June 15, 2025 - The Political Cesspool - James Edwards
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You're listening to the Liberty News Radio Network, and this is the Political Cesspool.
The Political Cesspool, known across the South and worldwide as the South's foremost populist conservative radio program.
And here to guide you through the murky waters of the Political Cesspool is your host, James Edwards.
Well, as I mentioned at the top of the program tonight, ladies and gentlemen, the entire calendar, the entire schedule for the month of June has been disrupted by Israel's preemptive strike on Iran.
And the reverberations of that on our schedule will be felt for weeks.
The global reverberations, God only knows.
But I am so happy tonight and pleased that the first at bat, and we'll be talking to Kevin McDonald and Virginia Abernathy and others over the course of the remainder of this month about this issue.
But that Mark Weber could be the first at bat to offer us a clear and composed, that's the key adjective tonight, composed perspective on Israel's war with Iran, including its background and potential consequences.
He is, of course, as you know, as one of the top three all-time leading guests on TPC in terms of appearances logged.
Mark Weber is an accomplished historian, lecturer, and current affairs analyst.
He's unusually well informed about Iranian relations with other countries, including the United States, as well as 20th century Iranian history.
He has made three visits to Iran.
He met and spoke with a wide range of people, including, well, everyone from ordinary citizens to writers, scholars, activists, and government officials from various countries.
Mark Weber has addressed meetings in Tehran, the Iranian capital, including a lecture to hundreds of young Iranian university students, and he even spoke at a conference of government leaders where the country's president also spoke.
Ladies and gentlemen, over the course of the next hour, you're going to be treated to expert opinion and commentary on this matter of utmost importance that needs to be heard by all.
Mark Weber, welcome back to the program.
How are you tonight, my friend?
Very, very good.
Thank you, James, for having me on.
It's always a pleasure.
I'm glad to be with you again.
Well, with us tonight, telephonically, but two weeks ago, if we could just spend maybe 60 seconds on this, you were a key speaker at our conference.
Two weeks ago, today, tonight, we were together.
It seems as though it was just yesterday, but we were there together.
And that was an amazing event.
You have covered it on your own program with Frodie Midjord.
Mark, your reaction in just 60 seconds to that event and the message that you shared with those assembled in person.
Well, the immediate reaction is to everybody in our country to realize this war is not our war.
This is not our conflict.
And it's a very bad day for America and for the world, but also it's a very bad day for the Trump administration.
It's a bad day for the Trump administration because we might wish that the Trump of 2016 were back in the White House.
That's a man who denounced wars like this, who said we were going to avoid wars like this.
In 2016, he electrified people by denouncing the 2003 invasion of Iran, of Iraq, as a fiasco.
Now, apparently, he's been playing a double game.
Just shortly before this attack by Israel, which they say is a preemptive attack, Donald Trump was telling everybody we're fully committed to negotiating an agreement with Iran, even though now he admits that he knew in advance that Israel was about to attack.
Some people are saying that this is so duplicitous that Donald Trump and Netanyahu were engaging in a charade only to try to lull the Iranians into a belief that no attack was imminent because it would have been considered especially embarrassing for Israel,
America's which depends on American support, to attack Iran contrary to what President Trump had said repeatedly, Israel should not attack at a time when the United States is still negotiating.
Anyway, there's a lot of consequences for this.
And like any war, the Iraq war, the Afghanistan war, the Vietnam War, we're not going to know the consequences really until months, even years into it, when we really see where this is.
When wars first start, there's a lot of enthusiasm by some people for the war.
People expect the war to last a short time and everything to basically go the way they hope it will.
But whether it's the Vietnam War, the Afghanistan War, the Iraq War, World War I, and other wars, they often turn out very, very differently.
I think this is an enormous blow to American prestige and credibility, and especially for the Trump administration.
You know, Iran was very reluctant to get into negotiations with Trump because Trump had torn up a previous agreement that the United States and Iran and the rest of the world had made about Iran's nuclear program.
And now Israel is attacked.
Now, Israel claims this is a preemptive attack, but that's a lie.
It's a lie because Netanyahu has been claiming for more than 30 years that Iran is just about to have a nuclear weapon.
In fact, Tulsi Gabbard, who's the head of U.S. intelligence, said just in March, Iran does not have an active nuclear weapons program.
This is what Iran has been saying.
The world knows this.
American intelligence people know it.
But Benjamin Netanyahu is lying to the American public in making these claims.
The big danger for America immediately is that we Americans might be dragged into a conflict far because the mood in America, especially among Trump supporters, is to avoid exactly these kinds of conflicts.
All right, so that brings us to the billion-dollar question.
And I have talked to several of our friends, Mark, this week, several of our colleagues and our comrades, people who are earnest at heart and are working for the right issues.
And there is no consensus on the question of what did Trump know, what did he not know, what did he want, what did he not want.
Was he in on this all the way or not at all or somewhere in between.
What is your take on that?
I realize it's purely speculative, but it is speculative, but either way, Trump has been lying to his own base of support and to the American people in the world.
That much is clear.
Whether Trump was conniving with Netanyahu in a deliberate deceit or whether he only went through motions to give an impression that he knew was false, that's not clear.
Trump said repeatedly, Iran should not attack Israel should not attack Iran.
He said that repeatedly as long as negotiations are taking place.
Now, either Israel did it without his approval, in which case he's going to be shown to be a very weak president, or it did so with his connivance, in which case he's shown to be a very duplicitous president.
But one way or the other, this is not good.
It makes every country in the world wonder whether any agreement with the Trump administration is worth the paper it's made on.
That's a bad thing for America.
It's a bad thing for the Trump administration.
And it's a bad thing for the world.
But it is speculation at this point.
But Trump, it's astonishing.
I mean, shortly before the invasion, he says, oh, we're committed to diplomacy.
Then when the attack took place by Israel, Trump says, oh, excellent.
There's going to be more.
Oh, great.
But which is it?
I mean, we don't know.
Well, and then you had, of course, you had, of course, the Marco Rubio proclamation almost immediately after the attack that the United States did not sign off on this.
So there were conflicting messages coming out of the administration itself.
I understand, I guess, to an extent that you don't want to be punked on a global stage.
So Trump is trying to get out in front of this and say, yes, well, of course we knew, and of course, you know, we were, you know.
But I don't know.
I mean, who knows?
I mean, I don't know.
You don't know.
Nobody knows for sure.
Nobody knows that for sure.
But one thing is clear.
Israel would not be able to carry out this attraction attack if the United States was going to punish Israel for doing it contrary to what American interest and American policy is.
Who knows?
He can play Donald Trump.
He can do what he wants, and Donald Trump will go along with it.
That's the record that Donald Trump has shown.
And that's a bad thing because it shows that his commitment, so-called, to an America-first policy is, well, how should I put it, very limited.
Well, I mean, let me ask you this, and this is not playing devil's advocate.
This is not picking one side or the other.
This is just an honest question.
What can you do with Israel as an American president?
If you are the American president, what can you do?
And would we have been better off with either Biden or Harris on this question?
No.
Well, America has made, the original sin was made already in 1948 when the United States, against Christ, was recognizing Israel.
Ever since its existence, Israel has never been a country that has stood on its own.
It's not really an ally.
It's not a strategic asset.
It's required from the beginning to today, constant, continual infusions of support and aid from outside, especially from the United States, to merely stay in existence.
That's not a good ally.
Now, of course, the reason that the United States alone of all the countries has this fervent support for Israel, manifested in many ways, is because of the power of the organized Jewish community here in the United States.
Hold on right there.
Hold on right there.
Mark Weber, ihr.org.
He is the director of the Institute for Historical Review, iHR.org.
We've got to take a quick break.
But thankfully, we have him for the full hour tonight.
Stay tuned for Moon.
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I don't believe we're on the deal of stars.
Nothing like a neo-hippie communist song, Eve of Destruction, by Barry Maguire, who went on to play Peter in a passion play about Christ decades later.
But nevertheless, we ask Mark Weber the question, are we on the eve of destruction?
Mark, I mean, I want to get in at some point in this hour to your visits to Iran and your experiences there.
We have to talk to you about that.
But looking forward, is this an escalation that far exceeds that of other skirmishes between Israel and Iran over the years, even the most recent years?
Are we on the eve of destruction?
Is this World War III?
Your thoughts on that?
No, well, I'd like to, I've been wrong.
I thought, for example, I was wrong about Trump.
I thought Trump really wanted to make a deal with Iran.
I thought he was going to do that because that would have been a win for him.
It would have been a win for his administration, for America, for the world.
And maybe, in fact, the only thing that was really preempted by this Israeli attack was preempting negotiations between the United States and Iran.
Now, that's, of course, off the table, and that's, I think, what Netanyahu is really worried about.
But no, I mean, what it really is, is one more milepost in the decline of America as a country.
I mean, that's the really sad aspect of all of this.
We're seeing the breakup of a kind of civilization.
It's not just with the Iran-Israel policy and U.S. support for Israel.
It's not with Gaza.
We can see it in the streets where there's a huge portion of our population that doesn't even think our immigration laws should be enforced.
America is enormously divided, and it's not going to change.
And this is a point I tried to make at the talk that I gave at the conference two weeks ago, is that the old America is really gone.
It's not coming back.
And when people say Donald Trump is the last hope for America, in a sense that's true because he's the last hope to trying to restore the America that once was.
But I don't think that's coming back.
Historically, when a society is this divided, racially, ethnically, culturally, as the United States is, it's like trying to hold together Yugoslavia or the Ottoman Empire or the Soviet Union.
It's too divided.
There's just fundamental differences.
Now, with regard to the war with Iran and Israel, it probably will not go on much longer because Iran doesn't have any serious allies.
And Israel is much, much militarily stronger, not least because Israel has nuclear weapons.
By the way, that's another story that we should maybe get into.
But Israel has far greater military capability than Iran.
And so at some point, I think that will become pretty obvious.
Iran is struck back fairly strongly, stronger than most people expected.
But Israel has a far, far greater military capability.
Israel has the most modern military airplanes provided by the United States.
It has nuclear weapons.
It has nuclear submarines.
Iran doesn't have anything near that kind of military capability.
So that's why I doubt the thing will go on for a longer period of time.
But having said that, it's very disruptive for the world and especially for the credibility of the United States, especially because support for Israel or sympathy for Israel has been declining all around the world, including here in the United States, because of this very brutal treatment in Gaza.
And of course, Netanyahu is not even particularly popular in Israel itself.
In fact, many people are saying he's carrying out this war at this time as a way to sort of save his own administration.
Now, that's a cynical thing.
It's speculative.
But the point is, the world has changed.
And for America to be siding with Israel is more and more apparently to just about everyone.
This is not in America's interest.
We're stuck to a country that has been, since its beginning, in a very precarious adversarial relationship with its neighbors and with many other countries, and has shown its real face, you might say, especially in the last couple of years.
All right.
So again, Mark, thank you for that analysis.
But I would ask you this, to go back to a previous question.
In your opinion, is Trump weak or complicit on this question?
Because there is not a consensus on this issue, even amongst our own friends.
Well, I think he is complicit.
He's certainly complicit.
I mean, Donald Trump has, but he misreads the situation.
He has said throughout the time he's been president or running for president that he's completely with Israel.
And he said repeatedly, I've given Israel everything it wants, and still Jews don't really support me.
And that's true, because the interest of Jews in America is not just support for Israel.
They have interests and an agenda, organized Jewish community does, in America as a whole.
And Trump has misread that.
So to that degree, he and everyone else in the higher levels of the American government has been complicit, if for no other reason than that the biggest, by far, donors to his election campaigns have been from Jewish billionaires, especially Sheldon and Miriam Adelson, but others as well.
And he's, of course, put Jews in very high positions in his first and now and second administration.
But so he's complicit in that sense and because he's committed to Israel.
But that's a violation of his own pledge to have an America first foreign policy.
We should have a foreign policy as America's founders wanted it.
We should wish well for other countries.
We might even have strong sympathies with one side or another in conflicts around the world.
But those conflicts are not our conflicts.
And we have to decide.
Are we the policemen of the world or are we first and foremost for looking out for the United States of America?
We can't be both.
And Donald Trump has gotten immense support from people for making that point over and over, that we've been involved in wars that have been calamities.
They've been disastrous for us and for the world.
But wars, by the way, that Israel has applauded and pushed us to go into.
But that's another story.
Anyway, he is complicit, certainly, on that level.
I like to think that now in his second term, he's trying to wean himself off, you might say, Israeli or Jewish support here and to have a real foreign policy that's good for America and our people in the world.
But this is a very bad thing.
I mean, the war, it's really sort of half in and half out.
If he really thinks Iran is a threat, then he should, the United States should go full bore and go in and attack.
But it's not.
And the world knows that.
You know, just on another level, China is the great rival of the United States today.
China doesn't get involved in these crazy wars.
It stays out of that.
It's building harbors.
It's building railroads.
It's building airfields around the world.
It's increasing its trade.
And it knows that getting involved in these kinds of wars are not going to the interest of China.
And they should be, we should have the same recognition.
Involvement in these wars is not in our interest.
We're not going to solve all these problems.
Despite Donald Trump's promises and other American presidents that we're going to end the war in Ukraine or we're going to end the war here.
We're going to deal with that problem.
Trump has said that repeatedly.
But that's a false reading of the world.
It's not going to do that.
And our policy toward Israel, I think, should be like that of any other country.
You're on your own.
You've made your bed.
You lie in it.
We don't wish you harm, but we're not there to pull your chestnuts out of the fire every time you're in trouble.
Well, then that brings us to the political conundrum that Trump finds himself in globally with Israel and then even domestically, Mark, with his own coalition here with not even a consensus among Tucker Carlson and Charlie Kirk to your level of MAGA.
He can't even sell them on this war.
That's right.
Well, he barely won the election.
He got, what, 51, 52% of the vote.
And a very important part of his coalition is Tulsi Gabbard and Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Both of them supported Trump in large measure because they said he's not going to get us into war.
He's going to stay out of those wars.
He's against war.
And that's going to be bad.
I mean, who knows?
Tulsi Gabbard may say, well, he's a big disappointment.
Again, she was made director of U.S. intelligence.
On the 25th of March, she told a congressional committee, Iran does not have an active nuclear weapons program.
That's the story.
That's consistent with what other intelligence specialists have said in the United States and other countries for years.
That's what Iran says.
And they were willing to have that proven by the agreement they made in 2015.
And so now to go along with Israel is to go along with a blatantly illegal war.
Israel is attacking, it's carrying out what it calls a preemptive strike.
Well, preemptive.
I mean, there's no, there wasn't any immediate threat from Iran.
Iran is weaker than it was a year ago, not stronger.
It's not a threat.
And a preemptive war by any country is, of course, a violation of international law.
But more than that, the world knows that.
I mean, everyone knows this.
Is the United States signing off on whatever Israel does just because it does it?
Or where do we draw the line?
We have to have some line of what's our interest, what's the world's humanity's interest in all of this.
And Donald Trump is not willing to do that.
IHR.org, ladies and gentlemen, for Mark Weber's Institute for Historical Review, ihr.org.
He has been doing this longer than I, and not many can say that.
A quarter of a century.
I go back, Mark goes back longer than that, not to age him, but just to show you the level at which he has excelled for so long.
IHR.org, you're going to want to stay there and support the work and make it a daily read.
We'll be right back.
We have Mark for thankfully the rest of the hour as we continue to allow him to provide us with a clear and composed perspective.
Stay tuned.
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State lawmaker Senator John Hoffman and his wife were shot and badly wounded.
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Minnesota Department of Public Safety Commissioner Bob Jacobson says they have concerns.
The reference materials that were inside of the vehicle that we saw, we have no understanding that any of the No Kings events would be targeted, but we also find it of interest to the public that these would be in there, and we want to alert everybody until we do that.
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Also at townhall.com, public policy expert Matthew Contanetti says Israel was absolutely justified to attack Iran's nuclear facilities.
Israel had ample reason to launch this strike, and it's a blow for world peace that Israel is launching.
Iran is the greatest sponsor of terror in the world.
Its proxies were behind the October 7th attack.
Iran and its proxies have kidnapped and murdered Americans since the Islamic Revolution in 1979.
And Israel, warning of more attacks on Iran after Tehran has fired waves of missiles and drones that killed at least three people and wounded dozens more in Israel.
That huge parade today beginning to wind down now in the nation's capital.
It has been honoring the 250th anniversary of the United States Army.
More on these stories at townhall.com.
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A long, long time ago.
Where have all the flowers gone?
Young girls, pick them everyone.
When will they ever learn?
When will they ever learn?
Mark Weber, exactly right.
One of the things that made Trump so alluring to us in 2016 was his opposition to the neocon wars, the Bush wars.
Where are we now?
That is the question that is going to dominate this hour and for hours ongoing the rest of this month and for who knows how long.
But we have Mark Weber back with us now, the director of the Institute for Historical Review, ihr.org.
And the question of what Trump knew when he knew it, how complicit he was in it, that will continue.
But first, Mark, I want to resume this conversation now with your personal experience.
I say with Iran, or should I say in Iran, but you've made three visits there and you've met with a wide variety of people.
As we said during your introduction this hour, you have addressed meetings there in Tehran, the capital, alongside the president of Iran at that time.
What was your experiences?
I mean, please share us with that.
There's very few people we could ask that question of.
Well, I mean, Iran is not the United States.
It's not Europe.
It's an Islamic republic.
It takes its religion very seriously.
It's committed to supporting and promoting Islam in the world.
They take that seriously.
That's not my...
That's not the way I want our government organized, of course.
Of course, there's big differences.
But that's, okay, that's the way they do it.
But they're not stupid.
Iran is a very ancient, or Persia is a very ancient civilization.
Iranians are very proud people.
They're very proud of being Iranian.
They look back on a very impressive history that goes back thousands of years.
And in fact, both the Shia Muslim identity and the Iranian national identity are both very important.
I think probably the Iranian identity is even stronger.
That's one of the reasons why Iran held up for eight years under a very brutal war with Iraq, in which Iran was completely isolated in the world.
Virtually the entire world was supporting, at that time, Saddam Hussein.
It's hard to believe or remember now because later the United States said Saddam Hussein was a terrible guy.
But the point is, it's not a first world country, but it's not poor either.
It's not a backward country.
It's not a Central African country or something like that.
It has a modern subway system, very many modern things.
Of course, the highways are filled with cars and so forth.
And many Iranians are very intelligent.
As we've seen, many Iranians have been living in the United States, and of course, in other countries, many of them are very capable people.
Now, of course, there's big differences.
And my interest in going to Iran was twofold.
First of all, I just wanted to better understand the country because it's an important country.
Some 80, more than 80, 90 million people.
And it's a major producer of oil, big country in the region.
The second reason was my big interest is to, and I've said this over and over, is to avoid war.
These wars are very destructive.
And there's no reason why there should be major wars involving Iran and especially why the United States, which is my major concern, should even be involved in such wars.
So that's really a short answer, I guess.
I had many conversations.
I was very struck by the mood of people and how they look at things.
Countries are like individuals.
They have different personalities.
That's always been true in human history, and it's always going to be true.
And the idea that some American leaders have had that somehow we can turn different countries into versions of ourselves is just foolishness.
It's not going to happen.
China isn't going to become like the United States.
Argentina will not.
Japan will not.
Poland will not.
These countries have their own history and their own heritage and their own personality.
And that should be respected because otherwise we're involved in constant wars.
And that's one of the reasons why Trump got so much support.
He told, he was, as you say, very much against this neocon, neoliberal idea that we can sort of turn other people into some versions of ourselves.
And we saw how foolish that was in Afghanistan, in Iraq, in Vietnam, and in other places where the United States has tried to be the big lecturer and the big model for other countries that have different histories and different personalities than we do.
Well, again, Mark, this is when we put together that conference two weeks ago today, this weekend, two weeks ago this weekend in South Carolina.
In addition to the current, the former, the aspiring elected officials, I thought it was essential to have you, Kevin McDonald, Sam Dixon, and Brad Griffin along as part of our program mainstays.
And as Brad has written at Occidental Dissent this week, that there are massive political headwinds that confront the Trump administration with regard to this current conflict.
There is no public support for going to war with Iran.
And the strikes that Israel put forth this week are already polling very badly.
Brad continues, support for Israel among Republican voters, among Republican voters, has dropped 20 points since October 7th.
This reflects the overall trend of declining support for Israel across the political spectrum.
Democrats and independents are outright hostile to Israel.
Republicans are split, but it is the MAGA base that is opposed to the strikes.
So keep in mind that these polls only reflect attitudes towards Israel and support of Israel striking Iranian nuclear facilities.
But going to war with Iran is a separate question altogether, and that polls far more poorly.
Trump isn't capable of selling that idea to his own base, Mark, much less to the rest of the country.
So that brings us back full circle to one of the reasons we had you on tonight.
MAGA is consolidating around the idea that Israel started this war without our support and should own it, and we should stay out of it.
When I say MAGA, I'm talking about the MAGA tier media.
Charlie Kirk, Matt Walsh, Tucker Carlson.
Tucker Carlson has gone so far as to embrace the position that we should drop Israel altogether.
Netanyahu's actions and the GOP Congress clapping like seals is only reinforcing the stereotype that Israel is an albatross that tries to manipulate our government into fighting wars in the Middle East.
This is accelerating the collapse in support of Israel on the right.
Your response to that, Mark, because you've been there for decades.
Yes, well, I mean, a poll just a few months ago showed that among young Republicans, there's a majority support of an arms embargo against Israel, for heaven's sakes.
I mean, this is a major thing that's a trend that's taking place, and it's especially pronounced among younger people.
Younger people didn't grow up with the intense propaganda that so many people were, Americans were subjected to in the 50s and 60s and so forth.
And social media has done a lot to change perceptions of Israel.
And people realize, of course, it should be obvious, Netanyahu is doing what he thinks is best for Israel and for the Jewish people.
He claims to be a spokesman for both.
But those interests are not our interests.
That's the main point.
And especially now, those poll numbers that you cited are true because most Americans are very aware that we have enormous problems here in our society.
The focus should be on dealing with the problems here at home.
If we can't even get our act here at home, all the more reason we shouldn't be off involved in conflicts overseas, especially at a time when the American government is essentially out of money.
People have made this point over and over.
I've made it.
So many others have made it, that the United States is sustaining its standard of living as it is by going into debt.
And that's not sustainable over the long run.
That's not going to happen forever.
People know this.
And that's all the more reason why supporting Israel, giving a blank check to Israel, is less and less popular.
Having said that, it's important to realize that the United States is this clapping seal, you might say, for Israel, because not because it's in America's interest, it's because the organized Jewish community has flim-flammed, cajoled, persuaded, deceived American people about themselves and their own country and their own interests.
That's an enormous, I mean, there's no country in which the organized Jewish community has this kind of power and clout as it does here in the United States.
And that's why Netanyahu can come to the United States and get standing ovations.
He doesn't get them from his own parliament.
And no other president gets the standing ovations that Netanyahu does from the U.S. Congress.
That's a perversion of America.
And every time that happens for thoughtful people, it's just one more indication of how corrupt America has become.
That we're giving more applause.
And Netanyahu, particularly, this is a man who has lied to the American public for years.
I can't even begin to catalog his long list of deceit toward the American people.
Well, I mean, there was a meme circulating on social media as we take this break for the last quarter of a century.
We've been on the precipice of Iran gaining nuclear capabilities, according to Netanyahu.
It hadn't happened yet, but we were always on the brink of it.
We'll be right back.
Hey there, TPC family.
This is James Edwards, your host of the Political Cesspool.
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You know where the solution can be found, Mr. President?
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The solution to so many of our problems at all times and in all places is to fall in love, get married, and have some kids.
Well, so Mark and I were having perhaps the most interesting conversation of the, well, I say that with trepidation.
Not really, but this entire hour has been completely informative and engrossing.
But we were having a very fine conversation indeed during the commercial break about where we stand and where we're going and everything that's playing into it, including what's going on in the MAGA movement.
One last time.
Trump is frozen like a deer in headlights, it seems, caught between his own political base, his donors, Netanyahu and the Republican Congress.
You know, you can't sell a war, Mark, in Iran if you can't get Charlie Kirk on board, right?
I mean, you know, even Charlie Kirk is saying he's not going to support this.
And Tucker Carlson is saying we've got to throw out all these bums like Sean Hannity, his former colleague who followed him on Fox News for supporting things like this.
So we're going to wait to see how all these chips fall.
But I think we would agree that an unpredictable chain of events has been unleashed here.
Once again, our friend and your co-headliner two weeks ago at the conference, Brad Griffin writes, it's not as simple as we are at war with Iran.
Nothing has happened yet.
We are not at war with Iran.
Maybe as a proxy, maybe as a golem, but America has not officially declared war on Iran.
We await that Pearl Harbor 9-11 moment, perhaps, but except for shooting down missiles and drones, we have not plunged in headfirst.
Does Israel have that pool anymore, Mark?
I mean, to have boots on the ground, you've got to go through sovereign states that exist in between Israel and Iran.
Where is this going?
Where will we be a week from now?
These are big questions.
That's why we brought you on tonight.
I'm sure that Trump himself is very much against putting American troops in Iran because he knows that that was a complete fiasco in Iraq.
It would bring down his administration.
And it's what got him elected.
In large part, what got him elected?
What got him elected?
He knows that.
That's what I like to think.
I mean, I keep hoping common sense might prevail.
Having said that, though, Israel will probably be able to achieve its tactical goals in this war without American support.
Israel knows that if things really go bad in Israel, the United States will back them up.
They've been given that assurance over and over by not only Trump, but by others.
But I don't think that's necessary.
Israel has, as I said, far more military capability.
Having said that, it's interesting that one or two of these F-55 fighter planes have been brought down by Iran.
It's the first time that these ultra-modern American military planes provided to Israel have actually been shot down.
I mean, Iran has some clout, and it's proven much more, it's even more robust than people expected, even though it was Israel that struck first.
But having said that, really, Israel is a far, far more potent country.
As I said, it has nuclear weapons.
It has nuclear submarines.
It has state-of-the-art airplanes.
Iranian Air Force is really out of date.
It's not a modern air force.
And they have missiles, but you might notice there haven't been really Iranian military aircraft in the air because they don't have really a modern Air Force or a modern Navy.
So anyway, that's why I don't expect that American troops on the ground will even be necessary or called for.
It's enough to just get American complicity and supply it with the weapons and the money that it has been given.
That's my guess at this point.
Again, things can spin out of control.
And also, Iran doesn't have any real allies.
It has allies, but not allies that are willing to go to war to defend Iran.
So that's, I think, where things stand.
But I want to get, I think it's important to tell people just what the litany of deceit that Benjamin Netanyahu is guilty of to the American public over the years.
I mean, in 1992, he was already saying, that's more than 33 years ago, that Iran was three to five years away from having nuclear weapons.
He told the United Nations, General Assembly, Iran's maybe a year or two away from having nuclear weapons.
He said that, what, in 2012 or so?
I mean, he's been making these claims for years, but the world knows it's a lie, really.
Americans might be impressed because Netanyahu grew up in America.
He speaks fluent American English, and that seems impressive, and he seems tough.
But he's a tough man, not for America.
He's a tough man for his own people's interests.
And those interests are not our interests.
That's the important thing that I think that we have to realize.
And what this is doing, as you say from the MAGA base, is forcing Americans to really look coldly, soberly in the face the whole question of why are we supporting Israel?
That's really the major thing I think that's coming out of this.
It's a reassessment of why are we even an ally of Israel, by the way, a country that we don't even have a formal treaty with, military treaty with.
That's a bigger point.
And it's part of a larger trend, calling into question, as Trump has done on so many issues, shaking things up and making us re-examine assumptions or premises that everybody thought were already settled and set in place.
I have a thought attendant to that.
But first, we will share this comment that has come in from a listener, a lady, and of all places, Spanish Fork, Utah.
Excellent program with Mark Weber.
So they're in Utah, the wilds of Utah, Mark.
You are being heard tonight.
And indeed, thanks to our AM radio affiliates and the Liberty News Radio Network across the country and around the world on the live stream.
But this question about where we go from here, is this another entangling alliance of Israel and the United States?
Or is this a last gasp of that current order?
I don't know.
I don't know.
I could see it either way.
Because I can see it.
Go ahead.
James, it is changing.
It is definitely changing.
Not just in the polls that you cited, but the fact that especially younger people get this.
That's a very important thing.
Jonathan Goldblatt, the head of the ADL, two years ago, he just said, we're in big trouble.
Younger people don't believe us anymore.
We're losing younger people.
Younger people don't grow.
They become very jaded on official propaganda of whatever kind.
And they just ask themselves, well, these obvious questions, what's in it for America?
What's good about it?
I mean, it's very hard to make a convincing case why American billions and billions of dollars or American lives should be given to a country that doesn't, it's not good neither for us.
It's not good for the humanity, you could say.
And it's embarrassing, really.
Increasingly, people see this.
And so I think something has changed.
And it's especially changed because the, you might say the brutal face of Israel has been made obvious to the world in the last two years and how they treat Gaza.
I mean, this is just unbelievable what Israel is doing.
And Trump doesn't seem to really grasp just how serious this is.
He's an older man.
He's born and raised in the 40s, 50s, whatever.
And he doesn't, I don't think he sees the situation with the clarity that I think many younger people do today.
And that'll be increasingly thing.
I wish that Donald Trump of 2016 were back.
He'd be pointing his finger at Donald Trump today.
Well, it's certainly easier.
It's certainly easier to take demonstrative stands when you're a candidate than when you are a president.
Yeah, exactly.
Yes, of course.
You know, conflicting spears coming at you.
But I get it.
I mean, but this is, no, I agree.
But it's certainly more difficult to be President Trump than candidate Trump.
But I do think, though, Mark, still that his instincts are with us.
That'll get me some negative comments with some of our more ardent adherents.
But I think that, and I'm not so sure that we would ask you this with a minute remaining, and we will have Mark Weber back on next week.
Very rarely do we have a guest on week-to-week or back-to-back.
But Mark Weber will be back with us next week.
We solidified that during the commercial break.
But, you know, I would ask you this, Mark.
All things considered, current issues being factored into that as well.
Are we better off now, or are we better off with Hillary Clinton or Biden or Kamala?
You asked this question, I think, just before the election.
I have to ask this every time.
Yeah, it's the same question.
I mean, nobody knows for sure, of course.
I mean, certainly Donald Trump has done many good things.
I think the biggest service he's done, and I said this in my talk, he's made Americans rethink everything.
He's forced issues to the forefront.
That's all to the good.
That's really the great legacy.
He said out loud, the emperor does not have clothes on.
I mean, he says that about the system.
That's already a big service.
We've been going for decades along in a kind of charade that everybody knows is really a fake in many ways.
And he's popularized the term fake news.
Those are really shaking up the system.
And that's a huge service, I think, to make people.
Having said that, Donald Trump, I said this already in 2016.
He's mainly concerned about himself, unfortunately.
And I think his instincts in some ways are good.
But he doesn't even know how to articulate those instincts in a coherent way.
And that's a big problem.
His movement is essentially a reactionary movement.
It's a protest movement against what's happening in our country.
And so that's why it's very difficult for him to have a coherent policy looking ahead for the future.
Hab Buchanan or Mark Weber, he is not.
But are we better off now than we would have been with Jeb Bush, Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, Kamala Harris?
Yes.
The answer is yes.
Clearly, yes.
With all the faults.
Yes.
The answer is yes.
Hey, if you've enjoyed Mark Weber tonight, you're going to get him again next week.
Same time, same place.
Thank you, Mark, for that.
We'll be right back to close out the show tonight with our learning final hour.