Donald Trump’s live interview reveals a hardline stance on NATO, halting trade with Spain for defense failures and clashing with the UK over Churchill-era disputes while defending the Iran strike as preemptive self-defense against imminent attacks. He claims the operation—backed by Germany’s Mertz—prevented Iran’s nuclear breakthrough and unified global allies, though critics like Bronze Age Pervert argue it benefits neoconservatives over MAGA priorities. Conflicting justifications from Rubio and Vance fuel skepticism, yet targeted strikes and potential Iranian moderation may avoid prolonged conflict, leaving Trump’s domestic agenda hostage to institutional resistance. [Automatically generated summary]
We thought, and I thought maybe more so than most, I could ask Marco, but I thought we were going to have a situation where we were going to be attacked.
They were getting ready to attack Israel.
They were getting ready to attack others.
You're seeing that right now.
And a lot of those missiles that are hitting in, those are stationary.
Those were aimed there for a long period of time at these other countries.
So I think I was right about that.
We attacked first.
And if we didn't, it could have been, you know, look, we're really decimating them.
They're being decimated.
And if we didn't if we didn't hit and by the way, we have massive amounts of ammunition.
We have the high end.
A lot of it was given away stupidly by Biden very stupidly for free.
And I'm all for Ukraine, but they gave away a lot.
As you know, when I give away ammunition, everybody pays for it.
The European Union's paying for it.
And they can do what they want with it, but they are giving it, let's say, to Ukraine, and it's okay.
But we gave away a lot of high-end, but we have plenty.
But we have unlimited middle and upper ammunition, which is really what we're using differently.
And we have really an unlimited supply.
We also have a lot of the very high-end stored in different countries throughout the world.
We're literally storing it there, which is actually something that I insisted on in my first term.
I rebuilt the military in my first term.
The military is great.
A lot of, unbelievable amount of ammunition or munitions, as they say, were given away to, you know, the Wall Street Journal incorrectly covered the story when they said that it was given away to the Middle East.
Not to the Middle East, it was given away to Ukraine.
Very little was given to the Middle East.
Middle East would buy a lot, and some of the nations, because they're rich, they have a lot.
But it was given away to Ukraine.
And it just should have been done.
Look, it's a war that should have never happened.
If I were president, that war would have never happened.
But we have a tremendous amount of munitions, ammunition at the upper level, middle and upper level, all of which is really powerful stuff.
unidentified
Mr. President, I have a question to both of you.
How worried are you that the rising prices for gas and oil are damaging the American economy and also what was the transition?
This is true for the oil prices, and this is true for the gas prices as well.
So that's the reason why we all hope that this war will come to an end as soon as possible.
And we are hoping that the Israeli and the American army are doing the right things to bring this to an end and to have really a new government in place who is coming back to peace and freedom.
They've been killing people all over the world for a long time.
They were the kings and fathers of the roadside bomb.
Salome, we killed him last term.
If we didn't, I think it might be a different story today.
They would have been much stronger and smarter than they are.
But they did the roadside bombs.
95% of the people lost their legs, arms, had their face wiped out, just wiped out.
I've seen some young people that it's so sad to watch.
And that was all, almost all, 95% comes from Iran and was Solemni.
Soleimani loved his favorite weapon.
He loved the roadside bomb.
And when you see people walking around with no legs and no arms and a face that's been blown to hell, these people, what they have to go and the way they have to live, this is Iran.
When you look at the barracks, the famous barracks, when you look at the hostages, when you look at a lot of hostages, when you look at all of the problems, they were really a purveyor of terror all over the world for many, many years.
And it's something that had to be done.
And I believe that if we didn't, because I see we're Congress, you know, if I didn't do this, guys like Schumer, who are losers, the Democrats, they're losers, that's why they're not here.
Guys like Schumer would say, well, you should have done this.
In other words, if I did it, it's no good.
If I didn't do it, they would have said the opposite, that you should have done this.
But most people feel, I'll tell you what, I have never had more compliments on something I did.
So if we have a little high oil prices for a little while, but as soon as this ends, those prices are going to drop, I believe, lower than even before.
unidentified
Go ahead, please.
Yes.
How do you want to solve the conflict on tariffs between the EU and the U.S.?
Between who?
The conflict on tariffs between the EU and U.S., how do you want to solve?
It was a very bad decision from certain standpoints.
From other standpoints, a very powerful decision because it reaffirmed all the fact that we have all these various forms of tariffs that we felt right, but it totally reaffirmed it.
It said you can use all of these tariffs.
So we have all these vast menus of tariffs.
And tariffs have made our country very rich.
We have to charge tariffs to nations who play with their money.
They move their money up and down like a yo-yo.
We have to take care of nations that have been good to us and fair to us, and we're going to take care of them.
Other nations, they haven't, and we haven't let them take advantage of us.
But the whole thing with tariffs is we had a decision that, as an example, we have a license situation, and the license is something that allows us to immediately stop all business with, nobody even knew we had this power, but we do now because of the decision.
We have the right to stop all business having to do with a certain country.
If a certain country is not treating us well, the president, not going to Congress, The right to stop, sort of interesting.
I have the right to stop under that one law and didn't have the right to charge him.
Right, I mean, this is what this meeting would have originally consisted of, anyway, bringing Mertz in, obviously, to discuss the tariffs and the impact on the Europeans.
This morning, oil prices are up.
That means gas prices will soon follow.
The pinch is already going to be felt.
I think this is part of the reason Iran actually is bombing all of the Gulf states and these sorts of things is because I think they're banking on the fact that they can weather this storm, come out on the other side, obviously probably soften up a little bit to the Americans, but it gives them the economic foothold if energy prices surge to then convert themselves into sort of a hermit kingdom, sort of like North Korea.
So, okay, Iran sort of withdraws from the regional scene.
They sort of give up their auspices of being a regional power, but they ensure generations of their regime's control over the country by, again, consolidating power, leveraging energy prices to, again, bring money into Iran for the regime.
I would speculate that's what's going on.
But a lot of people are speculating this entire play is about containing China.
Countries around the world, many of whom don't usually work together, working with the United States on Iran, whether it's Saudi Arabia working with the United States, Israel, Qatari shooting down Iranian aircraft, and we've also seen European countries step up.
Why are we seeing such unity around the world against Iran?
It's not the politics, it's their whole philosophy.
It's their whole where they come from.
It's terrible.
Where they killed 35,000, I thought it was 32, now it turns out it's much more than 35,000 people.
And in some cases, using machine guns with people that have no weapon, they have no weapon, and they're being machine gunned, they're being snipered from buildings, they're hitting the people with snipers right through the eyes.
It's just a very evil ideology.
And nobody's really seen anything like it.
As I said, even the fact that they've attacked all of their neighbors, and the neighbors weren't attacking.
They thought they'd maybe sit it out or whatever.
They've hit Qatar, they've hit UAE, they've hit Saudi Arabia, they've hit Oman.
You could never, and I've always said it, you could never have had true peace in the Middle East if Iran was allowed to go, even beyond the nuclear, if Iran was allowed to have all the, look at all the missiles they built.
A lot have been now taken out by us, and a lot have been expended.
But they have thousands of missiles in a fairly short period of time.
And I'll go two things.
The attack that we did, known as Midnight Hammer, had we not done that, Iran would have had a very powerful nuclear weapon within one month.
We did it.
It was great timing, but, you know, and you've been able to see that too.
The other thing was Barack Hussein Obama made maybe the worst deal I've ever seen because he gave all power in the Middle East to Iran.
He went the exact opposite way.
And I terminated that.
If I didn't terminate that deal, they would be sitting with a massive nuclear weapon three years ago, which would have been used already on Israel at least, and other countries also.
The second question that I've been asked is, why now?
Well, there's two reasons why now.
The first is it was abundantly clear that if Iran came under attack by anyone, the United States or Israel or anyone, they were going to respond and respond against the United States.
The orders had been delegated down to the field commanders.
It was automatic, and in fact, it bear to be true, because in fact, within an hour of the initial attack on the leadership compound, the missile forces in the south and in the north, for that matter, had already been activated to launch.
In fact, those had already been pre-positioned.
The third is the assessment that was made that if we stood and waited for that attack to come first before we hit them, we would suffer much higher casualties.
And so, the president made the very wise decision.
We knew that there was going to be an Israeli action.
We knew that that would precipitate an attack against American forces.
And we knew that if we didn't preemptively go after them before they launched those attacks, we would suffer higher casualties and perhaps even higher those killed.
And then we would all be here answering questions about why we knew that indeed.
I do believe him that he's telling the truth, especially in regards to, I do believe that Iran, as you've seen here, they have zero geopolitical instinct.
That's what they're bombing the entire Gulf.
They're bombing France or the French naval base.
Clearly, they would bomb the United States even if they were attacked.
That's not hard to believe.
I 100% believe that is the case.
I also do believe Mark Rubio when they say in this instance, if this is the case and you do preemptively attack, because again, allowing Iran to hit us first without having the chance to neutralize a lot of their capabilities would or could or probably would result in much more American casualties.
No, you know, you're not attacking Iran right now.
We have midterms coming up.
We have domestic policies we're focused on.
Now is not the time.
And if you go in, we can't guarantee that you're going to.
So it appears if Rubio, again, if Rubio had this intel that, again, Iran is poised to attack if they come under attack.
And we knew for a very long time that this is the case, this is how it works.
Then that means that they received foreknowledge that Israel was going to attack, presumably.
Now, it's just confusing because then there's the other question is, if that's the case, you know, when was Israel planning to attack?
Because it did take us about a week or two to assemble sort of this containment sphere around Iran, you know, moving all of our assets into the region.
This took about two weeks, two to three weeks, this buildup.
How long ahead of time did Israel give us a heads up that, hey, we are going to conduct this operation?
Because clearly, this was well planned.
You know, whatever your take is on Israel, very well-planned operation.
I mean, they took out Khamenei.
You don't just kill the leader of a country without a little bit of planning, I would say.
So clearly Israel had this plan for some time now.
So that could be that we had a deadline.
Maybe the Israelis gave us a deadline of, hey, this is when we are planning to attack.
That gives us time to mobilize our assets into the region.
That gives us time to negotiate with them.
Obviously, Witkoff and Kushner were negotiating with the Iranian delegation in Switzerland.
That obviously didn't go anywhere because we have.
Two, both of us have positions.
We're not coming down from um in which, you know, the Iranians want nuclear capabilities and the Americans say no, you cannot have that.
It's just in this instance you should be able to reel Israel in here that that does not make them.
You know, i'm sorry for a lot of people in the audience that are maybe, you know really, really Pro-israel.
Um, that's not a very good uh ally if if, if they're, they know, if we, if we communicate to them hey, we are going to get roped into a war if you attack them, and we do not want that right now, and then they go ahead and do that anyway.
I'm sorry, that's.
That is not.
That does not make you a very good ally, if that is true.
But again, we would be able to make these assessments much more clearly if the messaging was sort of, uh, was was fairly consistent from all these different officials.
It's just a bit confusing still.
So this is why i'm still holding out um.
You know coming in at these nuclear hot takes.
You know people are are already dropping in.
You know, throwing the the toys out of the pram or they're already doubling down that this is the greatest you know decision we could possibly make.
I'm just sitting here saying this is still not a great situation, but we need a little bit more time for this to develop, a little bit more time for again, a lot of these reports to come out of the.
What really went down um, in the lead up to this attack.
There's just a lot of questions that still need to be answered.
So I think what we're going to do is we're going to get into our interview portion of um, the show.
We have the great John Dole coming on.
He's going to be discussing all things Iran.
But before we get into that interview, I have a quick word from our sponsor.
But I still have a lot of content and a lot of show, I guess, still left for you guys because obviously that press conference took up quite a bit of time.
Obviously, everyone's talking about Rubio yesterday.
That is the question.
It's just, again, that's different than what we were told.
This is Benette's phylactery.
He put this commentary up.
I think this is broadly true.
Rubio admits that Netanyahu delivered an ultimatum and the U.S. went along rather than absorb a Iranian counterattack.
Doesn't feel like a slip up.
These are planner marks.
I agree.
Everyone's like, oh, this is a Freudian slip.
You know, Rubio admits that we're controlled by Israel.
I don't think that's the case for a variety of reasons.
Number one, being, again, this Rubio is very calm and composed.
You can tell he's carefully selecting his words here.
This is a carefully delivered statement that he's making.
It's a pre-packaged remark, I believe.
The question is, is this a warning shot to Netanyahu?
Is this signaling to certain people within the Trump administration?
It's difficult to tell.
This is why I'm just so hesitant to make these massive, you know, slam, you know, make these, you know, try to dunk on everyone here.
But what I do think is true is that, look, all things aside, I made this point on IRL yesterday.
And Mike Cernovich actually has been making this point.
He's driving this point home.
And I think it's true.
Is, look, who's the biggest winner out of this entire operation?
Within the United States, what is the largest pressure group that wants this war to happen?
Again, it's Israel.
Now, this isn't to say that the Americans don't have, like, again, overlapping interests.
We obviously have overlapping interests in Iran as it stands.
There's no question about that.
But, you know, it's a valid conversation to have.
You know, this is what a lot of people are saying.
So, I think Sernovich actually has a really good take on this, is what she's saying.
Look, the pro-Israel lobby, they've gotten what they want here.
They got what they want, and that's fine if we can deliver on domestic policy.
Because the way that Trump gets out of this and makes amends with a proportion of the base that is very upset with this is some massive domestic victories.
Because I agree, I actually agree here.
I'm going to pull up.
Do we have any movement, Callan?
I'm going to pull up this statement here.
I say statement, this reaction from Bronze Age pervert.
Now, the reason I want to bring up Bronze Age Pervert's statement here, what he had to say is because I think he's probably one of the longest prominent Trump supporters.
I mean, I think from day one, he's been a very, very vocal, you know, since day one, he has been a very vocal Trump supporter.
He's been intellectualizing a lot of the sort of driving ethos behind Trumpism, MAGA, et cetera, et cetera.
And he's very unhappy with the strike.
What I think is interesting, he points out, he's put out a lot of commentary over the last day or two, which I would recommend going and reading.
What I think is so interesting, and it's a really good take, is he says two things here.
These are two things that he's pointed out: one, he would oppose, and I'll just, you know, I'll just read this, is how he would oppose this, even if there's zero casualties.
I think this is very interesting.
He says, I need to clarify that I would oppose the latest Iran intervention, especially the insane regime change speech, even if it had zero casualties or if it was a fast and great success.
The Libyan intervention was also fast and well executed, and no Americans died in that.
No European soldiers.
It was the European powers who dragged the USA into that, by the way, which is true.
It was still a great disaster that both the USA and Europe are continuing to pay for, both materially and in reputation.
I've talked about the insanity of deposing Gaddafi for a while now.
Also, by the way, stupid, similar arguments were used against him, i.e., events from the 1980s, even though American had normalized relations and given him guarantees.
And what's worth noting is, again, the zero casualties.
That seems to be the line for a lot of people in this whole operation, as if they're saying, well, if we can get out of this with zero casualties, and I'm okay with it, you know, then I'm fine with it.
Then, you know, it's all water under the bridge.
But it's almost like that's not quite the issue because it's like still, it's about the long-term ramifications.
And then also, what does that represent for Trump?
What does that represent for MAGA?
How does that impact Trump supporters?
How will they, again, sort of perceive this?
That matters a lot because if you're trying to build a political movement or if you're trying to come in, commandeer a political movement, again, you have to be communicating that you are looking out for the people in the base first and foremost.
And this is what's interesting: What Bronze Age Purpose has been saying is he says, almost the worst part of this operation isn't like, you know, the potential of it being another Iraq or another Afghanistan or this, that, and the other.
He's saying the number one thing is that makes it just kind of suck is that it's a gift for like the worst people in American politics.
Like, you know, your Bill Crystal types, he's like neocon creeps, the National Review Board, um, editors, you know, board.
Literally, the worst people in American politics are very thrilled with this intervention, with this attack.
And I think that's a very important point to make because the whole point of MAGA, the whole point of Trump is putting a finger in that group's eye, you know, in that click's eye.
Above all else, like they hate the left too, for what it's worth.
They hate liberals, they'll dunk on liberals.
That's why you see Ted Cruz or these types of, you know, establishment neocon types.
They'll go and they'll dunk on liberals.
They'll say, well, you know, there's no such thing as a trans man.
That's easy.
Anyone can do that.
But opposing these, again, these entrenched neocon apparatus that's been dominating and suffocating the world since the war, that takes a little more backbone.
I mean, that's going to, that's going to, you're going to get a lot more targets on your back.
And that's what made Trump so great.
And that's what makes this feel a little bit different.
Because, you know, Trump was saying in the press conference, you know, Iran's been a threat for 47 years, is what he says.
You know, he says, for 47 years, Iran's been terrorizing the globe or whatever.
That's just really sad because we didn't inherit.
When MAGA came in, when MAGA came into DC, right?
When Trump came into the White House, we no longer had to care about these neocon political goals or political aims.
We didn't inherit their grudges.
So we don't have to settle scores for the neocons anymore.
They have this score to settle with Iran.
They've had this for the longest time.
We don't have to care about that anymore.
We are liberated from that.
And so I don't get accused of trooping out here.
So I don't get accused of being a panic.
And this is why I think Trump just needs to sort of explain the rationale here.
I know there's a point to be made.
Lindy Mann made this point.
It was actually kind of a good point because he said, I kind of respect that Trump isn't bothering to sell this to the American people because it's kind of insulting to us if he tries to sell it to us.
Just mop the situation up and get out of there and hope the oil prices don't go up.
Like whatever you got to do, settle the score.
I understand that to a degree, but this just feels like something that because they're trying, this is the difference is now they're trying to explain it, right?
Now they're trying to provide these explanations of why this operation needed to happen.
And from Vance to Rubio to Trump, it's all different explanations, right?
Different reasonings why, you know, Rubio saying Israel, you know, Vance, you know, he's saying, well, this is just the nuclear program, the nuclear program.
We need to incapacitate the nuclear program.
And then Trump was saying the regime is evil.
Like the ideology at the core is evil.
That's what we want to remove.
So it's three different reasonings where, you know, Rubio is saying this is, you know, effectively self-defense, you know, preemptive self-defense.
Vance is saying this is about preemptive self-defense, but from the perspective of taking apart their nuclear program.
And then, and then Trump is saying, no, this is about rooting out Iran once and for all.
This is about ending this.
That's what he said in that press conference.
He said, 47 years, no one dealt with it.
We're finally dealing with it.
We're ending this.
So that's what's kind of frustrating because, again, I agree with BAP, it's a shorthand for Bronze Age Trevor.
I agree with Bap's consensus here.
I agree with his takes on the whole thing.
You know, a lot of people are hopping on his head about this, but I do think he's correct.
And he's like the last guy that's going to levy an unfair critique on Trump.
Like he goes to bat for Trump.
He's a Trump loyalist.
So when he sort of sticks his head of the foxhole here and says, I'm very upset, it's worth noting.
It's worth paying attention to.
He's a very influential figure on the right.
And what's important is he's writing it all out.
This isn't just, you know, a lazy tweet people throw up on the timeline that say, you know, Trump's, you know, a retard or MAGA's dead or, you know, this is Israel controls America, BB, da, da, da.
Anyone can throw up a little six-word tweet that doesn't accomplish anything.
But I respect that he's at least outlining his case here of why he's a little frustrated.
With that, the king of outlining himself, the great John Doyle has joined the show.
Yeah, you know, I'm not like full like a plan truster on it as much as I would.
I mean, there's obviously like the baseline level of that, but I don't feel it necessary to come out and really be like, hey, everybody needs to relax the same way that I would when people are pretending that like mass deportations aren't happening, for example.
So with this, yeah, you know, I'm not like in love with it, but at the same time, like I trust Trump.
It seems that the administration generally has an idea of what it's doing here.
And they've expressed, you know, sympathy towards the concerns of patriots who have a little bit of trauma from the Bush era sort of neoconservative projects.
And so I haven't seen anything that would indicate that we're really going to get wrapped up in this prolonged boots on the ground kind of like regime change operation.
It seems to be more of the targeted strikes.
I mean, Trump even said like, what, four weeks or less?
I'm hoping that he sticks to that.
I'm guessing he would.
I don't think that he would certainly get himself into a situation where he thought that he would not be able to meet that timeline, especially he's certainly aware that one of the things that he ran on and what brought people towards him as a candidate was opposition to these like prolonged forever wars.
And so the public seems to have an appetite for like quick one and done, black baggage guy here, Obama guy here.
But in terms of the prolonged stuff, yeah, the public certainly doesn't have an appetite for it.
And it's certainly not where we should be spending our political capital, especially when we've got midterms, what, nine months away?
Well, this is what's interesting is there's this discussion of political capital, right?
So it's like, okay, we have finite political capital, especially to your point before the midterms.
A lot of people are saying, why not expend this on just like a massive mass deportation like rush?
And, you know, there's people coming back and saying, well, because we don't have the logistic, like we would have done that already if we could have.
But then there's other people saying, well, no, like we have to, you know, make this play in Iran in order to carry out domestic policy.
There's just a lot.
DC is a very strange, weird place.
There's a lot of overlapping interests, a lot of things that are tied up.
And ultimately, this is why you have to trust Trump because he doesn't have the point you make all the time, the fix everything button or even the mop this up cleanly button.
Like sometimes it gets a little ugly, sometimes it gets a little chippy.
Again, there's a lot of intertwined mess within the beltway right now.
And, you know, it seems to be also that they have built up a little bit of capital, so to speak, with the base insofar as they have been executing things that have been making people very happy.
I mean, obviously, you will have the panicking class who will exist simply to deny this.
But, you know, I think that they do have a little bit of credibility to kind of maneuver in ways that are doing favors for certain interests, but in ways that would be less popular for American patriots.
And that is, I think, reflected, like you said, with guys who are not by any means like Trump loyalists, like Matt Walsh, for example.
And he is taking a more level-headed approach to this than, frankly, maybe he would have with some other things Trump has done, where he's ready to declare that it's over, we need like a new direction or something.
And so I'm optimistic on the basis of that.
And I'm seeing reports about American casualties.
Obviously, we do not love that.
We are very sad to hear that.
But at the same time, it seems to be the case that this is going to be not exactly a Venezuela in the sense where we're literally just listening to Love Sosa in and out, quick and dumb.
But it's also not going to be some kind of prolonged endeavor that is going to create a larger PR crisis than it has to.
There's two things everyone is really concerned about.
One is the messaging, where it just feels like, again, we're not owed messaging.
I think this is something that needs to be said.
I think Lindyman actually made a good point where he's like, I kind of respect that Trump's not just trying to sell this to the American people.
He's just conducting business because George W. Bush would always try to sell it like we're idiots.
And it's actually kind of insulting.
But I do think if you are going to make statements, you should make sure that all the officials, the entire, like down to every Apparatchik is kind of giving the same messaging.
And it's just very frustrating because I was watching the Trump bilateral meeting with Mertz.
And, you know, he was saying, well, you know, this was Iran was going to attack us.
So we needed to attack them.
Rubio said something slightly different.
He said, no, Israel was preparing to attack, or he was alluding to that.
Therefore, we needed to attack.
And then Vance is saying, no, this is still about taking out the nuclear program.
So some people are very upset about that.
They're saying, look, if we can just get the messaging down, like at least communicate what the goals are, what the victory condition is, then I can fully trust what's going on.
And the second thing is with the Rubio statement, that's another one where people are a little freaked out because they're saying, why couldn't we have just told them to hold off the strike?
Right?
Because if that was going to rope us into a war, like, sure, what the crap?
I do almost like the idea of simply not elaborating just because, like you said, you know, when you start to get into the weeds on getting a kind of like consistent, coherent messaging for people to latch on to, how possible that is is, of course, in question.
But also, is that really, I mean, insofar as we are, like you said, trying to like sell it to the base, it almost comes to the table from a place of weakness where it almost is conceding, like, yes, you know, this is something that we should really be worried about.
Whereas it's like, look, from the perspective of the Trump admin, you know, this is something that they're probably going to handle with a level of care that they don't believe is going to create this kind of like blowback scenario that's going to cause a lot of problems for Americans and voters.
And so, in a way, it is almost like strategically better to address it as little as possible.
It's just like, what do you mean?
It's business as usual.
We have other stuff going on.
This is one thing among many things that we are doing.
But, you know, obviously there is a level of prudence that you have to have given how the media is going to react to this.
As like, look, Trump equals forever war, because they understand this, of course, is going to be alarming to the base if prolonged.
Yeah, I think that's why Vance going on Fox last night was a really smart move because DB on Hannity, my favorite broadcast.
Hannity, like literally.
The last man you can trust in media at this point.
Like literally, you can't even trust us, but Hannity, like you can, you can know he's dialed in.
Vance going on there, him being himself, not just a millennial, but like chauvinistically millennial.
Like he's, you know, he's wearing like graphic t-shirts all the time and he has a beard and everything.
Like he's like chauvinistically millennial.
And then he's also a vet.
So it's like, if one person's going to have like GWAT brain, it's going to be him.
So I think that's actually why it's so great that he's in this position because he's coming out and saying like, trust me, if anyone knows how bad like a forever war could be, it's going to be me.
If anybody's traumatized, it's me.
So that's why having him kind of out front on messaging, I think is important here.
And he's also like the best at framing I've seen in politics like broadly.
Like no one is better at framing than him.
I think the Politico article, the group chat leak, and then he came out and he's like, well, what about the AG in Virginia?
Like who cares about a group chat?
Like he just shows they can frame the ball like on a dime.
So the fact that he's like sort of been given the green light to be like kind of head of messaging, I guess you would say, for lack of a better word.
And the fact that characters like Tulsi Gabbard still have a gig, that indicates to me that the Trump admin is not just like, again, Israel captured neocon war machine now, but that they're just in a tough spot and they're trying their best to wriggle out of this without getting, you know, without completely derailing this whole operation, this whole, you know, second term operation.
I do have a bit of grace.
Again, I'm pretty upset, to be honest, about the situation that we're in.
It sucks, but it's very complicated.
And again, seeing that those figures are where they are, that is very encouraging.
Yeah, you know, it's one of those things where you just have to like give yourself permission to do the math on it, where it's like, okay, if the Trump administration were actually committed to the same sort of like, you know, continuation of Bush era neoconservatism, why would you see those figures maintaining key positions and influence within the admin?
And then you have to say, well, it squares because it's actually all just like a secret plot to subvert me.
And it's like, okay, at this point, this is just Tela Novella.
Like you're not engaging with her.
Seriously.
The same thing with like, you know, the immigration stuff, where it's like, okay, if this administration, if it is true that we are up against the deep state, the Leviathan that is the global left, which means that it would be difficult to do anything.
And if it is true that Stephen Miller, ICE Patriots are obviously committed to this issue, then wouldn't that somehow meet in seeing some mass deportations, but not as many as we would like to see, were it not the case that like this global Leviathan left exists.
So it's like everything that we would agree with at first principles is true, but then the execution of that, because the execution is not meeting what people would like to see in their perfect fantasy world, they then go back and say, well, actually, those things aren't even true in the first place.
And the whole thing is designed to subvert me and destroy the country because I am like a retarded person.
Like, they're like, yeah, they're like, this, I hate this line that's going.
And there's some well-meaning people that are saying it.
So I'm not like trying to dunk on everyone.
But like the people that came up with this line or the retards is where they're like, oh, why is it that we can get a war with Iran overnight and like these massive operations in Venezuela and Iran?
But when it comes to mass deportations, like suddenly we're really concerned about polling.
And I'm like, because the entire global apparatus bend towards mass migration and the entire global apparatus bends towards war with Iran.
So it's like, all that's happening here is you're going up against incentive structures.
In one sense, the incentive structure is like, yes, yes, yes, go to war with Iran.
Go, as fast as you can.
And then the entire incentive structure is towards mass migration.
So when you try to upend that, when you try to conduct mass deportations, you're going to go up against a brick wall.
So it's like, when you just, again, just allow yourself to do the math, when you just sit down and think for one second why it is a little bit different, then you realize it's a very dumb line and you should probably stop saying it.
No, it's really annoying that post-October 7th, the whole Israel discourse has become so poison and just riddled with retards because it's like actually a really geopolitically important country that should be discussed, especially in regards to Middle Eastern policy.
So when I say it, when I'm like talking about it on the show, I'm like, you know, you're just a little freaked out because you're like, everyone's going to hate you no matter what you say.
And you're like, can we just have like, you know, I feel like Jaden Smith, can we just talk about the political and economic state of the world right now?
So it's so frustrating because I'm like, okay, clearly there are, Israel is a huge beneficiary of this operation happening.
But the question is, what are the overlapping interests?
Because this idea that like Trump would be all gung-ho about Iran having a nuclear weapon, he'd be like, yeah, it's the greatest thing ever.
And then BB whispers in his ear, like, actually, no, you're my slave.
And then now he's like, oh, WTF, like, we need to blow up their nuclear program.
It's like so retarded.
This whole idea that we don't have overlapping interests in Iran.
Again, I'm not endorsing the war.
I'm not saying this was inevitable.
This is absolutely the greatest thing ever.
I'm just like, clearly, Trump's not beholden to them.
Especially, I think Michael Tracy actually had a good take where he's like, I think he just has auspices in the entire world.
That's why he's threatening Greenland, Cuba.
That's why he took over Venezuela.
That's why he's threatening Mexico, Columbia.
Like, I think he just wants to sort of be awesome.
Yeah, I mean, even, you know, the evidence that Trump had like betrayed us was that, you know, back in 2015, he was talking about Marco Rubio accepting potentially money from like the Sheldon Adelson, which Trump would go on to accept donations from or whatever.
But it's like, okay, at the same time, Trump was saying that about the Edelson donation or whatever, he was also saying Iran under no circumstances can have a nuke.
Like he thought the Obama era deal was like completely stupid.
He wanted to tear it up.
And also his rhetoric back then, too, was far more hawkish.
Like Trump, you know, when he was running in 2016, which apparently was the good Trump, which he's since lost track of, Trump was saying that, like, you know, if Iranian ships get like too close to ours, we should just blow them out of the water, like battleship style.
Like he was saying, you know, all this.
And then going in in 2024, he was saying, you know, we just want to make a deal.
We want to make a deal.
And then it's like, look, objectively speaking, all the efforts to make that deal were more or less impeded by like the Iranian government.
So it's like, okay, what are we supposed to do in this situation?
Trump is all about the art of the deal.
They don't want to make a deal.
Now he's going to be like, okay, well, kill yourself.
And then he's going to show a little bit more teeth.
He was literally like the guy that was like, I'm going to bomb the crap out of it.
That was his solution.
I was like, again, if we couldn't make a deal, that's like the second edition of Art of the Deal.
Like maybe like the DLC is that then we have to bomb you.
It is what it is.
You made a point on your show yesterday.
Great show over at Blaze TV.
Everyone needs to be tuning in.
Every patriot needs to be dialed in on that.
You made a good point where you're like, the best case scenario here, the best outcome is actually that, you know, the way we mop this up is that actually the regime kind of stays put, but they moderate quite extensively.
This is what we're seeing in Venezuela because, again, if you want to actually go in there and replace the regime, that's when it's going to take forever.
Iran's a massive country.
There's a lot of entrenched interests.
But it's almost like you throw them a bone, you keep the regime in there, you keep the familiar faces.
Yeah, I mean, you know, like, and I love doing this, but when you talk about other countries, it's very easy to be like, what do they even do?
What does Iran even do?
What is they still are like, I understand that it's not exactly the same thing, but they are still running a country that is still a very logistically complicated process.
It would provide them an opportunity to save face where it's like, you know, we resisted American tier, whatever.
But it's like, in practice, they actually are moderating a bit towards their hostility towards, you know, America and our allies.
And so I'm not opposed to that.
I think that that's probably the most likely best outcome, which is to say, like, not a perfect outcome, not the most likely outcome.
But in terms of like things that would more or less be good for us, I think that that could be what we see.
Because yeah, if you start to try to rebuild it from formula, then that's going to require far more involvement from America, which even if not involvement in the sense of like, literally, we've got like Marines with, you know, with weapons on the ground or something, it still requires a kind of supervision and effort from America, which we just, we should not be concerned with, not even because of how it may reflect in public opinion or whatever, but just because we have far bigger fish to fry.
And I just don't think we should have any focus there.
Because even if it's like, well, it's not mutually exclusive, we can obviously do this and this at the same time.
It's like, yes, but ultimately, because of the nature of hierarchy, it's going to require eyeballs and attention and mental bandwidth from guys who should be focusing it in other directions rather than sand people.
I wanted to ask you before we go, because we still have a little bit of time.
Again, to steel man, because I think we probably, I don't think anyone really is super thrilled about the situation we're in, but to even steel man some of the people that are these loyalists, I would say, that are particularly upset.
I think Bronze Age Pervert actually kind of laid out in detail why he's upset.
I think when you think of Trump loyalism, when you think of kind of the people that have driven that kind of Trump culture, right?
Like that have kind of built the back end that allows people to participate in this Trump thing.
You think of guys like him.
And obviously on the timeline, he wasn't tuning out.
He was actually kind of laying out specifically why he's upset, what his grievances were.
He's kind of going back and forth with some people.
One interesting point that he made, I don't want to put words in his mouth, but I think he said this is the primary reason he's upset by it is it's not about the you know the potential results, or the quagmire or like that.
We're not allowed to focus on domestic policy.
He said that he hates it because it rewards the worst people in American politics, like these Neocon creeps that Trump like, fought so hard to depose.
Yeah, that's a very good point and I was wondering what you think about that.
Yeah, I think that is that is an extremely good point, because you know and that's a perfectly valid reason, by the way, just by itself to oppose it, even ignoring the other things that he was saying, which I mean he was he was writing effort posts, which we love, the effort poster but you could almost justify your opposition to it specifically because it's like, why are we giving something to the people who have tried so hard at every stage of Trump's political ascent to impede it?
And even if there are interests, even if we stand to benefit from it as patriots, it is also true that the people who feel that they're getting the most out of it are people who have been opposed to us pretty much for the entire existence of the Trump cause, And so it is a messy situation, even if just not even in terms of distribution of rewards, even if just in sort of like a vibe sense, like why should they feel as though they get to enjoy the Trump political project?
even if they would have preferred it not exist at all?
Like, I get that, and I get how it can kind of reign on the parade of what otherwise has been a very successful second Trump administration.
So I have no counter to that.
I have no counter to that.
All I can say is perhaps that, you know, while not a great thing that is happening, it is just sort of like the reality of our situation.
And we're just going to kind of have to contend with it for the time being until we can hopefully displace these people permanently.
Yeah, he like sells his console and goes on walks.
It's like, dude, he's like one step away from killing himself.
Like, it's over for him.
Yeah, I was like, I was in a Chinese restaurant, CNN was on, and like David Frum was on there, and he was like, like, literally tweaking out.
Like, it was crazy what's going on to these people.
And then Bill Crystal, he should have been the most excited about this strike in Iran.
And then he tweets out today.
He's like, Trump's like making an illegal action in Iran.
I was like, bro, if anyone else did this, you'd be like glazing.
The fact that he hates Trump so much that he's willing to destroy his one political project that he believes in most purely to like dunk on Trump on a tweet is so funny and it really shows how evil these people are.
Like, you know, everyone wants to say like, this is not about red versus blue.
This is not about left versus right.
This is about Israel.
The largest, like, most like rabid Zionists largely hate Trump, even though Trump describes himself as the most pro-Israel president ever.
Obviously, Netanyahu likes him.
The Israelis like him.
But these people specifically hate him because of what he did to how they viewed themselves, which is this very serious, polished intellectual types who get to go on TV and talk about, you know, the issues.
And Trump just embarrassed him.
I mean, not only like the A-list careers, like we know about like, you know, the Clintons and we know about the Bushes.
Trump destroyed the careers and the dreams of so many just like little apparatchiks.
And it really is like beautiful.
And maybe the same way that like a BAP can oppose certain actions because of the vibes, I can almost like support certain actions just because I know that like what this guy is doing is continuing to do.
He's like the killdozer, just like just going through and just taking out people.
All right, well, that was the great John Doyle, and he's just well-mannered, well, well-reasoned take as always.
It's just you can depend on him.
He's like, this is the thing about John.
This is the thing about John, and everyone needs to know: you need someone where if he's open in the corner, you don't even need to look, no-look pass, throw it to the corner.
You know, he's going to knock it down every single time.
If you leave him open in the corner, he's going to knock it down.
And it's like halfway through the game, the coach is ripping his hair out.
Why do you keep leaving John open in the corner?
He's going to knock it down every single time.
So then now he's in the defense's head.
Now the guy is thinking, okay, well, now I got to space out.
I got to be ready to interrupt that passing lane, ready to get in the space and close out in the shot.
And then boom, I'm going inside every time.
Boom, punishing two points here, two points there.
I'm in his head.
He's freaking out.
He's saying, I don't know how to stop this guy.
The coach is screaming at me.
I'm going to get benched.
It's called a little Patriot psyop.
It's what we do.
So, with that, you can follow me on X and Instagram at RealTate Brown.
Come follow me there.
Come hang out.
And we'll be back tonight for Tim Kest IRL at 8 p.m.
It's going to be a great show.
And I believe Tim's back.
Tim is back.
So we'll be back tonight with Tim at 8 p.m. Eastern.