call, right?
Trump is the president of the United States.
Tucker still won't say his name.
In fact, when President Trump smacked Tucker yesterday, Tucker said, I still love him.
I still love him so much.
I mean, that's another piece of bull considering that back in 2020, he was talking about how eager he was for President Trump not to be president anymore in his text messages, but okay.
So here was Tucker labeling Chabad, you know, the guys who dance funny and wear long black coats and are extremely friendly with like fold-up card tables at public events.
Those guys are the actual force behind the Iran war, says Tucker Carlson.
And Chabad has been pushing in a pretty subtle way, unless you look carefully, for the reconstruction of the third temple.
And it seems like from the reading we did recently that those patches actually came from Chabad.
Well, any case, Chabad is pushing for the building of the Third Temple, but it's not just Hasidic groups from Brooklyn, and it's not just IDF soldiers.
There are amazingly a lot of American evangelical leaders, Christian Zionists, whose main point is rebuilding the third temple.
Now, how could an American Christian or any Christian call for the building of a temple whose presence, whose inherent presence denies Christ?
Well, naturally, Candace Owens jumped aboard this bandwagon of psychological breakdown too.
She put out a statement, quote, remember, they are digging tunnels in New York and in cities all across America.
It's so crazy.
All you could do is laugh.
I mean, truly crazy.
The digging tunnel story is about an unlicensed attempt by some students to dig a certain area from one building to another building in New York that was shut down by the city of New York.
The idea that Jews are rat-like digging tunnels.
In fact, the people who are digging tunnels are the people Candace likes, namely members of Hamas digging miles of tunnels, but they are digging tunnels in New York and in cities all across America.
That, of course, is a reference to the fact that there are several heavily Jewish towns in New Jersey, like Lakewood.
You should be absolutely aware of where the Chabad is nearest your home.
These people are dangerous.
Okay, this is where, my God, they are a radical sect of mystic occultists that follow the idea of a war messiah, and they harm kids if the work of Jeffrey Massen is to be believed, who worked under Anna Freud as the assistant director of the Sigmund Freud Archives.
Again, 40 of them were on a group chat while Chaim Braverman tried to organize my murder for me merely discussing their viewpoints.
It isn't your local mosque you need to fear.
Yes, I'm okay.
Quick test of whether your brain works.
If somebody went out into public and started trying to rap to fill in on Jews who acquiesce, do you run away?
If somebody goes out in public and shouts in a crowded space, Alahu Akbar, how do you react?
That's because you're not unwell.
But she then put out follow-up tweets.
A normal person's brain, when confronted with something they disagree with, hey, that's not true.
I can counter that with facts.
A Khazarian.
Okay, this is her usual anti-Semitic theory, which is that completely demonstrated, that the Jews are actually the offspring of a Turkic people called the Khazars, like a Turkic kingdom that for a brief period in time converted to Judaism in the early Middle Ages.
How can I make money and gold from this statement that is most likely, I mean, she's, I'm sorry, utterly indistinguishable from the work of Joseph Goebbels at this point, Candice Owens.
Well, here's the thing.
It would be funny, and it is kind of funny because people being cray is a little funny, but it actually is a little dangerous.
Chabads happen to be routinely targeted by both white supremacists and terrorists because they are so visible.
The Chabad of Palway, which is near San Diego, was attacked in 2019 by a white supremacist, killing one, wounding three.
Chabad houses have been targeted in Massachusetts, in Florida.
And of course, the Mumbai Chabad over in India was specifically targeted in 2008, killing a bunch of hostages.
Now, as always, here's the caveat.
That doesn't mean Tucker and Candace are responsible for crazy people who go and do violence.
They're not overtly calling for violence, but they are morally culpable for the things that happen to a certain degree and to a high degree because they continue to raise the temperature rhetorically and they are targeting a group of innocent people by calling them essentially terrorists and dangerous to the country.
And they are providing intellectual fodder for the violent deranged to go and do their work.
And of course, this latest bout of total insanity, I mean, true insanity, follows hard on Tucker's other insanity of late, from suggesting that Israel murdered JFK to labeling Christian Zionists the worst people on planet Earth to telling Ambassador Mike Huckabee that Jews should take a DNA test in order to claim historical heritage to calling Secretary of War Pete Hegseph culty.
Tranches of documents that have been released in the last 12 months, we've seen again and again, references to Israel, and there are a lot of references to Israel, have all been redacted for 62 years, 63 years.
I don't understand.
Like, why would that be?
And then the Christian Zionists who are, well, Christian Zionists.
Well, the president is good at his job because he makes adjustments.
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See, here's the thing.
President Trump is good at his job because he is not too online.
We've talked routinely on the show about the gap between the online world and the real world.
This is why I tell people to go out and touch grass and talk to actual humans.
However, that gap is growing wider every day.
So while Tucker and Candace and others in the brain rot horseshoe right keep claiming that Trump is losing his base, that isn't true, right?
These are the people who are claiming that the Iran war is going to break Trump's base.
I mean, because, again, he is the true believer in his own bizarre view of the world.
But if you listen to the online chatter, if you spend a lot of time on X, which is a mental ward, the entire right is against Trump, supposedly.
Why?
Because this is the place for the two online.
A lot of figures are looking at their click count, which is being jogged algorithmically, and they assume that their views are actually popular with the bulk of the American people.
And that's why some engagement farmers, you know, people who spend all day abandoning principles, but bragging about their view count, are claiming political victory, even while President Trump ignores literally everything they're saying.
Which is why, for example, sadly, Megan Kelly continues to pretend she's the vanguard of the conservative movement, citing you wait for it, her YouTube numbers.
Yesterday, because she's upset at me, she put out a statement saying that she wanted to thank her audience because they had 138 million views on YouTube in February alone, twice every show on CBS News combined.
And then she talks about my YouTube traffic and says that her YouTube traffic is significantly higher than my YouTube traffic.
Again, I'm not going to get into a contest of comparing statistics on episode downloads or YouTube downloads for specific episodes of Megan Kelly because that's not how I measure morality.
But that is clearly how Megan measures morality.
Now, some might point out that Megan's supposed bravery, because Megan tends to put herself out there as a brave figure standing up to the predations of the censors.
Some might point out that Megan's bravery stops precisely where the clicks end.
That she was pro-trans until the clicks turned against it.
At which point she suddenly became the most militant, cursing opponent of the trans movement.
That she was pro-Israel until the clicks turned against it.
At which point she started hinting of dark, sinister conspiracies to silence her.
That she was pro-Erica Kirk until the clicks turned against it.
At which point she went totally silent on Candace Owens, slandering the widow of her supposed friend.
There is not and has not been a political parade that begins without Megan Kelly at the front, that ends without Megan at the front waving a badon.
And as for her purported bravery against censorship, let's be clear.
And she's talking about every topic under the sun, particularly things like Israel.
Well, I shouldn't say every topic, almost every topic.
It turns out there is one topic she won't talk about.
That, of course, would be her continued complete moral betrayal of Erica Kirk to kiss Candace Owens' ass, even as she cosplays as the brave woman standing up against censors who don't exist.
She says she'll die before she bends the knee to those who criticize Candace Owens.
That's a bold stand, Cotton.
Well, now the brain rot is not relegated solely to the political right, of course.
Gavin Newsom, the governor of California, invited me on his show in January, where he told me explicitly that he is pro-Israel by his lights.
But of course, Gavin Newsom has become the cosmopolitan magazine of politics, offering a brand new position that will blow your mind every few days or so.
Because Democratic primary voters now suffer from a severe case of brain rot, Newsom is steering directly into it.
Well, the other day with the Pod Save America bros, those are the former Obama staffers who believe that their time with America's most craven politician on the Middle East makes them experts on the region.
Newsom was with them and he said that Israel was an apartheid state.
It breaks my heart because the current leadership in Israel is walking us down that path, where I don't think you have a choice but that consideration.
I mean, to say this is in America's interest at a time when affordability is at crisis levels, where you had an administration who literally got elected saying this is exactly opposite of what they would ever consider doing.
Well, now Newsom is so afraid of the brain rot left-wing base, he's decided to sit down with Hassan Piker.
That is the dude who finds himself profiled as the new face of the rising left by every major legacy media publication, all while hating the country with the fiery passion of a thousand burning sons.
He's also a multi-millionaire who believes he's a socialist and all the rest.
Here are just a few of this dog zapper's greatest hits.
So that's the person that Newsom is going to sit down with, because after all, better to cater to the brain rot than to demonstrate any real level of leadership.
This is the dude who wants to play Captain Normal in 2028 for the Democrats.
See, here's the thing about brain rot politics.
It's addictive.
It's basically the elp of politics.
It's the kind of stuff that's made in a foreign country like India.
It turns your mind to mush.
Take Piers Morgan, who doesn't seem to have any thoroughgoing politics.
Piers is and always was a click machine.
He's driven by fame and by clicks.
That's his prerogative.
But actually, over the past couple of days, he seems really offended.
Like he won't stop tweeting about the fact that I called his show the Jerry Springer of political TV on the show a little bit earlier this week, which it clearly is.
He then bragged about taking that as a compliment, which is why it's weird that he spent all of yesterday crashing out about that obvious observation.
And by the way, he was very upset about it, so upset about it that he decided to counter the accusation that his show has become a clown card filled with brain rot by bragging about his ratings, of course.
And of course, suggesting the only reason that I was not appearing on his show anymore was his criticism of Israel, which is weird because I appeared on his show for literally months after October 7th, even though he was already critical of Israel.
And I really haven't said anything on peers or about peers or to peers for probably a year.
I just stopped appearing on his show.
Why?
Well, honestly, he kept bringing on actual Nazis and the Nazi adjacent and then treated them all too often as voices worthy of a large audience.
Like, for example, these people.
unidentified
I believe that Jewish supremacy is the greatest threat to America.
And I think it's the greatest threat to the world today.
Listen, it's Piers' choice who he decides to have on his show and how he decides to conduct the kind of clown car battle royale that he does on a show every night.
And it's my choice not to join that circus.
We all make our choices and we all live with them, but some of us make our choices based on, you know, actual principles and not the clicks.
Here's the reality.
The circus atmosphere of the online world is actually driving real people truly crazy.
What starts as an online disease doesn't actually stay that way.
We're seeing that people who spend too much time online do get brain rot.
And that brain rot is going to harm the Republican Party and the right if they continue to follow it.
So you may remember this chart.
It was designed by Colin Wright.
It's become kind of a meme online, pretty famous chart.
So it shows three years, 2008, 2012, 2021.
And for each year, it shows a spectrum of political views, kind of a line left to right, and then a mark in the center.
The point of the chart is that as the left moved further to the left, the center also moved further to the left.
And if you stayed in the same place, you ended up on the right.
That's basically the meme, right?
That as the left sprinted out further and further to the left, the center, because the line lengthens, moves further to the left.
And the person who used to be center left is now center right.
You could run that plane in reverse.
What if the brain rot right starts to sprint directly to the further, further, further right or horseshoe around all the way to the left, scrambling the spectrum?
Well, the normie American is going to be left without a place to go.
And that is a problem.
That, of course, is a problem.
Well, this is what seems to be happening to young Americans who spend way too much time online.
Brain rot is, in fact, an infectious disease.
Young Americans who think differently than their elders aren't suddenly becoming wiser than their elders.
I know it has become a truism that young people are rarely wiser than their elders.
It's a truism because it usually is true.
But young Americans are spending a lot of time with the brain rot machine.
Their politics are moving to match, which is presumably why, according to a February 2026 survey, 45% of Republicans under the age of 44, for example, say that Jews are a threat to the American way of life.
If you're wondering about how Tucker or Candice get away with spewing total bullshit about Chabad, subsidizing, sponsoring, being the creators of the Iran war, that would be the reason why.
And again, just to point out how crazy that is, that is basically saying that Mormon missionaries are responsible for the Iran attack.
It's the equivalent.
It's also this brain rot, why 22% of young liberals, according to YouGov, say it's fine to be happy about the death of a public figure they oppose, and another 22% say they're not sure.
Well, you know, maybe one day those people will grow up, become the demographic majority, and the country will be ruled by total brain rot.
It could happen, but it's not happening yet.
And it doesn't need to happen because right now, the political incentives and reality are aligned if leaders would only see it.
Most Americans, liberal and conservative, are not totally dedicated or taken in by or influenced by or infected with brain rot.
Most Americans want normalcy and decency.
And whichever party discovers that first is going to win.
That's why Trump won in 2024, because while President Trump truths in bizarre ways and uses a cadence that many people find unpresidential, his policies are not connected to the online brain rot.
And thank God for that.
Well, people afflicted by online brain rot keep saying that America is somehow losing in Iran, which is hilarious just on the face of it.
America's action in Iran continues to devastate the Iranian government.
There are reports already emerging from Iran that top IRGC members are moving around the country, dressed as women, in order to avoid targeting from the air.
The Israeli ambassador to the United States, Yikil Leiter, he says that there are cracks in the actual structure of the IRGC.
At this point, we are hearing reports that some members of the IRGC have basically disappeared, not been killed, like just disappeared, aren't showing up for work.
Meanwhile, Iran's Air Force is basically Wright Brothers biplanes with some pop guns on them.
According to the Wall Street Journal, quote, Iran is sending its creaking Air Force into the fight.
Many of the planes are museum pieces, kept flying with scrounged parts and plucked and stand little chance against modern airplanes.
The age and weakness of Iran's warplanes, many purchased before the Shah was deposed by the revolution that established the Islamic Republic in 1979, caused Iran's planes to routinely crash during training exercises well before they could get into a fight.
Others were picked off on the runway.
On Sunday, Israel destroyed a U.S.-made F-4 Phantom II fighter bomber and an F-5 light fighter as they prepared for takeoff at Tabriz airport in northwestern Iran.
The F-4 entered service in the early 60s.
It has not been in production for nearly half a century.
The F-5 is of similar vintage.
None of Iran's air fleet has stealth capabilities.
Israel had an F-35 at Shotdown, what was called a Yak-130, which is an acquisition from 2023.
Usually it's used for light combat, but it's a training aircraft.
It's capable of half the speed of the F-35.
So, I mean, credit to the Israeli pilot, but again, that was a piece of superior weaponry shooting down a vastly inferior piece of machinery.
I mean, I'm sorry, but the world's best pilots armed with the world's best weaponry are not going to lose to the planes that were flying when John McCain went down in Vietnam.
Not only that, the Iranians still have not named a supreme leader because they think the Israelis will kill him if they do.
Spoiler alert, they are likely correct.
The U.S. is also escalating its bombing in Iran, so is Israel.
CENTCOM Commander Admiral Brad Cooper explained the current state of play yesterday.
When we say more to come, it's more fighter squadrons, it's more capabilities, it's more defensive capabilities, and it's more bomber pulses more frequently.
The amount of firepower over Iran and over Tehran is about to surge dramatically.
And part of it is that we're going to have even more basing.
And it's not just the UK.
We've had other friends step up and we're grateful for that.
And by the way, one of the things that is worth noting here is the number of ballistic missile launches by Iran has dropped from the hundreds on the first day of the war down to almost zero.
Well, Ben, first of all, it's just really cool to be wandering around the Pentagon, traveling with the Secretary of War during a war.
It's not something I ever thought I'd be doing, but here we are.
I got to go to a press conference at the Pentagon early on Wednesday morning.
And then yesterday, Thursday, I got to travel with the Secretary of War to Florida where we went to the Americas Cartel Conference.
And then we went to Tampa to CENTCOM, where he met with Admiral Cooper.
They discussed war plans and a skiff for several hours while we all waited.
And then we got to go to a press conference with both Hegseth and Cooper and ask them about what's going on.
So I asked Hegseth about these reports that an American pilot had been shot down.
He said that this is false, that this didn't happen.
And I think he exactly said to me that those reports of an F-15 being shot down are false.
As you can imagine, Iran is doing everything to peddle in lies, deception, and inflation of numbers and reality.
So there were a bunch of questions along the same lines, logistical questions about what's going on with the war in Iran.
I think it's really interesting, Ben, how these questions in general, especially down in Florida, are pretty serious, you know, honest questions about what's going on in this war, which is pretty different than what I'm used to in the White House.
And again, I should say, at this presser yesterday, this was reporters from, you know, local reporters in Florida, but then also reporters from all over the country who are really interested in knowing what's going on, which I found really refreshing.
Obviously, at the Pentagon, you have different reporters.
You have some of the reporters who are complying with the Pentagon's rules.
So you have a bunch of these more conservative outlets in the room, which a lot of these more liberal-leaning outlets do not like.
They really didn't like that the Daily Wire was in there, but I'm really enjoying this.
I'm enjoying this coverage.
And it's an honor to be up close to this historic events happening this week.
Yeah, I mean, look, they're going to be confident with me.
They're going to be confident with the reporters.
But in general, what we're hearing is that they're feeling really good.
Yesterday, during the presser, Pete Hegseth said that we have no shortage of munitions.
He was very confident that we're in a good place, that Iran cannot hold out for too long, that they're going to run out of the supplies that they need.
He was very confident.
He was posturing very confidently.
He had spent, like I said, several hours in that skiff with Admiral Cooper, reviewing what they had done, but reviewing also what they plan to do in the future.
Admiral Cooper, he's a really interesting guy.
He was up there explaining the status of the war, careful not to reveal things that he wasn't supposed to reveal, but also talking about the damage that we and Israel have already done to Iran and hinting that there's a lot more to come.
Of course, reporters want to know more specific questions.
We would always love to know more information.
For instance, Ben, I think it's really interesting.
There's a lot of reports out there that Isfahan, one of the nuclear facilities that we targeted during Operation Midnight Hammer, I'm seeing reports that it wasn't heavily bombed and that there's speculation that this is where some of the enriched uranium is.
I asked about that at the presser yesterday.
I didn't get any answers on that.
Hagseth kind of nicely said we wouldn't tell you that anyways, which kind of knew that was the answer that was coming.
And a little bit embarrassing to ask something that you might not get an answer to, but I guess that's just the name of the game.
And obviously, all of us have more questions heading into the coming weeks and months.
We even heard a report that this war might go until September.
We don't know, obviously.
We hope that it wouldn't go that long, but I'll hopefully be able to ask the Secretary of War about that.
And in the meantime, I'm really grateful that he's taking these questions, that Admiral Cooper is taking these questions.
And Admiral Cooper, by the way, very, very nice man.
I was getting aboard the military plane when we were leaving yesterday, and he said, Hey, I think I recognize you from somewhere and shook my hand and asked my name and outlet.
Well, President Trump is not going to set up a red line in Iran that he's not going to enforce, which means he's not leaving the worst of the worst in control.
So yesterday, he talked to Time magazine.
He said, I've killed all their leaders.
Fact, check, true.
One of the things I'm going to be asking for is the ability to work with them on choosing a new leader.
I'm not going to go through this setup with another Khomeini.
I want to be involved in the selection.
They can select, but we have to make sure it's somebody that's reasonable to the United States.
We have to be able to deal with sane and rational people.
So assuming that there isn't a full-scale coup and the government doesn't completely topple, even then, the pressure will stay on until we have basically a Venezuela situation that seems to be the president's off-ramp.
So what does all of this mean for 2026?
The answer is: believe it or not, probably not much.
If we win in Iran, there will be a boost for the administration.
How big?
Well, I mean, some boost, probably.
Most Americans don't see foreign policy as their top concern.
According to the latest Harvard Harris poll dropped just before the Iran action, Americans are split roughly 50-50 on Congress.
Foreign policy remains their literal last priority, last, like 1% as a priority.
2% for the GOP, 2% for independents, 1% for Democrats.
If Republicans lose, it won't be because of foreign policy.
It will be because of two factors: the natural cadence of midterm elections, the off-year elections usually go to the party out of power, and the economy.
There is a third wildcard: scandal.
Congressional scandals can bleed over and turn what is sort of a slow bleed into a gusher.
In 2006, Republican Representative Mark Foley was messing around with the congressional interns and had helped Nancy Pelosi take the House in a wipeout.
And that's why it is a good piece of news this morning.
Representative Tony Gonzalez dropped his re-election bid.
His district is hotly contested, but it turns out the Democrats not being able to nationalize a congressman cheating on his wife with a staffer who then set herself on fire.
Well, that at least will prevent a gigantic gusher for Republicans on that particular issue.
Meanwhile, President Trump has announced that he will make an endorsement in the Texas Senate primary soon to avoid a bloody primary conflict.
He put out a truth social in which he said that the primary race for U.S. Senate in Texas cannot, for the good of the party in our country, be allowed to go on any longer.
It must stop now.
We have an easy-to-beat radical left opposition.
We have to totally focus on putting him away quickly and decisively.
Both John, that'd be John Cornyn and Ken Paxon ran great races, but not good enough.
Now, this one must be perfect.
My endorsements within the Republican Party have been virtually insurmountable.
It is such an honor to realize and say that almost everyone I endorse wins and wins by a lot, especially in Texas.
So, unclear exactly who he's going to endorse, but he is obviously threatening to endorse.
Now, it may not matter.
I know the Democrats are trotting out James Tallarico.
He's the howdy-doody-looking Pete Booty Judge knockoff.
He's trade, who is running in Texas on the Senate side for the Democrats.
And they are pretending that he is some sort of open, honest, moderate, clean-cut, all the rest of it.
Well, the problem is the tape exists.
So it turns out he is in open borders, pro-transing the kids, far-left liberal.
He is one of these far too online brain rot politicians.
Here is tape that has emerged of Tallarico talking about Jesus and his own whiteness.
Bottom line to pretty much all of this: there is the real world, and then there is the brain rot that you see online.
Do not be taken in by the brain rot you see.
I know it's a tough exercise because, again, the human brain takes in information, it processes the information that it has, and it turns it into conclusions.
That's what we do.
When all that information is coming from X or when it's coming from Instagram or TikTok, what that tends to do is convince you of things that aren't true in the real world.
And that does have an outsized impact.
Thank God, the president of the United States is not dictated to by those same algorithms.
He is not controlled by anyone, least of all, the algorithm, which is wonderful for the United States.
Now, I'd recommend that Americans follow the president's lead.
Alrighty, folks, coming up, there's a whole other show that you miss if you're not a subscriber.
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I'm going to answer your questions, including one from somebody who's asking, How do I tell my liberal friends why we're fighting in Iran?
I'll sum it up for you in like 60 seconds so that you can use that at the water cooler with all of your lib friends.
Plus, we'll get to questions about the CIA and Richard Nixon and book recommendations for stay-at-home moms.
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