The Muckrake Political Podcast - Iran Out of Options
Aired: 2026-03-31
Duration: 49:32


=== Hollywood Shoot Chaos (01:24) ===

[00:00:01]  Hey, everybody.
[00:00:02]  Welcome to the McCraig podcast.
[00:00:04]  I'm Jerry Day Sexton here looking at Fred Nick House.
[00:00:06]  But Nick, how you doing, bud?
[00:00:07]  I'm doing okay.
[00:00:08]  I'm doing pretty well.
[00:00:09]  We're having a, there's a Hollywood shoot next door, and man, are there a lot of trucks out there?
[00:00:13]  Hollywood shoot, you say?
[00:00:15]  Oh, yeah.
[00:00:16]  Yeah.
[00:00:17]  Are we talking movie?
[00:00:18]  Are we talking commercial?
[00:00:19]  What are we doing here?
[00:00:20]  It is a, it is a, um, a commercial for Uber, but they're going to be inside.
[00:00:25]  I said, oh, you're going to be out in the driveway, right?
[00:00:27]  No, I guess the point is, Jared, is that you're in your house when you call the Uber, right?
[00:00:33]  So they have to document that part.
[00:00:35]  And then the walking out, I don't know.
[00:00:36]  Oh, you have to have the footage of the person looking at their phone and smiling.
[00:00:41]  Yeah, right.
[00:00:42]  Like on the couch.
[00:00:43]  And then this is.
[00:00:45]  Yes.
[00:00:46]  I had, weirdly enough, a couple of my neighbors sold their houses to a commercial shoot not too long ago.
[00:00:53]  And it's incredible how quickly the cars and the people descended.
[00:00:58]  And it was like, I went on my run and it was like running through like a set, but it was a block's worth of it.
[00:01:04]  I don't know how y'all live like that.
[00:01:06]  It's madness.
[00:01:07]  Let me just really quickly, I know it's not the weekender, but let's recommend the movie The Limey because there's an incredible sequence where these two hitmen guys are basically observing a shoot of a film shoot.
[00:01:19]  And it is the most, it's the funniest thing you're ever going to hear as they're commenting on people walking by.
[00:01:24]  Please go watch that.

=== Running Through a Set (15:22) ===

[00:01:26]  I love that we're getting ready to have this conversation about the state of the world.
[00:01:29]  And meanwhile, the fantasy world is being filmed next door to you.
[00:01:33]  Yeah, exactly.
[00:01:33]  Right.
[00:01:36]  That's fantastic.
[00:01:37]  Everyone, we got a full show.
[00:01:40]  There is so much shit going on right now that we have to get to.
[00:01:43]  Before we do that, a reminder, head over to patreon.com slash my craig podcast.
[00:01:46]  Support the show.
[00:01:47]  We have no sponsors.
[00:01:49]  We don't run ads.
[00:01:50]  We need to remain editorially independent.
[00:01:52]  We rely on you.
[00:01:54]  And also, by the way, you're already listening to the previews for the weekender.
[00:01:57]  We'll talk about film shoots on the weekender for an hour.
[00:02:00]  I don't give a shit.
[00:02:01]  Let's do it.
[00:02:02]  Let's roll it.
[00:02:04]  But that's patreon.com slash my craig podcast.
[00:02:06]  Nick, as an analyst who, by the way, is trying to get locked in really, really hard on what is going on with the war in Iran and the associated reverberations that will affect all of our lives.
[00:02:20]  And for the record, like the shocks to the system are well on their way.
[00:02:25]  It's merely a few days or a couple of weeks until we really start feeling them.
[00:02:29]  Being that analyst, I was hanging out on my Sunday.
[00:02:33]  I just enjoyed a wonderful Elite Eight game between Yukon and Duke.
[00:02:38]  I was so hyped.
[00:02:38]  And then all of a sudden, I was like, oh, some interesting signals are starting to bubble up to the surface.
[00:02:44]  So within a matter of a couple of hours on Sunday, multiple conflicting stories and articles began running in major publications.
[00:02:52]  In the Washington Post, it was announced that the Pentagon has plans for weeks-long operations in Iran, boots on the ground.
[00:03:00]  The Wall Street Journal ran an article that Trump is considering seizing a half ton of uranium from Iran, which would be, again, a boots on around operation.
[00:03:12]  And then Trump gave an interview to the Financial Times, Nick.
[00:03:16]  Let me read some of the interesting little headlines from this.
[00:03:20]  Trump wants to seize Iran's oil, as well as Karg Island.
[00:03:24]  We'll control it, quote, indefinitely.
[00:03:27]  This would also mean that we would, and this is the president's own words, quote, we would have to be there for a while.
[00:03:34]  But then also says that the regime change has already been completed and the new guys who have taken over are, quote, very professional.
[00:03:41]  These are a lot of different signals happening very quickly in a very, very tense time.
[00:03:46]  I have my thoughts on what this equals up to.
[00:03:50]  How do you feel about it?
[00:03:51]  Well, I mean, whatever he's going to comment on in terms of the regime now is not anything directly interact with any direct interaction.
[00:03:58]  No, you know, so it's like, what you know, the professional people he's talking about are probably bullshitters from Pakistan.
[00:04:04]  No offense to Pakistan, but who are just like making shit up and like maybe they can figure out a way to get them to do something later on after enough time.
[00:04:10]  But like, um, I kind of think it's a broader thing because I, of course, I have been saying the whole time, oh, they're not going to do this, they're going to chicken out.
[00:04:18]  We know that, you know, Trump cannot stand the sight of, you know, of numbers of casualties mounting and that looks makes him look bad, all that stuff.
[00:04:25]  So, you know, but I can't, you know, argue with the facts that are being said, that it looks like they're ramping this up.
[00:04:32]  But I thought it would be interesting because the discussion could also center around what modern war is now.
[00:04:38]  You know, is this just a bunch of missiles being wild back and forth and who can do it by attrition, throw some drones out there, maybe eventually be robots?
[00:04:47]  You know, or do we always have to kind of revert back to some sort of boots in the ground with a saving face part of this where no one wants to be embarrassed and admit that they lost?
[00:04:57]  So I don't understand exactly what modern warfare ends up looking like now.
[00:05:01]  Can you help me?
[00:05:02]  Well, yeah.
[00:05:03]  And I'll answer that question in just a second.
[00:05:06]  I think what is happening here, first of all, we've documented this, and I'm really proud of the way that we've covered this because as this thing has taken form, as it started, the initial strike, we talked a lot about the factors that were like leading toward an absolutely self-destructive, stupid decision.
[00:05:23]  This never should have happened in the first place.
[00:05:25]  We talked about all of the different actors and all of the different influences that brought us to the point of carrying out this illegal and obnoxious and disastrous war.
[00:05:33]  Meanwhile, we've talked a lot about Donald Trump, who seems completely and utterly lost.
[00:05:38]  And minutes after he gave this interview to the Financial Times, and if you follow everything I just said, it makes no sense whatsoever.
[00:05:46]  We've covered how he is essentially not getting briefings.
[00:05:50]  He's being lied to by his own advisors who are sort of pushing him along a certain route.
[00:05:56]  This is not a person who understands what's going on.
[00:05:58]  And what you said is exactly right, which is the idea that they are, quote, very professional.
[00:06:04]  Nick, he's not talking to them.
[00:06:06]  This is what Witcoff and Kushner and the Pakistanis are telling him.
[00:06:10]  It's like, oh, we're having conversations.
[00:06:11]  Don't worry about it.
[00:06:12]  It's going to be fine.
[00:06:13]  What has happened at this point, Nick, is that this guy is lost in the tides of history.
[00:06:19]  It is not him making decisions.
[00:06:21]  It is the forces that are pushing things.
[00:06:23]  The United States of America entered into this war for a variety of different reasons, but the underlying one was the current of what capitalism wanted, which was the destruction of the American neoliberal global order.
[00:06:35]  And so now we've reached a point where there's nothing to do.
[00:06:39]  And I want to say very quickly, Nick, I back in my younger days, I got into my fair share of fights, like drunken, dumb fights.
[00:06:50]  And anybody who has ever been in these types of fights, there's a period of time where before the fight starts, you're talking shit to each other, hoping that the other person will be like, no, that's fine.
[00:07:01]  Or say something shitty and then walk away so you don't have to fight, right?
[00:07:04]  It's sort of a dance of who's going to back down first because neither one of you wants to actually fight unless one of you wants to fight.
[00:07:11]  And let me tell you something, Iran wants to fight.
[00:07:13]  And the United States of America at this point, Trump, who doesn't have any choices, there are no economic choices, no political choices, no real military choices.
[00:07:22]  He's saying a bunch of shit, hoping that Iran will come to the table and say, hey, that's okay.
[00:07:26]  We can stop this thing.
[00:07:28]  It's not going to stop.
[00:07:30]  And so he's locked in.
[00:07:31]  There aren't options there for him to take at this point.
[00:07:34]  So now we're going to end up in a completely unnecessarily tragic position, which will look a lot more like flag-draped coffins coming back home as opposed to drones or robotic weapons or any of those things.
[00:07:48]  Fair enough.
[00:07:48]  And we got to talk about some of the goals as well, which will require boots on the ground.
[00:07:51]  But I do want to expand upon that analogy of being in a bar and having a fight because what Iran is doing is, you know, you're the one, Jared, you're the U.S. trying to start the fight talking shit.
[00:08:02]  You have a friend next to you, though, who's like, hey, man, it's okay.
[00:08:05]  And Iran punches that guy.
[00:08:08]  Well, no, the friend, the friend is the one who wants you to fight on their behalf.
[00:08:13]  Oh, well, I think a couple of the guys are like, hey, hey, let's not do this.
[00:08:16]  Then they're the ones getting a fist to the face.
[00:08:18]  So as well, like, you know, UAE and some of the neighboring countries.
[00:08:22]  So either way, but I did want to illuminate a little bit more because I'm glad that you kind of discussed a little bit about what the state of our leader is at this point and where he's going because he was appearing on stage.
[00:08:32]  And like, this is what he's now talking about in the, in probably some weird, twisted version of like the most transparent presidency of all time.
[00:08:40]  This is the shit he's saying now.
[00:08:41]  Check this out.
[00:08:42]  Thank everybody very much.
[00:08:44]  And I'm asked to take a few questions.
[00:08:47]  Unlike other politicians, they would like the questions screened.
[00:08:51]  I don't ask for screening of the questions.
[00:08:53]  You can ask me anything you want.
[00:08:55]  You can talk sex.
[00:08:57]  You can do whatever the hell you want.
[00:09:00]  Why did you laugh?
[00:09:01]  Don't encourage the man, Jared.
[00:09:03]  No, I love that there's two people in the audience.
[00:09:07]  Yeah.
[00:09:08]  No, it's not great, man.
[00:09:10]  And when you actually look at it, and I'm glad that you brought up these scenarios, these three scenarios that popped up all at once, this right now, it's very strange, actually.
[00:09:20]  It's the regime trying to talk through possible scenarios all at once.
[00:09:27]  And what do those signals reveal, Nick?
[00:09:28]  It reveals that there is not a mission here.
[00:09:31]  They're trying to create the mission for the thing that they're being forced into doing.
[00:09:36]  So here we have Pentagon has plans for weeks-long operations.
[00:09:40]  Quick, Nick, historical fact check.
[00:09:42]  If you go in for a weeks-long mission, how long are you going to be on that mission for, actually?
[00:09:48]  Weeks would seem like years, Jared.
[00:09:50]  Okay, it's the contractor promise, right?
[00:09:52]  Oh, I can do this 5,000.
[00:09:53]  No problem.
[00:09:54]  It'll be done in two weeks.
[00:09:56]  Sure will.
[00:09:57]  The second thing, uranium.
[00:09:59]  Nick, that's not just boots on the ground.
[00:10:01]  Those are specific operations to get a half ton of uranium out of Iran.
[00:10:06]  Real fast, who do you think proposed this mission?
[00:10:08]  Do you have any guesses?
[00:10:11]  I would probably like Hegseph.
[00:10:14]  No, actually, it came from, let me check my notes, conservative super radio host Mark Levin.
[00:10:20]  God damn it.
[00:10:21]  Of course it did.
[00:10:22]  Mark Levin, who is out there on the radio pushing this shit and trying to normalize it.
[00:10:26]  Then meanwhile, Nick, we get into the idea of like the troops will have to be there indefinitely, which flies in the face of what the Pentagon is letting go for the weeks-long operation.
[00:10:35]  He's also saying we're going to have to take it, but the people we're working with are very professional.
[00:10:40]  And what does that show?
[00:10:41]  Trump has no idea what's going on.
[00:10:44]  None of these plans in any way, shape, or form are based in reality.
[00:10:48]  It's literally manic, delusional shit that is trying to come up with the story for the thing that they are being forced to do.
[00:10:57]  And you may ask yourself, well, why are they doing this?
[00:11:00]  Why are they allowing?
[00:11:01]  Because again, this notion of going in and rescuing the uranium from Iran was never talked about.
[00:11:09]  It was never part of any plan initially.
[00:11:12]  So it's like, yes, they're just adding and doing.
[00:11:14]  But I think the reason is, is because the role of the commander in chief or the role of people who are serving the commander in chief, like they have to do what he tells them to do, right?
[00:11:24]  And that's that's a problem here because we could pretend that, you know, it would be a coup if we had adults like we saw in the first administration saying, yeah, yeah, we're not going to do that because that's insane.
[00:11:35]  But here we are where they're like, you know, we have people who are like supposedly following the chain of command.
[00:11:40]  And that's really where I suppose the founding fathers figured, okay, the 25th Amendment, or which had to be an amendment, wasn't even part of the constitution.
[00:11:47]  They didn't think of that, right?
[00:11:49]  That's where those things have to get kicked in.
[00:11:51]  And the fact that no one would be bringing this up at this point and saying this is the most, I mean, I would like to say, you know, disorganized war we've ever seen, but like disorganized, it's just not a word we should use for something like this.
[00:12:03]  It's so grave.
[00:12:05]  And no one is talking about that, right?
[00:12:06]  That should be the smoking gun that you'd need to remove somebody from power.
[00:12:10]  That's right.
[00:12:10]  And I think that's the hard part here, Nick, because this is where so much of American delusion crashes into reality.
[00:12:19]  Like this war, the reason it happened the way it did is because literally Trump and the people around him thought if they killed the Ayatollah, it would work exactly like what happened with Maduro, right?
[00:12:31]  And meanwhile, what got lost in that analysis?
[00:12:33]  That the past times that they struck Iran, it didn't go to war because Iran was conservative and said, fine, we'll let this go.
[00:12:41]  And then they killed their supreme leader, who is also their religious leader and told everybody.
[00:12:46]  And by the way, one of the most, it doesn't get talked about now.
[00:12:49]  I still think one of the most consequential mistakes of maybe the 21st century outside of the war in Iraq was Trump saying in his speech after the strike that the people should rise up.
[00:13:01]  Like he just threw that in as a bonus.
[00:13:03]  It wasn't going to happen.
[00:13:04]  I don't think it was part of the strategy, but it created an existential threat that Iran could not back down from.
[00:13:10]  Meanwhile, the military looked at this in the exact same way that they have looked at everybody from Korea to Vietnam and Iraq.
[00:13:18]  They're like, oh, we have so our weapons are better.
[00:13:20]  We've got more money.
[00:13:21]  We are stronger.
[00:13:22]  They are going to go down.
[00:13:23]  Meanwhile, going back to the bar analogy, Nick, sometimes you fight a person who isn't as big as you and they don't stop getting up.
[00:13:31]  And at some point, and for those film heads out there, go watch Cool Hand Luke if you don't know what I'm talking about.
[00:13:36]  Stay down, Luke.
[00:13:38]  Like sometimes they don't do what you need them to do.
[00:13:41]  And now we have a point where what you said when this originally started, they'll declare victory and they'll get out.
[00:13:46]  They tried that.
[00:13:48]  If this is a bar fight, they knocked them down and they started heading for the door and they wouldn't let them leave.
[00:13:54]  So they're not allowed to leave.
[00:13:56]  And now they've set up the biggest economic trap that we could ever imagine.
[00:14:01]  And there's no way out of it because the forces at work here say you can't just say you're going to leave because the petrodollar will collapse.
[00:14:09]  Well, are we going to put people in?
[00:14:10]  Well, that seems disastrous, but what else are you going to do?
[00:14:13]  So it's at a point where, yes, you're right.
[00:14:15]  The 25th Amendment would help, but that also wouldn't get rid of the forces that are propelling all of these people.
[00:14:22]  And I don't know, man.
[00:14:24]  I don't even know if a different president would have like prevented something like this from happening.
[00:14:29]  Maybe it would have changed the circumstances, but we've now arrived like a boat sailing on a current.
[00:14:36]  We've now arrived at a destination where it feels like, and we've been talking about this, it feels like we're going to put boots on the ground.
[00:14:45]  Yeah, what we have here, Jared, is a failure to communicate.
[00:14:48]  We have a failure to communicate.
[00:14:50]  Yes.
[00:14:51]  And that's across the board.
[00:14:52]  Everybody, the leader, the other opposition leadership here, nobody is communicating this well enough.
[00:14:58]  And I think it's interesting.
[00:14:59]  You probably could do a really interesting study on the timing of wars in terms of how it relates to presidential elections and whether people would be willing to do these things closer or farther away from elections.
[00:15:13]  Now, again, we have grave concerns about what's going on for the midterms, but it's far away from, you know, and then God knows what's going to happen after the second term.
[00:15:21]  We're supposed to be gone anyway.
[00:15:22]  But I would have to imagine that you'd see some pattern of perhaps slightly more cavalier with what you're doing foreign policy wise because the ramifications are not politically expedient for you, which is which is scary because we're talking about wives here.
[00:15:41]  Now, I don't think you're sold by that in this one.
[00:15:42]  I don't think I am either because at this point, they don't seem to give a shit about the political ramifications of anything, right?
[00:15:48]  Well, and I don't even think, I think that's the wild thing.
[00:15:51]  I don't think they're worried about the political ramifications.
[00:15:53]  And by the way, as we're talking, it's funny because I get people who write me all the time and they say, it's funny.
[00:16:00]  They ask me questions like, what mistake do you think led to this?
[00:16:03]  And the answer is always multiple.
[00:16:06]  Like, you don't get to this point without 1953 overthrowing the Iranian democracy.
[00:16:12]  You know, you don't get to this point without the mistreatment of these quote unquote second world countries after World War II.
[00:16:19]  Like you don't get here without colonialism.
[00:16:22]  But now you get to the point, Nick, where like if people would have pushed back after the Maduro kidnapping, would they have been so cavalier?
[00:16:29]  You know, wouldn't that have like if the Biden administration hadn't enabled the genocide in Gaza, would we have gotten to this point?
[00:16:37]  Probably not.
[00:16:39]  Probably not.
[00:16:39]  Because then Netanyahu wouldn't have wouldn't have seen this as the next evolution of things.
[00:16:45]  Well, how about Mitch McConnell would have prosecuted it for second impeachment?

=== Rigid Mindset Consequences (07:00) ===

[00:16:49]  That's what I, there are so many of these moments that where something could have gone different.
[00:16:54]  And you start looking at it.
[00:16:56]  And I'm not saying it's it's but we have free will, but there's a determinism specifically when it comes to geopolitics.
[00:17:04]  Like I could make the argument, I could do like a three hour video essay on this.
[00:17:09]  Like if we would have worked with China instead of being like, no, we're going to have a cold war with them.
[00:17:16]  If we would have welcomed them actually into like a cooperative world order, if we wouldn't have seized all this power after World War II, like this was a, this, this was a path that we were always going to end up on.
[00:17:27]  And so you reached this point.
[00:17:28]  You brought the 25th Amendment.
[00:17:30]  Yeah, they could go in and get rid of them.
[00:17:33]  I think JD Vance would maybe do something different or at least be more informed.
[00:17:38]  But Nick, now that the die has been cast, the economic consequences are coming.
[00:17:44]  They're on the way.
[00:17:45]  Like they're getting ready to move from the east to the west now.
[00:17:49]  And like it's going to happen regardless of what happens on the ground in Iran right now.
[00:17:55]  Right.
[00:17:55]  I mean, you realize how many people could just have free health care with the amount of money they're spending on daily in the Middle East.
[00:18:01]  It's insane.
[00:18:02]  And like we were talking about this with a friend of mine last night about taxes and about what happens with inflation and our, you know, it's all just a big shell game, right?
[00:18:11]  The whole that whole thing and like how the government works with our money.
[00:18:14]  But in reality, if you're looking for the solutions, it's like, yeah, stop these foreign wars, stop spending billions a day on there and actually do some good.
[00:18:22]  And then stop being so surprised when you treat people really shittily that they're going to then be shitty to you and like create the situations.
[00:18:31]  And that's China, that's Iran.
[00:18:32]  It's all these different places.
[00:18:33]  Now, you know, again, the carrot and the stick, you can have the argument all you like and about realism and whether or not you're being some sort of naive person who doesn't know how the real world works.
[00:18:43]  But you call me naive.
[00:18:45]  I can tell you exactly, we can both sort of lay out exactly the mistakes that you've made in this notion of being stern and being tough on all these different things and what happens when you do that.
[00:18:55]  So yeah, we need a better way to kind of do this whole thing.
[00:18:58]  I think we need to kind of experiment with some new versions of government, if you will.
[00:19:02]  And that's exactly right.
[00:19:03]  I think that there is, I've been trying to communicate this because America is not the place to talk about this.
[00:19:10]  America is obsessed with control.
[00:19:14]  We're obsessed with not just control of the world, but control of our lives and our fortunes and our fates and all of that.
[00:19:22]  And what you start to learn when you really look at it is by gripping too hard, you're destroying it.
[00:19:28]  Yeah.
[00:19:28]  Right.
[00:19:29]  And there are consequences to that.
[00:19:31]  And so there is a tragedy that's about to unfurl.
[00:19:35]  And by the way, I could be wrong.
[00:19:37]  I hope that I am wrong.
[00:19:38]  I hope that by the time this episode comes out tomorrow, there's been a breakthrough in negotiations.
[00:19:43]  And maybe in some way we can mitigate the financial, economic, and cultural fallout from this thing.
[00:19:48]  I hope I'm wrong.
[00:19:51]  But why would you be wrong?
[00:19:52]  Because he keeps talking about the possibilities of making those negotiations.
[00:19:55]  And then the next sentence, he's threatening war crimes by destroying infrastructure.
[00:20:00]  And what's he doing?
[00:20:01]  He's pumping the market for as long as he possibly can, which is the reason why the market hasn't fallen apart yet.
[00:20:08]  You have one half of people who are delusional, the Wiley Coyote economy, I keep talking about, that don't realize that the cliff has run out.
[00:20:16]  And then there's another group that's like, this thing's going down.
[00:20:19]  We're going to juice it for every cent that we possibly can, like a meme coin.
[00:20:23]  And then we're going to rugpo at the last possible second, right?
[00:20:27]  And so there's no way really to mitigate that at this point.
[00:20:31]  So maybe we could avoid the lives that would die.
[00:20:34]  But the sad truth of it, Nick, is like, if you look at it the way things are, those lives are already gone.
[00:20:40]  They're just being delivered to their end because of the cascading sets of mistakes and choices that have been made.
[00:20:47]  And so that's why it feels like a fait accompli.
[00:20:50]  We're all like, and by the way, Nick, real fast, I want to get into the mindset of how it probably feels to go through this.
[00:20:57]  I imagine you and me and the people listening, there's a part of our brain that's like, maybe he'll die today, right?
[00:21:04]  Like maybe, maybe his next breath will be the end and it'll get fixed.
[00:21:08]  That is a classic traumatized idea, which is like the abusive dad is on his way home.
[00:21:13]  Maybe he'll get in a wreck, right?
[00:21:15]  Or maybe he'll be struck by lightning and maybe that'll take care of the problem.
[00:21:18]  And what we have to do is return to rationality and say, this really sucks and is really awful.
[00:21:24]  We need to make sure we never get here again, right?
[00:21:27]  Bad things are about to happen.
[00:21:29]  We need to make sure on the other side of this that we never get to this point again.
[00:21:32]  I agree.
[00:21:33]  And the intractability of this fucking constitution makes that really, really difficult.
[00:21:37]  And so, you know, we've, there are other countries with more modern democracies that have had a flexible nature to what they the document.
[00:21:46]  And, you know, and it starts with the Supreme Court.
[00:21:48]  Like, we weren't really going to talk about them, but like you have, you have people on the Supreme Court who literally refuse to acknowledge it like anything, any progress has been made since 1777.
[00:21:59]  Like basically is what they're doing, right?
[00:22:00]  And it's, it's frightening.
[00:22:01]  It's frightening to have that kind of rigid mindset.
[00:22:04]  And yet they were lawfully put on this court.
[00:22:08]  Yeah.
[00:22:08]  And I would argue that we need to move towards direct democracy if we're going to have anything even approaching the Supreme Court, but that's neither here nor there.
[00:22:17]  By the way, Nick, speaking of things that need to get fixed and absolute insanity, Politico has reported that the acting head of ICE, Todd Lyons, has been hospitalized twice for quote stress-related issues.
[00:22:27]  There's also an anecdote in this article.
[00:22:29]  This is great, that last summer, when ICE had failed to locate a target in Los Angeles, your backyard, quote, one of his bodyguards took a portable defibrillator from a nearby office in case he needed a medical intervention.
[00:22:42]  I think this is a really telling report, particularly about who these people are and what they're underway, what life is like for them.
[00:22:52]  What's your reaction to finding out good old Todd Lyons has been hospitalized twice for quote stress-related issues?
[00:22:59]  You don't get hospitalized without something extremely major, eh?
[00:23:03]  A defibrillator, you know, that's four, right?
[00:23:05]  Absolutely, I do.
[00:23:06]  So, you know, picture the ER scene where they clear and they shock your heart back into functioning because it stopped beating.
[00:23:12]  Like, that's that's not, and you don't just do that just, oh, just in case.
[00:23:17]  So I'm now wondering if this has already happened to him, where they've had to bring him back from that.
[00:23:21]  Now, is it, is it nice to kind of conceive of a person in charge of ICE that has a conscience?
[00:23:28]  Is this what's going on here?
[00:23:29]  I don't, I don't know.
[00:23:30]  What do you think of that, Jared?
[00:23:31]  Is that what it is?
[00:23:32]  Well, there's a few things here.
[00:23:34]  One, I gotta say, like whether it's an actual heart-related issue or whether it's like an anxiety issue, which can feel like a heart attack, like what we can glean from this is it's not great being the head of ICE.

=== Putin's Mental Trauma (15:45) ===

[00:23:50]  And I'm not saying that as an excuse.
[00:23:52]  I'm saying that as oppression, authoritarianism, if you want to go back, I've been mentioning Franz Fanon a lot lately with decolonization struggles.
[00:24:03]  Like if you actually look at the psychological profile of oppressors, it's bad for them.
[00:24:09]  Treating people badly, disappearing people, tearing families apart.
[00:24:14]  It's not good for you.
[00:24:15]  There's also the fact, of course, that the Trump administration has these like quotas that they're making ICE go through.
[00:24:21]  And apparently, and this has been an interesting leak that's happened recently, you're getting nearly daily phone calls from Stephen Miller, who's screaming more, more immigrants, detain more immigrants, you know?
[00:24:32]  And for me, looking at this, I think it is a really good expression of the type of mental and emotional trauma it does in to carry these things out, which to me, it communicates we shouldn't fucking be doing stuff like this.
[00:24:51]  Like it shouldn't be done in general because it's wrong, but it shouldn't be done because even the human spirit and body repels from it.
[00:24:59]  Well, we haven't talked about it enough, but like the detainment centers that they've set up so far are one step above Abu Ghraib.
[00:25:08]  And so that's what he's presiding over.
[00:25:10]  And like, it's just, you know, I know we've hear an occasional report.
[00:25:13]  We also hear the reports like, you know, they're not letting, you know, Congress people into this to view these sites.
[00:25:17]  And there's a reason why people are dying in them and people are being tortured there for a variety of ways.
[00:25:23]  So that will also have an effect on you because I'm sure like, you know, he's probably subjected to the images of what's going on there and probably then having Stephen Miller going more and more and like make worse worse.
[00:25:34]  I need it to be worse for these people.
[00:25:37]  You know, I was watching West Wing.
[00:25:38]  I mean, I'm doing this whole thing and they're talking about, you know, in 2004 about, you know, tripling the number of agents at the border.
[00:25:45]  And one of the guys is like, that doesn't, that won't do it.
[00:25:48]  That's not, we can't seal that border.
[00:25:49]  It's too big.
[00:25:50]  It's whatever.
[00:25:50]  He's right.
[00:25:51]  But what would do it and what they figured out was making conditions on the ground here so bad for anybody who's an immigrant in this country that they won't come.
[00:26:01]  And that's this solution.
[00:26:03]  You know, that's what they've come up with without any notion of like what humanitarian violations, you know, human rights violations are going to happen to that.
[00:26:11]  And we've seen that over and over again.
[00:26:13]  It's disgusting that like this somehow resonates.
[00:26:15]  I think it resonates with people in this country where they're like, yes, I don't care what you do to stop that, you know, the immigration across the border.
[00:26:23]  This is what it is.
[00:26:23]  Fine.
[00:26:24]  It'll stop it.
[00:26:25]  We'll be better off.
[00:26:25]  That's what people are brainwashed to think.
[00:26:27]  It's really, it's that, that's how bad it is.
[00:26:30]  I'm going to give, and Nick, every now and then, through happenstance, I end up giving free political advice and strategy to some of the worst people on the face of the earth on this program.
[00:26:41]  I'm going to give some free advice to Todd Lyons.
[00:26:44]  One word.
[00:26:45]  Are you ready?
[00:26:47]  Yep.
[00:26:47]  Stimulants.
[00:26:49]  Oh.
[00:26:49]  So if you want to do this job, if you want to oversee the kidnapping of children, the detention of immigrants, the torturing of people who don't look like you, the building of concentration camps, which are surely killing people left and right, learn from not just the first Trump administration, in which afterwards we found out that they couldn't keep stimulants on hand because they were being used so much.
[00:27:16]  Go back to the Nazis and the fascists and basically every other type of abuser that we've ever seen, which is go get on some methamphetamine, go get on some speed, find yourself some Coke, whatever it is.
[00:27:29]  Because the reason why that these oppressive assholes always turn towards it is because Nick, the moment that their mind slows down and the moment that they're sober, they think about what it is that they're doing.
[00:27:42]  So go out, get yourself hooked on a stimulant so that you don't have to think about it.
[00:27:48]  So that you can just go and go and go until that organ that you call a heart, that black diseased bulb in your chest until it finally pops.
[00:27:59]  There's a reason why this is how it always works.
[00:28:02]  Jared, who says all we do is complain and don't offer solutions?
[00:28:06]  I'm offering solutions, man.
[00:28:08]  Go get hooked on Coke so you don't have to think about what a wretched fuck you are.
[00:28:14]  That's certainly something.
[00:28:16]  I kind of thought you were going to say like the word would be quit, but you're right.
[00:28:20]  It's not quit because they'll find the next guy in there.
[00:28:22]  And again, like I said before, there's probably a lot of young people who are inexperienced working in the administration of ICE.
[00:28:28]  And all they know now is what is happening now.
[00:28:31]  They have no sense of what ICE had been in the past, even though ICE is not, you know, certainly by no means an exemplary institution.
[00:28:38]  But, you know, whatever norms we used to have and some notions of how things are run is destroyed.
[00:28:44]  And you now have a new generation of young people who are joining because they want a job.
[00:28:47]  They want to make some money.
[00:28:48]  And this is what they think it's like and how it's supposed to be.
[00:28:51]  And that could take a long time before we can get that back into the bottle.
[00:28:55]  Have you ever noticed, Nick, that there are basically only two people that end up working in a Trump administration or working on the right-wing grift and abuse machine?
[00:29:05]  There is one group that is gleefully cruel, right?
[00:29:10]  They get off on it.
[00:29:12]  That's why a Hegseth gets up in front of a microphone and talks about lethality, you know, and like really postures and does that, right?
[00:29:19]  Or a Stephen Miller.
[00:29:20]  Stephen Miller's having the time of his life right now.
[00:29:23]  Like this literally, it doesn't get better for him.
[00:29:26]  And then there's another group and they're the ones who go through this.
[00:29:30]  And when they're not like, sometimes even when they're on TV, they get a haunted look on their face.
[00:29:36]  You know what I mean?
[00:29:37]  Like there's even moments with Marco Rubio where you look at Rubio and you're like, oh boy, that's a guy who knows deep down that he's involved in something.
[00:29:48]  That's right.
[00:29:49]  And that's the difference.
[00:29:51]  And I want to give an actual piece of advice to the people listening.
[00:29:55]  And Nick, I don't know if you've ever been in this situation.
[00:29:58]  If you ever find your, because you brought up jobs, if you ever find yourself in a job that makes you physically and mentally and emotionally distressed, like if you're at work or leaving work and you feel that bad, leave the job.
[00:30:16]  I know that's a hard thing to say in an economy like this, but like there are better things in life than putting yourself through the banality of evil.
[00:30:27]  And if this is taking a toll, seriously, if Todd Lyons is suffering, leave, fucking leave.
[00:30:33]  But of course, like there are reasons why he won't and why he continues to do this, but that's the conscience.
[00:30:39]  That's the conscience speaking to you.
[00:30:41]  You need no look no further than any kind of time, anytime Scott Besant speaks to the media, because the whole thing is a quivering, you know, revealing of how he probably really feels.
[00:30:54]  Because again, another guy that was sort of an adult and who was a professional and now has to sullied himself in the name of MAGA and Trump.
[00:31:04]  It doesn't make me feel any better to even conceive of a notion that there are consciences out there and people maybe are suffering because of that, but like continue to still do this awful work.
[00:31:14]  It doesn't make me feel any better about it.
[00:31:16]  But yeah, we need to figure out a way to pry these people out of these jobs and then find people.
[00:31:22]  Again, you should be able to run and do successfully if we do have free and fair elections on a lot of this stuff on recapturing your information and trying to protect your identity from being stolen by anybody out there, including the government, of which their apps are now tracking everybody as much as you can.
[00:31:38]  I get everyone's being tracked anyway, but it's nefarious or incompetent or both with what they're doing.
[00:31:44]  It's always both, my brother.
[00:31:46]  It's always both.
[00:31:48]  Yeah.
[00:31:48]  So yeah, so we just, we need some people to get back into politics who can realize how many, how important it is to get to, you know, put the genie back in the bottle in the sense of our own personal safety and our own personal security of our identities.
[00:32:02]  I think that would go a long way.
[00:32:03]  Well, Nick, you and I are in agreement.
[00:32:05]  We should storm their offices and drag them out into the streets and let happen what happens.
[00:32:11]  I'm going to stare into the camera.
[00:32:15]  Speaking of people being drug out into the street and letting what happens happens, Nick, a lot of weird signals and rumblings over the past couple of days out of Russia where rumors are that Vladimir Putin faces elevated threats of a coup.
[00:32:29]  I've been looking into this.
[00:32:31]  I've been talking with the people that I know who are hip to this entire situation.
[00:32:37]  Again, free advice.
[00:32:39]  Vladimir Putin is not the guy that I want to find myself advising.
[00:32:43]  But this is a thing I find myself saying pretty regularly.
[00:32:46]  Maybe don't stand next to any windows right now.
[00:32:49]  Maybe avoid standing next to any windows in the Kremlin if you possibly can.
[00:32:53]  Yeah, I guess.
[00:32:54]  But you remember, you know, nothing like a good old coup now announcement to kind of crack down and get everything back in order and get your solidify your power again, right?
[00:33:03]  Kind of just float that out there, get everyone really nervous and scared.
[00:33:07]  And, you know, so I don't know.
[00:33:08]  I mean, doesn't it just kind of reek of propaganda, you know, in terms of gripping a power?
[00:33:14]  I think, and I'll take the angle on this, starting with the discussion we just had about the Todd Lions thing and the psychological impact.
[00:33:22]  It's not good to be a dictator.
[00:33:25]  You know, like it's really not.
[00:33:27]  To be a murderous dictator, I look at that.
[00:33:29]  I don't know how you feel about it.
[00:33:31]  Like I look at that and I'm like, God, how do you sleep?
[00:33:35]  You know what I mean?
[00:33:36]  Like, not only do the people that you rule over with an iron-bloody fist want to kill you, but meanwhile, we've talked about Putin's situation.
[00:33:45]  He controls a group of oligarchs and military commanders that at times are his best friends and other times he threatens to murder or imprison them.
[00:33:54]  It's a constant sort of moving sort of puzzle.
[00:33:57]  So I do actually think that there is an opportunity that he could be overthrown right now for a variety of reasons, which I'll get to in just a second.
[00:34:05]  But doesn't it seem miserable?
[00:34:07]  Doesn't it seem really, really awful to live like this?
[00:34:11]  Well, you know, he's the richest guy in the world, I think, right?
[00:34:14]  Well, I mean, it's good to be king in that regard, I suppose.
[00:34:17]  Yeah, yeah, it's good to be the king.
[00:34:18]  Now, but you actually, you asked a rhetorical question.
[00:34:21]  Is it okay?
[00:34:22]  Can I answer it?
[00:34:22]  I would love you to.
[00:34:24]  You know, you asked him how does he sleep?
[00:34:26]  And I think the answer is upside down.
[00:34:29]  And so, you know, the guy is, he's, he's gone.
[00:34:32]  He's beyond.
[00:34:32]  This is nothing that will ever, you know, affect him other than the opulence he can live with and live in and the power that he wields.
[00:34:39]  It's, you know, it's worm brain erotted.
[00:34:42]  I don't think that there's anything there and other than, you know, him clinging to what he's got.
[00:34:47]  Now, is there a reason?
[00:34:48]  Would there be a reason perhaps in this country that there would be a lot of people angry with him and want to want to get rid of him?
[00:34:53]  Like, yeah, sure.
[00:34:55]  I don't know.
[00:34:56]  I mean, I suppose there is a history of revolution in this country a little bit, a little bit of history, right?
[00:35:02]  At least once.
[00:35:04]  And so you can't say it couldn't happen.
[00:35:07]  But if you studied, you know, 1917, you'd have to have enough people who had some power to get together.
[00:35:16]  And I don't think those people are getting in the same room together in mass.
[00:35:19]  It's a problem.
[00:35:20]  Well, I think, okay, so that's an interesting parallel.
[00:35:24]  I think we're talking about a pretty different situation besides the proletariat rising up and meanwhile having sort of a mutiny among the military.
[00:35:32]  We're now talking, if he were to be overthrown, it wouldn't be the people.
[00:35:37]  It would be the oligarchs and the war masters, more or less.
[00:35:43]  Right.
[00:35:44]  And in that case, like something like that could definitely happen.
[00:35:47]  And for the record, as somebody who sort of like decision trees and maps these things out, the idea of there being a military coup in Russia would be very exciting for just a moment because you'd be rid of Vladimir Putin, but then all of a sudden, like, you got nukes.
[00:36:02]  Like that's a, that's a, that's a real different situation.
[00:36:06]  I saw that.
[00:36:06]  We've seen that movie before or that movie.
[00:36:09]  We've seen that movie.
[00:36:11]  And in fact, while you're bringing that up, while we were talking earlier about sort of branching decisions that lead to problems, that movie and the decision to take nuclear weapons from Ukraine and guarantee them security kind of got us to where we're sitting now.
[00:36:26]  And for the record, let's look at exactly what the circumstances are that could lead to the destruction.
[00:36:32]  And a reminder, everyone, I'm talking about Russia here.
[00:36:36]  I'm not talking about the United States of America.
[00:36:39]  We have a long, protracted military invasion that was not very well thought out and in which the perpetrator underestimated the fighting ability of the country that they were invading.
[00:36:54]  Talking about Russia, not the United States of America.
[00:36:57]  We have a military which had incredible amounts of investment that had served as a way to steal money from the people and filter it to the wealthiest people that have then created a situation where they had all of this weaponry, but they had a fighting force that they were fighting that was able to adapt to what they were doing.
[00:37:16]  Again, I'm talking about Russia, not the United States of America.
[00:37:20]  You have a debt that was run up that was unnecessary based on that war, a bunch of backers who had given them money for a protracted amount of period of time.
[00:37:29]  And eventually they looked up and realized, man, this was not a good investment.
[00:37:34]  And we're not.
[00:37:35]  And by the way, talking about Russia, not America, Nick, a president in Vladimir Putin who kept telling them we're winning and war is about over.
[00:37:44]  Don't worry about it.
[00:37:45]  Keep the money pumping.
[00:37:47]  We also have an economy that has been absolutely devastated because they chose to carry out this war and has been in recession for a while and is heading towards what could possibly be some type of a collapse.
[00:38:00]  Again, Russia, not the United States of America.
[00:38:02]  And finally, we have a class of oligarch that is tired of the incompetence and bad leadership and the oppression and the threatening.
[00:38:12]  And they're tired of the dysfunction.
[00:38:14]  Nick, just a reminder, I'm talking about Russia and not the United States of America here.
[00:38:19]  Oh, I mean, well, here's another interesting thing that kind of ties back to what I was saying before about timing.
[00:38:24]  I'm choosing to believe, I don't think it's a hot take.
[00:38:26]  I'm choosing to believe that the reason why the stalemates last as long as it has between those two countries is because of the support that the United States gave initially under the Biden administration to Ukraine.
[00:38:35]  Is that a hot take?
[00:38:36]  I don't think so, is it?
[00:38:38]  I think that this sort of place where it is right now, this sort of stalemate, that was the decision of the Biden administration versus allowing Ukraine to win the war.
[00:38:51]  So yeah, I think there's been like a bleeding stalemate that was created artificially.
[00:38:56]  Yeah.
[00:38:57]  So it makes you wonder why did Putin go in when he did, right?
[00:39:01]  And there's all sorts of interesting things about that, you know, Trump was there and then he wasn't that Biden was in and why they did this.
[00:39:06]  Because if he had gone in when Trump was in power, I think it's pretty clear that Trump would not have supported Ukraine the way Biden did.
[00:39:14]  And then maybe Ukraine would have fallen.
[00:39:16]  So is this another one of those just totally incompetent, kind of irrational things that Putin isn't smart enough to realize?
[00:39:23]  You know what I mean?
[00:39:23]  That's an interesting question.
[00:39:26]  Well, I mean, there's all kinds of stuff like this.
[00:39:28]  And of course, with tongue in cheek, I'm making the comparison between the situation Russia has found itself in the United States now looks at.

=== Encapsulating the Last Hour (09:56) ===

[00:39:35]  But, you know, a lot of this was pushed by someone like an Alexander Dugan, who had this ideology that, you know, bordered on, well, I mean, it was religious, you know, it was a fanaticism where he was like, we have to go now.
[00:39:46]  We have to go now.
[00:39:48]  You have to wonder what it was that they thought, where they thought this was a good idea.
[00:39:52]  And then you start looking at the United States of America and you start wondering why is it that like a Netanyahu would push for this where it's at, which is the idea.
[00:40:01]  The idea at the heart of it, why Netanyahu did this is because nobody stopped him when it came to Gaza, which gave him hubris, which, you know, Russia and a lot of their, you know, military adventurism hadn't been stopped.
[00:40:14]  And then you add in the component of, I think Netanyahu looked at Donald Trump, didn't know if he was going to stick around after a second term or even survive.
[00:40:22]  And he was like, this is my chance.
[00:40:24]  And you either take the chance and it's your goal, it's your major ideological goal to take out your main competitor in the region and start creating, I guess, greater Israel to look at this and say, no, this is the reformation of the Soviet Union under a neo-fascistic, you know, fanatic regime.
[00:40:43]  And you start looking at it.
[00:40:44]  It's the same type of mistakes that are being made everywhere across the globe by the same types of people.
[00:40:49]  Yeah.
[00:40:50]  I mean, listen, you know, would there be the conventional wisdom in Israel would be like, well, it's a state sponsor of terror that we can finally once and for all eliminate or take, you know, Elinae is a threat, so we don't have to deal with that.
[00:41:02]  You know, there are other countries in the region that have already fallen and maybe we can create this whole utopia society in the Middle East, right?
[00:41:09]  Like, you know, you have to, it's tough because we now know, right, after all these years and all these different conflicts, how unrealistic that really is.
[00:41:18]  But, you know, and we know really kind of why Nenyahu is doing this, but he's certainly going to be able to, there is an umbrella that he can kind of hide under that justification in terms of, you know, what the Iranian regime, like no one's really, you know, rooting for the, you know, Iranian regime, you know what I mean?
[00:41:35]  That's the problem here, right?
[00:41:36]  It's like nobody wanted the way they were running their country to continue going on, right?
[00:41:40]  I think that's safe, the way they oppress their people.
[00:41:43]  But who is it for us to then decide we're going to press a couple buttons and then end everyone's lives?
[00:41:50]  Well, and I mean, you know, speaking of this utopia, like ask people in Lebanon how this utopia is going, you know, where it's probably over a million refugees at this point and like the war is taken over.
[00:42:01]  I, the, the final thing, and I think if there's a theme of this episode that we've just recorded, the theme is what happens when really fucked up people reach the point where no one tells them no anymore, right?
[00:42:16]  Which is when the liberal order broke down.
[00:42:19]  And I would argue it broke down starting with the war on terror.
[00:42:22]  I think that's when it, it's one of those things people always say, like, you know, World War II started at the Treaty of Versailles.
[00:42:30]  If you really look at the root causes here, it's the failure of the liberal post-war order that was always going to get to the point where this sort of like, you know what, Nick?
[00:42:40]  Actually, to give a description, you know what I really like?
[00:42:44]  I really like mixing Diet Coke with some cherry coke.
[00:42:47]  Full flavor, get after it balls to the wall cherry coke, right?
[00:42:53]  But guess what?
[00:42:53]  You do that enough times.
[00:42:54]  Like if you're half Democratic and you're half authoritarian, eventually after a while, you want that full cherry coke.
[00:43:02]  You don't want that diet coke getting in the way anymore, right?
[00:43:06]  So all of a sudden you're like, no, we're going to go for it.
[00:43:08]  We're going to do exactly what we want to do.
[00:43:10]  And then when the gloves are off, what you start to realize is all of these actors, they're all genocidal.
[00:43:18]  They're all murderous.
[00:43:19]  They're all authoritarian.
[00:43:20]  And when there aren't the restrictions there anymore, this is what happens.
[00:43:25]  All hell breaks loose.
[00:43:26]  And we've now arrived at the point where there are no restrictions and all hell is breaking loose.
[00:43:31]  It's amazing you bring it up that way because I was just at a place where I had asked for it.
[00:43:35]  What I do is I get a half Coke, half Diet Coke.
[00:43:38]  There you go.
[00:43:39]  And where I got it, when I asked for that, I didn't know what they really do.
[00:43:42]  They said, yeah, sure.
[00:43:43]  I got a half Diet Coke, half cherry Coke.
[00:43:47]  It's hard, man.
[00:43:49]  First of all, I think Cherry Coke should be abolished.
[00:43:51]  But the fact that I was also at a Panda Express, there's some metaphor here, Jared.
[00:43:55]  I don't even know what it is.
[00:43:56]  Maybe you or some already can help me figure this out, but there's something about that that kind of encapsulates everything we just talked about for the last 45 minutes.
[00:44:02]  100%.
[00:44:03]  It literally is.
[00:44:05]  And Nick, it's for me, you know, it's, it's, it would be wrapped up in bad instincts.
[00:44:11]  Like if I have, if I have like a cake or if I have like brownies, if I have a sweet thing in the house, I'm like, I'm just going to take it out of the fridge and take a fork full.
[00:44:20]  No, I don't just take a fork full.
[00:44:23]  There's always a second and then there's a third and then there's more.
[00:44:27]  The post-war American order was always a little bit authoritarian and always with the benevolent thing.
[00:44:33]  And then eventually we're like, oh, shit, we can do whatever the fuck we want.
[00:44:37]  And we don't learn from the mistakes.
[00:44:40]  And meanwhile, it's like everybody that we're fighting and everybody that we're dealing with, they looked at us and they were like, oh, there aren't rules.
[00:44:46]  Well, now we're just going to do whatever we want.
[00:44:49]  And is America going to bomb Russia?
[00:44:52]  Hell no.
[00:44:52]  We've got nuclear weapons.
[00:44:53]  So what happens then?
[00:44:55]  So then it turns into a great struggle.
[00:44:57]  And who suffers?
[00:44:58]  Who suffers is you and me, the people listening and the people who are stuck in between.
[00:45:02]  Well, decisions are made by the perceived threat and destruction, not about what the right thing to do is.
[00:45:09]  Exactly.
[00:45:10]  And that's where we're at.
[00:45:11]  And, you know, maybe in the past we've had guys and leaders who were who kind of valued the right thing to do, at least in the movies.
[00:45:18]  And maybe that's bled into what our perception of reality was for back then.
[00:45:22]  But, you know, didn't Abraham Lincoln act like in the thing that was right?
[00:45:27]  Or maybe not.
[00:45:28]  I don't know.
[00:45:28]  Like, like, you know, I like to think we had that, but certainly not now.
[00:45:32]  Well, I mean, we could have hours worth of discussion about him suspending habeas corpus and also planning on selling freed slaves elsewhere in the world.
[00:45:41]  But that's a different conversation.
[00:45:43]  Yeah.
[00:45:45]  Well, and who, by the way, like at times, even though I support him and I have a bust of him over my shoulder, acted like a tyrant.
[00:45:52]  Yeah.
[00:45:52]  Like it really comes down to this.
[00:45:54]  And I hope people walk away with it.
[00:45:57]  Like it's it's a lot like Target.
[00:46:00]  You remember how Target used to have all of like the pride things and like all of like the LGBTQ friendly things?
[00:46:07]  And everyone's like, oh, it's great to have an ally in Target.
[00:46:09]  And then the political winds changed and Target's like, I don't know what you're talking about.
[00:46:13]  We never did that.
[00:46:14]  Right.
[00:46:15]  The goodness or the badness of people in power is often determined by the political and economic and cultural and historical effects that are taking place.
[00:46:27]  Right.
[00:46:28]  Like Vladimir Putin would not have invaded Ukraine if there was actually a system to push back against it, if there wasn't an advantage for it.
[00:46:38]  We wouldn't be in Iran if there were actual safeguards and institutions that could stop this.
[00:46:43]  It just so happens that now the people with the absolute worst impulses are now at the controls because we flirted with fascism for so long and didn't move towards actual benevolence.
[00:46:56]  Right.
[00:46:56]  But also the unleashing of the presidency, it comes out of 9-11, I feel like, right?
[00:47:01]  When Bush Kenyan were able to erode some of the safeguards.
[00:47:05]  So that's also part of the problem.
[00:47:07]  100%.
[00:47:08]  100%.
[00:47:08]  And what did they always say, Nick?
[00:47:10]  It'll be fine as long as nobody who isn't worthy of the office gets in control.
[00:47:14]  Right.
[00:47:15]  So, meanwhile, yeah.
[00:47:17]  Sorry, and the answer is who won is Osama bin Laden.
[00:47:20]  He won.
[00:47:21]  That you know what?
[00:47:22]  That is the subtitle of the Mutt Craig podcast in general.
[00:47:27]  Right?
[00:47:27]  It really comes down to it.
[00:47:28]  The Mutt Craig podcast.
[00:47:29]  Osama bin Laden won.
[00:47:31]  Yeah.
[00:47:31]  I mean, because remember, up until that moment, you know, America was a peaceful world.
[00:47:36]  There was an economy that was completely booming.
[00:47:38]  Like, I mean, it felt like there was a moment in the late 90s where things were, you know, going somewhere in a good way, you know, and then look where we got.
[00:47:47]  Can I just share like a quick personal anecdote before we get out of this?
[00:47:51]  Um, a buddy of mine, one of my oldest friends, um, he has a job.
[00:47:55]  He works on a podcast and like uh interviews people, right?
[00:48:00]  And uh, they got Al Gore the other day, and he got to talk to Al Gore.
[00:48:05]  And listen, there's a reason why my buddy has this job and I don't have this job.
[00:48:10]  Because if I had Al Gore on my laptop screen, all I would do from the moment he logged on to the moment that he shut the interview down, I would say, What would you do after 9-11?
[00:48:20]  Tell me now, tell me right now.
[00:48:22]  What would you do if you were president when 9-11 happened?
[00:48:25]  That's all.
[00:48:26]  I would just want to know about that alternate universe.
[00:48:29]  And you threw up, for people who aren't watching on YouTube, Nick threw up two middle fingers.
[00:48:34]  And why?
[00:48:35]  Because he didn't fight an electoral coup.
[00:48:38]  Right.
[00:48:39]  By way, I wasn't sure if you knew exactly what I was why.
[00:48:43]  We're on the same wavelength here.
[00:48:45]  100%.
[00:48:45]  No, rolled over, showed his belly like a dog.
[00:48:48]  With the same, you know, a smoother transition administratively that didn't recognize that Osama bin Laden was a threat because later, but like they were too busy.
[00:48:57]  They were too busy doing other things.
[00:48:59]  Yeah.
[00:49:00]  Well, listen, well, we got it.
[00:49:04]  I'm not going to do that now, but yes.
[00:49:06]  We can't do it now.
[00:49:07]  All right, everybody.
[00:49:07]  That's going to do it for this episode of Mutt Craig Podcast.
[00:49:11]  We'll be back with the weekender edition this Friday.
[00:49:13]  I can't imagine if this is what this Tuesday episode was.
[00:49:16]  I can't wait for the Friday episode.
[00:49:19]  We'll be back.
[00:49:20]  Reminder, head over to patreon.com/slash my craig podcast.
[00:49:22]  Support the show, gain access to the weekender episodes as well as specials, mailbags, all that good stuff.
[00:49:27]  In the meantime, you can find us on Blue Sky.
[00:49:29]  Nick is at Nick Houseman.
[00:49:30]  I'm at JWSX.
[00:49:31]  Be safe, everyone.