Going to War (again) with Dan McKnight

Dan McKnight. God bless it, sir. How are you? Great. How are you? I'm doing well, man. I think this is round three for you.

That is the third time the charm. You're in the studio. One of them. Hopefully more than just your mom and my mom will watch.

Listen, I asked you to come in. We find ourselves as a country in another international conflict. This was one of the primary platform promises that this administration said no, no more wars, no more unending wars.

And I spoke with Senator Jim Rish actually a couple of weeks ago and his point on our international conflict was like, look, whether you like it or not, President Trump started this thing and we're in this and we need to support it.

You are one of the few people I've met who has served our country and really looks at this and and lots of international conflicts and you look at it from a human standpoint as a person standpoint, not just playing a game of risk and moving pieces around.

But like those are men and women that have families. Those are men and women that did not sign up for these types of things, especially your work with the National Guard. It's like you sign up to take care of your country here locally domestically and then all of a sudden you find yourself in you know across the country or excuse me across the world.

Talk to me about what you see as as things that have gone right things that have gone wrong and where we are with our conflict in Iran.

Sure. First, I'm going to say that every person that signs up and puts that uniform on understands that at some point you're going to be called on to go and fight America's wars defend America's interests.

And we live with that. It's heavy. I wouldn't say anybody in the military ever runs away from that. We just hope that when it's time to go that the country is willing to back us and that we do it with a proper authority, a clear vision and that it's a just cause.

And the way that our country is established from our founders is we established just cause by separating the war powers by giving the power to Congress to declare war so that when we go to war with a proper authority, it's done with the informed consent of the American people and then the country is all in.

And this war in Iran, I'm not going to argue the merits of the war.

President knows more than I do is Iran a threat, probably, are they an imminent threat? That's the question that's facing us today. An imminent threat would allow the president to engage the military full scale to defend America.

The problem is that all 18 intelligence agencies said that the war was not imminent that Iran was not an imminent threat to the United States. And we went anyway.

And that's a clear violation of the promise that we made when we raised our hand and sworn oath to the Constitution.

And so the human side of it always weighs supreme in my mind, but my fight is always with the process. It's always the process.

Senator Rich has advocated his responsibility. He's one of the people that's supposed to debate this, discuss it, vet the intelligence, present it to America, vote and put his name on it and represent Idaho.

And when we do that, it's the president would have had way more ability to prosecute this war.

He had to invite to the defense contractors into DC the other day and begged them to start making more Tomahawk missiles because we spent eight years worth of our supply in the first 72 hours, or almost out of Tomahawks.

If we had declared war, the industrial base would have already been activated. He could have come and deared the industrial base and forced them into mass production.

So when you do this half bait, we limit the president's authority and his ability to prosecute the war. And ultimately what pays the price is humans, families.

We've seen the 13 that come home and flag draped boxes and they've become an op-ed. They've become a talking point. They were on a fundraising letter that the president sent out a picture of him at a dignified transfer.

It's not what it's supposed to be. That's supposed to be a very solemn moment. It's supposed to be a very sacred moment. They gave their life. They gave everything they have in this country and it's being put on a fundraising letter.

I have a great appreciation for that. I see things like those photos being utilized by both parties for commentary.

That's right. They're being utilized by the left by say how terrible this is. They're being utilized by the right to galvanize people and gain support financially and politically.

And those men and women in those boxes were not here to be be political talking points. They gave everything to the country to me and you for will reap the benefits the rest of our lives.

It's very disheartening to see that when you talk about the 18 intelligence agencies, right? And I can't not it's like I know the CIA, right? The NSA, the DHS.

Right? Like I got three. It's like the other. I don't even know. I don't even know if the DHS is an intelligence agency. They have one, but it's not them. Okay. There we go. So I got two. So the point is you have these other agencies that are not elected officials that do know they're supposed to be theoretically the intelligence arm for us.

So they're like, listen, man, we know a lot of things that you guys can't know and you shouldn't know. For a number of strategic reasons, like you shouldn't all know who, you know, the agents are, right? Like somebody has to hold that information though and help those people.

So they're the ones that know all of the goodies. They're the ones that are like, listen, man, they're the ones that brief the president's right. And taking that into consideration, not a one of them said, this is a threat and it's an imminent threat.

Not one. And this is an official like, do they have like a red and a green flag? Like, how do we know that they're what what their specific position?

Yes, that's a great question. Tulsi Gabbard is the director of national intelligence, right? She leads the office of the national tells. She leads all 18. She represents all of the agencies. And it's the DIA, the CIA, the military, the Army's intelligence, the Air Force intelligence, all of them, the Department of Energy's intelligence wing, which are the actual nuclear scientists that study this and read the reports.

And then every year they put together an annual threat assessment report. In last year in March of last year, she went before Congress and testified that Iran did not have the capability to make a long-range nuclear bomb.

We bomb them anyway in June. She went back again this month to do the annual threat assessment again in the middle of operation, Epic Fury, and said again, Iran does not pose an imminent nuclear threat.

She wrote that in her statement and submitted it ahead of time to the committee. And then once she gave her verbal testimony, she left that part out. She didn't say that that part out loud.

And Senator Warner, kind of a jerk, but he caught it and he stopped her right there and he said, why did you leave that part out? The one part that contradicts the president, why did you leave that out of your statement? And she goes, I was running long on time.

So you can read her own words where the threat assessment said there is no imminent threat, none whatsoever. No agencies come out. And in fact, we just saw Joe Kent resigned because this he was the one that was doing the briefings. He was the one that was analyzing reports.

He's the director of the counterterrorism center and he had the highest level of clearance. And he said that there is no threat and I can't in good conscious support this war.

And he did probably the one thing that maybe the most admirable thing you can do when you disagree, you don't just soldier on either you put up a fight internally or you resign.

It's probably the highest moral authority in government. Then he went on all the networks and talked about it. And that was probably where he drew the iron of the president. That's where the anger came from that he went out and opened his mouth.

But if you look back through time, people have done this before Lieutenant Colonel Danny Davis could I ask sure could you give me some background on Joe sure and and what who he was what he's done for the country and then what has happened to him as of late.

Yeah, just for absolute transparency. I know Joe. Well, he's a friend. We hunt geese together in Wyoming. We've sat and shared many cocktails. I talked to him an hour after resigned.

Joe was a decorated special special forces soldier. He was in the green braze. He had six bronze stars. He's been awarded medals of valor. He served our country. He had 11 combat deployments.

And he came home and his wife Shannon. He met her on an operation. And she's a linguist in a cryptologist speaks multiple languages. She was in the Navy and she went back to Syria.

And Joe was ending up as any as career. And at the same time she was in Syria in 2019, the Department of Defense told President Trump that we no longer had any troops in Syria, because he'd ordered them to be to to leave get out of Syria. And they said, done mission accomplished. And then Shannon dies. So President Trump.

Rightfully was this was angry at his department of defense. This is I think General Mattis was the secretary of defense at the time.

And so he was angry. And so he's at Dover, waiting for Shannon to come home. And he was there to greet her and to dignified transfer and Joe's there to wait for his wife. And they got to talk.

And Joe said, Mr. President, what the heck are we doing there? You said we were out. You lied. You lied to us. And President Trump took that very personally and it became very close with Joe.

And Doris Joe to run for Congress twice in the state of Washington. He lost both times, but he ran. He had a temporary job at the CIA, but he quit that after Shannon died because he had to care for his boys. They were one and three.

And then he became Tulsi Gabbard chief of staff. And then he was nominated to run the counterterrorism center. And he's literally given everything in his life for this country. And now he's being destroyed, being destroyed.

But what happened when he resigned? He walked into the president's office. He met with JD Vance ahead of time. JD tried to talk him out of it.

He said, no, I'm going to do this. I'm going to do it the right way. I'm going to go straight to the president. He Tulsi Gabbard's his boss, but he went to the president because that's who appointed him.

And he sat down and talked to the president. The president was very friendly with him, understood, but was disappointed. Sure.

If anybody knows the president, he's very kind in person. He is a very, we talked about this earlier, the personalities and there's people. And he was very kind of Joe, very gracious, thankful for a service.

And Joe left knowing that he was about to be destroyed because that's how it works. They have to keep selling the narrative. So he resigned. And he, when I talked to him, I was actually flying to DC. And I'm texting him, well, I'm on the plane. So the news just broke. And I'm like, Joe, are you all right? You know, are you safe?

I don't know what's going to happen. And he goes, yeah, I'm on my way to go tell my story. And I said, Tucker, question mark. And sure enough, that's where he was always way to. And his story went out and it's had I think 85 million full views of the full to our episode.

And they, they now they're circling the FBI saying that he's under a probe from the FBI for leaking information. Joe's adamant that he has not leaked information.

And he is that FBI probe about a possible leak. We only know about it because it was leaked for people from the FBI have leaked that there was a probe into a leaker. I find the irony too rich.

But now Joe is, he's steadfast. He's strong. I talked to him again this weekend. And he is, he's committed. He's pocket committed. He's not backing down. And he's willing to say everything he can that is not classified.

And he'll continue to fight for this country. And he doesn't know whether that's going to lead him. He has no idea. But right now he's just loving on his boys.

Um, you, there's a concern that that I think you have that you've kind of expressed me that there is no, I'm a civilian. Okay. So I can, I can disagree with our defense plans. I can disagree with our, with our, you know, international actions.

I don't really know. Right. And it talk is cheap. I have, I am not a service person. I have not, you know, sacrificed. I don't know these things. Okay.

But when you have somebody like Joe, who is, who is in the know, who does really understand this has paid a price and continues to pay a price.

And those people can't talk. I as a civilian get very worried. So I'm like, listen, I rely on these other people. Right. Like I don't have the capacity to understand all of this myself. I rely on these other people.

And there's a concern now that was like, okay, the problem is those people are being cowed. Those people are being bullied and pushed down to the point where we're not going to have, we're not going to have any dissension.

And that's when like the real bad stuff starts when, when, when the people that do know when are supposed to be looking out for us. And again, we can disagree 100%. Like people get to disagree and have different positions. That's plain as they.

But when people start, you know, obliterating people for speaking up. Right. When people in power started obliterating the people in the know that actually understand what's going on. I get really worried about this.

Me too. And that's the character assassinations, the hardest part. But we've seen it throughout, you know, time you think back to the early 2000s, the most trusted man in all of America.

But beloved by the left and the right, Colin Powell. Right. Everybody believed that he was the leader that we wanted that we needed.

A generation of veterans looked to him because he was a great warrior during the Vietnam era, a great leader during the 80s in the Cold War. And here he is. Now he's the, our delegate to the United Nations to deliver a speech to the world.

Telling them that there's weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. And we're going to commit American lives and treasure to go take care of it.

He knew or should have known that that intelligence was fabricated. Later in life, he apologized in his own memoirs, said he made a mistake.

But what people like Joe and myself and other veterans need today is last generations veterans that are still in government, still in positions to know of, to know these things to stand up and say, hey, something's not right.

If we're going to commit our best, our brightest, our bravest to these things, we should at least get it right. Let's get the purpose right. Let's get the intelligence right.

Just war theory is not just theory. We believe in it. It's part of our country. And if we're going to go, there should be a cause that we, the entire country can get behind.

And I don't mean 100% of the country wouldn't ever going to agree on anything. We can't agree that today's Monday. I mean, is it Monday? I think it's Monday.

And so Joe raises that concern. He's like, veterans, we, when we take the uniform off, we believe in this unwritten rule that silence is honorable, right.

We don't question the narrative. We don't question the mission. We don't say anything that would put our brothers that are still wearing the uniform in jeopardy politics ends at the water's edge. We've all heard that before.

But what we truly need is for the desert storm veterans, the global war on terror veterans to stand up now and protect our next generation of veterans from fighting in another war that is based on false pretenses.

And if we can't believe the intelligence, then we have a mechanism to, to vet that out publicly and really get this nation talking about things like this. And that's Congress.

I, I wasn't paying as close enough attention as I should have back in the early 2000s, but I do remember at that time and then moving forward with the reviews of what commentary was made and what the American people were, were told going into the, you know, a rock war that a lot of it was just, you know, rhetoric.

It was just, you know, they have aluminum tubes sufficient for blah, blah, blah. It's like, okay, that sounds like it's relevant, but it turned out to be not relevant, right.

And I did speak with some service people. They were like, yeah, look, they, the second thing started happening, you could see through satellite data, you know, some things were moved out of the country and blood.

And it's like, okay, like that's relevant to, but overwhelmingly the sentiment was, hey, man, there was a, there was a commentary sold to Congress to get them to go along with it.

And there was a commentary sold to the American public to get the public to go along with it and support it in some way. We haven't really actually had a popular war since, you know, like World War II where people sacrificed at large for it.

But I haven't heard anything about what's going on now. I haven't seen the president take, you know, stay, you know, take to the airwaves and be like, let me explain to you what I know that you should know.

I haven't seen a discussion around Congress about like, let me explain to you what the things you need to consider are. I haven't seen an appeal to anyone at this point to explain, hey, Matt and Dan, these are the things that you guys need to know.

And this is why we're committing these things. Have I just missed, have I missed the news broadcast where all of this came out?

You have to read between the lines. You have to really kind of pay attention. This is where the nerdy side of me comes in. So with when all the intelligence agencies are saying there's no threat.

We sent Jared Kushner, which is Donald Trump's son-in-law and Steve Whitkopf, who was a New York real estate mogul brilliant man as an envoy to try and negotiate peace before we went to war.

They were making progress. They were reporting back that hey, progress would be made. We're coming to terms on the quantity and the level of uranium that they can enrich.

Everything's going great. Steve Whitkopf then comes home after meeting with Benjamin Netanyahu is Israel's prime minister. And he tells the president and he says it publicly in a news interview that Iran is probably a week away from having enough enriched uranium for 10 bombs.

Donald Trump means they have enough for like nine at this point. That right. That's do we have nine nine and a half right nine and three quarters.

And so, you know, they maybe they're cutting their own supply and they have an I don't know what they're doing, but

because you don't go from having zero to having 10 in a week. You got to have nine and seven eighths already.

And if we remember midnight hammer just eight months, nine months ago, we destroyed their entire nuclear capability. That's what we've been told. That's what they went to the airwaves and bragged about.

And so the story came from Benjamin Netanyahu's mouth through Steve Whitkopf to president Trump. That was the entire lane of intelligence. That was it. Nobody else vetted it. Nobody else confirmed it. Nobody else has put their name on it and saying this is true.

And then they put it out to the spin doctors to the Mark Levin's and the Sean Hannity's and the Fox News slop and all that stuff. And it starts to build its own momentum. And eventually the story becomes the verifier of the story. Right. Levin said it.

Mark Levin referenced it. Now it's a reference source. And that's how they did it in the beginning of the Iraq invasion in 2003. And it's just the same playbook being repeated again.

Yes, but at least when it was said in 23 or excuse me, 2003, it was said to us. It was said to Congress. It was said out loud and say like, you guys can take this to the bank.

Weapons of mass destructive WMDs. We have to go in there and people were like, okay, like I guess we got to do this. There's they're not saying that they didn't I didn't see something on Fox News where it's like nine nuclear weapons already.

10th along the way. We have to do something or these birds are flying. That's right. They know that's happened. And that would be a story that I think America could get behind. And in fact, if that was true, if it was actually true, I think the president could have asked for a declaration of war and gotten it in an hour from Congress.

What we have a nuclear Iran that can threaten us that has missile capabilities that can reach Israel and maybe even Europe. Hell, yeah, let's go. And but that didn't happen. Instead, we attacked because we needed the element of surprise is what we're told we didn't we can't tell Congress because we have to protect the men and women in uniform. We have to have the element of surprise. And so now we're in it. But once you're in it, you have Congress has two options. Continue writing the checks or cut the money off. That's the only options that they're there.

The ability to to oversee oversee the more and the efforts is gone. The president's taken it away from them. And so you find me, one member of Congress is going to defund American military while they're in harm's way. It ain't going to happen. Right. So that's what Jim versus point is we're now in it. We now we have to support it.

I don't know if I like that. We did it wrong and we've done it wrong for 84 years since World War two. We've never gone and gotten proper declaration and we have to just support it. I'm tired of being spoon fed something I really don't like to eat.

So what do we do? And if I may ask dumb question, I'm sure we are there with the stated purpose of stopping their nuclear progress. We are there like what is it that is driving our

millet? What's the direction of our military right now? Is there a stated goal? There's like, aha, we destroyed their nuclear infrastructure mission accomplished. We can come home. Right. Is there a stated goal?

There's a stated goal. And then there's the between the lines that if you read you can kind of understand what we're looking at.

And I'll stick to the one that is less likely to get this podcast shadow bands. So the president Trump's list listed his objectives. Destroy their Air Force, destroy their army, destroy their leadership.

It's a regime change war in his own words and to decrease our minimize or completely eliminate their ability to use nuclear energy at all.

Know your front. Know your enriched uranium. No nuclear power. Nothing. And which is weird because it's part of the negotiations. Kushner and Whitcoff offered Iran American nuclear energy will come in.

We'll set up your nuclear power plants at our cost on our dime. I thought it was a brilliant move. We go and we control their nuclear energy. It takes them having uranium off the table.

And now he's saying that they can't have it at all. And so the stated goal is to overthrow the regime and tell me if this sounds familiar. And the people will rise in the streets and greet us as liberators. That's the goal.

How'd that work in Iraq?

Wow. How does it work, Denver?

Ever. No. If somebody were attack our country, even if we hated our leadership, would we rally around the flag? Or would we side with the invaders?

Well, isn't the commentary that the individuals or the citizens are so oppressed that they're waiting for a liberator? That's like that's the story, right? That's the story.

So the bottom line is there is no real clear target that we could hit and then bring our troops home. There is no clear.

You know, end to the checkbook. If this point, it's no man. It's just more money. And anybody, especially ahead of the midterms that votes to defund it or not agree with it, they're done.

So politically, you either fund it. And if you're a let's let's play some political theory. If you're a Republican and you fund it, good for you.

If you're a Democrat and you fund it, your base is coming after you because you're now supporting Donald Trump and his war, right?

If you the Republicans likely aren't going to vote to defund anything, but they don't have to worry about it because they're likely they're alignment with President Trump as a positive, positive attribute going into.

And that it would be hyper cynical to say that's what motivated this or what was part of it, but it sure seems to be something that's playing out.

Well, you know, go back to 2015. Donald Trump was not popular in the Republican Party. He was popular with the people, but not with the career politicians. They all called him, you know, a turn code. They called him a carpet bag or he's not a real Republican.

He was a Democrat in the 90s. They hated him. Mark Levin hated him. Lindsey Graham hated him. They all hated him. Ted Cruz ran against him and said some of the most vile things about him, but now they're all propping him up because they want that endorsement. They want that access.

They want to be seen as the most Trumpian, the most Trumpian. And if you look yesterday, Ted Cruz was interviewed on one show at the same time that Lindsey Graham was being interviewed on, I think it was on MS now.

And at the same time that you can watch the show's parallel to each other, each one is talking about how they pushed the president the most for this war. I pushed him the hardest. I did it because they're both trying to set the stage for who's the most orange.

It's a crazy, crazy thing to watch. And this is the most important. You know, I'm a delegate, right? I went to the RNC as a Trump delegate. He's my guy, but I have to call spade a spade.

You know, if I may, I, I actually really appreciate that. Not because I think that like, yeah, it's funny, but there is a problem that our country is experiencing, which is people have conflated republicanism with conservatism.

Right. They've conflated republicanism with, you know, fiscal responsibility. They've conflated like all of these different things. And in reality, conservativeism is a set of principles that can be applied to any individual policy.

But if you say, if you're like, I'm a conservative, and I don't agree with president Trump on, like you don't, you don't even get to finish your sentence. It's like Rhino or whatever it might be.

There needs to be some capacity for people to parse these two things out and be like, listen, whatever either party does isn't always liberal and it's not always conservative.

Those are just independent principles that exist that can be applied through different policies or it's more conservative, less conservative, whatever it is, it's, it seems so silly to me that we have to have like blind allegiance and, and alignment with principles when they don't align at all with the actual actions of people.

The cult of personality in this country is, it's dangerous. And it's the same on the left as it is on the right. But you talk about conservative principles not being republicanism, it's not, it's just conservative, right.

And what people always say, well, what are you trying to conserve? Well, it's pretty easy. We have a document that says what we would like to conserve. And that's the, the constitution, that's the power of the people that we gave to the federal government to act in a very limited and specific way.

And that's where the conservative comes in. But yeah, the cult of personality thing, I think you're right, is, is maybe the most dangerous part of politics. And if you dare, if you dare stand up and say anything in opposition of the narrative, you just get destroyed and assassinated and we see it in our local party meetings here in Adi County, we see it on the national stage.

It's just, you see it at the Capitol building. How much, how much infighting was there in the Republican Party right now over immigration down to the Capitol building? It's, it's a soap opera you can't stop watching.

Man, what a wild time. Um, so as we're experiencing this in real time, the American public in general, people like me, we don't have a stated goal, we don't have a stated, uh, financial target, we don't have, there's no, there's no real way for us to say this is not going to be an endless war because, primarily, we don't even know why, why were there, aside from regime change, which could take

one week or 5,000, like we just don't know. It could, it could never be ending. Yeah, we're never going to find the next Thomas Jefferson by killing the head of the Iranian state. We're not going to get a Jeffersonian leader. It's not going to happen. It's not their culture. It's not their history. It's not who they are. And, uh, so maybe this war doesn't in five days, maybe it ends in six months, who knows.

But at the end, if it is a short war, do we then say the president was right, just because it happened to be short, does confidence and competence replace process.

What if it was Kamala Harris? What if it was present Kamala Harris that did this? Would we have stumbled our way into World War three? Would she have stumbled in after a night, a bender and push the button?

We have to keep, we have to protect the process just because it's our guy that does it just because he went to Venezuela and won a war in an hour and 42 minutes.

Doesn't make it right. We have a way of doing these things and it's what happens when Donald Trump's gone, what happens if the next leader is Marco Rubio, what happens if it's Hakeem Jeffries.

You know, where do you want that confidence and that trust to be checked? And I think if you don't check your own, you don't have, you have no more authority to check anybody else.

I know this wasn't why I asked you to come in, but do you, do you have any sense of where the Ukraine Russia war is at this point?

I mean, that, yet another thing where people were like, this will be over really fast. At least that's what Russia thought. And the rest of the world was, you know, it seemed to be the census, which was like, there is no way the Ukrainians could like stand up against Russia.

And here we are, man. My mom called me in tears in 22. I'm like, I don't know what to tell you mom. But where are we about where we were before epic fury. It hasn't changed.

They're still fighting in Russia in Ukraine. I remember a campaign promise that I will end that war in my first day. I remember that promise. And I think he's tried. I think he's done a good job.

This is what happens when the empire gets stretched then. You can't fight every fight. You can't keep your hand on everything. And President Trump is an incredible manager. He has incredible instincts.

Maybe the best political instincts of anybody in our lifetime. But this one, he got wrong. Finish, if you want, if you want a new war, you got to finish your last one.

Right. And we, it was a proxy war. We were fighting Russia. We weren't doing it with our own soldiers. We were doing it with our weapons and our money and our intelligence and all of our assets.

And if you wanted to start another war, you should have finished that one first. And now Russia came out and Colonel Doug McGregor, one of the great military leaders of the desert storm era, announced yesterday that he has heard through his sources. He's still very connected to the intelligence agencies that Russia has said if nuclear weapons are used, they will drop a nuclear weapon on Israel.

What happens to America then? We have, we have guaranteed Israel security. We've guaranteed the security of the Gulf coalition countries, the GCC. That's Bahrain and UAE and Saudi Arabia and all the countries on the Gulf.

What happens if Russia drops a nuclear weapon on any of those countries?

We're now in nuclear war, world war, and we would have to respond. So having Russia preoccupied with Ukraine is a bit of a farce. They're not preoccupied. They're paying attention. They want stability. They want to be the power in their region, just like we want to be the power in our region.

And that is not an unfinished problem. And Ukraine right now is still having generations of men just killed, slaughtered on the battlefield. And it's because of our money. It was Lindsey Graham, member that went over there, over and over and over again, that we will stand with Ukraine until my dying day was his statement.

Well, he just made the same statement about Israel. We will stand with Israel till my dying day. Well, Lindsey, how about we'll stand with America until your dying day. I've never heard you say that.

So he's committed hundreds of billions of dollars to Ukraine. He said he was going to personally go to the low country of South Carolina and ask his citizens to go to fight a war for Israel. That's his exact statement.

So he's got this vision of himself that he is the great protector of the world. And he's willing to do it with American sons and daughters. He has no children of his own. He's not going to send his kids.

And that's the that cultural personality we talked about. He wants to be the most tough guy, the most alpha, the most look at me. I am I'm more Trump than Trump. And it's a it's a really kind of a devastating thing to watch.

Are we still I know that a few months back, there was a very famous press conference where, you know, the president of Ukraine came over and, you know, president Trump and vice president Vance essentially just trashed on him. And, you know, it was a very poor exchange. And again, I can't even watch this is ridiculous.

But the sentiment was essentially like we're not supporting you anymore in less blank, blank, blank, whatever those things were has that actually become to fruition is the United States still sending billions of dollars over to Ukraine.

Yeah, we're still sending weapons, which we're running short on. We're sending money. We're sending advisors. The Florida National Guard intelligence.

It's a company of intelligence officers from the National Guard are in Ukraine right now consulting the Florida National Guard.

And believe or not, what we've done with the fuel being cut off through the streets of Hormuz has enriched Russia to be able to continue funding their war because Russian natural gas and oil on the world market now is way more valuable than it was before.

So by engaging in this war that cut off the streets of Hormuz, Russia has benefited to the tunes of countless trillions of dollars.

And so they have more money than they can possibly need now to keep fighting that war indefinitely. We can't outspend them at this point because of the gas shortage in Iran, because we just bombed them to oblivion.

So we destroyed that's why the gasoline price here jumped up like 75 cents overnight. Well, that and Joe Jackson controls the market.

Who's Joe Jackson? Jackson's. Oh, you will be shadow band. Oh my God.

It's all right. People people already come out. That's right. As far as they can. Any excuse to raise fuel prices is going to happen. The fuel that we're putting our cars now didn't come.

It wasn't didn't come out of the ground once epic fury started. We've had it in reserve for a long time. They they hedge, you know how fuel works. They hedge the future prices.

We only get about 8% of our of our petroleum products out of the streets of Hormuz, but having it shut down though, the petrol dollar is what's suffering.

So it's not the price of gas that is that's going up. It's the value of our dollars going down is what's really truly happening.

Do you think that's part of the larger play to deal with our national debt just cross 39 trillion.

And it'll be 40 trillion before talent areas. Oh 40 trillion before tax day for tax day. Yeah, I don't think there's a plan. I don't think anybody in Washington DC saved one or two people that really understand sound currency really care.

Because when you can just print money. You know money printer goes burr right you've heard this in the means they just keep pumping it out and as long as Americans are willing to continue paying 500 700 800 million dollars for a three bedroom home.

It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. We got low interest rates. We got reasonable gas prices. We've got a high quality of standard living. It doesn't matter what our the value of our money is. And I don't think anybody really truly is going to take that on.

The Republicans are going to do it. They haven't passed past a balanced budget in Washington DC and I don't know what eight since the 80s maybe early 90s.

Man, there's too much your damage. That's a tough one. That one too much here. That one actually makes me lose more lose more sleep than the war is what's happening to our country financially.

If I'm asking this is very personal but what do you what do you do in the face of that anxiety because for for me I'll be clear like I I get overwhelmed just trying to understand what's going on in Idaho right let alone the country let alone the world.

And when I look at what's going on in Idaho and in my community my answer is always keep your house in order right keep keep your things squared away. That's it.

You cannot even like God forbid anybody ever looked me and say like hey Matt what would you do don't ask me I have no idea what do you do.

I'm with you I believe in this concept it lift where you stand don't try and overextend yourself make sure everything in your life is balanced.

Take care of if you believe that your security is around precious metals than by precious metals if you believe it's in guns and ammo by guns and ammo.

Whatever your security is make sure your house is taking care of and in my house we without saying too much we believe in preparing and so we are prepared for short emergencies long term emergencies financial emergencies and that's just the way we do it.

But that's the only thing I can do to keep myself sane is to just lift where I stand and not worry about what the country's doing when it comes to currency because there's nothing I can do about it.

Are you you got a well not in my home.

Okay you got a you got a propane generator.

Just keep not in my home not in my home.

I really want to get what I'll talk to you all for about it.

That's a good time.

We have a ranch that's that's a safety place for us.

That sounds amazing.

I'm glad you're the best.

Listen man I really appreciate you making the time here.

I know you're going out of town and you know I when I propose six am of anybody's going to do six and it's going to be Dan McKnight God bless it.

Thank you for condons or anything you want to hit here at the end.

Man if anybody wants to support Joe we have an open letter.

It was published in the American conservative.

You can find it on our socials at troops home US on any of the socials.

But if you go to bring our troops home.us you can click stand with Joe and sign your name to that petition.

We've had 130,000 views on the petition in the last I think it's been 48 hours since we posted it.

And if your name is on that letter you'll be on the right side of history.

That's that's something I feel very very strong about.

God bless you man.

Thanks coming in Dan.

We'll do again.

Thanks man.