Ep. 1743 dissects the U.S.-Iran conflict, questioning its legality and necessity after a $20B strike left Iran’s nuclear program unaddressed despite prior claims of "obliteration." The host warns of escalation risks with Israel, Russia, and China while demanding clear objectives—citing Iraq’s 2003 quagmire as a cautionary tale. With polls showing 68% opposition, they argue war could backfire politically, handing Democrats midterm wins, and urge stricter immigration policies to counter Iranian sleeper cells. The episode ties the debate to broader culture wars, framing racial pride hypocrisy and a "Real History" series that rewrites colonialism as a tale of settler restraint, all while pitching pro-life coffee and protein bars. [Automatically generated summary]
Today, the Matt Wall show, the United States attacks Iran.
Was this a smart move?
Will it benefit American citizens or doom us to another Iraq-style quagmire or something else?
And why did we launch this attack?
Was it necessary?
We will break everything down today as fairly and objectively as we can on The Matt Wall Show.
We are going to discuss today, of course, the military operation in Iran.
It will not surprise any of my viewers and listeners to learn that I am quite skeptical of this operation, as I am usually skeptical of military interventions in far-off countries on the other side of the globe.
That's my position, and I'm not going to abandon it now, even as certain segments of the base become inflamed with war fever and demand that the rest of us fall in line.
I'm not going to do that.
I'm also an American patriot.
I love my country.
I want it to succeed, which means that I'm not rooting for this to be a failure, obviously, nor am I weeping over the poor Iranian regime and its leaders who are now scattered in many pieces across the desert sand.
Good riddance to them as far as I'm concerned.
Now, you wouldn't know it based on what you see on social media, especially X over the weekend, but there is actually a lane for people in this camp, in the camp that I'm in.
There is a lane for people who are skeptical of military intervention and regime change wars, especially ones in the Middle East, but also aren't siding with the Iranian regime and actively rooting for America to fail.
Not only does that lane exist in real life, but it's where I would estimate a great majority of normal Americans live.
Now, with that in mind, I want to discuss this issue as fairly and objectively as I can.
One thing we know for sure is that it is never more difficult to recognize the limits of what you know and to ask honest and good faith questions about what you don't know than it is during a once-in-a-generation war in which millions of lives, including American lives, can be potentially changed irreparably.
It's not natural for a political commentator or a politician to admit this, but it's true.
For decades, Democrats have pursued a policy of appeasing Iran on the theory that money and diplomatic concessions would forestall the development of a nuclear bomb.
On the other hand, Republicans have been split between two factions, the neocon axis of evil hardliners who chant bomb Iran on the one hand, and the America First proponents on the other, many of whom voted for Donald Trump precisely because he promised to keep the United States out of needless regime change wars.
Now, every single one of these factions at the moment has reason to be furious.
And therefore, they have an incentive to confuse the public about what's actually happening in Iran.
Democrats didn't get their peace treaty where the mullahs and the supreme leader hold hands and announce that they'll never attempt to build a dirty bomb ever again.
The neocons didn't get their full-scale ground invasion complete with boots on the ground, a new democratic Iranian constitution drafted by the United States, and lucrative nation-building contracts, at least not yet.
And many America First voters, myself included, are wondering how exactly the invasion of Iran will advance the interests of the United States.
We should not do anything at all, anything, outside the borders of our country or within them, unless it will first and foremost benefit American citizens.
And the benefit must be a net gain, which means the reward for Americans is greater than the cost we must pay to procure it.
That has to be the deal, or whatever you're doing is a bad idea, with no exceptions.
Is that the case here?
Well, other than a 3 a.m. address from Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago on Friday night, which broadly argued that Iran has been a threat to the United States for many decades, that case was not sufficiently made in the lead up to this operation.
And I would say that it still has not been made.
And it certainly hasn't been subjected to any kind of rigorous scrutiny.
Now, you can make the argument that because the beginning of the war in Iran was a highly sensitive military operation involving classified intelligence that could change at a moment's notice, it's not prudent for the White House to lay out its case in detail ahead of time.
After all, the president is the commander-in-chief of the military for a reason, and he's entitled to deference when it comes to national security.
But there are two major problems with that argument.
First of all, U.S. military deployments to the Persian Gulf over the past few weeks have been extensive and very obvious.
So this was not a surprise attack or anything close to it.
There's no reason why the president couldn't have addressed Congress, explained the status of the negotiations with Iran, and then outlined a plan of action in case those negotiations failed, including some suggestion of what would happen after Iran's government was toppled.
That didn't happen, even though the president had a chance to do so during the stay of the union.
But even if you give the administration a pass on that, which you might, you still have to wonder why the silence persisted.
There was no senior administration official or cabinet member appeared on any of the Sunday shows the other day, more than 24 hours after the attacks began.
They didn't seem interested in explaining how the war is going, why they felt they had to strike at this moment, or what Iran will look like in five months or five years.
Over the weekend, information came mostly through press releases and truth social posts.
Then this morning, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and General Dan Kaine held the first press conference to discuss the mission more than 48 hours after the start of the war.
When asked if the U.S. will put boots on the ground, this is how Kane replied.
You mentioned during the briefing, General Kaine, that there would be additional troops sent to the region.
Could you say how many troops currently are involved in this operation and how many additional troops are planned to go in this next phase?
I don't want to talk specifics because that would tip the enemy off.
And then Pete Hegseth said the same thing when asked if the U.S. already had the boots on the ground.
Are there currently any American boots on the ground in Iran?
No, but we're not going to go into the exercise of what we will or will not do.
I think it's one of those fallacies for a long time that this department or presidents or others should tell the American people, and our enemies, by the way, here's exactly what we'll do.
Here's exactly how long we'll go.
Here's exactly how far we'll go.
Here's what we're willing to do and not do.
It's foolishness.
And so President Trump ensures that our enemies understand we'll go as far as we need to go to advance American interests.
But we're not dumb about it.
You don't have to roll 200,000 people in there and stay for 20 years.
We've proven that you can achieve objectives that advance American interests without being foolish about it.
Now, when a reporter asked how long the mission would last, this is what Hegseth said.
I had a question about four weeks.
It's the typical NBC sort of gotcha type question.
President Trump has all the latitude in the world to talk about how long it may or may not take.
Four weeks, two weeks, six weeks.
It could move up.
It could move back.
We're going to execute at his command the objectives we've set out to achieve.
Okay, so then what is our objective?
Is it regime change?
Here's what Hegseth said.
Turns out the regime who chanted death to America and death to Israel was gifted death from America and death from Israel.
This is not a so-called regime change war, but the regime sure did change, and the world is better off for it.
Now, a lot of people on the internet are saying that this is the Iraq War 2.0.
The administration and Warhawks are saying that it isn't.
So it's important to lay out some historical context for those of you who don't remember what happened in 2003 or weren't born yet or were too young.
Back then, the Bush administration would often use the Sunday shows to make the case for regime change in Iraq.
They would fabricate information on occasions, as it turned out, but they were also grilled over and over again.
They knew that meet the press was not friendly territory for them.
They knew that the Sunday shows were biased in favor of the left, but the Bush administration still felt compelled to make their case before a hostile and skeptical audience one way or another.
Just days before the invasion, Vice President Dick Cheney went on one of the Sunday shows and said, I think the invasion will go relatively quickly, weeks rather than months.
A few weeks later, after the situation spiraled out of control, the Washington Post reported that Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul D. Wolfowitz told reporters that defense officials made assumptions that turned out to underestimate the problem, beginning with the belief that removing Saddam Hussein from power would also remove the threat posed by his Baath party.
In addition, they erred in assuming that significant numbers of Iraqi army units and large numbers of Iraqi police would quickly join the U.S. military and its civilian partners in rebuilding Iraq.
Now, back in the present day, yesterday, the Washington Post reported that, quote, inside the Pentagon and among some members of the Trump administration, there was deepening concern Sunday that the Iran conflict could spiral out of control.
Iran and Iraq are two different countries, that's true.
And a lot of things about those two situations are different, but they aren't as different as the proponents of this war would have you believe.
It definitely is not unreasonable to wonder if and to worry that the early days of this conflict and the stated reason for it resemble very closely those events in 2003.
So the reasoning we're hearing so far simply is not good enough.
Now, I acknowledge that the White House has access to all kinds of information that I don't have.
They could have reasons for doing what they're doing that I don't know about or understand, but that's an argument we've heard before, not just during Iraq.
I mean, much more recently.
It's what we heard during COVID when all the people with more information than us chose a course of action that was disastrous for the country, and we still haven't recovered.
The trust the experts' logic died with COVID, and it's never coming back.
From now on and forevermore, the experts will need to make their case clearly and coherently, explain exactly what they're doing and why they're doing it and what the end game is and what information justifies whatever course of action they've chosen.
Just simply trusting that they have it all under control is not going to work anymore, at least for those of us with a memory that stretches back farther than last week.
To the extent that an objective has been clearly laid out, stopping Iran from developing nuclear weapons appears to be the primary one.
But the problem is that we were told that Iran's nuclear program was obliterated.
That's the White House's own phrasing, still on the website.
You can go check it.
Just a few months ago.
It was obliterated.
So how could Iran's nuclear program go from total obliteration, annihilation, to a matter so urgent that we have to go to war over it in the span of like seven or eight months?
That's a problem.
That doesn't make sense.
It just doesn't.
This is a question that still has not been even close to coherently answered.
It is a fundamental hole in the logic behind this entire thing.
Now, the question about the end game, on the other hand, is very important.
This at this point is by far the most important question.
Whatever the reason is that we got into this thing and that's still not clear, we are hearing different things.
What exactly is the end game?
How do we get out?
When do we get out?
What are we trying to achieve?
The Iranian people rise up and take control of their government is what we've heard.
That's what Trump said in his address on Saturday night.
That's what he called for.
Well, okay, what does that mean?
Which people?
How are they taking control?
What happens after they do take control?
Are we sure the new people, whoever they are, will be better than the old people?
How are we going to make sure of that?
How are we going to make sure of that while also not putting boots on the ground?
Or are we going to put boots on the ground?
Even though we were told many times that would not happen.
None of this has been explained, and it needs to be.
You know, it's just a basic matter of life that generally speaking, the most ruthless and violent forces will be the ones who seize the crown.
That's the way, that's the lesson of history, not just Iraq, but all of human history.
What exactly is the mechanism by which we plan to ensure the secular pro-Western factions in Iran, who are by definition not barbaric killers, somehow manage to fill the power vacuum and prevail over the factions that are barbaric killers?
Now, I'm not a foreign policy expert.
I admit that.
I'm just a common sense guy.
I'm also a student of history.
So someone explain it to me, to all of us.
If you blow up the government, how is it not very likely that militant killers who are as bad or worse than the old regime fill the void?
How is that not, how is it, how is that not just a possible scenario, but actually the most likely scenario?
Now, however much trust you may have in Donald Trump and his administration, this is the reality he must contend with.
It's perfectly reasonable for Americans to be skeptical of regime change wars in the Middle East.
We can hear all day long, this is totally different from Iraq.
It's totally different.
Okay, I mean, that's so you claim that Trump himself was skeptical of regime change wars in the Middle East.
And the idea that we're obligated to just assume it's a good move because Trump decided to do it is asinine, not to mention un-American.
And that's especially true since at the moment, powerful voices in the conservative movement are calling for a long war in Iran, which is explicitly contrary to what most of Trump's voters want.
Too Soon For Iran Off-Ramps00:08:38
Here's the Wall Street Journal editorial board, for example.
Quote: It's too soon for Iran off-ramps.
The first two days of the U.S.-Israeli attack on Iran have been a striking success, but the response of the Iranian regime has also revealed the reason it was necessary.
The biggest mistake President Trump could make now would be to end the war too soon before Iran's military and its domestic forces have been more thoroughly destroyed.
Yes, the biggest mistake would be ending the war too soon.
We can't have a short and contained conflict, say the neocons, like the operation in Venezuela.
Instead, we need an open-ended war.
We need to stay until we eliminate their capability of engaging in acts of terrorism, which is when exactly?
And where have we heard this before?
I mean, again, everyone says it's totally different.
It's totally different.
Okay, it sounds a lot like the argument that got us stuck in Afghanistan and Iraq for an entire generation.
It sounds a lot like that.
I mean, it's pure gaslighting to tell us that we shouldn't draw any comparisons at all.
So before that happens, the Trump administration needs to answer some questions.
In addition to clearly establishing a timeline, they need to tell us: is it true, as some anonymous sources have claimed, that Iran was beginning to work on dirty bombs that could kill American citizens?
Now, here's one of the posts I'm talking about.
This is from Andrew Colvette of Turning Point USA in response to something I wrote on X.
He said, In calling around a number of contacts today, it was clear that there was growing urgency and concern in DC, even among the most stridently anti-war voices, that Iran was beginning to work on dirty bombs while making urgent appeals to China for hypersonics, which can sink U.S. carriers in the region, which carry 5,000 servicemen.
Now, while I don't fault Andrew, of course, for sharing what he's hearing, the problem with this kind of information is that it's totally useless for the rest of us.
There's no one going on the record who's saying that.
In fact, we have some reporting that suggests a totally different, suggests the opposite, actually.
This is from CNN, which is not a trustworthy source of information.
But where are the trustworthy sources?
That's always the question.
But here it is: quote: Pentagon briefers acknowledged to congressional staff in a briefing Sunday that Iran was not planning to strike U.S. forces or bases in the Middle East unless Israel attacked Iran first.
According to multiple sources, this undercuts Trump admins' argument on Saturday that Iran was planning to potentially strike the U.S. preemptively and posed an imminent threat.
Now, none of these claims in either direction are reliable because no one is answering these questions on the record with any specificity.
And in that sense, these reports are even less reliable than the narrative that led us into the Iraq war.
In 2003, Colin Powell and Donald Rumsfeld went out in public.
They told the United Nations and meet the press that Iraq had WMD and that we knew precisely where those WMD were.
If they could lie on camera, then there's absolutely no reason to trust, and they did lie, as we know.
Well, if you've got government officials that are going to go lie on camera, well, there's no reason then to trust anonymous sources who tell various media outlets or turning point that Iran was on the verge of acquiring a dirty bomb or hypersonics.
Nor is there evidence that Iran wasn't going to attack first.
We need to actually see the evidence, and someone in the administration needs to explain it to us.
Now, it does appear that, as Trump suggested at Mar-a-Lago, that Iranians are happy that their supreme leader has been killed.
Iranians living in Los Angeles, who a lot of these people shouldn't even be in the country, took to the streets in celebration.
So maybe they can go back home.
I mean, that's what we're hearing: a lot of people are going to go back home.
I'll believe it when I see it.
I don't think that's actually going to happen.
And there were similar scenes in Tehran, as the New York Times reported.
Large crowds of men and women dancing and sharing, shouting, woohoo, hurrah.
Drivers passing by honked their car horns.
Fireworks lit up the sky and loud Persian dance music filled the streets.
Many residents from their windows and balconies joined in a chant of freedom, freedom.
Well, that's good for them.
But we don't fight wars for the freedom of Iranians.
I mean, of all the reasons you could possibly give to justify this war, and there have been a bunch of reasons offered, many of them conflicting.
The worst thing you could say is that, well, we're freeing the Iranian people.
Their freedom is not relevant to us.
It may sound cruel, but to put it as frankly as possible, the question of whether or not Iranians are free should be of no concern to us whatsoever.
That's their own issue to sort out.
What's relevant in terms of mission objectives is whether these people, I mean the right people among those people, whoever the right people are, which hasn't been explained, will rise up and as Trump suggested, complete the mission in Iran, whatever that mission is exactly.
Is that going to materialize?
How sure are we that it will?
We need the administration to answer those questions.
They also need to provide assurances, if they can, that this new power vacuum in the Middle East will actually be filled by pro-Western secular leaders.
Has it worked that way at any point in the last 40 years when we've overthrown a Muslim state?
What's the batting average on that?
What's the batting average in overthrowing a Muslim regime and then having someone better fill the void?
What's the batting average?
And if that ever does happen, how long does it take generally?
and how much money has to be spent by Americans and lives lost to get us there.
Now, we all know what happened when the Obama administration, along with France and the UK, overthrew the government of Libya.
More than a decade later, that war has produced millions of refugees, many of whom ended up in Europe.
The economy of Libya, which was once a relative bright spot in Africa, has been destroyed.
Militia violence is commonplace.
Slave markets returned.
Maybe that would be considered a success in Iran.
Maybe that's what they're going for.
I'm not being sarcastic.
That could genuinely be the goal.
It could be the case that the United States has decided that if Iran is reduced to a dysfunctional, violent hellscape with no functioning leadership, then America will be safer.
After all, dysfunctional third world countries typically aren't capable of building nuclear weapons.
But if that's the goal, and I don't know if it is, somebody needs to tell us that.
And then we should debate the pros and cons of that rather risky approach.
We should ensure that refugees from Iran won't end up in Europe and the United States where they can commit terrorist attacks.
We should have some way of determining whether Iran's dirty bombs or the material to make them will end up in the hands of terrorists.
And by the way, what happens if Israel is not on board with our approach, whatever it is?
Because right now, they don't appear to be.
Instead, Israel is currently vowing to use the full weight of their military to go after Iran, which leaves open the possibility of a ground invasion.
What happens then?
What happens when Israel decides that they want to put boots on the ground?
Does that force us into it?
Would the Trump administration assist in that kind of operation?
Right now, we have no idea.
Would Russia and China get involved in that case?
So far, they've shown no interest in the conflict, which is a good sign.
It means that World War III probably isn't about to start.
Will that continue indefinitely?
Will it continue if ground forces are involved?
And maybe the most important unanswered question, the one that has immediate ramifications for every American, is whether or not Iran has sleeper cells in the United States that could activate at any moment.
We have no real guidance on that point whatsoever.
The administration hasn't shared any intelligence with us one way or another.
Our consulate in Pakistan just came under attack, but it appears U.S. Marines were ready for the rioters.
The Marines opened fire and prevented the attack from becoming another Benghazi, thank God.
But in Austin, Texas, a terrorist sympathetic to Iran, and we know that he had a Koran and clothes that said property of Allah, was able to murder several American citizens two nights ago.
High Stakes Immigration Risk00:13:25
His name was Diaga Diagni.
He's a 53-year-old naturalized U.S. citizen.
He was born in Senegal, was living in Phlugerville, Texas.
His social media feed was full of deranged posts, many of them anti-Christian and anti-Jewish.
He also mocked the idea that Islam could be a threat to the United States, which is reminiscent of that trans-identifying gunman in Rhode Island who insisted that trans people aren't actually dangerous psychopaths and then went and demonstrated that, in fact, he was one.
This is someone who obviously should not have been allowed into the United States, much less granted citizenship.
We should have taken one look at him and sent him back to Senegal, but that's not what happened.
This is from Fox's Brooke Taylor.
Quote, Diaga DiAgni entered the U.S. on March 13th, 2000 on a B-2 tourist visa.
In June 2006, he adjusted to lawful permanent resident based on a marriage to a U.S. citizen.
He naturalized as a U.S. citizen on April 5th, 2013, under the Obama administration.
In 2022, he was arrested in Texas for collision with vehicle damage.
In other words, he remained in this country for six years on a tourist visa, which is illegal.
Tourist visas last six months, not six years.
But instead of being deported, he was allowed to marry a U.S. citizen and become a lawful permanent resident.
And then the Obama administration made him a citizen.
It's reminiscent of the story of Billy Chimimer.
So you might not remember this one.
Billy was born in Kenya.
He overstayed his visa, married a U.S. citizen, got a green card, and then slaughtered 18 elderly women.
Precisely, no lessons were ever learned from this incident.
But there's an easy solution here.
First, we need a blanket ban on all third world immigration.
There's no reason why we should allow any foreigner from Kenya or Senegal or Somalia or Iraq or Afghanistan or Iran or anywhere else in the third world to step foot in the United States, period.
And certainly they shouldn't be allowed to come into the United States under the pretext of being a tourist.
Okay, there are no tourists from the third world.
They have no money to spend.
And foreigners from third world countries, statistically speaking, overstay their visas at extremely high rates.
So just cut it off.
End the entire stream.
Third world migration offers no benefits to this country at all, not a single benefit.
And we know it.
We all know it.
So end it all.
End the farce.
That's our only choice.
And secondly, of course, we need to intensify our efforts to deport and denaturalize as many foreign-born residents as possible.
Any foreign-born resident, any naturalized citizen who is clearly anti-American, needs to be gone.
You know, angry lesbians and Antifa managed to make this administration back down in Minnesota.
That's just a fact.
That's what happened.
And it can't be allowed to happen again going forward.
The stakes are simply too high.
We need to ruthlessly deport any illegal alien, no matter how elaborate their sob story may be, because it's a matter of national security.
And we need to denaturalize anyone who, like this terrorist from Senegal, is on social media talking about bringing death to America.
That should be one strike and you're out.
Just one social media post like that or public statement as a naturalized citizen where you're expressing hatred for America or its people, you should be gone, period.
These are people who lied on their application for citizenship.
They defrauded this country.
They are a threat to us.
They need to go.
Now, keep in mind when we talk about the potential downstream negative effects of wars in the Middle East, this is one of them.
Okay, even if World War III does not materialize, which it probably won't, we still have to contend with all the millions of third world anti-American invaders who are already in our country and could lash out at any time as one of them already has less than 48 hours into this thing.
That's part of the cost of an operation like this.
That's the other thing that proponents of this war need to contend with, and they're not.
I haven't heard any of them.
You have to honestly contend with this.
It's not enough to say, oh, yeah, well, there's not going to be World War III because China's not getting involved.
Russia doesn't care.
I think a lot of that is premature, but what about here?
Because what's happened over the last 20 years, one of the differences between now and 2003, between now and Iraq, is that we have permitted a tidal wave of immigration from the Muslim world.
So in many ways, we are in a worse position to do this kind of thing now than we were in 2003.
A lot worse, actually.
We are much more susceptible, much more vulnerable now because of the invasion that has happened over the last 20 years.
And that has to be part of the calculation.
It just has to be.
You start doing this in the Middle East.
We have a bunch of Middle Eastern people here who are still loyal to their homeland.
What is that like?
That is a very volatile situation, which is why before I could even theoretically support a regime change war in the Middle East, it would need to be preceded by a mass deportation operation to remove every third world Muslim militant and potential militant from the country.
Our own safety must come first, always.
Now, right now, the attitude in the Republican Party is very different.
Here's Ted Cruz.
This is from just a few days ago, for example, watch.
Plus taking the time to speak on issues like immigration.
My approach to immigration for a long time, I've summed up in four words.
Legal, good.
Illegal, bad.
I think most Texans and most Americans agree with that.
This is one of those cases where the simple approach is wrong.
The fact that a foreigner has complied with our laws does not mean that the law is correct.
It doesn't mean the law should remain unchanged.
In fact, there's compelling evidence, which you can see all over the place, that the law needs to change immediately.
It's one of the great betrayals of the Bush administration that even as they waged war in the Middle East, they allowed millions of foreign Muslims to enter the United States.
At the time, the Bush administration's argument was that Islam is a religion of peace and that extremists represent a tiny fraction of the Muslim population.
Never mind the fact that worldwide, the vast majority of Muslims support Sharia law.
The Bush administration was very concerned about being called racist, so they just opened the floodgates.
Now, 20 years later, we have Muslim politicians like Rashida Talib, who wrote the following post on social media in response to the attack on Iran.
Look at this.
So she's referring to the United States as they.
Both the U.S. and genocidal Israel don't care about the laws.
This is who they are, she says.
This is who they are.
Doesn't even pretend that she's an American.
And why should she?
The people who elected her despise this country.
She's giving them exactly what they want.
So is Zorhan Mamdani, the Muslim socialist who's now in charge of New York, where a quarter of the population can't even speak English.
Here's what Mamdani wrote.
You could see it here.
Quote, today's military strikes in Iran carried out by the United States and Israel mark a catastrophic escalation in an illegal war of aggression, bombing cities, killing civilians, opening a new theater of war.
Americans do not want this.
They do not want another war in pursuit of regime change.
They want relief from the affordability crisis.
They want peace.
So it's not that we don't want another war when he's talking about Americans.
Instead, Mamdani says they don't want another war.
Again, he doesn't see himself as an American because he knows he isn't one.
And he doesn't even have to pretend.
And also pay attention to the other language that they use.
They call this an illegal war as if international law actually exists.
This is not a genuine good faith objection.
I think there's a lot of reasons to be skeptical of this, to be opposed to it, as I've already laid out.
Calling it an illegal war is meaningless.
Americans, people who actually care about this country, aren't interested in talking about international law.
That doesn't matter.
The only thing that matters, I don't care if it's an illegal war.
I don't care about that.
What I care about is how this will benefit the people of the United States of America.
Now, given the lack of information, you have to be open to the possibility that this might have some benefit.
Lacking information, as we discussed, nobody can make an absolutely definitive proclamation with any credibility.
But we also have to be very open to the possibility that the war might undermine everything the Trump administration has achieved to this point.
Now, sure, if the conflict ends up as a major success with a minimal loss of life and a new pro-Western Iran, then Donald Trump can claim victory and will go down as a hero.
We can't say that's an impossible outcome.
Is it likely?
Well, it seems unlikely to me.
But who knows?
And right now, we're nine months from the midterms.
Some polls show that the overwhelming majority of Americans oppose going to war with Iran, although you'll also find some mainstream polls showing that Americans support the war if it means eliminating Iran's nuclear capability.
So to some extent, it depends on how you ask the question.
But really, the polls aren't the best indicator because people are generally, this is the important, a key point.
People are generally supportive of invasions in the early days.
The invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan were popular at first.
They ended up destroying Bush's presidency and led to eight years of Obama, which means that most likely, this is the key point.
This operation in Iran is right now as popular as it will ever be.
And no matter which poll you look at, it's still not that popular.
There's a low ceiling politically on this kind of thing, and that's a bad sign.
So what happens if this war becomes a quagmire and gives the Democrat Party a new platform to run on?
What happens if the Wall Street Journal gets what they wish, what they want?
A war that continues for years and years until Iran isn't capable of committing acts of terrorism, however that's defined.
Right now, according to most generic congressional ballots, Republicans are roughly even with Democrats in the congressional races.
That could change very quickly.
And if this war costs Republicans in midterms and then the presidency, it will not have been worth it.
Almost no matter how it turns out in Iran, if it means Democrat rule at home, it was not worth it.
Because Democrat rule here at home means tyranny for our people.
Freedom for Iran in exchange for oppression for Americans is not a good trade.
That would be just about the worst deal of the century.
So it's not enough for the president to talk about the USS coal bombing, which took place more than 25 years ago.
It's not enough for him to talk about the attack on Israel in October of 2023 either.
Why do we, as Americans, need to do this?
What's in it for us, for our country, right now?
Whatever the answer is, we are right now staring down the possibility of another indefinite conflict in the Middle East, one that could cost trillions of dollars, result in the deaths of more Americans.
How many?
We don't know.
And in the end, accomplish nothing.
It won't necessarily turn out that way, but certainly could.
And to me, based on what we know right now, that does not seem to be a risk worth taking.
It's a major risk.
The downside is extraordinarily high.
To me, it does not seem worth taking.
Less than a year ago, we were told that Iran's nuclear capacity was decimated and totally obliterated.
We were told that.
Those reassurances didn't last long.
So how do we know that this time, despite recent history, everything will be different?
High Risks, Uncertain Outcomes00:03:00
And if we are told this whole thing was a smashing success, how do we know it actually was?
That's what they told us in June.
The answer is that we don't know.
We have no idea.
And before the administration escalates this war even further and before any more Americans die, they have an obligation to tell us.
Now let's get to our five headlines.
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Social Contract Conflicts00:07:59
Okay, well, this is supposed to be the part of the show where we run through other headlines.
The problem is that there really aren't any other headlines because everything's about Iran.
So we'll be reaching a little bit here, but it is what it is.
So we'll start with this.
In much less important news, or maybe not, maybe even more important news, the NAACP Image Awards happened this weekend.
And there is a point to be made here, which I'll get to.
As expected, there were a bunch of speeches from rich and famous black people talking about how oppressed they are, which we knew was going to happen.
Ryan Koogler, who's the guy who directed, he directed the Sinners, right?
And he expanded on the theme of oppression.
Watch.
We just want to say thanks.
Thank you to you guys, man.
Like, it's a lot of since our people have been here over four centuries, there's always been a lot of lies told about us.
And a lie, no matter how powerful the person is saying it is, it's still a lie.
And the truth, and the truth, no matter how little power the person has that's saying the truth, it's still the truth.
And the truth is y'all are loves, y'all are beautiful, and y'all are powerful and mighty.
And bless y'all.
Thank y'all so much.
Okay, so a lot of lies told about us.
What lies exactly?
He doesn't say, so, you know, there's a lot of that.
But then there was this from Michael B. Jordan, the actor, a very famous actor, of course.
And here's what he says.
Listen.
What's up, y'all?
Y'all really don't understand how much this means to me being here.
I used to come here when I was a kid, when I was about 15 years old, sneaking in through the back as best I could.
I always loved being here, man.
It felt like a reunion of sorts, you know, being from New Jersey and coming out here during the summers.
And this is a place where I always felt encouraged.
I always felt like I was being celebrated and nourished.
You guys poured into me.
My small successes, even when I was a kid, you told me it was okay to keep going because I felt seen here.
I felt comfortable.
I felt like I felt the love.
And yeah, I just want to thank the NAACP.
I want to think, ah, man, I love being black.
I love y'all.
Okay, so I love being black, he says.
And here's the thing.
I'm fine with that.
I have no issue with Michael B. Jordan or any other black person saying that.
Actually, I support it.
I support it.
You should love being who you are.
You should love the parts of yourself that are innate, that are fundamental to your identity.
I mean, I'm not big on the whole love yourself shtick, not really my style, but you should love yourself as a child of God and you should love how you were made.
So yes, you should love being black if you are black.
That's fine.
No complaint from me.
The problem, though, is exactly what you're already thinking.
It's the thing that comes immediately to mind.
It's the most obvious thing.
And the problem is that we all know if, let's say, I don't know, Chris Pratt got up at some kind of awards ceremony and was standing up there and said, man, I love being white.
Man, I love being white.
God bless.
See y'all later.
It would be the scandal of the century.
It might even be the top headline on CNN right now, even with everything going on with it.
It might beat out the Iran war.
It might be that big of a deal.
Either way, it'd be an enormous scandal.
He would be condemned from all corners as a racist and forced to apologize.
We all know this is the case.
And even more absurd, people, including a lot of white people who have no problem with what Michael B. Jordan said, people would take issue with the statement conceptually.
You know, they would act like it's absurd.
They would say, well, what do you mean you love being white?
Why do you care what color you are?
What does that mean?
You didn't choose it.
Like, why do you act like you're proud of it?
They would act like it's fundamentally ridiculous for a person to love being the race that they are.
And they would certainly act like, so it's ridiculous.
And so they would assume that, well, the only reason you're saying that is because you're actually trying to convey that you hate other races or you think other races are inferior.
And that's how it would go.
And that is, that is the totally irreconcilable hypocrisy in our racial conversation in this country.
And a lot of people, white people, are just done with it.
You know, this is, in a sense, the kind of like modern social contract.
I don't really, I don't like that term, but if there is a social contract, then this is the contract, the social contract in the modern age, which says that white people will just tolerate, even actively affirm and celebrate these ridiculous, ludicrous, racial double standards.
This contract that says that, you know, every other race except whites are allowed to say and do a whole bunch of stuff that white people can't say and do.
The contract that says that, you know, every other race is allowed to love themselves and be proud of who they are, but white people can't.
And the only reason ever given for that is just sort of gesturing towards, well, it's about the history.
It's about the historical context.
Never mind the fact that the actual history of our country is that white people as a group, generally speaking, have been most responsible for building, establishing, maintaining, fighting for, inventing, pioneering basically every good thing in our lives.
And for that effort, the reward is in a very literal sense, this kind of second-class citizen arrangement.
But the thing is that increasingly white people, especially younger white people, especially white men, are just bowing out of this arrangement.
And that's what the media is noticing.
And that's what all the frantic hand-wringing about, you know, the rise of so-called white nationalism and all this stuff is all about.
It's really just people bowing out.
It's them.
It's people looking at this contract and saying, I'm not signing that.
But I don't, what?
Oh, so the contract is like, there's all these rules I have to follow, but nobody else does because of the color of my skin.
No, I'm not just not doing it.
Why should I?
Why should I do that?
Oh, you're saying that like every other person with different color skin can say this?
They can say, but I can't?
No.
And that's all that's happening.
People are saying that's a bad deal.
That's a bad deal for me.
I decline.
I decline to take part.
So, hey, guess what?
I love being white.
I love being white.
Happy to be white.
White people are great.
They've done great things.
They've been a blessing to the world.
Go ahead and tell me I can't say that.
Go ahead and explain to me why everyone else is allowed to say that, but I can't.
Go ahead.
But you can't explain it, and you know you can.
So shut up or don't shut up and keep whining, doesn't really matter.
But that's what I'm doing, and that's exactly what's happening, and this is the reason for it.
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Why Indians Were Called Savages00:08:50
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All right.
I've also been meaning to mention that episode two of my new series, Real History, is out right now.
And in this episode, we talk about the history of the American Indian and the real story of the American Indians, which is a theme that we've talked about.
We come back to that on the show quite a bit.
It's something that's important to me, which is making the case that we in fact do not live on stolen land, that we deserve to live here, that we built this country.
It was not, you know, this whole story of a country built on the oppression and subjugation of so-called indigenous people is not true.
And in the second episode, we deal with this, with that whole thing.
We lay out the real history, the real history of the American Indians and of the Indian Wars and all the rest of it.
So here's a clip from that episode where we talk about why the Indians were called savages.
And today we're told that, well, that was all just pure bigotry and racism.
But there is a reason for that.
In fact, they earned that moniker.
Listen.
So just how savage were the Indians?
We'll get into specific details of some of these raids, but for now we can focus on perhaps the most gruesome detail of all.
Evidence of cannibalism among American Indian tribes.
According to Keeley's book, War Before Civilization, at 25 sites in the American Southwest, anthropologists have discovered cannibalized human remains dated from roughly the year 900 to 1300, hundreds of years before Columbus arrived.
We know they were consumed because the assemblages of disarticulated bones share a number of features.
butchering cut marks, skulls broken, long bones smashed for marrow extraction, bones burned or otherwise cooked, and disposal with other kitchen refuse.
And there's a lot more to it than that.
If you watch the episode, you'll find we go into gruesome detail about what the first the European pioneers and settlers and then Americans discovered when they came across these native tribes.
And that is, and it doesn't really matter where they came across them.
If it was in, if we're talking about, you know, continental United States or the Mesoamerican tribes, we're talking about South America.
All across the hemisphere, I mean, even up into the Arctic, the encounters with the Eskimos, the Inuits, as we call them now.
You find this sort of thing, just brutal savagery.
And this is the story across the entire hemisphere.
And there's a reason for getting into it.
It's not just for shock value.
That's not what it's about.
It's to give you a sense of what it was like, what they were dealing with when they were trying to build a civilization.
I mean, you get to this part of the world, you want to build a civilization here where one previously did not exist.
And it advanced modern civilization for its time.
But what you're encountering are these tribes that are living 5,000 years in the past, 10,000 years even in some cases.
And when you actually look at the history and you look at what these tribes were doing, the whole story, the whole narrative about the noble savage, these peaceful people, Pocahontas, right, singing to the birds and the bees and the trees, all of that melts away.
And you see how utterly absurd it was.
And you also begin to understand.
There's so much emphasis that's been put over the last many decades on empathizing with the Native people, the so-called indigenous people.
We have to be empathetic to them.
We have to understand their plight.
And there's been so much emphasis put on that.
Nobody ever talks about being empathetic or trying to understand in context the settlers who came here, the Westerners, and what it was like for them.
See this through their perspective.
I mean, just imagine what it's like.
You cross an ocean, you come to this new land that you've never seen, you know, nothing about.
There are no maps.
You have no context for it.
It's a wilderness.
Mostly an empty wilderness, by the way.
Most of the hemisphere was empty.
Wide, wide swaths of land that were empty, not claimed by anybody.
And that's often forgotten.
You don't know what to expect.
And then you encounter, again, without any context, it's really hard for us to put ourselves in this mindset because of all the context we have now, because all these things we take for granted and all the kind of dogmas that we have that are ingrained in us, embedded in us.
The idea of like universal human equality.
Everybody is equal.
That's a really modern notion.
And people 500 years ago, 400 years ago, 300 years ago, they didn't have that.
They didn't take that for granted.
So you don't have any of that framework in mind, right?
You don't have any of that kind of scaffolding.
And you get here and you encounter people who are running around naked or in loincloths, murdering each other brutally, and in some cases, eating each other.
What conclusions would you draw about these people?
What language would you use to describe them?
Would you conclude that they are savages?
Yeah, I think so.
And when you start to be, when you try to actually be empathetic in that way and understand things from their perspective, what you realize is that actually, in many cases, the lack of brutality on the part of the European and American settlers is pretty surprising and admirable.
There was much more restraint than people realize.
And in fact, much more restraint on the side of the Europeans and the Americans than on the side of the Indian tribes.
Anyway, we get into all this in the episode and in much more detail.
But in order to watch it, you have to become a subscriber.
So go to dailywire.com, become a subscriber, you can watch, you can support what we do.
We can't do things like this.
Actually, takes a lot of time, a lot of research, a lot of effort to put together things like this.
And can't do it without your support.
So go to dailywire.com and subscribe, become a member, support the show.
And that will do it for the show today.
We'll end it there.
Talk to you tomorrow.
Have a great day.
Godspeed.
They told you America invented slavery.
They told you the Indians were peaceful.
They told you colonialism was evil and that Joseph McCarthy was a bad guy.
And guess what?
They lied.
For half a century, generations of American school children have been taught to hate our history, hate our country, and hate themselves.
It's time to set the record straight.
And since no one else is going to do it, I will.
Who sold us the slaves?
What were India and Africa like before Europeans arrived?
What caused white flight?
Some of the most well-known stories from American history are designed to demoralize you.
Trail of Tears, Smallpox Blankets Myth, the Red Scare.
It's all baseless.
It's time for a lesson on what they're not teaching in public schools.
On the real history of slavery, of colonialism, of the Indians, of America, and the world.