Can We Just Bomb Your Nuclear Sites, Pretty Please?
Co-hosts Jared Yates Sexton and Nick Hauselman break down the latest U.S. attack on Iran, where Trump ordered a dozen massive bombs dropped on nuclear sites, then claimed it wasn’t war - just “MIGA.” The Pentagon admits they don’t even know where the uranium is. Oh yeah, Congress was barely informed.
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Hey everybody, welcome to an action-packed episode of the Muckering podcast from JVS Sex.
I'm here with Nick Halsman.
Nick, you are heading out of the country very, very, very, very soon.
We're not going to talk to you for a little bit.
Are you excited?
How are you feeling?
There's geopolitical intrigue.
I mean, I'm worried about coming back and whether I'm going to get hassled or not, or maybe like making it harder to get back in the country based on the things I might have said publicly about the administration.
But if anybody's out there who lives in Japan, let me know because I would love to have a real authentic experience versus the typical, you know, touristy thing that we have already planned.
But, you know, anybody that lives there that's open, whatever, let me know and I will come hang out.
So any of our Japanese listeners, reach out to Nick.
Also, by the way, any of our listeners in New York City, rank Mom Donnie.
Just get out there, rank him.
Do not go with Andrew Cuomo.
My God, why would you?
A reminder before we get into everything, head over to patreon.com slash my Gregpodcast.
Support the show.
Keep us editorially independent.
You'll also get the weekender edition on Friday, which we know that you listen to.
I'm going to be holding down the fort.
I'm going to be doing some stuff.
I'll have some people who will come in and woefully, woefully try and replace Nick Houseman for a couple of weeks.
But everybody, all right, so let's try and reset what has been going on over the past couple of days.
On Saturday, the United States of America entered Israel's war with Iran, dropping 14 bunker buster bombs on three of Iran's nuclear sites.
They were flanked by fighter jets and supported by a barrage of Tomahawk missiles.
This is the first time those bunker buster bombs have been used in battle.
For the past couple of days, people have wondered exactly what Iran was going to do in retaliation.
And as of the recording of this podcast on Monday, June 23rd, Iran warned America through Qatar that they were going to attack a base.
They got all their personnel out of there.
It seems like there were no casualties and a pretty telegraphed little moment there.
Nick, we have so much that we have to talk about here, both in terms of how this administration handled this, the disturbing aspects of what it means to have Donald Trump as president of the United States of America, as always.
We have reaction, we have fallout, but based on what happened on Saturday and what has now happened on Monday with Iran giving possibly an off-ramp in this war that could have gotten a lot worse, what are your reactions to both the attack of Iran on Saturday and what we have now seen on Monday?
Well, I got to tell you from a military standpoint, I was really kind of fascinated just to kind of see whether these 30,000-pound bunker buster bombs actually work.
We've been hearing a lot of what the nuclear facility is like in this.
Unclear.
Unclear.
Well, I've seen the pictures and I got to tell you, Jared, you might not know this, but I'm not an expert in analyzing satellite photos.
Wholly unimpressive, though, and a pun intended.
I don't know.
It doesn't look like a lot from what we're looking at here.
And there are preliminary reports that they probably didn't destroy what they wanted to destroy, at least for that part of the facility.
So that part is really kind of interesting.
And then again, the response measured in the way that they responded to the Soleimani killing as well, when we killed him in Iraq at the airport.
And then they kind of, yeah, they let us know.
They sent some bombs, which did ultimately hurt American troops and ultimately allowed Trump to then, you know, dismiss those injuries, those brain injuries that they had from part of that response.
But the point being that, like, yeah, this almost feels like they're just playing some sort of game.
Yeah, we'll get you back.
Don't you worry.
I'm going to wag my finger, rattle some sabers.
And it's a little bit concerning that it's only the calm before the storm, I suppose.
Well, I'm going to say something that I never thought that I would necessarily say out loud.
Thank God for Iran showing restraint.
And you're right.
We saw it before in that situation where they struck a base.
We also saw it.
My God, what is time?
I think it was a few months ago.
It might have been a year ago in which Israel hit Iran and Iran basically telegraphed their punch and let all these missiles be intercepted.
There is a possibility here that this might be the off-ramp where we could get out of this without being pulled into a deeper war, particularly a regional war and maybe even a global war.
That is a possibility at this point.
But before we get into everything around Saturday and Sunday and how the administration has handled this or not handled it, Nick, just one of the more stupefying, absolutely asinine situations that I have seen in forever.
It was really odd watching in the lead up to Saturday, watching, as we discussed, I think it was on the last episode, we did the entire weekender edition leading up to this.
You know, we saw that basically no one in this country wanted this war, including the MAGA world, which we'll get into in a little bit.
The only people who wanted it was Israel, the war profiteers who create all the weaponry for all this, and every neoconservative that has been a quote-unquote never Trumper for years.
All the people who brought you Iraq War II and are now getting in line for this thing and spilling so much ink and writing so many articles talking about how brave and a master stroke this was.
This was repulsive.
And we're going to get into every little part of this and really, really get into the minutiae of it.
But this is not the administration that you want in control during moments like this.
What an absolute debacle it is.
So many crimes were committed.
And then, Nick, to watch our media apparatus just turn instantly into war porn and talk consistently about how this is going to reshape the Middle East.
This might be the moment where everything changes.
And my God.
And then on Sunday, we're told that we're going to get an update from this.
And of course, Trump comes in on Saturday.
He addresses the nation in an absolutely insane speech in which, you know, he says that God is appreciated.
I didn't even know what to make of that as an ex-evangelical.
He says the Iran nuclear program was, quote, totally obliterated.
The Pentagon briefing the next day changed that to severely damaged.
Surveillance photos told a completely different story.
Like you said, we don't really know exactly what the strikes were able to do or not.
Reports then leak out from the New York Times.
We don't know where the uranium is.
We have no clue.
We just don't.
It's weird.
These WMDs, whenever we do a quote-unquote preemptive strike, they just don't end up being where we think they are.
Trump then attempted to portray this as a one-off strike, which we'll talk about what that means in a second, because these assholes might have wandered backwards into a situation where they could avoid a larger war.
He warns Iran not to retaliate.
And then J.D. Vance goes on meet the press.
And what you're about to listen to is one of the most Orwellian statements that you are ever going to hear from a public figure, bar nut wild.
Question, Mr. Vice President.
Is the United States now at war with Iran?
No, Kristen, we're not at war with Iran.
We're at war with Iran's nuclear program.
And let me just say, Kristen, that we're incredibly grateful and proud of the American Air Force pilots who did an incredible job.
Guns will kill people.
Nailed it.
Absolutely nailed it.
And then little Marco Rubio goes on Face the Nation.
And it's lovely because now we're going to find out exactly why the United States of America carried out a preemptive attack on another nation.
On a phrase you just heard, weaponization ambitions.
Are you being there that the United States did not see intelligence that the Supreme Leader had ordered weaponization?
That's irrelevant.
I think that's a question being asked in the media.
That's an irrelevant question.
That is the key point in U.S. intelligence assessments.
You know, yes, it was.
No, it's not.
I know that better than you know that.
And I know that that's not the case.
But I'm asking you whether the order was given.
And the people who say that, it doesn't matter if the order was given.
They have everything you need to build nuclear weapons.
Why would you bury things in a mountain 300 feet under the ground?
Why would you bury six?
Why do they have 60% enriched uranium?
Okay.
I lament, Jared, that I did not prepare the clip from Saturday Night Live of the Martin Schwart character that was interviewed on the on the Saturday Night News thing, where he goes, I know that.
I know that.
What do you mean I don't know that?
Why are you asking that?
Of course I know that.
And he's smoking a cigarette nervously.
It couldn't have been more of a parody of that sketch if you tried.
This is the Secretary of Fucking State.
Like, and Nick, I'm not going to sit here and wax poetically about what it was like living under the George W. Bush administration, but like, this is the equivalent of like going and watching a really, really bad baseball team and then going out and watching a t-ball team.
It's incredible, like watching the difference between how these people are able to portray this entire.
But this, even, but even aside from like the presentation of it too, it's like, think about what he's saying.
Like, she's saying, well, did you guys finally get some evidence that you're going to sort of present or that proved to you that they were now going to weaponize all this material they needed that we're using for peaceful things?
And he says it doesn't matter.
What matters?
So we went from, you know, and this is sort of a piggyback to what Mike Johnson was talking about earlier when he says that, you know, Trump's corruption is out in the open.
So it's okay.
Well, now they're not even like, we don't need to present any more evidence.
We're just going to do like, we didn't have to do what we did with Colin Powell back in the day where he's showing us vials of whatever.
That's all.
We don't need any of that song and dance anymore.
We'll just be able to just do whatever we want to do.
It's everything else is irrelevant.
And that's where we're at.
And that would, we should have been able to predict that, I suppose, right?
At some point, they were just going to bypass all the kabuki theater and go right to just whatever they want to do.
Yeah.
And that's the thing is eventually we were going to reach the point where you didn't even have to perform this stuff.
And that's what this moment is about is like all of that theater and all of that performance and all of that rhetoric, it just falls by the wayside.
Everything that was, and the Bush administration did this too.
They got high off their own hubris that they were professionals and that they could handle this and that their gut instincts overrode the facts.
Here, you don't even have to pretend that at this point.
You don't even have to have that sort of like, you know, air of professionalism.
And this is the thing, Nick, on Saturday, and I don't know that history is going to totally paint this in the correct way.
Like we were meddling.
And this is why I was speaking out so vehemently about this leading up to this whole thing.
We were tiptoeing up to a point where World War III or something approaching it was just a specter hanging over everything.
And what you're getting ready to listen to, everybody, is Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth.
And let's listen to how much thought these assholes gave to that possibility that we might be setting in motion something very, very large and very deadly.
Iran and North Korea are cooperating on nuclear and missile development.
Do you think there is a possibility that Iran, North Korea, and other forces, such as China, will join forces to retaliate against the United States?
Well, unfortunately, because of the policies under the previous administration, we drove those countries together.
And ultimately, that creates a challenging environment.
For this particular operation, the focus is on Iran and Iranian nuclear capabilities.
That's our focus here, is to not just say that they can't have, but President Trump has said from over 20 years, frankly, Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon.
And ultimately, he decided this is the moment, given their stonewalling, when direct military action had to be taken to prevent that from happening.
So you heard it here, Nick.
They didn't think about it.
They didn't think about any of it.
Well, the way he's phrasing it too almost makes it seem like, oh, we're going to get to them pretty soon.
We're just focusing right now on the Iran problem, but, you know, when we have to go to war with China, whatever, oh, we'll have the plans for that.
That's almost what I'm hearing from that as Well, so this is really unserious people here who don't understand the ramifications because, again, we know that North Korea does provide support and material support for Iran's missile programs.
Like they are as close to allies as you can consider that.
And there is nothing that would stop them from joining in the party.
Well, and you know, Nick, one of the things that has driven me insane in the past couple of days, and I don't know if you saw this, but there were so many articles that were like, I'm paraphrasing one of the titles.
It was like Right Action, Wrong Team by David Frum, who was one of the people who has created this entire environment and has now been heralded as some sort of resist, you know, hero.
Like, if you read these articles, what do you see time and again, Nick?
It's like, listen, this is a really complicated situation, but if Donald Trump handles it the right way, we're going to get something good out of this and we're going to remake the Middle East.
And there are so many different parts and components to it.
And what did we find out in the aftermath of this thing, Nick?
The military literally, when they carried out this project, they had to use diversionary tactics because they were so frightened that the president of the United States of America was going to give things away in public statements or his social media post.
Because what has he done?
He is literally a poster.
He's posting through this thing.
And all he's interested in, what drove him, and we talked about this last week, Nick, it's all that he is worried about how he is perceived.
He's watching Fox News.
He's getting all amped up on this thing.
You even heard people in the administration, it was leaked.
They wished Tucker Carlson was still on Fox News so Donald Trump would hear another voice that would go against this.
And after this strike in which the administrative bottom line was, this is a one-off.
We're done now.
We're not interested in regime change.
Donald Trump continues to post about wanting a regime change.
He starts talking about what he calls MIGA, which is make Iran great again.
And he says that isn't the goal.
He still posts about it.
Then they are asking for Iran to come to the negotiating table.
And for people who don't know, look at why Iran wouldn't want to do that.
One, we carried out a coup in 1953 to get rid of their prime minister who's democratically elected.
We have done this bullshit dance where we made a deal with them, tore up the deal for absolutely no reason, asked them to agree to the new deal.
Now, we were told that there was going to be a two-week window in which Trump was going to decide whether or not he was going to bomb Iran.
That was a diversionary tactic.
Why would anybody negotiate with these assholes?
Why would anybody ally with these assholes?
Why would anybody work with these assholes?
It makes no strategic sense because these people are not strategic.
They are not serious people.
They do serious things.
And that is the problem here.
We have a bunch of inept, incompetent people who cannot handle this job.
And as a result, we and the people around the world are suffering because of it.
You know, the other report I saw was that Trump was watching the positive coverage of Bibi Netanyahu during when they were in the midst of their attacking Iran and was so jealous, basically, of that coverage and how positive it was for him that he's like, I got to get on this.
I want to get some credit.
I want to get in there.
We got to launch something ourselves and be part of this because I can't handle not sucking up all of the oxygen that's on Fox News.
And again, if you needed any kind of more evidence to prove that your take on the fact that these are just idiot assholes who don't know what they're doing, I mean, that's right there and there, because obviously what we heard in the first administration were there were times when generals would be like, yeah, we're not doing that, whatever he was them to do.
And that does not exist here anymore at all.
And, you know, like the thing that they're manipulating really well politically, I'll give them credit for it, is that everybody will vote or will say in a poll that they do not want war with Iran.
It's like 90%, whatever that is.
85% of Americans do not want war with Iran.
85. If you ask them, though, should Iran have nuclear weapons?
And all of a sudden it jumps the other way, not ASI, but something like that as well.
So there, and that's what you hear Hegset saying, like that he doesn't have any notion of what we can do operationally or we're going to have to deal with in terms of geopolitical ramifications of attacking, you know, a major, and this is a major, major military power in the middle of the Middle East, right?
They have not conceived of those things.
They don't have war plans for that, but he will then just keep repeating the political thing, which is, oh, well, we can't let him have the bomb.
It's our only focus.
And that's going to somehow win him a couple of points and swave some people that way.
It's going to be a loser for them overall.
I think that we all remember what happened in Iraq.
And we should all know that the infrastructure in Iran is way better in terms of the military power that they have.
And also geographically, they're locked a little bit harder.
Like we wouldn't be able to just march in and put the boots in the ground easily.
So this is, there isn't very many good ways to get out of this.
And again, if Iran ends up being the one country that has the, that are professionals with this, then I don't know what to tell you.
That's absurd.
Well, I mean, again, we're waiting on Amy Coney Barrett to be the swing vote.
That's what it is.
That's where we've gotten.
And I think there's some historical context I want to give here and then like more of a personal context.
First things first, Nick, the American world order post-World War II has depended on the veneer of decency, you know what I mean?
And benevolence.
It's this idea that even as we're going around overthrowing countries, even as we're starting wars, even as we're exploiting people, America at least had this narrative that we were doing what was in everybody's best interest, right?
We were doing it out of a concern for democracy, which was bullshit.
We were doing it to make the world better, which was bullshit.
And as those things came together, at least there was the veneer of benevolent hegemony.
Now that's not there.
They can't even perform that idea.
These people, and this is the larger problem, Nick, they couldn't even throw together a military parade, much less a giant military campaign that could literally change the face of the earth in one of the most dangerous moments of all time.
We covered it last week.
Hechseth was sidelined.
The Secretary of Defense was sidelined during the entire planning of this situation because they don't trust him.
They don't think that he's capable of doing the job.
We are now in one of the most complicated moments in American history, and the people who are in charge are not in charge of doing it.
And here's the thing, Nick.
I have to ask you, and I want the people at home to think about this.
Have you ever been in a meeting before?
And the person who's leading the meeting is obviously not up to the task of leading the meeting?
Yeah, I can imagine that.
What happens to that meeting over the course of the meeting?
Oh, it devolves into chaos.
It devolves into absolute chaos.
And I've been in meeting.
Listen, I'm from academia, right?
That's where I used to be.
Some of these meetings were about planning other meetings.
Some of these meetings were about how we were going to cater things.
And those meetings fell apart into total chaos when those people weren't able to handle it.
These people aren't able to handle it.
And what happens when that occurs, Nick?
Power vacuums grow and America is losing power and influence.
People don't trust them.
We're currently being led around by the nose by Israel.
You don't think it's strange that after we bombed Iran and we're hoping for this thing to end, that Israel then hit Iran with another like batch of airstrikes?
Like they know they're in charge.
They know that they are the ones who lead the direction of this thing, even as the United States of America is looking for an off-ramp.
We also have, meanwhile, Russia is looking for more influence.
We'll talk more about that in just a second.
We're seeing China who's looking.
We're looking to China right now to talk Iran into not closing the Strait of Hormuz, which controls a fifth of the world's oil.
That's how bad this situation is.
And never mind the fact, and we'll talk more about the illegality of this, the lack of authorization, the lack of communication.
It's not just that this is morally and ethically wrong, which it is.
Even though it's wrong, we don't have the people who can handle this situation.
When you put those elements together, they're combustible as hell.
And you just can't keep going down this road.
This is what collapsing empire looks like.
Oh, I don't even know where to begin to respond to that.
I mean, if you think that Pete Hegseth got cut out of the loop, then Tulsi Gabbard is like, it's like the scene in Goodfellas when Robert De Niro tells the wife, hey, go around there, go around the corner, some dresses I want you to check out.
It's like, yeah, just keep going.
That's Tulsi Gabbard.
She's gone with, I don't give her a week before she died.
She's in charge of our intelligence.
Yeah.
And by the way, during the first Bush administration, they talked the intelligence community into giving them the intelligence that they wanted.
These assholes couldn't even do that this time.
They weren't even able to get the veneer of intelligence.
They sidelined the DNI chief and they sidelined the Secretary of Defense.
They couldn't even do that stuff.
Let's get to the next thing because the straight-up hormoose, like to block that off and then disrupt the oil industry worldwide would be a really good idea for Iran.
If you didn't want to get involved militarily for whatever host of reasons, then that's a really great way to hit somebody where it's going to hurt.
And I was then reminded, I have a buddy in Israel who I kind of contact with the get the, what's the word on the street there, reminded me of, did you remember Operation Prang Mantis?
Because it's on the minds of Israelis.
And this is a thing from way back in 88. And if you don't remember, you're too young.
I mean, it's a deep cut.
It really is.
But Iran and Iraq were having a war, right?
And when they somehow attacked an American ship in that strait, America decided to pretty much destroy Iran's navy, basically.
And Iran, as a result of that, actually backed down and like signed a truce with Iraq to end that war.
So that is one reason, I suppose, why Iran might not want to kind of get back into one of those things where they'll find a lot of part of their military destroyed again in theory.
But provocative, interesting.
But certainly if I were Iran, I probably would look into that very seriously to try and disrupt some stuff first.
Nick, I cannot help.
I've been sitting around thinking about this and like the way that an end of empire comes together.
We've talked about this.
It is the mashing together of all of the mistakes that you have made in the past, right?
It's the fallout from that.
Nick, we are currently reliving at the exact same time the 1970s oil crisis, the second Iraq war, the rise of fascism, the domination of robber barons, the John Adams authoritarian turn at the turn of the 19th century.
Like we're putting all those things.
Oh, by the way, the eugenics craze and the anti-immigration craze of the early 20th century all at once.
Throw the red scare in there while you're at it.
Throw the red scare in there, the lavender scare while we're at it.
It's all of those things coming together.
And let me tell you something.
We had Joe Biden as president of the United States of America, one of the most like, you know, with more experience than probably anybody in Washington, D.C. Never mind his mental acuity.
That man couldn't handle the moments that we're going through.
He couldn't put it straight.
These Keystone cops are not going to be able to handle this problem.
And we haven't even talked again about the illegality of this thing, which we're going to get to in just a second.
We're now even talking about the logistical possibility of being able to handle this immoral, unethical war and situation.
It can't be done by these people.
We're literally going to have one mishap and misstep after another with these assholes.
They do not have the capability, even if this was on good, legal, moral, ethical grounds, and it's not.
So let's just be provocative for a second here, Jared, because do you agree that Iran should not have a nuclear weapon?
I think every country at this point should have a nuclear weapon.
Because if you don't have a nuclear weapon, the United States of America and whatever cronies they want to bring with them are going to come take over your country.
That message has been sent loud and clear over the past, like, what, 22 years now?
Okay, well, okay, So, great.
So, what is the goal then of this little, you know, firing these rockets and the bunker busters?
What is that goal?
What are they trying to do?
Well, I mean, I would love to hear what they think they're trying to do because they didn't do it.
Okay.
And it goes back to what you said.
You nailed it.
You hit the nail right on the head, Nick.
It's because we have a president of the United States of America who is so insecure and self-involved that he was upset that Benjamin Netanyahu looked more decisive than him.
It literally is the equivalent of a guy jumping off of a bridge because a friend tells him to.
That's what it is.
Well, let's pretend for a second that the goal of these rockets and the bombings was to destroy their nuclear weapons.
They don't have nuclear weapons.
That's the problem.
They don't even have them.
And by the way, part of my thought process was, okay, they're keeping it at 60% enriched because, and that's high for, you know, for a civilian.
It's got to be over 90. Right.
And so I'm thinking they're keeping it 60%.
That's their deterrence, right?
They don't need to get the bomb, whatever, but they're going to keep it sort of close so they can just make sure people don't F with them anymore and whatever.
But here's my point of this is that if the goal is like they're going to destroy and take it out, does something like this get them closer to that goal?
And that's the real question.
Now, they did take out two other facilities, right?
And they probably got those, those are above ground, whatever.
But like, think about you already, we already mentioned that a lot of the material is, they don't know where it is.
It sounds like Trump was, well, we kind of know that he was foreshadowing what was going to happen.
So they were probably moving it out ahead of time, independent of whatever subterfuge they're like.
Oh, by the way, the congratulations that they want to give Pete Hexeth for pulling this off without it leaking is the equivalent of like, you didn't screw up once when you're in American Beauty when they're watching their kid do tree leading.
That's what we're gotten to.
Do you have to pat Pete Hexeth on the back just because somehow he didn't leak in some sort of signal chat all the information?
That we know of.
Yeah.
By the way, Jonah Gold, Jonah Goldberg, what's his name?
Jonah Goldberg.
Jonah?
How much does he regret blowing the whistle when he did?
He should have stayed in that chat for a lot longer.
Oh my God.
Can you imagine that?
And you know why?
He's like, I'm never going to see anything worse than what he just revealed in this chat.
Oh my God.
You know, you can't tell me that if he hadn't said anything, he's staying there the whole time, that they would have revealed this as well in that group chat.
And by the way, since we're on this subject and you brought it up, the idea that this had anything to do with Iran having a nuclear weapon or getting a nuclear weapon, why is it that we focus on countries that supposedly have nuclear weapons or nuclear programs?
That they're getting close to them.
Why aren't we doing it to North Korea, Nick?
The argument is that they already have them.
Oh, isn't that more dangerous than maybe getting one?
Yeah.
Oh, okay.
So why aren't we going over there and bombing them?
Right.
Well, because they're going to launch theirs.
Oh, because they would actually be a threat if they did something.
It's amazing that the United States of America continues to pick countries that are supposedly right on the verge of having nuclear weapons.
Well, there's no oil in North Korea.
Oh, that's part of the problem.
That's exactly right.
And because all we want to do is go after countries that can't actually defend themselves.
And we have a, and by the way, why did this happen, Nick?
It didn't just happen because Trump was looking at Nanyahoo and quote-unquote positive press and right-wing media.
It's also because Israel had already disabled a lot of their, you know, surface-to-air defensive missiles and because they had dominated their airspace.
Donald Trump saw an opportunity to do something here that wasn't going to supposedly result in any casualties as he did it, which is why he said, we did this defensively.
You'd better not retaliate.
And now we have a situation and we're talking about whether or not Iran might have nuclear weapons or could have.
They don't and they're not getting ready to produce them.
Nick, we're now looking at Russia.
Vladimir Putin and the people around him are talking about how many countries are now wanting to give Iran nuclear weapons in order to make them safer and defend themselves.
And what did Trump do in response to that?
He threatened to nuke Russia.
That's how out of control this situation is.
It actually makes things exponentially worse and accelerates all of this stuff.
This was so wrongheaded.
This was so stupid, not to mention wrong, absolutely wrong.
But we cannot trust these people to handle any of these things.
They're only going to make them worse.
Yeah.
He's spinning out of control to some degree because I think he realizes, you know, within the first few months of his presidency that he doesn't have any cards.
He doesn't have any control that he thought he did.
He thought he can call Vladimir Putin and get that war over.
And I think he honestly believed that.
He thought he was in cahoots with Putin.
Putin made him feel like he was partners.
Oh, hey, don't worry about it.
We're going to take all this care.
And as soon as they get to him, Putin's going to screw him.
And now they're stabbing each other in the back.
So that's a big part of where he's spinning out, which is frightening.
And we can't say this is new, though.
Like part of the reason why we went into Iraq in 2003 was because W's daddy was targeted by Saddam Hussein years earlier.
Oh, we got to get him back for doing that to us.
That's as personal and as petty and as ridiculous as anything that Trump is doing.
And it lasted a lot longer than, God forbid, this might end up taking, right?
So it's frightening when you look at exactly who the Republican Party's been sending into the White House all these years anyway.
It makes you feel like you're watching Dr. Strangelove.
And that was a documentary.
So let me, okay.
So we're going to talk in a second again about the legality of this because we have to discuss it.
But Nick, let me ask you a question real fast, like a real legitimate question in the middle of all of this.
Let's say that you are Xi Jinping, right?
You're in charge of China.
What keeps you from pushing this issue?
Not in Iran.
What keeps you from doing everything?
Like what keeps you from this being the moment that you take the United States of America, this decrepit, geroncratic society, this corrupted, self-destroying society?
What keeps you from pushing it over?
Like an absolutely hollow husk?
I have an answer on this, but what at the moment keeps them from doing it, do you think?
I think if they truly did that and sent the United States over the cliff, they won't get a lot of revenue.
They have all this money.
They own all this debt.
They get so much revenue from the business deals and even with the tariff stuff that they don't want to lose that cow.
I think that's accurate.
And I'll tell you the second reason.
Why step in when your enemy's destroying itself?
Yeah.
I mean, really, at this point, we have been standing on the precipice of a new world order.
And no, I don't mean that based on the old evangelical conspiracy theory.
On the moment where the American empire, the American hegemony is finally ready to fall.
That's where we are.
That's where we live.
That's a big reason why all of this is happening.
It is amazing to me how self-destructive and self-annihilating what we're doing, not just in Iran, but also within the United States of America.
I mean, my God, this is our second full episode on the Iranian-American crisis.
I mean, we aren't even covering today all of the things that are happening in this country.
And to look around and be like, wow, this is how people are reacting and this is what they're doing.
I understand it to an extent, the chaotic sort of like manic self-destruction, but like we are doing everything in our power to bring this house down around our ears.
It's incredible.
Absolutely awful.
And it's predictable.
And it's exactly what happens after enough time for every empire.
Yes, it's entirely predictable and it makes it no less insane making.
Speaking of the illegality of this, Trump did not have authorization from Congress in order to carry out this act of war, but they can go ahead and say this Orwellian bullshit about how it's not war.
Turns out, Nick, that GOP Speaker Mike Johnson and GOP Senate leader John Thune, they knew about it.
They were told.
Apparently, Democratic Senate leader Chuck Schumer was given a little bit of a heads up, but not any details.
Let's check on the Gang of Eight.
Oh, that's right.
The Gang of Eight weren't told anything about this thing at all.
Nothing.
So, yeah, I kind of wondering about this because you're right.
There's protocol.
There's things we're supposed to do.
You know, if they knew about it ahead of time, it wasn't going to change anything.
I'm kind of weird about this one.
You know, at this point, because they're so feckless in the Senate as it is now, I'm like, it's a big shrug to me.
Would Chris Murphy have benefited anything more?
I guess the reason why they didn't want to tell him is because obviously they might say something publicly before it happens.
But what they ended up saying would be, we've seen the intelligence.
We know there is no evidence of this.
And now he's going to go and cause a whole big problem beforehand as well, which, by the way, I suppose would be the point, right?
Is what we need more of and more transparency.
Well, why do you think they told Chuck Schumer, by the way?
Because I think your point is correct.
Why do you think Schumer got the update on it?
Right.
And by the way, what do we think he got like a half?
He basically got told we're going to hit Iran is what it sounds like.
Why was Chuck Schumer the one Democrat who was told in this situation?
You tell me because I can't figure it out.
Because his entire response was, we should have been told more before this happened.
He wanted it to happen.
He's totally fine with the fact that we hit Iran.
He doesn't have a problem with that.
He has a problem with the lack of the decorum and the civility.
That's the problem.
Right.
Yeah.
And again, it alludes back to what I was referencing, which is the notion that, you know, Iran shouldn't have a bomb, right?
Like that, that is that thing that everyone seems to agree on.
And if they can stop that from happening, then all right, then go ahead.
Well, and because Chuck Schumer, like, I mean, basically at this point is fine with whatever Israel does.
He has no issue with it whatsoever.
He hasn't so much as stood up with it.
And then you have congressional leader Hakeem Jeffries.
He's looking at things.
But meanwhile, Nick, he hasn't, I mean, there have been bipartisan bills that have been put forward trying to rein Donald Trump in.
You had said that you have a list of every president that had carried out attacks without authorization.
This, this runaway train has gotten so out of control that we even have Republicans who are like, hey, I'm not okay with this.
This isn't all right for a president to be this unilateral.
It has built up over time to get to this point.
But Hakeem Jeffries can't even be bothered to read the bill.
Can't even be bothered.
Oh, well, I mean, listen, like, if you want to take Bill Clinton to task for, you know, bombing Kosovo in the middle of a ethnic cleansing, like, you know, there was some version of a humanitarian focus of that one, right?
That's not like, you know, an aggression that like of like this.
You know, so that is another important point to understand about that.
But, you know, I also suppose that there's a very cynical notion that, you know, Chuck Schumer is Jewish, right?
Instead of playing upon his connection there with Israel and then, you know, knowing that he won't get in the way.
He was fine with one of his constituents being kidnapped in the middle of the night, period, because he protested against Israel.
I'll just say that.
Okay.
Yeah.
It's gross.
It's gross.
I mean, the Democratic Party has absolutely failed once again.
I know it's deja vu.
People are, you know, tired of thinking about it.
There has been more resistance, Nick.
And let me tell you something.
I have spent so many hours of my life studying Alex Jones, who is one of the vectors in all of this.
And I'll comment on what people are getting ready to listen to in just a second and why it's happening.
It's along the same lines as Tucker Carlson, which I talked about on the weekender last Friday.
But even Alex Jones, whose entire livelihood is based on being a propaganda vector for Donald Trump and the right-wing oligarchical movement and coup, this is what Alex Jones had to say about the bombing with Iran.
It's Monday, June 23rd, 2025.
It's one of the most important video posts I've ever made.
We're now in day 11 of the Israeli strikes on Iran and their counterstrikes.
We are now going into the third day of the United States launching its attacks last Saturday that I predicted to the day.
Here's the bottom line.
President Trump said he did not want war, but he said he would never let Iran get a nuclear weapon.
He said it was not about regime change, and in his speech Saturday evening, he said that he wanted peace.
Then last night on True Social, he says, make Iran great again that regime change is a good thing.
That is designed to push the MULAs to close the Strait of Wormoose and attack U.S. bases.
Something they're saying they're looking strongly at doing if they will retaliate.
So, the Trump administration, while on the one side of its mouse saying it wants peace, on the other side is pushing and stoking this war for AIPAC and others.
That's just a fact.
And whereas I support Trump's domestic agenda and the trade agenda and all the other great things he's doing, and I've been persecuted among many others for standing for Trump, who I thank God wasn't killed with Butler, and I think overall is a great man.
He is making the wrong decision on all of this, and he is breaking his promise to the American people to not launch offensive wars.
It's true he said no nuclear weapon, but now he is definitely going back on a promise now pushing regime change.
Nick, that, first of all, him, Marjorie Taylor Green has become one of the largest critics of this operation.
I'm telling you as someone who has studied almost everything that Alex Jones has ever said, his belief and support of Donald Trump is religious in nature.
The fact that he's coming out and saying this, it isn't hurt by the fact that he relies on Russia.
He is a Putinist, not just apologist, but he's also in line with that Duganist ideology of isolated America.
The fact that he's coming out and saying this, Marjorie Taylor Greene is coming out and being openly critical of Donald Trump.
There is a weird fucking thing happening within the MAGA world right now.
This was one of those red lines.
It's been crossed.
And I cannot overstate again how huge it is that someone like Alex Jones or Marjorie Taylor Greene is coming out as just vehemently against this thing.
It is a wild situation that's developing right now.
Well, imagine the ramification of this because, you know, if we believe that Trump is Putin wacky, right?
Well, now Trump is kind of like standing up to Putin because we can't deny that Iran is a proxy for Russia and has very close ties that way.
And Putin would definitely, you know, exide for the fact that Putin probably would love for the oil prices to go up with this kind of chaos in the Middle East.
It would help him.
But it also is attacking one of their, you know, major players in their sphere.
So imagine that, that somehow Bibi Netanyahu has forced Trump to flip all the way around and getting us closer to where we want him to be, which is more anti-Putin.
Can you believe that?
I mean, listen, I'm sorry about went cross-eyed a little bit listening to that because it's accurate.
And also on top of it, like Russia wants Iran to be the allied great power in the Middle East.
And by the way, they're also there with Israel.
Like Russia has created this relationship with Israel.
They kind of are interested in the two sort of balancing each other out and basically almost like a survival of the fittest.
Who's exactly going to come out on the other side of it?
You then have all of these people, Alex Jones, Chucker Carlson, who are definitely within the Duganist ideology of isolationism, wanting these people to do this and do that.
Here's the point that I keep trying to make, Nick, and I hope that I can communicate this clearly.
Donald Trump doesn't understand any of this shit.
The only thing that he understands is who's going to give him money and who's going to flatter him.
That's it.
So one of the reasons why we keep having these contradictions like rubbing against each other like fault lines is that Donald Trump doesn't have a coherent ideology.
The only thing that he has is sort of like a fascistic internal instinct and also a needless or a ceaseless need for self-dealing and self-aggrandizement.
And guess who has figured that out, Nick?
B.B. Netanyahu, who has figured that out better than anybody.
And all of these weird esoteric American connections to Israel, whether it's APAC giving them money, it's the evangelical relationship to Israel and the end times philosophy, or it's just straight up white supremacists who look at Israel and then look at all of the Arabs around and say, these people are better than these people.
These fractures are coming together in a very, very bizarre way.
And it isn't the cohesive worldview that everyone thought that it was.
And it never was.
It was always rubbing against each other and finding the places where it worked.
But this is a very strange situation.
And it happens to be because Donald Trump isn't just contradictory.
One of the most contradictory human beings that we have ever seen in a place of power, because the only thing that matters to him is Donald Trump.
And that is the only motivating factor that he has in any of this.
So at some points, he's going to be on this side.
Other points, he's going to be on this side.
And it is going to constantly create friction that is going to really threaten to send some things spiraling out.
How about this?
Would it just be completely insane to picture a world in the next six months where suddenly like Syria is a friend of democracies?
Maybe Iran is.
Time out real fast.
What you just brought up, and because I want to keep hearing what you have to say, I want to remind people in Syria, we relied on Assad to fight the war on terror.
We got rid of Assad, and we have now put in the people that we used to fight in the war on terror.
Like that's literally just pointing out and highlighting what you're saying.
That's how weird this gets.
Yeah, C, colon, al-Qaeda.
You know, we've seen that before with us.
But imagine if like all, like all of a sudden, the entire entire swath of the Middle East is like friendly to democracy.
And then let's pretend like maybe the war between Russia and Ukraine gets solved.
And maybe somehow Trump gets to get credit for that too.
It's a little bit concerning, right?
In a way, because he might have backed into it, whatever, you never know.
But like there might be some really bizarre path where like, you know, it ends up being better than it was.
I disagree with that wholeheartedly.
I don't think that's what he's going to back into.
Okay.
I think I agree with you on that one.
I think that, but you don't think it's a possibility at all.
Those three, all those dominoes can kind of fall in one shot.
No, I don't.
I think one of the things that you're talking about, and I know where it comes from, like I understand that impulse.
I think it comes from a lingering feeling of American exceptionalism, that America has so kind of tried to shape the world that like a system of neoliberal globalism has come into birth.
And we thought that that made the world better, but it didn't.
And now if something like that were going to happen, there would have to be some sort of a cohesive plan.
You know what I mean?
It's about working with these people, working with these people, coming together in this way.
And instead, what I think we're looking at is an asymmetrical fracturing.
I think we're looking at a situation now, which is so chaotic because the decline of empire is chaotic that we're looking at a situation where in some regions we're going to be allies with people and in other regions we're going to be fighting them.
And I think that that's going to be driven by the fact that there are a bunch of war profiteers and tech oligarchs who are not loyal to anybody.
And I think that that's what's going to drive this as opposed to some sort of a domino, everything sort of coming together situation.
I think the chaos is going to breed chaos.
Okay.
I mean, I'm not even looking at like the Syria situation, how it fell so quickly as anything about American exceptionalism.
I don't think America really was part of that.
That's the groundswell of support for, you know, I mean, right?
That wasn't the CIA op like we did in.
We thought, and by the way, thanks, Secretary Hillary Clinton.
We thought that we were going to reshape Syria.
And what it did turn into.
It turned into the biggest chaotic shitstorm that we've ever seen with asymmetrical warfare everywhere that eventually led to Assad falling.
Right.
So the Assad falling part of it to me was a grassroots, you know, uprising from the people.
It wasn't because of us.
I'll tell you that damn much.
Yeah.
So, so yeah, I guess I'm just saying that like there are these weird, was it Murphy's Law?
Like some of these things can happen, you know, the way this goes.
Now, but you're right.
The notion of Iraq, or sorry, Iran being any part of a friendly to democracy kind of thing would require American exceptionalism, which we don't seem to have.
Well, and I mean, okay, let's say the Ayatollah falls.
Do you have a guarantee that somehow or another that means that Iran would suddenly become more democratic?
Oh, well, you want to explore that for a second.
That's not for certain.
No.
We don't know that.
I mean, look that it's it's it's like Egypt all over again during the Arab Spring.
We're like, oh, we're going to have something more democratic.
It's like, oh, no, now we have a military dictatorship.
Oh, damn.
How did that happen?
It's a military dictatorship with the elections.
Yeah, it certainly is.
All right.
And that's what I'm saying is we have been making this up as we go along.
If you were a president for eight years in this country, there's a reason you leave the office looking the way you do.
Because one year to the next, Nick, you have a meeting where you're like, group X is the biggest threat in the world.
And then all of a sudden you have a meeting two years later where it's like, group X that used to be the biggest threat in the world, they are our best chance and they should be our allies.
And that's the point is that there hasn't been a grand project that actually has something decent at the heart.
The last time we saw that was the war on terror.
And what did it do, Nick?
It destabilized everything.
It killed over a million people.
And even the quote unquote best minds of the moment were on that.
Those assholes were at least more competent than that.
And they couldn't even handle it.
And they have now created like a series of dominoes falling where all of a sudden former al-Qaeda, former ISIS people are our best allies in places that we destroyed.
Like I don't see that coming together in some sort of a coherent way.
Well, I guess there's a reason why you've used the word assholes more in this episode than we've had in a long time.
It's awful.
Yeah.
It's awful.
And I, you know, I we're recording this on Monday, June 23rd, that that attack by, quote unquote attack by Iran was telegraphed.
They are apparently looking for an off-ramp.
I don't trust that Israel is going to give them an off-ramp.
I don't trust that these assholes in charge are going to take it.
I can't even predict what the next piece of chaos is going to be because it's just, it worsens every day.
But as of today, as of right now, when we're filming on this little tit for tat kind of thing that they responded, just makes you think it's all been pre-planned.
I mean, you know, this has all been done.
Like everyone's in on the game on this one.
I hope.
Okay.
Right now, if nothing major changes and the Trump administration continues and fascism grows, the only thing that's saving us from World War III is people being afraid of World War III.
Do you know what I mean?
It's like all of the main belligerents are like, I don't know if I really want to kill like over a billion people right now, possibly more.
That is no way to live.
Right.
Like literally, again, I can't believe I'm sitting here saying, thank God Iran was like conservative here and held back here.
Like that's no way to live at this point.
I don't know, Nick.
We'll cover more of this as it happens.
It is enough to drive a person insane.
We will be back with the Weekender Edition on Friday.
Well, I will.
Yeah.
You're going to be in Japan.
I'll be with you in spirit.
Are you going to be in Japan on Friday?
I think I leave on a Wednesday, but it's really a Thursday when I'm there.
So I'll be there.
I think I'll be there on a Friday.
Oh, my God.
When the Weekender comes out, Nick is going to be in Japan.
Well, we wish him well, Bon Voyage.
Send your best wishes.
Delete your social apps before you get on any plane.
Yeah, I hear that's really ineffective, but okay.
We'll do something.
Okay.
You know what?
I'm ready to stream it if they pull me.
You know what, Nick?
You are hereby officially fired from the Muckrag podcast.
You have no allegiances.
You can now disavow literally everything that you've ever said on this show.
Okay, great.
That's important.
By the way, that's the decision I'm going to have to make when I come back in the country.
You can renounce me as much as you possibly want.
Right.
But stay tuned.
Keep your notifications on the YouTube channel.
I might just start streaming it if they call me in with an update and whole thing.
God, be safe, my friend.
I will be back with the Weekender Edition on Friday.
Head on over to patreon.com slash McGregpodcast.
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We really, really appreciate your support.
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