Why Trump Might Send Ground Troops to Iran

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What can a pot say to the world, I'm Tommy Vittor, I'm Ben Rhodes.

I was the Iran war in Somalia for you.

I do have this kind of habitual fall asleep and wake up

at 3.30 in the morning and I was ready for my racing.

And then start reading stuff and then you're up, so not a good idea to look at your phone

these days.

Not a good idea to look at your phone ever in the middle of the night.

I break that rule frequently and I do think there's a weird instinctive, I'm not

trying to over dramatize this, but having in eight years had to feel like you had to work

when something terrible in a modern situation.

Yeah, I mean, you just kind of like there's this weird instinctive thing in my body that's

like, do you see the thing where the, where the, when the war started about all these

dads who were saying they had to monitor the situation?

Yeah, yeah, I did.

I did.

I watched CNN all day or in the SMBC or whatever.

Yeah, well, that's basically us.

Well, by the way, it's an interesting war in that regard because, I mean, I hate to

say this, but I don't find CNN's coverage to be particularly eliminating.

Like, I got that guy in CNN.

That guy's good, but some of the, let's just say some of the guest choices and the panels

are pretty, uh, uh, 2004 feeling, you kind of have to really search for your content

on this war.

You know, it's got your mix of outlets and social media and people in the region.

There's clearly censorship happening like, why, why does Al Jazeera have all these images

that don't seem to appear on other stations, you know, it's, yeah, a lot of people covering

it from Israel are probably having to deal with sensors.

The guy's name is Frederick, uh, Pleikin, Pleikin, PLE ITGN, he's doing great job.

He is doing great.

Uh, uh, Frederick, Pleikin, search for him on Twitter if you want to see what CNN's doing

actually in Iran, which is, I mean, it's pretty fucking brave to get in a car and drive

into Iran as it's getting bombed.

Can't get in the Gaza.

Right.

You can get in Iran.

That's a very good point, Ben.

Uh, we're obviously going to focus much of our time today on Iran.

We're going to talk about the total incoherence of the White House's messaging and we're going

to try to figure out genuinely whether this war is about to end, whether it's about to escalate

something in between.

Like, I genuinely don't know.

I'm excited to hear your opinions.

We have not talked about this.

Uh, we'll take through seven to latest, uh, developments from the last week, including

casualties, all things oil and then some scary signs of escalation.

We'll tell you what we know about the new Supreme Leader of Iran and what his selection

signals from the regime will also talk about what a ground operation to get Iran's nuclear

materials would actually entail the latest on the bombing of an Iranian girls school

and then what's happening in Lebanon, uh, and then finally, Ben, we're going to talk

about the US military's new counter-drug mission in Ecuador and then the Gen Z rapper who

is about to be a prime minister of Nepal.

That's actually a fun story.

That's a fun story.

Then you're going to hear my interview with Mike Harawitz.

Um, he's been on the show before he is an expert on how the Pentagon adopts and uses

new technologies.

We talk about the fight between the Trump administration and, uh, the AI company anthropic

over the use of its model, Claude, as well as growing concern about this munitions shortage,

especially missile defense system shortages and how the US is now turning to drone technology

from Ukraine to, uh, close the gap in counter these Iranian drones.

So very interesting conversation with them.

Yeah.

There's a lot there.

I do think, again, I'm glad you did that because the anthropic story is not getting the

attention that it might otherwise get, but it, for the future of humanity, it's hugely

important.

Yeah.

I'd love to know what the Pentagon is doing with, uh, super powerful AI systems.

Why they need autonomous weapons and mass surveillance capabilities.

Yeah.

It seems like something easy to say no to.

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Uh, all right, Ben.

So we're now 11 days into this regime change, where we're with Iran.

Um, the goals in the broader strategy are like somehow less clear, I think now than

when they started.

Uh, we'll do a broader update in a minute on like major developments since our last

recording.

But we just wanted to like recap this, this head spinning messaging shift from the White

House this week.

So the quick version is at the end of last week and over the weekend, Trump was suggesting

like really maximalist goals for the war.

He posted a message on true social where he said, quote, there will be no deal with Iran

except unconditional surrender.

Uh, that freaked out the oil markets, understandably, to the point where on Sunday night, you saw

the price of oil hitting above $120 a barrel, just like exploding.

So it seems like Trump freaked out, uh, the Wall Street Journal reported that his advisors

were telling him like, find an off ramp.

This is going to kill us in the midterms.

So he made this call to CBS news while markets were still open.

The US stock market was still open and basically was like, oh, yeah, the war is about to be

over.

Everything's going to be fine.

And that seems to have worked in the near term, remember because the stock market has

this taco phrase, which is Trump always chickens out, so it folded into that.

But once the markets closed, the messaging changed again.

We had Trump like talking to Republicans at this retreat.

We had him doing a press conference.

And then Pete Hegseth was out this morning, Tuesday morning, doing another press conference.

And this is a super cut that our team put together of Trump and Hegseth messaging from Saturday

through Tuesday that I think kind of gets at the incoherence.

Let's watch.

We're winning the war by a lot.

We've decimated their whole people that fire.

They'll continue.

I'm sure for a little while we took a little excursion because we felt we had to do

an excursion of some people.

And I think you'll see it's going to be a short-term excursion.

We've already won in many ways, but we haven't won enough.

You've said the war is, quote, very complete, but your defense secretary says this is just

the beginning.

So which is it?

And how long should Americans be working on this?

Well, I think you could say about it.

We could call it a tremendous success right now.

As we leave here, I could call it, or we could go further, and we're going to go further.

You probably see Iranian people, you would help them, but it sounds like you're willing

to end this fight after your military objectives have wrapped up.

Is that, isn't that unbetrayal?

Will I help them?

I'd like to.

If they can behave, but they've been very menacing.

Today will be yet again our most intense day of strikes inside Iran.

The most fighters, the most bombers, the most strikes.

I see in the media banners that say war expanding or war spread.

It's actually the opposite.

It's actually quite contained.

So again, I think excellent, super cut there.

So let's just take on this idea.

First of all, quite a message to the Iranian people.

If you can behave, maybe I'll consider supporting you.

What does that mean?

This idea that the war has been a success.

First of all, the nuclear material has not been secured.

We'll get into what that would entail in a bit.

But it's 900 pounds of highly enriched uranium sitting in Iran.

The ballistic missiles are diminished, but not gone.

The US and Israel are not saying they've gotten all their stockpiles.

Before the war, Iran was on a cusp of a leadership transition.

By killing the 86-year-old Ayatollah before he could regenerate himself.

We were so tough, we killed the 86-year-old man, that to die.

Now installed as much younger son, so that's great.

And we might have taken out Iran's navy,

but there are some reports we'll get into in a minute

that they are mining the straight-of-form moves as we speak.

And we only took out the people who are a thousand miles away

who are defenseless with no weapons

and killed them without saving them.

Yeah, we should talk about that.

Because right, there was an Iranian ship in the Indian Ocean

that I believe was unarmed that had been invited

as part of a parade of military assets that we sank,

which is probably a war crime.

Ben, is the war over?

Is it just beginning what's happening?

Trump talks about a war literally like it's a football game.

We got a big lead in the second quarter.

We're winning, and we can call the end of the game whenever we want.

And I think what those clips confirm,

I mean, there are a number of things.

The first thing is that he literally started this war

with no idea what its objective was or what it was going

to lead to or how it was going to end.

I mean, because he himself never defined it.

And we talked about that, but he essentially came out,

made it sound like regime change,

Iranian people rise up, the language of regime change,

the language of unconditional surrender.

He, I, BB Netanyahu, Lindsey Graham,

whatever, small number of people convinced him to do this.

Clearly made him think that this was going to be very easy,

then the regime was about to collapse.

Because by the way, that's the kind of argument

they've been making for years.

Like if only you bomb them, this will be easy,

and they'll all collapse.

I actually think BB Netanyahu knew full well

that this wouldn't happen.

BB Netanyahu knew full well that this would not be quick and easy

and simple.

And frankly, because he wants to destroy Iran

and have it be a violent chaotic place, that's fine with him.

But Trump cannot say what he talks about winning

and, you know, we're achieving our objectives,

but he doesn't say what they are.

Look, what our military objectives are.

I heard him say in the club, you know,

we're achieving our military objectives.

Well, what are the military objectives?

Because we're not achieving any clearly defined objective

that you or I could understand.

And he's got his finger in the wind here,

and it is just appalling.

And we should say it's appalling that, you know,

he seems to care the most about the markets,

you know, not the human beings who are being destroyed,

not the geopolitical consequences

to the United States.

U.S. service members dying, Iranian civilians dying,

Gulf state security being completely punctured,

you know, instability that could be unleashed

for years to come.

He cares about like the price of gas tomorrow

and the stock market, because that's the only kind of metric

that he knows how to pay attention to.

That's appalling.

It is absolutely appalling,

and we should not get accustomed to the fact

that he just lies test relentlessly about war.

Like he is no different than Vladimir Putin or Kim Jong-un.

I think we as Americans, even when we don't like our president,

tend to think of him as a, like a bad,

a really bad version of a bad U.S. president, you know?

So like, we've had president's lie about wars before,

you know, take your pick, I'll be Jay Nixon, whoever.

He's in a whole other category of,

he'll just make stuff up out of whole cloth, you know?

I don't trust anything he's saying.

Not a word.

And we probably get more, not what he said,

but the girl school, those types of things.

Oh yeah, we have another clip of that.

Yeah, so, show you that.

Yeah, unfortunately.

So then there's that.

And then the last thing I'm gonna say about Hegseth

is again, to take a historic analogy,

member the body count, you know, in Vietnam,

the only way that we could kind of try to quantify

the success was like the number of people we killed.

He's taken this to the level of, like the number of bombing

that we do every day is somehow a measure of our success

or that is an insane way to talk.

Today is gonna be even more bombing, you know?

Okay, what are we bombing?

Why are we bombing it?

Where is this going?

Like, he can't answer those questions

and he just goes out there and brags about how many bombs

we're dropping and missiles we're firing.

We don't know what the target set is.

We don't know what we're degrading to what end.

He certainly doesn't seem to know

and he's the Secretary of Defense.

And he does it in this like annoying cat and a hat rhyme scheme,

which is really grating for just being.

Yeah, and so like what you have is a kind of clueless

U.S. government that has no idea why it's doing this

other than maybe Israel was gonna do it

and we had to come in or I just don't know what we're doing.

Why that?

And we can go through like they can blow up

some more nuclear material.

The Iranians will regenerate it

because they know how to do that.

They can blow up a bunch of ballistic missiles.

The Iranians will regenerate their ballistic missile program.

They killed the supreme leader.

Now we're the younger supreme leader.

Like this, this is making everything worse.

It's not making anything better.

And it's creating all these risks,

some which we'll get in here.

And they don't even know why they're doing it.

Yeah, there's a big picture of strategy piece missing here.

So we're gonna go deeper on the supreme leader

in a second, the ground operation,

how Democrats should respond

and then the latest on Lebanon.

But just something like quick news updates

in the last week.

And so in terms of the casualty count

for the broader region so far,

these are from official government sources.

So for the U.S., it's seven U.S. service members have been killed.

But today we learned that 140 have been wounded,

including eight who are seriously wounded.

So that is new information.

Iran says 1,255 people have been killed

in 12,000 have been injured.

Obviously that number is probably growing as we speak.

Israel says 12 killed over 1,900 injured.

Lebanon says 486 killed, over 1,000 injured.

UAE's death toll is six Kuwait reports six dead as well

and Bahrain reports one.

And then on the oil front,

the Trump seems to primarily care about.

As we're recording, oil is back down to about 86 dollars per barrel.

But the Strait of Hormuz is still effectively closed.

And there are reports right before we started recording

that U.S. intelligence is either starting to see indications

that Iran is taking steps to deploy mines

in the Strait of Hormuz or CNN one even further

and said that Iran has begun laying mines.

They said it was a couple dozen in recent days.

So after those reports, Trump posted something

on true socials saying that, quote,

we have no reports end quote of Iran mining the Strait.

But that if Iran did do it, he wants them removed

or else there will be a major military response,

which as far as I can tell where are we.

We're major than doing.

Yeah, so that clears things up.

But if the Strait is mine,

it would be a disaster for shipping.

And if shipping is shut down in the Strait of Hormuz,

the oil producers in Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Iraq,

they can't ship their petroleum products out.

They will have to either further cut production

or fully stop production in ways

that could permanently impact supply.

So like watch this space as people say

and also like congrats Vladimir Putin

because you're now getting in a bunch more revenue

because the price of oil just went way up.

So first of all, we heard in that clip,

Pegs SA, this war is contained

and getting smaller, even though the bombing

is getting bigger.

There are 700,000 displaced people in Lebanon

because of this war.

Like the violence being unleashed in Lebanon

would normally shock the conscience,

the front page news.

I'm sure the reason Israel is doing it

is because they know that the tensions on Iran, so we go.

But the war is in Lebanon.

It's in every Gulf state firing missiles at Turkey.

It's like this war is not contained.

No, it's a further thing.

And part of what is so frustrating

is that the people, those of us

who've been warning against this type of war with Iran

for 15 years, all of these things were very predictable.

These are the things that were going to happen

and they seem caught off guard that they're happening.

And it is, it's horrible that we should just pause

for the people of Lebanon that there's a normalization

and a routinization of Beirut's being bombed again

for the umpteen time, right?

Then if you get to the straights of our moves,

again, any Iranian war game scenario knew

that the extreme version of what the Iranians could do

is mine the straight.

Because if they threaten the straights of our moves,

even if they blow up a tanker,

it has a huge impact for a period of time,

but then once the hostilities seem like they have diminished

that traffic begins, it takes months and months

and months to demine the straights of our moves.

And so if you are disrupting or halting

the traffic of 20% of the world's energy,

the oil and gas coming out of the straights of our moves,

the economic consequences that could be absolutely catastrophic

and go far beyond high oil prices and gas prices.

It could be a seismic shock to the global economy.

Again, very predictable.

I'm not sure why Trump is surprised by that.

And he has no strategy to do with it

other than to bomb them more.

That is a logic of escalation of a regime change war.

Oh, I'm not able to get you to do what I want by bombing you.

So I'm just gonna keep bombing you more,

which is gonna make you want to do more to hurt me.

I keep minding the straights of our moves,

keep shooting at the Gulf States.

And this is the other crazy thing I see

and how Trump talks about this.

He thinks he controls the timeline, he doesn't.

No, he can stop bombing in two weeks.

The Iranians could still mind the straights of our moves.

They're not going anywhere.

They could still launch supercell tax.

They don't give a shit about Trump's timeline.

The Israelis certainly don't seem to care.

And so this idea that he's in control of events

is such a fiction.

Like he has taken a war to,

like this is not the assassin of Soleimani

where you can calibrate or even the 12-day war.

We, by going for a regime change,

by killing the Supreme Leader,

who's also the religious leader of Gia Islam,

whatever you think of the guy and you as a creep.

During Ramadan.

Yeah, during the war.

Like the idea that you can like neatly say,

this is a, we had a 12-day war

and it's a 19-day war this time.

No, it's one big war.

This is the same war as the 12-day war, too, by the way.

Like you don't have multiple wars

with the same country within a year

and get to call them different wars

because you want to have shorter timelines.

We are at war with Iran on an open-ended basis,

even if we stop bombing in a couple weeks.

Yeah, this is not terrorists where you can turn it off.

Speaking of oil, I mean, over the weekend,

the Israelis bombed 30 Iranian oil depots.

I'm sure folks saw these images.

There were massive fires right in Tehran.

It created these like apocalyptic scenes

of these massive black clouds,

like it was dark during the day.

And then you had literally had oil raining down

on an entire city of 10 million people

that could create health problems for generations.

The Trump administration leaked to Axios

that they were mad about these strikes

that the Israelis did this,

but it's not really clear to me if they were mad

because this is oil that will be needed

by the Iranian people or if Trump was just mad

that it spooked the oil markets.

The other kind of major escalatory development

from over the weekend then was the targeting

of desalination plants.

So Iran accused the US of hitting

one of their water desalination plants.

So in return, they targeted a desalination plant in Bahrain.

And if that kind of like escalatory tit for tech continues,

it could have devastating consequences

because Bahrain is basically totally dependent

on desalination for its fresh water.

I think Israel gets 80% of its water from desalination quake.

It's 90% of its supply.

So I mean, that's people just like literally

not being able to drink, they'll die.

On Monday, as we mentioned,

NATO defenses shot down a second missile

from Iran over Turkey.

US diplomats were pulled from a consular facility

in southern Turkey.

So back to this thing being contained,

it ain't contained.

And then finally, there's some data out today

indicating that the UAE's missile defense systems

might be degrading.

On March 10th, 25% of Iran's drones

made it through the UAE's missile defense systems.

The previous high was 10% on March 3rd.

So it's like, it's not clear if the Iranians are learning

or if the UAE is like running out of missiles

or if the radar is being gone or something's impacting it.

There's also reports today that the US

is taking missile defense systems from Asia

and redeploying them to the Middle East.

So again, so much for dealing with the threat from China.

Well, first of all, on the oil strikes

beyond the horrific scenes and potential

horrific human cost of those strikes,

what does that have to do with degrading the ballistic missiles?

What does that have to do with degrading nuclear program?

Don't tell me that this is about degrading

and running capabilities.

Your Israel is trying to destroy Iran.

They're trying to destroy the Iranian regime.

But they're also just, I mean, what is that?

I mean, and so they're going to try to spin their victory

as, you know, we took out this many ballistic missile sites.

Well, then why are you bombing desolination plants?

Why are you bombing energy infrastructure?

Right?

The US is doing that too with the desolination plants.

By the way, on the oil piece, you mentioned this early,

but it bears repeating, and I have a sub-stack out on this,

if you want to check out my sub-stack.

Putin wins because energy prices are higher

and Russia benefits from that.

Putin wins because Trump even acknowledges

and gave India a waiver to buy more Russian oil,

because they know that they can't get the energy

from the Middle East.

In the long run, Putin wins if other countries,

including in Europe, potentially,

are like, well, we can't rely on oil and gas from the Middle

East, so maybe we have to go back to buying Russian.

By the way, these are all these countries that shifted

from Russian oil and gas to like,

Qatar, the energy.

Yeah, now the Qatar shut down.

And by the way, that takes a while to turn back on

if you shut it down.

This is not like a 12-day war kind of situation.

Putin wins, by the way, because Ukraine has to send

anti-drone technology and personnel down to the Middle

East, which they're doing to help protect the Gulf states

against Iranian drones.

Like, Putin is such a big winner of this war

that he could have designed it in a laboratory.

Now he's, of course, he's giving targeting to the reports

that he's giving targeting to the Iranians to speak.

Steve Whitcough says that he's not,

and that we take them at their word.

Is there more credulous idiot on the planet than that guy?

No, you know, and so the oil piece is a sign

that this is not to spread ballistic missiles.

It's also a huge boom to Putin.

The desalination thing is existential to the Gulf.

It's going to accelerate them thinking

that the US cannot be relied on because they put our security

in existential risk.

Again, even if he calls you into the war tomorrow,

the geopolitical cost of potentially

endangering the whole global economy for an insane war,

endangering the security of the Gulf states.

They're going to look for their own nuclear weapons.

They're going to look for their own security guarantee.

Like across the board, they just so comprehensively

didn't think through the consequences of this.

Again, I can see it might serve Israel's interests

to unleash this kind of violence in chaos in Iran,

eliminated any potential competitor,

have regional hegemony.

By the way, the UAE, which had been,

Israel's biggest partner in that effort

through the Abraham Accords,

is clearly being targeted more than the Gulf states

by Iran for that.

So the UAE didn't get security from the Abraham Accords.

They got, or from our bases.

Yeah, or from our bases.

And so this is going to reverberate for many years to come

if it ended today, you know?

And I think that is what is not being told

to the American people by their political leaders

sufficiently, that this has already been

like a catastrophic decision, but Trump.

Yeah, and like Trump might say,

well, you know, we've blown up the entire Iranian Navy.

And maybe that's the case,

but like you don't need the naval ship to.

Was that causing you a problem?

I mean, I was really worried.

We were, we were, was the Iranian Navy causing your problem?

I live in LA.

Was the Iranian Navy going to come invade their California?

And also, but like getting rid of the Iranian Navy

doesn't mean they can't mind the straightover moves.

You do that with small boats.

These little boats can carry like two to three mines.

The Iranians are estimated to have a stockpile

between 2000 and 6000 naval mines,

which they bought from the Russians and the Chinese,

by the way, and a friend of ours is an expert

in this stuff pointed out that even if they have decided

to do this, like whether or not they're successful,

is a pretty clear indication that they are all in on this war.

Yeah.

And that they are not seeking peace.

And we'll talk about the news.

Well, and just real quick,

the reason that they wouldn't do it, right?

It's because they sell their energy through

they straight so for moves.

But if Israel is bombing their oil facilities,

they can't sell it anyway.

So in a way, you're lowering the price tag for them

to sabotage the straight because they're just

fucking over the Gulf States and not themselves

because their shit is getting blown up anyway.

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There's also been a leadership change.

And remember early in the war,

Israel killed the Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Hamane

and an air strike.

That was with US intelligence to help that.

Hamane, Ali Hamane was 86 years old.

He was about to regime change himself

or be a regime change by nature.

But now thanks to Trump, internet Yahoo, his son,

a younger, reportedly even more hard line figure

is now in charge.

This selection reportedly went against Ali Hamane's

written will and desire because he did not want Iran

to become a dynastic country again.

Like that was part of what the 1979 revolution was all about.

But 56-year-old Mustafa Hamane was the IRGC's choice

to lead Iran because that's the best way

to give the middle finger to Trump and Netanyahu

and the military goons like the Mustafa.

So here we are.

We don't know much about Mustafa Hamane.

He's been behind the scenes player in Iranian politics.

A lot of Iranians have remarked

that they've never heard him speak in public.

He doesn't have much of a public profile.

But he does seem to have operated as a chief of staff,

maybe for his dad, maybe he's like a liaison

between his father's office at the military

and the intelligence leaders.

So we know that they like him.

We know that the IRGC goons reportedly wanted

to be selected.

He doesn't have all the religious credentials

that you were supposed to have for that job.

And now he's in charge.

He's the spiritual leader of the country.

He's the commander-in-chief.

And he's the final decider of all political decisions.

And again, like time will tell.

But it seems like he won't want to make

nice with the US and Israel since so far in this war,

the US and Israel have killed his father,

his wife, his mother, and his son.

So that doesn't seem like someone

who will want to sue for peace.

Of course, he may not last long in the job.

The Israelis already tried to kill him

according to news reports.

The Wall Street Journal reported

that Trump would be cool with killing him.

But for now, at least he's the guy.

Ben, thoughts on this new Supreme Leader of Iran?

I think what I would say to people

who sincerely want a better future

for the Iranian people, right?

A lot of people in the diaspora, other people,

is that you would have had a better leadership transition

if we had not bombed and killed the Supreme Leader.

That regime was beginning to change.

Not because it wanted to.

It did not want to.

But you saw, again, the Women Life Freedom Movement,

it made the, it forced some societal changes, right?

People were beginning, women were beginning

to appear in public uncovered.

There was a sense of like prying something open

that was closed.

If in a, if in the normal course of events,

which would not have been much longer,

Hamine had died of natural causes.

The ability to force his son on the country

would have been, I think, much more difficult.

Yeah, there'd be protests.

There'd be mass protests.

There'd be competing people.

There'd be processes that would have been under huge pressure

because of the rally around the flag

that happens particularly among the IRGC

and the hardliners in the country

when they're under attack,

you have the most hard-line possible succession

like because that's what this is.

And it just puts the lie to the idea

that bombing a country and assassinating its leader

is a way to bring democracy to the country.

No, it's a way to ensure that the people

with the most guns in the country

are the ones who choose the successor.

Now, he may not last, he may be killed,

but I think what we learn is,

if he's killed, it'll be another IRGC-backed person, right?

Because they're the only people with power left.

When you are under assault like this,

the people with power in the country

are the people who are armed

and the people who are armed are the IRGC.

And we can keep killing one another.

I just think this is why,

even in times when there were no laws of war,

we didn't assassinate the leaders of countries.

Again, that doesn't mean you like Hamine,

but we don't just get to go and choose

that we assassinate the leaders of places we don't like.

And part because it ushers in a very dangerous new world

where that may become normal

and some of you have more and more assassinations.

When Trump is reportedly very angry

about the Iranians plotting to assassinate him,

well, I mean, that's the other piece of this.

They're gonna be trying to kill a US president

for a long time, including after Donald Trump's crisis.

And very senior generals and people who work to this.

They will do that.

They will be, this is why you don't end the war in 12 days.

Like they might try to assassinate the next US president

because of what Donald Trump did.

But the reality is that we've made the situation

internal to Iran worse by bombing and killing them,

but also by empowering the absolute most hardline people

in the country.

So that part's going good.

The other thing that I imagine,

like the actual national security experts,

both in the US and the Israeli government

are probably the most worried about

is this 900 pounds of highly enriched uranium.

That is, we think is buried under a mountain

at one or more sites, but we don't really know.

And securing those materials will almost certainly require

a sending in troops to get them.

That's why I suspect Trump has repeatedly refused

to rule out putting boots on the ground.

And Iran, here's a couple examples of him

kind of dancing around this.

What are the circumstances where you send it

ground troops?

How are you thinking about that?

I don't even want to talk about it.

I mean, that's, I don't think it's an appropriate question.

You know, I'm not gonna answer it.

Could there be possibly for a very good reason?

I have to be very good reason.

And I would say if we ever did that,

they would be so decimated that they would be able

to fight at the ground level.

So do you need ground troops to secure

the enriched uranium at the nuclear sites?

To find out about that, we haven't talked about it,

but it was a total obliteration.

They haven't been able to get to it.

And at some point, maybe we will.

You know, that would be a great thing,

but we haven't, we haven't gone after it.

But, you know, something we could do later on.

We wouldn't do it now.

Maybe we could do it later.

So, okay, so let's dig into what this kind of operation

would look like, because I got very triggered

over the weekend that I was reading this Axios report

that said, the White House doesn't view a mission

to secure Ron's nuclear materials

as boots on the ground or an invasion,

which is just like insane on every level.

This would be-

Who could be wearing socks on that boot?

Yes, this is it.

Yeah, we're just torturing the English language here.

So this would be a major military operation

that by any definition is men,

boots on the ground and an invasion.

So, there's been some good reporting

on what this operation would look like.

A lot of these plans existed when we were in government.

We've talked to experts about them.

So we got a good window into this one.

So, long story short, like you were talking about

sending hundreds of troops into Iran,

you would need a specialized team to find secure

and store the nuclear materials.

That might be a highly trained Delta Force team

or a Navy SEAL team.

And then on top of that, the Pentagon

would almost certainly send a troop to secure

a big perimeter around the sites

where the guys are digging up this shit.

You might have to send in like earth moving equipment

and stuff, like specialized equipment.

And I think that's why a lot of people's heads

parked up last week when the Washington Post reported

that the 82nd Airborne was given a change

and it's planning seemingly to be more ready to deploy

because they do this kind of stuff

like they go in behind enemy lines,

they seize airports, they seize strategic areas.

The Pentagon would also need to figure out

how to get those materials out of Iran,

hundreds of miles, that would either be by air or ground.

You would need like missile defense, drone defense

during the operation throughout.

And so this would not be a small operation

by any stretch of the imagination.

I just like don't get why a news outlet

would repeat this absurd spin

that it wouldn't be boots on the ground.

And then finally, Ben, earlier today, Tuesday,

Richard Blumenthal, Senator Richard Blumenthal

came out of an Iran briefing and said,

quote, we seem to be on a path

toward deploying American troops on the ground in Iran.

He also added that Russia seems to be eating our enemies

so he seems to be confirming that,

even though Steve Wykoff doesn't think that's the case.

He's putting it in his word.

Yeah, it's his word.

He's such a trustworthy guy.

He also said China might be eating them too.

So I guess we'll find out.

But what do you think the odds are that

there is this kind of like H.E.U. focused ground invasion?

And how is leaving this material in Iran

not like a red line for Netanyahu?

This seems to be the thing he cared about most

over the last three decades.

There's something surreal about the fact

that Trump has to simultaneously affirm his lie

that he obliterated the Iran nuclear program.

While leaving open the door to the fact

that we may have to do an incredibly complex

and risky operation to actually clean up the fact

that we didn't obliterate the Iran nuclear program

because as many of us have been saying for 15 years,

you can't bomb a nuclear program and obliterate.

It's physically impossible.

So that just shows you the kind of danger

of having someone who's this dishonest making decisions

because you can't really explain anything

because he's trying to keep these competing narratives

from bumping into each other.

Look, yeah, we've been there, we've studied this,

we've followed this because you can't bomb

all of the nuclear program away.

There has always been this idea

that if you were truly going to try to like take out

as much of the Iranian nuclear program as possible,

by the way, you can't eliminate it entirely,

they know how to do the nuclear fuel cycle.

So you can't bomb like the knowledge

that exists inside of Iran, how to do this.

But if you were to do this, you would need

a very complex special forces operation

with close air support and lots of personnel.

I will tell you this, Tommy, too,

that in some of the kind of wargaming on this

and I'll say like even out of government, right?

So this is not anything sensitive.

You might want the element of surprise.

You know, like pop up, here's the team

to get these materials.

This is the most telegraph punch, you know, possible.

Yeah.

So I imagine that that will make it harder

that wherever this is buried

and whatever, you know, things that they put in place

to try to protect against this operation,

doesn't mean you couldn't do it,

but it just being incredibly risky.

And whether it's Israeli commando's

or US commando's and special forces,

joint US Israeli military operation,

it's complex, it's risky,

it introduces ground forces into Iran,

even if you get some of these materials,

it still doesn't eliminate the nuclear program.

Because again, they know how to do this.

There are people inside of Iran,

like not even Israel in the US can kill that fast.

Who know how to do this?

Just set some back, complete.

It sets them back and we've told them

that the only way you could ever survive

is get a nuclear weapon.

So I guarantee you, if we see this, whatever we do,

there's still going to be trying to build

the nuclear weapon there, you know, on the back end of it.

Yep, so here we are.

The other kind of like invasion option

that I think people are talking about and worried about

is the US or Israel seizing a place called Carg Island,

which is this little island,

it's about 25 kilometers off the coast of Iran,

which is a key transit point for the export

of about 90 or 95% of Iran's oil.

So that would be a way for the US or Israel

to essentially take control of Iran's oil industry.

It would again be very risky.

You would be shot at, there's troops there.

It would be a big, big deal, but that's the thing.

I think nerds will tell you that like,

Sencom has had that plan on the shelf for a long time

and there's probably people in there want to do it.

But it's amazing and we're back in the 19th century here.

This is where we're at that we're just see,

I saw some people in Fox who'd never heard of Carg Island,

you know, we could go we're like,

oh, we're going to get the island and get the oil.

Like we're back in the empire business.

By the way, that would be the biggest terrorist target

in the world if we were like,

see some island and try to like run

the Iranian oil industry from there.

Like this is how we got an Islamic Republic

of Iran in the first place.

Because we overthrew a democratically elected leader

of Iran in 1953 because that leader

was nationalizing the Iranian oil resources

and lo and behold, you know, within 25 years

we get the Islamic Republic.

So the reason we've had an Islamic Republic

in the first place is because we tried to do this.

Disagree then, we are always the victims

in these stories, you can't ever make us a protagonist.

The one little bit of good news is that last week

there were all these reports that the US

was arming Kurdish militia forces,

especially in Iraq and encouraging them to go into Iran

and try to topple the government.

Trump now says he doesn't want the Kurds

to go into Iran.

Hopefully that's true when he's being honest,

but like, I guess put a pin in that one.

I always say about that is it seems pretty clear to me

that at least the Iraqi Kurds said no.

Because they were saying it very publicly.

Yeah, they were raising their hands, you know,

the people that are in the Kurdistan regional government

in Iraq were like, we don't want any part of this war.

So I don't necessarily give Trump credit for that.

I actually think the Iraqi Kurds would be like,

this had been insane thing for us to do.

Yeah, I saw one of them was interviewed on Fox News

and was just like, no, this is a really bad idea.

I don't think this is worth doing.

Also, I just, one last thing then.

I mean, I just think it's very clear

there's been a bunch of really good reporting now

about the nuclear negotiations that took place

between the Trump administration and the Iranians

specifically what Wicoff and Kushner were doing.

And it's just so clear to me now that Jared and Steve Wicoff

like fundamentally didn't understand the subject matter.

Obviously, right?

They're not nuclear experts.

They're not scientists, they're not PhDs.

But there was a, there was a transcript of a call

that those two Bozos did for press.

And like you can just tell, like they keep mistating

the name of the IAEA, like they're getting basic facts wrong.

And like maybe look, maybe Trump never wanted to cut a deal

and there was always going to be a war.

But those idiots definitely didn't make it better.

And it's kind of terrifying to think

that they're handling Gaza negotiations

around negotiations and Ukraine.

Like no shit that nothing's going well.

There are two scenarios.

One is that the entire diplomatic effort,

both last summer and this time,

were a facade of deception operation

so that we could bomb Iran.

That is outrageous and dangerous thing to do

because no one will ever trust US diplomacy again

if it's just meant to be a deception.

I'm sorry, yeah.

They were sincerely negotiating.

We make fun of these people.

We have a laugh about them, particularly Jared

because he's a moron who was born

with a winning lottery ticket and thinks

that he earned all that money.

But the reality is sending two complete idiots

into the most sensitive negotiations in the world

over and over and over again is not just embarrassing.

It is terrible for US interests.

Like an American sometimes make this mistake,

particularly right-wing Americans.

They think other people are stupid.

They're particularly brown people like the Iranians.

These are very smart, sophisticated people.

The Russians, the Russians are the toughest negotiators

in the world.

They are eating these people for lunch

every day in every negotiation.

The Russians are.

I mean, such that Steve Rickoff is reporting propaganda

that Putin is somehow not doing things

that he's clearly doing.

Or the Iranians aren't going to figure out

that these guys aren't serious.

And so it's not worth coming back into talks with them.

Trump would clearly like to be able to say

we're back in the talks of the Iran

because he's dangled it a couple of times

and the Iranians keep shooting it down.

So this is, this Jared Whitkoff show

is an abomination from a corruption standpoint,

but from a pure competence standpoint as well.

Yes.

And speaking of US credibility, Ben,

so it is just like increasingly clear, as you've mentioned,

that this airstrike on an Iranian school,

a handful of young school girls

that killed 168 children and 14 teachers

was an airstrike conducted by the United States military.

Iranian state media release footage

that has been confirmed by major news organizations

as authentic.

It shows a US Tomahawk missile hitting a naval base

that is directly adjacent to this girl school.

There have also been a number of news reports

that the Pentagon has been doing internal investigations.

They believe they were responsible for this strike.

But Trump, of course, is refusing to take responsibility.

He is instead trying to lie and spin his way through this one.

So here's a couple examples of his shifting story on this.

Did the United States bomb a girl's elementary school

of southern Iran on the first day of the war in 175 people?

Based on what I've seen, that was done by Iran.

Is that true, Mr. Hexat?

Is it wrong to do that?

We're certainly investigating.

Still investigating.

But the only side that targets civilians

is Iran.

Tomahawk missile likely destroyed

that Iranian girl school.

So will the Americans, will the US accept any responsibility?

Well, I haven't seen it.

And I will say that the Tomahawk,

which is one of the most powerful weapons around,

is used by, you know, sold and used by other countries.

You know that.

And whether it's Iran, who also has some Tomahawk,

say, wish they had more.

You just suggested that Iran somehow got its hands

on a Tomahawk and bomb the tone elementary school

on the first day of the war.

But you're the only person in your government saying this.

Even your defense secretary wouldn't say that

when he was asked standing over your shoulder

on your plane on Saturday.

Why are you the only person saying this?

Because I just don't know enough about it.

So like, we don't sell Iran Tomahawk missiles.

That's crazy.

Like, my understanding is that only the US, the UK and Australia

currently have Tomahawk's deployed.

Unless the Iranians broke into a British submarine,

sold Tomahawk and then dropped it on their own,

IRGC naval base slash girl school,

like the story's bullshit.

So Trump, he clearly thinks he could deflect

and wait for this story to go away, Ben.

But when you combine those lies with Pete Hegseth

bragging about getting rid of woke rules of engagement,

it sends, it's hard to think of a way

to make the US military look worse than that.

And all of us, you and I paid for that bomb

that killed those girls, right?

We American taxpayers paid for this.

Those girls are dead today because of decisions

that Donald Trump made and because of the way

in which we spend our tax dollars.

And look, just to take a couple of these pieces,

the investigations that are very thorough

that are out there that this is our missile.

I just point out a couple of things.

The idea that these were the children of IRGC people

that went to the school.

So the idea that they got this conspiracy theory

that is all over the internet.

The reason we have to address this

is because this is all over the internet.

I assume these railways are super charged.

Yeah, the bots are out there with this stuff.

I had an Iranian woman come up to me in LA.

I was like hanging out with Lizette.

Lovely woman, couldn't have been nicer,

but it was like spouting like insane made up propaganda

about the war and be like, tell everyone that, you know,

Iranians like the war.

I'm like, well, not the one's getting bombed.

And she was like, well, the IRGC is the one

who bombed that school.

It's like, man, that's not what happened.

It was 100% off.

If you think that, I feel sorry for you.

Because you're unwilling to look like truth in the eye.

And here's the other thing.

We gave a lot of shit to the Biden administration

during the Gaza war for defending the IDF, right?

And every time there was some horrific incident in Gaza,

which is very regular.

Remember it was always, this is being investigated

or this was the Hamas Pentagon, you know,

every hospital had the Hamas Pentagon under it.

There's a way in which we are becoming like that.

Like the Trump response to this, and even the Hegseth response,

which weirdly Hegseth is actually not going as far as Trump.

He's more reasonable than Trump.

Because the US military, I believe there are still

some people with some honor, I mean this.

I'm not trying to, I'm saying this as a compliment,

who have some honor in that institution

who are like, we do not lie about our mistakes.

Most of the military is horrified that they did this.

This is a massive intelligence fuck up.

And I'm sure that people are like, just devastated.

Devastated.

But this is why you don't do what Biden and Trump both

have done with the idea, which is go along with this bullshit

that every single child who's killed is like a Hamas terrorist

or every single hospital that's blown up

is a secret target, you know, or a secret Hamas command center

or every single one that you can't possibly defend.

You just say we're investigating it,

but we never get you the results of the investigation

and oh, by the way, it's Hamas's fault.

We are now doing that about Iran.

We're doing the same language.

We're investigating it.

We'll get back to you.

But maybe they did it.

They're the only ones who killed civilians.

Not us.

Like we cannot become and should not become

that kind of country, but I fear that, you know,

with Trump as president, like that's where we're at.

But that is a dangerous, dangerous, dangerous place to be.

Not alone because of what we saw already with these girls,

which the whole war is not worth it.

I'd rather have those kids back

than all the missile launchers that we've blown up.

Like that's why we had to be an anti-war party

in this country because this stuff can happen.

Let's talk more about how our tax dollars

should be spent in the Democratic Party

because as listeners probably know,

like last week, the House of Representatives

voted down a bill to stop the war in Iran,

not Trump would have vetoed it,

but it was important symbolically.

Four Democrats voted in favor of allowing Trump

and Pete Hegseth to continue this regime change

war of choice in Iran, which is just insane to me.

But Politico reported that the next step in Congress

will be the administration coming back to them

to request an estimated $50 billion in additional funding

for the war.

That's on top of the nearly $1 trillion

Pentagon budget for 2026.

Over the weekend, CNN's Jake Tapper asked Senator Chris Murphy

about this request.

Let's play that exchange and then talk about it.

The administration is reportedly weighing Congress

to approve an additional $50 billion in funding

for these operations.

You have said you're a hell-no,

not just a no on funding the war.

We have seen this movie before.

We know that that vote will be cast as,

especially if you run for higher office,

you voting against the troops.

Oh, come on.

I mean, the American people don't want this war.

They don't want this war.

They have seen what happens when American troops go

into places like Iraq, places like Afghanistan.

Ultimately, we get a lot of people killed.

We waste a lot of dollars.

The one thing the American people are clear about

is that they do not want the United States

dragged into another long-term war in the Middle East.

If you support the troops,

then you should be voting against funding this war

so that we get our troops out of harm's way.

Virtually nothing good happened from sending thousands

of Americans to die inside Iraq in the 2000s.

And if we don't learn that lesson,

then shame on every single one of us.

It's a good answer by Murphy there.

So I teed off on this on Pots of America

on Monday, so I'll be quick.

I want to make sure that every Democrat listening

understands that you cannot oppose the war

and then vote for funding.

That is not a position that exists in the real world.

That's a thing people in Washington convince themselves

is rational and it's actually incoherent.

Also, I just want them to understand that

like opposing funding is the right thing

to do strategically, morally, and politically.

This is not 2004.

Jake is wrong.

We're not going to watch the same movie.

The Pentagon doesn't need more money to sustain operations.

They have a trillion dollars.

There are not guys sitting in Fallujah

waiting to get an M-Rap that might not show up

if you vote against the 77 billion

or whatever the funding request was in 2004.

Like, Trump could end this war tomorrow.

He has basically declared victory a couple of times.

It suggests that it might be over tomorrow.

And I also voters will reward you.

If you say, let's not spend 50 billion more

bombing girls, schools, and Iran.

Let's spend it on education, healthcare.

Literally anything else.

That will be like the most popular thing

you ever do as a lawmaker.

Absolutely.

And first of all, you're right.

The Jake Tapper from 2002 doesn't need

to like conduct that interview.

I mean, we have Barack Obama.

The very first meeting I was in with him.

The first time I met him was in 2007

when he decided to vote against the supplemental

that funded the surge.

And the argument that was cast at him

was if he was voting against the troops.

And lo and behold, if it wasn't for his opposition

in the Iraq war, he never would have become President

of the United States.

This political thinking is so outdated

that it's astonishing to me that it still

gets currency in the kind of media framing around these issues.

I also want to say you covered the argument

well about the obvious political point

that people don't want to be spending this money that this war

is not popular.

I also think that one of the things that

drives people crazy about the Democratic Party

is it seems like it's a party that

has constantly got its finger in the wind

and is trying to figure out like what it stands for,

what it actually believes,

what will be the most politically fruitful?

Are we tough?

Are we tough?

Can I afford to piss off these donors?

Look, if you vote for the funding of this war,

you should be primary.

I don't want you in the Democratic Party.

And I'm not trying to be obtuse or stubborn,

but this is a threshold issue.

Like I would like to have a big tent on this party.

I think there should be people with different ideas

of how to get health care, different ideas of taxation.

To me, this is not a left center issue.

This is a right and wrong issue.

Morally, what do we stand for as Democrats?

If you as a Democrat can't say that I'm against a war

and I'm not going to fund a war that is being launched

by an authoritarian president illegally

with no rational basis that has explained

to the American people that has already unleashed

these consequences.

If you can't stand against that,

you don't stand for a fucking thing, okay?

And everybody can see it.

How is anybody going to trust you to fight for their health care

if you're too afraid to cast a vote

that someone might call you weak

or some donor might call you in complain?

So I'm sorry I got a little hot today.

I came in hot, but I don't know what to say anymore, okay?

It's an astounding lapse in judgment,

I think, to trust Donald Trump and Pete Hexf

to lead a regime-chained war of voice with Iran,

along with Dvian Netanyahu.

And like we didn't put it on the run down today

because it's just like the things to be mad about

are endless.

But Trump wearing a hat to the dignified transfer

ceremony really bothered me

because I know you've been,

I'm sure you've been to Dover.

I'd never went to Dover with President Obama,

but I went to Walter Reed with President Obama in like 2000.

So like 2009 or 2010, it was like me,

Reggie, Matt Flavin in Obama in Marine One

on the way there.

And then I chilled out with the press while he went

and net with wounded service members

for like three, four hours, whatever it was.

And then we all flew home together.

And like my memory of flying there

is talking and people like, it was fun, right?

It was cool.

And on the way back, it was like the heaviest situation

I've ever been in, like you could feel the weight

of what Obama had just experienced on his shoulders

and the devastation you'd seen and the families

and the people's lives were just ruined.

And he didn't say a fucking word,

nor did anybody else.

And just like to see Trump kind of winging it out there,

doing press events, goofing around,

you're like he's talking about the Iran war

in front of like the Miami,

inter Miami soccer team cracking jokes

about the renovations at the White House.

He's just like a fundamentally unserious person

who is not conducting this war for a serious strategic reason.

It's all about his politics.

It's all about Lindsey Graham fluffing him 10 times a day

and like doing whatever Netanyahu tells me to do.

And it's just, it's a fucking embarrassment to vote no.

Yeah, and to your point, I mean,

the guy is showing up at the dignified transfer of caskets

of dead service members coming home

because of decisions he's made.

And he's wearing a USA hat that looks like the kind of thing

that you could buy like a gas station rest stop, right?

Which no offense against us.

Those are great hats I bought his head stare.

But the point is that were afraid of being called weak?

Right.

Were afraid of being called unsatisfied old man

in a weird way.

Were afraid of like there were against the troops?

The guy against the troops is the one who's getting them killed.

Yep, for no reason.

Exactly.

And he was showing up in a fucking baseball cap

for a dignified transfer ceremony.

Like this is not a hard argument to make.

Very easy.

I just couldn't agree more.

Ben speaking of our feckless Congress

as we did a minute ago.

So November is going to be a huge election

at a load side of Democrats are in control of the House.

Maybe we can take back the Senate

or Trump just maintains his iron grip on the trifecta.

Winning the House is going to be the fastest way

to put a real check on Trump's abuses of power

and the Republicans enabling them.

So we got to go on offense and try to win

as many seats as possible.

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and listen to Pots of America

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Let's end this around section by talking about

like Hezbole Lebanon and the fact that the country

is once again getting hammered by the IDF.

So the numbers are really grim, Ben, as we mentioned at the top,

like we're talking about nearly 500 people dead in Lebanon

and nearly 700,000 people have been displaced.

So Hezbole entered the conflict,

it started firing rockets at Israel

after the Supreme Leader was assassinated.

The Israelis leapt on this opportunity to retaliate

and just destroy them again

and like whatever was left of the 2024 ceasefire agreement

is now just fully eviscerated.

And the IDF has both been conducting massive airstrikes

in southern Lebanon and the parts of the suburbs of Beirut.

But also the IDF ground forces have pushed into southern Lebanon.

Last week the French offered to like intervene

and maybe support the Lebanese military,

Manuel Macron, like I jumped into the fray here.

I think the Israelis basically told him to fuck off.

I can't tell if anything came of that.

Europe not exactly is showing a lot of strength

on this around war in general.

No, not much.

I think my concern, Ben, though,

if I were Lebanese official like beyond the immediate security

and threat to people's lives

and the humanitarian situation

and humanitarian crisis that could develop

if this many people are displaced for this long.

Like I would wonder if Israel is going to use this opportunity

to just permanently capture parts of Lebanon

while the world is kind of focused elsewhere.

I think that's what's happening.

I mean, I think that they want to permanently occupy

if not end up annexing southern Lebanon.

Some Israeli political leaders talk about that openly.

They know that this is a chaotic and violent time in the region

so they can kind of ratchet it up in Lebanon

without it getting as much scrutiny.

They have not announced kind of what their end game is

in Lebanon, other than just destroying things.

And I think people have to realize that

these people have been through hell in Lebanon.

And 700,000 people being told to evacuate is,

I mean, just think about that.

Where are they supposed to go?

And many of them are gonna come back to homes that are destroyed.

And we've so thoroughly normalized

that level of destruction with this idea

that it's somehow like about Hisbela.

I mean, this is so far beyond Hisbela.

This is like breaking Lebanon completely yet again.

By the way, what always ends up happening,

I'm not defending corrupt Lebanese politicians

because they're plenty of those two.

But like they'll palm Lebanon for however long may bomb it

and destroy all this stuff and displace people.

And then nine months in a big call

that politics in Lebanon are so dysfunctional.

Like what the hell are these people supposed to do?

Right, yeah, that's like a city the size of Denver

just being pushed out of their homes in this place.

I mean, it's staggering.

Like, you know, and I guess we'll just keep an eye on it.

Like, I don't know, the world is just kind of anxious.

And then you'll get these people, you know,

who will like be posting pictures from like 1984

of like women in bathing suits in Beirut and be like,

this is what it was like before Hisbela or something.

No, no, this is what it was like before the place got bombed.

You know, however many times I've lost track of it.

Yeah, it's a nightmare.

Okay, so a couple more things from us.

So while the world is focused on Iran,

the US military has been expanding its activities

in South America.

Specifically, the US military is now conducting

joint military operation against drug cartels in Ecuador.

So this is on top of the boat strikes off the coast of Ecuador

and in the Caribbean.

The New York Times reported that US Special Forces are,

quote, advising and supporting Ecuadorian commandos

who are hitting drug facilities.

US Southern command ban.

I don't know if you saw that they tweeted out this weird video.

I saw that.

The helicopter taking off, right?

And then it was like a drone feed of like US troops

getting into the helicopter, but the way they filmed it,

it made it look like there's about to be an air strike

on our own helicopter.

It was all very, very weird.

As we've discussed on the show before,

Ecuador went from being one of the safest countries

in Latin America to becoming one of the most dangerous

and becoming a major transit point for cocaine

coming out of Colombia and Peru, usually to Europe.

There's also these Albanian gangs in Ecuador

and there's sort of like facilitating those cocaine

flows into Europe.

In 2024, the president, Daniel and the Bulla,

declared war on the gangs and on the cartels.

That set in motion, this huge crackdown

in a wave of violence does not solve the problem

but has led to a lot of deaths

and now apparently involved the US military.

Beno was just reading about this,

sort of marveling at how little attention it's getting

and then remembering back in 2018

when Trump said quote, we more and more

are not wanting to be the policeman of the world.

It feels like that's kind of.

That's out the window.

And again, another thing that we're doing

with no public discussion.

He clearly has this idea that there's this collection

of right wing leaders across Latin America.

It's kind of his team.

I think Kristi Nome is now like, isn't she the envoy

to the envoy of the shields of the America?

You know, I'm absolutely made up.

Curious if that actually happens.

Yeah.

If she gets a plane to go down Ecuador.

But the reality is this idea where the US

becomes like to.

Cory down Ecuador.

Cory, I mean, like Lewandowski would last long down.

Yeah.

Eric Prince could probably put him to work.

Yeah.

Eric Prince, I pose the Iran war.

I think I saw him quote it.

We're not banning, you know, and he opposed it.

And part because this is the kind of war he wants to fight.

I want to be.

Yeah, I want to be an equity pay for this.

But the reality is we're just going

to become the security force for every right wing

autocrat in Latin America.

What's the goal here?

What's the end state?

If we lose personnel, then there are Americans

going to know why they're there.

You had Ricardo on the way to deal with these drug cartels.

You first, you have to go off their money

because they're multi-billion dollar enterprises.

And it's going to skipping right ahead to like some

military operation for ambiguous purposes.

So yeah, we are on this kind of slippery slope

to being the kind of military force

for the shield of the Americas.

You know, and I just, that's yet another thing.

How much is this operation costing?

Good question.

Because they're not free, right?

So yet another argument to make that that's not lowering prices.

That's not doing anything to solve problems

in Americans actually because it's not even

doing anything about the fentanyl problem,

which is what Americans are most concerned about.

It's just buttressing some right wing autocrat

who tells Trump what he wants to hear.

It's not great.

Okay, let's end this by talking about

the recent election in Nepal.

So this ladies and gentlemen is Nepal's next prime minister.

Let's watch.

I go hard like a blastest.

Ackishan fire is the closer somewhere we're mixed.

Get it, I'm a seaman of the class.

It's full of weapons.

This is a duality net like a Baptist.

Like a Baptist.

Joe bitch got the kailish.

My dick is most stylish.

He dripped like me stylish.

They say they fly and got no mileage.

They say they fly and fly in private.

No kailish general and got no humor.

Next time we show up, you get beat like a drummer.

Give out their pipe pipe like a drummer.

I put you in drama.

I shoot like I'm gonna.

I mean, collab with Zora and Mamdani.

I mean, Michael had a better time watching that.

That guy's yes, and a bit in the list show.

Yeah, fucking finally.

Okay, so that's a rapper.

It's not bad.

It's pretty good.

Yeah, I know he's laying down the beats too.

It's pretty good.

That's Belendra Shah, a rapper, civil engineer,

return politician.

People call him ballin.

He's the former.

He's ballin.

Yeah, he's ballin out there.

Also, a pretty true cure has that same code.

I don't love cures.

Anyway, he's the former mayor of Kathmandu.

There's still kind of ballots, but so far he's leading

in what looks like a landslide election.

This election is the result of these Gen Z led protests

from last year that brought down the former government.

The protest kicked off.

Remember, there's the social media ban

that seemingly was just a cover to hide

that the children of the elites were just like

spending money in Paris and pissing away

from the government money.

But those protests exploded in size

because of deep frustration about corruption

and lack of economic opportunity.

Because Nepal is a very young, highly educated population,

but it also has a 21% youth unemployment rate.

So there's a brain drain and a lot of people

leaving to go work abroad.

19 people were killed during those initial protests last year

because the government violently cracked down on them.

Then 70 more on the unrest and chaos that followed.

So that forced out the prime minister at the time.

So Baldwin is part of the center's party.

He has campaigned on anti-corruption,

on creating jobs.

He says he's going to double per capita GDP

to $3,000 within the next decade.

Nepal is landlocked between India and China.

They have very limited manufacturing.

They rely on a lot of tourism to mount Everest

for their economy and its current GDP per capita

is about $1,500.

So delivering on that promise will be quite a challenge.

But Ben, thoughts on our new Gen Z wrapper king?

Yeah, look, I can't really vowed for Baldwin.

And I spent a bunch of time reading up on this

because it's fascinating.

We'll see how it goes.

Here's the main thing that I think I take away from this

that is hopeful.

Clearly, people across the world, particularly younger people,

are absolutely fed up with the corruption

and the kind of rotten establishments

that govern their lives.

And I do think that there is a connection between

the Zoran Mamdani campaign and what he did.

Did you see the Hannah Spencer Green Party campaign

in the UK?

This is, I mean, if people haven't watched Hannah Spencer,

she was a Green Party member.

We won a bi-electron recently.

She's 34 years old.

She had a very Zoran-esque kind of message in campaign.

Get more risk over there.

Where's Katz go over there and meet with some of those.

More is kicking the tires on taking over European politics.

Yeah, more Katz is a friend of ours who works

for Zoran Mamdani.

Like a kind of young, brilliant,

kind of experienced-

Brilliant, brilliant guy.

Yeah, absolutely.

Good for him going over to Europe

and meeting some of these progressive parties

because we need to trade best practices.

My advice to Europeans, and I know we have a lot of European

listeners, is like, talk to more Katz, right?

Because it's not just about having clever social media.

It's about having a smart message.

But, Ballon, you know, he capitalized in the fact

that Gen Z, I don't think it's some irrational thing.

Oh, we like the rapper.

It's that they're so comprehensively fed up

with their political establishment.

That they kind of ousted them in this protest movement.

And they're like, you know what?

Let's put this guy in charge.

Because at least we know he's different, right?

And at least we know he's not been tethered

to the same corruption.

At least we know he hasn't kind of taken money

from the same crowd that's been around.

And so I actually think the warning to politicians

everywhere in the democratic world

and the non-democratic world is that

this is kind of where people are at right now,

particularly young people.

And I actually think it's wrong to say

that Gen Z, they're disengaged.

They seem pretty fucking engaged.

And a lot of these places.

They're pretty engaged over there.

They're like some fires that they were engaged.

And they've been engaged.

We've seen it in Africa.

We've seen it in the Middle East.

We've seen it in this country.

We're seeing it in Europe.

And if you, again, I'll just talk to the places where,

if you are smart politician,

trying to appeal to young voters,

you got to get to that mood.

You know, that may be not the ball in video.

Yeah, it's established.

But the anti-established mood of like,

this is different.

This is a clean break.

This politics is going to look different.

It's going to feel different.

It's going to be funded differently.

Because I think that is increasingly

where the mood's going to go,

given the direction of events in the world.

Yeah, people don't like elites.

Get inside my seam in all the closet full of rap tapes.

This is how I do hallucinate like a Baptist.

That was a V-Tort joint.

No, that was a ball in joint.

Y'all said he also dropped Kyle Genter's name.

Whatever.

I heard the Colley Jenner in there.

Yeah, there's a lot of training

I'm trying to follow with the lyrics.

Hey, it sounded good.

There's more of a slant rhyme,

which Bob Dylan would tell us is an art form.

Ballon seems to not do a lot of media too.

I was trying to, it didn't give a lot of interviews,

let's just say.

It's a bit of a mystery.

But right here's some of the name Ballon,

I think of the big baller brand.

Yes.

Yeah, but.

Well, I saw them, by the way,

just to, I heard you guys in PSA

rightly complained about the video game message.

But I also hate them expropriating,

like I saw, I don't know,

one of their dance giving a war porn post said,

if you don't know, now you know.

Biggie Small's RIP does not want you taking

like his potentially best catchphrase from,

one of the greatest.

Biggie was not repping the military industrial.

Yeah, Biggie was not the police.

But said they don't know, now you know,

give me a break, shut up.

Dan Scavina or whatever, 23-year-old white nationalist

groipers now become a war porn addict.

Well, what's funny is I think actually,

they are trying to appeal to the kind of Nick Fuentes

young, white, angry, like in cell crowd

with this kind of content.

And I think it's falling on its face hard.

Yeah.

Because those guys actually listen to Fuentes,

like Tucker Carlson, a bunch of right wingers

who were opposed to the war in Iran before,

and now were opposed to it after,

and they seem consistent at least.

And you know, Fox News might fall in mind,

but like, who cares what they say?

Yeah, I will say I have some notes

for the kind of anti-war maggot crowd,

like in Tucker's among it,

because I sample this to see where things are going.

It is remarkable they'd lengths they go to somehow,

like solve Trump.

Yeah, like we should need to call this out,

like listen, I mean, actually don't listen,

like we'll listen to it for you,

but like they didn't have a two-hour conversation