Dave Smith and Robbie Bernstein dissect "Reckless Stupid War Hawks," critiquing Ben Shapiro's unrealistic claims that U.S. strikes could topple Iran without boots on the ground while ignoring historical failures in Iraq, Libya, and Afghanistan costing trillions. They expose the hypocrisy of regime-change advocates who prioritize installing pro-Israel monarchies over innocent lives, noting Trump likely won't invade Venezuela despite his rhetoric. The hosts further analyze Jerome Powell's alleged coercion by the DOJ to lower interest rates for political schemes, warning that such reckless interventions risk catastrophic instability rather than liberation. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
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Toppling Regimes and Unclear Outcomes00:10:42
What's up, what's up, everybody?
Welcome to a brand new episode of Part of the Problem.
I'm Dave Smith.
He is Robbie the Fire Bernstein.
How are you feeling today, sir?
I'm doing well, Mr. Smith.
How are you?
Very good.
Very good.
Can't complain.
I just did my first Piers Morgan of 2026.
Was it feisty?
Yeah, it got feisty, but it got more feisty.
You know, I did a panel and I typically, I don't, you know, there's not enough time.
It's too much.
You know, he's got four people on plus Pierce and Pierce talks a lot too.
And then it's like, I don't know, you know, it's just, it's too many people.
And then I think today's one didn't work out that well either because it's like there were too many people and then the topics were like Venezuela, Iran, Greenland.
There was like so many things and so many people.
But then Kyle Kalinsky and Matt Walsh, I'm sorry, Michael Knowles ended up, they ended up being the feisty ones.
Me and Coleman were just kind of like sitting back and saying what we thought at times.
Did you get to get into it about Ben Shapiro with Michael Knowles at all?
He throw any shots.
That's how you got to that.
No, that's true.
But don't worry.
We'll take care of that here.
Today, we got some Ben Shapiro shots for you.
But it just, I don't know.
It seems to me like people just bend over backward to try to find a way to defend this stuff.
And it's unfortunate.
I guess I was a little bit disappointed in Pierce himself because he like opens it up by saying that it would just obviously be a good thing if the government in Venezuela and Iran collapse.
Like obviously, they're bad governments.
So it would obviously be a good thing.
And then so I had to start from there and being like, wait, really?
We haven't learned one lesson.
Like, you know, anyway, it'll be out soon.
You guys can all go check it out.
I hope you enjoy it.
Yeah.
So I guess we could start with Iran today, because this is an interesting situation that's going on there.
There's a whole bunch of reporting that U.S. strikes on Iran are imminent and that we will be bombing the country today, tomorrow, perhaps.
Unclear what exactly that's going to mean and very unclear whether that will actually topple the regime.
You know, again, they were saying on the panel today that like, if we topple the regime, most likely the Shah's son is going to take over, which I don't know where people are getting that from.
Like the, you know, it'd be quite a it's the idea that they're going to go back to the son of the U.S. sock puppet just seems totally unrealistic to me.
But I don't know, Rob, what do you think?
Another round of bombing Iran?
Yeah, well, I think it at this point after Trump's comments, he's almost doing the protesters dirty if he doesn't take some action, I guess, on their behalf, which, as you said, might not even necessarily be on their behalf.
I guess if we dismantle the region, we don't really know what's up next.
I am quite curious to see, though, if Netsonya ends up getting along with the new Iranian regime with all of his talk about actually loving the Iranian people and the problem is just the regime.
So if we do get the full change that they're looking for, I do wonder if they're really going to open, give them a warm, loving Israeli hug and say, welcome to the Middle East.
We're glad to be partnered with you.
Yeah.
I mean, it's, yeah.
Look, we'll see.
We'll see what ends up happening.
I mean, I think that Benjamin Netanyahu and the, you know, the Lakudniks, they just want this regime to fall.
I don't think they particularly care what comes next.
And if there is, like, for example, right, from their perspective, if Iran turned into a Libya or an Iraq or something like that, okay.
Well, there goes the, you know, the funders of Hamas and Hezbollah.
You know, like, it's like, oh, okay, good.
That's, they got what they wanted.
They don't have a regional rival there anymore.
And really, that's what, look, I mean, this is what it's all about from their perspective, right?
Is that what?
Israel, I mean, this is the whole thing here, right?
Israel could just accept the two-state solution that's been offered by everyone involved, every principal at one point or another.
Like all the Middle Eastern countries, Saudi Arabia themselves drew up a plan based around 1967 borders.
Egypt supports 67 borders.
Jordan supports 67 borders.
The IAE, like all of them, this is, or the UAE, excuse me, they all support the 67 borders.
Yasser Arafat agreed to 67 borders.
Even Hamas has, at least at different points, agreed to.
So Israel could accept that, but they don't want to.
They want all of Greater Israel.
So they don't want to accept that deal.
But there's resistance to them getting their way.
And the major resistance has been Hezbollah.
And Hezbollah does business with Iran.
And so that's what this is all about.
This is all since the clean breaks, the whole thing, what it's always been about is like, well, how do you avoid giving the Palestinians back their land?
And their calculation is by overthrowing the regimes in the region who support the resistance.
And by the way, when I say resistance, I don't, I'm not trying to like whitewash over that resistance including terrorism, you know, resistance including killing innocent people.
But then again, the occupation also kills a whole lot more innocent people.
And this was the whole deal, right?
Saddam Hussein was Arab nationalist, who it's, you know, was behind the resistance.
Muamar Qaddafi, a nationalist behind the resistance, right?
Bashar al-Assad allied with Iran and Hezbollah.
And that's what, it's just like that people act like it's a conspiracy theory.
It's so obvious.
Like it's so obvious that that's what this is all about.
And so, you know, you're watching the kind of the next step in this plan play out.
And the only little thing is that this plan, I mean, look, it kind of has allowed Israel to not have to go back to 67 borders.
It allowed them to just completely destroy Gaza.
And it's allowed them to advance settlements in the West Bank.
It's just come with a little price tag of like, you know, millions of dead innocent people, thousands of, you know, dead Americans and trillions of dollars of debt, which we pay for, not them.
So that's, I mean, I think that's why people are resistant to this.
And then, of course, Rob, it's framed as, well, what do you mean?
You don't love the people?
Oh, you side with the regime over the people?
It's like, no, I side against your insane, murderous plot for domination of the region.
That's kind of what I'm against.
How does the Shah play come about?
So the current leader gets killed and then the army has to invite him back in.
And then he comes in and says, we're now it allied with Israel and the U.S.
And so we're going to be able to sell our oil.
It's going to be better for everyone.
And then he's got a new regime that protects him against all the people that like the old regime more.
But I guess at some points, like the military, I guess, has to back, hey, we want to have this new leader here or something along those lines.
Yeah.
And who knows?
You know, it's like, it's very hard to say because, you know, look, it's not like, I mean, again, there's a lot of unknowns here.
Like we don't really know right now to what degree these protests and riots are being supported by, you know, the U.S. and Israel.
It's, it would seem crazy to suspect that there's not something going on.
You know what I mean?
Now, but whether the whole thing was fomented by Israel or the U.S., that's possible too.
Who knows?
But to the extent that our governments are involved, it does seem like the plan is always like, yada, yada, yada, and then everyone's good to Israel.
And they, you know what I mean?
They don't, but I think, as I said, I think that Benjamin Netanyahu's aware of that.
I don't think like, you know, they may claim, they may have a dream that they could install the Shah.
I mean, they were able to do that before.
But anyway, because of this, what happens is, you know, like every few years, there's big protests in Iran.
You know, they're a very repressive government and people don't tend to like very much being repressed.
And so there'll be big protests about them.
But as you know, Rob, because you've seen this a million times, right?
The Hawks always say, oh, they're on the verge of collapse.
This regime is about to collapse.
They're so weak this time that now they're going to collapse.
And, you know, it's like, I think I said this on the other show, but it's like the boy who cried wolf.
Well, like in that story, there is a wolf at the end.
You know, it's like, just because someone's crying wolf and it's not there does that.
So like, maybe this is the time.
Maybe this time it'll actually happen.
And if obviously a lot of this depends on what Donald Trump does next, but if the U.S. and Israel get involved and start bombing, like could they topple the regime through without boots on the ground through like a bombing campaign?
Maybe.
You know, I don't know.
They've done it before.
I mean, right?
Like they've toppled regimes this way.
The thing about the Iranian regime is it just, it seems unlikely to me.
And part of that is just because like, you know, the regime has stood since 1979, most of that time with the most powerful governments in the world hell-bent on overthrowing them.
They've survived all the way to now.
You know, it's like, I just, you know, the hawks can tell you how weak they are, how much their own people hate you, how much they really would prefer the Shah was in there.
Not so clear.
Not so clear that that's actually the case.
And like, you know, with a lot of these countries, you know, if you could imagine, like, imagine, obviously, the United States of America is like a huge country.
But even, Rob, if you think about like the politics of New York City versus the politics of New York State, like how different that is, you know, like there, you, I mean, I remember I grew up in New York City.
I lived there my whole life.
And then I moved to Oneonta to go to college.
And I remember there was a guy in a pickup truck who, like a broken down pickup truck in the town who drove around with a Confederate flag on the back of his truck.
And I remember just being like, a Confederate flag in northern New York?
Like, where are you seceding from?
Monarchies, Socialism, and Political Positions00:02:59
You know what I mean?
But like culturally, that's what that guy identified with.
And so like, so in a country with Iran, it's like a country like 90 million people or something like that.
Yeah, in the liberal cities, there's a whole lot of people who really don't like the mullahs.
But then again, it's not exactly clear what level of support they have.
And of course, Rob, in countries, you know, in authoritarian theocracies, it's not like you get to have a really good gauge of that.
Like it's not like a government poll just goes around and goes, how you feeling about this?
And people go, we don't like it.
And then they let you know that they don't like.
So we just, it's just a huge question mark.
Well, I've been in this game, you know, a long time by now.
And if there's one thing I know, it's that American foreign policy has always revolved around setting up monarchies.
So this is directly in line with what I've heard for the last 40 years is ensuring that monarchies can return to their kingdoms.
Yeah, I said that on Pierce today.
I said, so it's we said, we got to make the world safe for hereditary monarchies now.
Am I getting this right?
Like that's, it is funny that the war on terrorism started with spreading democracy and looks like it might be concluding with spreading.
We need socialist regimes in South America and monarchies back in the Middle East.
Yes, that's right.
That's right.
Or we need, right?
We need to over, well, first it's, we need to overthrow socialist regimes because of drugs, but then it's, no, no, no, you could stay and still do socialism as long as you give us oil.
That makes sense, right?
That's totally coherent and honest and above board.
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All right, let's get back into the show.
So anyway, so look, I mean, my guess right now is that Trump is going to attack Iran.
Negotiating with Moderate Rebels00:11:58
I imagine they're going to try to bomb regime targets or something like that.
If I had to guess, I'd say probably that won't be enough to take the regime out, but there is a possibility of that.
But of course, you know, you're in this position where people want to say that, oh, so if you don't want the regime to fall, that means you're for the regime.
But obviously, like in the case of Iraq or Libya or any of the rest, no, you know, like even Donald Trump himself, when, you know, because he'll have some moments of being honest, Rob, even he said, I wish we had Saddam and Gaddafi back.
It was just much better under them than it was after them.
And that doesn't mean Donald Trump is pro-Saddam or pro-Gaddafi, but it's like you are, you are rolling the dice.
And like four sides of the die say catastrophe, you know?
And so you are really playing with fire to be rooting for this regime to fall.
Even I would say, like, you know, people say like, okay, Dave, well, like, what if there's no U.S. or Israeli involvement?
And there's just, it's just their own people bring down their government.
And I go, well, in that case, it still might not work out well.
I mean, good luck.
Hope it works out.
But like, that doesn't necessarily mean it's going to be good.
Revolutions are messy business, you know?
And nine times out of 10, they don't lead, they don't lead to Thomas Jefferson getting up on stage with a declaration of independence.
You know what I mean?
They lead to nasty governments.
And of course, most of the time when you have a revolution, you know, the people who led the revolution are the ones who end up being in charge of the government.
But people who lead revolutions tend to not be, believe it or not, they tend to not be politically moderate.
You know, kind of by definition, you're not much of a moderate if you just led a revolution.
You know, it's like when they used to talk about the moderate rebels in Syria.
And you're like, what are you, you're talking about 20-year-olds with rifles who are in battle shooting people.
Like, it's by definition not moderate if you're in the war.
And so you are, that was Obama's plan was we want the radical buzz.
So you had Assad on one side and you had ISIS and al-Qaeda on the other side.
But then he was like, no, somewhere in there, there'll be a group of moderate rebels who can defeat both Bashar al-Assad and the head-chopping bin Ladenites through their moderateness.
Because that's what wins wars, Rob.
I thought the moderates were al-Qaeda against ISIS and Assad.
Well, they claimed that there were these moderate rebels in the middle and that they were arming the moderate rebels, but then all of the weapons ended up with ISIS and al-Qaeda.
So you do the mouth on that.
And they were aware of it and kept sending the weapons in.
So, you know, I'm not a lawyer, but it sure does seem like obvious treason.
Like the dictionary definition of treason, giving aid and comfort to the enemy in a time of war.
Like we had declared war on terrorism.
We had already at this point, you know, this was 2012 when we first started backing the anti-Assad rebels.
And so at this point already, we had fought a war in Afghanistan, a war in Iraq, overthrew the government in Libya, did a drone bombing campaign in Pakistan.
We had a huge drone.
We hadn't backed the Saudi invasion yet.
That was a few years later, but huge drone bombing campaigns in Yemen, northern Africa, all around those surrounding countries around Libya.
So we were doing all of that in the name that we were hit on 9-11 and were at war with al-Qaeda.
And then Barack Obama sent them weapons and money.
I mean, that's like open and shut textbook treason.
But he'll be held accountable for that anytime soon.
Anyway, let's, I did want to play this because it's always interesting to keep your eye on the Hawks and where, you know, their bullshit justifications are now.
So I did want to play this.
And as you said, I missed an opportunity to trash Ben Shapiro to Michael Knoll's face.
So let's do it now.
Me and you.
Let's hear from Ben Shapiro.
Now, Vice President JD Vance suggested that the smartest thing for the Iranians to do is for them to have a real negotiation with the United States about their nuclear program.
Okay, I'm sorry.
That's nonsense.
That's just crap.
That's silly.
I like the vice president, but that's nonsense.
The notion that the Iranians could make any guarantee to the United States that would now be sufficient to quiet our concerns about the revival of a nuclear program is silly talk.
It is undermining, by the way, the protesters who are in the streets.
If the suggestion is that if the mullahs say pretty words, then the United States will withdraw its support for the protesters and watch them get mowed down by the thousands.
That is a problem.
That is foolish.
Again, none of this thousands of troops on the ground.
So just pause it.
Right.
All right.
None of it requires troops on the grounds.
Okay.
So like you notice they are, Ben Shapiro is just completely inventing that thousands of people have been mowed down.
Like that hasn't happened.
Nobody, nobody serious is actually claiming that that's happened.
The numbers I saw, the estimate, which was from that NGO.
So like take this with a grain of salt, but the numbers, at least as a couple of days ago, they said 192 people have died.
Not been mowed down, but like have died in these riots.
I mean, they're really serious riots with fires and violence and all types of shit like that.
And so, but understand what the position is here.
And, like, how, like, again, I wouldn't have such contempt for Ben Shapiro if he would just say, I want this regime overthrown because that's what's best for Israel.
Because that's obviously the case, but he just won't admit that.
He just won't admit that it's obviously about what it's obviously about.
But this is the position.
Oh, they're willing to negotiate.
No, you can't negotiate with them because the only thing you want, because what?
Look, Rob, what's the reason why Ben Shapiro is against negotiating with Iran?
It's because if you're negotiating with someone, it's almost always going to be the one thing that's off the table is what?
That they step, yeah, that they step out of power.
I mean, you know what I'm saying?
Like, imagine you were trying to negotiate anything with Donald Trump, but what you wanted was for him to resign as president of the United States of America.
Well, I mean, come on.
What's the possible, you know what I mean?
Like, if when someone like Tucker Carlson goes and meets with Donald Trump and he's trying to convince him not to fight a war, or when Lindsey Graham meets with Donald Trump and tries to convince him to fight a war, the one, you know what I'm saying?
Like, if the starting point was, I want you to, you could maybe get some policy out of him if you persuade him, but there's no way you're getting that.
And so he understands that that would be, you know what I mean?
That would, that would be death to what they really want, which is regime change.
And by the way, I mean, again, it's like, if you remember, Rob, if you guys are really, really old and you remember last summer, when every one of these hawks swore up and down that it had nothing to do with that, it was just about their nuclear program.
It was the 60% enriched uranium.
That's just kind of gone now.
They don't even, they're not even saying now Ben Shapiro is openly saying, whoa, whoa, whoa, you mean you could negotiate to make sure they don't rebuild their nuclear program?
But what about the protesters?
I mean, come on.
Like, just how obvious is this?
All right.
Any thoughts there, Rob, or you want to play more?
Let's play more.
All right.
Iran.
Again, no one is talking about Iraq.
The Iraq war syndrome, as I discussed last week, is broken.
No one wants a gigantic American occupation of Iran.
No one.
That's silly talk.
Paul's.
The question is, what?
Okay, yeah.
Remember, we covered this last week when he said the Iraq war syndrome is over.
Ben Shapiro just announced because literally, because in Venezuela, where if you looked at the polling, it was enormously unpopular.
There was no popular support to go into Venezuela.
But then after there was a mission that got the leader and like none of our boys got killed or nothing, the support went up a little bit because, well, it looked like it was kind of successful.
But even when the support went up, it was like essentially, like I, like I said on the show, I think the latest poll I saw was like 30 something percent were for it, 30 something percent against the rest undecided.
It was as ambiguous as poll results could possibly be.
Like basically, I don't know, is what the American people were saying.
So he decided the Iraq war syndrome's over.
But Rob, if you listen to what he's saying here, he goes, no one's doing another Iraq war.
Wait.
So then is the syndrome over or is the syndrome not over?
What exactly are you even saying here?
You're saying, oh, no one's talking about hundreds of thousands of troops.
So this is their new thing now: is that they go, they know there's no popular support for that.
They know that there's no way they can persuade people to actually invade the country right now.
And so they'll go, no, we just do regime changes by sky.
But the thing is that no one really wants that either, man.
No one, we saw what we did in Libya too.
You go, we don't want to do that either.
Like, why would any rational American want to do that?
I think their argument is: if you look at Afghanistan, we spent 20 years there and then left the region in a worse place.
So the new pitch is let's fast forward, just bomb, leave right away, and just have it be in chaos.
Don't even pretend like you're going to hang out and try and make it better over there.
Right.
But like, as I said before, you can at least, under the Likud framework, understand how chaos to them is preferable to the Ayatollah.
But like, who the hell else would feel that way?
Why would anyone else go, yeah, let's go bring chaos?
Like, who would be for that?
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All right, let's get back into the show.
There, let's play the rest of this.
I just also love how he's pretending like this is for the people of Iran, which is what he said at the top.
Escalation Risks and Hardcore Attitudes00:15:38
That these people are being mulled by the thousands.
So obviously we're not going to go invade, but the idea that we can't just undermine this regime and go bomb the place and maybe take them out and then let them all scrap for who's going to be in charge and leave a vacuum for another ISIS.
That will help them.
They all, it's so funny, man, because they all like they switch on a dime to being humanitarians.
Like literally, there was today on social media, I saw there was this one account who like has been arguing with me about Gaza for the last few years, but now she's show she shows a picture of some girl who I guess allegedly was like the regime like threw acid in her face or something like that for like being scantily clad or something.
And showing me the picture of her face.
Look at that.
Look into this face.
And you tell me you can't do this.
And you're like, but you've supported what's going on in Gaza for the last two years, but yet an image of a, you know what I'm saying?
Like it's just so, it's so bananas that the people who supported a genocide are now saying they're animated by women's rights.
Like, you know, they got women in Gaza.
You know that?
It's like a whole bunch of them, like hundreds of thousands of women in Gaza.
And like, how are their women's rights doing over the last two years there?
But no, and by the way, this happens all the time, dude.
It's so cyclical.
Like the Hawks always do this.
They don't give a fuck.
It's like fuck around, find out.
War is hell, whatever, collateral damage.
But then when they need to sell a war, it's like, do you remember in Iraq War III when it was John McCain was out there?
The Yazetis, the Yazetis are trapped in Iraq and we have to go in and help them.
There's the Kurds in Syria.
It was the same thing.
Oh, the Kurds, all of a sudden we care so much about the people.
Yet literally, like these guys, you know, like Brett Stevens for the New York Times, he's one of the, you know, big Warhawk neocon types.
He's, he's over at the New York Times and has been for a long time.
He used to be the editor at the Jerusalem Post.
Funny how that works.
So he wrote on the 20th anniversary of Iraq.
So what would that?
It was 2003, so 2023.
This is like a couple of years ago now.
He wrote a big piece for the New York Times that was like, you know, Iraq war 20 years later.
And he goes through the whole piece and he's like, well, do I regret my support for the war?
And he's like, well, it's very, very tough.
But ultimately, he concludes, well, you know, Iraq's in a better place now than it was with Saddam Hussein.
And there is, Rob, there is no mention in the entire piece.
And Douglas Murray, by the way, had a similar thing, like Iraq 20 years later.
Both of them, not one mention in the entire piece of the million people who died.
Just don't even, it's strictly, the Brett Stevens one was strictly like a comparison of Saddam Hussein's Iraq to the current Iraq with no mention of the middle part there and what you had to do to these people in order to get it this way.
They just don't even think about the human beings that died until they need a pretext for war.
And then we're all for the people.
Then Ben Shapiro really cares about innocent lives in the Middle East.
And we're supposed to believe that that's real.
And like, you know, people will say, they'll try to hit like me with the hypocrisy on the other end.
Oh, you care so much about the babies in Gaza, but you don't care about these protesters getting killed in Iran.
And you're like, no, I'm against any unjustified killing.
And if my government was funding and arming the people killing innocent people anywhere, I'm going to be against that.
But like, no, I'm completely consistent throughout the whole thing.
I don't want to see anyone dying anywhere.
All unjustified killings are wrong.
And I don't want my country involved in any of it.
All right.
Let's keep playing.
What options are on the table that would protect the protesters, weaken the regime, and allow the Iranian people to take the situation into their own hands.
And obviously, there's a risk-reward calculation here that has to be made by the president of the United States.
Tehran is suggesting that it will consider targeting U.S. military facilities as well as Israel if it detects signs of an impending attack.
Now, realistically speaking, if Iran were to strike back, let's say that the United States were to fly some F-16s into Iran, take out some IRGC facilities, and then Iran were to fire a bunch of missiles at Qatari air bases, Al-Udaid, for example.
First of all, their retaliatory response thus far has been lackluster, shall we say.
Israel completely defenestrated Iran's military in the 12-day war earlier last year.
But if the Iranian government truly decides to attack American troops in the region in retaliation for a couple of pinpoint strikes, deterring the IRGC from murdering people in the streets, that will be the end of the regime.
And it will be performed largely through air power.
Okay.
So I just want you to think about how insane all of this is.
So he goes, so he goes, oh, they're saying that they're going to touch Israel and touch our bases if we come in and do this.
But if they do that, then we'll overthrow the regime.
So like, I guess, Rob, that's an acceptable price to pay is what he's saying, right?
Like, that's an acceptable price to pay that like some Israelis and some Americans will die, but the regime gets toppled.
I'm like, look, dude, this is really the attitude that a lot of them hardcore Israel firsters have is that it's like, even including even Israelis, if it's in the service of greater Israel, then that's okay for them to die too.
They don't mind that.
Ben Shapiro, look, Israelis died in the 12-day war.
Now, if you remember, Iran showed restraint toward America, not so much toward Israel.
And so, like, think about how sick this is that, like, it's let's just say there's a high likelihood that if Israel were to attack right now, that more Israelis would die.
Ben Shapiro is okay with that, as long as it ends in toppling the regime.
In fact, I'd go out to say I think that's what he wants because of what he just said right there.
That will guarantee that they'll do it.
And they'll do it all through air power.
Well, by the way, because I just want to say this, I'm not sure if I mentioned this on the last episode, but I had seen where the Mullahs were talking a big game.
The thing is that they talked a big game before the about bombing the nuclear sites too.
And that was one of the things that a lot of us were very concerned over.
Like this, like, yo, they can kill people.
You go do this, they may kill people.
And then as Ben Shapiro said, that like he's right, that escalates the war.
Then we got to go back.
And then, okay.
So there's a whole bunch of questions here, obviously, right?
It's just these people have learned nothing from no lessons of history.
But like, there's a few obvious things that would jump out at you here, right?
Like, number one, Ben Shapiro is essentially saying, well, look, you know, they're talking tough, but their response so far has been lackluster.
Okay, fine.
But like, what, why was that?
Like, why was it that Iran gave the U.S. 24 hours advance notice and then sent their missiles in a base where there was no one there?
They allowed everyone to be evacuated and then just made sure they didn't kill anyone.
Well, why did they do that?
Well, obviously for self-preservation, because they knew like right in that moment as the war was being escalated, if they killed a bunch of Americans, Donald Trump was going to have no other option than to come back and it would lead to their demise.
Okay, but if Ben Shapiro is now saying we're going in to lead to their demise, well, then that's a different calculation where they might go, hey, if we're going down, we're taking some other people with us.
Maybe not, but that's certainly a risk.
But then listen, as I said earlier, I'm trying to be fair and reasonable about this.
Maybe we can overthrow the regime through the skies, but only maybe.
Only maybe.
So what?
Let me let me take your scenario, Ben Shapiro, and raise you one.
Iran does respond this time.
They kill a whole bunch of Americans and a whole bunch of Israelis.
Then Donald Trump, as you said, has to escalate, has to step up the bombing campaign, and the regime survives.
The regime hangs on.
Maybe they respond by killing a whole bunch more Americans.
Now what?
You know, it's like, like I always say in these things, like, dude, the first world war started over a political assassination, one assassination.
It led to a world war.
Now, that's not saying that for all the people I thought, I'm not saying this is going to lead to a world war.
The point is just that minor things can trigger major escalations.
And in fact, at times, this is what the Pentagon refers to as escalation dominance.
And they specifically said in the case of Iran, we don't have escalation dominance because you always got to think out the net.
Like, we do this.
Well, then what do they do?
They could do this or they could do this.
But if they do this, we do this.
If they do that, we do that.
With Iran, though, they do that is thousands of our boys getting killed.
They're all stationed throughout the region.
And so this, just saying, it's very clear right here, Ben Shapiro knows this.
He's even saying, he's even saying this is a possibility.
They could do this.
So, Ben Shapiro is quite happy to gamble the lives of Americans as long as it leads to toppling the government in Iran on behalf of Israel.
Like, I don't know, dude, what can you say about this?
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I took note of a different contradiction in what he was saying, which was, and maybe I misunderstood Mr. Shapiro here, but it sounded like we can topple Iran.
So Iran will just take the strikes if we strike them, and then the regime will be weakened and then they will fall.
Now, if the outcome of us striking from the sky is the regime falling, you're assuming that the regime will just accept that.
Now, why is it that if the regime was going to fall after a strike, they would just go, oh, we're weakened.
We're going to leave peacefully.
Usually it doesn't end well for regimes unless you want to defy the way these things usually go down, kind of what happened with Assad and go, hey, you guys can take all your wealth and have safe harbor in Russia.
That's the easy way.
Or the hard way is we're coming after you.
I don't, you know, it could play out that way, where they get a deal, I guess, to just leave and then they can hang out in Russia and maybe their kids in 100 years can get put back in there by the United States government.
But just his sequence of events of, well, if they fight us, they're going to fall.
And so they're not going to fight us.
They're just going to accept us striking them from the skies.
And then everyone there is going to realize that they're weak and then they're going to topple them.
Well, why would they accept just being toppled?
Yeah, no, that's right.
And then, and, and, you know, again, like I, like I've seen big, big protests against the, the, Ayatollah and the mullahs and against the, the regime in Iran.
I've also seen huge marches and display of support for them, right?
And so you think about like, look, the whole, right?
We, the whole story is we overthrew the government.
The CIA overthrew the government, Operation Ajax in 1953, and we installed the Shaw and it worked for 25 years.
You know, so like it's not even, forget even the like, you know, you know, mission accomplished banner after like two days of a bombing campaign.
It worked for 25 years.
And then this regime rose up and immediately, dude, it's like it was, no, I don't even think anybody like disputes this.
It was over.
Like the whole thing that characterizes this regime is that, you know, when they overthrew the Shah, they burned American flags.
When they took the hostages later that year, when they took the American hostages, they were at the, was it either an embassy or a headquarters where the 1953 coup was organized from?
Like that's where they took the hostages.
Like it was, it was all symbolic.
So the whole fundamental raison d'être of this regime is resisting the U.S. imposing a sock puppet on their government.
And there's a very similar dynamic in Venezuela, right?
Where there was an attempt made to do regime change there under Hugo Chavez.
And the whole idea of this regime is like, and so you start to ask yourself, okay, so let's just say that works even.
And the regime falls.
Because this is like what they found out.
If you remember in Iraq, they disbanded the army.
That was the first thing they did is they disbanded the military.
And this military, so now you got, you know, what a wise decision that is.
So now you got a bunch of, you know, 18 to 24 year old men who are out of work and they have one skill, which is they're really good at killing people.
How does that?
So what do you, I mean, like, are you telling me of the entire military there?
There's no, think about our military for a second.
Think about how many fucked up, you know, adventures they've gone on.
But like there's still a whole lot of people in the military who are really committed to the military.
You know what I mean?
Who are really believe in the propaganda of the regime that they serve?
How many of those do you have in Iran?
How many of those do you have in Venezuela?
And the idea that we're going to put in the government that we want, in fact, Rob, what they're floating out is the son of the guy that we're going to put the Shah back in power.
And you're telling me no angry young man with a rifle is going to get together with his friends and decide they're going to go do something about this?
Like you're going to tell me that these two nations that have been defiant of the global empire, one for 25 years in Venezuela and the other one here, well, what is 1980 to now is, geez, man, I'm too old.
40, 47 years they've been in power for.
They're 47 years they've been, this has been the animating feature of this nation.
They're just going to roll over and accept that.
You know, this is like greeted as liberators.
Democracy will sweep the region type stuff.
That's a nice idea.
Defiant Nations and Global Empires00:07:42
You know, Ben Shapiro can sit here and game out all these things.
But look, wars always have unintended consequences.
And of course they do.
You know, you start dropping bombs on people.
You start toppling governments.
There's no one in the world who's smart enough to game out every single factor and variable and tell you exactly.
Ben Shapiro could sit here and say, oh, they do this, then we take them out from the sky.
And then, yay, the protesters win and women can wear mini skirts in downtown Tehran again.
No idea if that's how it's going to go.
There's a whole bunch of goddamn variables there.
And, you know, if you go by the track record, it's really bad.
Really, really bad.
You know, I don't know if you've seen Rob, but the Hawks now for days, they've been bringing up Panama.
You know, that's the whole thing, Panama.
And like, you know, they like to pick out like one data point, which wasn't even like, none of them can even tell you what was achieved.
We got him.
We got Noriega.
That's what was achieved.
And like, oh, so, so like, was his big crime is that he was defiant of the CIA and he was in bed with the drug cartels and he killed people.
So like, okay, so people stopped dying in Panama.
Oh, no, violent crime actually went up after we took him out.
Oh, you're like, oh, so the drug trade dried up?
No, no, no, no evidence that it really had any impact.
The cartels were still in place.
By the way, the president at the time, if I'm making a mistake, what year was that?
It was that, I think it was late 80s in Panama.
What year?
Can you just look that up real quick for me, Natalie?
What year did we depose Noriega in Panama?
To say 88, but I don't know why I have 88 and 92, or sorry, 88 and 82 both in my head.
So it was, but it was either, I think it was under George H.W. Bush, if I remember correctly.
But it was either Reagan or George W. Bush.
And, you know, Noriega's big crime was being in bed with the drug cartels.
But of course, that wasn't a problem in Nicaragua where we could partner with the drug lords because they were fighting the commies.
And so we partnered with them.
And where did they ship those drugs into, Rob?
The United States of America.
So don't tell me this was like, oh, but anyway, they love pointing to like this one example.
But then there's like, you know, we've had like dozens of interventions in Central and South America.
A whole bunch of them have been utter catastrophes.
Like we overthrew the government in Guatemala, 89, 89, surrendered in 90.
Okay, I was closer with the 88 one.
Yeah.
Okay.
That's probably, yeah, so it's George H.W. Bush.
I was right about that.
I was in Guatemala in the 50s.
In fact, I think it was, it was either right before or right after Operation Ajax, where we toppled the government in Iran.
We toppled the government in Guatemala.
And they were commies.
They were like real deal commies.
Like you could almost make a pretty, you know, nothing's ever apples to apples, but like you can make a comparison to Venezuela there.
It's a communist government.
We toppled them and it led to a civil war and hundreds of thousands of people died.
Like, you know, because these things are complicated.
Even, and that's even if you got the commies out of power and put the capitalists in power.
That could still happen because it's not like they're always crony, dirty capitalists who were putting in there.
And then, of course, there's been all types of interventions in Cuba, in Mexico, in Honduras, and Haiti, and like all these places.
They've been just disasters, absolute disasters.
And, you know, so all these guys, these hawks, they could sell you a pretty picture.
And it always sounds good at first, you know?
It always sounds nice.
Like, what sounds pretty nice that we're gonna, we're gonna be greeted as liberators and the war will be paid for in oil and democracy will sweep the region.
This is what all the hawks said about Iraq.
And then it cost $2 trillion.
It turns out the oil did not offset the cost, Rob.
And like, I don't, you know, who knows what Donald Trump's actually going to do here with any of these things.
You know, it's quite possible.
As I said, in fact, it might even be the most likely scenario or a very likely scenario that say in both of these cases, Donald Trump maybe just talked a big game about Venezuela.
Essentially, he's going to leave the regime in place.
He's going to try to get a few points on a deal, get one of these more oil companies to invest a little bit over there and he can spin it as a win, but nothing really changes.
Like the people aren't really liberated.
The American people, in a best case scenario, you know, end up seeing 10 cents off at the pump or something like that, or maybe not even that.
And it's very possible in Iran that Donald Trump's going to like bomb them, you know, kill some people, say, see, I did a big, strong thing, but the regime stays in power and nothing like catastrophic ends up happening that like destabilizes the region.
I think that's very possible in both of these scenarios.
But just to be clear, that's not what Ben Shapiro wants.
He's being very clear about that.
And so you got all these hawks in there that are really trying, you know, like what Marco Rubio wants out of this is not what I just laid out.
What Marco Rubio wants is this regime to be overthrown so that the government in Cuba collapses, right?
And what Benjamin Netanyahu and Ben Shapiro and all the Israel firsters want is for the regime in Tehran to be toppled.
And if that happens, It's a very high likelihood that you're going to end up with something that resembles hell on earth.
There's a long track record of that happening.
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You mean for the people that live there or the war that will go down?
Well, I think for the people who live there, I mean, I do think Ben Shapiro is right, but I think it kind of undercuts his entire retarded point.
The point is that Iraq war syndrome has not been defeated and that the American people are war-weary.
War Weariness and Political Will00:06:57
And there is simply no political will to have a boots on the ground type big invasion.
You know, there's just, I mean, I just don't see there's any, I mean, Donald Trump knows full well he is destroying his presidency if he invades a country, just absolutely destroying it.
I mean, he will have, you know, especially in today's like media landscape environment, too.
Oh my God.
I mean, Donald Trump will just be getting destroyed publicly if he goes and does something like that.
And so I don't, I, you know, my guess is that's not going to happen.
But toppling the regimes could still be a catastrophe for those.
And in Venezuela, if you're looking at a Libya type situation, well, that's right in our backyard.
So, no, I don't think you're going to see boots on the ground.
But the point is that, I mean, who knows?
You know, I will say with the caveat that Trump asking for that 1.5 trillion, you know, is makes you wonder.
But the thing is that toppling a government, not that we can always do it.
We've tried and failed.
But that is the easy part militarily.
But if you want to guide and direct what comes next, then you're going to need a military occupation.
You know, Donald Trump about Venezuela, he's saying we run the place.
And he doubled down on that with his interview in the New York Times the other day.
And he said, they go, well, how long is this going to take?
Are we talking six months?
Are we talking a couple of years?
And he goes, I think it'll be years.
I think it'll be much more than.
Okay, well, how exactly are you going to really direct policy for years?
The only real way to do that is to get in there on the ground.
And yeah, so that's essentially my assessment.
Or just say you're doing it.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Or just say you're doing it and not do anything.
Yes.
That's also that that is a more likely possibility, I think, in this case.
I do want to play just before we run and we're going to have to wrap this one a little bit early.
I know you have to run, but I do want you for this segment, Rob, because I wanted to play this Jerome Powell thing is crazy.
And we didn't talk about this at all.
So let's just play the, let's play this clip and then we can quickly respond.
Good evening.
On Friday, the Department of Justice served the Federal Reserve with grand jury subpoenas, threatening a criminal indictment related to my testimony before the Senate Banking Committee last June.
That testimony concerned, in part, a multi-year project to renovate historic Federal Reserve office buildings.
I have deep respect for the rule of law and for accountability in our democracy.
Nope.
Certainly not the chair of the Federal Reserve is above the law.
But this unprecedented action should be seen in the broader context of the administration's threats and ongoing pressure.
This new threat is not about my testimony last June or about the renovation of the Federal Reserve buildings.
It is not about Congress's oversight role.
The Fed, through testimony and other public disclosures, made every effort to keep Congress informed about the renovation project.
Those are pretexts.
The threat of criminal charges is a consequence of the Federal Reserve setting interest rates based on our best assessment of what will serve the public, rather than following the preferences of the president.
This is about whether the Fed will be able to continue to set interest rates based on evidence and economic conditions, or whether instead monetary policy will be directed by political pressure or intimidation.
I have served at the Federal Reserve under four administrations, Republicans and Democrats alike.
In every case, I have carried out my duties without political fear or favor, focused solely on our mandate of price stability and maximum employment.
Public, you can, you can pause it there.
I mean, that's pretty much what we needed to hear.
But so, okay, look, there's just a few things here, and I want to get your take on this too, Rob.
I know we're up against the time crunch here.
But like, first of all, what Donald Trump's doing is insane and for all the wrong reasons.
But it is something to hear the chairman of the Federal Reserve talk about how we believe in accountability in a democracy.
And that's why your books have never been audited.
And we have no way of looking at what you're actually doing.
And the idea of going like we've always been apolitical until Donald Trump threatened us is like, it's laughable.
It's like, imagine anyone claiming that an organization is, like, your organization was created by an act of Congress and your chair is appointed by the president.
I'd call that a political organization.
You know, like, imagine like if you, you know, if Walmart was created by an act of Congress and then the president appointed the CEO of Walmart and then you sat there and you went, Walmart's a totally independent company.
Well, no.
In other words, he does socialism on behalf of the big banks, but Donald Trump wants him to do socialism on behalf of the president of the United States of America.
That's what the beef here is over.
Nothing else.
However, the socialism that the big banks want him to do is far preferable to the socialism that Donald Trump wants him to do right now.
What Donald Trump wants them to do is lower interest rates, not because that's good for the country, because that's good for Donald Trump's midterm elections, period.
He wants them to start pumping more air into the bubble so that it doesn't burst on his watch and that all these other crazy schemes he's going around doing can be subsidized by 0% interest rates.
But just to be clear, so everyone understands, 0% interest rates are what we had through all of Obama and through all of 2020 and through the beginning of Joe Biden's presidency.
We've had this experiment in zero interest rates.
So like if you're saying that's the solution here, then just you better be telling me that you love the Obama recovery.
Ironically, Rob, what led to Donald Trump's presidency?
The economy for eight years under Obama is what got Donald Trump elected.
And yet that's what he wants to go back to because that's in the interest of him right now.
All right, your thoughts, last thoughts on this thing we'll wrap up.
I hate the Fed and the Fed.
You want to go after the criminality at the Fed?
You can start with an audit, start investigating its relationships with the big banks, start investigating why it's creating credit asset bubbles, who actually owns the thing, where the money's going.
There's a lot of meat on the bone for going after the Fed.
But when you're going after them for a building renovation with all the reckless spending that we do, and it's clearly to pressure them on an agenda, I mean, listen, but that's worse.
Auditing the Fed and Interest Rates00:00:54
Yeah.
And it's not like the agenda is transparency or sound money or say the agenda is just lower interest rates and bail me out all this bullshit I'm doing.
Which I don't even know if that works.
I don't know that they're doing a great job of selling bonds even at the current interest rate.
I don't know how much legroom they actually, good plug.
Check out Run Your Mouth coming up.
I just did one with David Collin.
I got Gene Epstein on, and that's one of my questions for him is if Donald Trump had his way, how low can they even push the interest rate?
That's an excellent question.
I'll be very interested to watch that episode.
All right.
Yes, go check out Run Your Mouth.
Come check us out on the road, comicdave Smith.com for all the ticket links.
Me and Rob are traveling all around the country this year together.