Jared J. Sexton and Nick dissect Trump’s 10% global tariff threat after the Supreme Court’s 6-3 ruling blocking his emergency powers, questioning whether $133B in collected tariffs—$2K per American family—funds his agenda or midterm bribes. They link cartel chaos in Mexico (e.g., Namicio Cervantes’ death) to U.S. destabilization, comparing it to Iran-Contra, while dismissing NYT’s Brett Stevens and DNC’s suppressed 2024 election autopsy as reckless, neoconservative overreach. A lone U.S. strike on Iran risks Vietnam-style quagmires, BRICS backlash, and even USS Ford’s toilet failures undermining readiness, framing Trump’s potential war as strategic madness—not serious policy. Their LIVE SOTU reaction airs February 24 at 9 p.m., debunking media narratives while exposing systemic irrationality. [Automatically generated summary]
I was just thinking, Nick, I was doing the math in my head that this comes out on Tuesday, and I was getting ready to do the promo for our live show.
And then my wires got all tripped up.
Oh, I forgot the name of the show.
Don't cross the streams.
Don't cross the stream.
I forgot the name of the show.
Oh, for a second there.
Isn't that terrible?
Anyway, it's the Mutt Craig podcast.
I'm too excited, Nick.
We're so, so excited because this comes out on Tuesday.
And Tuesday, Tuesday night is going to be the Stay of the Union.
And we're going to be doing a live show immediately after it is over.
It is scheduled to begin at 9 p.m. Eastern.
As soon as Donald Trump is done spewing bullshit all over a joint session of Congress, Nick and I are going to hang out and talk about what that bullshit was and go deeper than any of the cable shows because they're all awful.
How about that?
Hey, and we have a bunch new Patreon subscribers who are going to join us.
Yeah, that's fantastic.
So if you haven't already, head over to patreon.com slash muck craig podcast.
You're going to get the weekender every Friday.
But on top of that, live shows like this.
For instance, we're heading into the thick of the political season, Nick.
We're getting ready to go into primaries.
We're going into debates.
We're going into the midterms and beyond.
We're going to be doing a ton of these things.
I have to say, personally, from my perspective, listening to a Donald Trump Stay of the Union is akin to hurting myself, but it makes it better that you and I get to hang out after.
But we're going to do it so the listeners don't have to.
Supreme Court Controversies00:12:16
They don't have to.
And on top of that, do you want to tune into CNN?
Do you want to watch an 18-person panel that just spews more corporate bullshit?
Is that what you want to do?
Or do you want to hang out with your friends, Nick and Jared, as we just say, hey, that was absolutely terrible?
Sure.
Well, cut to Jared's appearance on CNN on whatever time.
They are never going to have me on again.
Let's be frank.
I will never be on CNN again.
That will never happen.
Yeah.
All right.
Well, you know, don't never say never.
You never know.
I'm saying never.
It's not going to happen.
And I don't want to.
I don't want to go.
Anyway, we got to go.
I can't talk about it.
That's sweet green underneath your nose.
And it might, you know, it might be too tempting.
It's so awful.
Wouldn't it be great if they would bring somebody on who's the equivalent of Jennings, but on their left?
It would never happen.
I guess you can't really be that way and be progressive or whatever anyways, but it'd be you just gave the secret away.
Great.
Damn it.
But I want that job.
I want to troll.
I don't know what I want.
I want to be able to be the opposite of Scott Jennings and make a lot of money doing that.
Yeah, they're not going to let you do that.
I'm sorry.
Well, everybody, speaking of a lot of money, we got to start off first with a bit of news.
Since we recorded last, the Supreme Court by a 6-3 margin struck down Trump's sweeping tariffs that he had used the 1977 International Emergency Economic Powers Act.
This was another one of those little tussles between the court in the dissent with Thomas, Alito, and Kavanaugh.
Trump immediately responded, Nick, by then just throwing out 10% global tariffs.
And then he was like, no, fuck that.
Let's do 15%.
He has since raged against the Supreme Court, called them disloyal, claimed that they're trying to hurt the country.
And in my favorite quote in a long time from Trump, at a meeting of governors, he referred to quote unquote, these fucking courts.
So we have another little intra right-wing squabble.
What's your take on this?
I mean, five-minute abs, Jared.
I mean, that's what he's doing with these terrorists.
And it's appropriate because the five-minute ad reference is to something about Mary when the guy picks up a completely unhinged hitchhiker.
This is what the country is now.
Donald Trump is that unhinged hitchhiker who turns out to be a serial killer in the movie, if I'm not mistaken.
And that's what he's doing right now.
That's how sane he is or how insane he is.
And again, I will be more powerful.
If you strike me down, I'll be more powerful than you can ever imagine.
It's sort of what he tried to almost, you know, reference in his response because he has a whole bunch of other, you know, again, these nefariously intelligent people behind him who are digging through these archaic and strange laws to figure out end arounds around all this stuff.
And it's really, really concerning because none of it is none of it is legal.
No, it's not.
And this is another one of those instances.
And this is, again, a reason why you don't need to tune into cable news anymore and corporate news because they want to say, oh, this is Trump and the Supreme Court doing this.
There are so many different stories that are taking place in this.
And what you just brought up in terms of the unhinged hitchhiker, Donald Trump, you have to realize he's living in his own reality at this point.
He doesn't understand any of these laws.
It's handed to him.
It's told to him, you know, via like worm tongue, Miller.
You know, all these people are like pushing his buttons and making him do this.
The reason why the tariffs were done in the first place, Nick, was for a variety of reasons, which included trying to jumpstart manufacturing in the United States of America.
And by the way, how well is that going?
Right?
Like, I mean, are we watching a renaissance of that?
They thought that it would happen pretty quickly.
They also wanted to destroy neoliberal globalism, which Trump doesn't understand in any way, shape, or form, doesn't get any of this.
But are they doing it?
I mean, they're turning it into something else for damn sure, which is what we talked about, which is it needed to come down, but you needed to have a plan for it and you needed to do something that would help people.
And in this case, it's just, you know, basic plundering.
But now we have to look at the Supreme Court and everything else.
What is the Supreme Court doing?
What is its main operating purpose?
It's to protect the interest of the wealth class against politicians.
That's it.
That's the entire reason that they exist.
Sometimes they're going to work with Donald Trump, an insane, crazy maniac who's going to do things that is going to help the bottom line for the wealth class.
In this case, they saw this and they were like, no, this is actually going to hurt the bottom line.
So in this case, once more, and Nick, isn't it funny?
It's always a 6-3 case, isn't it?
It's just whether or not these justices are going to move over here or move over there.
This is another instance.
And they think that they're just doing their jobs.
They think they're just carrying on in the tradition of things.
But what we have are expressions of what capitalism wants.
That's what this boils down to.
Well, speaking of the response by the Supreme Court, I mean, somebody must have taken a general shot and stabbed Neil Gorsuch in the heart because that guy, all of a sudden, out of nowhere, exoriates the entire Trump administration talking about, you know what, guys, this really isn't democracy as we know it, where you're trying to do all these tariffs.
You think he just realized it now was like, oh, shit, I better write something down that shows that.
I mean, it was shocking to me, but good to see.
I'm glad that I'm glad that maybe Gorsuch will start moving to where these conservative judges used to move, which is more toward the center over time.
And so maybe there'll be some fawing out there where there will be some pushback and stuff.
But like, you know, even what he's doing now at the end around is an extremely temporary measure that only lasts, I want to say 188, 120, 180 days.
So all this seems to indicate to me that this is, I just don't know where the money for the tariffs is really going.
And in my adult brain, I would assume that they're funneling a significant amount of that right into Trump's pocket, right?
That has to be what's going on here, which is why he's clinging to any version as he can to continue that spigot until they absolutely has to stop.
Well, you just touched on a bunch of things.
And I want to start with the first thing, which is what is happening with this court and whether or not they're going to assert authority.
And when you're dealing with authoritarian takeovers, there is eventually, I talk about these, these like little crossroad moments, right?
Like I've talked about, like there's the moment, will the military fire on the populace?
There's also the moment of whether or not the aspiring dictator will break under the tension or the institutions will break under the tension.
And by the way, Nick, looking around, I think we know which one's going to break first.
And that means that the Supreme Court has this veto on stuff until finally Trump says, fuck these courts.
I'm not doing what they want me to do.
So there's the question.
There is a limited amount of time that he can do these tariffs.
Is he going to stop doing them?
Is he going to again make the Supreme Court enforce this?
It's a tug of war that goes back and forth.
And what you just brought up, for people who don't know, in the last year, $133 billion have been collected based on these tariffs.
And we always talk about this.
A tariff is a tax on the people.
So the government has collected theoretically this $133 billion.
And every American family, I believe, has been taxed nearly $2,000 based on these tariffs alone.
So now all of a sudden we have this honeypot.
And Nick, you and I, we've been around this sun a few times.
We've seen the Trump administration.
This is our second go-round with them.
We know that if there's money to be made and put into a pocket, it's going in a pocket.
Like we have no idea how much money Donald Trump has stolen as president of the United States of America.
And here we have no idea where this money has gone.
As a matter of fact, I find it more, this whole story, I find it more interesting, not necessarily the jockeying of power.
I find it more interesting that there's $133, $133 billion of money unaccounted for that no one seems particularly interested in dealing with.
That's the point where we are.
That's the amount of corruption that you can take.
And listen, I'm a humble Midwesterner, but to me, $133 billion is a substantial amount of money.
And we don't know where it is or where it's going to go.
And it's only going to grow and grow and grow.
And nobody seems at all interested in where it could have possibly landed.
Well, I mean, that amount of money to someone like Musk is probably like, you know, winter vacation budget.
You wouldn't bend over to pick it up off the street.
Yeah.
Yeah.
He probably, yeah.
Now, but the thing with that is, is that, you know, there's this notion that, well, they'll have to return that money to the American people in theory.
Like people are getting a little excited about that.
Scott Besson, Treasury Secretary, was out recently saying, yeah, I wouldn't hold your breath on that happening at all.
However, if they were looking for some sort of sweetener as we head into the midterms and they drop a $2,000 check on everyone's lap and say, hey, look at what we're doing for you.
Like that might be some weird thing that they try and do and have Trump's signature on the bottom of every check like they did for COVID.
So maybe.
In fact, I would hope that that's what they're trying and that's what they're scheming to do, because obviously the real scheme is going to be stealing votes and stopping people from getting to the ballot box to begin with.
I would take these trying to bribe us with cash first.
I'll say, Nick, that's not a wild thought, but the only thing that I would say against that is if Donald Trump had to choose between putting some more money in his pocket and winning the midterms, he'll choose the money.
He'll take the money like 100 times out of 100.
So then that is the question is like, where are we going with any of this?
And where has this led us?
I've been thinking a lot.
I had a conversation yesterday, actually.
And I was talking about the other day when we kind of went down that rabbit hole and you were like, it was like this, this, this, and this.
And then you were like, is Jeffrey Epstein alive?
And it's like, I don't fucking know.
I don't have a clue what's going on.
We are in that zone now where all this shit, like we're talking about these institutions, we're talking about these decisions.
You know, like there are material conditions, there are people being talked into doing things.
All of these sort of machinations are coming together.
And meanwhile, the Supreme Court struck this down and he just sort of flipped them off.
And it's like, I'm going to do what I want to do.
And now we're at an how many constitutional crises have we had at this point?
I've lost count.
Yeah.
Well, people just kind of giving up making it into a crisis, but do you think that Obama was drunk when he confirmed the existence of aliens?
I don't think he was drunk.
I think he was loose.
I think he was just having a good time.
Right.
Because, you know, Trump ultimately confirmed that.
And just to piggyback on what you're saying is now these things are falling apart.
And I keep saying the next logical step will be the aliens are going to reveal themselves.
And on March, they're saying March 3rd now is what they're going to do.
But Trump, they're whispering that he is going to release whatever.
And he made it seem like Obama had said something that was top secret he wasn't supposed to say, which Ergo proves that Obama was actually saying something that was true.
Nick, I got bad news for you, man.
If you actually listen to the entire Barack Obama clip, I think he gives the game away, which is he says that aliens are real.
I think that's his personal opinion.
If there is such a thing as aliens and the government knows about it, they don't even tell the president.
And the reason they don't tell the president is the same reason why JFK didn't know about the Bay of Pigs until he was cleaning up their shit.
Like, if they don't even tell you about like coups and overthrowing of government, they're not going to share those secrets.
No president is going to give up and give that information because they wouldn't trust it with one person, even if it's the quote unquote most powerful person.
That is the nature of the deep state.
I think it'll be like the Epstein files, but like even less.
I mean, even a better and more sane version of that would be that Nixon couldn't get any information about the JFK assassination president.
Yeah, that's the whole thing.
Wild CIA Hockey Meeting00:14:36
There's so much shit going on.
Speaking of shit going on over the weekend, this is a wild story that speaking of rabbit holes, there are a lot of them here.
Mexican forces using United States intelligence went to capture the head of the Hela ASCO New Generation Cartel.
This is Namicio Cervantes, also known as El Mincho.
And during the transportation of El Mincho, he died.
We have no idea how that happened.
And in the wake of his death, which I think 70 plus people died as they were trying to take him captive, the cartels in Mexico have absolutely gone berserk, destroying property, taking over places, kidnapping people, setting fires, basically carrying out the beginnings of a civil war, including in cities like Puerto Vallerta.
Americans are stranded there.
There is so much going on in this story.
And it's amazing, Nick, how quickly the veneer of normalcy sort of can peel away.
And suddenly you have absolute chaos.
And you see like that, that veneer is hiding something very, very dark and very insidious.
Yeah.
I mean, Mexico has always sort of been this place where it's on the underlying, especially in the places that are like when we go, you know, as the vacationers, as tourists, but there's always this sort of underlying notion of like, it's a dangerous place and these drug cartels do actually have a lot more power and you have to be careful where you go, all this different stuff.
So, you know, for them to sort of make it so public and they get out there is, it was kind of stunning, right?
How many places they were trying to just cause havoc and intimidate and whatnot.
I mean, I saw some of the footage of people who are American tourists walking around after the fact, which made me wonder, like, that doesn't seem safe at all.
But they felt like, oh, they did their thing.
There's a big, you know, burning, you know, cars in the middle of the street.
And then it kind of dissipated.
But I don't think this is going away.
I think this is going to end up being worse.
But I think you have some ideas here about the connections here and how we're affecting that in America, huh?
I mean, it's a lot, man.
And I want to give some background.
And then there's like multiple sort of strands that I think are coming together.
Like when we talk about cartels, I think what we have in our minds are, we think oftentimes in America in stereotypes, movies and TV shows.
Yeah.
Right.
And it's this idea of like on the outskirts of society, there are like these dangerous people who will occasionally move drugs and they'll murder people.
Well, in Mexico, they are often interwoven into the fabric of civil society.
We're talking about everything from small town mayors, national politicians.
We're talking about the businesses, you name it.
It is a large part of the fabric of this country.
And it's basically this sort of quiet sort of agreement.
And going back to, you know, sort of the movie stereotype idea, Nick, you've seen enough mafia movies.
They're in the moments where like a cop comes in, everyone's like, oh, shit's about to hit the fan.
And like the cop's like, how's it going, guys?
Right.
They're on the same page, right?
What has happened here is that El Mincho dying has opened up a power vacuum, which means that there is now an opportunity for these cartels to sort of jockey to get in charge of things.
So there's a couple of questions.
Why in the fuck did this happen?
And even El Mincho, if you listen to some of the stuff that people are saying, like he was even shocked by it.
And I think like when it comes with Claudia Scheinbaum, the president of Mexico, I think there are some things that are happening there.
The U.S. was pressuring, right?
I mean, the U.S. has been talking about striking cartels, even the possibility of like limited invasion of Mexico.
I think that's one of the reasons why they teamed up on this operation.
There's also the fact that in a few months, the World Cup is supposed to happen.
It's almost like trying to clean things up or whatever, but I don't think that's how this is going to play out.
Meanwhile, the other thing we don't understand about cartels, Nick, is that they're not just cartels.
They don't just operate independently.
Those relationships are also with state powers.
And like, where do they get all these weapons from?
They get them from other nations, including the United States of America, which is one of the largest drug traffickers in the entire world.
So then I have to ask questions, Nick.
And we talked about Epstein.
We talked about like, was Trump working with Epstein?
And did they become competitors?
And we talked about how organized crime takes over other organized crimes beats.
So here's a question, Nick.
Is the United States of America changing the cartels that they're going to work with in Mexico?
Because the Trump administration, on top of all these tariffs and all these moves and tearing up alliances, do they have they identified another group that they want to work with in order to pad their pockets?
And these are all questions that aren't being asked.
But as we know, because we look at history and we look at the context of things, this is the kind of shit that the United States of America is involved with.
So those are the questions I have at this point.
And, you know, the question would have been before Trump got into office ever would have been, this is the CIA who is doing all this without talking to any in the government.
But now that question is, is it Trump who's involved in this?
Because he is as corrupt as any of these cartels.
And then we've, and we know they're already working hand in hand with certain cartels to benefit monetarily from this.
So, um, you know, there's no, I have to imagine who they're targeting, for instance, in these ships and these little boats off the coast of Venezuela is a direct like favor to the other cartels.
There's no question that that's connected to it as well.
And what you're touching on now is the larger picture here.
And I'm saying this, like this, if podcasts existed in the 1980s, this would be the type of conversation that would be taking place before Iran-Contra ever got talked about, right?
What we're talking about now is the United States in this new era, this post-globalism era is trying to create a sphere of influence.
And it's not, and there are all these things that are happening where it's like, why in the hell did this Venezuelan thing happen?
And you start asking those questions, which are like, is that all connected?
Is it the attempt to sort of restructure the Americas, but using sort of the influence over drug trafficking and over warlords and trying to get everybody on the same sort of page?
And then all of a sudden you're realizing, oh, we could be talking about a major conspiracy, like just a massive, massive conspiracy that would shine light on some of the things that have happened that have been so strange.
And going back to what I keep talking about with like the peasantry sort of experience that we're being loaded into, it's like seeing shadows on the wall and not knowing why they're happening.
That's what this feels like.
It feels like a ramping up of what it probably felt like during the 1950s into the 1960s when you would pick up the paper and you'd be like, huh, that's weird.
What happened in this South American country?
That's very odd.
It feels like that.
But they'd be like, ah, don't worry about it.
It's fine.
The government's not doing it.
Like, that's what they'd say.
You know, if this was a conversation in the 80s, this would be like on the rate, on AM radio.
That's exactly.
You're exactly right.
That's where it would be.
Yes.
Right through the desert, you like somehow pick up this fuzzy thing with our two voices.
So it's kind of cool that at least we can be here and more people can hear it.
But there's no question yet that all these things are connected.
And what they have to really worry about is that if you get on the wrong side of the CIA, for instance, we've seen like JFK what happened there.
If let's say Hegseth and the Department of Defense are like cutting out the CIA and doing their own sort of things on this, we might end up finding out a little bit more about this in the way of leaks, in the way of, you know, deep throat kind of stuff, because they won't take that sitting down, I'd imagine.
You can't have that war.
That's our war we're supposed to be having.
And we're supposed to be murdering people in other countries and causing all manner of revolutions.
So, you know, I just can't imagine why this would be, if we had any control over what's going on now in that area, why we would be coordinating this kind of stuff in the middle of a ramp up to a war in Iran.
Like that doesn't make any sense.
Is anybody in charge here?
I mean, and we'll talk about Iran here in a few minutes specifically, but Nick, I got to tell you, do you remember?
I think about this a lot.
I think, you know, there's like moments where like something shifts and like the world sort of shifts.
And sometimes it's very large, like it's an assassination or a coup.
And sometimes it's very small and it's very cultural.
And I'm thinking about, it was back when I was a professor and the internet and social media was picking up speed.
Do you remember when Charlie Sheen went through it?
You know how I'm talking about the tiger's blood shit and like he was everywhere ranting and raving basically on like a manic episode?
That's our government now.
Like what you just brought up, you and I would have a conversation.
If you and I were in charge of a government and there was a possibility that we would have multiple wars going at once, one of us would raise our hand and we'd be like, hey, sorry to interrupt everybody.
This is a lot of stuff.
Like if we thought about this, and just to give an example, I mean, that's what's going on with Russia.
Russia is in the middle of a bloody, bruising, awful conflict.
And they still have their sights set on invading other countries.
You know, like Israel, same thing.
Israel is basically at war with every single country in the Middle East right now.
And what we're talking about is not rational.
Like, we're talking about the fact that the people who hold the power in the world right now, the vast majority of them are irrational.
They're aggressive and they're like manic in what they're doing.
So what you just said is correct.
Like the idea of like opening up a theater in Mexico.
And by the way, Venezuela is having like its own little small civil war.
Like now all of a sudden we're talking about going to Iran.
There's no end to the things that they could do because they're not thinking rationally.
Right.
Argentina is destabilized right now.
The whole world is ready to fall apart.
I don't even want to look at it that is the way you described it.
I might look at it more like a Key and Peel sketch when they're doing the pitch for Gremlins 2.
If you've seen that, because it just gets more and more wild.
So it's not like manic coke energy where they're all hopped up.
It's just like, yeah, you go and do that.
That is great.
And then, yes, you take on Venezuela.
So it's like, that's what they're kind of doing.
You know what?
Maybe cocaine is definitely evolved as well.
Amphetamines.
I mean, well, like I thought, and this is a small aside.
I think one of the most perfect metaphors for all of this, Nick, it was like what happened with the Olympics this weekend.
Like I got up early.
I had my coffee.
I watched the big hockey game, the best hockey game I've ever seen.
I loved it.
You know, it was amazing.
And I was like, man, that was an incredible experience.
And then within like 10 minutes, Kash Patel, the head of the FBI, is in the locker room, like just drinking his ass off with the national team.
And it's like, oh my God, we paid for that.
We paid for him to take that trip and do that.
That's who we're dealing with.
Well, are we going to get into that spicy meatball?
Because I don't know if it's in the list of what we wanted to talk about today.
But I mean, here's the thing.
Is it possible that there have been people in similar positions in our government over the last, I don't know, let's say 40 years that have scheduled some sort of meeting that happened to coincide with the same, you know, with a big event, like a sporting event that they could go to.
Is it possible that that's happened?
No, it has, but I would love to know what the director of the FBI, what business he has in Milan.
Yeah.
Well, I mean, he told us what it was.
There are pictures of him appearing dressed in a hoodie.
You know, it's like you should at least play the game, like put a suit on and pretend, you know, that you're, it's official.
But yeah, they were pretending they wanted to kind of continue to coordinate around World Cup and around the Olympics for here.
We're hosting here.
But it's the different.
And this is something that's really hard to explain to people because it doesn't, you know, all the time I talk about how Trump is a symptom of a larger disease and that he's not an aberration.
He's the evolution of a past.
It doesn't mean that like things have always, things have always been like this, but they're at a different point now.
So like back in the 50s and the 60s, what you and I We're talking about a second ago when all these people were taking over countries or whatever.
The people who ran the CIA, they were serious, but they were also out of their fucking minds.
You know, like, if anybody doesn't believe this, just go Google CIA assassination Castro.
Like, go look at the things they were trying to do.
These people were getting high on LSD and going out and dosing people in public without their consent or knowledge.
Like, they were insane people, but they were also like very, very focused on it.
Maybe if they had had podcasts, maybe then it would be, you know, or, or maybe if their girlfriends were singing the national anthem anthem at like a minor league rodeo, like maybe they would be doing this type of shit, but it is a different form of it that is the manic amphetamine type fueled stuff that we're talking about.
Yeah.
And you go look at Wajahad Ali's friend of the friend of the pod watch his timeline because he discusses this a little bit in terms of his knowledge of like sort of a son, he's a son of immigrants.
He's much more aware of what that culture is like, but describing how this guy is just clearly so needy.
He's not popular.
He's not cool, but he's constantly trying to be that person and get involved with all these different things.
And that's why it's cringy, right?
When you're watching with him now, the hockey team seems happy to have him.
I guess he plays hockey.
You know, apparently in the reporting, if Kash Patel, it's a Sunday, you can't talk to him because he's busy playing hockey on some team in DC, whatever.
But he made it part of his name in the early, you know, in 2023 going on pods, ripping Christopher Wray a new one for flying around on jets and going to different things.
And here he is, again, it's the projection.
He couldn't wait to be able to do this because clearly we've already seen him do this with his girlfriend, the singer.
Immigration's Shadow00:04:25
So, you know, they're right.
There isn't seem to be any type of shame going on here.
It's the most corrupt cabinet.
And now the cabinet's infected all the other people in the other major positions in the government.
Well, and think about this, just to go ahead and give a little bit more context on the story that we've been talking about.
The people who are currently running these operations, I look at what Trump is doing and what we're discussing about like this is happening here.
What if this happens here?
I kind of, you ever go into a restaurant that you've never been to before and they hand you a menu and you're like, my God, how many things are on the menu here?
You know, it's like infinite jest.
You're like, how many, how many dishes do you have?
And you're like, what, what is happening?
Those people are bringing that menu to Donald Trump, who's not a serious person.
And he's like, give it all of it.
Fuck it.
I'll take the whole damn thing.
There's no, there's no text.
And so then you have like, there's no, it's just pictures.
That's right.
And it's AI rendered pictures.
And meanwhile, the people who are in the intelligence world, many of them are serious, but much like, oh, hell, what was the Kylo Wren?
Kylo Wren in the Star Wars movies, looking up to Darth Vader and wanting to be him.
They're looking at the original deep state operators.
You and I look at something like Iran-Contra and we're terrified of it.
We look at something like MK Ultra and we're terrified.
They look at that as the good old days.
Yeah.
So what we're dealing, and again, I'm only telling you what my initial reaction is because no cartel with as much power as this group is not involved with nation states and drug trafficking.
That's impossible.
So there's no way that Mexico is just like, we're going to go get this guy.
And then all of a sudden all hell breaks loose.
Like if that happened, if the U.S. and Mexico talked to each other about getting this guy, there's no way in the world there wasn't some conversation that and an understanding that this would lead to something like this.
It is a strange result, which signals to me that there's tons of operating underneath the surface of this thing.
Absolutely.
There's no question.
Yeah.
But the only question becomes is, okay, what is the end game?
I'm not so sure that they got too deep into that.
You know, they just thought, oh, we can make some money.
We can get some influence here.
Great.
Let's get rid of this cartel and the other one.
They're going to play ball with us.
So let's do it.
I'll give you, I'll give you one thing that I will be looking for in the next couple of days or weeks, which is the idea of things getting out of hand in Mexico and the United States being like, hey, we'll help you out.
We'll strike some places, which wouldn't it be weird if they got what they wanted and Mexico played along with it?
Like it's very much, it's like a choreographed wrestling match.
Right.
And by the way, we, you know, one thing we haven't talked about at all recently is immigration.
And I'm just kind of curious where that resides now in terms of our relationship with Mexico, because I'll choose to believe that there probably isn't any immigration happening right now across the border, like illegal crossings, right?
There's immigration happening, but I mean, it's, it's not at the level that it was in the past.
I don't know.
I mean, and primarily because they've made conditions on the street so bad that people are willing to not do it.
And they were willing to risk their lives and their loved ones' lives to come here because it was better than where they were, but now it's not.
Well, and look at this now.
So they've scared people into not immigrating.
And now those people are being told to shelter in place because the operations of the country that created this situation in the first place is now like creating these situations.
There's no way to win in this situation.
Yeah.
And, you know, and without that immigration, it does take away another level of antagonism I think that we had towards Mexico because, you know, Trump's take on it was they're letting, they're sending them here, right?
I'm sure he probably included Mexico with all those different countries saying they're, you know, he keeps saying that they let out their asylum, open up their asylums, whatever.
And so they've taken that part of it away.
And so does that open up another level of like cooperation or some weird shit like that, where, you know, we've known that the government, the United States government has been more than willing to deal with drug dealers and drug cartels in the past.
And so, yes, there's another, this is a new realignment of, you know, almost like the five, the five families.
Supporting Israel Over Younger Voters00:15:20
You know what I mean?
That's probably what we're going to do here.
And they must think that this will ultimately lead to some other version of stability, right?
I mean, I think stability under a different name.
Yeah.
But, you know, profit more than anything else.
I don't want to hear anybody's killings, whatever.
Dude, can you imagine?
Can you imagine Donald Trump gets in charge?
And they might not tell him about UFOs and aliens, but they certainly let him know about their drug trafficking.
And he's like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, wait.
We get slush.
We get slush money from this?
How much?
Yeah, wait, sorry.
Gold?
Wait, let me try some of that right now.
I'm sorry.
And other people are like, Mr. President, there's an emergency like, ah, not right now.
Yeah.
Let's talk more about this.
Let's talk more about this slush fund.
All right.
Completely different story, Nick.
We got to talk about, we had reported a while back that the Democratic National Committee had done an autopsy on the 2024 presidential election and that they spiked it into the ground.
It was like, we don't want to fight over what this report said.
We have our eyes on the future.
And Nick, what'd we say in our meeting on here?
One, it was the people who ran the Democratic Party who failed.
And number two, the issue of Gaza had absolutely tanked people showing up to vote for Kamala Harris and the Democratic Party.
Guess what?
Axios with a report that the Institute for Middle East understanding, which was present in the meetings about the fact finding from that autopsy, wouldn't you know it was a mistake by the Democratic Party to run the campaign the way that it did.
And let me check my notes.
Oh, the issue of Gaza hurt turnout in the 2024 election for Kamala Harris and the Democratic Party.
Gambling in this establishment?
I'm shocked.
I'm shocked.
Okay.
I'm not going to do this, but I will do something.
I will say that they were in between two interesting positions.
One, what you just described in terms of the young voter who was completely turned off because they wouldn't.
I guess because there was lip service towards Palestinians and not wanting innocent Palestinians killed, right?
They would pay some lip service for that.
But they also felt compelled to have to support Israel as much as possible on that end because I have to imagine they felt like the Jewish donors and the big money there was more important to them, I suppose, than alienating younger voters there.
But I guess what we're going to glean from this autopsy was that that wasn't equal.
And they ultimately turned the vote into the torpedo by doing that.
So here's a little bit of knowledge.
And this is a conversation I have had with every single candidate and every single campaign that I have ever consulted with or had a conversation with.
The fun thing about doing the moral and ethical thing is that it helps.
It actually did like all this, like, well, if we do this, it's going to hurt us here.
It's going to hurt us there.
Nick, if it didn't work, if you actually said, hey, guess what?
This isn't right and something needs to change.
She couldn't even, there was no daylight between her and Biden whatsoever.
And every single strategist and consultant wanted absolutely nothing to do with it.
And why, Nick?
Because all of those people who were on the Kamala Harris campaign, they were all looking for their next paycheck.
They were all looking for working for another corporation and eventually being on another presidential campaign or working for a nonprofit.
And guess what?
If you're part of the campaign that says this is a genocide and it's wrong, some of that money is going to dry up.
So they made decisions that had nothing to do with the actual election.
Polls showed that this was wildly unpopular.
And on top of that, they ran away from the moral and ethical imperative and they lost.
They ate shit.
And they ate shit because they were like, well, we can't do that.
Well, here's Liz Cheney.
You know what I just watched today?
I was writing an article for Dispatches from a Collapsing State.
I just watched this clip of Liz Cheney announcing her dad was going to vote for Kamala Harris.
And the liberals were just standing up and clapping.
And it's like, that was the decision you made.
And then on top of it, the Democratic Party was like, we can't even let this out.
We can't.
And everybody knew.
Everybody knew exactly what the autopsy showed.
And they just tried to hide it.
It's the worst example of like the Streisand effect I've seen in terms of a campaign.
And then these people have the temerity and the fucking gall, knowing all of this, to go on podcasts and shows and write articles blaming it on trans people, blaming it on trans people and black voters.
Like, how in the, how do you sleep at night, you fucking slime bags?
Like, these people, I wouldn't trust these people to run a lawnmower shop, much less a national campaign.
But you know what's missing in that report is that, and this is what I'm sensing, you know, because we have these meetings every week.
We have the meeting, right?
But what I'm sensing is that a lot of the pro-Israel people who would normally be very liberal, right, and vote Democrat, no problem.
There's been a change and it's rooted in some of the things like trans and all those different things where they were looking for any excuse to vote for Trump.
And the Israel thing becomes that excuse.
And I support Israel.
And I obviously we can't vote for Kamala because she does not support Israel, which is the most ridiculous, intellectually dishonest take you can ever imagine.
Biden Harris gave Israel everything they wanted.
Yes, More and never got in their way and didn't put any kind of pressure on them to stop what they were doing.
And so I sense that they lost a bunch of votes on the other side anyway, even though they were trying to make it seem like they were supporting Israel as much as possible.
So, yes, again, the moral of the story is, yeah, if you do the right thing and you're on the right side of history on these things, you know, you can get rewarded.
You know, there's probably more to the reporting that we're here as well, the other little pieces here, but I felt like they just did the exact thing that would alienate both sides of the argument for them.
And here we are.
It's kind of guaranteed Trump was going to win.
It's almost like maybe Netanyahu wanted to help Trump win the election.
It's almost like everybody knew that in the very, very beginning.
And, you know, I want to bring up one last piece before we move on, Nick.
And this is, it feels like because it was under a Democratic president that this gets completely memory hold.
Like there are so many Democrats and so many liberals who have forgotten what last year or two years ago was actually like.
It wasn't just that they gave Israel the weapons and the financial support and the cover.
Not only did they launder the genocide with the international community while every country was like, hey, this is a genocide and it should stop.
On top of that, Nick, Biden and Harris and the Democratic Party, they completely laundered an effort to go from campus to campus and city to city around the country and crack the skulls of young people who had the nerve to protest the genocide.
They worked with the right in order to do that.
They sicked the law enforcement of the country on these people.
They expelled them.
They ruined their names.
They hampered these kids' future.
They called them domestic terrorists.
Josh Shapiro likened them to the KKK.
And now, by the way, when people ask me, why aren't the young people protesting?
Because the last time they protested, they had hordes of people breaking their skulls.
This party, I said it, I don't know, it's been maybe a couple of weeks now.
Irredeemable.
There is nothing that this current iteration of the Democratic Party, there is nothing that they do that is in any way redemptive or hope-making.
And looking at this thing, like I, I don't, again, I don't know how these people sleep at night.
I truly don't.
And which is why, like, you know, this could take decades before this, our, our, our country kind of gets back to some version of like what we thought democracy was, but I don't want it to go back the way it was before anyway.
And that's what's, that's the rub here, which might ultimately be good eventually in the future because it had gotten destroyed completely by Trump.
And so it will obviously be completely different when we do, when it does change again.
And that will be okay.
The only problem I have with all of this then becomes how much damage are they going to ultimately end up doing?
And then how long is it going to take before we can extricate it from it?
That's those, I mean, you know, I've already kind of come in terms like, you know, my father is not going to see a different version of the United States before he's gone.
I kind of wonder if I'm going to, honestly.
It's going to take so much and shit like this isn't going to help.
Nick, unfortunately, we have to turn to Brett Stevens of the New York Times.
I'm so sorry.
Didn't we have a deal?
That was one of our meetings.
It was like, we're not going to do Brett Stevens.
But unfortunately, I hate to say it.
The new Brett Stevens column, it gives us an opportunity to learn and illuminate something important.
So this, and again, this is the type of shit that like when this comes across my feed, I have to go take a walk.
You know, this is Brett Stevens making the case for striking Iran and going to war with Iran.
Quote, President Trump appears poised to order strikes on Iran.
The lack of explanation is a serious moral and political mistake.
At the very least, Americans deserve to know what they're getting into, why, for how long, and for what result.
But it doesn't mean there isn't a compelling case for action.
Three, in fact.
Iran poses a threat to global order by way of its damaged but abiding nuclear ambitions, its deep strategic ties to Moscow and Beijing, its persistent threats to maritime commerce, and its support for international terrorism.
It poses a threat to regional stability, not just through its support for anti-Israel proxies like Hamas and Hezbollah, but also by its meddling in Lebanon, Iraq, Yemen, and until the overthrow of the Assad regime, Syria.
And it's a moral threat to the life and safety of its own people, many thousands of whom it slaughtered last month.
There was a time not long ago when Americans both left and right cared enough about human rights to believe it could, in some circumstances, justify military intervention.
Nick, we're off to a galloping start.
This, you know, remember Mad Libs, Jared?
This is a Mad Libs.
I've seen this before.
I've read this exact article with a different country written in there.
Okay, I'm so glad you said that.
I started reading this article and I felt like I was out on the quad at Indiana State University again.
Like it was, it was 2003.
I could eat Burger King seven days a week and not gain a pound.
Like I was, I was, I was having a great time.
And I remember this article.
I could, I could recite this article from memory.
Yeah.
Yeah.
That's, it's, it's remarkable.
He has no sense of anything.
I mean, we've seen this movie way more times than just 2003.
You can go back to 1964 if you want to for this.
It's unbelievable what, you know, they're going to start talking about the domino theory again, aren't they?
Well, I mean, they certainly are.
I want to go through a couple of these things because it's necessary when you deal with this.
Like this Brett Stevens shit, this is a never Trump Republican.
But guess what, Nick?
He's getting a little excited at the idea of a war.
And why?
Because he's a neoconservative.
What does he lust after, Nick?
He wants America to use its military to go around the world overthrowing other countries.
He was very turned on by Iraq, just like all of these neoconservatives.
What is it they want, though, Nick?
They want a president who will do this, but give them a story that makes them feel good about it, right?
Oh, we're going to go help people.
Oh, the American way is the way of the future.
We're going to be welcomed as liberators.
The problem isn't in terms of like actually having an issue with Trumpism.
The problem with him and a lot of these never Trump Republicans is that unlike Ronald Reagan, he's not going to give a speech about how great America is and how America needs to go about doing these things.
He wants a bedtime story.
He wants his binky put in before he goes to sleep.
Yeah, but it also is disconnected from the reality because like you said, we're liberators and all that stuff.
They don't understand at all about what they're about to get into if they want to do this.
Carl Bremer didn't understand it either.
The general and gross incompetence of what is going to about to happen.
And we talked about the logistics and the tactics of attacking Iran is insane.
Like there's just no way we don't have the kind of resources or the kind of help in the region that we would need and support from in that region to have any hope of making this anything that wouldn't last.
It would make Vietnam look like Disneyland.
I mean, and Vietnam didn't have like a major religious push to it.
I mean, like, it's a bad news situation.
It really truly is.
And also, by the way, like everything that he's saying on top of this, Nick, it's incredible that one of his reasons is its ties to Russia, China, and its control over all of these proxy terrorist groups.
Do you think that attacking them might not mean that you have to attack them?
Because if this is the greatest strategic mind of our generation, I don't know what to do with it.
Like, it's insane.
Do you remember why we had 9-11, why they wanted to do 9-11?
Do you remember why?
Well, they hated our freedom.
Well, yeah, but there was a little bit more like, you know, they hated our presence.
Can you imagine a man like Osama bin Laden and Joey and it's terrible.
It's absolutely terrible.
I would argue that if we left them alone more, we might not inflame this kind of thing.
But, you know, you know, it's funny.
I told you, I've been watching the West Wing, you know, from start to finish.
And we got to the part where he has to decide they attack, you know, a convoy and they kill the former Secretary of Defense and Donna is, you know, it really hurt.
It doesn't die.
And they have to have a response.
And Leo is screaming and yelling, we have to have a response.
And then, but you have President Bartlett who keeps saying, okay, we do this big response.
And then I'm going to have, and basically describes like 9-11 before 9-11.
Well, it was after 9-11.
He describes, you know, having terrorist attacks on our soil every month, which is a, which would be a profound threat that would happen, especially if we attacked Iran of all places.
Like Iraq was bad enough or Afghanistan was bad enough, but Iran of all places, the home of Hezbollah, would probably trigger all sorts of things.
People wouldn't go to public, you wouldn't go to a football game if you were.
Nick, I'll say this, because you went down this road.
What you just laid out would be one of the best case scenarios.
Because that's not even global war.
Iran's Cooler Head?00:14:38
Yeah, right.
And what you just laid out is horrifying, but it's not even one of the worst case scenarios.
I can't get a little bit myopic.
I like to keep my focus, you know?
But yes, you want to pull out a little farther and you don't have to do that much thinking to do that.
Yes.
You don't have to pull out very far at all because Russia has warships docked in Iran right now.
Yeah.
Moving along.
Quote, why is a military attack crucial, Nick?
Look at what hasn't worked to change the regime's behavior.
Economic engagement hasn't.
Europeans have long sought close commercial ties with Iran, only to have Tehran repay the favor by routinely taking European citizens hostage or carrying out assassinations and terrorist attacks on European soil.
Economic sanctions haven't.
The regime has been under some form of sanctions since its earliest months.
But while sanctions damage economies, they have little effect on despotic rulers who are indifferent to the well-being of their own people and who can always find ways to enrich themselves through sanctions busting, bribery, cybercrime, drug dealing, and other black market transactions.
Real quick, are you telling me economic sanctions don't work and they only hurt like regular people instead of regimes?
Fascinating that we keep doing it, Nick.
Fascinating.
Keep going, Brett.
Why don't you tease that out a little bit more?
Back to the article.
Quote, international institutions have it.
The International Atomic Energy Agency spent decades engaged in a cat and mouse game with Iran as the regime repeatedly hid its nuclear capabilities and prevaricated about its intentions.
Ultimately, that led to an IAEA report last year noting that the regime had failed to provide technically credible answers regarding the nuclear material at three locations.
Nick, we're right on the cusp.
Tell me if you've heard this one.
We're talking about deja vu.
Are you ready?
Are you ready, Nick?
I hope the people at home are ready.
I've heard they could be as close to a week to two weeks from producing a nuclear weapon.
How long has that two-week clock been running, Nick?
You know, what he is trying to do and pretend what that report said and what the report was doing while our agreement was in place.
Maybe I'm naive, but I am going to choose to believe that the overwhelming evidence we had during the Obama administration when we had the nuclear deal in place with Iran was successful and that they were in a box and were not able to develop weapons out of their nuclear capabilities.
So the idea that, and by the way, we're talking about what the end game is, it's basically going back to that agreement.
That's what they're going to get back to.
And they had it already.
It was there.
And they picked it up because a black guy did the deal.
That's basically what they did it for.
Well, Nick, I personally agree with what you're saying, but I think Brad has some issues.
Quote, whatever one thinks of Trump's first term decision to withdraw from the Iran nuclear deal, a good decision about a bad agreement in my view, though thoughtful people differ.
The Biden administration invested months in torturous negotiations trying to entice Iran back into it.
They got the back of the Ayatollah's hand.
Last year, Trump spent months seeking a diplomatic outcome.
It too went nowhere, and current negotiations seem to be on a similar course.
The failure of non-military options does not, of course, mean that military ones are destined to succeed.
Things will go wrong in any complex operation.
There's a reason the word FUBAR began life as a military acronym.
And Iran possesses the means to inflict damage on American personnel and installations throughout the Middle East.
The fact that they failed to land effective blows in the June war against Israel and the United States should lull nobody into complacency.
Iranians will have learned from their mistakes and a regime that feels it has its back to the wall will have no reason to pull punches.
Nick, you know what he doesn't mention here?
You know what happened when they struck Israel and they struck the United States of America?
They told them before they shot their weapons so that they could prevent any damage being done.
It is absolutely reprehensible that this guy is slipping in here the idea that maybe they're not as dangerous as they possibly are when in fact Iran, and I cannot believe I'm saying this, has been the cooler head time and time again with the United States and Israel over the past year.
But he also tries to make up this story that Trump spent months seeking a diplomatic outcome.
The only thing that they sought was bunker bombs trying to destroy.
And by the way, remember, they literally are now saying two weeks away from a bomb.
They just told us a few months ago that they had obliterated their entire nuclear program.
There was no way there.
They're years from doing anything, right?
So which is it?
Who was lying and when?
They're probably lying.
For both of them, they're lying, right?
They never destroyed anything.
Those bombs blew something up, but who knows how far they got, right?
Okay, did the deal work?
Did the bombing work?
Where are we on this?
How could he possibly use the phrase like diplomatic relations or trying diplomatically to solve anything last year when all they did was send some bombs?
And yes, you are absolutely right.
And it's frightening to think that Iran is the cooler head here.
And they retaliated, you know, in a way, like kind of wag their finger and be like, you know, hey, we'll play this game.
But at some point they won't with a million man army and a and a country that's surrounded with friends.
There's just, it's, it's frightening that like obviously the end goal in whatever PowerPoint that somebody presented to them is going to describe some sort of a deal they're going to end up having, you know, short of unless someone sold them on the on the Maduro doctrine, where they're going to, they think that they can somehow sneak in there and grab the Ayatollah out of there and whisk him away to be to be charged with some crime in our courts system.
You know, if that's what they're thinking, and someone pitched that and someone like that, then we are, now I'm really afraid.
Nick, and I want to just throw this out there.
Like, as long as he's talking about military operations, which I think is absolutely fucking absurd that we're doing this, like the Houthis took us down.
Yeah.
We couldn't even defeat the Houthis.
Like we had to, we had to agree to a separate ceasefire with them because they owned our asses.
Yeah.
And do we think that that ceasefire would not end?
And I'm just talking about a separate group over here.
I'm not even talking about the fucking Iranians.
Do we also, I can't.
I can't.
I can't.
I can't fucking, I, I, these people, they have such a hard on for going after Iran.
And why?
Because they absolutely hate them from the neoconservative conception of the Iranian revolution.
They feel like that they were emasculated.
They feel like they were embarrassed.
And it's, it's payback time.
And they've wanted to do this since then, period.
And here's what's going to happen, right?
We get engaged in some sort of a war, right?
And it drags on and it goes horribly for, I don't know, nine, 10 months.
And guess what they're going to say?
Who are they going to blame for it going so badly?
Guess Obama or Biden.
Of course.
They're going to say this is Biden's war.
That's what they're going to say.
And we're just trying to fix this whole thing.
This is from Biden.
Obama did this.
And what do you want from us?
Obama had no bullets left in our military.
Of course, we're going to lose this war that we started.
That's what they're going to say.
And you write it down on February 23rd, 24th when it comes out.
That's what we're going to be at.
And, you know, if he doesn't go from that, this should sink his popularity.
You know, he should finally go below the Nixon line, which will never be broken.
And I don't think he can't quite get close to it either.
The popularity of Nixon, the day he had to leave the White House was.
His numbers, the firms that are still keeping track are really, really eye-opening and bad.
Let's finish this article out, Nick, because we've gotten to the climax of this thing.
Quote, the Iranian regime may want war on the theory that all it needs to do to win is to survive it.
In this view, an American strike that further degraded Iran's military assets, but didn't fundamentally shake the regime's grip would rally its domestic supporters, demoralize its brutalized opponents, and demonstrate the futility of future military action as a means of altering the regime's course.
By the way, real fast, Nick, before we move forward, that's an insane type of logic.
Like that is an insane.
Moving on.
It's a bad theory.
Yes, it is, Brett.
It is a bad theory.
Thank you.
I appreciate that.
To listen to the regime's rhetoric is to be reminded of the Black Knight of Monty Python and the Holy Grail, who loses limb after limb while insisting he's still winning.
The regime has lost much of its nuclear infrastructure.
We don't know how much.
Watched its regional proxies be overthrown, decimated, and incapacitated.
Not really.
Presided over the implosion of its economy, kind of, and lost whatever domestic and international legitimacy remained to it.
By the way, they haven't had legitimacy in forever in the international community.
Also, fuck you, Brett, for bringing up Monty Python, the Holy Grail.
Yeah.
How dare you?
To finish, quote, no wonder protests in Iran have resumed, this time among university students who are bravely undaunted by the terrifying risk.
Their protests seem connected to the 40-day memorials for the victims of last month's massacres.
But it's not a stretch to assume those protests are also a signal to Trump that his promise last month to Iranians that, quote, help is on its way hasn't been forgotten and that ordinary Iranians are prepared to join the fight for their own liberation.
That's right, Nick.
Mission accomplished.
Guess what?
We're going to be welcomed.
Say it, everybody.
Say it, everybody.
As liberators?
Oh, we're going to be welcomed as liberators.
You know what?
I fart in this general direction.
Thank you.
I appreciate it.
Can I just say, joking aside, fuck him.
He doesn't care about these protesters.
He doesn't care about these people who have been massacred.
He's using it as an entry point the same way that every one of these craven motherfuckers has used it.
And it is awful what they're doing.
And I want the Iranian regime to be overthrown.
But you know how it's not going to be overthrown by us going over there and causing a big giant mess that's only going to escalate and get out of control.
Fuck these ghouls.
These absolute monstrous ghouls who use regular people and their suffering to their advantage because they want to take over the world.
I fucking hate these people.
Yep.
We're going to bomb Iran and then they're going to welcome us as liberators, Nick.
God.
I've seen this movie too often.
I can tell you.
Nobody ever looks at these articles and is like, hey, Brett, you're being paid millions.
But this time, this is the one, Jared.
This is the time we're going to get it right.
Also, by the way, do you notice how the rhetoric has completely changed?
Like as soon as there's a whiff of war, they're like, maybe Trump's not so bad.
The New York Times does it.
The Atlantic does it.
They all do it because all they care about is using the military of the United States of America for adventurism and overthrowing other people.
That's where their true allegiance is.
It's not with the Democratic Party.
It's not in a popular front.
It's for militaristic chauvinism and nationalism.
That's all they care about.
And meanwhile, their main destroyer, their main, you know, USS Ford, I think was the toilets aren't even working.
Shitter stole.
But yeah, if you read the article that I read the thing about it, it's toilets are really important and there's thousands of sailors on this boat.
And if you can't go to the bathroom, like things cease to work and function.
You cannot have a functioning ship if you can't go.
And so what's going on now is there's 45 minute waits to get in the bathroom.
Well, who's manning the station that they need to be manning while they're waiting in line to go to the bathroom?
Like nobody.
So this is where we're at with this.
This was a newer ship that they didn't design properly.
So, I mean, this is an this is a quagmire to say the least.
Nick, do you know when the last time the U.S. was involved in air-to-air combat?
Air-to-air, like top gun?
Yeah.
Do you know, do you know when the last time was?
Geez, like Kosovo?
It was in Syria.
Oh, so that's recently, right?
Yeah.
It took place in 2017.
Oh, I was going to, you made it seem like it was decades and decades, but okay.
Okay, that's not so bad.
Okay, that's still a long time.
And that was just an isolated incident.
What you just brought up in turn, and we were texting about this before I started recording.
You know what Russia found out when they rolled out their military war machine in Ukraine?
And they have a giant army and they should have overwhelmed them.
They rolled them out and they're like, oh, some of our shit doesn't work anymore.
And some of our stuff isn't up to snuff.
And we haven't actually done this in a long time.
Going into Iran, like after we've sort of been unchallenged, I mean, the Iraq war, we, of course, dealt with insurgencies, but the insurgents weren't flying fucking fighter jets.
Yeah.
You basically had a clear sky to do what you wanted.
And as far as I can tell, they have a million man army that's very well trained.
Dude, it's an absolute insane idea.
And that's where we're at.
It's so insane.
And they're going to try and do it.
It sounds like Trump is going to do a limited strike and then maybe do a larger strike.
Who knows?
But the fact that anybody is taking this seriously and actually talking about it is it's madness.
No, the only way you could even think, oh, okay, would be one of those seven-on-one kind of things like we saw in the first Gulf War.
The coalition of the willing.
Yeah.
Like, you know, maybe.
But again, we're talking about supply lines.
We're talking about geographical landlocked thing.
Can't do it as a coalition because it would be seen as a provocation of the BRICS countries.
Yes.
Yes.
You couldn't even do.
Well, and by the way, the UK wouldn't do it because they don't trust us anymore.
Well, right?
If they get involved, they'll be an easier target for anybody in those.
That's the thing.
It'll be the U.S. and Israel that does it.
And the only reason why that would not spark a larger thing is because Israel is playing both sides of the equation and works with Russia as much as it does with the United States.
Like you can't even have a coalition.
You're going it alone against an incredible foe.
Yeah.
I can't.
I got to go for a walk.
Going Live Tonight00:00:40
I'm tapping out.
I'm throwing in the towel.
I'm done.
All right, everybody.
A reminder, we are going to be going live tonight because this is coming out on Tuesday.
Going live tonight on Tuesday, February 24th, immediately following the State of the Union, which begins at 9 p.m. Eastern.
Head over to patreon.com/slash my craig podcast in order to hang out on the live show as we dissect and react to what happens during the State of the Union.
I got to tell you, I don't think this is going to be a boring one.
I think there's going to be some stuff that we're going to have to talk about.
Looking forward to that.
In the meantime, you can find us over in Blue Sky.