WE'RE GOING IN | Timcast IRL #1461 w/ Austin Rodgers & Adam Johnson
Austin Rodgers and Adam Johnson dissect U.S.-Iran tensions, where 100,000 Israeli reservists mobilize amid Iranian strikes on U.S. bases—Al-Udeid and Riyadh—and Hormuz Strait closures, framing it as a potential regime-change gambit with Libya/Syria parallels. They debate whether surgical strikes or occupation could stabilize Iran, warning of ISIS-like chaos if the government collapses without control, while tying Iran’s moves to blocking China’s oil and targeting Russia. Domestically, Texas elections—Jasmine Crockett’s 76,000-vote deficit, Tony Gonzalez’s razor-thin lead, and Dan Crenshaw’s 20-point loss—spark claims of media manipulation and election integrity doubts. The episode blends geopolitical risks with political infighting, ending with surrogacy trends and their own campaign pitches. [Automatically generated summary]
The likelihood that we put boots on the ground is unfortunately going up, at least I think, in the general opinion.
It's not guaranteed.
We don't know for sure.
But the Democrats have come out saying they are fearful based on what they are saying that the likelihood we are going to put boots on the ground is increasing.
Whether or not we trust them, I don't know, but I got to be honest, I don't think Democrats are actually fearful of it.
I think they're talking out the side of their mouths, going like, oh no, I hope we don't have boots on the ground.
Wink.
Yeah, at the same time, Israel is calling up 100,000 reservists.
And the question there is: for what purpose?
Do you need 100,000 people active across the country?
Well, to be fair, there's probably ground operations in Israel they do need people for, but 100,000 is quite a bit.
And then there's the ultimate logic, which is: how do you guarantee that the regime you've, or I should say, the supreme leader that you've taken out and his leadership is not replaced by the exact same structure?
You can't unless there is some form of occupation.
So perhaps it won't be direct U.S. troops, but it seems incredibly likely this will be the outcome.
And that appears to be an ever-increasing opinion that people are having.
But again, we're going to see, and we're going to show you exactly what the Democrats as Blumenthal is saying.
I fear it's going to happen, as well as the information that we've been getting from Israel.
But when you factor in those fears, and I think, again, the general assessment and fears people have, with the fact that a U.S. base was just struck by Iran, and that a CIA facility was also just struck by Iran, and that they've been striking civilian targets and they've shut down the Strait of Hormuz.
If we don't get a handle on this quickly and actually stop their government and their capability to fight, which again, Trump says we've done largely, but if they're allowed to continue, it's going to cause severe economic crisis around the planet, which means, again, I think the general assessment is: how do you solve this unless you actually get people in to shut down those military capabilities?
So we got to talk about that.
But, my friends, there's much, much bigger news.
I know it's funny to say, right?
But in Texas, we got big elections happening right now, and we are all rooting for Brandon Herrera, who is 91% in the prediction markets to win.
And that's what we want to see.
And so we're going to be tracking those election results out of Texas.
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And of course, my friends, don't forget Cast Brew.
Hey, Austin Rogers, running for Congress in the second congressional district of Florida.
Good point.
From the Panhandle and for the Panhandle is our slogan.
And, you know, in my district, it matters that you know how to throw a cast net, that you know how to tie a fishing knot.
I know how to do that, but also have experience in Washington serving as chief counsel on Senate Judiciary Committee and serving in Senator Rake Scott's general counsel.
So not a swamp creature, but know the swamp, know firsthand how it's broken, and looking forward to fixing it.
I just want to say I am more fearful than ever after this briefing that we may be putting boots on the ground and that troops from the United States may be necessary to accomplish objectives that the administration seems to have.
But I also am no more clear on what the priorities are going to be of the administration going forward, whether it is destroying the nuclear capacity of Iran for simply the missiles or regime chain for stopping terrorist activities.
And I think the administration owes it to the American people to have briefings not just for members of Congress, but for the American public.
So I'm going to go ahead and say, yeah, I think there's probably going to be boots on the ground.
We have this from Times of Israel.
This is actually an older story.
It's from a few days ago.
IDF mobilizes 100,000 reservists amid war with Iran.
So we have all of these indicators.
And I think to the point made by Senator Blumenthal, they're getting these briefings.
And I believe what you're getting is they would never and they could never come out and just say, we hereby declare war in Iran and we're sending in the troops because there would be revolt instantly.
So what you need is some kind of chaos's belly and then after that, some kind of justification for furtherance of that war.
We have had a U.S. airbase struck.
We have had a CIA facility struck with the Strait of Hormuz closed.
All of these things are causing the water to boil.
And at a certain point, you are going to have, in my opinion, I'm not saying for sure, but if this continues like this, you will then get, you know, Heg Seth or Trump or someone coming out being like, you know, we lost so many American lives today.
It's unfortunate.
We may have no choice but to shut them down.
They've refused to surrender.
And that's when you start getting an escalation of boots on the ground.
Now, again, with what we've seen in Ukraine, they don't play that game anymore where they're like, deploy the troops.
They go, a coalition of volunteers have decided to go in.
Many of them, of course, are U.S. veterans who are being paid circuitously through various means.
But ultimately, the sources of the funding is the U.S. government and the U.S. isn't involved.
So I expect the possibility of special forces, limited U.S. military engagement With support from private military contractors, which are effectively U.S. forces.
However, I believe the most likely outcome is going to be IDF moving in and shutting this down.
And I think the attacks that we've seen and the closure of the Strait of Hormuz are going to be the principal causes, or I should say, justifications.
My first reaction is on the declaration of war front.
That's something that, according to Article 1, Congress does.
And that is a speech act that invites all sorts of differences of legal rights.
You know, they can create a blockade that helps them control the economy.
So, you know, Article 2, the executive acting in a way that's addressing conflicts and hostilities is quite a different thing than a declaration of war.
I think Trump has shown with Venezuela and with Iran previously that he's been pretty surgical and that he's willing to take isolated sort of discrete movements to address the issue.
So I would argue that Venezuela was done as a surgical strike because of the war with Iran.
That we knew Iran was going to close the Strait of Hormuz.
And for those that don't know, I want to pull this up because I know there's a lot of people who, you know, they tune in because they want to watch general news and conservative level stuff.
And this can get particularly esoteric, as it were.
So let me grab the map here.
And here's the Strait of Hormuz.
Let me zoom out so you can see where it is.
Here's Iran.
Here's Saudi Arabia.
Then you've got Israel right here.
So the Persian Gulf is here.
You've got the Mediterranean.
Okay.
So European countries, Russia, Turkey, et cetera, transport goods to the Suez Canal and the Red Sea, for which they've been threatened substantially by Houthi rebels in Yemen, right here.
They've actually been bombing cargo vessels, and that's been disastrous.
You also have here the Strait of Hormuz.
Now, this is about, I believe it's a three-mile-wide stretch of water where 20% of global gas, oil and natural gas flows through.
And Iran has basically said, we're going to shut that down.
So Trump, he's probably sitting around with Du Bois, and they're like, should we go in and just bomb the Ayatollah?
And they probably said they're immediately going to shut the Strait of Hormuz and we're going to lose 20% of global oil trade and wipe out the global economy.
So Trump says, what can we do?
And they're like, well, yeah, look, I mean, Venezuela does have a massive chunk of that, and we could easily go in and knock out Maduro.
And so I believe the move against Maduro was actually a precursor to the strikes on Iran.
And this is something that specifically MAGA voters were thinking they were voting for Trump against things like WMD oil wars.
Trump had said we were going to get out of Afghanistan.
Now Biden ended up doing that and did it wrong, and the Democrats were against it anyway.
But we have this situation.
And I think also what you have is the, I think that Trump's inability to prevent the war in Ukraine, to like get that stopped, has been really rankling.
And so he's going after as well Russian allies, right?
Like Venezuela, Iran.
These are Russian allies.
You'll notice like China and Russia have not been coming in to Iran's aid.
And this is a situation where Trump is going to go after all of the oil.
Now, I do think, just my last point, I do think that if it goes beyond the, you know, two weeks to stop the spread, I mean, two weeks to stop the Iran.
Four to five weeks that have been promised.
I think that's going to be a concern because this was a promise made now, four to five weeks, right?
I think this might be, that's all that MAGA has the stomach for.
I mean, he may want that stopped, but I don't think that this actually has as much effect on Russia as it does have on China.
And then as for like a long-term, the administration made a bad move by even putting any kind of timeframe.
When they were starting out and they were saying, look, this is open-ended.
This is going to be longer than just a strike.
This is something that might take a while.
That was probably the best messaging that they had at the time by talking about boots on the ground or talking about an end to it or whatever.
Then they put a time limit in people's heads.
They just recently started launching B-52s, which means they've taken out the vast majority of the threats because you put first B-2s when there's you put in B-2s, the stealth bomber when there's serious threats.
B-1s go in when the threats have kind of knocked down a little bit.
Then B-52s can fly at 55,000 feet, but those are easily taken out by air defense.
So essentially, the air defenses in Iran are gone now.
So Iran is notorious for being mountainous with heavy anti-air defense, and the U.S. relies on air superiority.
So this has been one of the principal issues with the U.S. moving in on Iran for the whole time.
So taking out those anti-air surface air missiles was the key to getting this job done.
I just want to say, I am, of course, as a millennial skeptical on these regime change wars, for which this absolutely is.
I'm going to piss off a lot of people when I say this, but I just love the masculinity of it.
Let me explain.
The reporting is that the Trump admin went to sit down.
I mean, figuratively, they had a meeting with the Iranian government who stated, we have enough fissile material for 11 bombs.
That's where we're starting the negotiation.
And Trump's response was, then I'm going to kill you.
And again, I'm not suggesting I support the strikes or the invasion of Iran.
I'm not a staunch anti-Trump.
I'm not, I don't believe, I would call it intervention skeptic, general anti-intervention.
And I think the issue is the potential for instability knocking out a big player like Iran and the blowback we could get.
That being said, there is just something satisfied in finally having a world leader who's going to, like Obama saying, we're going to give you as much money as you want.
We want to buy you into the system.
Just this is not the way you solve problems with ideological psychopaths.
I am not suggesting that it means we should be bombing them.
It's just there's just something visceral about Trump's response to the world stage.
Now, I'll give him a little pushback.
I wish he had that same decisiveness domestically, which he does not seem to show, especially with the riots and the protests and the Democratic Party.
Sometimes, not always, but you know, there, I said, it is what it is.
Well, hopefully, this doesn't result in massive regional instability.
Well, anyway, my point is, you know, Trump's heavy priority has been an international engagement.
And I feel like he defers a lot of the domestic stuff to his administration, his staff.
And we have seen the far left basically getting away with murder, literally, in many states.
We see criminals being released.
And what the American people who support Trump want is not an incursion into Iran, which is why the base is split.
They want to see corrupt politicians be prosecuted, investigated, or otherwise.
And they ain't getting it.
They're not.
And again, I'm not saying it's been all bad.
I say generally net positive in a lot of areas.
But again, going in on full war with Iran is, I mean, this is a, if you're talking about political risk, Donald Trump being like, well, we could declare the Insurrection Act.
We could send in federal investigators to look into what's going on with, you know, Tim Waltz, the guy he hired, like a lot of various issues.
We could do that.
It's politically tumultuous, but I will bomb Iran.
It's like, wow, bombing Iran is tenfold more.
It's like more difficult to do in terms of decision-making than the domestic actions we want to see to hold accountable corrupt politicians and far-left extremists.
The reality is we live very comfortably because we blow people up who don't get on the petrodollar or who threaten global trade routes, which is basically the deal we have to these countries.
Like, hey, you're going to trade oil.
It's going to be clean, safe, and you don't have to worry about it because we're going to send our aircraft carriers around and police the seas.
So when Iran is acting a fool, our customers are going, look, we use your currency for the oil that we're selling, but we can't even trade in this region without getting bombed.
And Trump's like, okay.
That's why it's so easy.
This is honestly why it is easier, in my opinion, for every administration to go to war, because domestically you can lose elections, you can lose power.
Foreign intervention, for the most part, Americans don't care about foreign policy.
Like, I know they polled people and they're mostly opposed to the strikes in Iran.
But I got to be honest, if I walk down the street and ask somebody, would you care more about the upcoming season, insert sport, or war with Iran, they'll go, who?
To your point earlier and to something that you said, I think Republicans, there's a strong contingent of Republicans that are rightly skeptical of forever wars, of oil wars, of foreign intervention.
But I think Trump has demonstrated time and again in this administration that he is being surgical.
He is not getting us embroiled in forever wars.
He is being quite isolated and surgical in how he's treating this.
And I don't know why we wouldn't trust him for this one.
The strikes in Riyadh come as Iran Wyden's retaliation across the Middle East in the wake of U.S.-Israeli bombing campaign.
So far, Trump's surgical strike has just been Venezuela.
And yeah, you know, great job.
I don't think you can accomplish what you want to accomplish with Iran in the same way.
And so I think it's a fair argument to say, you know, we had just referenced Senator Blumenthal, who said, based on the briefing that I got, I am more fearful than ever that we'll have boots on the ground.
I defy anybody.
Tell me how we remove the Islamic fundamentalist government without occupation.
It is going to, like, if you create a power vacuum in Iran, the most brutal guy is going to win.
Again, so we can bomb their formal government and leadership, but you are going to get terrorist insurgent cells and they're going to start spreading all of those resources and weapons around like crazy and create massive instability unless someone goes in and occupies it.
I'll give some credit to South Korea, but we certainly haven't unified the Koreas, and that's largely due to the conflict with China and China's support for North Korea.
They get their faces shaved down and reshaped to look more like the European chiseled square jaw or like, you know, whatever.
They get eyelid surgery.
And it's because when you are occupied by Americans who look a certain way and they control your culture and your development, you look to the wealthy, you look to the developed, and you take those things on.
So again, Japan, this is probably why they retained this ethos of saying, we are not going to look at Vietnam or Iraq or Afghanistan, Iraq again, as it's not possible, just that we got to try again.
So I certainly would say that, you know, the way I describe it is that we have post-intervention stress disorder due to the failures of the Bush administration's interventions in the Middle East.
That doesn't mean it always fails, but I would say based on the track record of our current infrastructure, the probability of failure is likely high.
Syria being another really great example.
The Obama intervention in Syria resulted in the expansion of ISIS and U.S. weapons falling into the hands of psychopaths who basically defied all of the norms we expected from these Muslim insurgent groups.
It used to be that during the Iraq or early Iraq war era, you get kidnapped as a journalist or contractor in some Middle Eastern country by a Muslim.
There were, I forget what the word is, but there was something you could invoke in Islam where it would require them to protect you until the conclusion of whatever it is they kidnapped you for, be it a ransom or some political reason.
And an individual would be like, okay, I am basically your captor and I have to make sure nobody harms you.
ISIS did not care at all.
ISIS was like, we will literally chop off your head.
We don't care.
And they defied the norms we grew to expect because they were, as Noam Chomsky said, to quote, that guy, in the arena of violence, the most brutal guy wins.
And in reference to the left, he said, that's not us.
But the point is, you have order in Iran.
We keep blowing up their leadership.
Eventually, you get brutal Islamic disorder.
And that has a very high likelihood of looking like ISIS.
Unless we get boots on the ground exactly like we did in Syria.
And again, even Syria wasn't quickly resolved.
I don't see a mathematical probability to having any kind of stability in the region.
If the anger is that Iran is arming the Houthi rebels and Iraqi militia groups who are killing U.S. troops, constantly flattening the leadership in Iran, resulting in the IRGC just going rogue and forming Islamic factions is going to make that tenfold worse.
So the solution is then there need to be, look, I'll put it like this.
Fighter jets don't occupy street corners.
People do.
So you can bomb all day and night and the factions there that believe what they believe and don't want to give up are going to adapt to it.
Until you get someone on a street corner with a gun, you will not have control of these systems, the economics, be it disaster economics, war economies.
If you want to put a stop, you need a grid of people stopping them.
I would actually argue that he has disproven this, and that is by the 12-day war, which utterly failed in Iran.
And we were assured in no uncertain terms, the nuclear program had been wiped out, and that was not true.
And this war is the continuation of the 12-day war.
So I love calling the current strikes in Iran the 12-day war, because now it's what, the 365-plus 12-day war.
So the point is this.
We were told it was a surgical strike.
The bombs went in, took it out.
There were satellite videos showing what looked like Iran shuffling their fissile material out of this base.
And we were told they did not.
It's not true.
Don't worry about it.
Now we're being told that when Trump goes to negotiate with Iran, they said outright, we have enough material for 11 bombs, and that's where we're starting the negotiation.
So again, I say I love the masculinity of Trump's response to looking him in the eye and being like, then I'm going to kill you.
And then he did.
Okay.
Not that the strikes are good, but it is like you need the balls.
That being said, as much as I can be like, I love the manliness of it.
It is fair to say we are not talking about a question of trust or capability.
We're talking about a question of strategy and math.
And fighter jets don't occupy street corners.
If the goal is to remove their ability to fight, you can keep bombing them.
But we saw what happened with Syria already.
So again, I'm looking at a math problem.
Trump can be the best in the world at these math problems, but if the solution still requires physical occupation, my assumption is the United States fully expects there needs to be an occupation of Iran.
And they're going to pull off the same BS they did with Ukraine by saying U.S. troops aren't in Ukraine.
I think they concluded the only way we get this done is by total regime change.
There's been a I would describe it, and I want to be careful with this, but there's been a propagandistic effort to rally public support for the end of the Iranian government.
We've been getting just slammed by these stories of the killing of civilians and things like this, which I would argue is probably largely true, but of course going to be exaggerated, especially by Israel, who wants the Iranian government removed.
I also have no problem saying the Ayatollah was a very bad person, and the Iranian government is absolutely garbage, and it is 100% moral to have removed them.
I think that's true.
The issue, however, is it may be morally good that the Iranian government is not there anymore and was removed.
The question is, is it going to create, is it going to be a Pyrrhic victory?
Is the calculation Trump made that in order to effectively end this government, you need people?
I do not see, based on history and everything we've seen thus far, it is possible to engage in a full-scale operation of this size without people, with a very easy example being Ukraine.
They told us there are no U.S. troops on the ground.
No, I was just going to say you've rightly identified a power vacuum, but I think the response from a lot of Iranian people being nothing short of jubilation signifies.
If China launched a strike and blew up the White House, they would be running videos all across China of Americans celebrating and they'd say, see, we liberated them.
And again, the rebuttal is the same appetite exists nearly half the population in the United States.
You know, Trump won 49.5% of the vote and Kamala got like 47 or something like this.
So again, when you start seeing all of these mass protests, I guarantee you, I mean, this is true, North Korea, China, Russia are rolling those videos out in their media being like the American people hate their government and want it overthrown and Trump just killed two civilians.
Indeed, and the argument there is we all agree we are correct and we have a better form of government.
My point is to look at a video of any amount of people protesting and determine that the people of Iran support their government being toppled, I would say, well, a percentage of them probably do, just like a large percentage of the people in the United States would celebrate Trump being killed all the same.
Yeah, but it's not a justification for why we go in and blow up their government.
None of that morally justifies the U.S. Like to say that because a portion of a country's people don't like their government is not a justification of executing their leader.
A moral justification would be they adhere to a form of Islam that is eschatological, apocalyptic, wants to kill the West, wants to kill the United States of America.
That's why My point is, whether or not any amount of people in Iran are for or against the government does not matter.
The question that I think is posed largely, certainly there's going to be a bunch of leftists who are like, it was wrong to kill a leader in this way.
I'm like, the Ayatollah was a very, very bad guy.
The bigger issue is not military action against evil people.
The bigger question is, is this a Pyrrhic victory which results in mass destabilization in the region and results in more death, more killing, more rape?
And if our goal ultimately is, now, first and foremost, I get it.
They can't have a nuclear bomb.
And they come to the negotiating table claiming that they still have the material to do it.
And you know why I believe this?
I know a lot of people are going to say, you actually think they really said that?
You actually think Donald Trump would come out and admit he f ⁇ ed up when the 12-day war was supposed to wipe out their materials and it did not work?
I don't think Trump decided to just arbitrarily go in and mount this massive assault on Iran.
No, I think the reality is the 12-day war failed.
And now the Trump administration has to admit they failed and their assurances were incorrect.
And now the only outcome was we're going to have to take them out and start taking out their capabilities.
Is your argument that the 12-day war was a success?
We set their nuclear program back decades, as we were told, meaning they're going to be at least 20 years on the low end away from ever getting close to this.
And then because they wouldn't agree to it, Trump decided to kill them all.
Indeed, I think the real issue was already laid out by Rubio when he said Israel was planning on staging an attack against Iran, and we knew this would result in strikes against U.S. personnel and our bases.
And we didn't want to take a defensive posture, so we decided to go in on the attack.
Trump, of course, walked it back.
But I don't buy it for a second.
I think Rubio just said the quiet part loud.
Israel has been begging for this war, and the U.S. and Trump were trying to avoid it.
When Israel said we're going in, Rubio was like, well, we have no choice.
And he was like, if we did not join them and it resulted in strikes against U.S. personnel, we'd have more dead, and then we have to go to hearings to explain why we didn't react properly.
Indeed, we went to war, not because of the nuclear program or whatever it may be.
It seems the most probable reason is because Israel has wanted to go to war with Iran for a long time and told the U.S., we will do it with or without you.
And the U.S. response was, we are going to get bombed like crazy if Israel does this.
We better just stand alongside them and make sure we take out as much Iranian infrastructure as we can before that happens.
He's running for 28 and probably the frontrunner, if I had to guess.
I think my greater concern with all of this is not so much what's going on in Iran.
It's what's going to happen stateside.
How many sleeper cells are here?
How many attacks we're going to see?
Because if the general sentiment of the U.S. population is we don't want a 20-year war if ever war, is it beyond the CIA to maybe orchestrate a handful of things to encourage people to be on board with a 20-year war with Iran?
And again, I'm trying to be careful because I don't want to come out and just be like, it's true.
I don't care what they say.
Like, they're investigating it, but it seems the most plausible reason.
And the fear now is that we have Democrats not wanting to fund DHS at a time when we know there are people here legally and illegally who want to kill us.
We had the attack in D.C. on the West Virginia National Guard already.
There's a woman screaming something like, why are you filming this?
And with all due respect to the person who filmed, I commend you for doing so because I know it's difficult with the horrific sight you see, the blood coming out of these people as they're desperately performing CPR, trying to keep them alive.
But people need to see it.
I'm sorry.
Don't let your kids see it.
I get that.
People need to understand what these people are going and willing to do.
And so when you have a video showing these people laying on the ground, dying because Islamic terror is in this country and they want to kill, and Secretary Noam told me in an interview explicitly, these people are here and we are concerned because we have to track them down.
And now the Democrats are saying, well, we don't want to fund DHS because we want to protect illegal immigrants that expect more of this.
And this has got everybody freaked out that I've been talking to because it could be anywhere.
And Austin, downtown, that's just why they were all placed.
They're talking about re-vetting all these Afghan migrants.
100%.
All of them.
There's a Benjamin, Carl Benjamin, asked a really great question on X.
It's a really simple way to put it.
He just said, I'm paraphrasing here, but with the Islamic migration into Great Britain, the question is, how does it benefit the people of the United Kingdom?
In what way should they welcome these people in for what benefit do they get?
The answer is none.
There isn't one.
And so if that's the case, then why do it?
And so now, if you have a country, the United States, that has gone to war and wants to go to war repeatedly with Islamic nations, probably a bad idea to invite militant ideologues into your country.
Yeah, I mean, look, we talk about, you know, cultures that are incompatible with ours, and we should make sure that if we're going to allow people into the United States, they need to be from cultures that actually mesh well with the United States.
Like, we shouldn't just be like, anyone from around the world can come here with no vetting or what have you.
If you can get to our shores, we'll let you in.
We should have very strict requirements about who is and isn't let in to become a citizen.
And so once you wipe out everybody, and Trump even said that they had wiped out the people who he thought would be, you know, good next leaders.
Now we have a situation where how many more people are they going to wipe out before they find like, you know, that guy who was waiting, like the, the postal inspector?
The point isn't about like, trying to find the good guy.
It, the point is to make the people understand, look, this is going to keep happening until you play ball with the United States and go ahead, go ahead.
And that's, I mean, that's actually and that's what happened in, you know, in Venezuela.
Like they, they wrapped up Maduro and they told the, the vice president, look, you need to play ball.
And I mean, obviously the jury's still out on on how far that's going to go how how uh, how well they're going to work with the United States and stuff um, but it it, all indications are that they're like, okay yeah, we'll go ahead and do this.
I read a story about the vice president.
That or not the vice president, but the, the person that won the Nobel Peace Prize, that she was supposed to be the president, that that Maduro stole the election, she was going back and they were going to organize new elections.
I think in the fall and I mean again, if it works out then it seems like a method worth trying.
Now obviously, like I said, Iran is not the same place as Venezuela.
The culture is different, but if the, if the Trump administration's goal is all right, we're going to get you to the table and find someone that actually wants to work with us and we're going to use violence to do it, I mean it's it's, it's not something that I'm exact, that I that I can say, that I endorse, but it's better than having a 20-year quagmire.
Yeah, I think I think it's an effort to bring them to the negotiating table and say hey, you've already found out.
Yeah, mess around and find out like, if you don't come to the negotiating table and play ball, we mean business, he's shown he means business and I think he's gonna get a lot of success out of this.
So, like, if they can get that to stop, I think the region will look at this as an overall good thing.
And again, I don't know that it's going to work.
I'm not saying that I'm for the attacks, but at the same time, if they can get those kind of behaviors to stop from the Iranian regime, that's something that the whole Middle East is going to say, well, this is good.
Because right now, the whole Middle East essentially is against Iran.
Everybody, they all signed onto the Abraham Accords.
You were looking at basically a Middle East that was moving towards a peaceful situation with Israel.
They were recognizing Israel.
It was looking like things were going to go the way that the West wants.
And the only stopping, you know, the stopping force was Iran.
If they can fix it, if they can straighten that problem out by a use of force, the whole Middle East is going to say, well, this is actually better than it was before.
Hopefully, that, you know, again, I'm not, I'm not in favor of a ground invasion.
I do think that it's a little early to be talking about ground invasion.
We're on day, what, three of the actual airstrikes, and you haven't seen any kind of significant movement of troops or logistics, and you don't see a ground invasion.
You don't, you're not going to see a soldier going into Iran unless there's a Burger King in a truck behind him.
Like, there's always a massive movement of troops.
There was a massive movement of troops signaling the invasion of Iran.
I'm sorry, of Iraq.
There was a massive movement of troops into Afghanistan.
People will know if that's something that's actually starting to happen.
And it's probably a little too early to actually be talking about it.
So the largest buildup of U.S. naval forces in what, 20 plus years or ever in the Gulf launching missiles and blowing up bases as well as their palace is not war.
Yeah, like, so he punches me in the back of the head.
I bang my head in the urinal, fall down, I get up, I go, you son of a, I punch him in the face, he falls down, he gets up, kicks me in the nuts, then I punch him in the stomach.
No, not legal ramifications against me, legal ramifications that attach to the executive, to Congress, to international law, to all sorts of things that are maybe it's a war with a silent Z. W-Z-A-R.
We've not gotten any declaration just yet on how it's going to play out.
Jasmine Crockett is getting crushed.
She's down some 76,000 votes.
She's down by about, we're looking at eight points, 8.3 points so far, 39% reporting.
I'm just going to go ahead and say this.
I'm on her side, and she should, along with the FCC, sue CBS, Paramount, and Stephen Colbert because they violated FCC.
Oh, more reporting just came in.
They violated FCC regulation rules in order to give James Tallerico a major boost, and they knew they were faking it.
Colbert knew he was not prohibited from having on Tallerico's opponent, Jasmine Crockett, and Ahmad Hassan.
He knew this, and he wanted to frame it as though Trump stopped him from having him on to make it seem like this guy was the guaranteed frontrunner against the Republican and that Jasmine Crockett didn't exist.
As much as I don't like Jasmine Crockett, and I do think Tellerico is better in a lot of ways, it doesn't matter.
That was scumbag BS, and Colbert is a scumbag who hoaxed people to cheat in an election.
I just want to say this whole Tony Gonzalez thing, everyone knew, and it was kept under wraps by the Democrats and Republicans.
So for those who don't know the story, Tony Gonzalez reportedly had an affair with a staffer who was desperately in love with him.
And she was, I don't know that the full story was, but she was like, you know, if you leave me, I'll take my own life or something like this, doused herself in fuel or something, and then accidentally immolated herself.
But apparently, the Beltway of D.C., they all knew it the whole time.
Well, I mean, obviously, I can't see the future, but I would hope that considering he lost by 400 last time, and this time his opponent is embroiled in a scandal that's pretty embroiling.
It was the Texas redistricting, redistricting that caused the California redistricting that caused the New York redistricting that caused it to go to the Supreme Court.
So if I, so I got here, the Texas 23 Republican nominee, and we can see Brandon Herrera at 93%.
Weirdly, Tony Gonzalez at 16%.
Those numbers don't add up.
It's interesting how that sometimes happens.
I don't know what the actual rules are why that's happening, but I know a lot of people are going to get mad at me when I say this, and I'm not going to make a play or anything like that.
But my point is, if you were going to make a bet on the establishment, you know what I mean?
Like, do we actually have faith that the machine would be fair to Brandon Herrera?
That's the real question I'm bringing up.
His likelihood of winning just dropped to 85%.
And Tony Gonzalez up to 18, which, again, those numbers don't add up.
I just want to say, real quick, there's a you are so right now, call she has close, there's no contracts available to bet yes on Tellerico to buy yes contracts.
Jasmine Crockett, there's a yes, no, no.
She will not get the nomination, not available.
But if you want to bet she's going to win, and if you want to bet Tellerico's going to lose, those are allowed.
And we call those value bets because $100 on no wins you $9,351.
So the idea there is a value bet.
Again, you know, it's buying contracts on futures predictions.
But this is like for $100, having a very, very, very slim chance to win basically 10 Gs.
You know, there's a lot of people who take those bets.
Tony Gonzalez up to 35% to win, which is weird because Brandon Herrera is at 83%.
And I think the reason here is, I want to clarify, it's my understanding is it's supposed to be internally among themselves.
Basically, whether or not Brandon Herrera wins, yes and no, is it's immaterial to whether Tony Gonzalez wins.
Like basically the way the contracts work, all that really matters is what people think: will Tony win or lose, not if Brandon is winning, Tony is losing, if you get what I mean.
So it often will equal more than 100%.
So basically, you have a lot of people betting that their guy's going to win.
It still doesn't add up because Brendan Herrera is at 85 yes and 24 no, which, you know, doesn't math.
And Tony Gonzalez at yes, 33 cents and no 77.
I will stress this again.
This is due to the fact it's the average cost of the contract, not the actual percentage that he's going to win.
So again, let's, oh, actually, where's the Texas 23rd?
But yeah, I mean, I really do have my fingers crossed that Brandon wins.
Obviously, I know the guy and he's a good dude.
But the idea of Gonzalez winning after all that stuff came out about the cheating on his wife and the scandal with the poor woman that ended up killing herself.
It seems like it's accidentally.
If he still gets elected, I mean, God, I can't believe that he's got this many votes.
The fact that he's got 1,800 votes with that track record.
Those people have to be completely and totally checked out.
We encourage each and every one of you to remain resilient.
We cannot allow this type of behavior to be rewarded because so long as they know that they can win, even if it means cheating, then they will continue to do it.
So, I am asking you, I am begging you to make sure that you go ahead and figure out where it is that you are supposed to vote, stand in line, wait in line.
Stephen Colbert falsely accused Donald Trump of suppressing an interview with Jasmine Crockett, a Democrat's opponent, so that they could frame this as though Tellerico was the only competitor against the Republicans, when in fact, the real issue was if Colbert interviewed Tellarico, he needed to provide equal opportunity to Jasmine Crockett.
However, instead of being honest, Colbert attacked Trump so that regular people would assume it was Democrat versus Republican.
And that was the lie meant to prop up the Democrat purporting to be a Christian so that, again, the idea here is Jasmine Crockett is not going to get enough middle-of-the-road people, and Tallerico could.
So they're kneecapping Jasmine Crockett, cheating, violating FCC rules, and then lying about and hoaxing smears against Trump so they could steal this election.
Parents are going to be like, it should be known if you illegally enter this country with the intent to violate our laws and effectively spit in the face of our people and our nation with your child, you are not giving your child a better life.
In fact, you are going to cause tremendous suffering to them.
I think Thomas Alito and Kavanaugh are probably going to be a bit more based, with Thomas Enlito, of course, being perfectly based, and the rest are going to be the least based possible.
I mean, if somebody was, let's say somebody was born in California to Chinese mom who came to the U.S. simply to have the baby and then have the child have American citizenship, grows up in China the whole time.
And let's say that was in 2013.
Even if Trump eliminates birthright citizenship, that doesn't do anything for that.
I think the obvious goal with the 14th Amendment is to say the people that were born here after, like, we're concluding the Civil War, all of these slaves, they were born here, they're citizens too.
And then the far left is like, and this means anyone at any point born here, even if they're the reason why they said subject to the jurisdiction of the United States is that the slaves in the United States were subjects of the U.S. government.
Yeah, there was some controversy on Caul Shi over the death of Khomeini because there was a wager, will he be out of power before, and that's like April 1st.
It was like March 1st, April 1st, September.
And he died.
And so a lot of people were like, that counts.
And Kaul Shi said, we have never had wagers on death.
It's always removed from office.
But here's the problem, I suppose, is that that guy's never, it should have been 99% zero.
Like, never going to happen.
He's the supreme leader.
He's never going to be removed from office.
The only way he exits office is after his body exits reality.
And so I think a lot of people made the assumption because on polymarket, it is.
If you're dead, that counts.
And so Kaul said, no, no, no, no.
If they're dead, they stop it where it is and then do a fair market value payout.
Like I said, considering he was within 400 points, I mean, 400 votes last time, and to think he could, you know, not up when Gonzalez has this terrible, you know, scandal that's going on, it makes you get a little bit blackpilled.
This is going to be interesting, though, looking at the midterms going forward.
You see a lot of these people who held office for a long time getting ousted in the primaries.
That might be a good indicator that people are watching what's going on.
And a lot of the issues I have with Republicans is they fall asleep during the midterms.
But if we're seeing people get their seats flipped like Crenshaw, that is a significant indicator that maybe midterms won't look like what a lot of people are predicting.
There's so much, like, incumbents have such an advantage in Congress and stuff because the people that know who's running, most people can't even identify their own congressperson, never mind, you know, actually go out and be bothered to go out and vote for him.
So people in Congress that are in Congress, they have such an advantage.
And it's a shame because there's so many people in Congress that need to be primary and removed and stuff.
I mean, it seems like the only kind of silver lining is it looks like Crenshaw's not going to be another guy anymore.
He's famous for being he won what's what's called a satellite tournament, which is a small, cheap, like amateur thing where you're trying to win.
You're trying to win a seat to the actual tournament, and then he won the tournament and it created this boom where it was like you could be a regular guy and win $3 million.
There's a concept called nominative determinism, which is a hypothesis that people will gravitate towards careers that fit their names.
And the general idea is it's like, if you will it, there's a way, or the inverse of out of sight, out of mind, when your whole life you keep hearing that word or, you know, you gravitate toward those things.
I will say at the same time, many people's last names are literally just based on the job they had.
Yeah, the names in my family, like on the Norwegian and the Yankee side, they're all pretty traceable to like the thing that it was, you know, like resident of this valley.
All right, we're going to go to your super chats and Rumble Rants as we watch these numbers.
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Let's go to your Rumble Rants and Super Chats, of course, and see what y'all have to say.
Super Pooper says, everyone here is beyond annoying.
With pleasure.
He says, to hell with your speculation, unless you have the intel that Trump does, STFU, Alex Jones already proved to me he isn't worth listening to.
The point that I'm making is like the Kurds are pretty pro-America because of the, I believe it was the first Gulf War when Saddam Hussein was gassing them.
No, but I think it's fair to say that Iran has been, as a regional power, they wage the war they're capable of waging in the region, and they have been bombing and killing Americans and our allies in the region for some time.
And this is Trump being like, yeah, I'm done with it.
It's interesting because I think if we're going to do global conflicts and we're going to go in places and do all this stuff and take over places and Cuba's next and whatever else, then it does make me a lot more in favor of autonomous weapons than I previously have been because it would reduce the deaths.
He says, Obama dropped bombs on Libya, Yemen, Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, and others.
Were we at war then?
Simple answer.
Simple answer is yes.
However, challenge is they didn't fight back.
We were just bombing their countries and they just did largely nothing.
Iraq, yes, we were at war.
Afghanistan, yeah, we were at war.
Libya, yeah, we were at war.
And look at the state of Libya now.
We just haven't followed through.
Yemen and Pakistan are the only ones where we can question because Yemen and Pakistan did not engage in armed conflict with us.
So there was no between nations.
So that being said, I would agree.
It's not a fight if I punch you in the back of the head and you fall down.
It was an ambush.
It was a strike.
No fight ensued.
No one struck back.
So when we were bombing civilian targets in Yemen and Yemen was largely just like hiding, like as a government, yeah, I think it's fair to say that we were bombing countries we were not at war with.
Same thing is true for Pakistan.
As for the rest of the countries, we were literally at war with them.
Don't we think that the United States, since World War II, has been subject to foreign policy loss after foreign policy loss, and that Trump has given us the first sort of strength and the first foreign policy victories ever?
Like, sure, Trump is racist and the least racist president we've ever had, which is a good thing.
And then it puts them in a position where it's like, I do agree with you, but here's why it's better than it's ever been.
And then it puts the liberals in a position where it's like, do you agree with this black man who has approached this from, yes, you're correct, but it's still better than it's ever been?
You have to have these liberals concede, like, it's true.
If you think Trump is racist, you have to acknowledge he is the least racist we've ever had.
Honestly, Not to be that guy who's like, oh, I have one, but yeah, it's like, okay, you can call me whatever you want, but if you don't have evidence for it, you're just kind of a jerk.
I think there was some article out in Australia, Skynet or something came out and said that actually people who do the plasma pheresis like cycle their blood actually live a lot longer and they have less diseases.
I saw something, speaking of capitalism, I saw something about this on the internet, and I was like, look, it's going to be the first chance that Gen Z has to get a money transmon from the boomers to Gen Z and J.
Oh, good God.
They can actually pay them air market rate for their blood.