Trump Says Iran War Is “Very Complete”, Plan TRUSTED
Tate Brown and Oren McIntyre dissect Trump's conflicting claims that the Iran war is "very complete" while Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth predicts intensified strikes, highlighting mixed messaging amidst collapsing oil prices below $84. They analyze the strategic risk of neoconservatives executing a "pincer movement" to co-opt the MAGA coalition, threatening JD Vance's 2028 candidacy and Trump's legacy if domestic victories like the SAVE Act are used to justify foreign intervention without boots on the ground. Ultimately, the episode warns that internal betrayal by appointees could undermine American interests and the conservative agenda. [Automatically generated summary]
This is Tate Brown here, holding it down on this lovely Tuesday.
It's now afternoon.
We're a minute into the afternoon.
So far, so good.
Everything is going to plan.
I think I am here with it.
Let me restart that.
I'm here with you guys today.
We have a whole slate of news to get to.
The big one is obviously Iran.
This story is not going anywhere, nor should it.
It's wacky and wild, and people are making a lot of money.
And Patriots are being rewarded with some really keynote footage of boats being exploded.
There's a lot in it for everyone.
I think everyone's getting something out of this.
So it's a very beautiful thing.
With the Iran story, we're going to get into it a little bit.
Obviously, it looks like we're already won.
We've already won.
It looks like we're victorious.
I think plan trusters are vindicated once again.
I really don't think this is a surprise for anyone who has been following the show.
To be fair, like I haven't been, you know, super vocal about my trusting of the plan here.
I mean, I trust President Trump.
I certainly trust him, but there's a lot of moving parts when it comes to a war with Iran.
So, you know, it's getting wacky and wild.
I'm not saying things are, we're in the clear yet.
We're certainly not quite there.
There's still a lot that needs to unfold, but there's been a lot of encouraging rhetoric coming from President Trump himself, as well as it really does seem like our military objectives were over the mark.
I think that's fair to say.
So we're going to get into all that, and we will be joined at the half-hour mark by the great Oren McIntyre, and we're going to have him come in and I think give the kind of base perspective what the base is thinking regarding Iran, sort of how we've been performing thus far, how this may impact the midterms, and also give his personal take.
I think that's going to be excellent.
So we're going to bring him in at the half-hour mark.
We have a few other stories that we'll get to if we have time.
The Financial Times put out this horrible, horrible headline, basically just celebrating the fact that white men will have fewer and fewer board seats in the Fortune 500.
So the anti-white stuff is not going anywhere.
Woke has not been defeated.
A lot of people in this sphere, this time last year, we're celebrating that Woke is dead.
We're not even anywhere close to that, folks.
I mean, I think that's pretty obvious at this point.
So between all that, we have a lot to get into.
But first, before we do, I got a quick shout out for our sponsors for today.
Did you hear that?
This chair is really getting crazy over here.
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Look at this, people are making like an espresso martini in the background.
Um, I think I don't think this is espresso, you'd be more like a cold brew martini, but you can do that, you can do whatever you want.
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You got to mix it.
Obviously, the casper itself is not going to do that for you.
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And at that point, all bets are off, quite frankly.
All bets are off.
I don't know what you would leave in the comment section because, from my understanding, the comments, the chats that you guys are leaving, these are all sober thoughts.
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I can't breathe out of my nose.
It's like every day I come in, you know, it's like this is this must be what Pharaoh went through.
Um, nose is blocked up, so I'm having a mouth breathe, which is just you know, quite frankly, destroying my looks maxing gains that I've fought so hard for over the last few months.
And I'm just watching it just slip through my fingers like sand.
Um, I don't know how much mewing I'm gonna have to do to get back on the saddle here, but with that, we got another great sponsor today.
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All the boards are selling out, they're selling like hotcakes to say the least.
Look at this: 20th Amendment gone.
All these blueprint collection boards, they're all gone.
But with that, let's get into our first story from CBS News.
Trump says the war is very complete and he is considering taking over the Strait of Hormuz.
So obviously, CBS News here got an exclusive phone interview with President Trump regarding the war with Iran and the progress thus far.
This is what he had to say.
I think that the war is very complete, pretty much.
That's a great, that's a very Trump quote.
I love that.
Speaking from his Doral of Florida golf club, quote, Iran has no navy, no communications.
They've got no Air Force.
Their missiles are down to a scatter.
Their drones are being blown up all over the place, including their manufacturing of drones.
And he continues to go on.
If you look, they have nothing left.
There's nothing left in a military sense.
And then they put this commentary up here.
CBS puts this up.
The U.S. military said it struck more than 3,000 Iranian targets in the first week of operations.
And then we can keep reading here.
Late Sunday, Iran announced that Ayatollah Mojdaba Khameni would replace his father as a supreme leader of Iran.
Quote, I have no message for him, none whatsoever.
That was quoted.
That was from the president of the United States, adding that someone else was in his mind in regards to who would lead the country.
Commercial shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, through which about 20% of the global oil supply flows as effectively aground to a halt.
The president said the U.S. could, quote, do a lot about the strait and threaten Iran if it inhabits the waterway.
Quote, they've shot everything they have to shoot, and they better not try anything cute or it's going to be the end of that country.
If they do anything bad, that would be the end of Iran, and you'd never hear the name again.
Look, whatever your take is, I don't care if you're an anti-war, you know, point-blank, you know, pacifist.
You got to admit, that's really funny.
The president saying, he would bomb, effectively saying, I would bomb Iran so thoroughly that you would never hear the name again.
Like, people would just, you would bomb them so much, it would be erased from the consciousness of human beings globally.
That is, that's just hilarious, quite frankly.
You know, you got to laugh at these things.
You got to laugh at these things, folks.
The president also said the strait is open now and claimed ships have been entering the strait.
Sorry, I don't know.
That's just like my body is falling apart.
It's falling off the rails here.
I need some casper.
I need an emergency casprew.
Where's our slave?
We have a Tim Cast slave, I think.
Oh, no, they banned that 150 years ago.
I don't know what we have.
We need one, though.
Maybe we could get a dog that could, like, yeah, and we could put like a tray.
Oh, you know what?
We could do we get like a St. Bernard and you know, the St. Bernard's in the cartoons, and they have the flask around their neck with the, with the medicine in it.
And I think he could have vault black casprew in his little flask, and he could, like, run up and give me an emergency hit.
I think that'd be really something.
Instead, I got to settle for this Red Bull.
I don't know if you guys tried this Red Bull.
It's got monk fruit extract.
You know, it's no Caspar, but it's actually quite nice.
I don't know what monk fruit is.
It just came out of nowhere like three years ago.
Like, what is a monk fruit?
I'm not going to look that up live on air.
Knows what would come up if I looked that up.
We're focused on Iran right now.
Let's lock in here.
Where were we?
The U.S. benchmark.
Oh, okay, right.
If they ever do, it'd be the end of Iran.
He'd never hear the name again.
The president also said the strait is open now and claims ships have been entering the strait, but said he is still, quote, thinking about taking it over.
So, okay, so I'm hearing two kind of things here from the president, you know, two situations.
Up here, he says it's effectively over, right?
He says, I think the war is very complete, pretty much.
But down here, he says he's thinking about taking over the straight of hormuz.
Those are two slightly different timelines, I would say.
You know, if it's almost over, it's almost over.
That's great.
And, you know, we'll get out of here.
And I think it's a, if we get out now, I think that's a tremendous victory, quite frankly.
I think if this is all true, that we've truly just basically sent Iran back to the Stone Age, that's a military victory.
Now, again, that's not to say this is a good idea.
That's not to say, you know, everything that I've laid out in the show, my critiques, my concerns with this war, those all stand, right?
Those are all legitimate.
I'm just saying, from a military perspective, from an operational point of view, if we get out now and these are all true, what President Trump said, that's a massive victory.
That is a massive, from again, from a military strategic sort of perspective, that is a massive victory.
There's no denying that.
But if it's true that he's thinking about taking over the straight of hormuz, this is going to last a while.
I would imagine his mind has changed a bit on this, on taking over the straight of hormuz.
I don't know what I'm yawning.
I'm so sorry.
Seeing as crude oil has just completely caved in price here.
Let me find.
Yeah, so if we look here, I'm driving myself.
What do you guys think?
I'm driving the stream deck myself.
Oil prices have completely collapsed.
They're now below $84 a barrel, down 30% since last night's highs.
You know, they were saying the benchmark, crude oil dropped about 13%, around $13 per barrel, shortly after the CBS News interview before rebounding somewhat a few hours later.
Oil prices are now down slightly since Friday after surging by double-digit margins earlier Monday, though oil prices remain above pre-war levels.
Major stock indices also closed in positive territory Monday after spending most of the day in red.
Mr. Trump initially estimated the war would take about a month to complete.
We are far ahead of schedule, he told CBS News.
So this is what's interesting.
And this is what everyone is talking about.
This is what everyone's concerned about.
There's two different, again, and this has been the situation since the beginning of the war.
And this has been my primary critique, I think, first and foremost, is the messaging is different from official to official.
This is not to say that they need to tell us every single thing.
I'm actually take the position that it's better just to mop this up and then give us fairly minimal information, whatever information we need to have as the American public to, again, sort of conceptualize what's going on over there.
They don't really need to sell us this war.
That's something that George Bush did.
If this is truly a quick in-and-out operation, you don't need to sell it to us.
Just do it.
Massive victory and get out.
That's what they did with Venezuela.
This is concerning a little bit.
This is a little concerning.
So the president, obviously, we're far ahead of schedule.
The war is basically done.
Now, Pete Hegseth comes out and he says, We only have just begun to fight.
No mercy.
Things are a little different here.
So Pete Hegseth, this is today.
This is from CBS News.
This was earlier, like about an hour ago.
This was the last time it was updated.
Hegseth says, Tuesday, quote, most intense day of U.S. attacks on Iran.
Trump to determine, quote, end stage.
So again, this is just a little bit different than what we heard, what Trump told CBS News on Monday afternoon.
It's Pete Hegseth coming out and saying, actually, today is going to be the most intense day.
And again, he's saying that the war has just begun.
It's just a little interesting.
It's just mixed messaging, I think, is a way to put it.
I'll read here.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said that Tuesday would be the most, quote, most intense day of strikes against Iran so far.
And that, quote, ultimately, President Trump gets to determine the end stage of these objectives and the Islamic Republic.
Now, again, if it, his objectives are a little unclear.
I think ultimately he just wants to send a message to Iran.
And I think he's done so.
And that's why I believe yesterday he was saying, you know, end is near.
He was doing a victory lap.
I think that's what he wants.
It's really hard to imagine him sort of enforcing a regime change here.
I just think when it's laid out in front of him, how much resources that would take, he would probably bulk at it.
Who's to say?
I think there's a big internal debate happening right now.
That's why, again, you're seeing the messaging kind of all over the place.
It's been that way since the beginning of the war.
Again, because I think there is an internal debate.
There's a reason why JD Vance has been very quiet, very quiet since the beginning of the war.
He's only tweeted like twice.
Tulsi Gabbard, again, very quiet.
Not that she's necessarily in a shot calling position right now, but it does say that the fact that these guys haven't been sidelined, seemingly, indicates there is sort of an internal debate, internal dialogue happening.
So this is from Pete Hegseth.
The quote: Today will be, yet again, our most intense day of strikes inside Iran.
The most fighters, the most bombers, the most strikes, Hegseth said at a briefing at the Pentagon.
Dan Kaine, the chairman of the U.S. Joint Chief of Staff, at the same briefing said the U.S. military had struck more than 5,000 targets since the start of the war, and that ongoing U.S. and Israeli strikes on Iran had resulted in a 90% reduction in the Islamic Republic's missile launches against Israel and Persian Gulf allies.
Kane identified three military objectives continue.
destroying missiles and drone capabilities, striking the Iranian Navy and targeting Iran's military and industrial base.
Iran also Tuesday launched new attacks on Gulf Arab countries while Israeli strikes also hit southern and eastern Lebanon amid concerns in the U.S. about being embroiled in a long-term conflict.
The stated timeline for the conflict had been inconsistent.
But Hegseth said, quote, this is not.
I'm so sorry, guys.
Pete Hegseth said that, quote, this is not 2003.
This is not endless nation building under those types of quagmires we saw under Bush or Obama.
Our generation understands this fight.
For 47 years, these barbaric savages in the Iranian regime have murdered our brothers in arms, my guys, your guys, our guys, through their terrorist proxies and cowardly attacks.
Now they race towards a nuclear bomb to hold the world hostage.
He said the Iranian leaders are desperate and scrambling and that the U.S. allies are winning.
And then he goes on.
They ask him about the reports of the new Supreme Leader, obviously the son.
And he's saying he's been wounded.
And Hegseth says, I can't comment on that right now, which means he might be dead.
That was the reporting we were seeing last night is the new Supreme Leader has been wounded already.
And we haven't seen anything from him.
That indicates he might just be dead already.
Which would be really funny.
Really, really funny.
Again, you got to look at this as it's happening.
It's here.
War's here.
How do we get out of this in one piece?
You got to admit, that's pretty funny.
They literally just put him in charge and he's already gone, most likely.
Mr. Trump told Fox News he was not happy with the selection of the younger Khmer to replace his father, adding, I don't believe he can live in peace.
So it's just, again, it's just a little confusing, right?
You know, Trump saying, look, it's almost over.
We're pretty much done.
Now, there's a possibility he was just saying that to get the oil prices back under control, to get the stock market rebounded.
That's certainly possible.
I wouldn't put it past him to do something like that.
Hegseth again saying this is the most intense day of strikes.
It could be the situation, which is the grand finale, right?
This is where we finish off, you know, we are our list of military objectives.
Today is now the day where we check off the rest of the list.
I think that's certainly a possibility.
Again, that's a big day.
We'll just see at the end of the day what things look like.
But with that, we have a few more stories here.
Trump says Iran war will end very soon, predicts lower oil prices.
Again, this was sort of the same statement everywhere.
But what I love about this during his press conference is he says, we've wiped every single force in Iran out very completely.
They have no leadership.
It's all been blown up.
There was that funny clip a few days ago where he was like, the ex-guy in charge, he's dead.
But then there was another guy that was put in charge, but he's also dead.
He was like talking about how difficult it actually is to find someone to put into leadership, which is quite funny.
So we obviously had a few comments quotes.
Here's what I pulled up earlier.
The oil prices have in Iran.
Sorry, the oil prices globally have completely collapsed below $84 a barrel, down 30%.
Let's see what the latest is on oil prices.
Let me just do this on the fly real quick.
Oil.
I should have had that ready to go.
All right, so we're back.
back up um since beginning the no no no yeah we're at 89 bucks So, you know, it dropped down to below 84.
Perked back up to 89.
I think probably again because of the reports today of the ramping up in strikes.
And then also in addition, because Heg Seth was saying, or the Department of Defense, sorry, Department of War was saying actually there's still some objectives out.
There's still objectives out there that need to be accomplished.
So, yeah, this was a cool keynote video here.
Footage circulating online appears to show an IRGC Navy vessel exploding off the coast of Kangan in southern Iran.
Take a look at this.
the video initially was being posted by like these iranian affiliated glazers who were like oh well this is uh this is an american tanker being blown up um As if we would be sailing tankers through right by the Iranian coast right now.
Yeah, we're going to sail our tankers right through Iranian waters right now.
Absolutely ridiculous.
One cause for concern.
Actually, I didn't pull this up, but I saw this headline earlier.
Let me see if I can find it real quick.
This is also going to be impacting markets.
This right here, they're not necessarily the first airline, but this is the biggest airline I've seen.
British Airways cancels all flights to and from Abu Dhabi until later this year, and all flights from Imam, Bahrain, Doha, Dubai, and Tel Aviv until later this month.
So Jordan, Qatar, you know, Bahrain.
So things are just wacky, wacky and wild.
There's no question about it.
So with that, I think we should get into our next segment here.
We'll talk about this further with Oran.
I think that'll be fantastic stuff.
This is an interesting headline that was put out here by the Financial Times.
Just take a look at this.
Let's just pull it up in all its glory for you guys to see this.
This is really something to see here.
This is from the Financial Times.
White males will have, quote, fewer board seats in the future, says UK diversity chair.
Helen Andrews put up some really salient commentary here, and this is why I wanted to bring it up.
The ruling ideology is just race communism.
Taking stuff from the bad class and giving it to the good class is its central purpose as much as it was for the Soviets, who gets board seats, jobs, college sports, loans, housing.
It's all about the allocation of resources by race.
And she continues to write here.
She continues to write here.
Wokeness is a bad name for it because it sounds frivolous and makes you think of diversity seminars and college professors.
Race communism sounds like what it is.
Your telecommunications merger won't be approved unless you give sufficient handouts to legally favored races.
This was an insane headline.
This was obviously a while ago, but NAACP backs Comcast NBC merger after securing diversity pledges.
These companies will literally be being held hostage by diversity quotas, and it's their own fault.
I mean, they could just say pound Zan if they really wanted to.
Comcast, NBCU, signed deal with the Latino groups, Latino organizations to boost diversity at the respective companies.
The deal is part of a diversity commitment made as part of the proposed merger.
Comcast picks up four minority-owned cable channels.
She makes a music video of her just like sliming out men.
She's literally just man after man.
It's this really the way she does it, you know, it's already stupid.
But the way she does it is from such an obvious position of insecurity, such an obvious, she's obviously acknowledged that she's the woman here is sort of physically inferior.
That's why like killing men would be such a ridiculous idea.
The idea that a woman could be like a mass murderer, a serial killer, only targeting men in this fashion is so ridiculous.
She's conscious of that.
It's kind of the same thing you see from a lot of these like anti-white protesters or these sorts of things.
This was really good commentary on here by this poster, Ray.
Women voluntarily have casual sex with some guy on Hinge, fail to secure a relationship from it, and then fantasize about total male genocide for the rest of their 20s and 30s.
I think this is like, I think this is broadly true.
I kind of reject this notion that's quite popular, I think, in like the manosphere and these sorts of things that like women immediately just enter the dating market like broken already, like with a chip on their shoulder.
I don't think that's actually true.
I think a lot of women early on, you know, in their late teens, early 20s, are actually like have the parabonding ability, the capability.
They are looking for, you know, a serious relationship.
It's just, I think it's more of a society-wide issue.
I mean, I understand like, you know, it starts with everyone.
You know, everyone's got to like commit to something for it to become a society-wide issue.
But the casual sex stuff, so to speak, for lack of a better word, really derails.
It really, it really harms women's ability to be like taken seriously in a relationship.
There was this Reddit post that was going viral where this girl was saying that she performed a sexual act on a man on their first date or after their first date.
And then she was complaining how now she actually views this man.
They've gone on a few successive dates after, and she views this man as a potential long-term partner, but he doesn't take her seriously because she sort of showed her hand after the first date.
And this is like a serious problem for women.
It really doesn't affect men, quite frankly.
It's a serious problem for women as they sort of, again, give up their hand too early and then they really have no leverage over a man to sort of keep them committed in a long-term relationship because the man just doesn't take her seriously.
You know, if that happens, the man's first thought is, well, she's clearly done that for however many men came before me.
It's a huge problem.
This is sort of different.
What Ray is talking about here is Serena Carpenter is sort of the end game of that.
A woman that's gotten burned for that so many times, or once at least, getting her heart broken, where she just turns into like really this really caddy, you know, a crazy person.
Again, she's fantasizing about total male genocide.
I think this is part of the reason why women have become so liberal.
I think obviously a lot of it's dispensation.
A lot of it is media propaganda.
I think a lot of it is social incentives.
But I think a lot of it is there's a lot of women as they get into their 20s and 30s that just genuinely hate men.
They just genuinely hate men.
There's no question about it.
And it's like a hatred out of insecurity.
It's not like a pure hatred or certainly not a righteous hatred.
It's like a hatred that comes from insecurity.
That appears to me to be what's going on.
And it's really just something.
So let's see if Auron's ready.
I haven't seen anything yet indicating such.
What's going on here?
Tim sent me a screenshot from Twitter and he said, you made it, brother.
And it's showing the trending topics on Twitter.
And Tate is trending.
I really appreciate that, Tim.
That's just, it's not me.
It's probably Andrew Tate, if I had to guess, possibly Tristan Tate.
There is this interesting issue that I'm going to have going forward.
Initially, I thought the issue would be because I shared a name with Andrew Tate and Tristan Tate that was going to be hard to really get my name out there in SEO.
A bigger problem that I'm going to have is long-term because Tate is going to be a girl's name starting about two years ago and then in perpetuity.
Because if you don't know, there's a very popular singer called Tate McRae.
I mean, she's absolutely massive, but her audience is primarily young women, like almost entirely young women.
So I think what's going to be, and also young women, I would say, that are temperamentally a bit more on the conservative side.
I don't think she has like a Sabrina Carpenter style, like Libtard audience.
I think she has a bit more of like normal, well-adjusted young women fans.
And so these are the type of women that would have a lot of children, or at least would have children, you know, period.
And so I think what's going to end up happening is Tate, I think it's already happening, is now a lot of young women in their heads are like, Tate's a girl's name because of Tate McRae and will name their daughters Tate.
And so there's going to be a situation in about 15 to 20 years where it would be like if my name was Jennifer or if my name was, you know, Lindsay or like Lindsey Graham, you know, like a girl name.
It would be, I think it's going to be a situation like that.
So I'm kind of bracing for that.
Bracing for the inevitable.
I think that's the reality of the situation.
Still no news on if Auron is here or not.
I haven't gotten any updates.
Let me thumb through our different channels and see if he's made it in or not.
Yeah, no, nothing yet.
It's okay.
We can stay patient.
We can stay whatever.
Let me see.
Let's open chat then.
Let's see what chat's up to.
You know?
Let's see.
Someone said, jerk yourself off.
What is going on?
A bunch of freaks.
Bunch of freaky.
How do I freaking move this?
There we go.
Gosh.
All right.
Let's see here.
What are you guys up to?
What's going on?
Let me expand.
Let me expand the game.
Oh, crap.
Thumbing around here.
All right.
What are you guys talking about?
What's going on?
Change your name to Gore Lock Girl?
I guess I could do that.
I guess.
Should I do that?
Chat?
What do we think?
is that a good idea how where how do i oh my gosh dude How do I make this bigger?
Oh, it's like...
Oh, it's frozen.
No?
Tate, you see the woman versus woman BS speak?
Dude, I'm getting hit with like cryptic messaging right now.
Slur is about to pour in.
I mean, at least it's something, you know, at least it's something because right now it's quiet.
You have a favorite episode of Queer Eye, but Tate is the fag.
Whoa, who was talking about Queer Eye in here?
What is going on?
Let's see.
I would rather watch my favorite episode of Queer Eye than this gay.
Oh, yeah.
You have a favorite episode of Queer Eye, and I'm the gay guy?
What's going on?
It's got to be bait.
It's got to be.
Let's go up here.
Tate is basically greenlighting the female use of sex as manipulation.
I'm just trying to game out what would be best for them.
I'm not saying it's great for us.
I'm just saying, like, if you're a woman, like, what other assets do you really have?
Like, What are you gonna like?
It's like that tweet where the guy got cheated on, and then his, it's like that tweet where that guy got cheated on, and then his girlfriend was like, um, I gave him my body, but I'm giving you my mind.
Obviously, to bring you in, there's this news story that's been going around.
I don't know if you've seen it.
There's a situation in Iran.
It's a little unclear what's going on.
You know, the president's been a little tight-lipped about it.
We don't know.
The press hasn't been talking about it.
It's very, very discreet, very small story.
Obviously, there's a war.
I wanted to bring you on to get your thoughts on it.
I think you're one of the sharpest minds around.
Before we get into it, I want to ask you, could you give people a quick intro of who you are and what you do for the three people in the audience that don't know?
Well, I wanted to bring you on because I was a little confused.
So I think maybe you could walk me through this.
As we had Trump, he gave an interview to CBS News yesterday afternoon.
And he basically said, look, the war is effectively over.
He's saying, you know, we're winding it down.
We've completed all of our military objectives.
But then near the end of the interview, he says, oh, by the way, I'm thinking about taking over the Strait of Hormuz.
So within that interview, we get some conflicting reports, but it's encouraging that Trump is like already kind of thinking I want to be done.
He says at the very end of the interview that like, in my head, I'm just trying to wrap this up.
But then you had Heg Seth come out and say, today, Tuesday, is going to be like our strongest day of strikes yet.
You know, he's saying, I think this is just the start.
So this kind of goes back to what a lot of people have been complaining about since the beginning of the operation is which it doesn't seem like any of the cabinet are really on the same page as far as timelines.
Do you think that's intentional?
Do you think that's just kind of a fog of war situation?
I'm just wondering, maybe on the communications front, what your thoughts are.
Someday someone's going to write a really interesting book on the criminology of the Trump administration, who's actually influencing, who's actually bringing the information, who's actually directing the flow.
I think for Donald Trump, one of his strengths has been his ability to kind of confuse the leftist media by never really representing one flat surface.
He's always kind of making one comment, throwing to another.
He's offhand.
He'll say something that seems bombastic, but then maybe it's backed up by some fact they didn't realize.
They kind of fall on their face.
This has been a constant cycle with Trump, and we're kind of used to it in that context.
The problem is when you get to war, that becomes a little dicier.
People don't want the misdirection.
They don't want the salesmanship.
They want to know what's going on.
They want to feel like they have a firm grasp of a commander in chief.
And so I think that Trump is really just speaking in the style that he always has.
But I think it's throwing people for a loop because of kind of the severity of the situation.
Now, I can forgive that more because that's just Trump's style and it has been effective for him in the past.
The thing that is more concerning is we can't seem to get a consistent line from different representatives from the administration itself.
When I get a different line from Pete Hegset than I do from Steve Witkoff, than I do from Marco Rubio, and then I have Bibi Netanyahu showing up on Sean Hannity, giving me an address about the war I'm involved in for some reason or my country is involved in.
Those are the things that are very concerning.
And so I think that it would help ultimately.
I agree with you that if Trump is already in the mode of, all right, we've done enough damage to the regime.
We took out the biggest bad guys.
We set back their, you know, their missile infrastructure and all these things.
We could probably start wrapping this and going home.
Great.
That would be fantastic.
I hope that's the plan.
Limit the strike, you know, make it like an extended Venezuela instead of a night.
It took a week or two, but ultimately similar operation.
I think that's the kind of thing the American people can probably walk away and say, all right, whether they agree with it or didn't, they're probably not going to carry that into the midterms, carry that into the later electoral consequences.
But if that's just him talking off the cuff, hey, I'd like to be done.
Maybe we're done.
But actually, we're planning another four, five, six weeks of strikes, then we're in a much different situation.
I mean, I think now actually is the interesting off-ramp.
I'm saying with literally today or possibly tomorrow is the off-ramp in which I think the Iran hawks kind of get what they want, which is a complete incapacitation of the Iranian regime.
Again, if Trump's, you know, what he has said regarding what the damage they've inflicted is true, then if you're an Iran hawk, you're thrilled, quite frankly.
I mean, you're not getting your regime change, but again, you're getting a total incapacitation of the Iranian state.
I mean, there's Trump is saying we've sunk dozens of vessels and hit all these different targets.
It's really, again, again, if you're Iran Hawk, this is great news.
And I think also, to your point, if we get out now, most people are going to forget about this from the midterms.
There's obviously going to be a portion of the base that's going to remember and they're going to kind of, again, have this sour taste.
It's going to be a blight on his record, I will say, like long term for, you know, the people that are really on the inside.
But for the vast majority of the electorate, and honestly, the majority of his base, I don't think they remember this come the midterms.
So that's why it's such an interesting moment we're in.
And that's why I really hope that what President Trump is saying is true.
But to your point, it's really frustrating when no one in the cabinet is on the same page.
And part of the reason this, I think the frustration is more, or sorry, I should say why I think this might be an internal debate is the fact that JD Vance has been so quiet.
I mean, he's tweeted like two or three times since the beginning of the war.
He hasn't really spoken to the press too much.
He's only really been seen, you know, doing the transfers with the fallen soldiers out there.
So that to me indicates internal debate.
I don't even know if the timeline's clear within the Trump administration yet.
I don't know if they even have a timeline to communicate to us yet.
And that's why President Trump is kind of going out there and just boasting about what's been accomplished thus far and what he would sort of anticipate the timeline to be.
Yeah, I think a lot of people have noticed, you know, that if you look back just a year or two ago, you can get tweets from Stephen Miller and JD Vance saying, we're never going to do regime change in Iran.
That's, you know, some kind of Kamala Harris, you know, slight.
That's their propaganda.
They're the ones who are going to get you into these forever wars in these countries.
So I think it's pretty clear that ultimately this is probably not something.
I mean, we don't know for sure, but this is probably not something that certain wings of the administration were not interested in.
But of course, when the president says go, you have to get behind and you have to do, you know, he is the leader.
That is your job.
And, you know, whether you're a vice president or an advisor or anyone else.
So the best you can do is stay quiet, keep your head down, get the work done and get the guys back as fast as possible.
And that's, I think, what we're all hoping for at this point.
As you say, I think you could easily and accurately present the current amount of damage that has been done to the Iranian regime as an American win, setting back any capability of serious military incursions by the Iranians for quite a while.
Certainly their nuclear program, we're not even, I guess, depending on which White House messenger we're getting, they may or may not have any capacity to produce weapons, but it's very clear that that's been greatly diminished.
The larger concern, and I think many people have seen this, is really the level of decision-making capability that Israel seems to have in this conflict.
We've even had Donald Trump saying very specifically, I think it's a joint decision between me and Bibinet and Yahoo as to when we leave this.
So it's very clear, and I said this back when we have the original strike on Iran, that the purpose of Israel's military incursions with Iran is regime change.
That is absolutely their goal.
That was not the U.S.'s goal initially.
Now, Donald Trump has echoed some of that, but I think you can still look at this and say, okay, we got the biggest, baddest guy.
We knocked out a large amount of their leadership, their military and political leadership.
That's, you know, it's not a regime change, just like in Venezuela, we didn't go in and occupy and control and completely prop up a new government.
We just knocked out the top guy and said, okay, next one better play ball, right?
You could sell this and say, okay, that's what we've done here and it's time to pack it up.
But I don't think that's enough for Israel.
I think that Bibinet and Yahoo is looking for a total decimation of the Iranian regime.
And so the question is, are we allowed to walk away?
Are we allowed to make this decision in the interests of the United States?
Or are we in some way lashed to the foreign objectives of another country?
That's what I think many people are asking after the several exchanges we've seen from the administration and its representatives.
Yeah, I mean, because you saw Netanyahu come out yesterday or the day prior saying like, this has just begun.
Like, we're going to finally rid the world of this scourge.
And the type of rhetoric he's using, the type of rhetoric Lindsey Graham is using is just like ridiculous, quite frankly.
It's like, I agree.
Like, Iran, the Iranian regime is like horrible.
Like, I totally agree.
But the rhetoric they're using is like, it's specifically targeting baby boomers because they're like, this is a Nazi regime and all this sort of stuff.
And I'm like, they're just keeping morale high for boomers because they know that's who they really need to like sway over in this war to keep support high.
And to your point, that's what's so frustrating because, you know, a lot of people in our space, a lot of people that I love, quite frankly, and I trust a lot.
They are like trying to sort of game this out like this is a long-term strategy, like a geopolitical pincer move on China that we're making.
And I'm like, there could be some truth there.
That could be an additional goal for the United States.
I think that actually probably issue.
Those conversations probably are happening.
But the primary goal has already been said out loud by the Israelis.
The Israelis see Iran as kind of the last bulwark against total sort of Western allied hegemony in the Middle East.
And the Americans, by all accounts, agree with their assessment.
Now, do we agree with the tactics required to bring this forth?
Like, again, a regime change?
Doesn't appear so.
But it's just kind of obvious, I think, to everyone what's going on here.
And I don't see much utility in denying that.
I kind of like Cernovich's position, which is everyone kind of knows what's going on here.
And again, if you can overwhelm us with domestic victories, I don't think people really care that much.
And they'll say, okay, well, maybe this was required to carry out our domestic policy for whatever reason.
But that's what it kind of hinges on because otherwise, again, it just, again, it seems painfully obvious what happened here is we're kind of in a way cleaning up a mess in the region.
Yeah, I mean, the fact that a foreign intervention might be required to achieve some kind of domestic outcome is itself a rather concerning proposition, one that should probably shake every single person in the United States to the core and have them asking some very serious questions about the way that our government operates.
However, to narrow it down to the specific topic, yes, I think that is true.
And while it's never a great thing when your best outcome is maybe people will forget we did this by the midterms, ultimately that is probably true to some extent, right?
So being a political realist, you know, let's deal with it, deal with the issue first, and then maybe we'll ask the wider question of, you know, what are the implications of this revelation?
And I think ultimately it's correct.
we can wrap this up in a few weeks, if we can have done serious, have done demonstrate a serious amount of damage has been done to the Iranian regime, their capability to project power, their ability to develop dangerous weapons, and we can walk away and say, hey, certain amount of loss of life is tragic, but necessary and this kind of thing.
We didn't really put boots on the ground.
We really didn't make this an extended regime change operation.
If Trump can declare victory and walk away with that, I think he is in a position to then win back the trust of the base and even extend his ability to project good outcomes in the midterms by achieving high amounts of kind of domestic priorities.
I think that is a position he is in.
He can still do that.
But as you say, it's all about the timer.
Can he wrap that up?
And is he willing to tell Israel, that's enough, we're going home?
As you say, we're getting all this smoke getting blown on us, but ultimately, I think everyone recognizes what is happening here.
And it's like, okay, if this is what's happening, then can we just wrap this up, get the home, figure it out the midterms, and then we'll go back and hash out like what the implications of these revelations are.
But let's finish this up, wrap up the conflict, secure domestic wins, get through the midterms, ensure that the Trump administration is able to carry out its promises and hopefully set up someone like JD Vance to continue its legacy.
That's the most important thing, I think, to real MAGA voters right now.
I mean, we saw it in the Iran strikes last year where the big beautiful bill passes like two weeks later.
So it's like, I'm kind of expecting the same thing as like, okay, if we clean up and we get out this week, then like the SAVE Act should pass in two weeks.
I'm actually going to, like, for posterity, say that's going to happen.
Because it's true.
I mean, you have all these warhawks in the Senate that like they need, you know, you scratch our back, we scratch yours, that sort of thing.
And then to your point, like with the domestic policy, again, everyone kind of knows what's what's going on here.
Again, it's concerning that like, again, foreign intervention is what's required to get some stuff across the finish line, but like we're political commentators.
There's just the reality on the ground.
That's not going to change anytime soon.
To your point, though, with this, we already saw it.
This is kind of the thinking with Ukraine.
As we stitched together this Abraham Accords, you know, say Israel is kind of leading the region.
This should be an obvious moment where, okay, we inflict that initial hit here, and then we sort of hand off the war to our regional allies, right?
You know, this Abraham Accord coalition that's formed.
They're more than willing to, again, finish the job.
If it's true that we've inflicted all this damage on Iran, if it's true that, again, their navy is basically non-existent at this point, this should be pretty easy to just hand the baton off and let them sort of finish the job.
And quite frankly, let them do whatever they want at that point.
If our hands are truly clean to the situation, then yeah, let them if they really want to.
If that's really Israel's prerogative, if it's really Saudi Arabia's prerogative to carry out regime change, that's fine.
It's just, we want out.
Like, enough is enough.
And to your point, hopefully everyone forgets about it by the midterms.
It should, as you say, be possible for the United States to have allies that handle things in different regions without our direct intervention, without us being the backbone of that operation.
The problem is that just really isn't the case.
I think increasingly we're in an era where people don't know what to expect from modern military incursions.
They don't, what would it look like to have a coalition of Saudi Arabia and Israel actually enter Iran and change the regime, right?
I don't think they can actually envision that happening.
I think the United States truly is the only military power available to them.
You know, it's got to be the United States, China.
There's only a handful of people in the world that can truly, in a modern sense, come in and kind of take on a project of the scale, which is why Israel and Ukraine and other countries invest so heavily in swaying the American government to their causes because they recognize they kind of need that 800-pound geopolitical guerrilla to really make this kind of thing happen.
And so I don't think the United States is even comfortable handing such an operation off to this network of allies in the same way.
Well, I mean, kind of on this note, going back to like the start of the war, I wanted to ask you about this specifically.
I think this, because you would have a really good take on this, is everyone is discussing why this war felt like a betrayal in a sense or why this war was such a bad idea.
And everyone was giving their takes on, well, for this reason, for that reason.
I found the take that really resonated with me the most of why this war really just didn't set right was from Bronze Age pervert, actually.
He put out a long, quite a few threads sort of giving his thoughts on the war and these sorts of things.
And to kind of distill his main gripe, and again, this is what resonated most with me as well, is that this is just kind of a gift to the worst people in American politics.
And by extension, the class that put the most resistance up to Trump, which was the neocon establishment, the people he went to war with originally in 2016 and literally tried to, where they were ankle biting at every possible step.
The fact that you're seeing Lindsey Graham go on Fox News and he's just like on the verge of orgasm really like burns.
Like that really hurts more than anything else.
Besides all like the potential, you know, the potential of it being a quagmire or this, that, and the other, even being a distraction with domestic policy.
I actually kind of agree with that take most.
That's to me, the kind of worst part of all of it is that it's just a massive gift to people that do not deserve it at all.
And I was wondering sort of if you agreed with that or had maybe a slightly different perspective.
You know, we've had this dynamic, and this might only appeal to the very online sense of the wording, but we've had this dynamic in kind of the back and forth on this war about the panicans and the plan trusters, right?
Those that are entirely trusting Donald Trump no matter what.
And those who are concerned might be raising issues, these kind of things.
And the false dynamic has been this idea that anybody who is panicking is kind of in this Nick Fuentes.
I'm going to just give up on MAGA and start voting for the Democrats camp.
And everybody else who's in this plan trusting, they truly support Trump.
But if you look at it, there are, of course, many people who really do love Trump and have decided that they're going to give him the benefit of the doubt on this.
And I respect that.
I understand that position.
But what they should be looking at very carefully is suddenly they are surrounded by never Trumpers.
Suddenly all the guys on their side are all the people who hated Trump.
You've got guys, I think, you know, just the most insane neocons are coming out and saying, yeah, ultimately Trump's doing the right thing.
Trump's doing the right thing finally.
Half, you know, three-fourths of the guys who wrote the never Trump memo are all of a sudden 100% behind Donald Trump.
And that's concerning.
When Lindsey Graham is excited, when George Will is like, oh, well, I guess Trump got one right.
Like when you have guys like that going around and suddenly warming to the president, that's an area of concern.
So I would say that it's hard not to notice that as Trump has moved more towards this foreign intervention side, more and more of the never Trump neocons are suddenly rebranding themselves as the true MAGA.
And more and more people who actually were with Trump from the very beginning are raising concerns, asking questions, pointing out that this could be a serious issue.
That doesn't mean that it's 100% right.
It's not okay.
Well, guilt by association, whoever you're standing next to means you're tainted by it.
But it's impossible not to notice that shift.
And so I think it's critical.
The reason many of us supported Donald Trump was to destroy this establishment, to destroy Con Inc., to unseat the neocon consensus, to bring a true Pat Buchanan-esque America-first understanding to the forefront.
And Trump has been great on that in many ways, including things like immigration, DEI, birthright citizenship being challenged, all these things that are so critical.
So it is not, Trump has been successful in many areas.
And I still support him because of his success in those areas.
But people should be concerned about that shift.
They should recognize because if ultimately the neocons get to skin MAGA the way they skinned not Occupy Wall Street, the right-wing version of that.
The same way the neocons skinned the Tea Party movement, if they are able to do the same to MAGA, I think we are in some serious trouble because the whole thing that we really believed was once Trump got elected, the MAGA coalition was the new Republican Party.
They were going to be reigning for many decades.
And if the neocons are able to coup MAGA entirely out of this situation, they don't care because if the Democrats get back into power, it'll be the neocons that bounce back and control the conservative movement when MAGA is in shambles.
So Trump needs to recognize that the people around him are not cheering him because they suddenly believe he's a great leader.
They're cheering him because they think they can use this to wedge him out.
And I mean, to your point, Trump's domestic victories are so overwhelming, especially when you sort of, again, have the context of how the GOP operated for 50 years.
This isn't, this is not neither of us or really anybody in the space saying, you know, MAGA's death.
We're not doing anything sensational here.
This is not, we're not in the clickbait business.
This is the business of like pragmatism.
Okay, are we moving the football down the field?
Is Trump continuing to move the football down the field, even with this Iran war situation?
I would still say yes.
That's why he still has my total support.
And I don't anticipate that changing, by the way.
But you can still be very concerned with the Iran war and still say Trump has been fantastic so far in the second term or he's been very good.
And then to your point, I think what's happening here is it's an obvious pincer movement with Vance in 28.
Because if you look at the polling, he's very popular.
Clearly, he's completely out of step with sort of what the pre-Trump neocon consensus would like the candidate in 2028 to look like.
That's where you're already seeing these kind of bizarre quasi-hit pieces because they know they can't go all out on him yet because A, they don't have the ammo and B, they don't have the popular support because he's still very popular within the Republican Party by and large.
But you can tell they're firing off some warning shots here and there.
You know, you'll see like an article that for some reason indicates Rubio has presidential ambitions.
It's just like you can see they're kind of testing the water there and getting it ready to really put, you know, throw a wrench in Advance 28.
Yeah, they're already running stories about how Rubio won some straw poll at Mar-a-Lago about who should be next.
You can see Max Abrams just doing nothing but tweeting how much he hates G.D. Vance in every day and how much he has to be replaced because the definitely not neocons are definitely not angling to unseat the MAGA legacy.
It's not subtle.
We know that Ted Cruz was attempting to exacerbate divisions inside the conservative movement to give himself a chance.
Politics is cutthroat.
There's no surprise there.
And people on the right need to start to realize that there are people who want to cut the MAGA coalition out of the movement and kind of reconstitute it back to its neocon institutional bona fides.
So I think it's just really important that you can support Trump and you should support Trump.
But the biggest thing you can do to support Trump is recognize when the long knives are out for him.
Look, I love much of what Trump's done, but this is the guy who appointed John Bolton.
This is the guy who appointed Christopher Wray.
This is the guy who appointed a lot of guys who had it out for him.
And he still put them into positions of power.
So this is a track record.
We know this about Trump.
While I may be great on many things, he will put people in positions of authority that are ultimately planning to backstab him.
That's just a weakness of his administration.
I don't think we do it any favors.
If you told me last time that we should shut up about John Bolton being put into the cabinet, I think you'd be wrong.
Similar situation here, right?
Like we should be aware of the dynamics inside the conservative movement and that they are ultimately pulling the long knives out for MAGA while still saying, okay, we do support Donald Trump.
Even if he doesn't see this particular attack, this particular flank, what then we need to do is communicate to him, this is a problem and we support you and we want to see you ultimately succeed.
We want your legacy to succeed through somebody like JD Vance.