Trump’s Ceasefire Was A HUGE Lie To Hide Military Buildup
Jim Fetzer, Dave DeCamp, and Max Blumenthal expose Trump's ceasefire as a lie masking a massive Marine deployment to the Middle East for potential invasions of Karg Island and Conorock. Despite a deal approved by Pakistani PM Shahbaz Sharif halting hostilities in Lebanon, Israel launched "Operation Eternal Darkness," killing over 1,500 and displacing millions while officials like JD Vance falsely claimed the region was excluded. The guests accuse Netanyahu of using the U.S. as a proxy for a "Greater Israel Project" driven by Smotrich, implicating Kushner and Witkoff in negotiations despite conflicts of interest, and suggest Democrats are complicit in ignoring Beirut's civilian casualties amidst alleged Pentagon-Israel collusion. Ultimately, this deception reveals a strategic effort to expand borders under the guise of peace, challenging the administration's narrative of stability. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: CohereLabs/cohere-transcribe-03-2026, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
|
Time
Text
Fake Ceasefire Cover Up00:08:11
Was Trump's big ceasefire all one big cover up, a fake ceasefire in order to build up missile stocks, troops in the region?
It sure seems that way.
Reports overnight from Reuters specifically, and now other news outlets weighing in on this, the thousands of Marines are being rapidly transferred from San Diego straight into the region, preparing for a potential ground invasion, maybe take Karg Island, Conorock, other spots.
Why send all these American forces if we're ironing out a ceasefire?
We're sending Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner.
They're on the case.
Well, it doesn't seem like the U.S. and Israel have any intentions at all of a real ceasefire or meeting any of Iran's 10 point plan.
Yesterday, the Trump administration was already taking the big victory lap over what it called a ceasefire breakthrough with Iran.
But that celebration didn't last long at all.
Almost immediately, Israel launched a series of terror attacks inside of Lebanon.
Lebanese now saying, remember April 8th the way that you remember October 7th?
The way that we remember 9 11, April 8th, Israel bombing civilians, killing hundreds, reportedly more than 300 people killed, throwing the entire ceasefire agreement into doubt.
That puts the total of Israel's destruction in Lebanon at reportedly over 1,500, you guys, 1,500 people.
Now, millions are being displaced, thousands are injured.
They are still digging out of the rubble.
You saw for yourself entire buildings coming down.
On top of, I mean, that is not what you call a precision strike.
A precision strike is not a real thing.
It's a paradox.
It makes us think that you can just sort of pluck out Hezbollah.
Well, they're saying now that the value of Hezbollah is entire neighborhoods.
Okay.
And stopping this land grab was absolutely, according to Pakistani negotiators and the Trump administration themselves, part of the deal.
The Iranian government demanded an end to the IDF's expansion in Lebanon, and they did not do that.
Now, today, Both the IDF and Prime Minister Netanyahu have said, absolutely not.
We are not going to stop in Lebanon.
That was never part of the deal, and we're not going to do it.
Here is a video that you can seek out for yourself from the Prime Minister saying they are going to continue to strike Hezbollah with full force and continue inside Lebanon.
They're couching this as we're going to secure the security of just Israelis because Hezbollah has been retaliating on behalf of Iran and on behalf of Lebanon itself, which is being invaded.
And so Hezbollah now is attacking.
Israel in retaliation.
Now, I just wonder if Israel can exclude Lebanon from the ceasefire, can Iran exclude Israel?
I'm just curious.
Can the ceasefire just be between the United States and Iran?
Is that a thing?
And is the Trump administration really going to blow up the ceasefire so that Israel can invade Lebanon and genocide them the way they did Gaza?
Is that, we're just going to have to watch that now?
Is that what's happening next?
What makes this even more revealing is that the Trump administration had been pushing hard for a ceasefire for days.
Behind the scenes, officials were reportedly involved in shaping the message that Pakistani prime minister ultimately released, meaning they handed Pakistan a cheat sheet that did include withdrawal from Lebanon on behalf of Israel.
Trump himself had signaled support for the Iranian proposal, which he called a workable basis from which to negotiate.
Now, why the Trump administration ever thought that they could ask Israel to withdraw when they have already locked their jaws on Lebanon?
I don't know because the Biden administration could not get them to unlock their jaws on Gaza.
How did we think that we could do this?
I'm so curious.
Now, joining us today to talk about this, this obvious scuttlebutt, is Dave DeCamp from antiwar.com and Max Blumenthal from the Gray Zone.
Thank you, gentlemen, for coming.
Great to see you guys.
Yeah, good to be here.
All right, we'll start with you, Dave.
What do you know about the peace negotiation and the obvious pee in the pool that Israel is doing in Lebanon?
Yeah, well, I mean, what we know as a fact is that the ceasefire that Iran agreed to included a ceasefire in Lebanon.
It was in the statement that was released by Pakistan's prime minister that looks like it was probably drawn up by the U.S.
We know at least that it was approved by the U.S. before it was issued.
And not only did Israel not just continue their bombing, they escalated in the worst way imaginable and launched Operation Eternal Darkness, which I can't think of a more evil name for a military operation.
And killed hundreds of people, as you were saying there.
And then what does Trump say publicly?
He says, oh, Lebanon wasn't included.
And the White House says that.
JD Vance, you know, what you mentioned there that, okay, if the deal is only between the U.S. and Iran, does that mean that Iran and Israel could still fight?
Because JD Vance said that it would be dumb for Iran to let the negotiations fall apart over Lebanon.
But at the same time, in the same breath, he said that the ceasefire includes an end to attacks on Israel and the Gulf Arab states.
So, it's a really bad sign for these negotiations.
And apparently, Vance is flying into Pakistan with Kushner and Witkoff, who they should not be anywhere near this if the Trump administration was serious.
So, based on the behavior of both the U.S. and Israel just in the day after this ceasefire was declared, things really, really aren't looking good.
And then the messaging from the Iranians is that they're not going to back down on these core demands that they've put out.
The idea, well, first of all, I find it very fascinating because this is right at the end of the sort of, we're getting approaching the sort of 60 day window here for the authorization of, you know, use of force, which would then have to recalibrate inside the White House where they'd have to come up with another operational name.
Today, reporting from the White House is that Operation Epic Fury has now, they're talking about it in the past tense.
They're saying basically that that was a success.
It's done.
Oh, so they can, now we have a pause.
Now we'll reset the clock.
That's why all these troops are moving into position.
And you see multiple reports about that.
So I'm just, I'm not buying the ceasefire at all.
I know I'm a pretty cynical person, but where do you fall on this?
Are you buying it?
Is this just a reset moment in order for us to put more troops and weapons in place?
Well, maybe they have to reset the name of the operation because we rebranded it as Operation Epstein Fury and it just kind of fell flat.
Branding.
But I totally agree.
And Dave presented a very succinct analysis of how the ceasefire has fallen apart.
In just a few hours, with JD Vance's dishonest comments claiming that Lebanon was never involved, when we could clearly see that Lebanon was never part of the terms, when we could clearly see because the U.S. supplied a draft to Pakistani Prime Minister Shahbaz Sharif, which he then proceeded to copy and paste onto his ex account, including the header to be posted by PM Shahbaz Sharif, which he then edited, which included Lebanon.
So they're lying.
JD Vance is lying.
Everyone in the U.S. administration is lying.
Lebanon was always included.
Israel called, decided we're going to massacre 250 people, bomb a funeral, bomb areas in Beirut we've never bombed before, and that will be it.
We're going to provoke Iran to respond, and then we're going to blame Iran.
And they blew up the ceasefire because they know that Donald Trump will not stand up to them and that they control when Donald Trump starts a war and when Donald Trump ends a war.
Iran's War Dividends00:02:06
And we know that Israel is not happy with the war ending here or being left alone because it cannot fight on its own.
We should also mention the ground operation that Israel's waging in Lebanon is not going very well.
So resorted to a performative massacre in order to shatter the ceasefire.
While U.S. troops, Marines are being deployed to the region for what appears to be the next phase, and that this ceasefire was exploited to allow rearmament, redeployment, and possibly send some new interceptors to Israel as it was running out.
And it will not change the fundamental dynamics, which are determined by the choke point or determined at the choke point of the global economy in the Strait of Hormuz.
20% of global commerce passes through there.
Iran is now implementing a toll system using cryptocurrency to charge tolls for the passage of ships.
And that means that countries that wish to have an economy have to avoid the U.S. and deal directly with Iran, which means that Iran has become more powerful now than it was before the war.
It means that Iran is getting real dividends from this war through the application of force and the demonstration of their successful military doctrine.
And that means that the elements of Iranian leadership, the IRGC, and their popular base in the country that support the war are gaining strength, while those that have always advised negotiations with the U.S. and re implementing the JCPOA, which never gave Iran any dividends because the U.S. never gave them sanctions relief, are being weakened.
And so we can clearly see if the dynamics continue to play out.
That there's very little the U.S. can do alongside Israel except cause more death and destruction while Iran gains power politically.
The Greater Israel Project00:06:46
Dave, I want to talk about the international response to the Beirut bombing because it's horrific.
It should offend every conscious human soul.
And yet, the political response has been tepid at best.
I was thinking today about in 2015 when, you know, all my Facebook friends put an Eiffel Tower overlay.
Over their bio because of 12 deaths at Charlie Hebdo.
I don't see Lebanese flags.
I don't see international outrage.
I don't understand it.
Can you respond to anything that you might think of that is an actual flex of condemnation?
Well, I mean, I got the same feeling from reading the statements from European officials.
You know, we saw them say, you know, really tepid language, as you said, no strong condemnation of what Israel has done here.
And I think the most shameful as Americans is the fact that this isn't just Israel bombing Lebanon.
You know, they wouldn't be able to do this without our bombs and fighter jets that our government maintains.
And as Max said there, they bombed a funeral.
And I saw the pictures of the aftermath, and you could see there are coffins that were destroyed.
I mean, how can you possibly justify that?
And it does look like the purpose was to just kill as many people in Lebanon as they could in the day to just inflict this terror.
And I don't know what you could call it other than a terrorist attack.
And, you know, people like to speak in terms of 9 11s.
I don't know if you remember after October 7th, that was something Tony Blinken loved to say was like, oh, based on Israel's population, October 7th was like seven 9 11s.
I forget the numbers, but I mean, Lebanon is a tiny country, the population is like five and a half million.
And More than a million, I think the number now from the UN, and this is just people registered, is 1.2 million people displaced.
I mean, this is a total catastrophe and humanitarian disaster.
And it certainly does not get spoken about properly from these Western officials that we see putting out these statements.
No, it's the equivalent of 89 11s or 76 Pearl Harbors, max.
But this is all part of the plan.
And as Natalie mentioned earlier, You have the Finance Minister of Israel, Smotrich, announcing that Israel will begin expanding its borders into Lebanon, specifically part of the Greater Israel Project, Syria, and specifically Gaza.
And he says this is the only viable solution to ensure Israel is well protected.
Watch this.
Pakistan in person peace talks.
And this is what the table is also saying.
That's the wrong side of it.
Sorry, that's the wrong one.
There we go.
Alcoz Otea, Fagdim, Ramim, Ves, Regal Medinit the Sayemet, Esregal Medinit the Sayemet, Duda Shamon, Shoregat Halutin, Trion, Halukatar, Zagamat Medinat, Tirob, Tierrega Medinit the Sayemet Beaza, Tahimet Vulotenu, Tierrega Medinit the Sayemet Elevanon, Tahimet Vulotenu, Alalitani, Le Gurod, Maria Gana, Tierrega Medinit the Sayemet, the Sura Keterahirmon, the Hights, the Fahot, Ken, yes, Regal Svait.
So, yeah, they're, I mean, they're not hiding it.
This is all part of that Greater Israel project that Mike Huckabee talked about with Tucker Carlson.
Take it all.
Take it all.
And that's exactly what's happening here.
But reports are, Max, that the Israeli military is in disarray.
And to Dave's earlier point about ground forces, I mean, there's a real problem of like a ground invasion into Lebanon with this Israeli military in sort of disarray.
What do you make of that?
Well, Bezalel Smotrik, being one of the biggest psychopaths in the most fascistic government in Israeli history, which is saying a lot because these governments have been fascistic since the beginning, is speaking to a domestic audience there.
This is not for our consumption.
We're not supposed to see that.
And that's because he comes from this party that used to be outlawed even in Israel called Otsma Yehudit, or Jewish Power.
They are the most extreme.
Party on the spectrum, and they're polling very well among younger Jewish Israelis.
They're the number three most popular party among the Israelis who have served in these genocidal wars for greater Israel.
And so he's just speaking to that constituency and promising them some gigantic reward for all their sacrifices as the military falls, as you said, into disarray.
And this is something that isn't even being hidden.
You hear this complaint from members of the Israeli army's general staff.
Bezalel Smotrik's son is a perfect evidence of that.
He was nearly killed in the initial wave of the Israeli ground invasion into Lebanon, along with.
Many of his fellow soldiers, and his life was saved by Arab doctors inside Israel.
While his father has called for Arabs and Jews to be segregated in hospitals and for Arabs to be prevented from treating Jews because he is a segregationist.
So that's how desperate he got, and it speaks to the desperate straits of the Israeli army.
Greater Israel was the objective of Netanyahu in getting the U.S. and Donald Trump to.
Use the US military as an Israeli proxy against Iran.
A month later or more, the United States has lost the war.
Okay?
They've lost.
And that means that the project of Israel as this regional hegemon that was going to shatter Iran and actually then install some kind of puppet government, which would have forced Russia and China to deal with Israel as the Greater Israel Project actually started to consume the US government itself, that Is not happening right now.
And Israel, as a regional hegemon, has been defeated by Iran to this point.
A New York Times, the New York Times correspondent in Lebanon, or one of them, whose name I'm forgetting right now, she tweeted after the Israeli massacre yesterday that Christians and Sunni Lebanese and Lebanese who never would have supported Hezbollah are now calling on Iran to intervene and attack Israel to save Lebanon.
IDF Offices in Pentagon00:02:59
And she actually had to delete that tweet.
Because she was getting attacked by Zionists.
It was very cowardly of her to delete that, or maybe the New York Times made her delete it.
But that's the truth.
That's the reality the Lebanese public is now rallying around Hezbollah and rallying for an Iranian response.
This is in direct response to the kind of savagery and extremism we're seeing from people like Bezel El Smotrik.
And that is not the dynamic that Israel promised would play out when it launched this war.
Dave, the Times of Israel, because now of the New York Times report that, well, that Max was talking about the correspondent there, but the New York Times, of course, this bombshell report about being dragged into this war, into Israelis' war back on February 11th and that Oval Office meeting where Netanyahu came and did a, it went into the Situation Room and did a 90 minute presentation with Mossad up on the screen and not, and all of this.
So the Times of Israel now saying that Israel dragged the United States into war isn't just wrong.
Saying that, Is anti Semitic.
So you're not allowed to say it.
But as Tucker revealed, I think we've talked about this in the past, but he succinctly summed it up about how the IDF literally has desks, permanent offices and desks inside the United States Pentagon and where we sort of do the bidding of the IDF and Mossad inside the Pentagon.
Watch.
We got to stop it.
But you could begin with no, you can't serve in government if you've got two passports.
Sorry.
Period.
At any level, DMV up to DOD.
No.
And if you've served in a foreign military, come on now.
Especially when the US is at war.
You can't serve in the U.S. government if you've worn a foreign uniform.
Of course not.
You can't hold elective office if you fought for somebody else's country.
Because by definition, you have fought for aims that are not the same as ours.
In fact, they may be in opposition to ours.
You may have fought against what's good for the United States.
Certainly, if you served in the IDF, you fought against what's good for the United States, knowingly or not.
Probably didn't mean to, but you did.
You shouldn't go to jail for that, but you can't be allowed to work at, say, the Pentagon.
But right now you can.
And by the way, there are IDF officers working out of the Pentagon because they have an office within the Pentagon, as they do at CIA and Langley.
A foreign government has offices in our critical executive branch headquarter buildings.
That's just not healthy.
IDF soldiers who walk the halls and actually are kind of rude to other people that work at the Pentagon and sort of like that they kind of run the place.
How are we allowing the IDF, Mossad, To have this infiltration inside of our government, inside of our Department of War, Dave.
Pete Hegseth Exposed00:09:52
Well, I mean, this goes back many years, of course, but with this current administration, I mean, it's almost their soul beholden to Israel.
It's just kind of to another level.
And what was really interesting, I thought, about that New York Times report was that pretty much every senior Trump advisor was named as being kind of saying what Netanyahu was telling them was BS.
That was actually the quote from Marco Rubio.
And also, they had John Ratcliffe saying what Netanyahu was telling them was farcical.
And I thought that was very significant because.
If you go back before the June 2025 war, as I understand how things went down, is that we knew that U.S. intelligence was saying there was no evidence Iran was building a nuclear weapon, but the Mossad laundered intelligence through the CIA, through John Ratcliffe, claiming that they were.
And now we have Ratcliffe, not on the record, but in this report, saying that he was doubting the Israeli intelligence.
And I think that's potentially a good sign that they know that this whole thing has been a disaster and that they're looking for a fall guy.
And the fall guy, Is going to be Pete Hegseth because he was the only one in that report who they said was totally on board with this.
And when it comes to kind of that control, like, you know, how have we, has our government become this kind of subservient to a foreign power?
People like Hegseth and, you know, our demonstration of that, they have this kind of ideological underpinning.
You know, he's a Christian Zionist who wants the third temple to be rebuilt.
He shares common goals of people like Bezalel Smotrich.
And then, of course, you have also the Jewish Zionists in the government and Jared Kushner, who is family and friends with the Netanyahu's.
And somehow he's still involved in these negotiations.
And during the previous negotiations, which were a total farce, he and Witkoff were apparently convening with Netanyahu every day, speaking to him every day about this.
Yeah.
So they're in charge.
And Trump has been open about the fact that one of his biggest donors cares more about Israel than the U.S.
So this stuff is just so in our face now.
That's why that New York Times report.
You know, it probably didn't surprise anybody that Netanyahu gave this big briefing to convince the U.S. to go to war.
But the two people who look really bad from that report are, as I mentioned, Pete Hegseth and also President Trump, because it just shows that he was doing this going along with whatever Netanyahu and Israel was saying.
And I think the only hope we have to kind of come out of this soon without another war and everything is if Trump, you know, decides to take the step to actually put pressure on the Israelis.
But unfortunately, we're just not seeing any sign of that after.
After this so called ceasefire was announced.
Right.
Max, I know you have to go.
You have another commitment.
So thank you for being here.
Do you have any final thoughts on Tucker and his reporting since this week of possible nuclear fallout?
Well, I think just to wrap it up, Dave hinted at Pete Hegseth taking the fall.
And now there's this internecine war, the civil war brewing inside the Pentagon between Hagseth and Dan Driscoll, who's the Army secretary.
Going up against Pete Hegseth, who was a mid level officer in the National Guard, I think Hagseth's at a clear disadvantage.
He could be the fall guy.
Remember, he was exposed during Signalgate, he got exposed last week.
For somehow, he's the only one getting exposed for insider trading when, uh, you know, everyone from the Trump kids down to Barron Trump, uh, the Witkoff kids.
I mean, they're all involved in it, we know they're all involved in it.
He's the only one who gets exposed.
All these leaks are coming out about Hague Seth.
So, you know, it will be delicious to see his coup de grace.
But at the same time, we never see the leader who's responsible for this face any consequences, as Tucker pointed out.
And that's Donald Trump.
It was Donald Trump in that February 11th meeting that we all now know about who made the decision almost alone to follow Netanyahu into this calamitous war, which has sent the global economy.
Into a crisis that will last years.
And, you know, what kind of accountability will he face?
None from within his inner circle, because as we can see, they all knew this was disastrous, would be disastrous, that Netanyahu was lying to Trump, and none of them faced Trump.
They're all yes men and yes women, like Susie Wiles, who are afraid to tell Donald Trump the truth.
And so here we are.
Donald Trump will have to face accountability, I guess, at the ballot box in the midterms.
And JD Vance will face consequences for standing by Trump and for lying about this ceasefire.
But there should be legal accountability for threatening the death of an entire civilization, for attacking civilian infrastructure.
And we have to consider that the Democrats are doing nothing, nothing to hold Donald Trump accountable, which is another reason why he's getting away with it.
I believe that Chuck Schumer, in his heart of hearts, the Democratic majority leader, actually supported this war at its outset.
And now he wants it to continue because it's harming Trump.
So they're not going to do anything to stop it.
Right.
On the contrary.
Oh, I just wanted to add yeah, the DNC today refused to condemn APEC.
So the Utah party is, I mean, it's almost comical.
Like, yes, this is all terrible.
There's this mass civilian casualties at the hands of this government that this political action committee supports, but we cannot condemn it.
It's wild sauce.
Thank you so much for being here with us, Max.
Dave, will you stay a little bit longer?
We want to ask you a few more questions.
Sure, yeah.
I just want to remind Max, I know he was saying before he goes, Max, I just want to put this back up on the screen to remind you that saying that the United States was dragged in by Netanyahu is anti Semitic.
Saying that Israel dragged the U.S. to war isn't just wrong, it's anti Semitic.
I want you to think about that as you go about the rest of your day, okay?
Yes.
Wisdom from Shlomo.
Thank you.
Thanks, Max.
Thanks, everybody.
Thanks, Max.
So, Dave, yeah, I wanted to ask you about the The players now who are flying to the Middle East, the envoy that's going to be meeting over the ceasefire, putting this 10 point plan in place.
Here's a graphic where you can see Kushner.
You can see the players that are there.
They are.
You got JD Vance, Steve Witkopf, Jared Kushner, Mohammed Geliboff, Abbas Aragachi from the Iranian side.
And this will be, of course, in Pakistan.
Why should they trust us again?
That's a good question.
I mean, the fact that Steve Witkopf and Jared Kushner are anywhere near these negotiations, I think, is a bad sign.
I think they got to stay home.
You know, especially Witkopf's performance this last round.
You know, he went on Fox News, I think, and just, you know, this is during the negotiations when they supposedly want a deal.
And he said, oh, they could have enough nuclear material for a bomb within a week.
Just no evidence whatsoever backs that up.
And then, as I mentioned before, you had, you know, Kushner was conferring with, Netanyahu during the negotiations.
And even though he's not technically a member of the administration, he's been deeply involved in all of these so called deals that we've seen in the Middle East.
The one in Gaza, he was very involved in.
And just today, the IDF shot a nine year old girl in the head.
People have been getting killed there every day, which has been completely overshadowed by this war with Iran.
You know, JD, it's interesting that Vance is going to be there.
Unfortunately, I mean, you know, we were just discussing that New York Times report.
And as Max kind of said there, it says in that report that nobody opposed the war more than JD Vance, but he sure did not seem like it in all of his public comments.
He stood by and, after the U.S. bombed an elementary school and just, you know, supported it and played into a lot of the propaganda.
And, you know, the questions that he took, I think when he was in Hungary yesterday about this, he made some remark like, oh, the parliament speaker, Golubov, he said something like, oh, I don't think his English is very well.
It's very good, you know, that he didn't understand the points or something.
I mean, that's not a good sign.
That doesn't sound very diplomatic.
And he's also, you know, going along with this lie that the ceasefire didn't include Lebanon.
So those are all bad signs.
And I think if they really want to deal, you know, they're going to have to be serious and they're going to have to, you know, respect Iran's positions here.
And sending Jared Kushner and Steve Witkopf doesn't seem very respectful to me.
Yeah, I agree.
No, I agree.
And let's not forget the stance.
You know, people think, oh, this JD Vance is going to be the savior when he runs eventually.
They're all in cahoots and they're all part of this.
And they have fully supported this war.
There's been really no daylight at all about it.
Dave DeCamp, antiwar.com is a must read website.
Please check it out.
And can you tell everyone the name of the podcast as well?
Yeah, it's called Anti War News with Dave DeCamp.
It's on YouTube or you could, you know, wherever you watch stuff and you could listen to the podcast as well.
Awesome.
I watch it on X.
I appreciate it very much.
Dave is doing amazing work covering this ceasefire.