Dave Smith hosts a Libertarian Institute roundtable with Connor Freeman, Kyle Anzalone, and Scott Horton, dissecting the Gaza war as an ethnic cleansing campaign involving 15,000 bombs and 90% civilian displacement. They critique Biden's pro-Israel stance amid regional escalation risks from Hezbollah's 100,000 rockets and Iranian-backed Houthis, while analyzing Israel's unsustainable two-front war strategy and alleged "mowing the grass" policies to depopulate Gaza. Ultimately, the discussion highlights how unprecedented media visibility of these atrocities is fracturing Democratic support and threatening broader Middle East instability. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
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Welcome to Part of the Problem00:08:35
Fill her up.
You are listening to the cash human.
We need to roll back the state.
We spy on all of our own citizens.
Our prisons are flooded with nonviolent drug offenders.
If you want to know who America's next enemy is, look at who we're funding right now.
Every single one of these problems are a result of government being way too big.
What's up, everybody?
Welcome to a brand new episode of Part of the Problem.
I'm very excited for this one.
We got a cool episode for you.
Before we get started, I just want to remind people there are still a few tickets available to me and Robbie the Fire Bernstein's New Year's Eve Bash, a live stand-up show and a live part of the problem podcast.
And then we're doing an after party.
It's in East Rutherford, New Jersey, very close to New York City.
So come on out.
Go to comicdave Smith.com for tickets to that event.
It's going to be a lot of fun.
All right.
So for today's episode, we got a Libertarian Institute roundtable doing something a little bit different, but it's going to be a lot of fun.
And we're going to talk about what's going on in the world and what's going on at the wonderful organization that is the Libertarian Institute.
First, of course, returning to the show, everybody knows Scott Horton, who's really become, I think, the most prominent anti-war voice in the libertarian world, author of many great books.
And of course, the Libertarian Institute is his creation.
Thanks for coming back on the show, Scott.
Thank you, Dave.
Happy to be here.
Of course.
And then if you want to introduce Kyle and Connor, because they're both making their part of the problem debuts, you can tell them what they do at the Institute.
Yeah.
Well, first of all, Kyle is our news editor at the Institute, as well as opinion editor at antiwar.com.
And he's the host of a great show called Conflicts of Interest, a news podcast, which is absolutely fantastic.
And then Connor is both of our right-hand man, actually.
In a way, he helps me run my show and keep my schedule and all of my guests and all those kinds of things, as well as is assistant news editor at the Institute and also helps with the news stories at antiwar.com and writes opinion pieces for both as well, including, I think, a recent one last week.
And is, like me, flawed in his overly comprehensiveness.
He's a type whose articles are, you know, double the length they should be and with three times the footnotes as they should be.
And I'm really proud of both of them.
And they both do absolutely fantastic work.
And so at the Institute, we got, you know, our kind of older generation is the great Sheldon Richmond, James Bovard, and Ted Galen Carpenter.
And I'll throw in Laurie with them, but unfairly, because she's really my age in her 40s, the great Laurie Calhoun as well.
But then we got all these great kids.
Well, they're kids to me, but they're all 27 to 31 or so.
But that's Hunter Durantsis, our editor, the great Kyle and Connor, as I just introduced there, as well as Patrick McFarlane and Tommy Salmons, I guess, is more my age as well.
And everybody's got a great podcast and everybody writes great articles.
And of course, we got Keith Knight.
I left out Keith Knight.
He is also 27, like Connor.
And they live out in Phoenix and are buds out there.
And listeners of the show know Keith.
He's been on several times.
And the only reason Keith wasn't on this one is because I've just started reading his new book.
So I'm Domestic Imperialism.
I just started reading it.
It's really great.
So I'm going to have him on a solo episode to talk about the book.
So that's the only reason why Keith isn't here today.
Okay.
So this is Keith's original one.
No, this one right here.
The Voluntarist Handbook.
Yes, I had him on the show about that one.
Libertarian Anarchist Xays.
You know, Michael Malice included all these commies.
Who wants to read a book or whatever crap?
This is all libertarian anarchists here, the voluntaries handbook.
And then this is the brand new one, dude.
And behold the beauty of this thing.
And, and, and the insight is as good as the cover.
Domestic imperialism.
Is that the best name for a book ever?
Domestic imperialism, nine reasons I left progressivism.
And there, of course, is Wilson, Roosevelt, LBJ, Bernie Sanders, and AOC.
on there, the evil Franklin Roosevelt, the great dictator, president for life, Roosevelt, and all of his evil descendants.
And, well, Wilson, you know, anyway, and this book is just fantastic.
And to see, the reason I have all these different books that I didn't write behind me here is because I published them.
And so I get a little bit of executive producer credit.
And we just published five books this year, including Lori's.
And this is back here.
If you can see Questioning the COVID Company Line, which is her fantastic essays that she wrote beginning in the summer of 2020 for the Institute, debunking every bit of the COVID hysteria.
And we published that earlier this year.
And then we published the fake China Threat.
Well, what the hell am I doing?
And then we published.
So that's that's questioning the COVID company line.
It's so good.
I'm not just saying that.
I mean, it's absolutely fantastic.
She's an absolutely brilliant genius.
Lori Calhoun, she wrote the book, We Kill Because We Can, about all the drone wars and all that.
I'm going to let these boys talk in a minute, I promise.
And then this is The Fake China Threat by Joseph Solis Mullen.
This guy's a brilliant genius as well.
He just got hired as a history professor.
By the way, congratulations to Joe.
And this is a great book.
And you see the subtitle there.
And it's very real danger.
He's not saying China's a paper tiger.
He's saying don't mess with China and you probably won't have a problem, but we really shouldn't be picking the fight.
And who do you think is picking the fight?
Of course, it's Hillary Clinton and the Asia Pivot in the Obama years is where this all started.
And it's, you know, one of these self-fulfilling prophecy type things.
Great take on that.
And then as I say, domestic imperialism.
And then check this out.
Diary of a psychosis.
All of Tom Wood's emails that he sent out to the people of the world during the COVID regime.
And for people not familiar, he was the foremost fighter against the COVID regime in the entire libertarian movement the whole time.
And this is all of his charts and all his debunkings.
And I hate talking about this book because I'm afraid I'm going to ruin it for people because to read it is an experience.
You will say, Scott, let me interrupt you there.
I literally just finished it.
And all I'm going to say is it is so damn good.
Like it's a, it's a book that it was, it was like an experience.
Equal, I texted Tom today.
I'm going on his show tomorrow and then I'm going to interview him about the book in the next couple of days.
And I said it is, it was equal parts cathartic and enraging.
Like it was like, it's like you're like, yes, thank you.
Thank you.
And then you're still furious.
It's just so I can't recommend it strongly enough.
So anyway, just put my stamp on that.
Just like with Lori's book, the real realization, and you know, whatever, I already knew this, but to see it in that form and to just see how early every lie had been debunked.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Before they kept going anyway, just like with the weapons of mass destruction back 20 years ago, where how are we still talking about aluminum tubes?
They already debunked that in the post back in September.
And we're still talking about aluminum tubes in January and February.
We're going to have a war over some tubes.
And the same kind of thing here.
This is already debunked and you're basing policies on it two years later, three years later.
It's really bad.
It's as bad as could be.
And for people who want to scold their woke, you know, brothers and sisters about this, this is the book to hit them over the head with.
I'm telling you, it's something else.
And then James Bovard.
And this is really, for people who may not be familiar, because for some reason you're too young or you're new to our movement or something, James Bovard is our most successful and important and accomplished libertarian journalist in history.
And his speciality is the investigative opinion piece where he can be as scathing and mean as hell and funny as hell as he wants, but he does real deep investigative research as well and breaks stories and has broken a tunnel.
Investigating Lost Rights and Liberty00:13:04
And he's written a ton of books.
In 1994, he wrote Lost Rights, The Destruction of American Liberty.
And then this is the sequel now, Last Rights, The Death of American Liberty.
And just like everything he's ever written, it's really just absolutely five-star material.
And he wrote The Bush Betrayal and Attention Deficit Democracy, Freedom and Chains and Feeling Your Pain.
I mean, these books are absolute libertarian classics for people who are, you know, it's like the enough already.
And I'm mimicking his style very much, but it's like if you've read my books, it's the enough already, but of domestic policy, where it's just a relentless compilation of facts about how horrible everything is.
But anyway, so this is what I'm bragging about this year is I apologize.
Obviously, I'm making up for the fact that I haven't gotten my book done.
But I've gotten so many books done.
I'm way behind.
I'll tell you what's a pain in the ass, publishing everyone else's books actually takes up a lot of time, guys.
But so this is what I'm bragging about.
And it's a lot to brag about.
And it's, it's, of course, all to their credit.
The great Laurie Calhoun and Laurie Calhoun, Joe Solis Mullen, Keith Knight, James Bovart, and of course, the heroic Tom Woods as well.
That's our hall for, oh, what did I just do?
Oh, that's our hall for this year's books and what we're building the Institute on.
You know, we don't have a big glass castle in Washington, D.C. like Cato.
We're kind of a virtual organization.
But what makes us not just a great website with a lot of great podcasts and articles on it is we publish books, 13 of them now.
And all of them, you know, in my opinion, five-star.
Well, I'm not including my own, but everybody else's books are the best that anybody could do or that I couldn't possibly be prouder to be involved with.
So there's that.
And just let people know before we open this up a little bit that you guys still have your fundraiser, your fun drive going on, right?
That's right.
And you know what?
Publishing these books is really expensive.
And the way I do it, we're a nonprofit, which means I don't know how to run a business.
So why bother trying?
And I really want these writers to keep all the money.
And so the Institute doesn't get any of the money from these books.
We just publish them for the bragging rights.
We get to publish our name on the spine and on the publisher page and on the back and brag about our role in helping to bring these books to light.
But then from there, the writers get all the money.
And no, that is not an open invitation to everyone to submit.
But so we don't make our money back on the books and we're not trying to.
But that does mean that we are banking that overall people will be impressed with our project and what we're doing here.
And especially, you know, Austrian school libertarians understand this better than anyone with marginal utility theory that the more money you have, the less any one unit of it is worth to you.
And so to some people to donate 50 or 100 bucks is absolutely fantastic.
It's the most they can do.
And we absolutely appreciate as absolutely much as can be appreciated.
At the same time, there are other people who have fortunes who can afford to donate serious amounts of money and not really miss it.
Or in fact, might even be obligated to for tax reasons, have to give a certain portion of their money away to nonprofit organizations.
You know that if you're donating to the Institute, it's not getting pissed away.
I literally am just paying my guys.
That's it.
Yeah, well, absolutely.
And look, I couldn't recommend it.
If any organization you're going to donate to, I think this is right up there with the best cause you could find.
And it's cool, man.
I think we mentioned, I can't remember if we said this on air last time you were on or if I was just saying this to you after we wrapped up, but it's like, I remember very well because I was friends with you before you started the Institute when you were like, hey, we're doing this thing.
And it was being like, oh, cool.
And now it is cool.
Like the books that have been published by the Libertarian Institute are like people, because people ask all the time, you're like, oh, where'd you get all this stuff?
Like, what are, what's a good reading list or something?
Like, that right there is a great place to start.
Just all the books that the Libertarian Institute has published.
And in fact, going back to the older ones, as I've been kind of doing a lot of big shows talking about the Israel stuff over the last couple of months now, I keep pushing Coming to Palestine.
I'm like, hey, if you really, listen, if there's a place you want to learn about this, go read Coming to Palestine.
It's like a great place to start.
And that's people could see it right there behind Scott over the one with like the sun on the top.
But okay.
So one more thing, Dave, before I let you interview these two guys.
Let me just tell you, because it's the end of the year.
And it was a big day for me today, particularly.
I interviewed Roger Waters for the second time.
Yes, yes.
Very cool.
I didn't meet him when he came to town, which is a huge deal to me.
But I got to interview him today for an hour.
And he played his brand new song for me that he wrote last night.
He played it and I debuted at World Premiere on my radio show in Los Angeles this afternoon.
It's called Buried Under Rubble.
And normally like some guy pulls out his acoustic guitar and starts singing some emotional type song.
I'm not really into it, but dude, this is Roger Waters.
Yeah, it's fucking Pink Floyd, dude.
You of a baby buried under the rubble in Gaza.
It's crazy.
It is deep, man, and good.
And so that's awesome.
It's going to be on the site.
But that wraps then 25 years on the radio since Say it ain't so on Free Radio Austin.
That wraps 20 years of 6,000 interviews.
I'm just 10 interviews short, guys.
Cut me some slack.
5,990 interviews after today.
And then 13 years on KPFK.
I guess 17 years since I was full-time doing anti-war radio for anti-war.com.
And then 13 years on the radio on KPFK 90.7 FM in LA.
So that's a bunch of shit I got done.
And people can go and look at those archives, listen to them, all their 6,000 interviews going back to the first one from 99.
And then after that, from 2003 on.
And they're all at scotthorton.org and at youtube.com slash Scott Horton show.
Yeah.
I mean, how much shit can you give the guy for not finishing his Ukraine book?
I mean, he's done 6,000 interviews and he's published all these other books.
So, you know, be patient.
6,000 pages.
I'm having trouble narrowing it down is all.
It's not like I haven't been working on it.
It literally is like almost 12,000 pages now.
Yeah.
Well, all right.
There you go.
Okay.
So no, so let's, but I'm glad to be having like all of us on here because, and I do like that we have like a couple of the younger guys here in the libertarian from the Libertarian Institute.
We kind of, it's, it's an interesting time for, uh, to be a libertarian.
There is like, and please, this is not a knock at all on the Mises Institute, which I think is like the greatest organization and helped me become, you know, like the person I am.
But you also kind of realize it's like, you know, Lou Rockwell is getting older and has had health issues and stuff like that.
And Hans Hermann Hoppe is older and stuff.
And so it's kind of interesting to talk to a couple, Connor and Kyle, a couple of guys from the younger generation.
So one thing I wanted to, and I'll go around, I want to get Connor, your thoughts on this and Kyle, your thoughts on this, but something I've been thinking about a lot as someone who's kind of very steeped in the libertarian world.
So, and this has to do with the decision that just came down, I think about two hours before we started recording that I guess now Trump has been kicked off the ballot in Maine.
It's very unclear what's going to happen.
He was kicked off the ballot in Colorado, but then there was like a stay on that ruling because the Republicans appealed it.
So he's back on until the day before the primary.
It seems like all of this is going to go up to the Supreme Court and get kicked out.
That seems to be what's going on.
Still seems like a pretty bold next step in this kind of weaponization of the system against Donald Trump.
And for people listening, if they don't know, within the libertarian kind of tradition of thought, there was so Ludwig von Mises, who is our kind of economic godfather, he used to say he was a classical liberal and he supported democracy.
And his justification for supporting democracy was that it allows for the peaceful transfer of power.
And that this way we don't have to be violent toward one another.
We can have a peaceful transfer of power because, you know, people voted.
And it wasn't one of these justifications that are like, well, the government is us because we vote for them or something like that.
But it was just like, hey, look, practically speaking, this allows for a peaceful transfer of power.
Hey, I'm sorry to interrupt, but Dave Jim Lostrowsky quoted that Rothbard on my show today.
Coincident.
He quoted Mises.
Oh, was it Mises?
Okay.
Well, I think he said it was Rothbard.
But anyways, Jim Lostrowski on my show said that exact same thing.
I was like, wait a minute.
Rothbard was more like, his thing was more that like, well, democracy doesn't change the moral characteristics of what a government does, which I think we would probably all agree with that too.
Hoppe had a radically more anti-democratic approach where he would, he basically argued that, well, when you have democracy, then it's almost like there's no, at least under like a monarchist system, you're simulating private ownership of a government.
And so there's at least like an incentive to hand it off to your kids in decent shape.
Whereas when you have democracy, you're just trying to loot as much as you can for four years and then get out of there.
I will say, I have never been more sympathetic to the Mises case after watching them attempt to kick Trump off of these ballots.
And my initial thought is just that it's like, guys, this is just, there's so much potential for this to lead to violence.
So just let them settle it at the ballot box, man.
Like, I hate all these guys.
I'm just going to vote for like Michael Rechtonwald and know I'm going to lose.
But okay, fine.
But like, just please, like, if you just settle this democratically so that we're not in a state where basically you're in a fist fight and you just pulled out a knife and now that guy can't just fist fight you.
He's got to look for weapons to fight you with.
So I don't know.
I'm just going to make this open-ended, but Connor and then Kyle, what do you guys think about all this stuff that's going on?
Take it wherever you want to.
Yeah, sure.
So, I mean, as far as like the transfer of power, I mean, I've never voted for president in my life.
I just can't bring myself to do it.
I was very close to voting for Robert F. Kennedy Jr. until he stabbed us all in the back for Rabbi Shmooley and the Adelson oligarchy.
But I mean, the reason I was going to do that was because he was the only guy standing against this rush to war with China.
That's the most bipartisan push for war I've seen since 9-11.
And so it was, I thought, very important to have somebody there who was going to oppose this completely bipartisan push where it's just, we're on the defensive.
China's encircling us when it's all just complete projection.
We've launched the largest military buildup for war since World War II, encircling China with hundreds of bases and, you know, just getting, you know, hundreds.
We have hundreds of troops on Taiwan.
We're constantly sending aircraft carrier, strike groups and, you know.
Constantly provoking them and and and spending.
Now I mean Robert Higgs says you double the nominal defense budget.
So we're getting close to what?
One and a half trillion dollars a year.
Now the end, the most recent NDIA is 886 billion dollars.
But you know, we always look at it from the perspective of foreign policy.
So when Trump came in, there was this document that was written called expanding American power, by Robert Kagan, Michelle Flournoy, um Stephen Hadley and Eric Edelman, which these are all just arch neocons or Michelle Flournoy's marvel liberal interventionists.
But their plan for Hillary was renewed military threats against Iran.
Uh, arming Ukraine uh preparing, you know, for this proxy war with Russia uh, increased military spending and renewed military action in Iraq and Syria.
Trump did all of that.
So it appears that we just do not have options as far as this all goes.
And I do agree with you that I think that, especially if you have a whole half of the country I think more than half of the country is not willing to withstand another four years of Biden, but especially that right-wing half of the country, if you tell them that their votes don't matter and we just will not allow you to vote for the candidate you choose.
Uh, I think we absolutely have are sitting on a huge powder keg.
But at the same time, it would say, you get in this very dangerous position where, as anarchists, as libertarians, we want people to realize that the state is what it is, it's a monopoly on violence, and they don't care what you think, they just want to take your money, and if you resist them, they may even just kill you.
And the sooner people realize that, I think we we're able to make more progress.
The Monthly Knife Club Sponsorship00:02:51
But uh, in the meantime I mean it just I foresee nothing good coming of this.
Um but, as I said, I mean with Trump I, we could very easily go to war with China, but that's true for Biden too.
And so um unfortunately, we're just left with horrible options, and I think the American public is already, especially after this war on Gaza, the any remaining vestiges of legitimacy that the American government has in the eyes of the broad majority of the public, I think, is slipping away almost completely.
So uh, you know who knows what's next, but this is definitely a major provocation uh against, I would imagine, more than half the country, and this could easily turn into.
I don't want to be one of these guys that says civil war or anything like that, but uh, definitely we could see something, maybe as bad as what we saw in 2020.
yeah i mean it's it seems like uh there's it seems like there's almost an attempt to provoke that all right guys let's take a moment and thank our sponsor for today's show which is the monthly knife club the ultimate subscription box for knife enthusiasts, outdoor adventurers, and everyday carry enthusiasts.
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All right, let's get back into the show.
And I want to come back to, we'll talk about RFK a little bit more, but I want, Kyle, I want to give your thoughts on like the whole craziness with weaponizing the judicial system and, you know, to all the different levels against Donald Trump.
What do you think of it?
Yeah, I certainly agree with you, Dave, that it makes you appreciate the Mises argument about democracy because you really do want to avoid violence.
I mean, you know, me, Scott, and Connor are anti-war activists.
And a big part of that is because we, you know, look at the horrors of war and violence that can occur when people fight over politics and power.
And so that's certainly something that you want to prevent happening in the U.S.
And for that reason, you know, the path that Maine and Colorado are going down is the wrong one.
Democrats, Insurrection, and Sabotage00:16:10
Hopefully this is just political theater and they know that the Supreme Court is going to rule against this.
And, you know, maybe they're just trying to get the Israel issue off of the kitchen table during the holidays or something like that.
On the other hand, Dave, you know, with the Hoppe argument about, you know, a monot, you know, having a long-term government or something like that, the Biden administration right now is trying to pass a $61 billion aid bill for Ukraine simply so it's not an election issue, right?
They're just trying to kick the can down the road to late November of 2024.
That's a good point.
So if you look at that, or if you look at the influence that Israel has in the U.S. with the Israel lobby, if we didn't hold regular elections, how much less sway would the Israel lobby have over all these members of Congress and the U.S.
I mean, maybe they own the monarchy in a way, and that's how they wield influence and power in that scenario.
But if you look at how it works now, elections are certainly where the Israel lobby, the lobbies of Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Ukraine, or our own defense industry basically get to take the reins and control power.
Yeah, isn't it interesting, right, where you see that like Nikki Haley, how like her, would you watch her like debate performances?
It's like she's not even talking to the audience.
Like she's not even thinking about, I shouldn't say that.
She's talking to the audience because the audience, immediate audience is made up of donors.
But I mean, like, she's not even talking to like Republican voters.
It's just the whole thing is it's like, hey, big donors, I will play ball.
And like, well, what do you think about the economy?
Well, I will play ball with big donors is what I think.
What do you think about the war?
Well, you know what?
Any war you want, I'll sell that war for you.
It's very interesting, like how, uh, and it's never been so blatant in like the Republican primary where you have like Trump and I will say and Vivek Ramaswamy, whatever you think of those two guys, that they're trying to get voters.
And then everybody else is just like trying to get the big donors.
So that is, yeah, that's one of the, you know, effects of democracy.
Scott, what do you, what's your take on all of this?
I think it's kind of like one of these weird dynamics where, again, being removed from the ballot adds a different element because then you're not democratically viable.
But there's kind of this weird, there's this weird thing in politics where like in terms of like the polls, it helps Donald Trump very much that they're kicking him off these ballots.
Just like it helps Donald Trump very much that they're indicting him on a lot of this nonsense.
But I think in some way, perhaps the Democrats know that this is going to go to the Supreme Court and then get struck down.
And then that actually might help the Democrats in a way, because then they go like, look, this guy was so criminal, he shouldn't have even been on the ballots, but this partisan Supreme Court kicked it off.
Or what, I don't know, what do you think?
All other things being equal in American politics, you run to the Republicans run to the right and Democrats run to the left in the primaries.
Then you sober up and run as a moderate in the general because you got to win.
It's 51% winner take all in every district, every state, whatever it is.
And so, you know, usually they can't run too far toward whatever extreme position without screwing their own selves up.
It's kind of built in sabotage in the system, you know, or prevention of self-sabotage in the system.
So, but we saw how went how far they went before.
It really didn't hurt him that bad.
I mean, they framed the guy for treason.
And instead of not forgiving him for that, people were like, well, you know, they must have thought he was guilty of treason and just made honest mistake there, Dave, or something.
I don't know.
And I guess they say it was the abortion decision by the court that really stopped the red wave from coming and the backlash that was really due to the Democrats in the midterms back, what, in, was it 18 or was it 20 that was supposed to happen?
22.
22, I think is what you're thinking of.
And that's what I meant to say.
And, but, you know, I don't know.
The thing is, there's, you know, Robert Kagan, very importantly, Bill Crystal's partner.
They wrote toward a neo-Reaganite foreign policy for foreign affairs back in 1996 where they promised benevolent global hegemony.
The author of our demise and destruction, him and his brother, fat neck Fred, and his horrible, horrifying sister-in-law, Kimberly Kagan, who runs the Institute for Study of War.
And of course, the worst one of all, his wife, Victoria Newland, who engineered the crisis in Ukraine in 2013 and 14 and the current one as well.
Them, the Kagans, Donald Kagan spun and their wives.
Robert Kagan wrote a thing for the Washington Post saying dictatorship, dictatorship, dictatorship.
And you see what they're doing there, where they go, insurrection, insurrection, insurrection.
Then they go, aha, see, because it was an insurrection, we could throw him off the ballot, even though they're begging the question here.
What are they citing saying it was an insurrection?
Some opinion from some Democratic consultant head in a box on cable TV news or something.
And nobody with any legal authority pronounced Donald Trump guilty of insurrection.
It's just a term.
You could accuse, you could call that January 6th protest anything you want.
Doesn't equate it in any way to the rebels who fought against the United States in the Civil War, you know, which is where that thing comes from.
It's just kind of a stunt.
But the thing is, if they can call that an insurrection over and over again and then try to make it stick, then of course, by calling him dictator, dictator, dictator over and over again, they can do.
And this is what Biden is running on.
Someone actually, I think on Twitter, I bet it was Orph, who's Matt Taibbi's buddy, who does the video compilations.
He did a video compilation of Biden at all his recent fundraising speeches saying Trump is a threat to democracy, he's a threat to democracy, he's a threat to democracy.
If he wins, essentially we'll never have elections again.
They'll suspend the Constitution.
They'll institute a dictatorship and this kind of thing.
There's an article by Charlie Savage, the disgraced Charlie Savage from the Russia-Afghan bounties hoax of 2020 in the New York Times from two days ago, talking about how he's going to seize control of the Justice Department and indict and convict all his enemies, which, you know, he has talked something like that, but he also chanted lock her up and all that stuff and the swamp.
And nobody really believes any of that rhetoric anyway.
But they're essentially, what are they doing?
They're building the excuse for another Russiagate hoax or another, you know, 2020 style sabotage of his campaign on the excuse that America just can't bear him winning.
And in fact, Kagan calls the Trump supporters the cult of Trump.
He's this crazy demagogue and his supporters are this cult.
He's talking about 70 million American voters.
He's talking about the Republican voters of America.
He's far and away.
Here we are four years later, after everything they threw at him.
He's still far and away the Republicans' choice in every state to be the nominee.
Oh, and not even, I wouldn't say despite everything they've thrown at him, because what they've thrown at him is actually encouraged it.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And so, you know, ultimately it comes down to they, and it really does come down to this.
He's the one who stood for election and won in 2016.
They tried to frame him for treason and it didn't stop him.
And then after he won, they still tried to frame for treason.
They impeached him twice.
They called him the leader of the American neo-Nazis.
And then after four years of that, his black and Hispanic vote totals and percentages went up across the country because people just don't believe this stuff.
And so, you know, cheaters never win.
This is how he won in the first place.
Bill Clinton told him, Donald, I really think you should do it.
He admitted that, right?
This was one of the things they thought they were being clever and helping to convince him to run in the first place.
And then as we all know from the leaked Podesta emails, the Pied Piper strategy was to build him up because he'll be easier to beat in the general, him or Carson or Cruz.
And we see, if people aren't familiar with that from 2016, just look at, was it, yeah, it was just last year in 22, the Democrats organized and donated to the further right-wing candidates in congressional elections because some of them were some real kooks.
And they took the risk that they were going to get real kooks elected on the bet that they wouldn't.
And in fact, their bet paid off, by the way, the Pied Piper.
Yes.
By the way, for people who don't remember this in 2016, because I was like just consuming all of the corporate media at the time, because, you know, I do a show making fun of them.
So I got to kind of like watch it.
But it, cause what was revealed in the Podesta emails very specifically specifically is that they were asking MSNBC to cover everything on Donald Trump.
They were like, play every rally.
And they used to do this.
And this was early enough in the campaign cycle that it was weird.
It was like, if you were watching MSNBC, it was very weird that MSNBC of all places would anytime Trump was giving a speech, which, you know, it was campaign season.
Everyone was giving speeches all the time.
They'd cut right to it.
And just give him all the attention and this.
Now a lot of people have the uh conspiracy theory that this is what's actually going on right now, that this is why they were coming down on him as, like another pied piper strategy to actually get him the nomination.
Because, you know, like it was a close like uh, the polls were much closer between him and Desantis initially, and then, ever since they've been prosecuting him, he's been dominating.
I don't know.
I just have a really tough time believing that they would do that again after it blew up in their faces last time.
But they have a plan.
Yeah, maybe I, I don't know.
I mean, they did it once, so I can't like rule it out.
Uh, you know.
But at the same time, you're like, is it possible they would do this again when it blew up in their faces the first time?
I also just find the I I don't know.
I find the propaganda.
If you remember, in 2016, their attacks on him would be like, if Trump comes in, the stock market will crash, he's gonna pull, push the red button and all this.
But now we've kind of had four years of Donald Trump, and so I just feel like this stuff, he's gonna be dictator for life and he'll suspend free elections just seems like it's not gonna hit home quite as much.
Maybe um, i'm wrong about that.
Uh, Kyle or Connor, any any thoughts on on any of this stuff.
Well, I think Biden is more hated than Trump is.
I mean, I would just imagine you have this whole part of the real left that absolutely despises him for all, I mean, as much as they despise Trump for all of his, you know for, you know, symbolizing this symbol of racism and the, the bad history of the.
In their interpretation, he represents the worst of what the United States has been in the 20th century.
Come back to life in full rich white man, not the insensitive, all that yeah yeah yeah exactly, I mean, and you know uh, and so, but Biden they, they call him Genocide Joe, rightfully so, I mean they hate his guts and they know that he's just absolutely corrupt and has been, you know, overseeing illegal occupations in Syria and just constant provocations of uh, you know the, the proxy war in with Ukraine, I mean absolutely, I think, obliterated him.
As far as the far left, the real, true left, was concerned um, you know the, his Hawkish administration with Blanken and Sullivan has just been absolutely uh, to borrow a phrase, deplorable.
And so there's a lot of people who you know absolutely, especially after the war on Gazna.
Now they just will not vote for Biden, no matter what.
Yeah, that's the big one yeah yeah, that could really help Trump and, as you say, I mean the more they push on him, the more that they uh oppress him and his constituency which, as Scott said, is 70 million people, the angrier they're going to get and they're going to be that more incentivized to go to the polls, and I really realistically don't uh, I mean They, if they do, like you say,
you said on the previous show, you were talking about how if this goes to the Supreme Court, um, you know, depending on what happens here in the next year, if they could, if somebody dies or whatever, they could maybe have a ruling where they just say, no, across the country, you can't have him on the ballot.
I don't think they would take that step.
I mean, that would just be absolute chaos, you know, overnight.
Uh, and they would probably be too afraid to do that.
They'd rather probably try to steal it again.
Uh, and I don't mean to say conclusively that they stole it, but they might go even further than they did in 2020.
Uh, but especially after Rushigate, especially after the summer of George, the COVID regime, all the, you know, the absolute horrible, the inhumane treatment of the protesters on January 6th, you know, throwing people in solitary confinement.
This is just, this would be going, this would be crossing like the Rubicon, I think, and you would really be poking the bear there.
And so, I don't know if they want to try that.
I also don't think the Democrats are confident that Biden is good for them.
They might be honestly in a sort of a reverse sort of way.
I guess in a way, it's an ancillary to the Pied Piper strategy.
Having Trump for another four years could actually help the Democrats, because I don't think, I think people are furious with them because it's, I mean, they've just done an absolutely horrible job.
I think most people would tell you that the country was doing better under Trump.
You know, they don't understand necessarily that his monetary policies have led to the inflation we've been suffering under during the Biden years, but all the worst things that Trump has done, Biden has escalated them, especially when it comes to foreign policy.
Yeah, it's a really, there's a really interesting point that you bring up there.
It's something I've talked about a lot where there's this weird thing in politics where if you are a left-wing advocate, there's a very strong case that four years of Trump would be much better for you than another four years of Joe Biden.
In the same way, Scott was kind of alluding to before, that however you feel about abortion, Roe v. Wade being overturned was clearly politically much better for the Democrats than for the Republicans, right?
Like sometimes when you win, it's the old white men can't jump thing.
Sometimes when you win, you really lose.
When you lose, you really win.
And I do think that there's a real, like, there's a real point to that where even when Trump was president before even the COVID stuff, it was just a huge victory for the left wing America.
Like every left-wing organization's fundraising numbers went up.
CNN actually had a few shows where they cracked a million viewers per show, you know, like, but as soon as he's gone, all of those organizations just lose all of their funding and all of their viewership because it's like, I don't know, you don't have the big bad wolf really to like rally against.
So there's definitely something to that.
I don't know.
What do you think, Kyle?
Any thoughts on any of this stuff?
Yeah, I definitely agree with that that this is going to be a huge boost to the Democrats fundraising come election season when they're able to point to Trump again.
You know, because a lot of what Trump did that the liberals were so horrified about, we see a lot of that under the Biden administration anyways.
And certainly the support for Israel's war in Gaza is, you know, just the worst thing that has happened in the past decade.
And so, you know, there, the Biden administration has just been objectively worse.
You know, they were all out in the streets because Trump banned Muslims from entering the U.S.
But here, Biden is supporting Israel, killing 2.3 million of them, just absolutely ruthlessly, men, women, children, all of them.
Gaza Devastation and Political Breaking Points00:11:15
And so, you know, I think Biden is in real trouble and the Democrats are in real trouble, but Trump running against them is certainly going to be big for fundraising.
I kind of wonder if they actually put Biden on the ballot in November, if they're not looking to offload it to one of these Democratic governors.
I guess Newsom or Whitner would be my top guesses in the play being that, you know, Biden's polling numbers are so low, we'll let everybody freak out thinking Trump is going to be president again, dump a bunch of money in, then we'll throw Newsom or Whitner at everyone.
I mean, look, I've been saying that for a while now, and I don't, I just don't think Biden's going to be the nominee ultimately.
And it's not just his approval rating or it's just the fact that, look, man, it is very obviously the decline in Joe Biden is it's accelerating.
And if you look at, if you look at a video of Joe Biden giving a speech in 2000, let's say the, you know, the 2016, the last year he was vice president, it is so night and day.
And then, and that's night and day from 2020 and 2020 to 2020, late 2023, almost 2024 is night and day.
I mean, he's getting worse and worse.
And look, he had the perfect excuse for not campaigning in 2020 because it was COVID and I'm doing the responsible thing by staying home and all of this, but he doesn't have that excuse coming up.
And so my guess is that they're going to try, especially with the charges against his son.
It seems to me like they're laying out the pretense for his ultimate, you know, like moving.
And also now that RFK, who we will get back to, RFK isn't running as a Democrat anymore.
They don't have the issue of the next guy who comes in would have to primary with RFK.
They can just kind of come in and waltz their way into the nomination.
So that is my guess.
I will say though, and I want to, I'm curious to get all of your guys' thoughts on this.
There is something about this war in Gaza that has reset things a little bit, like reset where some of the right wingers and the left wingers, and I mean, this broadly speaking, you know,
even like liberals and conservatives, whatever, you know, the two halves of America, where they've been, because Joe Biden and the Biden administration, I think were largely able to kind of subdue their voter, their voting base or even rally them and get them on board for the war in Ukraine.
I don't feel like there was major damage.
I mean, sure, like kind of like you alluded to, like left-wing anti-war advocate types were against it, but generally, I don't think there were huge numbers that turned against them.
But that is not the case with the war going on between Israel and Gaza right now.
I mean, there is like, there is a substantial number of typical Democratic voters who are just totally not having this and are furious with Joe Biden that he's supporting them.
And that's why he's constantly like throwing these rhetorical kind of red meat things at them.
Like every time he just goes like, oh, well, we'll do whatever we want.
You know, Israel can do whatever you want and we'll back you up.
But like we really care about humanitarian aid and we really care.
Like he, he kind of knows and you can see this in the Democratic establishment that they know they got to find a way to not alienate this group too much because it does seem like so much of there's more of an anti-war left than there has been since the war in Iraq over this war.
And I don't know exactly what the reasons for that are, why they were so silent on the previous ones, but they're kind of back to this one.
But that's a real dynamic that's really hurting him.
Yeah, I think this one is different because everybody can witness it all day, every day, as long as you have an internet connection.
Unfortunately, that kind of footage just wasn't available during the dirty war against Syria or the genocide, the genocidal war against Yemen or any of these other wars of my lifetime, for that matter, frankly.
I mean, every single day you can sit there on Twitter alone, just Twitter and watch hundreds of thousands, well, excuse me, hundreds of children die.
And you can just follow the Al Jazeera news ticker or Middle East Eye or any of these other news wires, and you can just see, you can just massacre after massacre after massacre.
I mean, and at the same time, the American public knows.
We just, you know, the Wall Street Journal reports that we sent them 15,000 bombs, 5,000 of which weigh 2,000 pounds.
And they, for the first six weeks of the war, they were routinely dropping those into the areas that were designated safe zones.
And the safe zones, and Kyle has written about this at the Institute, there's no running water, there's no medicine, there's no bathrooms.
It's just the most cruel treatment of these people.
And they've already displaced more than 90% of the population.
And now they're bombing the South.
I mean, when Herzy Halevi, the IDF chief, came out and said, you know, our operations in the South, we're going to emulate what we did in the North.
And at the same time that they're already bombing central Gaza, which is the only way for people to get from one side to the other, it's pretty clear that this is an ethnic cleansing campaign.
We knew that when the document from the intelligence ministry was leaked, where they were, you know, floating the idea, well, what if we just pushed them all into the Sinai Peninsula?
And then you have Danny Danon, who's not just a member of the Likud, but a former UN ambassador, you know, Israel's former UN ambassador, writing with a member of the opposition party in the Wall Street Journal that, hey, why don't you take them?
You know, all these Western countries, you care so much, you care about humanitarianism.
Why don't you take these people and assist in our ethnic cleansing campaign?
And you have the head of the intelligence ministry, Gila Gamiel, bragging about how, well, my plan is gaining so much popularity in the country, excuse me, among members of the Knesset for just pushing all these people out.
And then at the same time, that people are watching these children die left and right.
And, you know, according to the Euro-Mediterranean Humanitarian Monitor, it's over 90% civilian casualties.
And the Israelis just pull these numbers completely out of their asses where they go, oh, it's 2,000.
Oh, it's 5,000 Hamas guys we got.
Oh, it's 7,000.
But meanwhile, you can, I mean, the numbers that are coming out of the UN and like I said, the Euromed Humanitarian Monitor and the Gaza Health Ministry, everybody acknowledges that these are likely undercounts.
You've got thousands of people buried under rubble right now through these bombings.
And they have destroyed 33% of the infrastructure and housing in Gaza already, according to Robert Pape and all these analysis that have been published in the AP and the Washington Post and the Times.
And so it's, I mean, it's unlike anything we have really seen.
And I think the American people are just absolutely abhorred by this in a way that even, you know, especially following all the bullshit we have to sit through about the rise, you know, rising China and how brutal of an authoritarian mass murder Vladimir Putin is, which I'm not denying that Putin's a war criminal or anything like that.
But the fact is, you can look at the UN numbers.
I mean, his, in two months, the Israelis killed well over the number of civilians in this war against Gaza.
And this is a people in a besieged coastal enclave, 25 miles long by five miles wide.
They've been under blockade for 16 years.
They've been under occupation for longer than the Soviet Union ruled Eastern Europe.
And they were already being routinely bombed and massacred every few years.
The last time they held nonviolent protests, which lasted more than a year, you could like clockwork every Friday watch the Israelis shoot children every single Friday during the race.
In 2018, you're talking about?
That's right.
Yeah.
And they were shooting kids, medics, journalists, amputees, just to be cruel.
Well, that's the thing where there'll be kind of like this argument.
And again, not like, of course, not justifying anything that like Hamas did on October 7th, but they'll kind of like, they will act like there haven't been peaceful attempts.
And like, look, the BDS movement, right?
I mean, that was like their peaceful attempt.
I mean, okay, libertarians might object to the S a little bit or whatever, but like it was like a boycott movement.
And that was like banned like by governments across the world and it was called horrifically anti-Semitic.
So every time there's an attempt to do any type of peaceful, you know, like resistance to this, it's met with violence.
And, you know, it's that's not to justify terrorism against civilians, but it is to explain it for sure.
And it's also a conflict people have been following very closely for decades, more so than these other wars that we've been involved in in my lifetime, certainly.
And so it is a very charged issue.
And the fact that the Congress is just so corrupt and bought and paid for by the Israel lobby, it makes people feel that much angrier and that much more hopeless, but it inspires them to get out there in the streets and make their voices heard.
And I don't agree with all of the tactics of the protesters, but it's it to see anti-war, and that's what these are.
These are anti-war protests.
It's very encouraging and probably some of the best things we've seen come out of this in this country, honestly, in the last several years, and probably more than that.
So it's good to see it's certainly revitalized the anti-war movement.
And I think it's a great opportunity for libertarians to make more headway on this issue.
And obviously, Dave, you've been doing a great job with that since the seventh.
But yeah, I mean, I think the reason people are furious is because they just cannot believe this is a naked funding of a genocidal war against a civilian population.
And they can keep saying we're targeting Hamas, but just nobody believes that because we can see in like in the 972 MAG article where it's like, no, no, we're bombing schools and high-rise apartment buildings and we're bombing universities and banks.
We're doing this to deliberately to put pressure on them.
And then we blow up the family members of suspected Hamas members that these recommendations for these targets are just generated by AI programs.
It's really sick stuff.
And people just have to, they hear about this every single day.
And one of the weird things about the mainstream news coverage of this is if you watch like, you know, Fox News or whatever, pick a channel, they will show the devastation ongoing in Gaza, just the absolute rubble, parents carrying their children with limbs blown off through the streets, you know, cars and ambulances and convoys of refugees being blown apart.
And then in the other margin, you'll have some guy agitating for we need to be funded.
We need 14 billion more dollars to keep this going.
And people just cannot sit through that kind of cognitive dissonance for very long.
It's it's it's really a disrealizing how dysfunctional our society is, honestly.
And I think it's like you say, I mean, there's all whether it's with Trump or this, but people seem to be headed for a breaking point in this country.
But I think this is a real dangerous one.
And because obviously it could provoke a much wider war in the region that would dwarf what we've done already just in the post 9-11 wars.
People need to keep in mind that didn't just cost trillions of dollars.
According to the cost of war project at Brown University, it killed or led to the deaths of four and a half million people.
Switching Habits with Fume00:02:22
We're playing with fire that could be a lot worse than that right now.
Yeah, there's you definitely you see right now there's of course there's like a there's Hezbollah in Lebanon there.
You now have the Houthis in Yemen.
Of course the Iranians who everybody's pointing the fingers at Lindsey Graham is up there advocating that we just start a war with Iran.
Why exactly?
Like, you know, I don't know, because we say they're involved or something like that.
And so you can see how this can spread.
There's a lot of potential to spread to a much wider war.
And that is that is a real danger.
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Yemen War and Obama's Legacy00:13:16
I want, Scott, I wanted to get your take on kind of obviously you've been one of the leading voices in the country about the war that was going on in Yemen, the U.S.-backed Saudi war there in Yemen over the last, well, I mean, we've had a ceasefire there that actually held for quite a while for the last year or so, but it was a good, what, seven, eight years of just that being the number one humanitarian crisis in the in the world.
And now the Houthis are really, which I think is pretty ill-advised, really getting pretty loud vocally about this war.
So like, what's going on there?
And what are your thoughts on what Yemen's involvement in this war is going to be?
Yeah, well, no, worse.
I mean, they're firing missiles off and they've taken over at least one ship and they've attacked other civilian vessels and allegedly attacked American naval vessels in the Red Sea as well.
I just saw, I think this is right, Kyle, give me a thumbs up that the U.S. claimed to have shot down a bunch of missiles and drones fired by the Houthis today or maybe yesterday.
Just today, one missile, one drone, the U.S. says they shot down and they recorded as the 22nd attack on commercial vessels in the Red Sea since October 19th.
I'm not sure about the U.S. numbers, but at least that's what they're saying.
Yeah.
And then, see, these are, this is why these are my guys, man.
The numbers I can't keep track of.
Kyle's picking them up for me.
Same thing for the strikes by Shiite militias against American forces in Syria and Iraq.
And there's been reprisal attacks there as well.
Khatib Hezbollah is a Shiite group close to the government there and close to Iran in Iraq.
And I don't know exactly who's behind the attacks in Syria, but they claim it's Shiite militias close to the government there doing it, close to Iran.
So the Houthis, just very briefly, if there's such a thing, Obama famously waged a drone war in Yemen.
And sometimes his worst critics, when they're accusing him of his worst crimes, accuse him of the drone war.
When, hell, that's an asterisk, man.
That's nothing because see, that drone war was from 09 through 15, the beginning of 15.
But at the end of 14, beginning of 15, this group, the Shiite, this group of Shiites called the Houthis out of the north, they came and seized power in alliance with the former dictator that America used to back and then betrayed and forced out, a guy named Saleh, Abdullah Saleh.
And they came and they overthrew the new leader, the former, or yeah, the vice president turned president, Mansur Hadi, and forced him out and thus started a war.
The Saudis and the UAE came to Obama and said, we want to fight him.
And Obama gave them a green light, gave them all the bombs and all the care and feeding of their planes and including mid-air refueling and including the USA Navy enforcing the block.
And this is the line.
This is where the famous Obama line to placate the Saudis comes from, right?
Like it was like, oh, sorry, we fought that war in Iraq and you didn't really like that and you didn't really like some of these policies.
But so in order to placate the Saudis, fine, we'll jump on board with you for this war.
Yeah.
And in fact, worse, ironically, and you're right, because it was definitely fighting the war in Iraq for Iran had angered the Saudis and they were trying to make up for that.
But also they were in the middle of trying to iron out the Iran nuclear deal, which actually protected Saudi Arabia by scaling back Iran's nuclear program and expanding the inspections regime by quite a bit.
I'll spare you the details.
But you might think the Saudis would appreciate it.
But the thing is, the Iranian nuke was always a hoax anyway.
They weren't worried about that.
So scaling back the program didn't mean that much to them.
What they were worried about instead was that by scaling back the program, Obama was signaling that America was going to tilt back toward Iran and away from Saudi.
Well, he was, well, like, well, look, I mean, because what they were actually doing in effect was removing the neocon pretext for war with Iran.
So they were totally undoing what John McCain and George W. Bush had worked so hard for for so many years, which is that we're laying the groundwork.
They were in the axis of evil after all.
And now Obama comes out and says, no, they're not anymore.
That's all over.
So that's really what it's about.
Yeah.
And in other words, more to the point, they were even removing the pretext for the Cold War against Iran.
Maybe now we could get along with them, which I got to tell you, for people who aren't familiar with the politics of the USA in 2015, there was no way in hell Barack Obama was going to Tehran or was bringing the Ayatollah or even the president Rafsanjani to the United States to have dinner and become friends.
All they were doing was taking the nuclear weapons program off the table, and that was it.
And they were going to be lucky even if they could get Hillary to go along with that into the next term, much less the next Republican to take power.
But anyway, to placate the Saudis, exactly, that's from the New York Times in a war that they knew would be indecisive.
They said it'd be long, bloody, and indecisive.
In other words, we don't even know what victory is supposed to look like.
We don't believe we can force the Houthis out of the capital with airpower, but we're going to do it anyway.
And as Michael Horton, No Relation, the Al-Qaeda expert from the Jamestown Foundation said, John McCain complains that we're flying as Iran's air force in Iraq.
And that was all John McCain's fault, different story.
But we're flying as al-Qaeda's air force in Yemen is what he told Mark Perry in March of 2015.
That was the war that Obama started in 15 that was essentially an American-backed Saudi and UAE air war more than anything else and naval blockade enforced by the United States.
That lasted from 15 all the way through the end of Trump, which was through the beginning of 2017 is when Trump took office.
And then all through four years of Trump and through the first year of Joe Biden.
And what ended up happening was the Houthis kept reaching out and touching Saudi oil refineries with their drones and missiles.
And eventually in, I think it was late February of 22, they blew up one last refinery near Riyadh.
And we don't know exactly the scene, but somebody in a white robe said to the crown prince, enough of this, bring an end to this now.
And they did, and they sued for peace with the Houthis.
And so, oh, I left out the part where right when the Houthis seized, man, I'm so bad at telling this story, even though I'm the best one at telling this story.
When the Houthis seized power.
Obama's government thought this was great.
And our current Secretary of Defense, Lloyd Austin, was then the head of central command, four-star general, head of central command.
This is why he shouldn't be Secretary of Defense, by the way.
Never mind the conflict of interest with Raytheon.
General shouldn't be Secretary of Defense.
This is a republic, not an empire.
But anyway, Lloyd Austin made a deal with the Houthis.
America would give them intelligence if they would kill Al-Qaeda with it.
And the Houthis said, all right, then.
And this is confirmed on the Houthi side of the story as well by the Wall Street Journal, got it on both sides of the ocean, confirmed the story, as well as Deputy Secretary of Defense for Intelligence Michael Vickers gave a briefing at the Atlantic Council and told the whole story to Barbara Slavin, the reporter from the Atlantic Council and formerly at UPI.
And she wrote a great write-up all about it as well.
And so when Obama launched the war against them, he was stabbing them in the back and in fact was committing treason directly on behalf.
Well, indirectly, but just barely with a very lowercase I-N and all capitals italics for the rest of directly on behalf of AQAP, the guys that tried to blow up the plane over Detroit with the underpants bomb on Christmas Day, 2009, the guys that did the Charlie Heddo attack.
They massacred the cartoonists in France.
And I think they did the Eagles of Death Metal Concert or one of the other horrible massacres in France in the Obama years.
I think the Eagles was ISIS.
I might be wrong about that.
That might have been that.
There was a handful of them, and I think AQAP was two of them.
Anyway, so the Houthis are people who, if America's enemy was al-Qaeda, instead of they were our strategic ally against the Shiites, well, then the Shiites would be our strategic allies against Al-Qaeda.
And we wouldn't care if Hezbollah wanted to kill Al-Qaeda in Syria.
And we wouldn't care if Khatib Hezbollah wanted to kill Al-Qaeda or ISIS in Iraq.
And we wouldn't give a damn.
And we might even celebrate if the Houthis were killing AQAP.
Go ahead.
At the very least, be our guest.
And instead, America's on the side of the suicide bombers against the Shiites because the Shiites ultimately are under the thrall one way or the other to varying degrees of the Ayatollah in Iran who maintains his independence from the American empire, which makes him the bad guy and them all the enemy.
And this is the danger regional war that Connor's talking about here, where we could have things.
There's a brand new article two days ago in the Wall Street Journal about, they claim that Biden taught Netanyahu out of major strikes against Hezbollah on like October the 12th or something.
And Israeli intelligence said, they're coming.
Let's hit them right now.
And American intelligence said, no, they're not.
Don't do it.
And then Biden assured him that we know we're right.
They're not going to attack.
Don't do anything.
And so they didn't.
But Netanyahu could have just as easily ignored him.
And apparently they were going to launch a major operation.
And the strikes with the Houthis, there comes a point where, you know, Gulf of Tonkin incident or not, whether our Navy should be there or not.
Our Navy rules the seven seas and they could very well catch themselves within range and catch a bad shot from a missile.
And you could have a pretext for a real escalation right there.
And the good news is, by the way, the Saudis are just signing the peace deal right now.
They apparently are really, as we were talking about right before we went on, they are really interested in putting this thing behind them and don't want to restart the war for us at this point.
So at least thank goodness for that.
But this, it's a real funny situation, Dave, see, because all the Sunni kings in the region are all the American sock puppets.
And even though the Palestinians are Sunni Arabs as well as Christians or Sunni Muslims, I mean to say, as well as Christians, I don't think any of them are Shiites.
It's only the Shiites in the region who stick up for them.
Hezbollah, the Alawaites tied with the Shiites and close to the Shiites in Syria.
And of course, the Shiites in Iraq and in Iran.
But all the Sunnis are the kept American sock puppets who can't say anything in Jordan, in Egypt, in Saudi, in Bahrain, where it's a majority Shiite population, but a minority Sunni king that rules over them.
But to be clear, those are the governments.
The governments of those countries are all bought off.
But I'm sure the people, the people of those countries are like 100% with the Palestinians.
100%.
Exactly right.
And so that means that this is a very volatile situation.
That's what Hamas was trying to provoke this reaction from Israel.
I don't know if they wanted to get hit this hard or they expect to get hit this hard.
They are trying to provoke Israel into doing something crazy against them in order to provoke all the counter reactions against that, where everybody is forced to take a stand.
It heightens the contradictions, as the commies would say, and makes compromise less possible for everyone and war across the region more likely.
And, you know, I talked with Robert Pape today about what sounds like it should be a completely off the table, crazy discussion about, you know, they want that West Bank more than they want the Gaza Strip.
And, you know, if they're willing to kick out 2 million Palestinians out of Gaza, then they've reduced their Palestinian population problem by 2 million.
But then again, in for a penny, in for a pound, and you got some right-wing loonies running that country right now, they might build a railroad and a new bridge across the Jordan and try to do another knockback and force these people out of there.
And the question was, how much of a fight would they have on their hands if they try to take the opportunity to get away with it?
And would that really bring on a war with the entire Muslim world?
Would the Sunni kingdoms in the region all fall?
Would there be a united even, you know, new entire structure of alliances in the region as people go to war over, because that would mean the loss of all the holy sites of Jerusalem once and for all and everything.
And this could be a real deal.
And all the Israelis would have to bet is, don't worry, us in America can take them.
And now we're in Iraq War IV, but not just that.
Now we got to fight, I don't know, Syria and Hezbollah and maybe the new junta in Jordan and Egypt and whoever takes over when their governments collapse under the strain of this.
It could get real bad.
They could wind it up real soon here, wind it down real soon here, or it could get much worse.
I don't think it can just go on like this.
Yeah.
Escalating Tensions Against Iran00:14:59
And to think that in the middle of all of that, you have like someone like Lindsey Graham, who is a United States senator somehow, just saying, bomb Iran.
Like just escalate a major attack against Iran right now.
So that in addition to all of those risks that you're talking about, we're now in a hot war with Iran.
Because how removed they are from just like the logistical capabilities of even the U.S. military that we would just get like, okay, so let's just start something that by all expert accounts is going to be substantially more difficult than the war in Iraq, like against a much larger country with a much more prepared military that can hit our targets much more easily and much more difficult terrain to navigate.
Let's just start that war for no reason.
Let's start that and then wait to see on all these other escalations.
It really is wild that that type of rhetoric is even being like, and by the way, if you people don't know what I'm referencing, Lindsey Graham just the other day said this on national television that we should just, it was like, wow, they got targets out in the open.
Let's take them all out.
And it's, I don't know.
It's pretty wild.
Pretty wild to say.
Okay.
So let's let's I because I wanted to get back to because we didn't talk about RFK, but Connor kind of alluded to him earlier.
And that is one of the interesting kind of elements of this presidential election that we've got, there's a third party candidate out there this year that is at least since Ross Perot, the most, I don't know, well-positioned third party candidate in my lifetime.
And was, let's just say, up until Israel became such a big concern, as Connor kind of mentioned, you were considering even supporting the guy.
I mean, look, he was, at least if we're just judging political candidates based off their rhetoric, which is especially with someone like RFK, who isn't really a politician, all we kind of have to go off of, he really was by far the best on Ukraine, by far the best on China.
He was very good on the whole COVID regime insanity.
He was very good on, you know, deep state corruption and things like that.
And there was a lot that was very appealing about the guy.
Look, I interviewed him.
I had him on my show.
I, you know, I know him and some of his family members and stuff.
And there was a lot.
But man, when it came to this Israel question, it really is like it's just a different guy than the guy who at least we saw campaigning.
And there were always problems with RFK from the libertarian point of view.
I mean, there were always like issues he was bad on.
But man, this one is just disqualifying.
Well, I'll just say that, you know, the situation that Scott is describing, it's interesting because the plan was reversed.
If you go back to the beginning of the year last year, when the Houthis were making these major hits on oil facilities in the UAE and Saudi Arabia, Biden was underwriting some of the Saudis' worst bombing in years.
And the Israelis and their partisans, as well as the current head of CENTCOM, Eric Carrilla, under Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, were advocating for building a NATO-style coalition against Iran.
And they were using the Houthis as an excuse.
But the idea was that we're going to have, we're going to integrate the air and missile defenses in the region.
We're going to have this buildup.
And it'll all be based off of the foundation of the Abraham Accords, which was all about building up a coalition, an anti-Iran coalition, throwing the Palestinians under the bus and further arming up all these Arab regimes, these sock puppets of the Americans.
Then, of course, we have enshrined into our law that Israel must maintain a qualitative military edge in the region and be the dominant power besides the United States over everybody.
So they were going to get further armed up.
And it was supposed to work swimmingly.
And I think Lindsey Graham is just upset that it went in this other direction now.
But as far as Kennedy goes, he was, now he's saying that China and Iran are the enemy, that China and Iran are going to blackmail the entire world.
The only thing standing in that way in the way of that is Israel.
And they're going to cut off our complete access to Middle Eastern oil.
They're going to choke the entire world.
Wait, are you talking about Lindsey Graham or Robert Kennedy?
I swear I'm talking about Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
And it's that bad.
This guy, I wrote an article for the Ron Paul Institute about how he is our only option to oppose this new cold war with China because Liam McCollum had transcribed his remarks during that Twitter space he did with Elon Musk and I believe David Sachs.
And if you read it, I swear Ron Paul could have written it.
It was wonderful.
And he was saying we need to have, if we're going to compete, we should compete economically, but this is really an option, an opportunity for unprecedented cooperation here.
We can use this economic relationship to rebuild our industrial base.
We do not need to make Taiwan a military issue.
They don't want war.
Why are we trying to escalate?
And we do not need to be headed towards war with China.
I'm not afraid of China.
In fact, that's, I believe exactly what he said.
And so, and he was talking about how we were promised a peace dividend after the Cold War.
We never got it.
And this is the same old, the same old, you know, scam we've been dealing with since the end of the Cold War.
There's always a big boogeyman excuse to continue ballooning the defense budget and to growing the national security state and continue fighting all these wars.
So the deal we were supposed to have with Kennedy as libertarians was we swallow our pride and accept some of his whatever you want, Democratic Party domestic policies in exchange for him being a fighter on behalf of the American people against big pharma, the military industrial complex and the national security state.
And I don't, I mean, you made the point on a previous show that he's gone on this tour giving a hand job to every rabbi he can find.
And that's not inaccurate.
I mean, seriously, you look at this guy, Shmooley.
He's obviously a foreign agent openly meddling in American politics and American elections.
And every video, every single day, this guy is pressuring American politicians into being more pro-Israel, more supportive of this war on Gaza.
And come what may, you know, it has nothing to do with American interests, only to do with the interests of Israel.
And Kennedy's campaign has now become ancillary to Shmooli's project on behalf of the Edelsons or whatever his racket is.
And so Kennedy is saying, he's made remarks like China and Iran are one organism now, and Israel's not an occupying power.
And he's taught Venezuela is a huge threat as well, because they and Iran, I guess, are a part of the same organism with China.
And I swear, it's got, he's become, Dan McAdam said, he sounds worse than neocons sometimes.
And it's just a complete embarrassment.
And all of the, you know, even his Ukraine rhetoric has not been as good as I remember it being earlier in the election season of, you know, lately anyway, because his focus is on proving and I guess pushing back on when just, you know, pretty reasonable leftists like Crystal Ball, or she's not even really a leftist, I guess.
She's just like a progressive, push back on him and say, I don't want to fund mass murder of women and children.
And his position is, we did it to the Iraqis.
Why are you only mad when it's the Jews?
And again, like falsely equating every action that Israel does with the Jews.
So if you're against killing women and children on the U.S. with American bombs and American planes, then you hate Jews because that's what Jews do.
I mean, and then he's complaining about the rise in anti-Semitism when he's contributing to it, if there is a rise in anti-Semitism and pretty much demonstrating to the American people.
I mean, you saw Vivek doing his whole performance at the Republican Jewish Committee or he's just as pro-Israel as anybody else.
Trump did the same thing.
You know, this really, it's embarrassing for the American people to have to sit through this.
Kennedy is maybe the best example.
Look, man, you don't ever complain about Yemen.
That might be one thing that you could gotcha somebody with, but you didn't say anything about Iraq War II?
Come on, the entire American left was against Iraq War II the whole time.
You can't really.
He was talking about dual containment.
He was talking about the 90s, the sanctions on Iraq in the 90s.
It killed hundreds of thousands of children.
And I guess he forgot that that was Martin Indonesia.
And I promise I'll be quiet and let these boys talk, but I just want to say real quick, because I actually got breaking news on this my own self that I reported today, which is that Robert Kennedy's foreign policy and veteran affairs advisor, James R. Webb, resigned in disgust over his Israel policy.
And I broke that story this morning on Twitter and I published James R. Webb's resignation letter where he talked about exactly what Connor just talked about.
That, oh, yeah, well, we collectively punished all the people in Iraq.
And James R. Webb said, oh, yeah, well, I was a Marine in the Battle of Ramadi in 2006.
And no, we did not go around blowing up people's houses and killing civilians and collectively punishing them.
We were trying to do counterinsurgency, which meant fighting with restraint and only firing when being fired upon.
And what we feel is taking extreme risk and losing a lot of guys in the process.
And so don't sit here and equate what the Israelis are doing in the Gaza Strip to the way that we fought that war.
You don't know the first thing about it out.
And he resigned over that.
And he was a guy who, well, I'm going to interview him tomorrow morning.
I guess you'll find out more about it.
But he's a guy with the very best of intentions.
He's Senator James Webb's son.
If you remember him, he was the anti-war Democrat who was there for a while and just couldn't stand it anymore, being in the Senate around those scum and left.
But he had been the Secretary of the Navy under Ronald Reagan and was anti-Iraq War II.
His son went and fought in the thing.
He's a friend of mine.
He's a good guy.
And he went in there to try to advise Kennedy because he knows the time, man.
He knows exactly what this guy needs to know.
And, you know, Kennedy is, and this is all me.
This is not him talking, but you can just tell about even the stuff about Ukraine.
Ray sounded real good on Ukraine at first, but then also he started making these really elementary mistakes about George Kennan said what?
And this guy said this and this guy said that.
And you can tell he's really a dilettante.
He's trying to repeat something that somebody told him, but he never really learned it himself.
He doesn't really know it.
It's more of a Gary Johnson than, you know, one of us.
And so his best effort wasn't that good.
And then the real problem is, is that he's a bad person on the just basic level.
So as soon as he praised Roger Waters for saying something positive about Ukraine and he said, oh, that's good.
And then he was told by the Israel lobby, no, we hate Roger Waters and you're never allowed to say something nice about Roger Waters because he hates Jews, which is, of course, a horrible lie, and which he refuted again on my show today.
But anyway.
And so Kenny goes, oh, I didn't know that.
Well, screw him.
He's horrible.
And all this and that.
And then he got in worse trouble was because somebody filmed him.
And I'm sure this was somewhat taken out of context or whatever.
I don't know.
It wasn't the worst way that the New York Post portrayed it.
But still, somebody surreptitiously filmed Robert Kennedy with a cell phone camera speculating about Jews and the germ and that maybe somehow it was engineered so that Jews wouldn't be hurt by the COVID thing.
Well, he got in huge trouble for that from the extremely pro-Israel and pro-Zionist New York Post, which trashed him for it.
And then what did he do?
He goes, I can't be a racist against Jews.
I hate Palestinians.
All of them.
They're vermin.
They're terrorists.
They're subhuman.
They all deserve to die.
Oh, and they're all the most pampered little precious pets of the international community.
He actually said, he actually said to Crystal Ball that the Palestinians might be the most pampered group of people in the world.
And on the personal list, wait, two more things.
He said he made up this lie.
He said, the Palestinian authority will pay anyone anywhere in the world to kill any Jew, which is completely crazy and is not true.
And he's frankly just Robert Kennedy himself taking out a hit on every Jew in the world.
You just told everyone who might want to kill a Jew that there's money in it for you if you do it.
Did he even make that?
He thought he heard that somewhere like Alex Jones thought he heard that somewhere and just go, that's good enough.
I'll just repeat that.
And then on top of that is he went and he threw Elon Omar under the bus.
Now, I'm no big fan of Elon Omar.
In fact, the very first time I heard her say words, I was like, oh, she's stupid.
This is disappointing.
And I haven't really paid any attention to her since.
That was what, six years ago, whenever she got first elected.
But he just brought her up out of nowhere and goes, get her.
The black woman says the richest, whitest guy in America goes, get her.
She's the real racist.
Like this is a cartoon or something because, and then what?
She didn't even say anything.
She wasn't even in trouble.
He was only bringing up that two years ago, she was in trouble over bullshit.
The made-up story that she, which she did say, but it was a made-up controversy, that she said, it's all about the Benjamins, baby, which was a double entendre about Benjamin Netanyahu and Benjamin Franklin on the $100 bill, as though AIPAC raises a quarter of a billion dollars a year and spends it on American politics for no reason.
You got that, everybody?
200 plus billion dollars a year for no reason.
How dare you say anything about that?
Anyway, he just brings this up from two years ago and goes, Elon Omar, get her.
She hates Jews.
Get her.
What?
And it reminds me of Winston Smith in 1984 when they put the rat cage on the guy's face, just like Robert Kennedy Jr. deserves to have happen to him.
And he goes, no, get Julia, not me.
Get my girlfriend Julia.
And he throws his girlfriend under the bus to Big Brother to be tortured instead.
That's Robert Kennedy.
He's Winston Smith after O'Brien already completely tortured the humanity out of him.
And he's completely broken and has the dignity of a dead dog with rigor mortis and a ditch on the side of the road.
Okay, now I'm done and I'll step out of the way for the rest of the interview here.
Ridiculous Siege Politics and Opinion Polls00:16:06
I don't want to take up too much of your time here.
No matter how many times you say that, we all know you're not going to do it.
So it's okay.
We'll all get rants in here.
But to me, for him telling Crystal Ball that the Palestinians are the most pampered people in the world, that was really a moment to me where it was like, dude, that's not even the story from the pro-Israeli hawks point of view.
Like even they won't say that.
They'll go like, you know, well, it's the, it'll be Douglas Murray.
It's Hamas who's actually doing this to all of these, you know, innocent people.
And that is terrible that it's happening, but it's Hamas's fault.
But no one's trying to pretend that like, people of Gaza have it great.
They're the richest people in the world, really.
No one's done more for them.
So to hear him say that, it was just, it's, look, it's a shame in a way.
It's, it, it makes me sad because I, I, I never thought RFK was gonna win the presidency, but there was something cool to having like a dissident voice.
Yeah, he wasn't a perfect libertarian dissident voice, but he was like, uh, you know, the son of democratic royalty who was repudiating a lot of Joe Biden's policies.
And to see it all come down like this, like it's just, it's just such a shame that the Israel's war became the most important story in the world.
And he's just totally sold that for speculate, as you will, whatever reason that he is not willing to challenge anything on that.
All right.
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All right, let's get back into the show.
Kyle, if you want to get in here and any comment on RFK or Israel or any of that stuff.
Yeah, I mean, it's just so absurd where the discourse is in America right now, where you have people like RFK Jr. and Lindsey Graham talking about attacking Iran when the U.S. can't even deal with the Houthis.
I mean, we've been at war with them for eight years already.
And there's a fantastic article out today by Dub Bondau in the American Conservative explaining how the U.S. really doesn't have any options here.
It's not like Saudi Arabia or the UAE are going to restart the war against the Houthis on behalf of the U.S. and Israel.
The Houthis are one of the most popular people in the Middle East right now.
The people love them because they see the Houthis as being like the biggest force right now for standing up for the people of Gaza.
And so they are very popular.
And yeah, the U.S. could keep shooting down Houthi drones that cost $2,000 to make with missiles that cost a couple hundred thousand dollars to make.
And so it's really not a sustainable policy in the long term.
Of course, the U.S. could go to war directly with the Houthis, but other than maybe hitting a few targets, you know, on shore or something like that, the Houthi drones are very mobile.
And we've seen in Iraq and Syria where the U.S. has a lot more intelligence that they can't just take out these groups and prevent the attacks on American forces.
And so we really don't have an option against the Houthis.
And so the idea that we're just going to go to war with Iran when we can't even deal with this pesky group in the poorest country in the Middle East seems awfully ridiculous.
And I think, you know, the same kind of goes for Israel too, when we're talking about Hezbollah, where, you know, Israel is not making a lot of gains against Hamas and Gaza.
Initially, they said 1,000 to 2,000 dead Hamas.
That was about a month ago, but they quickly revised that up to 5,000.
And now they say 7,000.
But however many it is, it's still far less than the number of Palestinian children that Israel has killed in its bombing campaign.
And so the idea that Israel is going to be able to fight a two-front war is absolutely ridiculous.
There's actually a report in Israeli media out today that I just wrote up for the Libertarian Institute.
So you can find in the news section of the website.
And the Israelis are asking the Americans for Apache attack helicopters because they only have two squadrons of them.
And it's running 24-7 right now.
They're using all the reserve forces to operate these helicopters because they're trying to fight a two-front war essentially against Hezbollah in the north and Hamas in the south.
And it's just not a long-term strategy that Israel can maintain.
And so I guess Tel Aviv is really hoping that they'll draw Washington into the war against Hezbollah in the north.
But you could imagine that that group is going to inflict an awful lot of damage on Israel before they're really able to stomp out and take out a lot of Hezbollah's larger positions.
And again, their forces already split between not only just, you know, the South and Gaza, but also they're carrying out quite a few operations in the West Bank.
They just, I think, carried out another drone strike there this week.
Do you, because you guys probably have a better sense of this than me, but like what?
Okay, so short of like, you know, the governments in like Egypt or Jordan or the, you know, in Saudi Arabia or something like that being overthrown or something like that and the people's will, you know, just with the forces that are actually hostile to Israel who are, you know, don't have American sock puppets ruling over them.
So like the Houthis.
Hezbollah, Hamas, all of that.
Like, what are the capabilities of like, what could Hezbollah really do to like northern Israel or what can the Houthis actually do?
Are they just completely outgunned and outmatched?
Or could they actually like cause some real damage to Israel if it came to like a full out war?
Well, certainly Hezbollah has a lot of military capabilities, rockets and missiles.
They say they have over 100,000 of them.
And certainly with the war in Syria and with the Syrian government there, you know, in response to America propping up all these jihadists in their country, they invited Iran and Iran and Hezbollah to help them fight against the jihadist forces and were really key in that fight, especially before Russia entered the war.
And so my guess is that the ties between these countries have only increased in time and that's increased Hezbollah's not only, you know, they've now fought a war in Syria.
And so now they have more battle-hardened fighters ready to fight against the Israelis, but they also likely have developed their missile technology and stuff just from Iran and Syria based on that.
The Houthis, I'm not sure what they could really do to the U.S.
I think most of their missiles and things like that are, you know, they're able to hit Saudi Arabia, their neighbor.
I don't think they've ever hit an American ship or even come within a few nautical miles of an American ship in the Red Sea.
I don't think their anti-ship missiles are that accurate.
I believe they have some of the only anti-ship ballistic missiles in the world.
Most anti-ship missiles are cruise missiles.
And so that would mean they're less guided and probably less effective.
And they, you know, the drones they're using are fairly small.
And so they're meant to cause small damage to ships rather than actually sinking them or anything like that.
That being said, I mean, America does have a base in Djibouti that would probably be within range of Houthi targets.
Maybe some U.S. military assets in Saudi Arabia are the UAE as well.
Okay.
So one of the things that it's interesting because there's no, obviously there's a lot of like, you know, we all kind of live in this world and there's a lot of evil wars and evil shit that's that happens, but it's really like there's nothing quite like when it comes to Israel, how unbelievably twisted every argument gets made.
And like the argument that should be an argument on our side gets thrown in our face almost like, you know, like even though my favorite way is Netanyahu just talking about how it's incumbent on the world, if they care about the people of Gaza to take in the people of Gaza.
Like you're like, if you care about these people, then why don't you help us ethnically cleanse them and shit?
Like it's just, it's all so wild.
But one of these things that I've encountered, because I've done a lot of these debates at this point, and then like Connor, me and you messaged earlier today about my last episode taking on Douglas Murray's claims.
But so one of the things that the pro-Israeli people will argue about is they'll point to like opinion polls, which I don't, I don't know what, look, I don't know the actual logistics of how they're conducting these opinion polls, but anyone who's telling me they are conducting an opinion poll in Gaza right now, I just have some questions about how exactly that works.
You know what I mean?
Like, how exactly are you talking to these people?
What?
But then there's, but they're saying that it's like, well, look, like support for October 7th is so high.
Support for Hamas is so high.
If there were elections in the West Bank tomorrow, Hamas would win because everybody just right now is supporting Hamas.
And all I can think about when I hear that is like, well, yeah, that's what even General McChrystal told us, right?
That's insurgency math for you.
That, yeah, I forget what were the numbers he used, but 10 minus two is an eight.
10 minus two is 20, because the more of the innocent people you kill, or even the more uh you know insurgents in that case that you kill, they all had brothers and cousins and fathers and sons, and all of them are now going to grab up uh you know, uh rifles and be ready to fight this cause.
So it does seem like that's.
Another huge element in this here is that they're.
My guess is that even Israel isn't going to commit to this ridiculously vague stated goal of eliminating Hamas, because what I don't think any of us really believe they've killed 7 000 Hamas militants.
I don't.
They haven't shown any evidence.
They're just asserting that they've done this.
But even if they had, what was the total number of Hamas militants?
They're still not even a fraction of the way there.
So what are we talking about they'd have to do in order to to take out Hamas.
What you're talking about Dave, is the collective evil and guilt of the civilian population, because they supposedly support their security force.
But that doesn't count for us or for anyone else, nor should it.
Everybody is stuck with the security force.
These people don't even have a state.
These people are occupied by Israel, not by Hamas.
Hamas are just the trustees in their prison.
That's it.
They're the strongest gang that took over the strip when Israel withdrew to the outside right and just laid the place under siege.
Um, so the people of Gaza have no choice.
And then anyone at Georgetown you know College, University OF Public Relations or Harvard, UH Foreign Relations School, JOHN F Kennedy School will tell you about the Rally around The Flag effect.
Get this dude.
George Bush had been president for eight months and then the worst attack on America that ever happened, at least since the War Of 1812, happened more in terms of casualties from a foreign uh power terrorist group attacked the United States and his approval rating went up to above 90 percent.
And all that was.
It wasn't really a vote of confidence in him.
It was the American people feeling like, well, outsiders are going to read these poll results and they got to know that all us Americans are united behind whoever's in charge of kicking ass on our behalf, whether it's his fault or not.
Well, and I think I think even more than that it's it's a feeling of being like we're terrified that we could be killed and here is the only option we have, or the best option we have of what could possibly defend us from that, not even support you.
Yeah, they only have the monopoly on force around here.
That's the same as anyone when you blow them up.
That's the, the great documentary.
People have never seen the power of nightmares.
They talk about the transmission belt of power between Al-Qaeda and the neoconservatives.
They need each other's violence to justify their own plans for the enemy and what they want to do.
You see how bad these guys are?
No one cared what Paul Wolfowitz said.
They were the crazies in the basement.
That's what George H.W. Bush called the neocons.
Oh, all those Israeli spies, they're the crazies in the basement.
They're allowed to murder El Salvadorians and Nicaraguans, but keep them the hell away from Middle East policy.
But once we knock some towers down, Paul Wolfowitz goes, I know what to do.
And everybody goes, oh, Paul says we got to go to Baghdad.
Okay, Paul, at least he's got a plan.
You know, that's what Tucker, that's what Tucker Carlson told me, which was real interesting, is that he said when he used to work for, I guess in the 90s, he worked for the Weekly Standard, was it?
Or one of those?
And he said they had a shared office with Peanak.
And he said they literally, like, he said, when they, to go to the bathroom, you had to walk by the Peanac office or whatever.
And he said they all always just kind of rolled their eyes and laughed at those guys.
Like they'd all be like, like, we have this policy for how we're going to fight multiple wars in the Middle East.
And they're all just kind of like, yeah, all right, whatever, dude.
It's like, none of this is ever going to happen.
Like, it's all so ridiculous.
And then he's like, looking back at it now, you're just like, ah, geez, they really are.
That was Robert Kagan.
Those guys really grabbed the wheel, huh?
Yeah, that dork, that was fat neck Fred.
He killed 300,000 Afghans.
Yeah, I don't mean to laugh at that, but it's just kind of funny to be like from that position of like, and then I was saying to him, like, almost like, man, that's how, that's also how you would have felt about the original Zionists.
Like if they were, if you were just listening to this like little group, even before they really got like the international like financing and stuff, where they're just like, we're going to go create our own state in Palestine, you'd be like, yeah, sure you are, dude.
That sounded like a good plan.
Yep.
Anyway, I'm sorry.
I didn't mean to break you up there.
Of the Palestinians, I want to talk to you about this thing real quick, man.
Everybody take this down as a footnote if you could, dude.
It's worth it here.
Let me find for you real quick.
A guy sent this to me.
Everybody knows about how Hamas won the election.
They won a plurality.
Pardon me for the bright light in my eyes here.
They won a plurality of the vote in 2006.
And then there was a failed coup.
Remember the Gaza bombshell.
That was the American Saudi Egyptian failed coup against Hamas that backfired and led to them seizing control of the entire Gaza Strip in 2007.
And then the full-scale siege.
Okay.
But this all started with the disengagement policy.
Remember Formaldehyde.
I'm always telling you about that.
Ariel Sharon's advisor said the reason we're disengaging from Gaza is to put the peace process in formaldehyde.
Okay.
Well, check out this thing.
I'll just, I'm not going to read to you out of it or anything, but it's Jerusalem Post from May 20, 2004.
Okay.
A year before the disengagement.
The disengagement had actually just failed in the Knesset.
Sharon tried to push it and Netanyahu and some others have backstabbed him.
He eventually got it through as we know a year later, but that's the occasion of the discussion here.
Anyway, it's called It's the Demography Stupid.
That's a takeoff on Bill Clinton.
It's the Economy Stupid campaign from 92.
It's the demography stupid, an interview with Arnon Saffer, S-O-F-F-E-R, Arnon Soffer by Ruthie Bloom, B-O-U-M.
Okay.
Kill Them All or Disengage00:02:06
So here's the deal.
He's saying he, Soffer, is the author of the disengagement policy.
He's the one who convinced Sharon to do it.
And what he's saying is something that sounds sometimes like what liberal Zionists say as an argument for the two-state solution.
We ought to let these people go.
Let them have their independent state.
That way we're not stuck with them, these horrible Arab Muslims that we don't want.
And we can have our liberal Jewish Zionist dream within 67 borders, right?
Well, they're saying, nah, we're not going to let them have their state.
We're going to keep them pinned in and under siege and occupied.
We're not going to let them have anything like a state.
Forget that.
But we don't want them to be considered part of Israel.
We want to disengage from them, starting especially with the Gaza Strip.
We're going to colonize as much as the West Bank as we can.
But we want to essentially subtract the population of the Gaza Strip from the population of Palestinians that are said to be our responsibility.
We'll otherize them further.
And the problem, of course, is because Palestinian Muslims and Christians are having too many babies and they won't stop.
And soon they're going to outnumber us.
So we've got to do something to get rid of them.
So what we're going to do here is essentially virtually get rid of them by disengaging, not really giving them independence in a two-state solution, but disengaging from the Gaza Strip.
And then he says, we'll build a wall around it.
And he says we will have to kill and kill and kill because they will not accept this.
They will continue to fight.
And then we will have to just send in missiles and bomb their homes, send in missiles and kill their families and force them to understand that this is what happens.
You cannot resist or we're just going to keep killing you.
And this is the policy that, as we know, came to be called mowing the grass.
And the problem is they were born with the wrong religion and they keep getting married and reproducing.
So they have to be killed and killed and killed.
America First Healthcare Alternatives00:02:16
And this is in 2004, which is two years before they won a plurality in the election George W. Bush forced them to hold.
Three years before the coup where Gaza seized control, where Hamas seized control over the Gaza Strip.
We're going to build a giant concentration camp, razor wire fence around the place, and then we're going to murder them all.
You got to send them to the middle.
Because there's too many of them.
So I was completely unaware of that.
Jesus Christ.
That's what it's all about.
All right.
Let me ask you this, because I've always like kind of wondered about this.
And I think I've meant to like ask you on the phone about this.
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Settlers, Cutting, and Radical Division00:08:16
All right, let's get back into the show.
Okay, so after Hamas wins the plurality in, was it 2006?
Yes.
The elections?
So in 2007, when there's the coup attempt, which is where they really, they thwart the coup and then they consolidate power and take over Gaza.
That was led by the U.S., correct?
Were the Israelis in on that coup?
Yes.
So Ehud Olmert then, Sharon was gone.
So Ehud Olmert was his kind of right-hand man and handpicked successor.
He was a bad guy, but less of an ideologue than Sharon or Netanyahu.
And I think he...
If I read that story.
He wasn't on the prop up Hamas train that Netanyahu's on.
He actually wanted to overthrow them.
Right, because that was the result of his action was he ended up giving them more power than Sharon ever did.
But then, of course, and by the way, people really should read that article.
I know it sounds stupid, Vanity Fair, but it's a good piece by David Rose.
And he quotes in there David Wormser, the guy that wrote the clean break strategy for overthrowing Saddam to weaken Hezbollah so that Israel won't have to give up a Palestinian state because they will neutralize what you guys were just talking about, the threat of Hezbollah on the northern front.
And if we can neutralize that threat, then we can screw the Palestinians and not have to worry about Hezbollah.
That was what the whole damn clean break was about.
Well, here is Mr. Clean Break himself, Wormser, is ratting on, was it Eric Edelman?
No, it's Elliot Abrams and saying this is all Elliot Abrams' fault.
I always confuse those two.
It's all Elliot Abrams' fault, that idiot.
He did this.
And he says, us neocons in the in the White House are all at each other's throats, he says, over this.
And that's, he gave a couple of good block quotes to David Rose about this.
So out of the horse's mouth from Dick Cheney's right-hand man, foreign policy advisor, author of the clean break strategy for Netanyahu, David Wormser himself is verifying major parts of the story and casting aspersions, incredible ones at the guys who did it.
And then, and people should go read Connor wrote the thing.
I did the research and he did some of it, but Connor wrote the article.
It's my last piece at antiwar.com is called Netanyahu's Support for Hamas backfired.
And we got all of the quotes and explain all the context going back before, but especially explain the context of the Netanyahu doctrine, which quite simply was to explicitly and deliberately prop up Hamas because they're the perfect little enemy and scapegoat that so that they do not have to negotiate in good faith with the Palestinian authority to give them a two-state solution and independence, because ultimately you think they want the Gaza Strip.
What they really want is what they call Judea and Samaria, the West Bank, where 3 million Palestinians live.
Yeah, we cite Andrew Higgins' article from the Wall Street Journal in that piece, and it's from 2009.
And he's talking about, you know, using the insurgent math reference, he's talking about how when Omer launched, when they mowed the lawn for the first time in earnest with Operation Cast Led, he says politically the biggest loser here was the PA.
His sources tell him that in Palestine, that basically the PA is seen as defenseless.
And no matter what, you know, if Hamas carries out any kind of abuses of their own people in Gaza, it doesn't matter because they're becoming the only feasible armed resistance.
And so as this time goes on, by the time you get to 2021 and Operation Guardian of the Walls, which Israel launched because Hamas had fired rockets from Gaza in response to Israeli attacks on the Elats on the Al-Aqsa Mosque and during the month of Ramna, brutal.
Every year they do this.
You can watch videos of it where the Israeli police go into the Al-Aqsa Mosque, the third holiest site in all of Islam, and they just beat the living hell out of women, children, the elderly.
It doesn't matter.
And it goes on for days and days, every time.
And at the same time, Itmar Ben-Gavir, who is now the national security minister, was leading this effort of these radical settlers.
You were using these corrupt Israeli courts to evict Palestinians out of their homes in a neighborhood called Sheikh Jarrah in East Jerusalem.
And there were pogroms being committed against Palestinians as well.
So Hamas responded with some rockets that killed nobody.
Israel responded by mowing the lawn, killing.
over, I believe, 260 people, including dozens and dozens of children.
They were attacking water supplies, residential buildings, doctors without border clinics, you know, health facilities and media towers, excuse me, high-rise towers housing media offices.
There was a huge scandal where they used an American JDAM to blow up a building that was housing the AP and Middle East Eye and I believe Al Jazeera.
Maybe it was, yeah, it was three major global media outlets.
And this is what, so at that time, Ransy Barud said, who's our great resident Palestinian columnist at antiwar.com was explaining that, look, Israel's efforts to divide the Palestinians with the 20% population that they treat like third or fourth class citizens in Israel, the Palestinians who live in East Jerusalem under occupation and the Palestinians that live in the West Bank versus the ones penned up in the concentration camp in Gaza.
They were trying to keep these people all divided and cutting them off with separation walls and settlements and cutting their communities off from each other and making their lives unbearable.
But they see, they respond to each other's oppression, no matter where they're located under Israeli occupation.
And so if anything, this is just the culmination of this wrongheaded policy.
If those polls you were referencing have any credibility, I agree with you.
I don't know how the hell they're carrying out those polls under the massive bombing.
It's like they're knocking on doors in Gaza, just going door to door like, hey, do you have time to take a quick survey?
And who wouldn't respond that way when you have one option for armed defense?
Literally, I mean, there's some brave resistance groups in the West Bank, but I mean, the death toll in the West Bank from Israeli forces and settlers this year is over 500 now.
And it's mostly just since the 7th.
But up until October 7th, this is one of the deadliest years in recorded history in Palestine, just in the last, I should say in the last several years.
I mean, they had already killed about more than 220 Palestinians, mostly in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, but there was a before the 7th, but there was a smaller bombing campaign in Gaza back in May where they, in fact, bombed Lebanon even.
And, you know, so it's, I mean, this is, this was a, it was one of the most provoked attacks.
I mean, not on the civilians, but certainly this policy of the Israeli government is not only supporting Hamas, but continually mowing the lawn.
And only that, I mean, there's now about, they say the estimates range, but like from 500 to 700,000 legal settlers in the West Bank.
And I mean, they have been running wild, especially since the 7th.
There was an incident where they killed about three Palestinian olive farmers.
So the Palestinians then held a funeral for them the next day.
The settlers showed up and killed a father and a son at the funeral procession, just shot them to death.
And so that is, it's like open season on Palestinians.
They're depopulating entire villages in the rural areas right now.
And talk about lockdowns.
They have ramped up the impediments to normal life.
I mean, they are cutting off these towns and villages from each other by force.
And people can't leave their homes.
They're worried they're going to starve to death in the West Bank because they can't leave their homes to get water or food.
Yeah.
And it's like, you know, like in the same way when you like, if you look at like the OD numbers or something like that, and they're like 100,000 Americans, you know, die of overdosing every year.
And it's like, yeah, but that's just the ones who died.
The ones who are like, you know, have ruined their lives on drugs is like 10 times as many as that.
And the same thing with like quoting the numbers of even like people have been killed in say the West Bank, but how many people have been viciously assaulted or just like totally humiliated and, you know, just the type of thing that like you wouldn't have to go as far as to kill my family for me to want to kill your family.
Divide and Conquer Strategy Explained00:04:43
You know what I mean?
You could maybe just like, you know, like if you, if someone just put their hands on my wife, that would be enough for me to become like a radical pretty damn quickly.
Into your house at gunpoint and you call the sheriff and the sheriff works for them and it says, yeah, that's right.
You got to go.
Yeah.
Right.
Exactly.
You know, there's, so I, a video that I had like that I, it was from earlier this year, but for whatever reason, it has just gone super viral over the last few days.
I don't know if any of you guys saw there was a video when I was on Patrick Bett David's show talking about how like the culture war was completely engineered and it's all like a divide and conquer strategy.
And it's just funny because as you say that you're just kind of like, yeah, look at like this is this is what governments do.
And talk about a real divide and conquer strategy is what Israel's been launching against all of the Palestinians and, you know, like Arabs even within Israel.
Like this is really like in some ways, if you remove morality from the question, somewhat masterful, I guess, like they've really managed to divide and conquer these people.
But it does seem like they may have overstepped this time because man, global opinion is turning against Israel in a major way.
All right.
Listen, I do, I do have to wrap.
I really enjoyed the show.
I will, I promise in 2024, I will have both Connor and Kyle on individually and do a full episode with you guys.
And of course, Scott, you'll be on a whole bunch of times.
So before we get out of here, a final message about the Institute or anything else, how people can contribute to the fundraiser, let them know.
Yeah.
Well, look, first of all, I'm sorry for talking so much.
You know how it goes with me.
I know who you are.
But these guys are really great.
And I'm telling you, man, there's nothing more valuable than conflicts of interest, which is Kyle's daily podcast.
And Connor is most of the time his co-host, but not always.
And Will Porter from time to time as well.
But it's a news roundup.
And he's just, you hear him on the statistics and the details of every single little thing, Encyclopedia Brown style in the, you know, Hortonian mode.
And he and Connor both do such great work there.
And just go look at the Institute.
Look at that masthead at the Institute.
I've always said this about my show, Dave, that I'm not the best broadcaster.
I don't have the deepest voice or the most perfect grammar and all that.
But man, I got a good taste in guests.
And you know what?
It's the same thing with my crew that I put together at this institute.
And the only thing we're missing is Will Grigg because he died.
Otherwise, we would have the absolute perfect crew at the Libertarian Institute right now.
So we're just one short.
But otherwise, you know, I don't know.
I think it's something, you know, especially it's grown in the last little while.
And with all the book publishing and everything and everybody's great podcasts and articles, I really think it's something to brag about.
And I think it's something that is really important.
And we do need financial support.
We're 501c3.
As long as your check, as long as the envelope is post-day or is not post-day, but as long as the stamp on the thing, I guess, is posted by New Year's Eve, December 31st, then, or the check is written.
I don't know how it works.
Something like that.
Then it counts on 2023.
And you can write it off on your taxes.
The money literally either goes to the war party or it goes to us.
And, you know, Tom Woods is on my board of directors.
So Sheldon Richmond.
You guys all know them.
And they can vouch for me that I spend everybody's money extremely carefully.
I spend on virtually nothing but payroll and book publishing is all that your money goes to.
And I think it's really probably the best bang for your buck in the liberty movement.
And anti-war.com made their nut for the quarter.
So damn it.
Libertarianstitute.org slash donate.
We got kickbacks in the form of great books and I guess t-shirts and stuff.
I don't know.
Please go and support libertarianinstitute.org slash donate.
And thanks, Dave, for the opportunity to say that.
Yeah, of course.
Thank you guys all.
Thank you so much, Connor and Kyle, for coming on.
I really enjoyed this.
And you have, Scott, given me a lot of homework with this latest round of books that you've published.
But I'm chugging through them.
I got Tom Woods down, Keith Knight just started.
And then I got Bovir coming up after that.
And then I'll see what else is next on my reading list.
Awesome.
All right.
Thank you guys so much.
Really appreciate you taking the time.
Thanks, everybody, for listening.
Don't forget to come check me and Robbie the Fireburnstein out for New Year's if you're in the area, East Rutherford.