IRAN WAR DAY 19: Israel Strikes IRANIAN OIL, Iran RETALIATES | America First Ep. 1660
Nicholas J. Fuentes argues the U.S. is an "occupied nation" ruled by Israel, claiming the 2016 election colluded to scuttle the JCPOA and that Project Esther targets Americans via Palantir. He asserts Israel struck Iran's South Pars gas field, triggering Iranian retaliation against Qatar and Saudi Arabia which pushed oil past $120, while Trump denies prior knowledge. Fuentes contends Tucker Carlson and Joe Kent are staging interviews to save JD Vance's 2028 prospects amidst a "mission creep" toward a $200 billion ground war, urging Republicans to obstruct the administration until a true "America First" candidate emerges in 2028. [Automatically generated summary]
People that are scrambling, trying to protect their ever-shrinking share of what they have are foolish.
It's all going.
It's all going away.
This country is being ripped apart and raped and looted.
We're being slowly poisoned and in some cases quickly murdered and assassinated.
And we're killing ourselves every day.
Inadvertently, with the kinds of things that we eat and breathe and drink and see.
People have got to start to radically begin to obey their conscience and tell the truth and do the right thing.
People have got to start to get courageous.
And this is the time for everybody to turn and look to God and to pray and to ask for strength and to ask for wisdom to get through this time and to transform and sanctify this country.
And the alternative is that there will be no country.
Is it really only as big as low gas prices?
Is it really only so big as bringing inflation and gas prices and the corporate tax rate back down?
It's not about waiting for someone to come in and change the policy and make it better.
It's a personal decision that we all have to make to become soldiers of Christ.
Would you look at the time?
Would you look at the time?
The broken block is right again.
Would you look at the time?
Print your apology of form.
I told you so.
unidentified
When I get home, I want you.
Hello, I got places to be Evening everybody You're watching America First.
to say that the blood, the blood of our people, is something that is essential.
That we are different.
that America was different because we are different.
Palantir is an AI data analytics company.
They use artificial intelligence to look at vast amounts of data and create insights.
If the government has an amount of data which is kind of unimaginable, if you've got every phone call, every email, every transaction, every photograph of a license plate on the highway, satellite data, it's too much data for a bureaucracy to sift through.
Palantir comes in and interprets the data using algorithms, using artificial intelligence, using software to make vast amounts of data usable.
That's what they are.
And so many of the people that worked with Elon that came into the government through Doge worked with Palantir.
Now that Doge is finished, Palantir seems to be just getting started.
Thank you so much, everybody.
Let me just say, are you trusting the planet at this time?
unidentified
I'm party.
Seems to my eyes all up for the first time party.
Seems like my eyes smell better like the other day.
I want nothing but a red and out of patience.
She told me I'd be shutting in the living face.
When I get home, I want you.
Hello, I got places to be evening everybody You're watching America First.
If we don't have freedom on the internet in the age of AI, we are going to be mind-raped every day forever.
Think about anything you've ever said or done in the vicinity of your phone's camera or microphone, everything you've ever put into your phone, and even things that are not necessarily so scandalous, but even things like your favorite restaurants, your geolocation, because your phone also has a GPS.
They know where you are at all times.
They know where you go and when.
They know what you buy.
They have access to your bank account.
AI will literally know everything about you.
Everyone you know, your relationship to them, your tastes, your preferences, your habits, your whereabouts, your routines, your schedule, when you asleep.
They know how much REM sleep you're getting.
They know your resting heart rate.
They know how many calories you consume.
Think about the ways that they can manipulate you.
You have a computer in your refrigerator, computer in your car, computer in your home security system, computer in your everything, computer in your clothes, your watch, your glasses, your VR headset, your alarm clock.
You have a smart home, economy of things.
It's like total, like, rape of everybody by the system forever.
My life is like a first-person video game, you know?
This is like, this is my primary.
This is me like walking, walking down the hall.
This is my primary weapon.
Press circle to interact.
Press circle to interact with this item.
At the end of the day, here's the question: Is it worth it to save the country?
Does the country matter?
Is it worth it to preserve our civilization?
Is it worth it to preserve our religion?
Maybe bigger than that.
Is the truth worth it?
What is the truth worth to you?
What is telling the truth worth to you?
Is it worth something, nothing?
What are you willing to give to tell the truth?
All you need is Jesus.
All you need is prayer.
These material appetites, they will never be satisfied.
And even if they are, it'll never be an adequate substitute for communion with our Holy Father, with somebody, with the author of the world.
And every mother and father understands the love for a child.
And that is how we were made.
We were designed that way.
Because through that experience, we could understand by analogy God's love for us.
It says in Revelation that God will wipe away every tear.
And that's like, to me, it makes me want to cry when I read that.
People experience these things in their lives.
We've all been there where you feel like the whole world's against you, the walls are closing in.
And you read something like that that says that God, like our Father, our Creator, is going to wipe your tears off your face.
People that are scrambling, trying to protect their ever-shrinking share of what they have are foolish.
It's all going.
It's all going away.
This country is being ripped apart and raped and looted.
We're being slowly poisoned and, in some cases, quickly murdered and assassinated.
And we're killing ourselves every day, inadvertently, with the kinds of things that we eat and breathe and drink and see.
People have got to start to radically begin to obey their conscience and tell the truth and do the right thing.
People have got to start to get courageous.
And this is the time for everybody to turn and look to God and to pray and to ask for strength and to ask for wisdom to get through this time and to transform and sanctify this country.
And the alternative is that there will be no country.
Is it really only as big as low gas prices?
Is it really only so big as bringing inflation and gas prices and the corporate tax rate back down?
It's not about waiting for someone to come in and change the policy and make it better.
It's a personal decision that we all have to make to become soldiers of Christ.
Because they voted for Kamala Harris.
People do not stab young girls on trains because they're born black.
People do not shoot Palestinians in the back of the head or cheer it on just because they're Jewish.
The people that do this are lost.
They have to be isolated and segregated out.
A new consensus must emerge.
Are you in favor of a society with meaning?
A society where life is sacred, where life has sanctity, where people's lives and their dignity and their integrity is respected?
Or are we going to live in a society that is a never-ending war between nihilistic tribes, warlords, savages, pagans?
I see an emerging consensus.
And I think that the mature people that actually love America, actually love our children, the people that recognize the division, the peril that we're in, we need to fortify a new consensus and rally the people of conscience, the people of decency, the people of humanity, the people of charity towards their fellow man,
against those that want to kill us, against those that laugh and celebrate when innocent people are harmed.
For any reason, for any ideological reason.
Against the people that are cruel, the people that are hateful.
And by that, I mean the people that are really cruel.
Not the people that say things you disagree with, not the people that are provocative, not the people that are sometimes angry, but the people that are really cruel and really evil.
What makes Christianity and Christ so different from the other religions is that our religion is based on the bearing of suffering for the sake of even those that persecute us.
An unconditional, absolute standard of love for all of God's children, even those that are misguided, even those that persecute us, even the most heinous among us.
That is what makes us different.
That is what makes us good.
unidentified
Canary Mission is an Israeli-funded blacklist, which since July 2025 has been confirmed to be used by the Trump administration to target students, professors, and professionals who oppose Israel and reside in the United States.
This idea is part of an initiative created by the Heritage Foundation, the same group responsible for the infamous Project 2025.
In their initiative, titled Project Esther, they state that students participating in pro-Palestinian protests and activism are supporting Hamas, a group that the United States designates as a foreign terrorist organization.
Therefore, pro-Palestinian students are considered to be supporting terrorism and are subject to the revocation of visas, frozen bank accounts, asset seizures, and the denial of basic constitutional rights.
In effect, the Canary mission serves as a means to circumvent constitutional protections, allowing the federal government to engage in intelligence gathering activities that would otherwise be considered unlawful.
But the Canary mission is not alone.
Palantir, another company closely aligned with the state of Israel, uses AI-driven analytics to maintain private databases on U.S. citizens and currently works with four federal agencies.
While government contracting with the private sector is long-standing, the prominent influence of Jewish groups within these increasingly powerful organizations warrants careful examination.
I renew the call for all able-bodied young American men, all of our elite human capital, all of our geniuses, warriors, intelligent people to dedicate themselves to American sovereignty and independence as Christians, as Americans, as white people, as citizens of the United States.
And anybody that settles for anything less is just as much of an enemy.
I would actually consider them worse than our oppressors.
So on Independence Day, it's important to reflect on the fact that we are an occupied nation.
Now, just like then, we're being ruled by a small country across an ocean, serving itself at our expense.
And as long as that is the case, I will always be obsessed with that.
As long as that is the case, I will always be speaking out against that and fighting against that.
And I will always be anchored, understanding that that is the fundamental struggle.
As long as our presidents have to kiss the wall in Israel and wear a small hat, as long as they have to say that we want to make Israel great again and they're the greatest country ever, and I will never be okay with that.
Ever.
And it doesn't matter what they offer me or us.
It doesn't matter how they might try to placate us or appease our interests, the concessions they'll make.
Barack Obama created the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, the JCPOA, or the Iranian nuclear deal.
And Barack Obama brought together China, Russia, Germany, France, the United Kingdom, and the United States and the European Union to enforce a nuclear deal that restricts Iran's enrichment of uranium.
The early talks were conducted in secret, and the Israelis were furious, furious about this.
They hated Obama.
Netanyahu went to a joint session of Congress and gave a speech in defiance of the American president and its nuclear deal, and Congress gave 37 standing ovations.
This is the background of Trump's first election.
2016 election happens.
Trump gets elected with the help of the Israelis.
You don't believe me?
There's a whole article about it.
It's an excerpt from James Bamford's book, Spy Fail.
It goes into great detail about the hidden collusion in the 2016 election.
It wasn't Trump and Russia.
It was Trump and Israel.
And why was Israel so hell-bent on getting a Republican elected in 2016?
In 2018, Donald Trump declares the IRGC, the Revolutionary Guard, which is the military of the regime, a terrorist group.
Greenlights that group for sanctions, for attacks.
Now the United States is in a shadow war with Iran.
It culminates by January 2020 in the assassination of Qasim Suleimani.
Suleimani was the architect of the axis of resistance.
Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis, Suleimani built all of it.
Are you starting to see Obama had this solved?
He made the deal.
The Israelis hated him for it.
They colluded with Trump to get him elected so that Trump would do maximum pressure and create a ladder of escalation, pulling us out of the deal, declaring the IRGC terrorists, then killing its leader, putting sanctions on the regime.
This is a war that started a long time ago, that Trump made hot in 2018 and has been going on for seven years.
That's the nature of forever wars.
Just like in Iraq, which went from 1990 until today, just like Libya, which went from 2011 to today.
Syria, which went from 2011 to today, and Iran, which went from 2018 until today.
That's the nature of forever wars.
And if you're not paying attention to those underlying forces, you're going to fall for it again and again.
You're going to be surprised and confused and coping over and over.
And people are just tripping over themselves to do it again.
Okay, I'm like two seconds out from just joining the Jews at this point.
It's like I started out like the Jews are oppressing us.
Then it's like, no, no, the Jews are oppressing all of you.
People that are scrambling, trying to protect their ever-shrinking share of what they have are foolish.
It's all going.
It's all going away.
This country is being ripped apart and raped and looted.
We're being slowly poisoned and, in some cases, quickly murdered and assassinated.
And we're killing ourselves every day inadvertently with the kinds of things that we eat and breathe and drink and see.
People have got to start to radically begin to obey their conscience and tell the truth and do the right thing.
People have got to start to get courageous.
And this is the time for everybody to turn and look to God and to pray and to ask for strength and to ask for wisdom to get through this time and to transform and sanctify this country.
And the alternative is that there will be no country.
Is it really only as big as low gas prices?
Is it really only so big as bringing inflation and gas prices and the corporate tax rate back down?
It's not about waiting for someone to come in and change the policy and make it better.
It's a personal decision that we all have to make to become soldiers of Christ.
unidentified
Hello, I got places to be Evening everybody You're watching America First.
to say that the blood, the blood of our people, is something that is essential.
That we are different.
that America was different because we are different.
Palantir is an AI data analytics company.
They use artificial intelligence to look at vast amounts of data and create insights.
If the government has an amount of data which is kind of unimaginable, if you've got every phone call, every email, every transaction, every photograph of a license plate on the highway, satellite data, it's too much data for a bureaucracy to sift through.
Palantir comes in and interprets the data using algorithms, using artificial intelligence, using software to make vast amounts of data usable.
That's what they are.
And so many of the people that worked with Elon that came into the government through Doge worked with Palantir.
Now that Doge is finished, Palantir seems to be just getting started.
Thank you so much, everybody.
Can I just say, are you trusting me at this time?
unidentified
Seems to my eyes all up on the face.
I'm Carlin.
Seems to my eyes more than the other day.
I want nothing but a ready out of patience.
She call me like a little face.
When I get home, I want you.
Hello, I got places to be Good evening, everybody You're watching America First.
If we don't have freedom on the internet in the age of AI, we are going to be mind-raped every day forever.
Think about anything you've ever said or done in the vicinity of your phone's camera or microphone, everything you've ever put into your phone, and even things that are not necessarily so scandalous, but even things like your favorite restaurants, your geolocation, because your phone also has a GPS.
They know where you are at all times.
They know where you go and when.
They know what you buy.
They have access to your bank account.
AI will literally know everything about you.
Everyone you know, your relationship to them, your tastes, your preferences, your habits, your whereabouts, your routines, your schedule, when you asleep.
They know how much REM sleep you're getting.
They know your resting heart rate.
They know how many calories you consume.
Think about the ways that they can manipulate you.
You have a computer in your refrigerator, computer in your car, computer in your home security system, computer in your everything, computer in your clothes, your watch, your glasses, your VR headset, your alarm clock.
You have a smart home, economy of things.
It's like total, like, rape of everybody by the system forever.
My life is like a first-person video game, you know?
This is like, this is my primary.
This is me like walking, walking down the hall.
This is my primary weapon.
Press circle to interact.
Press circle to interact with this item.
At the end of the day, here's the question: Is it worth it to save the country?
Does the country matter?
Is it worth it to preserve our civilization?
Is it worth it to preserve our religion?
Maybe bigger than that.
Is the truth worth it?
What is the truth worth to you?
What is telling the truth worth to you?
Is it worth something, nothing?
What are you willing to give to tell the truth?
All you need is Jesus.
All you need is prayer.
These material appetites, they will never be satisfied.
And even if they are, it'll never be an adequate substitute for communion with our Holy Father, with somebody, with the author of the world.
And every mother and father understands the love for a child.
And that is how we were made.
We were designed that way.
Because through that experience, we could understand by analogy God's love for us.
It says in Revelation that God will wipe away every tear.
And that's like, to me, it makes me want to cry when I read that.
People experience these things in their lives.
We've all been there where you feel like the whole world's against you, the walls are closing in.
And you read something like that that says that God, like our Father, our Creator, is going to wipe your tears off your face.
People that are scrambling, trying to protect their ever-shrinking share of what they have are foolish.
It's all going.
It's all going away.
This country is being ripped apart and raped and looted.
We're being slowly poisoned and in some cases quickly murdered and assassinated.
And we're killing ourselves every day.
Inadvertently, with the kinds of things that we eat and breathe and drink and see.
People have got to start to radically begin to obey their conscience and tell the truth and do the right thing.
People have got to start to get courageous.
And this is the time for everybody to turn and look to God and to pray and to ask for strength and to ask for wisdom to get through this time and to transform and sanctify this country.
And the alternative is that there will be no country.
Is it really only as big as low gas prices?
Is it really only so big as bringing inflation and gas prices and the corporate tax rate back down?
It's not about waiting for someone to come in and change the policy and make it better.
It's a personal decision that we all have to make to become soldiers of Christ.
Because they voted for Kamala Harris.
People do not stab young girls on trains because they're born black.
People do not shoot Palestinians in the back of the head or cheer it on just because they're Jewish.
The people that do this are lost.
They have to be isolated and segregated out.
A new consensus must emerge.
Are you in favor of a society with meaning?
A society where life is sacred, where life has sanctity, where people's lives and their dignity and their integrity is respected?
Or are we going to live in a society that is a never-ending war between nihilistic tribes, warlords, savages, pagans?
I see an emerging consensus.
And I think that the mature people that actually love America, actually love our children, the people that recognize the division, the peril that we're in, we need to fortify a new consensus and rally the people of conscience, the people of decency, the people of humanity, the people of charity towards their fellow man,
against those that want to kill us, against those that laugh and celebrate when innocent people are harmed.
For any reason, for any ideological reason.
Against the people that are cruel, the people that are hateful.
And by that, I mean the people that are really cruel.
Not the people that say things you disagree with, not the people that are provocative, not the people that are sometimes angry, but the people that are really cruel and really evil.
What makes Christianity and Christ so different from the other religions is that our religion is based on the bearing of suffering for the sake of even those that persecute us.
An overflowing of love.
An overflowing of self-giving love.
So much of it, it cannot be contained.
An unconditional, absolute standard of love for all of God's children, even those that are misguided, even those that persecute us, even the most heinous among us.
is an Israeli-funded blacklist, which, since July 2025, has been confirmed to be used by the Trump administration to target students, professors, and professionals who oppose Israel and reside in the United States.
This idea is part of an initiative created by the Heritage Foundation, the same group responsible for the infamous Project 2025.
In their initiative, titled Project Esther, they state that students participating in pro-Palestinian protests and activism are supporting Hamas, a group that the United States designates as a foreign terrorist organization.
Therefore, pro-Palestinian students are considered to be supporting terrorism and are subject to the revocation of visas, frozen bank accounts, asset seizures, and the denial of basic constitutional rights.
In effect, the Canary mission serves as a means to circumvent constitutional protections, allowing the federal government to engage in intelligence gathering activities that would otherwise be considered unlawful.
But the Canary mission is not alone.
Palantir, another company closely aligned with the state of Israel, uses AI-driven analytics to maintain private databases on U.S. citizens and currently works with four federal agencies.
While government contracting with the private sector is long-standing, the prominent influence of Jewish groups within these increasingly powerful organizations warrants careful examination.
I renew the call for all able-bodied young American men, all of our elite human capital, all of our geniuses, warriors, intelligent people to dedicate themselves to American sovereignty and independence as Christians, as Americans, as white people, as citizens of the United States.
And anybody that settles for anything less is just as much of an enemy.
I would actually consider them worse than our oppressors.
So on Independence Day, it's important to reflect on the fact that we are an occupied nation.
Now, just like then, we're being ruled by a small country across an ocean, serving itself at our expense.
And as long as that is the case, I will always be obsessed with that.
As long as that is the case, I will always be speaking out against that and fighting against that.
And I will always be anchored, understanding that that is the fundamental struggle.
As long as our presidents have to kiss the wall in Israel and wear a small hat, as long as they have to say that we want to make Israel great again and they're the greatest country ever, I will never be okay with that.
Ever.
And it doesn't matter what they offer me or us.
It doesn't matter how they might try to placate us or appease our interests, the concessions they'll make.
Barack Obama created the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, the JCPOA, or the Iranian nuclear deal.
And Barack Obama brought together China, Russia, Germany, France, the United Kingdom, and the United States and the European Union to enforce a nuclear deal that restricts Iran's enrichment of uranium.
The early talks were conducted in secret, and the Israelis were furious, furious about this.
They hated Obama.
Netanyahu went to a joint session of Congress and gave a speech in defiance of the American president and its nuclear deal, and Congress gave 37 standing ovations.
This is the background of Trump's first election.
2016 election happens.
Trump gets elected with the help of the Israelis.
You don't believe me?
There's a whole article about it.
It's an excerpt from James Bamford's book, Spy Fail.
It goes into great detail about the hidden collusion in the 2016 election.
It wasn't Trump and Russia.
It was Trump and Israel.
And why was Israel so hell-bent on getting a Republican elected in 2016?
In 2018, Donald Trump declares the IRGC, the Revolutionary Guard, which is the military of the regime, a terrorist group.
Greenlights that group for sanctions, for attacks.
Now the United States is in a shadow war with Iran.
It culminates by January 2020 in the assassination of Qasim Suleimani.
Suleimani was the architect of the axis of resistance.
Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis, Suleimani built all of it.
Are you starting to see Obama had this solved?
He made the deal.
The Israelis hated him for it.
They colluded with Trump to get him elected so that Trump would do maximum pressure and create a ladder of escalation, pulling us out of the deal, declaring the IRGC terrorists, then killing its leader, putting sanctions on the regime.
This is a war that started a long time ago, that Trump made hot in 2018 and has been going on for seven years.
That's the nature of forever wars.
Just like in Iraq, which went from 1990 until today, just like Libya, which went from 2011 to today.
Syria, which went from 2011 to today, and Iran, which went from 2018 until today.
That's the nature of forever wars.
And if you're not paying attention to those underlying forces, you're going to fall for it again and again.
You're going to be surprised and confused and coping over and over.
People are just tripping over themselves to do it again.
I'm like two seconds out from just joining the Jews at this point.
It's like I started out like the Jews are oppressing us, then it's like, no, no, the Jews are oppressing all of you.
People that are scrambling, trying to protect their ever-shrinking share of what they have are foolish.
It's all going.
It's all going away.
This country is being ripped apart and raped and looted.
We're being slowly poisoned and in some cases quickly murdered and assassinated.
And we're killing ourselves every day inadvertently with the kinds of things that we eat and breathe and drink and see.
People have got to start to radically begin to obey their conscience and tell the truth and do the right thing.
People have got to start to get courageous.
And this is the time for everybody to turn and look to God and to pray and to ask for strength and to ask for wisdom to get through this time and to transform and sanctify this country.
And the alternative is that there will be no country.
Is it really only as big as low gas prices?
Is it really only so big as bringing inflation and gas prices and the corporate tax rate back down?
Very excited to be back here with you tonight on Wednesday.
We have a lot to talk about tonight, lots to get into.
Big show, our featured story tonight.
We're talking all about the war in Iran, day 19.
Three and a half weeks.
Wow.
Three and a half weeks.
That has flown by.
Has it really been that long?
Or no, I guess it's almost three weeks.
We're in the third week, entering the fourth week on Friday.
Wow, time flies.
Anyway, so there's that.
This is a long war.
But the good news is, are you ready?
The good news is it's only two more weeks, you see?
So it's actually not that bad.
It's actually not even a big deal at all.
It was supposed to be four days.
It went a little bit long.
It's only going to be a couple more weeks.
What did they used to say?
Two weeks to flatten Iran?
I mean, two weeks to flatten the curve.
So we're in the middle of week three, and we're going to be talking all about the war in Iran.
Big news.
Big news out of the war today.
And we're going to be trying to cover a lot of different things.
I don't know how much we're actually going to have time to get into.
I'm thinking about four different major updates in the war.
And we'll try to get to all of them.
Like I said, I'm not sure that we will finish.
First of all, there have been some major developments in the course of the war.
First, and most importantly, we are now entering what they're calling a new phase in the war.
They say that this is an escalation, and we anticipated this.
The Trump administration telegraphed it last week when he bombed Carg Island, or at least the military assets on Carg Island.
But today, the war has officially shifted into a new and escalated phase of energy warfare.
You could say it was already an energy war.
Energy is a major factor.
That is what the closure of the Strait of Hormuz is all about.
That is the chief means by which Iran is trying to force the United States to exit the conflict.
However, up until this point, the U.S. and Israel have refrained, or for the most part refrained, from striking energy infrastructure inside of Iran out of fear that Iran will retaliate and hit energy infrastructure in the Gulf.
This would be a major problem because it would take potentially months, years, maybe a decade to repair all of the energy infrastructure, which would lead to permanently high energy prices.
So so far, the U.S. and Israel, they've hit everything else, everything other than oil and gas in Iran.
Iran, doing their part, has refrained from hitting Saudi, Qatari, Emirati, Iraqi and Kuwaiti oil and natural gas infrastructure.
Well, that changed today, and that's the biggest development.
Today, Israel launched a major strike on Iran's gas fields near Tehran, huge strike.
And because this is still a developing story, we don't really know actually all the details.
It's disputed.
And what I mean by that is earlier in the day, we were told that the Trump administration approved of the strike.
So far, the administration doesn't want Israel to bomb the energy infrastructure for the aforementioned reason.
Earlier in the day, I think morning or afternoon, it was reported that Trump gave the go-ahead.
He greenlit the strike and that the administration was aware of it and they were okay with it and they approved it and Israel carried out the strike.
Iran retaliated and they bombed natural gas fields in Qatar, in the United Arab Emirates, and oil in Saudi Arabia.
Later in the day, the Arabs were furious.
Emiratis, Qataris, and Saudis condemned the attacks, and they are furious with the Trump administration for allowing this because, of course, Israel's strike on Iran directly catalyzed Iran's strike on the Emirates, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia.
So then just hours ago, hours ago, in the evening, Trump put out a post on True Social and said he didn't know about the strike at all.
He said the administration was unaware of Israel's attack, did not give Israel permission to carry out the attack, and has said that there will be no further attacks on Iran's energy in the future, and that if Iran hits any energy inside the Gulf, then the United States will retaliate and do what exactly, I assume, more attacks on Iran's infrastructure, energy infrastructure.
That seems to be the implication.
So once again, it's like with everything else.
We don't really know what's going on.
It's like the beginning of the fighting.
What is the goal?
What's the plan?
How long are we going to be there?
Will there be boots on the ground?
Are we close to done or is victory far away?
Is it going to be a four-week war or years?
We don't know.
We don't know.
And so today there's a huge attack on the energy infrastructure, and we don't even know what the U.S. position is on it.
Did we know?
When did we know?
Did we give the approval or not?
It is currently disputed.
I think Trump is just lying.
Like everything else, I think Trump is just abjectly lying.
Of course, Israel told the United States.
And of course, the United States knew about it.
And of course, they approved it because this is part of the escalatory tactic against Iran.
Just like how Trump bombed Karg Island last week, he authorized this strike because he is trying to ratchet up the pressure on Iran to compel them to allow the Strait of Hormuz to open up.
And we'll talk about why I suspect this.
If you understand the timeline, it's very clear that that is what happened.
And we'll get into the details of that.
That's going to be our main story about the operational side of the conflict.
This is a war of attrition now.
That's just how it is.
And it's a war that we really can't win.
So Trump is trying to find a creative solution here, trying to find a way to have his cake and eat it too.
How do we escalate the fighting without really escalating?
How do we pry the Strait of Hormuz open without toppling the regime or invading the country?
He seems to be trying to find a way out, but this is threading the needle here.
This is a very narrow gap that Trump is trying to shoot through here between two really bad options: either a strategic defeat or a totally unacceptable escalation.
So we'll talk all about the energy warfare.
Then we're also going to talk, again, if we have time, about some of the plans to escalate.
So in the background, it's very hard to tell what is really happening.
Here's what I mean by this: in the background of all of this, all of this negotiating, bargaining that's happening, as I said, Trump is looking for a creative solution.
In the meantime, there does appear to be a serious effort underway to escalate the fighting.
And we saw last week, Trump has sent 5,000 Marines on amphibious assault ships to the Persian Gulf.
What are they going there for?
Nobody knows.
Today, Trump is considering reinforcing those 5,000 Marines with thousands more ground troops.
What that is going to look like, how many, from where, we're not sure.
But there's a report out of the administration that Trump is seriously considering ground reinforcements in the Persian Gulf.
And that points toward an invasion of some kind.
Maybe that's a special forces operation.
Maybe they're invading the island, the coastline.
But it's pointing towards an escalation on the ground.
Simultaneously, the Pentagon is asking Congress for $200 billion for the conflict.
Now, so far, the fighting is costing us about $1.9 billion a day.
So if they're asking for $200 billion, are they preparing to fight for 100 days or longer?
That's a serious spending package.
Now, Kevin Feinberg in the Pentagon, he is responsible for a lot of the military procurement for the actual purchases of weapons.
He's been saying we need to replenish our arsenal of precision munitions and other weapons.
He says we need $200 billion, $200 billion for the war.
It's probably cost us somewhere in the ballpark of $30 billion to date, maybe a little more, maybe a little less.
Now they're asking for a serious increase in spending.
We talked early in the conflict about how U.S. military intelligence is setting up personnel in southern Florida, and they're digging in for a 100-day conflict, maybe going as far as September.
So while Trump is trying some of these creative solutions to try to break the stalemate and exert more pressure on Iran and possibly alleviate some of the economic pain, simultaneously, preparations are underway for an escalation on the ground.
They're digging in for a long conflict.
Now, the reason I say it's hard to understand precisely what's happening here is because you have to ask the question: is this a signal?
Are they purely signaling to Iran, telling Iran that we're ready for the long haul?
Because everything in wartime, it could be a legitimate preparation.
It could be telegraphing or signaling that we're digging in.
What's the difference?
Well, if we're trying to get Iran to open up the Strait of Hormuz, we're already bombing them thousands of times.
And we know that the only way for us to actually escalate and topple their regime or suppress the drone and missile fire is to invade.
They know that.
We know that.
They know we know.
We know, they know, we know.
Okay, both sides are very aware of this.
You know this.
I know this.
Everybody knows.
The way to win is to invade.
And nobody wants that to happen.
So Iran is under the impression that they only need to last a few weeks.
They maybe are not prepared to really go the distance because they're getting hit really hard.
And although they have a very deep bench in terms of IRGC leadership that can replace those that are assassinated, and although the regime is hanging on, how long can a country really sustain being attacked thousands of times every day before civil order simply collapses and society fragments and balkanizes and there's total disorder, total civil unrest.
So if the Trump administration is making preparations for a long war, is that telegraphing to the Iranians that Trump is a madman that is willing to go six to 12 months?
Is that signaling to the Iranians that it can, in fact, get worse?
That the Iranian regime cannot survive a long conflict, that the United States might be irrationally committed?
Or is the Trump administration actually making those preparations and actually preparing an operation to invade the coastline along the Strait of Hormuz or to invade Karg Island or to seize Iran's nuclear facilities or highly enriched uranium?
It's hard to tell exactly what the goal is there.
So we'll talk a little bit about that.
And we're also going to talk tonight about Tulsi Gabbard, who in a hearing in the U.S. Senate today, this is amazing, she was asked point blank by Joel Asaf from Georgia, a Democrat.
She was asked, do you believe that Iran presents an imminent threat to the United States?
And she basically towed the line with the Trump administration and said, well, whatever Trump determines is a national security threat, that is true.
And this is really the central question.
This is the pretext for the entire war.
Israel and President Trump, not even his whole administration, but Trump himself, they have said we had to invade Iran.
We were left with no choice.
Or rather, we had to attack Iran.
We had to go to war because Iran presented an imminent threat.
This was the justification.
Joe Kent, who worked in the office of the DNI, Tulsi Gabbard's office at the counterterrorism center, Kent resigned yesterday saying, this is a lie.
This is not true.
Iran did not present an imminent threat.
And so the justification for the war is false.
So Tulsi Gabbard was presented with that question.
This is becoming kind of the definitive question of the conflict.
She was asked, did Iran pose an imminent threat?
And she totally ducked the question.
And she deferred to the president and said, well, it's really up to Trump to decide what is a threat and what isn't a threat.
And the senator said, that's false.
No, that's your job, actually.
You have discretion.
You have the ability to judge.
You are the head of the office of the Directorate of National Intelligence.
So her job is actually to gather the intelligence from all the 17 intelligence agencies and to create options and insights for the president.
It's your job to determine what's an imminent national security threat.
And she said, I don't know.
That's Trump's job.
It's Trump's judgment.
It's his determination.
That's all that matters.
And if you know anything about Tulsi Gabbard, this is a disgusting betrayal because for years she has been a non-interventionist and has said that we should not fight a war with Iran, that Iran is not an imminent threat, that whatever threat Iran does pose to our strategic interests or allies in the region, it does not justify intervention, much less a regime change war led by the United States.
And this is after yesterday, she effectively said the same thing on Twitter.
Yesterday, after Joe Kent resigned, her follow-up to that, because Kent was her deputy in the ODNI, Gabbard said on Twitter, basically the same thing, it's Trump's judgment.
Whatever he says is an imminent threat is an imminent threat.
So this is either cowardice or it's a total betrayal.
Either way, I told you so.
I told you that Tulsi Gabbard was not our girl.
Everybody said in 2024, during the presidential transition, they said, we're going to have this unbelievable administration.
We're going to have JD Vance and we're going to have Tulsi Gabbard and RFK Jr. and all these people.
And I told you, all these people suck.
Pete Hegseph is not based.
Marco Rubio is not based.
JD Vance is not based.
And neither is Tulsi Gabbard.
All of these people are crap.
Tulsi Gabbard has a lot of weird connections.
I believe she was on the Council on Foreign Relations.
JD Vance, you know the story at this point.
RFK Jr. is campaigning with Rabbi Shmuley.
And Marco Rubio has always been a puppet of the Adelsons.
But people seriously thought in 2024 this was not even acceptable.
They thought this was the dream team that would deliver the golden age.
Well, now you see how much that is worth.
Joe Kent and Tulsi Gabbard and Dan Caldwell, all these people in the admin, and this is what you get.
So that's that.
But we're going to get into it.
We got a lot to cover.
Before we begin, I want to remind you to smash the follow button on Rumble, smash the like button, leave a comment.
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That's a group chat on Telegram that I'm in, and I'm in there all the time.
I dropped another voice message last night.
I went into it a lot.
Yesterday was a pretty interesting show.
And I did like a post-show follow-up on Telegram.
I dropped like a 30-minute voice message, 30-minute additional bonus content only for the group chat.
So if you're interested, check that out.
Like I said, that's AmericaFirst.plus.
Yesterday's show was very interesting.
And I spelled it out.
If you missed the show last night, it was really essential viewing.
You want to understand what's going on with Joe Kent, you have to watch the show last night.
And I gave a little blurb on Telegram this evening.
And I will just actually restate it here very briefly because I do think it's that important.
Everybody is talking about this Joe Kent letter.
And if you haven't heard yesterday, Joe Kent is the director of the Center for Counterterrorism, which is under the office of the Directorate of National Intelligence, run by Tulsi Gabbard.
Yesterday, Joe Kent resigned his post to JD Vance, the vice president, and he published his letter of resignation on Twitter and basically said, I cannot go on in this role because I don't believe in what the administration is doing.
He said, Iran does not and did not pose an imminent threat to the United States or our core interests.
That was a lie.
He said, rather, we were dragged into the conflict by Israel.
He said we were dragged into the conflict, much like we were in Iraq by Israel and its lobby in the United States.
And he said that he could not, in good conscience, support sending U.S. soldiers to die in the Middle East like they have been sent in the past for another endless war on behalf of a foreign government.
And it was a great statement.
I give it about a B.
I would maybe give it a B, a B plus, for reasons I got into yesterday.
He simultaneously said that the killing of Qasem Soleimani was America first and a great decision, but also said the war in Iran is America last and influenced by the Israelis.
And that doesn't make a lot of sense to me.
It's just not true.
And you don't get one without the other.
So you can't be in favor of killing Suleimani, but also then want to pull back when we go to war in Iran because the killing of Soleimani directly led to the conflict.
And anyway, I talked a lot about that last night, but he published this letter.
And then today, he went on Tucker Carlson's show.
And they did, I believe, 90 minutes or two hours.
And Joe Kent elaborated on his position.
And it was really uninteresting.
It was pretty boring, actually.
If you're familiar with these conversations, it wasn't really anything new.
And I have to say, it was a little bit scummy.
Tucker put it behind a paywall.
So he advertised this morning that Joe Kent was going to be on the show live at 6 o'clock.
And then they put it behind a paywall on the website.
You got to pay $6 to watch it.
It's like, we're at war, okay?
We are at war in Iran.
The deputy to the ODNI resigned because he said Israel made us fight the war.
You get the exclusive interview.
You put it behind a $6 paywall.
You tell the Goyam, you can't watch the interview unless you pay the toll, unless you pay the $6.
That's crazy.
Okay, that's actually crazy.
And that's coming from the guy that is always saying, oh, I don't need anybody's money.
Oh, I'm not taking money from Iran.
You know, when he does that voice, I don't want their money.
Tucker told us that he knew for a fact Erica Kirk was being followed by Egyptian planes.
That's what he said.
When Candace Owens pushed on 28 different shows that Erica and Charlie Kirk were being chased by Egyptian military aircraft, Tucker Carlson said, I happen to know that that is happening for a fact.
Really?
Because in mid-December, somebody paid for the same data that Candace Owens has, which is available if you pay $900.
And he found out that all her data was bogus.
It was all fake.
She messed it up.
She entered the data incorrectly.
And so all of that was a giant hoax.
And then she never spoke of it again, never talked about it again.
The moment it was debunked by somebody that just had the time and resources and IQ to literally fact check it.
So what happened to that?
Tucker says, well, I happen to know the Egyptian planes are real.
I happen to know that Mossad tried to do a false flag in Saudi Arabia after the war in Iran started.
I happen to know there's a conspiracy.
Joe Kent says, we're being told we can't ask questions.
You know what?
If you two people know something, why don't you share with the rest of us?
Otherwise, shut up.
What good does that do in the conversation to say, well, there's this conspiracy, but I can't talk about that.
Really?
So then what are we doing here?
What's the point of this interview?
Why are we doing a podcast?
And why are we doing an interview?
What's the point of going on TV and saying, I'm going to give Tucker the exclusive?
Oh, did you hear what Joe Kent said about the Charlie Kirk assassination?
He strongly implied there's a conspiracy.
Well, what is the actual purpose of having you in the USIC and then flaming out and resigning if you're not going to tell us what you know?
Do you know something or not?
Because if you know something and you're not telling us, then you're part of the cover-up and you're lying.
If you don't know anything, but you're implying you know something, then you're lying.
And I question your motives.
Why are you leading us to draw this inference?
I don't like that.
Beyond that.
So I saw that and that made me lose my mind.
I'm so sick of that stuff.
I have no tolerance for that.
Every day these people are baiting us to subscribe, get on the paywall, watch the next episode.
We have new Charlie Kirk text messages on tomorrow's episode.
We have Netanyahu's letter, but we're not going to release it until we have new, what did Candice Owens put out the other day?
We have new footage from behind Charlie Kirk.
She waits until the end of the episode, puts it at the very end, and it's a nothing burger.
I'm so sick of that.
I'm a conspiracy theorist.
I believe in conspiracies.
I want to see the evidence.
And don't tell me you're a brave truth teller.
Don't tell me you're a martyr if you're hiding things.
And if you don't know something, then don't imply that you do because that's dishonest.
And so anyway, I had a big problem with that.
Beyond that, I believe this whole Joe Kent thing is an op.
It is the most obvious op in the whole world.
And it's accomplishing one of two things.
One, and this is maybe the most obvious, Tucker apparently is going to get charged with Farah.
He says he knows that.
How does he know that?
Nobody knows.
How does he know half the shit he says he knows?
Nobody knows.
Do we even believe it?
Tucker says the CIA is reading my text messages.
Okay, how do you know that?
That's highly questionable.
He says, but the CIA is reading my text messages to the Iranian government, and they're going to charge me under FARA, Foreign Agent Registration Act, as an undisclosed lobbyist for the Iranian regime.
This is what Tucker says on Saturday.
Then Joe Kent resigns on Tuesday, goes on Tucker's show the following day, and they have this big interview about the war in Iran.
Well, it comes out this afternoon that Joe Kent is under investigation by the FBI, and that investigation predates his resignation and maybe even the whole war with Iran.
And they say it's related to him leaking classified intelligence.
Now, Joe Kent and Tucker Carlson are good friends.
Maybe was Joe Kent leaking to Tucker?
Are they connected in some way, perhaps?
Because that would be alarming.
If Tucker was meeting with Trump and receiving intel from Joe Kent, and then he was also in touch with the Iranian government, at the minimum, that does warrant a little bit of scrutiny.
I do think actually that that might constitute some kind of an issue.
And maybe the purpose of this media blitz was to get ahead of it.
This is just speculation.
This is just a theory.
I'm not saying that's the case.
And I'm not saying I believe the DOJ.
I'm not saying that I believe that Tucker and Kent are criminals.
I don't know what charges are being brought or if charges are being brought.
I don't know whether they're credible or not.
It could be a complete hoax or a witch hunt.
Maybe it's not even real, but it is really interesting.
And it could go either way.
You could say either Tucker and Joe Kent are being punished by the deep state because they're opposing the war.
You could say, and I think that's plausible too.
You could say that Tucker, who is a staunch opponent of the war and lobbied Trump to stop, and Joe Kent, who resigned his post and was a conscientious objector, you could say the two of them are being punished by the deep state, which has gone authoritarian because they're at war and they are trying to crack down on anti-war dissent.
Plausible.
It could also be said the other way, that Tucker and Joe Kent got caught with their hands in the cookie jar.
And they got tipped off that charges were being brought and maybe they were going to go to jail and get in some trouble.
And so how do we get out of this problem?
Well, they got ahead of it by becoming martyrs.
And they go on Twitter and say, we're about to be charged.
We're just doing free speech.
We're just against the war and this and that.
That could be the case also.
And so it is interesting that Tucker came out this timeline on Saturday and said, I'm about to be charged under FARA.
Tuesday, Joe Kent says, or rather it's reported, I think in the New York Post, it says the FBI is about to charge Joe Kent for leaking classified intel.
It's hard to tell because we are in the fog of war.
But that is a little bit mysterious.
And so that might be one thing that is going on.
Clearly, something is up there.
And either there's a rogue element in the administration that wants them to go to jail for opposing the conflict, or they are foreign operatives, which wouldn't be hard for me to believe because Tucker does roll with all the foreign governments.
Okay, who is prosecuting the war in Iran?
Well, it is Israel, but you know who else advocated for it?
Saudi Arabia, the Emiratis, the Qataris, less so the Qataris.
And Tucker is in bed with all those foreign governments.
Tucker said that, in his opinion, the wisest man in the world is Mohammed bin Zayed, the crown prince of the United Arab Emirates or the president of the UAE.
Very interesting.
And he's been in Saudi Arabia.
He interviewed with Piers Morgan there.
Goes there all the time.
Talks to the royal family there.
And so it is interesting that Tucker does seem to be involved on a higher level.
We're not talking journalism because he didn't interview these people in front of the camera.
He's having private closed-door meetings, lobbying them behind the camera, off-camera.
Maybe there's no cameras even in the room.
That's not the work of a journalist.
That's the work of a lobbyist, a spy, some sort of operative.
So I could easily believe that's going on too.
Now, the other side, what might else, what might be the other explanation for what is happening with Joe Kenn and Tucker?
I think that's also very obvious.
So the same day on Saturday that Tucker said he's under CIA investigation, the first member of the Trump government came out and criticized the war.
And that person was David Sachs.
David Sachs is the AI czar in the White House.
So he's a member of the Trump government.
For those that don't know, David Sachs has been a close personal friend of Peter Thiel since 1992, since they went to Stanford Law School together.
And I believe Tucker Carlson met both of them in Washington, D.C. in 1992.
So Tucker has known Peter Thiel as long as David Sachs has.
David Sachs is tight with Peter Thiel.
They co-founded PayPal together.
Sachs is part of the PayPal Mafia.
And David Sachs is also a close confidant of JD Vance.
So is Tucker Carlson.
Tucker Carlson's son, Buckley, works for JD Vance in his press office.
And Tucker had JD Vance on his Fox News show something like 45 times.
Joe Kent, when he ran for Congress in 2022, got money from Peter Thiel.
When he was running for Congress in Washington State, he got the maximum individual contribution from Peter Thiel and maybe other money as well.
We're not really sure about that.
Tucker also promoted Joe Kent on his Fox News show, just as he did with JD Vance.
So there's like this nexus there.
And there's a lot of other connections.
I went into great detail about this on my Telegram channel.
Now you see the gang is all back together this weekend where David Sachs is against the war.
Tucker's under investigation.
Joe Kent leaves the admin and interviews with Tucker.
And Joe Kent and David Sachs are the only ones against the war in the admin.
And Tucker interviews Kent and Tucker is obviously outspoken against the war.
All three of these people, what do they have in common?
They all have deep ties to JD Vance, direct and indirect personal and political connections to JD Vance.
And as I said last night, and this is really the most important thing to understand, JD Vance is trying to save his prospects in 2028.
So is the coterie of advisors that have staked their future and their career on a Vance administration.
It looks like this is a desperate last-ditch effort to save Vance by trying to push Trump in the opposite direction.
You're also seeing reports in the Daily Beast and in Axios about how Trump is about to break with Netanyahu.
Certain unnamed White House aides are saying that Trump is about to have a big split with Netanyahu because Netanyahu wants the war to go on long and Trump wants to end the war quickly.
I have a hunch that Trump is going to come out and deny those claims.
I have a hunch that somebody's going to come out and deny that.
I have a feeling that's a planted story.
And I have a feeling that there is a concerted effort to try to push Trump away from this, even among, by the way, many of the people in the Bronze Age pervert Peter Thiel network.
Their sole and exclusive mission is to make Vance the president.
And when the U.S. and Israel went to war in Iran, many of the Thiel-backed network on social media, they said, this is a terrible mistake.
We should have never went to war in Iran.
Because they know, like Tucker knows, like David Sachs knows, like Joe Kent knows, that the person who is most affected by a catastrophic war with Iran, it's not even Trump, it's JD Vance.
Because he is watching in real time his chances of becoming the nominee and then the president dwindle in real time with each passing day that the war goes on.
So I see this Joe Kent thing.
This is an op.
I smell a big op and everybody is falling for it because the rhetoric is good.
The rhetoric is mostly good.
It's mostly fine.
Like it's sound.
You have Joe Kent saying the Jews are bringing us to war in Iran like they did in Iraq.
No, no, that's good stuff.
Okay, that's fine.
I'm glad he's saying it.
I'm glad somebody's saying it.
I'm glad they're against the war.
But I will also say that I don't trust these people at all.
I don't trust Joe Kent.
I don't trust Tucker Carlson.
I don't trust any of them.
And I find it highly suspicious that Joe Kent, as recently as 2024, was saying that we should give Israel foreign aid and we should bomb Iran's nukes and missile capabilities.
He was saying that recently, and he has been saying it consistently for years.
He's also in the CIA.
They all are.
Tucker's dad is in the CIA.
Joe Kent is in the CIA.
Peter Thiel is a CIA contractor.
JD Vance was a Marine, then got recruited out of VL Law School, which is a notorious recruiting ground for the CIA, and then worked for Peter Thiel regardless.
So I see a lot of intelligence connections there.
They're all part of a network.
They're all boosting Vance for some reason.
And I don't want to be taken for a ride.
So I don't trust any of these people.
And I find the whole thing very suspicious.
So people say, well, he sounds good.
He's saying all the right stuff.
I'm watching this interview.
This interview is a performance.
The interview is a performance.
Tucker and Joe Kent, it's not a real conversation.
It is staged.
It is a play.
They are putting on a play for you.
And they're talking to each other for an audience like they're dumber than they are.
They're dumbing it down.
They're taking it very slowly.
And I think that's why.
I think that is really what is going on here.
And there might be some kind of foreign intelligence connection with Russia, with Iran, maybe more on that later on a future show.
But I did just want to say and clarify at the outset, because it is so important.
This is the big thing that is happening in our space in the past 24 hours.
I am highly, highly skeptical of all that.
But anyway, I do want to move on.
I want to get into the actual operations in the war.
And the big story tonight is how the war is now escalating.
As we have talked about, we are halfway through the third week in the war.
We expected, well, I don't even know what we expected.
You can't even really use that word.
Perhaps the president alone expected that this would be a quick and easy war, pound Iran very hard for a few days, decapitate the leadership, and a crippled and wounded Iranian regime will very quickly wave the white flag and sue for peace.
Whereupon the Trump administration can impose conditions on Iran's nuclear program.
That was the idea.
As you know, things did not go according to Trump's plan.
The Iranian regime survived.
The Iranian regime maintains its capability to launch drones and ballistic missiles.
And they have used that capability to attack the Persian Gulf nations of the Gulf Cooperation Council to close the Strait of Hormuz, a vital choke point for oil, natural gas, and fertilizer, which goes out into the Indian Ocean, and to attack and degrade U.S. radar early warning systems and to attack the state of Israel.
And so the war has settled into a second phase, you can say.
If the first phase was the U.S.-Israel assault, bombing runs thousands of times in the first 12, 24 hours, bombing regime targets, decapitation strikes, bombing their Navy, their military hardware and infrastructure, logistics, supply chains, things like that.
Now the war has settled into a second phase where it has become an attritional war, and it has become a war of economics.
The United States and Israel are using their air and sea power to bomb Iran all the time and continues to decimate its leadership, continues to find and destroy its missile production and missile launch capabilities.
But as long as Iran remains intact and as long as they're able to launch drones and missiles, then they are able to shut down shipping in the Strait of Hormuz, which chokes the global energy supply, hurting the global economy, and they're able to increase the pressure on the Gulf nations by hurting their real estate, tourism, and other industries, which they're trying to pivot towards.
So this is the second phase.
This is the grinding stalemate.
This is the status quo, attritional war that the conflict has settled into, as we've talked about.
And so the question facing the Trump administration is how to break the stalemate.
It can't go on forever.
The longer that the Strait of Hormuz is closed, there is going to be a lot of damage to the global economy.
It might even trigger a global recession.
Energy becomes scarce.
Oil prices increase, and that increases the price of everything.
Fertilizer supply is constrained.
That makes costs for farmers go up.
That makes food more expensive.
So we are facing higher inflation.
There was an expectation the Federal Reserve, for example, would cut interest rates today.
They're not able to do that because actually mortgages are going up.
Prices are going up.
Inflation appears to be ticking higher in anticipation.
The economy is pricing in the long-term risks to the oil supply because of the conflict.
So Trump is looking for a way out here.
He's looking to break the stalemate.
And there's, as we talked about, a couple of ways to do this.
Either we have a truce and a ceasefire, and that allows the Strait of Hormuz to open up, and it relieves the economic pressure on the United States and the world.
So that's one way to break the stalemate is effectively a strategic retreat and withdrawal.
The other way is we have to actually win.
We have to force the Strait of Hormuz open.
But this is a very complicated endeavor because the way that Iran has closed the Strait of Hormuz is now mostly with drones, not even ballistic missiles, but with suicide drones.
Iran has millions of them, millions of them.
They're cheap.
They're small.
They're easy to produce.
They're highly mobile.
They can be launched from anywhere.
And Iran is making more of them all the time.
And so, how do you prevent Iran from closing the Strait?
Well, you have to make it so that they cannot launch any drones.
How do you prevent them from launching any drones?
It is impossible.
You cannot bomb all their drones, drone production.
You cannot bomb all the places where they can launch drones.
You can't kill the personnel that are launching them.
The only way to stop Iran from closing the strait, it appears, is to topple the government and for a new government to come into place that orders the military to stand down.
That seems to be the only way.
And the only way to topple the government is to invade.
It has been reported that the IRGC is actually seven links in the chain of command deep, meaning that prior to the conflict, the highest-ranking IRGC officials, they prepared seven layers of succession.
They have a second person, third person, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh person lined up in the event that they are assassinated.
And then the next guy and the third guy and the fourth guy.
So you can't kill everybody with air power and sea power.
You can't destroy every place where they're storing, launching, and making drones.
The only way to win is to topple the government.
And you have to do that with a ground invasion, which obviously is off the table.
So Trump is looking for a third way to break the stalemate.
How do we win without retreating, without escalating?
And what he is trying to do is find alternative ways to force Iran to comply.
Why is this so difficult?
Because right now we're bombing Iran thousands of times and killing all their leaders and destroying all their weapons.
We're literally dropping the biggest bombs thousands of times everywhere, all day, every day for weeks and killing the leadership.
So Trump is looking for a creative way to increase pressure without escalating, to avoid retreating.
How do you do that?
Well, as we've discussed, there's one thing that's been off limits.
They're blowing up the Navy.
They're blowing up the missiles.
They're blowing up the regime.
The one thing that the United States has left untouched is Iran's energy infrastructure.
As you know, Iran is a petro-state, meaning they rely on the export of oil and gas for most of their government revenue.
And so if you destroy that industry, which is not easily repaired or rebuilt, then you cripple Iran's economy, but you cripple it for years.
So that's obviously, that is the one thing that we haven't hit yet.
We've hit the military.
We've hit the regime.
We've destroyed their weapons.
We've destroyed the headquarters, the airports, air bases, everything short of the energy.
Because even though destroying the energy would cripple Iran's economy and it would take years for them to repair, so it'd be a problem for the successor regime.
We have not hit it for two reasons.
If the Trump administration bombs Iran's energy, then Iran will retaliate and bomb Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait, Iraq, and the Emirates energy.
They will bomb it.
The Houthis will bomb it.
Maybe the Iraqis, maybe Hezbollah will bomb it.
It will be unavoidable.
And so what we do to Iran will be visited upon the Gulf.
And that will be catastrophic.
Because in the end, all this energy infrastructure will be destroyed and the global supply of energy will be chronically restrained, chronically, I should say, constricted.
So you have a fifth or a third of the world's oil, depending on how you measure it, whether it's by volume of oil that moves through a sea lane or volume of oil overall.
You have a fifth of the world's oil that moves through the Strait of Hormuz, which is going to be probably for 10 years taken offline, as well as liquefied natural gas, of which Qatar makes a lot of it.
And that goes to Asian countries, but also Europe is reliant on it.
And of course, the global supply determines the price.
So it affects everybody.
If you have an all-out energy war in the Persian Gulf, you have a chronic energy shortage in the whole world.
And like I said, because the infrastructure is destroyed, infrastructure takes a long time to rebuild.
To rebuild a refinery, a pipeline, this takes years and it takes tons of investment.
And the question is, who then is going to invest?
This is the same problem in Venezuela.
We can't get Venezuela to pump more oil very quickly because one, takes a long time.
Two, who's going to put up the money with all the geopolitical risk involved?
It's tenfold in the Middle East.
It's going to take years.
Who's going to invest?
Who's going to put up the billions of dollars to do this?
So if we attack Iran's energy, then they retaliate.
In the end, all the energy infrastructure is destroyed.
This permanently constrains the global energy supply, which means that energy is permanently high.
That means inflation is permanently high.
And this is something the U.S. economy just cannot stand.
We already have chronically high inflation.
I believe it's been since 2022.
The Federal Reserve has not hit its benchmark, its target of 2% inflation.
And there's a lot of debate about why this is.
It could be because of quantitative easing.
It could be because of COVID era supply chain problems.
There's a lot of reasons people say for the inflation right now.
But this is the last thing that we need.
So this would be permanently a problem for the U.S. and the global economy.
So Trump doesn't want to go there.
It's also a related problem.
If we bomb Iran's energy infrastructure, even if they don't retaliate, that still further constrains the energy supply in the short term.
And that's exactly what happened today.
And we'll get into this.
By bombing Iran's energy infrastructure, even in the short term, that constrains the global energy supply.
Throughout the conflict, there has been oil moving through the Strait of Hormuz.
It is Iranian oil mostly going to China.
If you take that offline, there's just going to be even less oil in the world than there already was with the Strait closed.
And then you'll have the same problem in Iran, having to repair that infrastructure.
It will take a long time to bring that supply back to the global economy.
And then even if you achieve regime change in the country, it will be tough for whatever regime comes next to rebuild if they don't have their energy sector intact, if they don't have that infrastructure still in place.
So for these reasons, the United States doesn't want to go there.
But it seems like that is the linchpin.
And this is why Trump has shifted tactics starting on last Friday.
On Friday, Trump launched a major airstrike on Karg Island.
Karg Island is an island in the Persian Gulf off the coast of Iran.
That is where 90% of Iran's oil exports move through.
Iran gets the oil on the coastline and in the Persian Gulf, refines it on the Iranian mainland, and then ships it out to the island via pipeline where it gets picked up by tankers and then taken out of the Persian Gulf and through the Strait of Hormuz.
So this is the hub for virtually all of Iran's oil.
This is the critical center of Iran's energy sector.
And Trump bombed it on Friday, but only the military targets.
Now on Friday, I speculated that maybe that was in preparation for an invasion, for a ground force moving in and seizing the island.
And that way you get a little bit of both.
You're able to take control of Iran's energy without destroying the infrastructure.
And so you can deprive them of the revenue without actually setting back in a permanent way the global supply of energy by destroying the infrastructure, which would take years to rebuild.
That being said, an invasion of the island would be extremely difficult because it is within range of Iran's drones and missiles.
So any amphibious assault on the island would surely be repelled by an Iranian drone and missile salvo launched at the Marines trying to land there.
So I said on Friday, perhaps this is a gesture that indicates to Iran that if they don't open up the Strait of Hormuz, then the United States might attack the energy infrastructure on Karg Island.
So the attack by bombing the military infrastructure, but not the economic energy infrastructure, Trump is threatening Iran and saying, we will do it.
Maybe this is too close for comfort for you.
If we're going to bomb the military infrastructure on the island, maybe the next strike is the energy.
And the Iranians definitely don't want that to happen.
So maybe that makes them uncomfortable.
Maybe that makes them more willing to negotiate.
Now, over the weekend, Trump made a pitch to the global economy.
He made a pitch to the world community and said, look, everybody is affected by the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, and some more acutely than others.
And what he's talking about there is that most of the Persian Gulf oil and gas doesn't actually go to the United States or Europe.
And so Trump says over the weekend, look, there is a global energy crisis.
It is bleeding the United States.
There's a lot of problems in the long term if we don't open up the strait.
And so Trump tries to expand this to other stakeholders and says, why should we alone bear the burden of solving this problem and reopening the strait?
Asia will be affected the most.
They won't get the oil and gas from the Persian Gulf.
So maybe they should actually help us open up the strait.
They should lend their Navy and their military for an allied coalition joint operation to open up the strait.
He also called on NATO and said, hey, we supported your war in Ukraine.
Now it's your turn to help us in the strait.
And by the way, this is humiliating.
This is embarrassing.
Why are the Asian and European countries not going to help us?
Well, they didn't start the war.
So yes, Asia is worried about the constrained energy supply.
And yes, Europe is worried about the effect on the price of LNG and the price of crude oil.
At the same time, Europe is fighting a war against Russia.
And Asia doesn't want to join a fight that really has nothing to do with them at all.
This is not India's fight.
It's not Japan or South.
That has nothing to do with them.
So Trump is effectively begging all of our allies to help us finish a war that he started.
So what happened to this America alone?
We have all the cards.
We're the boss.
We're the only country in the world.
We're the king of the world.
Trump went in, thought he could win quickly and easily, found out the hard way.
It wasn't going to go down that way.
Now he's in the position of literally begging objectively inferior, weaker militaries to come to our aid and assist us, begging the United Kingdom, begging Germany, Japan, South Korea to come and help.
As we talked about on Monday over the weekend, all the countries rejected this appeal.
First Japan, then Australia, South Korea, then all the European countries, France, Germany, Italy, the UK, the European Union, Poland.
They all came out and said, this is not our war.
That's not in the cards for us.
We've ruled that out.
You started it.
You finish it.
So Trump then says on Monday, you know what?
We don't need you, which is the best.
I mean, that really encapsulates everything about this administration and about this whole conflict.
So Friday, he says, we're going to have a great coalition like it's a done deal.
We're going to open up the strait.
Everyone should and must help us.
Everybody rejects him publicly and outright and forcefully.
So then he's forced earlier in the week to say, well, who needs you anyway?
We don't need your help.
We'll do it ourselves and we'll just remember that.
Truly pathetic.
So now, so today is Wednesday.
This is why the timeline is so important here.
On Wednesday, today, Israel launches a major strike on Iran's gas fields, the southern Parse gas field.
Iran immediately retaliates and they bomb Qatar's gas, the Emiratis gas, and Saudi Aramco, their oil refineries.
And what happens?
The price of oil surges to $120 a barrel.
It had stabilized.
I said this, I think, yesterday or on Monday.
The price of oil had stabilized at around about $90, $100 a barrel.
This is after it spiked past $100, not last weekend, but the weekend before that.
Today, oil exploded, even though Trump is trying to contain that, trying to contain the price shock by opening up the strategic oil reserves, changing some regulations, allowing Venezuela to export more oil.
In spite of all of his efforts to limit the effects of the supply shock, now the oil has exploded because the war has entered now a third phase where we, the U.S. and Israel coalition, are openly targeting Iran's energy infrastructure, and they are responding in kind.
Now, this is a story from the Wall Street Journal about the strike.
It says, quote, Israel struck the giant South Pars gas field that Iran shares with Qatar, by far the largest in the world.
Iran quickly retaliated with an attack on a major gas hub in Qatar, just across the Gulf, and a missile barrage fired at the Saudi capital, Riyadh, with debris landing near a refinery.
Israel and Iran had already hit energy facilities throughout the nearly three-week war.
But Wednesday's attacks struck some of the world's most important hubs and raised the prospect of tit-for-tat volleys against oil and gas facilities.
President Trump approved of the strike to pressure Iran to unblock the Strait of Hormuz.
The officials said Trump believes Tehran received the message and now wants to refrain from further strikes on Iranian energy infrastructure.
Days earlier, Trump considered whether attacking Iranian energy sites could be part of an escalatory campaign against Iran, hitting one target and gauging Iran's reaction.
If Iran didn't cede to U.S. demands, there would be more bombings of energy targets.
Qatar condemned the attack as a dangerous escalation and a direct threat to its national security.
Benchmark Brent oil futures shot up to close to $110 a barrel, and European gas prices surged 6% in the hours following the news.
Arab governments were furious about Israel's attack and the U.S. failure to head it off.
So this is part of a strategy.
Trump bombed Karg Island on Friday, not the energy infrastructure, but just the military assets.
And the message was unmistakable.
He was saying, if Iran doesn't open up the strait, then we'll target your energy.
In the meantime, he made his plea to the world, help us militarily take the strait.
They refused.
So Trump moved in with Israel to then escalate it, and he went from Karg Island military assets to Iran's gas field in the Persian Gulf, anticipating then that Iran would bomb Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the Emirates.
Now, why did Trump allow this to happen?
Well, first of all, he knows that the only way to pry the Strait of Hormuz open without regime change or a ceasefire is that he's going to need to make it hurt more for Iran.
The only way to do that is to hit their energy.
And he needs them to be sure that he's serious.
He needs them to know that he will actually cross that line.
So this was the strategy.
Hit Karg Island, see what they do.
They did nothing.
Hit one of their oil and gas hubs.
See what they do.
If they do nothing, hit another one until they open up the Strait of Hormuz.
Now, why did he wait until today to do this?
Well, what he said over the weekend is if Japan and South Korea and India and China, if they are the ones that are actually getting the Iranian oil and gas exports, then they should help us.
If they won't help us, then we will hurt Iran's oil and gas industry.
Because who will that affect the most?
That will actually affect first and foremost the countries that actually get the oil and gas from Iran, which is China, India, less so Japan, South Korea.
So Trump said, if you don't help us, well, we will be forced to take matters into our own hand and escalate.
We will start an energy war that will hurt you the most.
If we bomb Iran's oil and gas and then they bomb Qatar, the Saudis and the Emiratis, who is going to be without oil and gas?
Who's actually going to face the most acute energy shock?
it's going to be the Pacific countries and European countries, which are now dependent on LNG, they will feel the price shock as well.
We still import a lot of energy for reasons having to do with our energy infrastructure, but we're not going to feel it as much as the Europeans and definitely not as much as the Asians.
So Trump, by bombing Iran's energy, knowing they will retaliate against the Gulf, that is his way of punishing the allies that did not assist.
He said, okay, if you won't help us open up the strait, we'll have to figure out our own way.
And that involves hurting your economies.
That involves hurting everybody involved.
Now, there's a big question about who actually authorized the strike, because as I said, this is an Israel strike.
Israel in the early phases of the war targeted Iran's energy infrastructure.
And the United States told them, don't do that again.
If you attack their energy in the future, tell us in advance.
So when Israel bombed Iran's gas fields today, it was assumed that they had told the United States and gotten their approval.
And it was reported earlier in the day that the Trump administration approved the strike.
But all of that changed in the evening.
Trump put out a statement on Truth Social and said, actually, the United States didn't know.
He said, we didn't know, and we want the energy warfare to stop.
And that if Iran keeps bombing Qatar, then we will retaliate, but we're not going to attack Iran's energy any further.
This is a statement on Truth Social.
This is Trump.
He said, quote, Israel, out of anger for what has taken place in the Middle East, has violently lashed out at a major facility known as the South Pars gas field in Iran.
A relatively small section of the whole has been hit.
The U.S. knew nothing about this particular attack, and the country of Qatar was in no way, shape, or form involved with it, nor did it have any idea that it was going to happen.
Unfortunately, Iran did not know this or any of the pertinent facts pertaining to the attack and unjustifiably and unfairly attacked a portion of Qatar's LNG gas facility.
No more attacks will be made by Israel pertaining to this extremely important and valuable South Pars field unless Iran unwisely decides to attack a very innocent, in this case, Qatar, in which instance the U.S., with or without the help or consent of Israel, will massively blow up the entirety of the South Pars gas field at an amount of strength and power that Iran has never seen or witnessed before.
I do not want to authorize this level of violence and destruction because of the long-term implications it will have on the future of Iran.
But if Qatar's LNG is again attacked, I will not hesitate to do so.
Thank you for your attention to this matter.
So Israel bombs Iran's energy after Trump told them two weeks ago, don't do that again.
And if you're planning on it, get our approval first.
It was reported this afternoon that Trump gave Israel permission.
Now Trump denies it.
And Trump is telling Iran, look, you didn't know, but we didn't give permission.
And so if you bomb Qatar, we'll grant that that was a mistake on your part.
Trump says Israel will not attack again.
But if you attack Qatar again, if this, in other words, becomes an energy war, if you've called my bluff, in other words, then we will go in, the United States will go in and we will completely bomb your energy infrastructure.
Now, what are we doing?
So what is going on here?
First, they say Trump knew about it.
Now he says he didn't know about it.
Two weeks ago, Israel bombed Iran and we told them don't do it again.
Now they do it again and we say, well, we had no idea.
And what this looks like to me is that Trump obviously approved the strike.
So he's just lying here.
I think he's obviously lying.
And like I said, I think this was the strategy all along.
Hit Karg Island, wait and see.
Our allies didn't help us.
Iran didn't open up the strait.
So we gave Israel permission to launch a limited strike on the gas field.
Wait and see.
What will Iran do?
Well, Iran maintains the ability to retaliate.
Even though the ballistic missile launches are decreasing, the drone strikes are increasing.
And now there's hundreds of drones being launched every day at all these countries, at the Persian Gulf, at tankers.
Speedboats are intercepting tankers in the Strait of Hormuz.
So Iran retaliates quickly.
And Qatar is one of the world's biggest hubs for LNG.
As far as LNG is concerned, it's really just Qatar.
It's not so much Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, the Emirates, Kuwait.
It's really just Qatar.
And LNG is in very short supply.
It's a very hot commodity.
LNG is how Europe has replaced Russian natural gas, which used to flow from the Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines.
And so now they're dependent on LNG.
Japan needs LNG.
China, India, they need LNG.
And so if this becomes an energy war, if we're trying to put pressure on Iran through energy, they're going to give it back in full.
And they're really going to hurt the Persian Gulf.
And that's going to hurt everybody.
Because like I said, that is going to limit the global supply of energy indefinitely, oil and gas for Asia.
And then that supply shock will affect everybody.
Prices are going to go up, fuel and energy costs will go up, and the price of everything will then go up.
And if the price of energy goes up, well, you can forget about AI, which is dependent on compute or compute.
I don't know, I don't know, compute, I guess, which is the ability of computers to do AI.
And our whole economy is growing through data centers and AI.
In other words, there's this contagion effect.
This is going to spiral out of control very quickly.
So Trump is looking for a way to break the stalemate out of desperation, launches this energy war.
He's going to hit the one thing that we have not attacked, thinking that Iran will buckle.
But Iran called our bluff and said, if you hit the southern Pars gas field, well, fine, we'll hit Qatar.
Now Trump says, whoa, whoa, whoa, we didn't authorize the strike.
We promise we won't do any more energy warfare.
So you better not do any either.
Because if you do, well, then we'll retaliate.
So what are we doing?
What is the strategy?
What it looks like to me, Trump authorized the strike.
Iran did not buckle.
They retaliated harder.
This whole thing is about to spiral out of control because Iran called our bluff.
And now Trump is trying to get in front of it.
That's what that looks like to me.
So yet again, we have no plan.
It's the same story over and over.
We're going to bomb Iran.
Oh, they closed the Strait of Hormuz.
We didn't anticipate that.
Okay, well, we're going to attack their energy facilities.
Oh, they responded in kind.
We didn't anticipate that.
We can't have it go that far.
So this leads me to my next point here, operationally in the war.
Now, Trump is talking about reinforcing the ground forces in the Persian Gulf with thousands of soldiers.
Simultaneously, the Pentagon is asking Congress for $200 billion to prosecute the war.
And these are those stories.
This is about the ground forces.
It says, quote, the Trump administration is considering deploying thousands of U.S. troops to reinforce its operation in the Middle East as the U.S. military prepares for possible next steps in its campaign against Iran.
The deployments could provide Trump with additional options as he weighs expanding U.S. operations with the Iran war well into its third week.
Those options include securing a safe passage for oil tankers through the Strait of Hormuz, a mission that would be accomplished primarily through air and naval forces.
But securing the strait could also mean deploying troops to the shoreline of Iran.
The Trump administration has also discussed options to send ground forces to Karg Island, the hub for 90% of Iran's oil exports.
Iran has the ability to reach the island with missiles and drones.
Trump administration officials have also discussed the possibility of deploying U.S. forces to secure Iran's stocks of highly enriched uranium.
The sources mentioned did not believe a deployment of ground forces anywhere was imminent, but declined to discuss specifics of U.S. operational planning.
So they have 5,000 U.S. Marines on three amphibious assault vessels headed to the Persian Gulf.
To do what?
Nobody knows.
The administration is talking about deploying thousands of additional ground forces, already got 50,000 U.S. personnel in the region.
And they say that Trump is hell-bent on forcing the strait open.
How do you do that?
Well, they say they're going to use air power, sea power, and yes, they're going to invade Iran's coastline.
They're going to invade the coast near the Strait of Hormuz and on the Persian Gulf to accomplish what?
I imagine to prevent drones and missiles from being fired there and push back the radius of drones and missiles from being launched.
But of course, that shoreline will be within the radius of drones and missiles that are further inland in the country.
How do you do that?
Maybe establish a beachhead, set up some kind of missile defense radius on the beachhead?
I don't even know how that would work.
This is now getting into advanced military planning, but maybe something like that, that seems to be the plan.
Moreover, the Pentagon is seeking $200 billion for the war.
This is that story.
It says, quote, the Pentagon has asked the White House to approve a $200 billion request to Congress to fund the war.
That number would far surpass the cost of the administration's massive airstrike campaign to degrade, or rather to date, and instead seek to urgently increase production of critical weaponry expended as U.S. and Israeli forces have struck thousands of targets over the past three weeks, according to three other people familiar with the matter.
It remains unclear how much the White House will ultimately ask congressional lawmakers to approve.
Some White House officials do not think the Pentagon's request has a realistic shot of being approved in Congress.
The Pentagon has floated several different proposed funding requests over the past two weeks.
By December, Congress had approved roughly $200 billion in spending for the war in Ukraine.
The cost of the war in Iran has rapidly grown, exceeding $11 billion in the first week alone.
Shortly after the joint U.S.-Israeli bombing campaign began last month, the Trump administration started preparing an additional funding request to help cover the costs.
So it's very clear that they are planning something bigger here.
Right now, the USS Gerald Ford has actually left the theater of conflict and gone to a port in Greece because they need to make repairs.
They say that the bathrooms exploded, the kitchen had a fire, and now the whole aircraft carrier is inoperable.
So it's left the Red Sea and is going to Greece.
Now, you only got one aircraft carrier there, the USS Abraham Lincoln.
They say that Gerald Ford will be in repairs for at least a week, then it's going to come back.
You got thousands of Marines headed there.
You got additional thousands of ground forces being deployed.
The war is costing $1.9 billion per day.
They're preparing a $200 billion funding request.
Clearly, they are preparing some kind of ground operation.
It's just like the initial bombing campaign.
First, they're talking about it, discussing it, planting stories in the media.
They're considering options.
Then it becomes operations.
Then it becomes the news.
So it's clear that Trump is not able to win with energy war, not going to happen.
He's not able to open the strait by bombing the leadership.
He actually wants to pry the straight open with some kind of invasion.
He's going to send, it looks like a U.S. force to the strait or the island to try to take Iranian territory, establish a beachhead.
And then at the minimum, even if they're not able to force the Iranian regime to completely capitulate, they can alleviate the economic pressure and collapse the regime as they're able to move the oil through the strait.
That seems to be the strategy.
And that's crazy.
This is a country, as we've talked about, that has 90 million people.
It's huge.
It's all mountains.
And they're all soldiers.
They have a million soldiers.
They have 200,000 IRGC.
They got another 400,000 regular ground forces.
They got hundreds of thousands of militiamen.
And we're going to invade this country.
We don't even have a military big enough.
If we had every member of the U.S. military invade Iran, it probably wouldn't be enough.
And we're going to go in there with a tiny ground force.
There are some reports that say we will go in with the Gulf countries, with the Kurds, Israeli intelligence, U.S. air power, and there's going to be some kind of tactical invasion.
This is totally insane.
How is this going to work?
And then what?
They're going to get on the shoreline, and then they're going to get hit with drones and missiles there.
Or they're going to get ambushed, IEDs.
How long are they going to be there?
Days, weeks, months, years?
And what happens when we sustain heavy casualties?
Let's say we try to invade on the shoreline.
We're going to retreat after a ton of Americans die.
Now they say that the Gulf countries, they want us to collapse the Iranian regime before we leave.
They say now that Iran is bombing all of their cities and their energy and their airports, now the Gulf countries view Iran as an existential threat.
And they want us to finish the job and collapse the regime before we leave.
This is how you get drawn in.
When we say we're going to war with Iran, nobody said Trump might make the judicious decision to launch a limited strike on Iran consistent with our interests, but not outside of them, you know, aligned with Israel, but not totally ident.
No, no.
People said we would get drawn into a war, dragged into a war.
What does that mean?
What's the denotative meaning of those words?
When we say dragged, when we say drawn, we mean that it is a gradual process where you have mission creep, where the goals keep changing, where one thing leads to another.
And over time, there is a pressure, there is a narrowing of options and possibilities that ultimately leads to a full-fledged war.
That's what we're talking about.
Nobody said the risk is that Trump might do, like I said, a limited tactical operation to achieve U.S. objectives, only U.S. objectives, not.
No, no.
We said we would be dragged gradually into a war and we would wake up one day and find ourselves inside of a conflict that nobody wanted.
We would find ourselves in a conflict far wider and far deeper and going on for far longer than anybody ever conceived of, that anybody ever wanted, that nobody voted for, which is what happened in Iraq and Syria and Libya and Yemen and everywhere.
That was always the risk.
Now, why do I say this?
Because last year, people saw the bombing of Midnight Hammer and they said, see, we didn't go to war.
We did one airstrike and then we left.
Mission accomplished.
Yeah, but see, Midnight Hammer made epic fury inevitable.
And people said the same thing about killing Suleimani.
They said, killing Suleimani, that's a good thing.
We're not anti-war.
We're not isolationists.
That's not a war.
We just killed one guy.
I think I may have said that in 2020 when it happened because I didn't understand the bigger picture back then.
I think I was more agnostic about it back then.
But now I see how one thing has led to another.
This has been going on for decades.
We have gradually, step by step, been drawn in.
And the Israelis always tell us, well, it's just this.
Now it's just this other thing.
Now it's just this next thing.
And with every strike, diplomacy becomes less likely to succeed.
There is less trust between Tehran and Washington.
There is less of a possibility for diplomacy to prevail.
And then war becomes inevitable.
And as time goes on, the goals of the war, the bounds of the war, these are always expanding.
And that's precisely what happened here.
Maybe we went in to degrade their missiles, but then they closed the Strait of Hormuz.
So now we got to open it back up.
But guess what?
Israel killed Iran's supreme leader.
How are they going to make peace now?
Israel went out of their way to kill all the leadership, which makes them hate us.
It radicalizes them more.
It rallies the people around the government.
But what's more, they've gone out of their way to kill the members of the leadership that are more likely to make peace.
So maybe we went in thinking we're going to neutralize an imminent threat.
We're going to destroy some missiles and go home.
Israel made it impossible for us to make peace because they killed the supreme leader.
They killed the leadership and specifically killed the leadership that was more moderate.
And so now we're stuck.
Now the Strait of Hormuz is closed.
We killed their leader.
They don't want to make a deal.
They, in a way, can't make a deal.
And we have to fight to the finish because we can't leave now.
We got to prevent them from controlling the world's energy supply, which is what would happen if we left.
We would cede that to them.
And now that Iran is bombing the Gulf countries, this is an existential threat to them.
If the Emirates is trying to build an economy on tourism, banking, technology, entertainment, how can they do that when they have drones bombing their malls and hotels and airports?
They can't.
So now they're all in on Iranian regime change, and they're going to lobby us to be all in.
And this is how it goes.
Iran, Israel rather, bombs Iran's energy.
Iran bombs the Gulf's energy.
Now the Gulf wants Iran to die.
This is how you get sucked in.
Then we're going to go in.
If no other country will help us, if we are not able to withdraw, if Israel wants the fighting to go outside the U.S. commitment, well, then we need to open up the strait.
How are we going to do it?
Ground forces, what's going to happen?
Many of them are going to die.
What happens in a war where you have hundreds of dead Americans?
Is that going to de-escalate things or escalate things?
Does that increase our commitment or lessen it?
And as time goes on, we're only approaching the day when an Iranian sleeper cell goes off and kills a bunch of civilians.
Just a matter of time.
Just a matter of time.
That's what it feels like before we are fully fledged in a ground war with Iran.
That's how all this is shaping up.
That's what it looks like to me.
I don't see a way out of it.
And in the meantime, there might be a temporary ceasefire truce.
I doubt it, but it's possible.
And what all the reports say is that they're going to watch and wait for Iran society to collapse.
You have a truce, have a ceasefire.
And that is just going to be a deferring of the fighting.
And in the meantime, Mossad and CIA are going to prepare the ground force.
The Kurds, anti-government civilians, some kind of U.S. ground force.
So even if we don't invade Iran tomorrow, the day is going to come when Iran has regime change and U.S. ground forces are going to be a part of it.
And it will be a gradual process, how we get sucked in to yet another war.
A tomahawk missile kills the schoolgirls at that school in Tehran.
He says, well, that was an Iranian projectile.
Oh, actually, it might have been ours.
This is a regime change war.
Actually, we mostly won.
The war is coming to an end quickly.
Actually, we're in it for the long haul.
We have a coalition open the strait.
Never mind.
We don't need them anyway.
I approved Israel's strike.
Actually, I had no idea.
There's no plan here.
There's no plan.
He's making it up as he goes along.
He's going off of his gut.
He's not going off the intelligence.
He's not listening to anybody.
This is totally ad hoc, totally flying by the seat of his pants.
And, you know, maybe that wouldn't be a problem, except that Israel has a plan.
Okay, Israel has a strategy.
They have a plan.
This is their Super Bowl.
They've been waiting a long, long time for this.
So Trump stumbled into this conflict.
No idea what would happen.
No plan, no contingency.
And Netanyahu, the master, the maestro, who's orchestrating the whole thing, he knows exactly how this has to go.
The tempo, whether we're going fast or slow, he knows what he wants from this.
He knows what he wants out of Trump.
And Trump is just being fed propaganda through Fox News every day, which Israel controls.
That's where we are.
I told you so.
I told you this is how it would be.
People said, I can't believe it.
I just can't see it, Nick.
I saw I was playing dark and darker with some BAP guy, some BAP meathead, some meathead, some meathead bodybuilder sunning his balls.
I like Bapbook.
Bapbook been out.
How long?
Faggot.
And I like the guy.
He was nice enough or whatever.
But I was playing dark and darker with this BAP chud, sunning his balls, all that nonsense.
And I said, listen, motherfucker, I said, Trump is bringing us to war with Iran.
Do you support that?
He goes, I don't know, dude.
I just don't see that happening.
I don't know.
I just don't see that happening because you're not paying attention.
You don't see it because you're not looking because your eyes aren't open because you are asleep.
So how would you see it?
People are soundly asleep, eyes closed, snoring and kicking and carrying on, dreaming about a golden age, dreaming about Pam Bondi and Mark Rubio dancing to staying alive.
And they go, I don't know, I just can't see it.
I can't see Trump going to war with Iran.
That's because you're asleep.
You're in the Matrix.
Your eyes are closed.
My eyes are wide open and have been, and I'm awake.
I'm an awakened guy.
It was obvious it was going here.
I told you it would be like this, but you didn't listen to me.
If you actually cared, you'd be here.
Remember when?
But it's true.
And now we pay the price.
I told, of all the words of tongue and pen, the saddest are these.
Nick Fuentis was right again.
You called me a Democrat.
Fuck you.
People said, you know what people said?
They said that I didn't get charged in January 6th because the Biden DOJ forced me to take a deal.
And they said the contents of the deal were that I would have to support Democrats in politics to stay out of jail.
So my handler from the Biden government is checking in on me.
Did you support the Democrats today?
Yes, sir.
Please don't arrest me because I was saying that Trump would bring us to war in Iran.
Yeah, well, I guess you were wrong.
And I was right.
You were wrong.
I was right.
You voted for this.
F you.
You fell for it again.
I'm right about everything.
Serves you right.
You trusted a Jew.
Trump is a Jew and you trusted him.
Serves you right.
MAGA, LOL, MAGA, M-A-G-A.
How about L-O-L?
There won't be a lot of LOL or L-M-A-O when you're M-A-G-A-ing because it's all M-I-G-A.
It's all make Israel great again.
So people are going to be saying, OMG when we're dropping bombs on Iran.
Crazy, crazy.
Anyway, we got to move on.
We got to get into the super chats.
But I'm so mad.
I'm to quote a friend.
I am so mad right now.
It's crazy.
It's crazy that I told you, I told you exactly how it would go and you just didn't believe me.
Now, this is not me saying, hey, the Democrats are not controlled by Israel.
They are too.
But here's the plan.
In 2026, we need to shut this administration down.
Who's going to do it?
Democrats.
It's a midterm.
Do you know what that means?
Trump is not on the ballot.
The House is, and a third of the Senate.
If the Democrats gain control of the House, they will get oversight powers.
What is oversight powers?
Subpoena, deposition, compelling the release of documents.
They can form subcommittees.
And what they will do is they will investigate the Trump government.
They will slow it down because they have a political incentive to do so.
Republicans won't hold other Republicans accountable.
It's a structural thing.
They need money from the Republican committee.
They need the Republican leadership to give them committee assignments and other forms of patronage.
So the Democrats, because of political necessity, they will use oversight powers as a blunt weapon against the Trump administration.
No, they're not based.
No, they're not anti-Israel.
No, they're not any of those things.
But because they're set again, structurally aligned against the GOP, they will slow the administration down.
If this administration is controlled by Jews in Israel doing all this harm, that's a good thing.
That's why I'm telling people to vote Democrat this year.
It's not because I'm under any illusions.
I'm voting Democrat to be an obstruction, an impediment to this administration from the executive branch of the government, because the House will use its oversight.
There's checks and balances to check the power of the executive branch and they will slow down this Israel-occupied, out-of-control administration.
Step two, in 2028, we need someone to run in the Democrat or Republican primary who is actually America first.
I don't care which one.
I'm not going to vote for Gavin Newsom.
I'm not going to vote for JD Vance.
I'm not going to vote for Josh Shapiro.
I'm not going to vote for Marco Rubio.
2028, we need to be prepared to say we will vote for anybody in a Democrat primary, in a Republican primary, who will put America first.
But nobody from this administration who has brought us to war in Iran, nobody who has taken APAC money or Adelson money, nobody who's taken J Street money, nobody who's taken Jewish money can even be in consideration.
And that's what we're playing for.
Do not be tricked and deceived into getting right back on the hamster wheel and being part of the machine.
We got to get out there and hold the line, whatever.
That's the part they won't tell you.
Because Tucker has a candidate.
It'll be JD Vance.
Tucker might even run.
And you know what he's going to do?
If Tucker runs for office, he is going to be a spoiler.
You're going to be excited about it.
You're going to love it.
And you know what Tucker's going to do?
He's going to, Ted Cruz will run also.
Tucker is going to grill Ted Cruz on Israel.
He's going to grill Marco Rubio on Israel.
And he will take all the blows, all the damage.
He will be called an anti-Semite.
He will be the Israel critical candidate.
But he'll never win.
He'll drop out and he'll endorse JD Vance.
And that way, JD Vance doesn't have to get in the mud.
He won't have to get his hands dirty.
He won't have to take a position on Israel.
He won't have to get into the scrum with the others.
He won't have to get dirty and get ugly.
Tucker will do that and bow out.
At least this is my vision in 28.
I don't think Tucker seriously thinks he's going to be president.
I don't think he even wants to be president.
That's why they groomed JD.
That's why they groomed JD to be the guy.
JD is still their guy.
So when Tucker says, well, I might run, either that's just sensationalism to get clicks.
I was reading it right up today on Twitter, endorsed by Ted Cruz, which claims you, Catholic integralists, Dugan, multipolarists, and Carlson and Co. are trying to hollow out the evangelical base to spurn Israel.
I know you dislike Dugan and Tucker, but what do you make of this new ploy to triangulate your agendas?
Looking into last night's show, unsurprisingly nearly every news article, tweet, or vague mention of Joe Kent's former support of Israel has been wiped from the internet or pushed to the asscrack of the algorithm.
Least obvious reputation altering off of all time, Nigerikin is opinion.
It's like you guys couldn't even, you couldn't figure this stuff out if you had a million years to do it.
It's so bad.
I hope you see that now.
I hope when you read the super chats, you see that even if you watch this show every night, some people are just never going to be able to do this for themselves.
You can know everything I know.
You can, you know, you can watch everything I say on the show, and you still will not be able to predict what is just around the corner.
You still would not be able to fill in the blank because you are impaired.
Tentatively, South Korea, North Korea, but let's just maybe Korea.
We'll say four for now.
Kuwait.
You see, the problem with these ones is you.
You either know the alphabetical all the countries, or you just have to think about every single country, which makes it true and And I don't know that there even are seven that start with a K, to be honest.
I think it's a troll.
You're just trying to stump me.
But I'm not going to give up super easily here.
Let's see.
No, I think that's it.
That's got to be it, right?
That's got to be it.
Past name.
I don't know any past nations.
That's too broad.
Every nation that ever existed?
Yeah, all right.
Those are my answers.
Kenya, damn it.
Kosovo, damn it.
I should have just kept going.
The problem is, I thought, ah, I thought you were trolling me.
Huckabee's picture is next to the definition of servility in the newest Webster after telling Bibi he's glad to not be on the Israel kill list and Ben called Mike a good boy.
Did you see the California GOP is vetting for infiltrating Grohipers?
Carter 11B sent $20, looking as good as ever, man.
Any plans to move from the pull-up bar to waits?
Put 10 pounds of muscle on in his mug clav.
Idaho University Groypers sent $20, been throwing the idea around that World War II was orchestrated by the Jews as a means to gain sympathy and then later power thoughts?
Oh my $6 Indian cent $23, converting my family to Catholicism partly because of you.
all amazing what do you think would happen if the united states just abandoned israel and blamed them for the war and leaves them on their own i know it very unlikely but i wonder what you think happens if true oh candace dick tucker suim sent twenty dollars You see Pierce storming off his own interview.
Keith Woods wrote a little tweet on how the millennial hipster exposed Brick Urbanberger joint era was the last modern iteration of a uniquely white culture and I came to appreciate it a lot more.