Mike Baker is an American-British former Central Intelligence Agency officer and security expert, technical advisor for the entertainment industry, TV commentator, and host.
Listen to Mike's podcast "The President's Daily Brief": https://bit.ly/3tAIdqw
Get Mike's book "Company Rules: Everything I Know About Business I Learned From the CIA": http://bit.ly/3KRV51X
Follow Mike Baker on Twitter: https://bit.ly/402Ogia
Protect yourself against Central Bank control with - American Hartford Gold
https://bit.ly/3ZJ2pTl
Text PBD to 65532 or call 866-939-6984
Vault to the top. Be your best. Feel your best. Achieve your best. Vault Brain drinks will unlock your brain to help you be your best you. Try the new Vault Drink today! www.vaultdrinks.com
Connect With Experts On Minnect: https://bit.ly/3LZv80y
Visit our website:
https://valuetainment.com/
Subscribe to our channel: http://bit.ly/2aPEwD4
Subscribe to:
Adam Sosnick - @vtsoscast
Vincent Oshana - @ValuetainmentComedy
Tom Ellsworth - @bizdocpodcast
Want to get clear on your next 5 business moves? https://valuetainment.com/academy/
Join the channel to get exclusive access to perks: https://bit.ly/3Q9rSQL
Download the podcasts on all your favorite platforms https://bit.ly/3sFAW4N
Text: PODCAST to 310.340.1132 to get the latest updates in real-time!
Patrick Bet-David is the founder and CEO of Valuetainment Media. He is the author of the #1 Wall Street Journal Bestseller Your Next Five Moves (Simon & Schuster) and a father of 2 boys and 2 girls. He currently resides in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida.
Why would you pet on Goliath when we got pet David?
Value payment, giving values contagious.
This world of entrepreneurs, we can't no value to haters.
Howdy, running, homie, look what I become.
I'm the one.
All right, our guest today, with all the mess that's going on.
Specifically, a question we asked this morning on the podcast with Charlie Kirk is, how is it possible that the supposedly the best intelligence in the world did not know that Hamas was training for a year, preparing their soldiers who had no clue who they were going to attack on a city they built that matched the city like the one once in Israel.
And then all of a sudden Egypt says there may be an attack and you don't do anything.
And you mean to tell us we have to believe the fact that you don't know this was happening?
It's kind of a tough question for some of us that we're asking.
So today's guest, perfect timing.
Mike Baker worked in the CIA for 17 years as a covert field operations officer, specializing in counterterrorism, counter-narcotics.
He's drinking a drink right now.
Counterinsurgency operations, engaged in organized and supervised operations around the globe, working in Asia, Middle East, Africa, Europe, and the Soviet Union, former Soviet Union, and elsewhere.
And he hosts the President's Daily Brief, a daily podcast that's available on Spotify, Tunes, and the first TV.
We're going to put the link below as well.
Mike, it's good to have you on again.
It's great to be here.
Thank you very much.
Yes.
Hopefully we were hoping the occasion will be different, but all the mess that's going on around the world, it's kind of crazy.
It's wild.
But for you, Mike, with your background, brother, with you worked intelligence.
You're in it 17 years.
Historically, I've interviewed the former director, one of the former directors of Mossad, and you talk to them, the level of pride they have at how great they are.
How do they not know the fact that an attack is about to be made like this and 1,500 people die deaths later?
How do you not know this was happening?
Yeah, well, first of all, they are excellent, right?
I mean, so but the bottom line is this was essentially, when people say, look, this was their 9-11, what they're referring to is, you know, sort of the shock of the event and the impact on the nation.
But really, when I say it was like their 9-11, what I mean is it was the same type of intelligence failure.
So I think what they're finding out now and what they'll find out in further hot wash on this whole thing is that, yeah, there were clues.
There were indicators.
There were bits and pieces of intelligence.
Again, I'm not sure how to read the Egyptian Intel Chief's comments.
I think we need to hear more from him, from them in terms of specifics about what they were talking about that they said they warned some week and a half before this.
But the bottom line is we had a problem with 9-11, as most people know at this point in time.
We were getting small data points.
We were getting little bits of intelligence.
And yet the problem was our state, our local, federal, the intel community, everybody was siloed.
So you weren't compiling all that data and making sense of it.
You were having a credit card purchase in Saudi and you were having another event here in the U.S.
And we weren't dialing all that together, right?
And so the holy grail after 9-11 became, well, how do you do that?
How do you take all these disparate pieces of intelligence that are coming from a variety of different means and suddenly focus in on a bigger picture and understand what it all means?
Now, we thought we were getting there, but the problem is that it's a human endeavor.
And so what I would argue is that we're going to find that the Mossad, Shinbet, the IDF, border security, everybody, they were picking up little pieces, right?
But for the same problem, which is shit's going to happen occasionally.
You're never going to get it down to a zero-sum game.
It's a very unsatisfactory answer, I suspect, but it's the honesty of God's truth.
So they're going to have to go through the sort of the same heart-wrenching realization at some point that they probably could have prevented this.
Am I what about the two-hour, I'm sorry, the three-hour to six-hour response once it happened.
Like once it happened, it was just unfortunately.
You mean to stand down?
Stand down, Mikey.
But what I'm saying is we got more along the lines of, since pride and all that, aside, just their presence, it just kept happening, kept happening hours.
They even kidnapped people and brought them back to the strip.
It's like, how did they drop that ball?
Yeah, well, first of all, you have to understand how long this was in the planning stages for, right?
And it was in the planning stages, and it was a very tight operation in the sense of need to know.
So, not to disappear down too many rabbit holes on this one, but there's a lot of layers here.
The New York Times came out and in some sort of bizarre statement said, well, according to some sources, and then, you know, not identified, Iranian officials were surprised by this because there is this gyration right now.
You know, oh my God, how can we avoid saying Iran?
How can we not say that the Iranian regime is essentially responsible for all of this?
Because without them, Hamas is irrelevant, right?
They wouldn't exist in the way they do.
So the idea that the Iranian officials were caught up.
Well, no shit, because at the end of the day, this was need to know.
You had some IRGC, some Revolutionary Guard personnel responsible for liaison with Hamas.
They probably actually passed that responsibility on to others because, again, realizing they wanted to keep this close hold.
So there were very few people in on this.
I suspect there were a very few number of officials leaders within the brigade, the armed element of Hamas, who also understood what was going on and had the big picture.
So they were very smart.
They probably dumbed down their communications significantly to prevent any sort of signals intercepts.
And again, it's not satisfactory, but having worked in operations for a long time, things happen.
And you say, how did I miss that?
So let me ask a question this way.
So if you're U.S. and we also have one of the best intelligence out there, CIA.
I like to think so.
Do you think we have agents?
Do we have agents in Israel?
Do we have agents all over the Middle East?
Do we have agents that gather Intel to bring you back to us?
Because this is also problematic for us.
It's very problematic for us.
The answer is yes.
Look, Israel treats Intel kind of the way they treat the military operations, right?
Which is the pride, and we're going to do it ourselves.
You know what?
We'll take care of ourselves.
But we have a very tight Intel relationship regardless.
Having said that, we also depend heavily on them for their human, right, frankly.
What was that word?
Human intelligence.
Oh, gotcha, human.
Yeah.
So they're extremely careful.
I think one of the surprises for me from the question of how did we miss this is not so much the, we missed technical collection, right?
Although that is also concerning, but it's the source reporting, right?
It's the human.
Because I would like to have thought that they had a larger network of sources within Gaza and that at some point somebody would have picked up on this.
But again, what that points to is just how close held this operation was.
And the fact that they were able to maintain that secrecy over the amount of time it would have taken to plan this.
They had to do recis, they had to do surveillance reconnaissance on their eventual targets, right?
They didn't just like stream out and happen in kibbutzim or a village or something.
So they knew what they were doing.
They had to stockpile weapons.
They had to go through training, right?
They had to train the personnel that were going to be involved in this attack.
So it was a remarkable, in a sense, ability of Hamas to do this.
But then again, they've been at it for a long time.
Man, I still have a hard time believing that because for me, you got a blockade in Gaza.
Air, water.
I mean, in every possible way, they got a blockade.
So that means you have people on the inside that you can see what's going on from top.
You can have drones.
You can have so many different ways to see what they're working on.
Why are 28 guys here running into the house and coming out?
Running into the house and coming out and running into the house and coming out.
What are they doing there?
Who's in that house?
I mean, but Pat, you know, they've got maybe 300 miles of underground tunnels, right?
So it's like Minnesota during or Minneapolis during the cold months, right?
You never have to go outside.
You're always walking through the skywalks.
The tunnel system that they've built over all these years.
And yes, Israel's got ground-penetrating radar and they've got surveillance capabilities and all the rest of it.
But it's remarkable.
And they hadn't been inside Gaza for, what, nine years?
Yeah, since their disengagement in 05, longer than that.
So, you know, 17 years.
By the way, have you seen the videos of what those tunnels look like in Hamas?
There's plenty of videos inside the Hamas tunnels that they have.
If you rob, if you find one of the clips, like this one here shows, you know, inside Gaza's underground tunnel.
There's plenty.
Wall Street Journal has it, what they've built over the years.
It gives insight on what – is that one of them?
If you just type in Inside Gaza Tunnel, see if on Twitter anything comes up that's Gaza Tunnel.
Go ahead, Adam.
While you're pulling that up, Rob, just to be clear, CIA intelligence, you know, there's conversations out there that somehow they turned a blind eye to this, the IDF, Mossad, Netanyahu.
Like, you know what?
Like, almost kind of like the 9-11 stories, like, look, you know, they turned a blind eye to it.
There was fair warning.
And, you know, whether it's the big oil or military industrial complex, they kind of, you know, there was some.
We'll look at the other way because there's going to be enrichment on the other side of this.
From a CIA perspective, what's the likelihood that Netanyahu, Mossad, IDF sort of was like, yeah, we'll let them attack.
We'll let this kind of slide.
Maybe it got a little more out of hand than we suspected.
But now we sort of have a green light to full attack.
What's the likelihood that they sort of co-signed this?
Yeah, I mean, I get, you know, I'm not a buyer on things like that, right?
It's because in part, because Israel knows exactly where this is going, right?
Part of the depression or the depressing part about the Middle East is how consistent it always plays out.
So they know, or they knew, no matter how horrific Hamas's attacks were and the brutality that was displayed, they knew that as soon as you started getting a body count in Gaza, that the whole narrative, social media narrative, the mainstream media narrative, was going to start focusing on that, right?
I mean, the lack of interest from a segment of society who just willing to set aside the brutality of those attacks and say, well, geez, look at the, you know, you know, look at the rising casualties in Gaza, you know, and as if they're trying to, you know, create some sort of equivalence here.
Yeah.
And then also the bottom line is Hamas doesn't give a shit about dead Palestinians.
They don't, I mean, that's, that's the point of what they do.
What does that mean exactly?
Because there's sort of this equivocation of like, you know, Gaza is Hamas and Gaza is a Palestinian in Palestine and they're living in this open-air prison.
And then Hamas is just, you know, they're freedom fighters.
From a CIA perspective, Hamas is Hezbollah, their ISIS.
Are they full on what they are perceived to be, which is a Islamic terrorist group?
Well, they're useful, very useful proxies.
Basically, what Iran has done is surround, you know, to a significant degree, Israel with a couple of terrorist armies.
But what I mean by Hamas not caring about casualties, that's their currency.
That's their leverage, right?
Hamas has an extremely sophisticated public relations element, right?
Most of them sitting comfortably over in gutter.
But they know, and part of it is their willingness over the years to do exactly what they know is always going to result in dead casual or dead civilians, embedding themselves, you know, putting their stockpiles adjacent to or within civilian infrastructure.
Their military command centers, you know, their personnel, they know what they're doing, right?
And so they understand that as soon as you start getting civilian casualties, the world is going to turn, right?
And it's going to force an issue.
And sure enough, now there is as much or probably more talk about that than about the reason why this is happening.
So I would argue civilians, I mean, Palestinian civilians, if they die, they're victims of Hamas as well, right?
Yeah, it was an explosion.
It was a rocket that came in from Israel.
But the reason you're having this is because of Hamas.
Why did they vote for Hamas?
Meaning they have, I don't know their election system in Gaza or the West Bank in Palestine, but it used to be the PLO under Yasser Arafat and then the Palestinian Liberation Organization.
But they voted for Hamas in 07.
And they still run Gaza.
I don't know how these elections work, but why do they vote for Hamas versus another option?
Was it Fatah or other options that maybe would serve the people better than a militant terrorist group?
Again, that's way outside my pay grade.
I have no idea, but I would argue that there are a lot of citizens or residents of Gaza who aren't affiliated or associated with Hamas, right?
I mean, look, it's shitty living, right?
It's awful.
50% unemployment.
Yeah.
It's horrible.
It's only going to get worse.
It's going to get worse.
No question about it.
And by the way, we have a friend right now in Israel who's there as we speak, Jason Lyons, Jewish Republican liaison, former chairman of the United States Israel Security Alliance, and has a degree diploma from Harvard Business School and Negotiation Mastery.
Jason, can you hear us?
Patrick, how are you?
Thank you.
I hope you can see me and hear me with the old city and Jerusalem in the background.
I can.
I can.
So how are things there?
If you were to give us an understanding or what the feeling's like when you're talking to people, how are things right now in Jerusalem?
I would say I would equate it as Floridians is the calm before the storm.
We know occurred a hurricane five is coming.
The most beautiful weather is usually a few hours before the hurricane hits.
I would assume that within the next coming days, the worlds will see an incursion like nothing they've seen before.
There is no one in the world that has actually ever seen the mights of the Israeli army.
They've been very meticulous, precision-like in dealing with terrorists, specifically Hamas, over the last 30 years.
And they have done everything they could possibly do to avoid collateral damage.
Sadly, there will be collateral damage.
The biggest challenge we have right now is there's approximately 150 hostages, many nationals from foreign countries.
We have a number of diplomats here.
I am meeting later on this evening, very late, possibly early this morning, with Representative Mills, who set this up, came out here to try to do some negotiations.
I don't want to go into all the details.
The Secretary of State is right next door to me.
I'm at the King David Hotel.
He's literally next door.
And I want to first of all thank Senator Rick Scott, who has been in touch with me hourly over the last week since the war broke out.
What else can I answer for you, Patrick?
You know, you hear messages about the left and the right in Israel.
The left is like, hey, why don't we negotiate and let's figure out a way to make this work?
And, you know, these guys are saying every time you bomb us, you know, we're going to be showcasing and taking out one of the hostages.
And the right is saying, no, we cannot negotiate with terrorists.
That's what the media is saying.
Are you feeling more of a unified group going up against Hamas, or is there some level of a division between the people and Israel?
Well, I think, you know, in the past, the Israelis have traded a thousand for one.
You know, in baseball, that's probably the equivalent of a player to be named later.
The horrible trade.
They did it for Shalit many years ago.
You know, now you have probably a tremendous amount of pressure coming from the Americans, the Germans, Australians.
They all have hostages there.
You know, they don't want to be part of this.
So Netanyahu's walking a very fine line right now.
And President Biden, who I thought spoke quite well the other day, you know, let's see where the action is.
But I don't like to unnecessarily throw people under the bus, even though his relationship with Israel to date hasn't been great.
But he did give a very strong speech the other day.
And I think for the most part, Israelis have had enough.
I was at the base probably closest to Gaza two days ago.
I was with the Major General.
He pulled me aside because he didn't want his soldiers hearing what he was telling me.
But he tried to describe to me the catastrophic things that he personally witnessed over the last 48 hours, seeing not just children, babies, heads decapitated, little girls with blood all over them, women that had been raped and left for dead.
These are things that you only see in the movies, and they get a very lousy rating, like a rated R rating because of the violence.
I mean, we have never seen, other than maybe some of the things that ISIS have done, the barbaric actions of animals.
I can't even call them human beings.
I mean, who burns babies to try to make a point?
And I think one of your guests on the show, as I was logging on, mentioned about the vote.
There's no vote.
Hamas hands you a ballot, and there's a machine gun pointed to your head.
This is who you need to vote for.
So it's a complete sham of a vote.
These are the worst people in the world, and they need to be completely eradicated because of the hostages.
It's complicated right now.
And I think the reason why the Israelis haven't gone in yet is because they're trying to do everything they can to secure the release of these hostages.
And the United States, who's now sent a second aircraft carrier, is making sure that the Americans get out as well.
So that's the situation right now.
The left and the right.
There's nothing that unifies this country more than a common enemy.
And that's what you have right now.
And Hamas, as terrible as the things they've done over the last four days, they were able to do something that no politician has been able to do over the last 70 years in this country, unite them.
So kudos to Hamas for waking up the sleeping giants.
Jason, this is Adam.
Thank you for your perspective.
You talk about the calm before the storm, where the IDF is getting ready to attack, I presume, and go full force.
You talked about the barbaric nature and the barbarism of Hamas.
What can the people that are not familiar with how IDF operates learn?
Meaning, allegedly they sent 3,000 texts to Palestinian citizens urging them to leave.
They've dropped leaflets.
They've dropped food before.
They do what it's called, I believe, roof knocks that's saying, hey, you've got five minutes to vacate the building because we've identified this building as a place that a missile came from.
So meaning they're trying to limit civilian casualties.
Whereas obviously Hamas will gladly rape and pillage whoever they come across.
What should the world know about how the IDF is operating to save civilian lives?
Well, you know, I think you're going to see a new playbook, and I think a lot of Palestinians are going to get killed.
There's nowhere to go.
It's a little unfair.
You have an ocean on one side, a sea.
You have Egypt, which was letting it at the most 2,000 a day.
And then, of course, to the north, you have the Israelis.
There's nowhere for the Palestinians to go.
This is a horrible situation.
One of your guests eloquently put this, that Hamas put the Palestinians in this pigeonhole right now.
This is a terrible situation, but they crossed the line.
And as I mentioned before, precision into all of the killings of Hamas leadership over the last 20 years.
And I'm afraid that precision is going to wane over the next couple of days and the collateral damage will be heavy.
And another one of your podcast members, I think, also mentioned something to the effect that, you know, what can they do about it?
Well, I think the Israelis value life as much as any nation in the world.
And I still believe, even though there will be some collateral damage, the Israelis will do everything possible to minimize the collateral damage.
Quick follow-up.
You sort of said that You might want to start buckle up brace for impact because civilian casualties might be possible, maybe even unavoidable.
You know, there's winning the actual war, then there's winning the PR war.
Mike Baker mentioned how good the Hamas is at PR and putting spreading their basically lies.
From a PR perspective, why would Israel want to kill civilian lives, even if it's unavoidable?
They don't want to.
The problem is, they're all entangled with each other.
I mean, up until four days ago, they were using the Palestinians as human shields.
That means that they're shooting thousands of missiles, and the Israelis know where the missiles are coming from.
So the reason why the Israelis don't take out those installation systems is because they're surrounded by Palestinians.
Now, they up the game.
They took 150 Israelis/slash semi-Israelis and they've put them in those places.
So now you got to think twice before you take out these rockets.
And that's the quandary that they're in right now.
Mike, Vinny, any questions?
You guys good?
Yeah.
What have you heard?
It's Mike Baker.
Jason, what have you heard about Egypt's willingness, perhaps, to allow Palestinian refugees to cross into Egypt?
The numbers were low that I heard.
It's possible that CC will get enormous pressure from the United States.
He might get a boatload of buddy for accepting them.
That's something that's, you know, there's back channelings right now that are going on with the Egyptians for that very reason.
There's a lot of back channeling going on with the Qataris right now.
You know, they spent $200 billion on the World Cup, and that money could go up for smoke real fast if they don't play ball with the United States.
The United States has a relationship with Qatar, but it's one of these mutual beneficial relationships.
We have a base there, and we tend to look the other way.
It's hard to look the other way when the leader of Hamas is living in a palace and has refuge in that country.
And I have a very good relationship with the royal family over there.
And they're not happy about the situation either.
But things are, let's say, in the works of trying to do something to alleviate their pressures.
And Jason, this is Vincent.
God bless you, and I hope everything is, you stay safe and everything goes good over there while you're there.
A couple of days ago, the ex-head of Hamas, Khaled Mashal, called for tomorrow for Friday the 13th to be an international, basically a day of terrorism.
How much do you think that we should heed to his warning?
And what is the security apparatus on high alert where you are?
Because, you know, obviously it was caught with its pants down necessarily.
But how do you think?
How serious is this warning from Khaled Mashal?
You know, I think anybody that kills babies and throws them in fires, I would take their threats fairly seriously.
Whether or not the Israeli Arabs, you know, I am in a hotel right now, which has hosted probably every president since Lyndon Johnson.
And there are probably 30 or 40 Arab Israelis that are working here.
And don't think for a moment that the guests here at this hotel weren't thinking what are the possibilities that these guys will take a kitchen knife, you know, and run through the dining room.
We just heard that in the old city, which is right behind me, two people were shot today.
So, yes, there is a risk.
I would say Jerusalem is probably the least risky.
We did go to a number of places in Israel today that I would say is a little bit more concerning.
The answer is: I don't want to dare the terrorists by telling you that I'm not concerned about it.
So, I'm going to say that I'm hopeful that tomorrow will be peaceful.
I plan on staying here in Jerusalem.
We do have added security here.
I have a personal detail myself.
You know, I have kids.
I have a wife.
I have parents.
They're concerned.
I will tell you that as a Jewish American, when I was a young boy, my mother used to tell me that every Jew needs a passport in case one day they have to run to Israel.
This is the first time in my 55 years where I have actually seen people trying to get passports to run away from Israel.
It's a very sad day for the Jewish people.
A lot of us have family members that were in the Holocaust.
My mother-in-law was born in a DP camp.
My wife lost grandparents from both sides and five children and had to start over again.
And my wife's grandmother has numbers on her arm.
She was in Auschwitz.
So, you know, this is a very scary time.
And somebody mentions about proxies, whether it was Iran with Hezbollah, and so on and so forth.
Iran is a wonderful country.
The people of Iran are as good as they come.
I know Patrick is from there.
And if Patrick was an American citizen, I think he could be president of the United States one day.
We've spoken about that.
And I think these are bad apple regimes.
These are not bad people.
There's the Palestinian people, for the most part, are good people.
I get a little slack sometimes when I say that to my Jewish friends, but the fact is that they're pigeonholed right now.
They don't want to be there anymore than anybody else.
So let's hope for the best.
I hope the world understands.
One of your guests made a brilliant observation that in a couple of days, you're going to see headlines like 25,000 Palestinians died and 2,000 Israelis died.
And people are going to start doing the math and say, well, that doesn't sound right.
But unfortunately, in about a week or two, I'm predicting that the world will forget how this started.
And it will go back to the basics of it was the Israelis, apartheid state, so on and so forth.
And I hope at least this time, with these children that were slaughtered, these women that were raped, these daughters, sons.
I was telling Patrick before that I had just left the house of two parents who lost their son last night.
You know, they said goodbye to him last night, and that's it.
And the funeral was probably going to be a few hours later.
But I hope the world remembers how this began because it is going to end with the full might of the IDF.
And in a couple of weeks, people are going to forget and they're going to say, oh, the IDF just railroaded these people and hosed them down.
But try to remember if you can how this all started.
Jason, this is Adam again.
One more question for you.
Jewish American as well.
I love America.
I love Israel as well.
I was just there three months ago.
I took my mother for the first time in 30 years.
She used to live on a kibbutz.
She did not recognize the country because she's like, oh my God, it's like the economic growth has been incredible.
My question is about Bibi Netanyahu.
When I was there, I saw the protest, everything that's going on in the Knesset, the parliament, the Supreme Court, you know, Tel Aviv, super liberal.
It was right after their Pride Week.
Obviously, Jerusalem, traditional, conservative.
The political upheaval is tangible there.
You could feel it.
So what's the future of Bibi?
Is he, what do the people feel about him?
You know, there's conversations that he's sort of turned a blind eye to kind of allow this to happen so he can sort of gain more power and have more excuses to do anything like this.
From your perspective, he's the longest running prime minister in Israeli history.
I think this is like his fifth term in 16 years.
What's the future of Bibi?
I would never bet Bibi Netanyahu out.
You know, let's go through his history.
His brother was a decorated soldier.
He lost his life at Entebbe.
It was a mission that he ran.
He was the only person that was killed in that mission.
It was one of the most heroic events ever in the history of this country.
You know, whether or not he got a head start because of the name recognition, he's a brilliant person, Bibi.
MIT, he was United Nations ambassador.
He won an election against Perez.
And, you know, I offered him a job once as a headhunter many years ago.
He was out of work for a while.
We met in the David Citadel.
And I remember he told me that the winds can change very quickly in Israel.
And that's been his career.
His career has had some ups and downs.
But you're 100% correct.
He's the longest standing prime minister.
He just passed his 16th year, which is, I believe, three more years than any other prime minister since 1948.
And Bibi is in a quandary right now.
You know, they're trying to go after him, trying to indict him.
Whether or not you believe the indictments are real or bogus, he has had no choice because he himself is pigeonholed to try to change the Supreme Court ruling.
So that has caused problems.
It's caused a lot of issues with venture capital money that would flow into Israel as well.
The liberals are not too happy about it.
And there was a tremendous amount of division in this country up until the war started a couple days ago.
My guess is, is that, you know, is he completely responsible for one piece of offense around the entire country that was breached?
I mean, that's how they got in.
At the end of the day, yeah, I guess the buck stops with the CEO of the company, but there were probably several people between the foot soldier and the commander-in-chief that dropped the ball on this particular one.
I think over time, you know, there will be investigations how this happened.
The Israelis are embarrassed the same way the United States was embarrassed in September 11th.
You know, how did that happen?
But we tend to rally around our leaders during wartime.
And Bibi is a survivor.
He's lost family members in war, and I think he's earned a certain amount of respect, similar to a gold star family.
And my prediction is that he'll be okay in the end.
And I think the Israelis will rally around him.
I'm happy that they were able to do this unity government in the 11th hour.
And when Israelis unite, they're extremely powerful.
So that's what Hamas is going to be up against, united Israel over the next couple of months.
And I think when this is over, you'll have a similar outcome to ISIS where they will totally wipe out.
You know, you'll be able to Google Hamas and it just won't exist anymore.
It'll say something like a former terrorist organization and hopeful outcome that will come out of this.
Jason, appreciate your time.
Be safe.
And I will reach out to you after this podcast is over with.
Again, thank you for your time.
Patrick, thank you as well.
Be safe, my friends.
Yes, sir.
Take care.
Thank you.
Thank you.
He's in the thick of it.
He's in it.
He's in it right now.
Mike, what did you think about what he said?
Well, first thing is, and this is going to sound really cynical.
And we've heard this from others.
They're going to smash Hamas.
They're going to destroy it.
They're going to annihilate it.
Look, I spent a lot of time in counterterrorist operations, and that's not how it works.
You know, it's not, again, it's not a zero-sum game.
So you can degrade and you can mitigate risk and you can remove certain targets.
But there are some underlying issues here that creates this bottomless well of potential new recruits.
And it's just, you know, I worry sometimes when they say, okay, Netanyahu said it again today, we're going to crush him.
We're going to destroy him.
It's, you know, I don't know.
Call me cynical.
It's not possible.
Why not?
Look, ISIS still exists, right?
I mean, he referenced ISIS, saying it's going to be just like ISIS.
Former, you know, whatever.
Yeah.
ISIS is still there, right?
And they're still, and they're trying to reconstitute.
And we can, I'm not saying you can't do significant damage, right?
Part of that is dependent on how solid your operational intelligence is and how quickly you can act on that intelligence.
So we can do a great deal of damage.
But I would argue that if you want to destroy Hamas, you've got to get rid of the Iranian regime.
That's the head of the snake.
And it's not, you know, again, he's absolutely right, but nobody's arguing as Iranian people.
Just like with G and the communist regime and his lockdown on the people, nobody's arguing about the Chinese people.
They're fantastic.
It's social, cultural, great history, but it's this regime.
And the Iranian regime, as far as, you know, I'm not going to shift off this position.
They're responsible, you know, for the vast majority of funding for Hamas over the years.
It's always coming from Iran.
Same with Hezbollah.
And they've done it for a reason, because they've got this ability now to surround Israel.
And also, look, Hamas knows, Hezbollah knows, if there's stability, right?
Like if you got this agreement between the Saudis and Israelis and you got the Gulf states in there and they suddenly, and you get without instability, you know, what is Hamas?
What is Hezbollah?
And, you know, frankly, what is the Iranian regime?
So, but I think you can't take those.
You can degrade them significantly, but you're not going to, you're not going to, you're just not going to remove the core problem.
Quick follow-up to that, because I fully agree.
That's where I was going with this.
I respected Jason, but the whole eliminating Hamas, I think, is a pipe dream.
You know, because Hamas spouted from the Muslim Brotherhood, which came from Islamic fundamentalists, and then, you know, Hezbollah, a new group will pop up.
You're not going to change, like, if you eliminate Hamas, you're not going to eliminate the ideology or who's funding the ideology, which is Iran.
Look, just to be clear, like I have, I'm Jewish, I have Arab friends, I have Muslim friends, I have Christian friends.
Like, we do not want war with Islam.
Nobody does.
The West, this is not the Crusades.
These are specific sections.
So there's, what, 2 billion Muslims in the world, 1.8 billion Muslims?
99%, let's say, let's say they're good.
They want no problem with this.
The problem is, let's say the 1%, that's 18 million people that are Islamic.
Let's just say it's 1%.
By the way, that's more than how many Jews exist in the world, 16 million.
So from a numbers perspective here, if you just take 1% of 2 billion people, you're talking 18, 20 million people that want death, that want destruction.
You're never going to fix it by just eliminating the people.
Let me read this.
Iran's Khamenei hails.
Hamas warns retaliation could be greater disaster.
This is a Washington Examiner story.
Khamenei praised Hamas for inflicting an irreparable defeat on Israel, but denied direct responsibility for the attack, warning that Israel's response could lead to a greater disaster.
He stated it is unlikely that the unsurpinct regime will be able to use the help of the West to repair the deep impacts that this incident has left on its ruling structures.
Questions regarding Iran's role in the Hamas attack have risen with conflicting reports from Hamas reports, Hamas sources and Western observers emphasizing Iran's general support for the group.
Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu has declared an unprecedented military offensive against Hamas in Gaza and characterized it as a clash of civilizations.
He called for international support stating in fighting Hamas, Israel is not only fighting for its own people, it's fighting for every country that stands against barbarism.
So he's saying this.
Khamenei is saying that.
So if you're saying, okay, you take out Hamas, so what?
As long as Iran's there, Iran's there.
So now, you got some people that are criticizing because your position sounds like what Nikki Haley said, what Lindsey Graham said, we got to go after Iran, right?
We got to go attack Iran.
Is that kind of what you're saying?
Well, yeah, I mean, Lindsey Graham came out and said, you know, we have to start bombing the oil refineries.
And yeah, if you engaged in a military conflict, then your logical choices are oil refineries and, you know, start busting their nuke facilities for their weapons program.
But that's not necessarily what I'm talking about.
I'm talking about, look, we had a maximum pressure approach, right?
Which it's a little unsatisfactory and it never really makes regime change necessarily because they just keep tightening the screws on the general population.
But I think we've got to do something other than what has been taking place over the past couple of years, right?
The Biden administration was very vocal about it.
Coming in, it was a brand new day with Iran, right?
We're getting off that maximum pressure approach.
They staffed most of their Iran-focused positions, right?
From Robert Malley to a variety of other desk positions at the Pentagon and State Department with people who believe that same thing, right?
Mali has been very disdainful of any sort of maximum pressure approach to Iran.
And now, mysteriously, has had his security clearances pulled, is on suspension.
And, you know, we're not hearing boo about it from the administration.
But that, and then there's this idea, look, they're still going through these contortions.
Secretary Blinken said it again today.
You know, he said, you know, I just have to correct this misperception somehow that we've given these $6 billion in unfrozen assets and somehow they're doing everything possible to avoid the obvious, which is without Iran's support, training, technical assistance, Hamas would not have gotten to a position where they could accomplish what they did over the weekend.
And so they're bending over backwards to avoid, and I get it.
Nobody wants, as you pointed out, direct military conflict with Iran.
We would like to find other ways to make this happen.
But every time an administration tries to approach and deal with Iran and offer, they get kicked in the ass by the Iranian regime.
So at some point, what do you do?
Well, okay, first of all, we take away the $6 billion.
That's something we could accomplish here in the next 10 minutes.
And then we actually get serious again about oil sanctions and we put the screws down on them.
It's the only time, the only time they ever acquiesce or start to act as if they're going to do it.
It's when you, I hate to say it, but when you've really screwed them down.
And otherwise, they're just going to engage in this.
I'm not saying they drew up the operational plan, but I guarantee you there were liaison personnel within the IRGC that are assigned to deal with Hamas and Hezbollah who were very aware of all of this.
What do they fear?
Meaning, we talk about Iran as if they're untouchable.
Meaning, you can't go to war with Iran.
It's going to start this.
Oh, my God, we can't and let them enrich the nuclear weapons because they're going to do this, but we can't pull out of it because it sounds like there's no options.
It almost sounds like we're in the nuclear deal.
We're out of the nuclear deal.
John Kerry's going there.
Trump pulls out.
It sounds like we have no uniformity whatsoever and they're almost untouchable.
So if you're, like, from your perspective, or even Pat's perspective, what do they fear?
The Ayatollahs, the IRGC that you're talking about, what do they fear the most?
Well, I think I'd let Pat talk about that, but I would jump in just for a second and say I think they fear the same thing that Xi fears, same thing that Putin fears.
They fear losing control of the population, right?
And I would argue that there's a sizable part of the population that is, again, not inclined towards the Iranian regime, but have few options.
But that's what they fear.
They fear losing control.
Xi spends every day trying to figure out how do I not have that happen.
And there's not an insignificant amount of protests that take place inside of China that we never hear about.
And that's their number one fear within the CCP is that I would argue the same thing with the Iranian regime.
They just want power.
They want control.
And they envision themselves.
They want to be the indisputed, undisputed, I'm talking like President Bush.
They want to be the undisputed regional leader.
Obviously, Saudi has other views on that.
But it is incredibly complex.
I mean, the Iranian president just had a phone call with MBS over in Saudi to talk about what's going on in Gaza.
And you think, really?
Because I'm pretty sure one of your objectives here was to screw over that potential.
Peace treaty with Israel.
Yeah, of course.
You're talking about that.
This is from Daily Mail.
Iran's president, Saudi Crown Prince, hold their first ever phone call.
Iranian President Raisi and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salam Salman engaged in their inaugural phone conversation focused on the recent Hamas attack in Israel.
Raisi affirmed the need to end war crimes against Palestine, while a Saudi crown prince declared the kingdom is making all efforts possible to stop the ongoing escalation, reiterating Saudi Arabia's stance against targeting civilians.
In response to Iran's reported support for Hamas, U.S. President Joe Biden issued a stark warning stating, we made it clear to the Iranians, be careful.
He disclosed details of a new arms shipment to Israel, including interceptors for the Iron Dome defense system and ammunition for the Israeli Defense Force following an attack by Hamas militants that resulted in over 1,200 casualties.
So that phone call looks like Saudi is playing kind of like trying to keep everybody happy with the deal.
Hey, we were about to have a deal with Israel.
We were about to make them official, but we still can't lose our relationship with Hamas with Palestine.
And he's trying to kind of play both sides.
And I don't know how successful he can be doing that.
Yeah, I agree with you.
That strikes me as a very dangerous game.
And I think MBS is a very savvy individual.
But at some point, he's going to have to make a decision here.
I would argue that, look, the Saudi, you know, legitimately would like to have normalized relations with Israel, right?
It's just going forward, it makes good sense.
As would, I would say also the Gulf states, I would think, would feel the same way.
But why?
Why would Saudi or the Gulf states want to have a normalized relationship with Israel?
You know what?
I think they would put development, economic development, stability, which also promotes economic stability, ahead of, you know, kind of this constant regional conflict, which goes back to the Bronze Age.
So, yeah, which again is probably why it won't happen because it goes back to the Bronze Age.
We're starting to see more and more and more since MBS and the Jamal Khashoggi thing, horrible, horrible.
Oh, God, yeah.
Right?
And I mean, the 9-11, whatever the insight, but it would seem that MBS is trying to do a PR campaign, whether it's real or actually, you know, a facade, to sort of re-enlighten the world on what Saudi Arabia is, right?
So as you see Iran becoming more of a social international pariah, you're starting to see Saudi Arabia talk about these peace treaties, talk about arms deals with the United States.
You've seen what they're doing in the sports PR world.
They started the live golf thing.
You're starting to see them buy sports franchises.
MBS has basically come out and said, yeah, we are doing that to ingratiate ourselves into the real world.
We've seen the economic success of the UAE.
Saudi's like, all right, well, we've got oil money too.
Like, why be a pariah when we can be a player?
And there's also this, they need to be, well, we need them to be, but they want to be a counterbalance to Iran.
Of course.
And so at the end of the day, doesn't it behoove them to treat or enable Iran to be that social pariah and prop themselves up?
Look, look, we're not that bad.
Yeah, good use of the word behoove by the way.
I love it.
I love it.
I love the big word.
Wow.
So, Mike, with all the stuff that's happening with, you know, the prisoner trade, we throw in, you know, the Biden administration throws in $6 billion, which is ridiculous.
How much do you think of what's happening falls on the fact that we do have such a weak leader?
Like, because they know, you know, they're not going to really press them that hard.
But, I mean, think about it.
They know that we're Israel's number one ally, but you're still doing some stuff like that.
How much does that come into play when you're making decisions to go attack and do all this kind of?
I'm pretty sure they look at the big picture.
They're not just going to just kill.
There's something deeper than that, isn't it?
Well, yeah, I mean, I think it doesn't help when, as Pat said, you have sort of this back and forth in policy.
And, you know, and I think there's inconsistency in U.S. positions.
And I think also this soft approach on Iran, frankly, caused a lot of concern within the Saudis and also the Gulf states as to, you know, okay, where is the U.S. going here?
You know, what are they doing?
What's their intention?
And so I think, I don't know.
But as far as Iran's intentions, yeah, I think they just, it's a destabilization of the region.
They don't view a because I don't think they view themselves as coming out on top in a region that is increasingly peaceful and stable.
So they would see themselves being further and further isolated, I suspect, the regime again I'm talking about.
But it's, yeah.
But I think the problem is going to be, and Jason talked about it and saying, you know, hopefully in a couple of weeks or three or four weeks when casualties that people will remember what happened.
I'm not an optimistic person sometimes, and I don't think people are going to remember how this all kicked off.
Yeah.
They're going to move on.
And by the way, Adam, Adam, your number was how many billion Muslims in the world?
1.8 billion.
1.8 billion.
And you said 1% of the population are just hate, like, radicalized.
Some would say that's a low number.
I was going to say, Pat, remember the Bill Maher podcast?
25% is 10%.
Let's say 20 to 25 conservative.
That's a conservative number.
That is hundreds of millions of people that are just like, you're not going to change their mind.
It's just hate, get rid of them.
And so I was just trying to make a point that that number that you are beyond conservative.
By the way, let's play.
Okay, let's be positive.
No, we can fix this.
Okay.
All right.
So if you got hundreds of millions of people, tens of millions of people with that level of hate or belief, like for example, if you read the charter, if you read Hamas's charter, 1988 versus the 2017 charter, their original charter.
You know what it says?
If you can't pull it up, Rob, I don't know if you have it or not.
If you don't have it, I'll just read it to you.
This is when it came, their first one, Pat?
This is their charter.
This is what, like, their Bill of Rights.
Okay.
Let me read you their Bill of Rights.
Here's Hamas's Bill of Rights, the OG one, the 1988, which is what, 35 years ago.
What they were founded on, their founding.
Original founding council.
The complete destruction.
It's four themes.
Number one, the complete destruction of Israel as an essential condition for the liberation of Palestine and the establishment of a theocratic state based on Islamic law, Sharia law.
Number one.
Number two, the need for both unrestrained and unceasing holy war, jihad, to attain the above objective, point number one.
Number three, the deliberate disdain for and dismissal of any negotiated resolution or political settlement of Jewish and Muslim claims to the Holy Land.
Number four, the reinforcement of historical anti-Semitic tropes and calumnies married to sinister conspiracy theories.
Okay.
I mean, these are true believers that believe that.
Now, keep this in mind.
So that's what they believe in.
When you raise your kids, if you're a Bears fan, your kids are probably a Bears fan.
You're a Lakers fan, they're a Lakers fan.
You're this, most of the time, religion, beliefs is going to be the same, right?
Okay.
Now, this is what's interesting about this.
This is why I had the conversation is they're having more kids per woman than any other religion in the world.
Okay.
So whatever this number is, it ain't going away.
It's going to get bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger.
By 2050, you think right now, look, oh my God, look who's the Senate or Congress Muslim this.
Dee, 2050, it's going to be like 20, 30, 40, 50, hundreds involved right now in the last midterms election, 82 or 83 Muslim elected officials, city council, not necessarily Congress and Senate, but just different positions that they got.
From a competitor, myself, I respect how competitive they are to win the war of them being able to get everybody to be baptized in their way of living, in their way that they view the world should be, right?
The laws that they follow.
These are not people that are playing around.
So when you're saying numbers like that, this is not going to slow down anytime.
So what do you do?
Okay, you kill 20,000 Palestinians and Hamas.
All right.
Say you kill 50,000.
Say you kill 100,000.
And then what do you do?
Okay.
They got 2.1 million people living in Gaza, by the way.
Zero Israelis, 2.1 million Palestinians.
And to your point, about a million of those are young kids.
Young kids.
50% unemployment.
I think it's, I don't know if it's NATO or who gives them money.
UN or somebody gives them money, $720, $730 million.
And they say the money doesn't end up going to the people.
They keep it at the top and they go by weapons.
So this is kind of like, hey, you should kind of get rid of the blockade because you're not allowing business to come through here.
And Israel says, no, we're not removing a blockade.
Matter of fact, we're going to shut it down right now for water and food, but somehow, some way, they're getting food and shelter.
They're getting food and water to these guys.
Here's the point.
Number one, is this ever going to stop?
Okay.
You know, preventative.
So let's just say preventative, right?
You buy life insurance not because you're going to die tomorrow.
You buy it because what?
Guaranteed, you're eventually going to die.
Yeah, you have to do life.
You know, you get onto auto insurance, not because you're going to get into an accident tomorrow, because if it happens, you're protected, right?
What is insurance right now?
Okay.
My concern right now is it's easy to want to retaliate.
Trust me, there's different parties involved.
Palestinians, they're going to give their argument, which is what?
How come you're not sharing our side of the story?
Did you not see the father that's walking around with the daughter and the kid?
Dude, we see all of that.
And it's heartbreaking.
Okay.
Then you hear the story of Israeli who are Israeli Americans who are here versus Israelis who are in Israel, left and right.
To one side, let's destroy them all.
Let's get rid of them.
Let's make this all our land.
Let's make it.
You can only be Israeli to come back to the Holy Land and this is it, right?
The other side is like, well, no, let's kind of figure out a way to negotiate with them.
Then there's everybody else in the world that's not directly involved with it.
You're not Palestinian.
You're not a Jew.
Maybe you're a Christian living in America.
Maybe you're a Mormon living in whatever, Brazil.
I don't know what you're sitting there saying, look, this is.
Brazilian Mormon.
Believe it or not, I met a Cuban Baha'i, which is kind of weird.
Baha'i Cuban.
Baha'i Cuban.
Yeah, apparently there's like a Baha'i church in Cuba out of all places.
But the point, the question I'm asking is: okay, so first starts there, and then all of a sudden residual effects.
Boom.
Front door your house, your city, your community.
Now what?
How do you prevent from that happening, right?
That's the concern.
So I don't think any of this is going to be slowing down.
But do I think they're going to retaliate and they're going to do something?
Yeah, I think so.
How bad is it going to be?
I don't know.
20,000, 50,000, 100,000?
I don't know.
Whatever that number is, you're going to get retaliation from the other side.
You'll definitely get retaliation.
I think where it could go, one scenario is what's happened in the past.
Look, they retaliate and then numbers start to rise, meaning casualties.
And, you know, Israel will stop.
They typically will say, look, don't preach to us about morals, right?
Because look what happened over the weekend as a point.
But I think usually what would happen is the U.S. allies would have an off-the-radar, very serious conversation at a certain point when it starts to look like, look, this is, you know, we got to stop because you're risking fissures in the support that exists for Israel.
And at that point, typically, you know, that's when the Israeli government will back off and say, okay, we've done what we need to do.
And they'll draw a line and say we've accomplished a goal.
And frankly, again, you're not, you know, maybe I'm wrong, but you're not going to destroy Hamas, but they will get to a certain point.
That pressure will build, and they'll issue a statement that basically says, We have degraded, we have crushed them, we have done whatever.
However, they're going to have to frame it, right?
And then Hamas will do what they do, and they'll release their PR statements and say, Yeah, look, you couldn't do it.
Look at how many civilians you killed.
And by the way, we're still here.
And it'll just keep going like it's been going since the turn of the century.
I mean, yeah, yeah, you go back to whatever, World War I. Pat used a word that I think is very important: the residual effect.
Okay, so the last big dust up here was in 05, the disengagement, everything there.
There's been conflicts between no doubt.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
But it's about to get ugly right now, the residual effect.
So let's say it takes, you talked about unemployment.
A million of the two million are younger people.
So let's say there's a bunch of 10-year-olds right now, kids.
They're running the streets.
You'd have seen the video of like the literal kids beating up an Israeli kid because he was Israeli.
He was captured.
All right.
So you see this.
So you talk about the residual effect.
So, you know, what are the sports that these boys watch?
What are the big teams in Gaza?
There's no teams.
There's no sports.
There's no idols to look up to.
I'm not looking up to Michael Jordan, let's say, or Ronaldo or Messi or Gretzky, whoever it is, who they look up to are these freedom fighters.
We call them terrorists, but they call them freedom fighters.
Well, sure, they're martyrs in their own community.
They might, of course.
Yeah, and there's generational hate.
It just gets passed along because, yeah, I mean, the trauma.
And imagine kids.
Again, we have to be more, I don't want to say sophisticated because I'm not sophisticated, but you have to be more complicated in your thinking.
And we're not, right?
We tend not to, particularly here in the States where you got three minutes to cover a news story and everything's superficial.
But you can have real empathy for a five or six or seven or eight-year-old or a teenager living in Gaza, right?
And the terrible conditions, and there doesn't seem to be, where is the future?
Where is it going to lead?
How do I make my life better?
You can have those thoughts while still being absolutely disgusted, right?
And it's some core of your being saying, no, we've got to have some revenge for the horrible things that Hamas does, right?
And again, putting their own people at risk because that's how they survive.
That's how Hamas keeps going.
But, you know, typically we don't do that.
Typically, we don't have really layered conversations.
But you can have two competing thoughts in your head at the same time.
But at the end of the day, this is sort of the quagmire that everything comes down to: is that everything comes down to polarity, right?
Like, you know, the sun and the moon, right?
Man and woman.
It's complete opposite.
You know, I think it was MLK that famously said, you don't fight darkness or hate with more hate.
You do it with love.
You do it with sunshine.
All that fun stuff.
But even if you do a PR campaign of love, like Pat pointed out, their founding principles are your annihilation.
So how do you love someone and hey, listen, we can get along.
We can do this.
They're just like, yeah, I still want to kill you.
Yeah, no, their point of view from Hamas' point of view, Hezbollah's point of view, is if you accommodate Israel, like a citizen of, or not a citizen, but a resident of Gaza, you accommodate Israel or you talk about it, then you're a traitor to Islam.
Right.
That's just the fact of the matter in terms of how they.
So yeah, the idea that you're going to hug your enemy to death in response to something that they've just done, it's not going to work.
Pat, you were shaking your head as I said that.
What was it that you were saying?
Yeah, you know, like you got kids, let's just say.
Okay.
Somebody, God forbid, does something to your kid, okay?
Or somebody, your son is 14 years old.
He's walking, you guys go into a restaurant together with you, your wife, your two kids, and somebody kills you in front of him at 14 years old.
God forbid.
Let me tell you.
I mean, that's not going to leave that kid.
Never.
Okay.
So maybe he finds Jesus and he learns to forgive.
Okay.
Now let's take 100 kids who have experienced that.
Say 60 of them are like, look, God, I'm going to forgive the man and move on.
You see these videos and they're viral videos where the person who killed the person's kid comes and hugs him.
It's like, oh, my God.
Okay, great.
But 40 of them, I'm not going to be like that, bro.
Nope.
Okay.
Why do you think revenge videos do movies do so?
Well, freaking, what's the, not Daniel Day-Lewis?
What's the other guy that keeps doing revenge movies?
Taking two, taking eight, taking 40.
What is that?
What's the guy's name?
Liam Nason.
How many take-ins do we need to do?
You know what it tells you?
It tells you freaking the world loves revenge movies because they want to seek vengeance.
Why do they keep making these movies?
Because we relate.
The one movie that the old one, Mel Gibson did, where the bad guy walks into the apartment and his son starts peeing and he looks at his, I don't know if you remember that scene.
He looks at his son.
His son is peeing.
He looks at the guy.
He realizes it's the killer.
And then he changes the behavior to get a hold of this guy.
What is it called?
Ransom.
Ransom.
It's the movie.
Ransom.
Good for you.
Let's go eat.
I'm a gladiator, right?
My name is Maximus.
That's good.
We have my revenge.
Glad to snipe in the night.
Man on fire.
You can really memorize that.
Some of the greatest movies of all time are revenge.
So what does this mean?
This ain't never stopping.
Nope.
It is never.
By the way, can I interrupt and just say we also can't leave out Charles Bronson and Deathwish.
You can.
Fair enough.
Charles now.
Fair enough for that.
Our apologies to the Charles Bronson.
We apologize on behalf of the entire podcast.
But the point is, this ain't never going to stop.
So the only thing you can do, it's like, listen, there's nothing you can do about dying.
What you could do is delay when you're going to die.
Okay.
So, okay.
If you eat ice cream every day, smoke two packs of cigarettes a day, you drink every day, you know, you're increasing the chance of dying earlier.
If you got blood pressure, you got all this other stuff you're dealing with.
Okay.
And if you take care of your health, you exercise, you eat a good diet, you know, you're extending how long you could live.
Okay.
And if your job's not a risky thing.
But no matter what, this ain't going away.
Nope.
So everything.
So then what becomes a solution?
Here's the only solution I think about.
Honestly, the only solution I think about is the following.
If you really unpack this.
What is the only solution?
There's only one solution.
Okay.
Is hardcore putting the fear into your enemy, earning respect, and being gentle where you don't have to raise your voice.
If they fear you, if they respect you, and you set the tone of who you are, and you're not an asshole about it, then you're kind of like, all right, cool.
We know you got power.
We know if you cross the line with you, you can annihilate us.
But we like you, respectful.
Let's figure out a way to coexist, but we can't mess with you, right?
This is leading with strength.
This isn't anything new that we're talking about, right?
There's leaders that led the way and created peace in a society or in a nation or a country or a city or region by having a strong military.
You know, Idaho, but why do people move to Idaho?
Because Idaho leads, I think, one of the top, what do you call it, a license to carry.
Everybody's got it down, whatever the numbers is.
Because what?
Crime is low.
I dare you.
You go to a restaurant, if there's 100 people there, probably 50 of them have a gun with that.
Don't be stupid.
Nobody's jacking the stinker gas station because somebody's carrier.
Yeah, and then you go to Chicago, and guess what?
You're in a restaurant with 100 people in there.
The 20 people that have guns, they just got out of jail and they got it illegally.
And guess what?
They can ruin your life.
So which place would you rather live?
So I think the only way this gets me more thinking about, again, where we live.
You see the iron dome.
You're like, huh, what a great thing.
By the way, you know how much they spent on the iron dome?
$210 million.
That's all it was.
Yeah.
It's crazy.
Crazy, right?
$210 million.
Sick.
I think it was 2006, 2007, the whole thing with the, you know, Hezbollah's coming from Lebanon.
They're like, okay, we got to build an iron dome.
U.S. even helped it.
And I even searched the other.
Rob, check to see how many iron domes we have in America.
It says two, but I don't know if we have iron domes in America.
I've got one over my compound.
Do you?
In Idaho, yeah.
Wow.
Wow.
You see, the U.S. military has two iron dome batteries that were supplied in late 2020.
I don't know if we have iron domes.
I mean, we have laser dudes.
We're lasers.
Maybe we should use our diplomatic and friendly relationship with Israel to help us figure out what they're doing.
Did you say we have lasers?
You said we have lasers.
We 100% of the time.
If we have lasers, how the hell couldn't we laser down a freaking balloon for hours?
Don't be good at that.
We have lasers.
Pat, we have to let it go through to get free.
We have lasers.
We actually do have lasers, but I'm sure we have lasers, but they're freaking heads.
Can I ask you a question, Mike?
So I mentioned, you got the reference, right?
What movie is this?
I want sharks with freaking lasers.
That's Austin Powers.
Okay, good.
Before we shift gears, can I just go ahead and follow up?
Because I'm staying on this topic.
Pat, you bring up a good point with how you solve this.
So the unemployment thing, is it 50%?
It's 50% in Gaza.
Look, I think, especially.
And by the way, some say that's a low number.
So, you know, what's the unemployment rate in the United States right now?
3.5%.
You know, how are we going to get down to 3%?
Oh, my God, during COVID, it went up to 20%, whatever it was.
We have no idea what it's like to wake up and literally, there it is, 3.8%, have no job, no career, no skill set.
You pray, you're with your family, respect.
But, you know, don't discount, not that you guys are, don't discount the importance of work and earning and what it does for giving you a purpose and giving you meaning.
And also the concept of making yourself better.
That's a human thing.
100%.
And it's so essential to having purpose.
So, you know, what's the GDP of Gaza?
What do they produce?
I don't know.
But if I'm them, you know, talk about selling the dream, selling hope.
You know, you can look at a little country in the Middle East like the UAE, Dubai, everything that goes on there.
Where were they 50 years ago?
A piece of sand.
So when you can give hope to people and say, you don't have to be 50% unemployment.
You don't have to be the purveyor of terrorism.
You don't have to just think about death and destruction and retribution your whole life.
There's a better plan out there because what you're doing is a road to nowhere.
So they do have a blueprint and a template with the UAE small Gulf states, whether it's Kuwait, whatever, and say, like, when's the last time you heard about Kuwait attacking anything?
Obviously, the first desert storm, but there's a blueprint and there's kids.
They would tell you, Palestinians would tell you, Gaza would tell you, this is the fault of the Israeli folks.
This is the fault of the blockade.
This is the fault of the land, water, air blockade that you guys have created and the reason why we can't have any kind of business being done here.
If it wasn't for you guys, if it wasn't for Israel, this wouldn't happen.
So now, Israel's mindset, some people are saying, hey, you got 22 Arab nations.
Why don't you go to one of them?
Choose to go to one of the Arab nations.
Can you pull up the Arab Nation list, Rob?
Algeria, Bahrain, you know, Djibouti, your favorite Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Morocco, Oman, Palestine, you know, Qatar, go to one of these.
Why don't you go to one of these Arab nations?
So Israel, some folks in Israel wanted to be just go to complete different.
But I tell you, if I'm a president right now, okay, and imagine that $100 billion we spent on Ukraine, okay?
Let's take that $100 billion.
Bring everybody in that's military folks and make a list of all the threats, okay, one by one by one by one, in every possible way, make the investment to getting everything done.
The southern border, done.
Above it, whatever kind of protection we give, done.
Whatever other things we can do to create an iron dome above the most important places that we have in our country, whatever that is, if it's the financial capital of the world in New York, boom.
Do it.
If it's, you know, the Pentagon White House, boom.
If it's the ports we got to protect in Long Beach, Jacksonville, you know, Texas, you know, even boom, protect the ports.
Protect the port that we have.
We have a port in New York around that area.
Boom, protect it.
Everything becomes, dude, play defense, invest, stack yourself up with your defense where you're so protected, and then tell everybody what we just did and how we're protected.
And don't compromise anybody and everybody.
The fact that both the left and the right, can you imagine how stupid this is to be more excited about winning an election as a Democrat to compromise your border?
It is more important for a Democrat to win an election than to compromise the protection of your border, acting like you care about your people to the point where even Democrats in New York are turning around saying, we can't afford to do this.
Chicago, we can't afford to do this.
Get them out of our gym.
People in Texas, we can't afford to do this.
Arizona, we can't afford to do this.
California, we can't afford to do this.
No, no, it's okay.
As long as we do this, we can keep winning elections.
Is it your political party over your country?
Number one, if somebody ran right now in 2024, you know what will be a big campaign right now?
What?
Like if the debate that's coming up right now, I'm sure one of them is going to hit this message.
But my entire campaign would be around strengthening the military so we don't have to go to war and nobody can melt.
I would strengthen the military.
The borders all of that stronger, especially today at a time like this.
Trump hit that message in 2016 when he ran on that.
And guess what happened?
You know what a lot of people wanted?
That's exactly what they wanted.
They wanted the wall.
They wanted protection.
They wanted to be protected from some of these things.
But even more today than before, because 70,000 people from 2021 to 2023 came here who are from Syria, who are from Afghanistan, who are from Iraq.
Everywhere.
Yemen.
What are we talking about?
And by the way, if you give, and you mentioned this, Pat, if you give 100 million that we were supposed to give to Ukraine, 100 billion, you know what's going to happen?
Zelensky is going to be on the first flight and he's going to be like, you bought iron what?
That's for me.
That we can't take.
You know what Zelensky would do?
He's going to have a heart attack.
He's fighting.
No, I'm sorry.
That was your Ukrainian.
That was my Ukraine.
He's like, you give Ireland on for what?
That's for my country.
He would go back to being a phenomenal comedian.
That's exactly.
Yeah, no, that's hilarious.
My passion.
So I touched on it with Jason about Khaled Michal's message calling for tomorrow to be a terror day.
Adam did a very, very conservative number, 1%.
We actually figured it's probably 20%.
So you have the 250 million Muslims that actually really, really would do harm to us because they actually hate us.
Customs and Border Patrol, Pat mentioned 1.5 million illegals have come in here.
70,000 that are, what was it, Pat?
Special interest, illegal aliens.
So Mike, and not forget the 200 FBI terror watch list folk that we caught.
Mike, how.
Well, you also have, don't forget, you also have all the gotaways.
So we have no idea how many other special interest aliens.
Gotcha.
So Mike, who knows, right?
What do you think, Mike?
And not to be, we're not fear-mongering.
We're just being optimistic, bro.
Like, I don't want to have our pants down like, oh, we don't know what they'll happen.
How concerned are you?
What are the odds, Mike, that there are obviously a shitload of them here?
You have people like the Michelle Khaled guys saying, guys, we need to attack.
How concerned should we be as America for something like that going down here?
Well, you should always be concerned if you don't have a secure border, right?
I mean, you should always be aware of the fact that if we're not controlling and securing the border, which doesn't make you a racist or anti-immigrant, every other nation does it.
We just happen to be the ones that apologize for it for some reason or don't actually do it.
Then, yeah, the problem is then you don't know where you are on the alert scale.
So this call for resistance and however else they want to phrase it, it's a problem because as Pat said, we've had over the past two years, we've had a ridiculous number of encounters with individuals from Lebanon, from Yemen, from Syria, from Afghanistan, from Pakistan coming over.
And yeah, fine.
Some of them are looking for a better life.
That goes without saying, but we don't know.
And the Biden administration can't tell you.
There's some estimates that maybe there's one and a half million gotaways during the Biden administration, right?
But that's a complete guess in a sense.
They're extrapolating on the data that they've collected over the years.
So they're making some assumptions.
But yeah, so I think, and look, every time there's an escalation over in the Middle East, local, state, federal, and the intel community, everybody gathers together and says, okay, now what's going to happen?
You know, what if?
And where's that attack going to come from?
And what's the problem?
And so that game goes on all the time.
They're always tabletopping exercises.
But the problem is that we don't have this border at this point.
Again, I hate to.
What do you think is, Mike?
Is it just, is it, I mean, we're not stupid.
It's not because they're humanitarians, Mike, and they give a damn.
Maorcas is just sitting there smiling in Congress.
He doesn't give a shit.
Is it on purpose?
Like, are they trying to destroy us from within?
Because they can't deny the numbers that we just talked about, Mikey.
They're here.
These people are here.
I don't think it's – I mean, again, I don't think they're trying to destroy us from within or anything like that.
I'm not necessarily, you know, I don't usually go that route, but I think that there is sort of a self-righteous sense among a sector of the Dem party that says, you know, well, if we do talk about secure borders, it is racist, and we're better than that.
And they're not smart enough to understand.
Look, you could fix actually and have a fair immigration policy, and you could also have a secure border.
One doesn't discount the other.
But you cannot fix the immigration system until you have a secure border.
It's not going to work this time, though, Mike.
Because I'll tell you, I fell for it the first time.
I'm guilty.
To Trump, the MAGA, build the wall, make Mexico pay for it.
The media, oh, he's racist.
That's what's going on.
It's like we've seen the results of actually not implementing a more secure border.
We've seen the results of not having the wall.
We've seen the results of just wide open borders.
And now Biden's building some wall.
Exactly.
Exactly.
They laid down.
What we were told, and this is the whole problem, is like people make mistakes, but you don't double down on your mistake.
You say, hey, look, I probably should have looked into this more.
Like, whatever.
This is eight years ago, whatever the number was.
But the point is, the wall's racist.
The wall's medieval.
This is a medieval.
This is a medieval solution to a modern day problem, though.
Oh, my God, he thinks all Mexicans are rapists and drug dealers.
How many times did they play that?
But here's the reality.
At the very least, a wall will help secure the border.
Do we want to start helping to secure the border or do nothing?
And I think most Americans, if you just sort of frame it that way, they're like, yeah, you know, I don't, you know, I'm not a fan of Trump, let's say, but yeah, I'm cool with a wall.
I had this conversation with somebody who will remain nameless just a day and a half ago where we were having this conversation about the wall along the southern border.
And they said, well, look, it didn't do any good in Israel.
High-tech, you know, and all you can do is sit and stare at somebody like that.
I'm sorry, but do you imagine that that's what we're talking about here?
That level of breach.
I'm sorry.
You know, as we talk about these hordes of Latin American people coming in, yeah, migrant workers for the most part to work.
Yeah, but for the most part.
Whereas you have a Hamas literally killing people.
So the equivocation there is insane.
Yeah, well, I mean, Mike, I've seen a lot of videos.
Thank God to Elon Musk because that we can see it, that there's Americans recording people from China, people from the Middle East.
Nobody speaks English.
You're like, where are you going?
Where are you from?
They can't even, zero English and they're coming in here and they're young age men with no kids.
It's like, what are you?
They like have a fake Mexican mustache on and just like their brother.
They're just from Afghanistan.
But keep this brother.
They speak no Spanish.
Robert.
Where's this?
Oh, yeah, you go.
Just B-roll footage of people crossing the border illegally into the United States.
What do you think about it?
So Vivek Ramaswani said something.
He said, if I was a president, one of the first things I would do, one of the first.
Is that a dog?
You remember?
Is that a dog?
And this doesn't help, real quick, Ven.
This doesn't help that, you know, Governor Abbott in Texas, he tried to put up these floats.
Yeah.
You know what that was?
These floaties?
Yeah.
And then, you know, when you reported, the federal government said, no, you can't even have that on the Rio Grande River.
When the states tried to do something about this, they're like, yeah, sorry, buddy.
I don't play this whole deal.
Yeah.
No, they tried to say, look, this is, you know, this is the free and fair passage on waterways act.
You know, you're breaching that with putting out these barriers.
And again, it's true that we have a flawed immigration system, right?
And it's true that the country was built on immigration.
Oh, fine.
You know, none of that's in question.
But you can have a controlled and secure border like all the other nations I've been to have.
And I don't see anybody.
I mean, try moving into Mexico illegally and getting a work permit and benefits.
Mike, what do you think about that?
It's not going to happen.
Vivek Ramaswani said one of the first things that he would, but I'm sorry, I'm still laughing because we saw the dog go over.
I looked at Pelleg and the dog.
He's like, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Like, oh, no, the dog made it.
But anyway, Vivek said one of the first things he would do, Mike, was put, because we have a bunch of people, a bunch of reservists, bunch of soldiers that are just here.
We're not like actively in a crazy war.
He would set up, you know, military at the border.
Like, if we're going to get serious, wall, okay, I get it, build it, but put up the military to guard it, protect it, and just like, enough's enough.
I know, Adam, we deal with people coming in tunnels and shit, but if we want to get serious, guess what?
Let's get the military involved and let's not like, you'll know not to just show up and like, what, caravans of 3,000, 5,000, 6,000 people.
It's like we have, like, enough is enough.
Well, I think part of it is, I think there's more layers to that.
And I don't necessarily agree with Vivek about, you know, let's, let's post the military down on the border.
Yeah, if we, if suddenly, you know, the alert, you know, goes up and we've got a problem.
But in the case that we've got, part of the problem is administration policy, right?
And people aren't stupid overseas.
They understand when it's an open situation.
They're basically being invited to come in, right?
Despite the fact that then they said, no, no, we told people, don't show up.
Well, no, all their rhetoric during the campaign, all their talk, and all their criticism of Trump's policies, all of that helped contribute to the fact that you had this migration, this large inflow.
And you can do that along with then creating a more secure border through physical barriers, through surveillance, through detection, through ground.
There's things you can be doing without saying we're going to send the military down there and post up.
You can beef up CBP, right?
And this would drive the squad on Capitol Hill crazy, but you could beef up ICE and CBP.
What's CBP?
Customs and border protection.
Okay, got it.
So we have elements in place that can handle this problem if you allow them to do their job, right?
And if you create the necessary infrastructure.
You've got to empower them.
You've got to empower them.
You're not doing it.
That's the word.
They're not feeling empowered.
They're feeling like they're crippled, like they can't do their job.
By the way, I want to read two stories that may be one of the stories you're hearing a lot of Republicans coming out talking about the $6 billion freeze, all this stuff.
But I want to read the story.
How the Al-Aqsa Mosque became a flashpoint in the Israeli-Palestine conflict.
This is an NPR story that came out a couple of years ago.
Recent attacks by Hamas against Israel, resulting in casualties on both sides, were partly triggered by Israeli raids around the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem.
This area has become a flashpoint due to long-standing Palestinian grievances, decades of military occupation, and a decade and a half of siege in Gaza Strip, which has left millions of Palestinians living in the difficult conditions.
According to Yosef Manoyar, a senior fellow at the Arab Center, Washington, D.C., in recent years and months, the escalation of violence against Palestinians has been noted by the United Nations and governments throughout the region who've been warning that this escalation of Israeli violence against Palestinians is going to lead to an explosion in this region.
So I don't know if you know this story.
I don't know if you're aware of the story.
What are your thoughts about this?
Yeah, the history of Palestine, the history of the area, right?
Again, there's a certain cynicism in the consistency.
And it's depressing when you think about the consistency of all this.
I mean, you can go all the way back to, you know, look, the Israelites, right?
I mean, again, not to get deep in history, but the Israelites controlled Palestine, you know, back, you go to wherever, the Iron Age.
The Romans, the Romans took over, and there was a Jewish revolt.
You know, I'm jumping period to period, but I guess the point that when you started reading that, I thought of the Romans putting down the Jewish revolt, and one of the things they did was they destroyed the Jewish temple, which was incredibly important to the Jewish population there at the time.
It's always been a flashpoint.
So whether you're talking about the mosque or you're talking, there are certain not oversimplified, there's certain very few points that surface all the time in this conflict, right?
And so I think part of it is I think people put their, they just shrug and say, it's never going to solve itself.
So I was thinking about what you were saying about what's the end game, or how do you deal with it?
And I think that's the question that has to be asked because we always get, we get locked into these moments.
We get locked into the Palestinians and their concern over the mosque.
We get locked in over the issue of Jerusalem and is it open?
There are these, I don't know what has to happen to broaden our approach to say at some point we have to solve this because everybody sitting here agrees two million people in a space that's maybe a fourth the size of London is not right, right?
So we have at some point there's got to be a sea change that says somehow you've got to create something different.
If we keep doing this, because I guarantee you, they're going to finish this operation, they're going to get vilified, the Israelis, I mean, and we're going to go right back to the status quo.
Oh, thanks very much.
Yeah, I've got something here.
If you would have drank the vault in the story.
Yeah, that's what I might.
We got a bunch of them.
We have a bunch of them.
Rob, do me a favor.
Just pull up the map of the Middle East.
Should have had the vault.
Pull up a map of the Middle East.
But, you know, by the way, this story, any mosque that gets blown up, I'm not happy about this.
Any church that gets blown up, there's certain things that I believe are opposite.
So this is, you're kind of almost in Southeast Asia, so just go punch in on the Middle East.
So, okay, so go back out.
So this, go punch out just a little bit.
So this is what we would call the Middle East.
Yeah.
To your left, you have Egypt.
You've got Syria.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Okay, so this is the Arab world, let's say.
Now, if you go all the way in, tiny, tiny, tiny, you'll find little, old, little, old Israel.
Okay.
I feel like I'm familiar back in middle school.
There you go.
But I think it's important.
I love you.
So there's Israel right there.
To the southern left is the Sinai Peninsula, which they gave back to Egypt after the war.
Okay, the Golan Heights, which has been an area of discrepancy.
So why am I doing all this?
You have Israel right there.
Now punch all the way back out.
So we're talking about a little tiny fraction of the Middle East where it's pales in comparison to the Arab world.
All right, what's my point?
So you have 15 million Jews living in this little tiny, tiny tiny little area.
You have 2 million Gazans, Palestinians living in this little area.
You have this entire Middle Eastern world that empathizes and sympathizes for the most part with Gaza.
First question.
What are you going to do with these 15 million Jews if you do want to expel them?
Go there.
Go there.
You're going to expel these Jews.
Where are they going?
Okay, they fled to Israel.
Why?
Because they were persecuted in Europe, Germany, Poland, Auschwitz.
Go there.
Russia, everything that happened there, whether they were in Morocco, whether they were in Libya, because there's called Sephardic Jews that are from the Middle East, and there's called Ashkenazi Jews that essentially were from Europe.
But how did they end up in Europe?
It's because they were expelled from, you called it, the homeland.
And, you know, Jews have been fighting wars since the kingdom of Judea and your people, the Assyrians and the Babylonians and the Phoenicians and everything.
But this has always been sort of the Jewish homeland.
And it's like you said, the Romans and all this.
So my question is this.
What's easier to do?
If we were just going to make a deal and had zero motion in it, you're going to remove these 15 million people somehow.
And where are they going?
There's only one Jewish homeland, one Jewish state in the world.
Where are they going?
Or you have 2 million people in Gaza living under dire conditions and you have an entire Arab world that what won't take them in?
Right.
Even Egypt.
I was going to say the Arab world has, you always have to ask that question.
What have they done to actually benefit or help the Palestinian cause?
So you can hate on Israel.
You can call them an apartheid state.
You could do all that.
But okay, how are you helping Gaza?
So you send them money to create more war.
How do you empower these people?
How do you help these people?
How do you have humanitarian aid and take these people in so it's not just one constant cycle of war?
Yeah.
That's all I'm saying here is that there's so much Arab land, respect.
There's this tiny little thing called Israel, yet they're the problem.
It doesn't add up.
Well, I mean, you go back, what, 30s, 40s, when they were proposing a two-state solution, and every Arab nation that was there at the time voted against it.
Said, no, not going to happen.
The Jewish population was basically behind it saying, yeah, let's do the two-state solution.
But, you know, so we've been fighting this.
We're seeing the same things over and over again for a long time.
So you're right.
I mean, those are the, but I think those are the sort of questions that have to be asked rather than necessarily, okay, well, how long is this operation going to last this time around, right?
Because there'll be another one.
Right.
So what are the other options?
Other than let's kill each other.
It's like the pandemic.
We're going to get another pandemic, right?
So maybe it would have been smart to demand transparency from China so that we know how to prevent or at least mitigate the next pandemic.
But no, we don't do it.
You know, we always get stuck in the small details.
And not that, again, not that this conflict is a small detail, but you know what I mean.
And in terms of we got to solve a bigger problem here.
And I think what happens oftentimes is people say, well, it's always been like this.
So geez, we're never going to come up with a solution.
And probably won't.
I think the only solution is a strong defense and strong offense.
If you got that in place where the other person knows not to mess with you, great.
You know, we had a kid in school, like, you know, in school, the first time somebody tries to bully you and you hit back and then everybody in school sees it and like, you know what?
I'm probably not going to fight Vinny moving forward.
It's just simple as that.
I'm good.
I'm not going to fight the guy anymore.
There needs to be a little bit of that.
But let me read this story about Trump.
Trump slams Netanyahu as not prepared for Hamas attack.
Trump strongly criticized Netanyahu, asserting that Israel was not prepared for the Hamas attack.
He stated he was not prepared and Israel was not prepared.
And under Trump, they wouldn't have had to, they wouldn't have had to be prepared.
He also questioned who would have thought their intelligence would have been able to pick this up.
He continued.
He revealed this disappointment, Netanyahu during his presidency, citing a pivotal moment when Israel backed out of a plan to kill General Soleimani, head of Iran's Qudz force.
And Trump disclosed we had everything all set to go.
And the night before it happened, I got a call that Israel will not be participating in the attack.
He emphasized, I'll never forget that Bibi Netanyahu let us down.
So, you know, the most unpredictable things comes out, you know, when he's, how do you process this statement here?
Yeah.
Well, how do you process the fact that we're going to end up with Biden and Trump again as our presidential candidates?
That's pay-per-view.
Wow, that's actually really smart.
I need to figure out a way to revenue this.
$99.
Look, I'm at a point where I actually praise Trump on what he's right on, but I'll call Trump out on what I think he's wrong on.
There's certain people that are on one side or the other, and that's how you operate with Trump.
But there's something called multilateralism, and there's something called unilateralism.
I mean, the definition of unilateralism is I alone can fix it.
You're going to fix the world?
I'll end Russia war one day.
I hope you do, buddy.
But an ally like Bibi, who, believe me, was no friend to the Obama administration and Biden, was no friend to Bibi.
But this is where the whole personal attacks.
And if you're not loyal to him, this is where it kind of falls on deaf ears where it's like, bro, like, this ain't about you and Netanyahu, or like you alone can fix it.
The one thing we need in this world, in this crazy world with North Korea, Iran, Russia, China, are alliances.
Now, you want to push away Israel?
Not that they would.
America is not the sitting president, although Roseanne thinks he's still the commander.
Still the chief commander, whatever.
You know, Europe, you want to drive them away, drive a wedge with them?
To me, it's the personal, the name-calling, the vindictiveness is sort of a lot of.
That's the part of Trump that some people are just like, ah, that's why he lost the last time.
That's why he lost the last time.
People were tired of the chaos and they were tired of the noise, despite whether they might have liked the policy.
So yeah, but that's the thing.
That was a policy.
But most people don't vote for policies.
Quite frankly, they're not smart enough to vote for policies.
It's pretty complicated.
In this situation, you know what?
Just silence.
You don't have to say anything.
You don't need to say anything in this situation.
They're dealing with what they're dealing with.
The last thing I want is somebody going, hey, if it was me, nobody wants to hear that.
Trump is an opportunist and he's a brilliant marketer and he's going to take a look at the people.
He's like, all that thing says, you know, by the way, Pat, if Trump was here with this whole conversation, you guys are talking about Gaza and the Palestinians, you know, he would say, why don't we just take them, bring them to Canada, give them a big piece of Canada?
Because you think about it, Canada's not doing shit.
He's like, bring him to Canada, give him a chunk of cannon, AJ.
Why not?
He would have a lot of canon.
He doesn't do shit.
He would.
He said, hey, guys, Woodward, get it up.
By the way, I just read your lives.
Trump at 21 years old.
Okay.
If he was in the army, you would say, hey, man, you know, in high school, Adam scored 62 points in a game.
He would say, 62 points.
If I played against him, I would have scored 101 points.
That's it.
He's Uncle Rico from Napoleon Dynamite.
I was like, how much do you want to make a bet?
I'll throw the ball to him.
Exactly.
That's Donald Trump.
It's Uncle Rico.
Guy from Dirk Digler, Boogeynights.
So what do you bench?
What do you bench?
I bench 185.
What do you squat?
I squat about 225.
How about you?
230.
Oh, my God.
He's always got one up here.
That is so.
And I get it.
He's trying to stay relevant, and he feels like he was cheating.
But by the way, let me give my part that I relate to him.
The book of the month we have this month is four agreements.
I love that.
You know what the four agreements are?
Dave Marez?
Yeah.
What's the book about, though?
It's about keep your word.
Keeping your...
Keeping your word.
Don't like holding grudges with people.
It's four very simple things.
I have it on my phone.
Yeah, it's phenomenal.
Oh, sorry.
Don Miguel Ruiz.
Yeah.
So what are the four agreements?
One of them is keep your word.
The other one is if you can.
Never self-talk negative about yourself or other people.
Always speak yourself.
Don't take anything personal.
Be impeccable with your word.
Don't make assumptions.
Always do your best, right?
Easy, easy.
You know, for the last 14 years, if I've worked with anybody and I go and look the last 20-some years, okay?
And I look at where conflicts has been in my, for me personally, with relationships I've had, with direct reports of people that get paid very well to do their job.
You know what's the number one thing?
90% of the conflicts, a person didn't keep their word.
Okay.
So now somebody could say, who gives people such a stickler, man?
Let it go.
People are not perfect.
Totally get it.
That's the wiring.
Okay.
That's the wiring.
I am this guy.
I've been like this for 44 years.
I'm my father's son.
My father, God forbid, if you told him a month ago, the next time you come, you're going to bring him a pottle of Tope Chico.
You show up without Topachico.
Do you know what he's going to do to you all night at dinner?
Why did you bring him?
He can never keep his word.
No, no.
Vinny never.
I asked him for one thing.
I asked him for one thing.
One thing.
All this stuff I do for him, for one thing, he doesn't bring me Topachico.
You know who Trump is?
Netanyahu didn't bring him Topachico.
That's it.
He said, let's go do Ghassam Soleimani.
By the way, I had another guy.
The day before we started a company, it was a guy that said, hey, Pat, you and I are going together.
We're going to run this company to get insurance company.
You know what he does?
The night before we're about to start it, he backs out.
At my wedding, he's telling everybody we're starting a company.
At my wedding, he was one of my groomsmen.
And all of a sudden, now I'm backing out because, you know, I'm going to make sure you don't get sued.
He was afraid.
Wow.
He was worried.
Of course we're going to get sued.
You're becoming a direct competitor.
And you got to see what we can do from there.
Let's roll, right?
And then, boom, we have to do what we did.
But the moral of the story is: I understand what he's saying.
I get the fact that if behind closed doors, you said you're going to be part of this Ghassam Soleimani, so I'm not the only guy that takes it.
But this is the part where you got to respect this guy.
Can you bring up the one scene, Rob, with Trump sitting there with Schumer and Pelosi?
These are the kind of things that I value.
I love them.
This is what I respect.
I mean, you can say whatever you want.
I respect brass balls when he says, you don't want to take the blame, I'll take the blame.
I'll shut down the problem.
I'll take the blame.
Can you find this clip, Rob?
It's one of the best clips out there for leadership because he brought the media, and in front of media, he says, I so don't give a shit about you writing negative things about me that I'm going to tell these two people that are chickens, they're worried that they're going to write about them.
I'm going to say I shut it down.
And then the rest of the world's like, holy shit, this guy actually pulled it off.
And he did have the whole press corps on the ship.
So that's the part where I understand.
Like, for me, I'm saying, I said, look, okay, this is the one.
If you can make the, how big is this thing, by the way?
How many minutes is it?
Okay, so go on the minutes where you see.
If you go on the graph, no, no, no.
Go on the graph on the time right there.
You see where the tension site records?
Click right there.
Yeah, click right there and press play.
Oh, here we go.
Volumes.
So let's see if we can find it on Twitter.
It is such a powerful clip.
Press play.
Good as that, if not better.
So we've done a lot of work on the wall.
A lot of wall is built.
A lot of people don't know that.
A lot of wall is renovated.
We have walls that were in very bad condition that are now in A1 tip-top shape.
And frankly, some wall has been reinforced by our military.
Our military has done a fantastic job.
So the wall will get built.
But we may not have an agreement today.
We probably won't.
But we have an agreement on other things that are really good.
Nancy, would you like to say something?
Well, thank you, Mr. President, for the opportunity to meet with you so that we can work together in a bipartisan way to meet the needs of the American people.
I think the American people recognize that we must keep government open, that a shutdown is not worth anything.
And that we should not have to go.
The street's about 20 seconds away.
Watch, it's coming.
She's drunk, Pat.
You have the White House.
That's going to be cool.
You have the Senate.
You have the House of Representatives.
You have the votes.
You should pass the state.
No, we don't have the votes, Nancy, because in the Senate we need 60 votes.
And we don't have it.
You could bring it up right now.
Yeah, but I can't, excuse me.
But I can't get it passed in the House if it's not going to pass in the Senate.
I don't want to waste time.
Well, the fact is, you can get it started that way.
The House we can get passed very easily.
And we do.
But the problem is the Senate, because we need 10 Democrats to vote.
No, no, no.
That's not the point, Mr. Pennsylvania.
Look at Mike Pence.
The point is that there are equities to be weighed.
And we're here to take this conversation in a prayerful way.
So I don't think we should have a debate in front of the Speaker.
He doesn't care.
But the fact is, this guy is going to be a little bit more.
The entire media come in and set the tone.
I love this.
Nobody said that.
Which administration would do this?
We would do it immediately.
We would get it passed very easily in the House.
We would get it.
Nancy, I'd have it passed in two seconds.
It doesn't matter, though, because we can't get it passed in the Senate because we need 10 Democrat votes.
That's what I'm saying.
Again, let us have our conversation and then we'll meet with the press again.
Let us have the conversation.
Then we'll meet with the press.
We do.
Fast forward about 20 seconds if you can do that.
He says the ownership.
Fast forward.
Because I found the clip where he says it, because it's when him and Schumer are going at it.
Schumer is looking so I love him.
He's about to have a heart attack.
Well, I found a shorter clip.
Tony looks like Mr. Burns.
I found a shorter clip.
But it's important.
Chuck, did you want to say something?
Here's what I want to say.
We have a lot of disagreements here.
The Washington Post today gave you a whole lot of Pinocchios because they say you constantly misstate how much of the wall is built and how much is there.
But that's not the point here.
We have a disagreement about the wall whether it's effective or that on border security but on the wall.
We do not want to shut down the government.
You have called 20 times to shut down the government.
You say, I want to shut down the government.
We don't.
We want to come to an agreement.
If we can't come to an agreement, we have solutions that will pass the House and Senate right now and will not shut down the government.
And that's what we're urging you to do.
Not threaten to shut down the government because you're going to get it.
Let me just finish because you can't get your way.
Let me say something, Mr. President.
You just say, my way, or we'll shut down the government.
We have a proposal that Democrats and Republicans will support to do a CR that will not shut down the government.
We urge you to take it.
And if it's not good border security, I will take it.
And if it's not good border security, I won't take it.
Because when you look at these numbers of the effectiveness of our border security, and when you look at the job that we're doing, you just said it is effective.
Can I tell you something?
You just said it.
Without a wall, these are only areas where you have the wall.
Where you have walls, Chuck, it's effective.
Where you don't have walls, it is not effective.
Cameras on his face, guys.
I love it.
We've come in here.
Mike Pence is sleeping with his eyes open, by the way.
A little bit more forward.
Article 1.
If you don't have border security, Chuck, we're not going to keep it up.
Let me check.
We are going to have border security.
And it's the same board you're bragging about.
But again, if we can build on the map again, good.
We do.
See?
We get along.
Thank you, everybody.
Except President.
You know what he did at the end that we missed?
He says, I'll take the responsibility.
We'll go ahead and shut it down.
Forget about it.
I'll go ahead and do it.
So for me, a part of me is when I see him being so maniacal and detailed about remembering.
Dude, you know what kind of enemy you don't want to face?
The guy that remembers every freaking thing you do.
You know how annoying of an enemy it is?
But you know what's a good thing about an enemy like that?
When he's on your side.
When a guy like that is on your side, representing you, complicated personality, they tend to be unpredictable, and the enemy doesn't like that.
But what about so he's coming up?
By all accounts, it looks like he's going to be the nominee, right?
So in your opinion, the people that didn't vote for him the last time, which is why he didn't get reelected, are they going to come back in?
Or how's the math work this time around?
Okay, you want to go through that?
Let's go through that.
Okay.
How many people voted for Biden?
81 million?
I've been told.
Okay.
So let me ask you this.
Of course, CIA, you for sure know the exact count because you guys counted it.
Watch that.
Yeah.
I've got it right here in my chat.
So here's a question for you.
Out of the 81 real people, of course, those are real.
Out of the 81 million people that voted for Biden, how many of them are still going to vote and how many of them are having Bider's remorse?
Well, see, and that's the reason I asked that question is because I think if there was a the dynamic here or the wild card is that it's Trump again, right?
I think there's no way the Dems win if it's not Trump running.
Because I think people are going to have buyers' remorse with Biden.
And the tendency is always you get this flip-flopping going on.
But the problem is with Trump, and again, look, policies, I like the policies, right?
I had no problem with the policies.
Actually, question for you, though.
Let's play straight up.
It is Trump of Biden, okay?
It is Trump.
How many of the 81 million people that voted for Biden have buyers' remorse and are not going to vote for him again?
Not saying they're going to vote for Trump, but they may go independent, libertarian, or sit this one out.
I'm not saying they're going to vote Trump.
I think the likelihood they sit it out.
Yeah.
But yeah, what do you think?
Give or take.
I mean, listen, no one's, you're not going to be held accountable to this and you're CIA.
It's Trump.
You know, it's Trump.
And so I'd say because of his polarizing abilities, I think the number is going to be low.
I think what do you think it is?
You know, 7%.
7% is Trump's winning.
I go at 7%.
If that's the case, it's over.
I mean, just so you know that.
But let's go lower number.
Let's say 4 million.
That's 5%.
Okay.
It's 4.8% if you do 4.
Okay.
So we go 77, 78 million.
Okay, fine.
Of the people, and by the way, I think there's going to be the 7% is going to be the right number.
I think it's going to be around 75 million to 77 million votes this time around.
I think a lot of people are going to sit this one out.
They're not going to vote for Trump.
No.
But they're going to sit this one out and they're not going to vote for RFK.
Some of the liberals that are pro-vaccine, they're not going to do RFK.
But I think RFK is going to take some from Biden and it's going to take some from Trump.
Okay.
Now, of the people who are the middle ones, the people that matter the most, independent ones, the libertarians and independents, how many of them who voted against Trump in 2020 and now they're seeing every report came out if that New York Post story, the Twitter would have been left, they know Trump would have won.
And if COVID doesn't happen, Trump would have won.
And now Trump said, by the way, Trump's ad video is going to be very easy.
They said no to the volunteer rapist.
Now Biden's doing the wall.
They said no to this.
He's doing the fucking.
They said no to Afghanistan.
They said no to this.
Oh, God.
Do you know that greatest hits list, these marketers?
They're just waiting for this one.
Now go to the Trump.
So here's the other part.
This is the other technical question we have to answer.
How many of the people that are anti-Trump, okay, that are Lincoln Project people, now they're realizing the Lincoln Project, outside of one person who was on here last week, your best friend, Stevenson.
She, my boy, what's up, Steve?
Outside of him, Lincoln Project.
John Weaver came out.
What did John Weaver came up with?
Pedophilia.
Pedophilia.
I thought it was a spy for Russia.
Another one was all this age and all this stuff.
Lincoln Project is gone.
They are not what they were before.
Not this much.
They have zero credibility today.
So the rhino story, those guys that were stealing votes away, they're not there.
Now, let's go to Santa.
There'll be another grift, though.
They're ruining that situation.
There's no question about it.
But they don't have the same credibility.
And they're going to say the next in the Lincoln Project.
That's all what they're going to say.
Then it becomes the people that are pro-DeSantis or the people that are pro-Nikki Haley or they're pro-Mike Pence, his relatives, seven people, or the people that are pro-Vivek or the people that are pro-whoever those guys are on the stage, right?
How many of them, at first, they're going to say, there's no way I'll ever vote for Trump, but at the end, they're going to say, shit, I'm going to vote for Republican.
Okay.
When you put all of that stuff together, if there is no gamification, if there is no gamification, if there is gamification, if there is, hey, World War III is here and we're under attack and we have to make sure we pause election and something like that.
It's not going to be happening.
If there's no gamification, I think this guy's got a very clear argument on how to get back in.
And I think he's convinced.
I think his people are convinced.
I think some of the even the people who the judicial system or DOJ has not been fair to them, they're now relating to him, saying, look at this.
I relate to this guy.
Everything they're doing to me, I kind of felt like I went through it, except this guy's a white guy.
Why are they doing it to him?
I think there's a lot of things there that the case could be made on why he could potentially win.
I mean, yeah, I'd love to see the Republicans win.
I'd love to see them take it.
The worry that I have is that the polarizing nature of him as a candidate and how that could because, again, I think the Dems have made the same calculation.
Their best chance of winning is to face Trump.
And I don't, they tend to have a better machine, right?
Republicans never underestimate their ability to shoot themselves in the foot and do something stupid.
But yeah, we'll see.
I do want to see a change in the White House, though, because I can't imagine anybody saying to themselves, you know, I'm going to vote for Biden because I'm okay with Kamala Harris as president of the United States.
I was just in like five group chats with cousins and people, and it's always the same.
You know, I ignore them all freaking day because it's Trump.
Biden Biden.
How can you, I'm boggled.
I asked them, how could you still in your right mind vote?
Are they that dedicated to the party that you still have to vote for Biden?
Nothing is going on.
I go, what are you voting for?
Is it just it's not Trump?
Like, are you that stupid?
And you don't get like, look, the house is burning down, but you know what?
It's the only reason Biden won because it wasn't Trump.
Vinny, I love you, brother.
It still shocks me that you can't believe that half the country hates Trump.
No, not hates Trump.
I'm just letting you know.
They're never going to be available.
No, no, no.
No, I didn't say hates Trump.
I'm saying right now, I'm saying this election.
I'm saying right now, if you can go there and go to the voting booth and circle in Biden with all the shit that's happening, you're going to be able to do it.
75 million people will do it.
About 44% to 47% are where he's at.
It's really there.
But there is the buyer's remorse vote.
I'm telling you, there are a lot of those buyers' remorse votes.
Can I give you some opinion on the numbers?
By the way, just the same, the same.
How do you vote for Biden?
That's the same people.
You have friends like this.
How do you vote for Trump?
Exact same camp.
The numbers are very clear.
So whether Biden had 81 million votes or 77, whatever the hell number he had, it's almost irrelevant to me because the general Electoral College determines the president.
It's not the total vote.
Yeah, the popular vote.
Not the popular vote.
So at the end of the day, we've seen this.
It's four or five states in a handful of cities that are metaphysically bipolar.
Why?
Because they voted for Bush, then they voted for Obama, then they voted for Trump, then they gave Biden a shot.
They are more than willing to give somebody a shot.
So these are the same guys that are like, yeah, shuffle up and deal.
We'll go with Trump again.
They have no allegiance to anybody but themselves, and that's fine.
But to your point, I agree.
If you put a Vivek on stage with Biden, blowout.
Oh, for sure.
And Nikki Haley, you saw the stat.
She's five points up.
Even DeSantis, I think he would give Biden a run for his money.
But you're right.
They're both hovering in the low 40 approval rate.
I don't see how they, again, and people always say, well, the Dems are out to get him.
They're going to convict him on something.
And I'm thinking, well, the DNC doesn't want to convict him because the DNC wants to run against him.
Because the others are going to roll out weekend at Bernie's Biden out there.
Oh, my God.
He's the only guy that's similar in age to him.
So he's like, well, he's not that old.
He's only a couple years older than Trump.
Yeah.
I don't know.
You know what's going to happen on the first Tuesday of November, or actually, no, it's probably going to take six weeks after the first Tuesday in November of 2024, because you know, nowadays elections, it takes a long time to count.
Back in the days, we were such better counters, if you think about it.
We used to be able to count to 10 like in three seconds.
Technology was better back then.
Technology is like working backwards, right?
With all the stuff that we got.
But eventually, within six weeks, they're going to count, okay?
And there's going to be a group that's going to be like, here we go again.
You know, same guys back up, established and running the show.
There's going to be another group crying, thinking it's the end of the world.
But one of those two is going to happen.
But before that happens, the next 12 months, I have a feeling, is going to be a shit show.
Craziness.
Yeah, shit show.
Craziness on what's going to take place.
Anyways, gang, hope you enjoyed today's podcast, Mike Baker's podcast.
Gang, Mike Baker's got a podcast called The President's Daily Brief, a daily podcast that's available on Spotify, iTunes, and the first TV.
We got the link below in the description, in chat box, all over the place.
Make sure you go subscribe and listen to the one and only Mike Baker.
