Rex Jones and Tim Tompkins analyze imminent U.S. troop movements toward Karg and Kishm Islands, debating whether 2,500 combat forces signal an invasion or a distraction against Iran's 150,000 defenders. While discussing a $3M verdict on social media addiction and criticizing MAID laws as authoritarian, they scrutinize the strategic viability of attacking oil-rich waters where Iran could mine the Strait of Hormuz. Ultimately, the hosts question if this potential conflict constitutes a suicide mission that risks domestic unrest and undermines U.S. military recruitment. [Automatically generated summary]
Dude, you're going to have to check it out because he's one of those people.
It was like I was talking to like a Kyle Serafin, right?
And like those military, like those police, like those government people, they will just like they have all the information, they have all the data, and they just like lay it on you in like five to like 10 minute chunks.
And like my thing was, I didn't feel like I didn't have enough time to interview him properly, which is why I want us to actually prepare notes, get questions for this guy.
This guy's been all around the world, like all these places that we talk about.
And this is the key thing about Michael Yan that's so interesting to me about him.
Everywhere that we've talked about, he's been there.
That's the crazy thing to me about a lot of the criticism.
A lot of the criticism of like Infowars people of like my dad, Harrison, you could even throw Owen into there.
It's from people that mostly do like POV cell phone videos and like recorded segments, media content, whatever you call it.
They probably call it content over and over again.
And when you tell them like, hey, there's people that have been doing a 30-year show in live format five to six days a week for three plus hours a day, it kind of breaks their brain a little bit because like that's, it's a different kind of media than what they're doing, right?
And like what you're seeing is like, it really is, it's a radio show on TV.
And I think the thing specifically is when you're live, you know, a lot of the stuff, you're talking, you're talking, you're talking, and you catch a lot of the instances that you see, like you think are mistakes.
And the whole point is to not focus on those things.
Well, here's what you do have because you're right about that.
Technically, like at a ground level, it's you and you're making the decisions.
It's your show, but you actually have phenomenal resources there, which is why we've been able to do a really high-level show in the short time we've been doing it.
You actually have a producer.
You actually have people that are in there switching, editing, helping you do things, flipping things in live time, giving you feedback on guests, giving you feedback on callers.
That's really useful because the reason why, Tim, you're actually able to do this at a really high level now is because we put in hundreds of hours in a very difficult environment.
We were switching for ourselves most of the time.
It's just been me and you, no, no fancy ad breaks or anything like that, no segments, just talking into the camera, connecting with their audience on real information.
And it's been really cool to see you in there and me in there too, us in there together as a team working together.
It's been really cool to see it from the outside looking in because we watch the clips too.
And I, and I just super much like, let me just gather my thoughts here.
I am super grateful to be able to have the opportunity just even for us to be doing this and then have it kind of segue into that because never in a million years would I thought I would have had that opportunity to speak in front of such a large audience.
And it's just every time I get up there, I'm like, that all I can feel is gratitude.
But you see how the spirit of making it a live show, and this is the difference between being a podcaster where you're two people talking to each other with mics looking at each other and a broadcaster where you're sitting in a studio talking to the camera to the audience, of course, looking and talking to the other host as well.
Hard to catch you this late at night on the East Coast.
Well, shout out.
If you ever want to catch up on a live stream and see a title that interests you, if you see my Twitter feed, it'll be a lot of what I'm covering that day.
Somebody this morning, I listened in, they were like, I've been listening since like 19, I've met your dad in 1990, and I've been listening to him since the early 2000s.
The National Assessment for Adult Literacy found the literacy rate for American adults in 1870 was a gross total of 11.5% from census data.
In 1979, that number was at 0.4%.
With most early estimations for literacy and education heading into the 21st century pointing towards an either firmware downwards trend of illiteracy, we are seeing the highest rates of illiteracy in 155 years.
They say everything, like the most critical things for a kid happens zero through five.
And I don't know about you, I assume for you as well.
Like my parents really took care of me during that time, educated me during that time, made sure you know how to do things, right?
Like, oh, yeah, the very foundational fundamental things that make you a capable adult and just human being in the future.
And when you have a period of time where kids literally can't see the faces of the people they're interacting with, you can't develop your linguistic skills.
A study done by Western Oregon University found in 2023 in their local school district: 54% of the seventh graders were found to be below proficient in reading, and 61% of third graders were below that threshold.
Nationwide, only 46% of students are proficient in reading.
So, how can you be a student if you don't know how to read?
Right?
How can you learn something if you can't understand it?
And the deal is: I mean, the kid has an iPad, the kid has cheesy poofs and Kool-Aid, or like that other kind of like, what's that fruit punch with the guy surfing on it?
Social media companies have been found liable for, I believe, this is children getting addicted.
And that's at the top of page one.
Yeah, I'm going to go ahead and read this here.
I'll read the title.
Jury in Los Angeles finds Meta YouTube negligent in social media addiction trial.
A jury in Los Angeles determined that Meta and Google were negligent and failed to warn users of the dangers associated with using their platforms in a high-profile social media case.
It's the first of several trials taking place this year that experts have characterized as the social media industry's big tobacco moment.
A jury in Los Angeles determined on Wednesday that Meta and Google's YouTube were negligent and failed to warn users of the dangers associated with using their platforms in a case that could have repercussions across the social media landscape.
The personal injury trial commenced in late January in LA Superior Court.
A young woman identified as Kaylee alleged that she became addicted to apps like Instagram and YouTube as a child.
Today's verdict is a historic moment for Kaylee and the thousands of children and families who have been waiting for this day.
The attorneys representing her said in a statement after the verdict, she showed extraordinary courage bringing this case and telling her story in open court.
A jury of Kaylee's peers heard the evidence, heard what Meta and YouTube knew and when they knew it and held them accountable for their conduct.
Well, when you have the ability to post videos and have people comment on those videos, and those people have their own channels and their own accounts, and they make videos about each other, that's the most form of social media that there could be.
They're comparing it to the 1990s when tobacco companies were forced to pay billions of dollars for lying to the public about safety.
Meta was ordered to pay $375 million in damages based on the number of violations because Raul Torres alleged the company failed to properly safeguard apps from online predators targeting children.
You know, they're going into – I'm not – I wouldn't be surprised if there's some predatory stuff going on between the adults and who they're talking to.
And she thought that her existence was too painful to stay alive and she wanted a way out.
And these countries, whether it's Canada, whether it's Spain, really, we call them liberal democracies, these authoritarian states that do this type of thing, they offer something called MAID.
No, I think this is illegal in the United States and should be illegal in other places.
Because at 25 years old, I know this is a difficult situation for her, but she should still have the ability to have people come in, give her the support and help her out of the situation.
If my little sister had been siloped into this and was going to go die or whatever, if they were taking her to go do that, I would stop that from happening with whatever means necessary.
I think that by me doing that, she would stand up out of the chair and want to stay alive because she would see that I gave my life for her so that she could be okay.
That's why I have a very big problem sometimes when it comes to governments being involved in personal aspects of people's lives because there is a threshold.
You know, let's take an example and not to diverge too far from this.
You know what they did in California, right?
Where like in school, like they're encouraging the kids to like, you know, do the whole transgender thing.
And if the kid wants to like change their genitals and everything like that, they can do that.
And the school can encourage and help them do that.
And the parent and they don't have to tell the parent.
And the parent doesn't have any control over its own kid.
And I don't know if I don't know if you have or haven't.
It's a book by Aldous Hugsley.
And that's a story.
It's kind of like 1984, but it's more a parallel into what we live in now, which is like all the people that are born, they come out of these vats and they have various degree of like brain damage and alcohol poisoning, you know, to keep them dumb.
They have various social classes.
They're encouraged to just have sex all the time, not have any real relationships, to take drugs, take this thing called SOMA, right?
To stay, uh, but like that's what we're entering towards now with these systems of medical control where it's like, yes, just sign up to be killed, just sign up for medically assisted dying.
I don't have it right now.
There's like Canadian ads where it's like, oh, the lights in the forehead.
They spent more time trying to create a case, spend all that lawfare instead of actually pouring the resources into getting the woman the help that she needs.
I don't know.
I may be stupid.
I may be dumb, but we couldn't get her like the world's best therapist and maybe give her all the support she needed.
And we decided that this was the option that we needed to do.
Like, there's nothing that adds up here that would be like, yeah, I need to make an entire case and try to win this so that this girl can kill herself.
And here's, here's one last point I'll make before we get off the story.
What you were talking about earlier with the government and with the individual, the state, the government itself, it doesn't have free will.
The state, its will is whatever the people are willing to tolerate, whatever the people won't stand up to.
And we've lived in a society for far too long that has been willing to just blindly follow the leader, blindly follow leadership just over and over again off various different cliffs.
And now it's reached a point, largely in the West, where they think they can do things like this.
They think they can start an illegal war.
They think they can kill their own citizens if they give it a nice name.
We deserve what we tolerate.
And ultimately, that's why, as individuals, as an individual, you're more important than the state.
The state is supposed to represent not all of us as a conglomerate, but all of us equally at the same time.
It is a very hard thing to go through, especially not knowing what your next move is because it's not like, you know, and I'm not trying to blackpill here and I'm not trying to make it worse.
It's not like you can just go in and pick up another job just like that.
Now he's got to put in all that work and find the applications and do all the resumes.
And then the worst part is, is LinkedIn and these job sites are using AI to screen and people aren't even getting called back.
There's people that have like a thousand applications out and haven't gotten but 10 interviews.
I'm actually going to try to just lower a couple things and try to try to keep the price range to where people can afford to buy items.
But yeah, I'm negatively impacted by this economy.
So it actually pisses me off, Tim, when you see these podcasters calling us all pannikins and whatnot because like we don't support the administration that they're doing.
And the best part about crypto is you can't track who's the owner of a crypto wallet.
And if you have an anonymous account, it is like the fucking lawmakers.
Let me gather my thoughts here.
It is basically like a paradise for scammers and people who are robbing the American people while they cannot put food on their table and people are getting fired.
I have met like 10 people that have gotten fired in the last 10, in the last few months.
It's a playpen for the government that you're describing.
It's a playpen for the bureaucrats, for the middle management, for the people in the military and the Navy and our own government, local, federal, you name it, who know about these events.
You might have some trickle-down info to bet on them and get rich because, hey, now we're looking at stock trading.
We got to give these new crooked politicians a new way to fraud.
Well, yeah, you got to think about our goals by doing this, right?
Because we want to control that oil depot.
That's where they export most of their oil from.
If we can take that, if we can have a beachhead there, then theoretically in the minds of the Americans, we can have some means and some say in controlling the strait.
Of course, there's hundreds of miles of coastline.
There's plenty of places for them to put missiles.
It'll be dealing with ongoing attacks.
It will require support, which is why you see more troops coming because those people are mostly going to be, hopefully, support people to help that operation.
There's a guy that likes to run around and break things, right?
And those people are attracted to the Army and to the Marines specifically.
But people that are in the Navy, I think they hit their, they were shy, like 147,000 of their recruitment goal.
So the ships, the real base of the American Empire, our control of sea lanes and global shipping, that's really under threat if we don't have the people and we don't make boats anymore.
Whenever there are only when you see this kind of deployment, it can only be one of two things.
It's an exercise or it's an actual mission.
I don't see this as an exercise.
And the fact that it looks like they're bringing in both SEAL Team 6 and Delta Force by themselves, those are just, you know, they're not an assault force.
They're good at rescuing hostages, that kind of thing.
But, you know, somehow they're getting activated, but they're being accompanied by the 75th Rangers.
And I recall in all the exercises that I scripted, you know, when they involved either Delta or SEAL Team 6, you're always involved.
The Rangers, you know, at minimum, they go in and seize an airfield, you know, and accompany that.
And then you got the 82nd.
So it looks to me like what's happening, that five-day, so that started on March 12th.
March 13 was when Trump activated the 31st Mew, the Marine Expeditionary Unit.
They started setting sail.
When do they arrive in theater?
Friday or Saturday.
Dude, that's right at the end of that five-day period.
The 11th Mew is about a week behind.
But what one scenario I could see as possible because they're bringing in multiple elements of the Special Operations Air Regiment.
It's not just one unit.
So that tells me they're going to have two vectors of attack at a minimum.
And the likely targets would be Karg Island up in the northeast corner of the Persian Gulf and Kesham Island, which is right there at the bend of the Strait of Homuz.
This is bad.
And then I got a note.
I got a note from a friend of mine who was in contact with somebody with Delta Force.
You just might have hit the nail on the head because if you keep somebody in a tired state to where they're only getting two or three, they're more susceptible to influence.
I'm going to be honest, but let's go back to the who was he was in contact with somebody with Delta Force, one of his friends.
And he said, this friend told me, he says, look, I heard from two different friends in the soft community, and that's special operations forces, that a bunch of tier one guys shipped out Thursday night for a major operation, probably an island, to take place by this weekend, that a lot of people were concerned the op had not been thoroughly thought through and that they'd be badly overexposed.
One guy said no effort was made at a blocking force.
And he said, I hope they send a priest along who can last rights us, which is not the kind of talk you usually hear from those types.
These are actual lines from a sitting U.S. senator.
And he's like, Lindsey Graham will also make statements like, but I told the countries that we might be willing, I might be willing to make a deal with them.
And you're like, you're a senator.
You work in the legislature.
And he talks about he acts like he's an imperial vizier or something.
You know, the word circling in the soft community.
And, you know, I think Trump was playing this to be up, beat, up, beat, up, beat, you know, manipulate the stock market.
When the stock market closes, you know, 4 p.m. on Friday afternoon, after that point, Trump will make an announcement.
Oh, you know, the negotiations are off.
The Iranians have rejected it.
They're being intransited.
So we're not going to show them.
Giving further support to that is Trump was supposed to attend a fundraiser, charity fundraiser at Mar-a-Lago Friday night.
He was going to be the special guest.
He's canceled that.
And he was supposed to speak at CPAC on Sunday, and he's canceled that.
So those are, again, what I call warning indicators that, you know, he's clearing his schedule, so he's not going to be available.
If the United States proceeds with this, and again, I have no inside information that they're going to, but I'm just, you know, looking at this analytically, you don't.
You don't deploy those units just to say, oh, let's, you know, let's put them out in theater.
Well, and you have to wonder just what in the world is going on here.
I mean, what would be the objectives?
Because there's been a couple of bits of information out, which is important on the side of this potential operation here.
Number one is that the Iraqi side has said, hey, you know, the PMF, the Shia militia that's part of the Iraqi security forces, they're aligned with Iran, but they are part of the Iraqi security forces.
They have been authorized to retaliate against the U.S. and Israel strike that kills their fighters, that has killed their fighters, rather, in Anbar province.
Because like, I just, you know, back in Iraq and Afghanistan, they were able to like brainwash the entire society to go with these conflicts specifically.
You got the WND, you got 9-11.
But now you just see the contrast.
People are not going to be fooled like that again.
At some point, the government has to understand that you can't keep tricking the American people over and over.
Like, when I snap my fingers, Rex, you will forget this ever happened.
True, but remember the last time they got involved, we took it as an opportunity to stabilize that region to where a lot of those rebel groups were able to take over specific parts.
You know, the first time the United States didn't really have a plan, but I think they've been planning for this one specifically.
So it's like, yes, it's like, I wouldn't be surprised if that's happening in other places and we just continue to fuel the fire because the United States does have a lot of firepower, but I don't know.
I mean, it's just so difficult because this is the first time in such a long time that we've fought people with a wind condition other than just survive.
And of course, their win condition is ultimately to survive, but it's also to keep that straight blocked.
That's how they're able to win the war in theory.
You got those three major choke points.
You got the Sumed pipeline.
You got Bob al-Mindab down there by Yemen.
And then you've got the Strait of Hormuz, of course, we've all been talking about as the weeks have developed and gone on over there.
And all of this is if we attempt to attack anybody inside, you know, on the ground inside of Iran.
Because, for example, and this is what the parliamentary speaker for Iran has said.
We're closely monitoring all U.S. movements in the region, especially troop deployments.
What the generals have broke, the soldiers can't fix.
Instead, they will fall victim to Netanyahu's dilutions.
Do not test our resolve to defend our land.
You know, we've seen a lot of times where Zelensky, for example, in the Russia-Ukraine war, he made a lot of boasts and a lot of pretty grandiose claims that he was never able to back up on the battlefield.
Do you see the Iranian side here being similar to that?
You know, we've seen the little old lady from South Carolina, Lindsey Graham, he's been talking about the need to take Karg Island.
General Kellogg, the Captain Crunch of the Trump administration, has also been suggesting it.
And why?
Well, so Iran pumps a significant amount of oil out of that, out of Karg, and that is then delivered to China and other places.
Note, just as a side note, but to show you how much this whole thing is backfired on the Trump administration, before the war started, Iran was pumping 1.1 million barrels per day of oil, and it was being sold at $47 a barrel.
Today, they're pumping 1.5 million barrels, so 400,000 barrel increase, and they're selling it at $97 a barrel.
So they're rolling in cash.
So this was supposed to, you know, remember, sanctions are supposed to decimate Iran, but instead it's making them flush with cash.
So you've got that.
But let's say, you know, the reason Scott Bessett and Trump lifted the oil sanctions on Iran.
Because remember, you apply sanctions to get control of them to try to force them to do your will.
Because Besant and Trump are terrified that with the skyrocketing price of oil, if they don't keep it tamped down by both making sure that there's enough supply out there that it's not going to be terribly severe, that then your choice now is to attack the island, get control of that oil, which Iran can then turn off.
and not allow it to go onto the island anymore, which then will reduce the oil supply that you're claiming you want to uphold.
I mean, it doesn't make sense.
And seizing that island doesn't make ensure that you're going to close off, open up the Strait of Hormuz.
In fact, just the opposite.
If you see Karg, the Iranians have already said, if you do that, we're going to mine the whole damn Gulf, not just the Strait, the whole damn Gulf.
Not a single ship will be safe to move.
So they'll completely shut it down.
Now, this gets back to what's the military objective of taking Kesha Island, which is down right there at the turn in the Strait of Hormuz.
It'd be one thing if the Strait was, if traffic could not pass through that narrow opening because you had guns and artillery pieces or missile launchers or whatever right there on that island, that that was the only thing preventing ships from going through.
Well, that's not the case.
And there are at least, I forget how many, I think there's 150,000 Iranians on that island.
So, yeah, no, like, I really, I don't think I was thinking too critically about this because I'm like, well, they've had plenty of time to think about all the strategies of how they can defend these particular assets.
So either Trump and the United States is trying to play 4D chess where they're not interested in the island and they're interested in something else, because I don't see how you take over something with 150,000.
You know, like a German modern artist, they'll put a porcelain toilet down and like throw paint on it.
And the people watching, like, it's incredible.
What's the process here?
What's the plan?
There is no plan.
They're just kind of throwing paint around and seeing what sticks.
And the thing that's so scary is you have all these generals around Trump, particularly Air Force generals that have told him like our bombs are everything.
Basically, the strategic value of the Air Force and like their standard in military, they want to be seen as people that have a 100% success rate.
That's why we like, we've hit over 7,000 targets in Iran.
Like that's why they have to keep repeating that stuff over and over and over again.
Campaigns ultimately can't be won from the air.
That's been proven over and over again in various conflicts.
What you need the air support to do is to bring in the ground invasion.
And then that's that's what we're going to start seeing.
And that's when you're really going to see.
I know I've ragged on the American military a lot because we can't get a lot of things done, it seems.
But, you know, as Tim has spoken to many times, when you see that combination of forces, that's why they think they can use 8,000 troops to take out that island.
You know, but the eerily similar to the Vietnam War, if you watch those videos, all of those commanders and all of the troops, I mean, sorry, not troops, all of the high-up commanders were going on public national television and saying, we're winning this war.
We're doing a great job.
And meanwhile, they're sweating in the background because they know they're losing it.
Well, like my great uncle, like he would talk about, like to my father, and I've heard some of these things as well.
They would talk about what would happen in Vietnam and like not the scripted war games, the actual war games, the experiments that they would run on people.
And like our military has been involved in stuff like this for such a long period of time.
And the special forces component of our military has really increased.
Like as other areas of the military have suffered, we found more and more special forces guys that want to do this job.
They're being told to do this job now.
So when you tell these guys to do the job, they're going to try to execute on the plan.
And you don't tell the, you don't deploy these guys and be like, oh, it's just a training exercise.
It's not real.
It's not a big deal.
We watch the news.
We watch Trump tweet.
We watch what he says.
Trump promises Donald Trump, what is his promise?
What is the peace president's promise, Tim?
Total obliteration.
Is that not what he promises to the people that oppose the empire?
I'm a big believer in putting boots on the ground, not necessarily into Iran, but taking Carg Island and also taking the Strait of Hormuz.
Look, we kind of need to do it the way the Romans used to do it.
You know, you need to put your legions on the ground to secure the territory and give them confidence that they can do it.
That we can open up the strait.
Look, I know there's risk involved.
There's always risk involved, but those kids, those young men and women, they understand the risk involved on taking both Karg and opening up the Strait of Hormuz.
He said there's the older boomer, and then there's the ones that were towards the tail end, which were the newer boomers, and they grew up in two different worlds.
So now I do need to make this distinction because I think going forward, we'll start doing that, right?
We can't put all the boomers in it, right?
But the ones that were earlier are that that guy is a fucking old boomer.
They don't actually have any real dirt on our government, but they have this fake narrative Star Wars story they've spun that really convinces people on the Democrat side.
And there's a lot of corruption there as well.
With Trump, Trump is in bed and compromised partially by the Israeli regime.
If you want to see me to start your day, drink your coffee, go work out, go to work, whatever you want to do, 8 a.m. to 11 a.m. I'll be hosting American Journal tomorrow.