Richard Spencer critiques Donald Trump’s "annihilate the Iranian Navy" threat, calling it reckless regime-change rhetoric that could destabilize Iran’s factions despite his framing of it as a "freedom" push. Unlike Bush’s 2003 Iraq propaganda, Trump offers no public justification for strikes on Venezuela or Iran, yet Spencer dismisses Iran’s nuclear bluffs and drone tactics as weak, comparing their lack of deterrence to North Korea’s unchecked influence. The episode frames global tensions as WWIII-lite, with U.S.-Israel vs. Russia-China blocs clashing in Ukraine and Iran, while questioning Israel’s true allegiance amid Netanyahu’s shifting alliances. Ultimately, Spencer warns of escalating chaos, urging caution before the world’s divisions solidify further. [Automatically generated summary]
Trump gave an address to the nation at this wee hour.
Well, it's begun.
Something ever happens, as they say.
This is real.
And I don't think there's any other way of categorizing it.
We've seen things like this before, but Trump gave an address in which he said some very important and provocative, disturbing things, such as we are going to annihilate the Iranian Navy.
There will be casualties on the American side.
This isn't just some humanitarian intervention strike like that.
He expects there to be retaliation and blowback.
He said some other things of importance as well.
So I think this is absolutely real.
He said that the regime is going to be in shambles, and this is the moment, maybe the one moment for another generation or two when Iranians have a chance to take over the government.
Now, a couple of thoughts here.
We like to say things like, you know, the American people, the Iranian people don't like their regime or they want freedom or whatever, but that's euphemistic to impose this unitary conception on a people.
The fact is, if you're going to take over a government, there are going to be many different factions and they are going to be warring factions at that.
So basically saying, people, you know, come, Gotham is yours.
That is a recipe for chaos.
I have nothing else to say on that matter.
But let me be clear on a few things just off the bat.
First off, I don't support this.
I don't really support Trump, if I'm honest.
He's done some things here and there that I've liked.
No need to go into them.
I voted for a different party.
I voted for a different candidate.
That candidate was Kamala Harris.
Still brings a smile to my face to this day.
I am a foreign policy voter to a large extent.
Now, I was more exercised by the Ukrainian war, and I still am, and the situation with NATO, etc.
So when I said I voted on the basis largely of foreign policy, that's what I meant.
But I would also say this: I don't think Kamala Harris would have launched this strike and would have opened up the can of worms that Donald Trump just opened up.
I don't think she would have.
Now you can say, ah, you know, Liz Cheney and Doyce endorsed her, and there were neocons who became Democrats and whatever.
You can say all that, but we live in a different time.
Donald Trump is joined at the hip with Israelis, not just Israelis, but Likud Israelis.
Some people in the chat are saying she would have done this.
She would have.
Well, it's a hypothetical.
It remains to be seen.
We'll never know, of course.
We'll see how Kamala reacts to this.
But Donald Trump has been for his entire career joined at the hip with hardcore Israelis.
Now, he also has had a lot of support from, you could say, anti-Zionist, anti-Semites, pacifist, third positionist.
What am I trying to say?
Multipolar worldist, etc.
He's had support from all of these people, no doubt, because he is a screen on which you project your fantasies and your fears and your hopes and your dreams.
So of course he had support from these people.
But I think it was a very reasonable thing to say that Donald Trump was more likely to get us into another war in the Middle East.
He was the greatest president Israel has ever seen.
He could be the king of Israel.
That's what he told us.
We know about the first term.
He did a strike much smaller than this one during his first term against Iran.
He moved the embassy, gave over the Golan Heights, etc.
There was precedent.
There was every reason in the world to believe that Trump is far more likely to do something like this than Kamala Harris.
It's not really an issue between neocons and rhinos and globalists and then a patriot.
That's a false binary that people buy into.
The globalist, I will guarantee you, self-described globalist, in fact, are going to be against these strikes.
Now, the neocons, that's a different story.
I would imagine most all of them will.
Some of them will probably have actual Trump derangement syndrome.
So there's that.
It's really the binary is between liberal globalist, people who are in some way, at least ideologically speaking, holdovers from the Cold War.
That is Joe Biden, who's, I guess, literally a Cold Warrior, Kamala Harris, who has a kind of ideological holdover from the Cold War, and people who want to manage an American-centric world order where the spice flows, as they said in David Lynch's Dune.
Basically, the money flows, oil is available, things can get hot, but not too hot, et cetera, et cetera.
Those are the globalists, and that's how they think.
They are actually disinclined to support strikes on Iran.
Not that they love Iran, but they are less inclined to do something like this.
And then there is the populist nationalist Lakudites that Trump has always been a part of.
They are much more likely to do this.
They might like the global arrangement in some way.
They benefited from it, but that's not where their heart is.
Their heart is in America and Israel acting directly, decisively, without any hesitation, without ever asking for permission on behalf of the interest as they see it, which is a strong, powerful Israel in the Middle East at the very least.
And some of them think Israel should go further, greater Israel, etc.
It's that's the dynamic.
Liberal, soft power globalists who want to keep the show running, who are inclined towards NATO, etc., and hardcore Lakudite Zionist nationalists like Trump and Bibbi Netanyahu.
They don't like NATO or they don't care about NATO.
They think that sticking up for plucky Ukraine and confronting Russia is a luxury item, a kind of distraction from the real thing.
And some of them, I'm sure, are good people.
No, actually, none of them are good people.
Some of them, I'm sure, are book of Revelation, apocalyptic, crazy loons who want to actually bring on the end time.
Not the majority, but a sizable minority are like that.
That is the division.
When I look at that, I say, I'm not voting for Donald Trump.
Keep in mind a couple of things also with JD Vance and the sort of rising people in the Trump movement.
JD Vance has made his opinions on this matter quite clear.
We need to stick with Israel because they serve some vaguely defined nationalist cause or national interest in the Middle East.
And, you know, as he said on television, when the Russians invaded Ukraine, you know, I couldn't care less about Ukraine.
I just care about my mama over in Ohio.
She's suffering from the fentanyl.
Yeah, that's how he thinks.
That's how he thinks.
They don't care about Europe.
And they're willing to jeopardize something that they have all benefited from, which is the tax Americana, the American-led world order, globalism, whatever you want to call it.
Even the tariffs are a sort of puzzle piece that fits in with this.
So I don't want to hear people talk about like, how did this happen?
Why did Trump do this?
Who was in Trump's ear?
We hadn't purged all the rhinos and neocons from the GOP yet, I guess.
No, that's bullshit.
This is a 100% Trump liquid bibby net and Yahoo type operation.
It is not surprising.
It is predictable.
And you couldn't quite foresee it, but you could make a reasonable assessment of the situation and say, I'm not just not voting for these guys as I did and as I told you to do.
But here we are.
I don't want to just play I Told You So forever.
It's boring, not to mention being self-righteous.
But let's move on.
First off, or second off, I guess.
I am old enough to remember the Iraq war.
I'm 47 years old.
I was just out of college when 9-11 happened, and I was a young person living in New York.
I was actually living in New York during 9-11, believe it or not, I witnessed it, but I was living in Chicago and attending the University of Chicago during the lead up to the Iraq war.
And for an entire year, actually more than a year, year and a half at the very least, all we talked about was: should we go into Iraq?
There were various arguments.
You had the neocons, you had Peter Hitchens, you had George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, you had Colin Powell at the UN, et cetera, et cetera.
It was on the front page of every paper every day.
What were they doing?
Well, they were genuinely arguing.
But also, they were engaged in a propaganda campaign to justify the Iraq war.
They felt George W. Bush genuinely felt that he needed to talk Americans into it.
This is the meaning of 9-11.
This is the next step that we have to take.
And he was successful and not successful in doing that, but he ultimately got his war.
He assembled a coalition of the willing.
Do you guys remember that one?
It was a coalition of sorts that supported an American-led effort, but he wanted to get the world on board.
He wanted to get the United Nations on board.
We seem to have entered this new place in history.
You know, who Baudrillard said that, you know, the Iraq war didn't exist, did not take place.
Now, he was writing that about the George Herbert Walker Bush's Iraq War in 1991.
A limited campaign, but a real war, in fact.
What he was saying basically is that the Iraq War isn't a kinetic physical event so much as it is a televisual event.
It's existing in the minds in this ongoing hyper-reality on CNN with Wolf Blitzer and all those boys.
And yeah, it's an insightful way of looking at things.
And you could say a similar, you could make similar comments about the Second Iraq War.
But I feel, and you can make similar comments about this Iran war, but it's also different.
What we saw with Venezuela was a government that didn't feel the need at all to justify itself.
Venezuela's Unjustified Success00:06:32
There was no buildup.
As Klausovitz said, you know, nothing succeeds like success.
If you're winning, you just need to start piling on.
They did a limited strike against a tinpot dictatorship.
It wasn't even really a regime change so much as personnel change.
It wasn't even party change.
It is political party change, believe it or not.
And it went swimmingly.
Why?
Because Venezuela is a cracked pot, tin pot dictatorship.
They were able to do it.
And they just bragged about it afterwards.
And then after a week or so, we all forgot about it.
Now, it was a success.
I gave some good words towards Venezuela.
And I think I've been sort of justified in it in the sense that Venezuela does actually have these stable, you know, liberal democratic institutions.
And you actually can just knock someone off and put a new guy or gal in.
And it might very well work.
There's not going to be a religious holy war directed against you as resistance.
And we'll see, of course, but I think that's largely correct.
They seem to have learned that lesson, but they probably even learned this lesson earlier because they, again, they didn't bother justifying Venezuela.
They did not bother justifying Iran.
They just did it.
There was a State of the Union address on Tuesday, seems like another century ago, in which Iran was discussed.
But I don't even remember what Trump said about Iran.
He certainly wasn't getting the public ready for war.
And remember, that was a prime time event where he very well could have done that.
He didn't even bother.
It is remarkable.
We are in a situation where the government can just do a war and they don't need public support.
What percentage of the population even knows that the Venezuelan war, if you want to call it that, campaign intervention took place?
It's a remarkably small percentage of the public.
Most people don't even know about it.
When it worked, Americans loved it.
Hey, we always supported that.
Why don't we do more of that?
It's good.
Nothing succeeds like success.
I think we will see a lot of that with the Iran war.
It's happening in the middle of the night, as you can tell.
Most people are totally checked out or have their face glued to video games or the internet, social media, OnlyFans, and they're just not going to even know what's happening.
But unlike Venezuela, I don't think a strike against Iran can be contained.
And they, in a limited fashion, Trump is preparing us for that.
Basically, saying things like, you better get ready for some body bags to come back.
There are going to be casualties.
They always happen in war.
So we're in a test phase operation where we are going to see if they can pull this off, if they can actually just do things and not gain legitimacy.
They don't even care about the opinion of the rest of the world.
They certainly don't care about the opinion of Europe.
And they're just going to go for it.
Now, I would say this, and I said this on my podcast on Substack not too long ago when there was talk about Iran war and we had this massive military buildup, which has been going on for weeks at this point.
And I said, look, we are all aware that the United States is in a state of steep decline.
We're all aware of that.
I don't know how you could even disagree with that claim.
Even liberals agree with that claim.
Leftists certainly agree with that claim.
Multi-generations agree with that claim.
We are in decline.
We don't, the American dream is dead.
We don't have a hope for the future.
Culture just seems to get more coarse and crass and disgusting, et cetera, et cetera.
I don't need to go into it all.
That's true, but we should remember that just because we're declining, other regions and nation states are not immune to this type of degeneration.
And in fact, other states might be declining at a faster rate than the United States.
So, you know, you can talk about Venezuela and it's a sovereign country and the people are nationalistic and they've got a dictator in charge.
Ooh, don't want to go in there.
But the reality is when you lift up the rock, there's just all these bugs and worms and whatever crawling around there.
It's a joke.
And I think Iran and which is a Persian country, but all these other Arab countries are, to be frank, largely jokes.
After October 7th, they had a lot of opportunity to get together and unify in some sort of violent attack on Israel, etc.
And what happens?
What happens?
It's like, you know, those John Reacher movies or television shows where, you know, there's John Reacher there in the street.
World War III Joke00:09:24
He's ready to fight.
And the dumbass gang members start attacking him one after another, and the final three just run off.
That's what happened.
There was no unified access of resistance.
Syria, which had held out against mounting pressure from the United States, eventually just fell.
So look, I don't think this can be contained.
I think this is bad.
I think there are going to be no doubt unintended consequences to what just happened.
That being said, I don't think we should overestimate the competency and power of these governments.
And you even saw it.
I mean, this is a social media phenomenon, but it is sort of true.
I mean, you even saw it from their Twitter account, like just Iran saying, like, let the world remember that we didn't start this war.
Oh, congratulations.
Congratulations.
You didn't start it.
You sure as hell didn't.
Yeah, you're a cock.
You're getting your ass kicked.
That's what's happening.
And at some point, I don't feel a great deal of sympathy for these regimes, particularly Iran and particularly regarding the nuclear situation.
I mean, let's put this into perspective, shall we?
Nuclear weapons were developed in the 1940s in the famous Manhattan Project.
We all saw Oppenheimer a couple of years ago.
Both of my grandparents fought in the Second World War, and they were in their 20s during that time.
They were born in the 1920s.
They were fighting it in their 20s.
I am more than twice their age now.
The nuclear weapon is not a new thing.
It's not like bleeding edge technology.
It's also very clear and has been clear as day forever that if you want to start operating on a different plane, a different geopolitical plane, you need to have a fucking nuke.
There's just no if, then, or buts about it, actually.
Even North Korea, which is a miserable place, operates on a different plane and is not being regime changed precisely because they have a nuclear weapon.
So it's not like you weren't warned, Iran.
It's not like this is some controversial outside-the-box opinion that I'm telling you.
Why in the Sam hell didn't you get a nuke yesterday?
Do you have one?
I don't know.
I don't think so, actually.
And it's probably too late now if you didn't.
So, good luck.
I mean, I hope the world remembers that you were the real victim here.
Let's see how far that will get you.
I think being the real victim in the minds of the war and $5 will get you a cappuccino at Starbucks.
So, congratulations.
I just don't have any sympathy.
Now, look, it's a particular, a peculiar situation.
Scientists, probably brilliant ones, were killed by Israel.
There's huge amounts of pressure against a nuclear program.
And there are also things that are their fault, like total corruption and incompetency, etc.
So, I get it.
It's hard, but my point remains.
Iran, if you wanted to play with the big boys, you needed to get a nuke.
That has been clear for decades.
And I just don't have any sympathy for this passive-aggressive both sides-ism that they seem to be playing.
Where, on the one hand, they're going to, you know, vaguely and occasionally threaten Israel and Europe and America with nuclear annihilation.
And we're big, bad, tough guys.
You'll then tweet out Jane Austen quotes on Twitter on occasion to show that you're actually the good guys.
You're the good guys.
And then you'll try to make deals and then you'll promise not to do it.
And then you'll say that we need denuclearization.
It just, there's, there's not two hands.
There's like five hands in this passive aggressive strategy that got them nowhere.
I just don't have sympathy for these governments at some point.
Like, how many times and how bad are you dumbasses going to fuck this up?
I just, I don't know what to say.
I am not going to be around waving Iranian flags or talking about the great resistance to the American Empire or something.
That's just stupid.
We are declining.
You guys seem to be declining even worse.
You're run by aging boomers, I guess, like the rest of the world.
But anyway, just some thoughts.
I guess I'll go out on this thought, which is that, I mean, people talk about World War III and so on, and they see it as World War II, but worse.
Because we had nukes at the very end of World War II.
Now we're going to have nukes from the beginning with World War III and so on.
But it all remains to be seen whether there's going to be, you know, millions of casualties and nuclear Armageddon and pitched battles across the sphere.
That remains to be seen.
I'm not positive that is going to occur.
We shall see.
But I think you can accurately say that we are in World War III right now because the world has been starkly divided.
Ukraine is a small little regional war on some level.
In the words of Kamala Harris, the brat, my gal.
Russia's a big country and Ukraine's a small country in Europe and Russia invaded Ukraine.
And that actually is an apt summary for what just happened.
But it's bigger than that.
Russia and China have been moving closer together as time goes on.
They signed a pact of friendship and unlimited cooperation or some language like that after Ukraine.
And there was a lot of lead up to that.
So there sort of is an East-West division.
It is a reiteration of the Cold War.
Now, Israel's relationship to Ukraine is more complex.
I think we like to put them on the side of the West, but that's not exactly right.
They've stayed out of Ukraine to a large extent.
Bibi Netanyahu had very good relations with Vladimir Putin, probably still does.
And there are many people in the Likud coalition who are, in effect, Russians and Russian nationalists.
So it's actually a complex issue.
But Iran has offered weapons to the Russians that have been used to kill Ukrainians.
Drones.
The world does seem to be dividing up into unified blocks in the same way that we saw with the Axis powers and the Allies, etc.
That these big regional powers get together.
And I do think that, A, that was happening before this war, and that is going to start to congeal as this goes on.
So are we in World War III?
Yes, we are, in the sense that there are blocks of powers on two sides of a conflict that has multiple fronts and that expands across the globe.
We are in World War III, in my opinion.
That doesn't necessarily mean that there's going to be like Chinese soldiers fighting in Great Britain against Iranians.
World War III?00:01:22
I mean, it doesn't necessarily have to be a direct analog with the Second World War, but I think we are there.
So anyway, these are just some of my thoughts.
I wanted to get them off my chest before I go to sleep.
But if you guys want to ask some questions or you want to, I guess you could even come on here if you want to ask some questions.
We could do that.
Otherwise, I think I will just bring this to a close.
All right.
Very happy.
We had a number of people got on the stream.
So that's great.
And I probably should do more of these.
It's good to jump on every once in a while to Substack and talk to the followers.
So we'll do some more in the future.
But anyway, get some sleep here in the United States.
It's already 9 a.m. in Britain, so I guess the Europe is up.
It's 10 over in Central Europe.
Get some sleep.
Stay safe.
I hope that Apollo will bless us in these difficult times.