6/16/25: Former Trump Staffer Dire Warning On Iran, Trump Snipes At Tucker Carlson, Tim Dillon Sounds Off On Iran War
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We're very excited now to be joined by Dan Caldwell. He is a former Pentagon senior advisor, recently worked under Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth in the Trump administration, longtime foreign policy analyst, and a United States Marine. I think the last one, most important title there for you. But Dan, one of the reasons we wanted to talk to you is we've covered your story extensively here on the show, the story really of the ousting of you and the United States Marine.

really a target on both your back and others who were inside the administration, people who had spoken out vocally for restraint in U.S. foreign policy. And Dan, as somebody who literally worked for this most recent administration, perhaps you could give us some insight into some of the things that happened here. Let's start with D1, please, and put it up there on the screen. It does now appear, Dan, that

many of the U.S. diplomatic efforts by Steve Witkoff and others served as cover for this Israeli surprise attack on Iran. Now, given your experience and some of your insight, you know, without getting into classified information, what's your assessment of what really went on inside here now that you know all the principal players? So I do think that at the end of the day that

diplomacy was and still is the primary goal. Ultimately, the president believes that the only way to solve this is

is primarily, when I say solve this, permanently solve this, is through a diplomatic effort. Because as a lot of people pointed out, a military solution, even using all the power of America's bomber fleet, naval assets, and combined with Israelis, will not permanently solve

dismantle the Iranian nuclear program. Well, wait, can I zero in on that? Because you saw these war plans, all right? And you don't have to get into that, but you're somebody who actually sat there at the desk. So is that what you're saying? You know, given your knowledge is that this is not something that can be solved by the United States of America.

Well, don't take it from me. I mean, the Israelis have said this as well, too. Now, there is a caveat to this, is you could militarily occupy Iran. You could do another regime change war, another long-term occupation of Iran. And that is the way that you would truly permanently dismantle Iran's nuclear program. Now, let's be honest. That would be incredibly costly.

It would make Iraq and Afghanistan and what we've been doing in Syria and in other countries look like a cakewalk. Iran is a significantly larger country. It is a more militarized country with a much more advanced military. And a lot of people are focused on their higher-end conventional capabilities, but they also have a very strong militia force. They have a regular militia force called the Bachi. Mm-hmm.

And they are really, truly a garrison state. And that would be an incredibly difficult occupation. So getting back to what President Trump was looking at doing is I truly believe that a lot of this stuff about, oh, this is a cover, I have to say I think is misinformation. Interesting. And I think that it was primarily, and there were others that disagreed in the administration, is that the

The president really wanted to prioritize a diplomatic option. Now, I'm not in the administration anymore. I don't know what has gone on the past couple weeks for sure. But diplomacy was always the thing that he wanted to prioritize. And based on his remarks, I still think he wants to pursue a diplomatic outcome. So it's your belief that—

that he was effectively double-crossed and betrayed by the Israelis here, who, because, I mean, the reason that these strikes happened on, you know, after the 60-day deadline that President Trump had implemented that happened on day 61, something that he, by the way, you know, highlighted and celebrated in the aftermath of these attacks,

Very clearly, the timing of these was to blow up any possibility of a diplomatic solution, which is something the Israelis are not interested in. So you're telling me your belief is that President Trump was effectively betrayed, his diplomatic negotiations undercut by the Israelis, or do you think that he bought into this, what I think is preposterous, you can give your opinion, expert opinion on it, preposterous belief that somehow going to war with Iran was going to make it easier to

to effectuate some sort of a peaceful diplomatic solution? So Crystal, this is a cop-out. A lot of my assumptions over the last week have been blown up. And I can't answer that question without absolute certainty. What I can tell you from my experience inside the administration and what I know of the people in the administration is that

diplomacy was what they wanted to pursue. So you had guys like Steve Witkoff, you had people like Michael Anton, you had a lot of folks across the administration that were putting a lot of effort and trying to come up with ideas on how to make diplomacy work. Was it always perfect? Were they always doing the right thing?

These are always incredibly difficult things to pull off. I think that if we look back, there may be things that could be done better. And I think to your point, it's going forward. Yes, I think you have to admit is that in the short term, diplomacy is going to be incredibly difficult. It's going to take a lot of things to come back.

from what has happened over the last few days. Right. So this is what I want to get to then, because you named some of the pro-diplomatic factions. You don't have to get into names if you don't want to, but describe for us what the other faction inside perhaps the administration and in Washington appears to be that obviously is now backing Donald Trump behind this action and really is both loving, celebrating the Israeli military campaign and actively working to put the United States into this conflict. What does that faction look like?

look like and where are they located? Well, within the administration, one observation I've had is that I didn't work in the first administration. I worked a lot with them on the outside, mainly on reforming the VA and then towards the end on ending endless wars. What I saw in the first administration was you had most of the people in the administration, particularly on the national security side, dislike the president and were oftentimes working against him.

This time you don't have that, is you have a lot of truly smart and talented people across the interagency. A lot of great people at the Pentagon, especially on Birch Colby's policy team. You have great service secretaries. I think the Deputy Secretary Steve Feinberg is doing a great job. And at the State Department, similar, you have people like Michael Anton, and you have a lot of great people in the Vice President's office, at ODNI, and at the NSC. And they all largely, I mean, they have disagreements over the issues, but their attitude is this, is this is a great

is they have their views.

They are going to make recommendations to the president based on their analysis of intelligence on the DOD side of the trade-offs to accomplish certain military options. And they're going to make those recommendations. They're going to run them up the chain. And from there, the president and the principals are going to debate and decide. Now, within the administration, I think that most of the administration, the political appointees, understand that there's a lot of danger involved.

with a war in Iran. Not everyone, but most folks do. I think there are a lot of folks in the uniformed military that actually think that a war with Iran would be disastrous. But there are folks that still are under this delusion

that all we have to do is send a few B-2 bombers in and drop a couple massive ordnance penetrators on Fort O and everything will be fine. And there's a lot of people outside the administration in the think tank community, in Congress, in the advocacy space, in the media that are still bought into this idea that this is largely a risk-free proposition. And let me tell you, if the United States gets directly involved –

there's a risk that it could be one of the biggest national security catastrophes we've seen over the last 20, 30 years. Let's stick with that. So let's put D2 guys, please, up on the screen. Here we have a recent report. As you just mentioned, somebody, Elbridge Coldry, somebody who I consider a friend and a very, very intelligent person. The headline here is Pentagon is split over Trump's Israel policy. But specifically, Dan, what they are talking about

is a war inside of the administration here between the CENTCOM commander, General Michael Carrillo, and Elbridge Colby, who is the, what is he, the Undersecretary of Defense for Policy, who, I mean, has the audacity to suggest, hey, we need to be careful with our military resources here. A war with Iran or offensive military action against Iran in conjunction with Israel would significantly deplete our stocks, and it could make us very unprepared for a conflict that

actually matters. Describe the contours of this, General CENTCOM, the CENTCOM commander, General Carrillo, who is both CENTCOM, is under his environment. He is scheduled, I think, to, you know, his term be over soon. But he is the top military commander here, obviously has the ears of the Secretary of Defense and the president in this theater. What are his views here of the conflict?

Well, first of all, I just want to say regarding Bridge and his team, you know, my friends, Mike D'Amino and others, they're doing their jobs. Their jobs is to challenge what the combatant commanders want to do. It is their job, since the combatant commanders are very focused on the regions they control, their AORs is what they're called, right?

Their job is to look at the global picture and assess the trade-offs to support what various combatant commanders want to do. So we're in an environment where the United States' military resources are constrained. We've had 20 years plus of wars in the Middle East. We have emptied

many of our magazines of ammunition and our arsenals to support Ukraine is we have an environment where our resources are not limitless. So trade-offs are real. So every asset we move into CENTCOM comes at the expense of another combatant command like the Indo-Pacific, where we have a real threat, a real challenge in China.

We trade off against things we're trying to do in the Western Hemisphere. I think one thing this administration deserves a lot of credit for is more of a Western Hemispheric focus. So Bridge is doing what he's supposed to do. And I'll also say this, knowing Bridge and Mike and the rest of the team there, is they're going to challenge, which is healthy and good. They're going to make a recommendation. But at the end of the day, when the Secretary of Defense and the President makes a decision, they're going to turn around and follow it and ensure it's implemented properly. Now, in regards to General Carrillo,

Look, I mean, I think it's been reported and based on my experience with him is that he takes a fundamentally different view of the importance of the Middle East than a lot of other people in the administration. And

And he also, I think, believes that a military campaign against Iran will not be as costly as others. So that's his view. And I think there are a lot of folks that want to see some type of military action occur before he retires as a result of that. So he retires, I believe, in the middle of July.

And I don't think it's a coincidence you see a lot of the pressure ramping up to do something prior to his retirement. Got it. So just back in March, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard testified that the intelligence community continues to assess Iran is not building a nuclear weapon. Let's go ahead and take a listen. Just a little flashback to her testimony to this regard.

The IC continues to assess that Iran is not building a nuclear weapon and Supreme Leader Khomeini has not authorized the nuclear weapons program that he suspended in 2003.

The IC continues to monitor closely if Tehran decides to reauthorize its nuclear weapons program. What is your understanding of the current situation? Because obviously, I mean, we've covered all the comments now about how the real goal for Bibi Netanyahu and others who are supportive of this direction and policy with their real goal is here is regime change. But the nuclear program is being used as the pretext and justification for these strikes. So what can you tell us

about Iranian nuclear development? So I obviously can't get into specific intelligence and what was discussed and what I saw or didn't see. But my understanding was that that assessment

was correct and was largely agreed to across the intelligence community, whether it's the CIA, military intelligence community, what the State Department have. And the State Department actually has a very good intelligence branch, one of the best. Actually, they've been more right than the rest of the IC. It's called INR.

that that has been the consensus for a while now. And one of the reasons actually that is the consensus is based on Iranian behavior is I think this often gets overlooked, but I believe it was Khomeini before he died had a fatwa against developing a nuclear weapon and that hasn't been repealed. That was an indicator

that a lot of people were watching that if they repealed that, like, okay, now they're going to sprint towards a bomb. And I'd also know too, is that it's not a matter of, they can just snap their fingers and in a day they could have a bomb. There's still a breakout time and window, and then it takes more time to actually weaponize this. But again, from what I know, and I've been out of the loop now for, you know, close to two months, um, is that, um,

That assessment still stands. Well, one thing I look at, Dan, is even in Beebe's announcement of the war, the shortest timeline he gives for a breakout is a few months. This is not a couple-day thing. That basically aligns with— Which we've been hearing since the 90s. Yeah, of course. We've been hearing that. Even if that's BS, he doesn't even say they're days away from a nuclear weapon.

He's like, we're a few months away from a nuclear weapon. It's like, well, OK, so we had a deal tomorrow to have a talk. We can't do that. You know, it's like one of those where it's just extraordinary. And really what I want to get at with you, Dan, is within this administration at this point, you know, if they go forward with this and of course it'll look, they'll try to minimize it. You said we just got to do a B-2. What does it look like from there?

You know, the B2, that's step one. So now what? You know, if we see the Straits of Hormuz get closed and all this, how many resources of the United States would it take, even from that point of a so-called limited intervention? Well, I think...

it's I think we need to start with what is the war right now and as we sit here today and There's a lot of things changing and it could change, you know very rapidly in the next minutes or hours But right now essentially the war is a race. It is a race between Iran and Israel to see who can destroy

the other side's critical military equipment the fastest and exhaust the other side's supply of critical munitions. So for Israel, that is Iran's ballistic missiles, but also their ballistic missile launchers. That's really actually probably more important than missiles themselves, and that's why the Israeli Air Force, it appears, has really started to focus on those in the last days. For the Iranians,

They are trying to exhaust the supply of the United States' FAD batteries they have there and then Israel's very good integrated missile defense. They're trying to exhaust the supply of their missile interceptors while simultaneously trying to outlast Israel's supply of precision munitions, particularly their standoff munitions.

So in terms of that race who has the advantage right now, it's hard to say. It looks like the Israelis did a really spectacular set of strikes the first day. They destroyed a lot of the Iranians command. They did hit some key sites, but Israel doesn't have the size or doesn't have enough planes and the ability to basically attack the Iranian military on a scale that it would destroy their offensive capability in one day.

So Iran, as we sit here today, still has a lot of offensive capability. On the other hand, Iran has not launched as many missiles as we thought they were. But more Iranian missiles seem to be breaking through as the barrages continue on.

So what does that indicate to you? That indicates to me that Israel and the United States are either rationing their interceptors, knowing they have a limited supply, or the Iranians are learning and learning how to launch their missiles in a way that they can break through defenses. Now, getting back to your question of what does this mean for the United States?

Well, again, the United States is in a resource-constrained environment. Our ability to fight a prolonged war against the Iranians is very limited and would come at very high tradeoffs.

What would it look like, say, if there was an authorization to use the B-2s to strike Fordow? Well, I think that from there, Iran would feel like the United States is now directly engaged in the war, not just indirectly through defensive. And they would feel like now we have to strike –

American forces in the region and this is where the casualty figures come from and this is why I think some people get Dishonest because they say oh nobody's talking about boots on the ground Well, we have 40,000 troops spread across the Middle East all of whom are in striking range of Iranian ballistic missiles I have to say many of them are on bases that don't have the same layered defenses and

that most Israeli cities have. So you could have a situation where the Iranians are launching mass drone, mass missile attacks on these bases and can inflict heavy casualties on the United States. And what happens from there?

The people who've been saying, you know, oh, we just got to let Israel do what they want to do and they don't need our help to then now a couple days later is like the American needs to get involved and we need to have B-2 strikes on Fordow. Those same people are going to call for escalation. If the United States escalates, there's going to be more attacks. They could start attacking our Gulf Arab partners and allies.

And then from there, you have the Straits of Hormuz potentially closed. You have attacks on energy infrastructure. Energy prices spike. Straits of Hormuz is what, 30% of energy? I believe it's 20, 30%. But it's a huge portion of China, actually. So then they might need to get involved. Yes. They may look at the need. They may look at what's happening in the Gulf and say, OK, now's the time to make a move against Taiwan. I'm a little less confident than that, but that is a possibility.

So you'll have massive energy spikes here in the United States, which could upset the progress that President Trump has made on reducing inflation. You'll have thousands, potentially thousands of dead American soldiers, diplomats, and other civilians. And let's not forget, too, you will have a lot of dead Arabs, dead Iranians, and yes, dead Israelis. You know, it is Israeli civilians, Iranian civilians that are paying most of the price for this war right now. We can't forget it. You know, I was...

Reading coming in here today, it looks like that many of the casualties last night from the Iranian nuclear strike were Ukrainians, that they were probably Ukrainian refugees, Ukrainian Jews fleeing the war in Ukraine. And I don't know that for sure. These are the strikes in Tel Aviv? Yes. And that's, you know, those are the people paying the price in that. And it really upsets me that people are minimizing this on both sides and ignoring that.

And this is where it could head. It's just not a video game. We don't have a magic power where it's just a matter of a few B-2 strikes and a few cruise missiles and this problem is solved. There is real risk that this could escalate into something much, much worse. Well, and Dan, let me ask you one more question on that. I mean, we saw our intervention in Libya, which ends up in that country being a failed state. Let's say that Bibi Netanyahu and others get their wish and this regime in Iran effectively collapses.

What is the fallout? What does it look like if you have this giant, incredibly significant country as effectively a failed state? Well, my friend Saurabh Amari actually wrote a – We're going to have him on the show on Thursday. Yeah, really great Twitter post about this. And Saurabh, I think, is really interesting because he used to be a regime change advocate and he's reassessed his views. And he walked through, I think, very effectively of what that would mean is –

It would mean that the United States would have to get more involved in the Middle East when we're trying to do less and empower allies to do more, including Israel alongside the Gulf Arabs. It would mean probably higher energy prices for at least a short term before global markets could adjust.

And you know you could have an actual true nuclear threat here because you could have bad actors Outside of the Iranian regime get a hold of this nuclear material and build something like a dirty bomb Yeah, and so and they Iran has other WMDs. They likely have chemical weapons that could fall in the wrong hands So it's a huge threat the Iranian regime is awful one of the worst on the planet, but they

they are still a regime that has shown that they have not provided these weapons to some of the bad proxies in the region yet. That could change if the war drags on,

and they have not done certain things that you would expect a totally irrational regime to do. Correct. And we just simply don't know what would replace this regime. And that is one of the big problems with regime change. One last question for you. By all accounts, it seems the Iranians were engaged in diplomatic negotiations with the Trump administration in good faith. Of course, they had previously engaged with the Obama administration in good faith and were able to secure a deal that the first Trump administration got out of and the

Biden administration declined to get back into. It seems to me like if you're, as a layman here, looking at the Iranian calculation, this has created additional incentives for them to accelerate towards acquiring nuclear weapons. I mean, as an expert, is that your assessment too of the sort of calculus that has been created, not just with regard to what we did with Iran, basically lying about diplomatic negotiations to create the conditions for an Israeli surprise attack,

But with regards to Libya, with regard to other countries around the world, even Ukraine, is that the sort of calculus that our foreign policy has created for countries? Well, I'm far from an expert on this. I just have the privilege of knowing a lot of really smart people whose ideas I can steal. I think, yes, there is an incentive now for the Iranians to actually break out and pursue a nuclear weapon before. Crystal, you kind of alluded to this earlier.

I think that for the Iranians, they want to have the appearance that they could break out. They want to preserve some type of capability in large part because of what happened in Libya, because of what happened in Iraq, and recently Syria as well too. It hasn't happened in North Korea. Yeah.

But for them, the nuclear weapon threat is more of a bargaining chip for things like sanctions relief, better integration in the region.

And really the biggest guarantors of their national survival are things like their missile program, which for them is very important because of their experience in the Iran-Iraq war where they were really brutalized by Saddam's Scud missiles, his Dupolev bombers. So that's more important for their –

their regime and national survival than a theoretical nuclear weapon. But look, if the United States is perceived as not being able to negotiate in good faith along with the Europeans, if there's a belief that other actors in the region are going to undermine it, then they just might make the decision like, okay, we're going to be the Middle East, North Korea. In a lot of ways, they already are.

We're going to break out and basically become a massive hermit kingdom. And that's the only way we're going to be able to survive as a nation. Yeah. And that's a terrifying lesson because that actually did work for North Korea.

Yeah, they're still there. They're still there. And every time I've talked with multiple people on the negotiating team with the DPRK, every single time we told them to denuclearize, they're like, yeah, how'd that work out for Gaddafi? They know. They're not stupid. Well, it's funny. It's not a coincidence that in the middle of the negotiations where President Trump was making progress, and he deserves a lot of credit for taking the steps he did. It's not a coincidence John Bolton came out

and started talking about Libya. That was a deliberate attempt to undermine his negotiation. I will say, this time around, I think among his political appointees, you don't have people like that that would go and ultimately try and undermine negotiation if it reaches a point at that point. That's if we can have a negotiation. Yeah, but yeah. If you do. But again, I have to acknowledge that it is going to be tough to get negotiations back on track

But there is still a pathway for that. It's going to take more time. And the biggest thing the administration is going to have to show on that is patience. Yes, very well said. Dan, really appreciate you, man. Dan, thank you so much. I appreciate you talking to us. Very much so. All right, we're going to go to the next part.

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Some interesting reaction from MAGA World to our encouragement and involvement in Israel's attacks and war with Iran. Steve Bannon, who has been obviously very opposed to us getting involved in this way, had a lot to say. Let's go ahead and take a listen to a little of that. You either got it, if you're going to go alone, you can take care of your deal or not. You don't need us. Decide to go alone. Decide to reject it. No, we don't need you. We're going to go it alone.

And the go-to loan lasts about six hours. Not only do they want him defense, they want us to go on offense. But don't set it up that we're going to get wrapped up in this thing in the first day, and now people want us to go on offense into bombing runs on this? And Mike Pompeo, Mike Pompeo sitting there going, everybody in the Gulf region is so excited. Is that your paymasters in Qatar, Pompeo, that you took the money from? Is that your paymasters in Qatar telling you this? What I know is,

is that we weren't asked to come. You know, this people went on this by themselves. They made a conscious decision to do it themselves. And if you want to do it yourselves and do it yourselves, all of a sudden we got to come in and defend that. And what planet? And I'm not worried. People say, oh, it's going to tear MAGA apart. No, it's not going to tear MAGA apart at all. We need we may have needed to do this to decide who's really America first and who's still a neocon.

Who's still a neocon? And if I'm hurting your feelings, I'm sorry. Your feelings are going to have to get hurt. All of you boomers skipping around right now. What happened in Iraq?

We were lied to. What happened in Iraq, the law of unintended consequences. Weapons that are being used today have a degree of precision that no one ever dreamt of in a prior conflict. The bombing designed to shock and awe Iraq's military centered on Baghdad, but also struck key targets in Mosul and Kirkuk in the north and Basra in the south. We successfully accomplished our mission. We did everything that we set out to do. Everybody's back safe and sound. All

All targets are designed to undermine the regime of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein and to convince his generals to turn on him or at least surrender. So you got Bannon saying, we're finding out. Heroic comments from Steve Bannon. Yeah. We're going to find out who's America first and who are the neocons. It looks very much like Donald Trump is in the neocon camp. Here's the issue is this whole America first thing. It actually gets to the next part. I've been wanting to go off on this. Put it up there on the screen. Trump says, quote,

I decide what America first means. For those people who say they want peace, you can't have peace if Iran has a nuclear weapon. So for all of those wonderful people who don't want anything to do about Iran having a nuclear weapon, that's not peace. But really, it's the hubris of the quote. So much bullshit. I decide what America first means. And actually, this is a key test. Dave made a prediction. I didn't want to get into it, but the

time, where he was like, MAGA is going to turn on Trump. I'm like, no, I don't think so, actually. And look, I mean, here's the truth, is that the vast majority of the American people are propagandized to an insane degree on war. Let's look back to 2003. The propaganda worked, OK?

America did not turn on the Iraq War since mid-2005 until people were dying in the streets and the Basra Mosque and all that were going off. Those of us who were opposed to it from the beginning were considered traitors. Traitors. Yeah. It took years for this –

to happen and similar here. I mean, look, it is factually incorrect. America first is a movement that goes back all the way to the 1920s. It is literally not invented by Trump, but operationally it is, let's be honest. And that's part of why everyone's like, oh, we get to decide what's true. There's no such thing.

And this also gets to the whole idea of Trump is pro-war or pro-peace. It's like he's neither. He is just this manipulatable figure, and there are factions within his movement and his coalition, some of which is varying on top or not, and Trump at different times gets to go along. His kind of amorphousness is actually a strength because it kind of convinces both sides that he is one of them. He both convinced the pro-Israel neocons and the anti-war people.

at least libertarians like Dave Smith on our show, to vote for him, right? That's actually a political strength in politics. But now, you know, whenever it comes down to it, what he's really telling us is he's the person who decides because all of his political information says they will follow me. I think he's right. And Steve Bannon, in a way, intuits how correct that is by saying to all you boomers switching around on –

cable news, like you are being sold a lie. But I don't know if that's enough to remind them because the force of the propaganda is immense. I mean, I watch CNN and I see a former IDF spokesperson who is analyzing the war. I see Scott Jennings, the Mr. MAGA in a fucking

bunker in Jerusalem telling Trump to go and bomb Iran. Mr. Maga on CNN. That's CNN, not to mention Fox. I go on Fox. I see one segment of a guy being like, hey, it's not such a good idea for my friends over at the American Conservative. Nine out of 10 guests is all these former generals, former Bush guys, Ari Fleischer, the guy who was the press secretary during the war in Iraq.

that's who is being mainlined into their blood. And they've already been, you know, so conditioned because of the anti-antisemitism campaign of the last two years to be, you know, susceptible to all of these arguments. I mean, in retrospect, like anti-antisemitism is the most successful neoconservative rehabilitation project of all time. All

time because they convinced, you know, not only the United States government, they weaponized the Department of Justice and others to literally prosecute basically their political opponents and to go after, you know, abandon their principles of free speech. But now on war, right? Some of us saw it at the time, talked about it here a lot, but most people were very willing to go along with it. So I don't know. Well, even you hear from Bannon. Yeah.

I mean, there's so much, there's so much spin and cope from people like him who have been vocally opposed to a hot war with Iran, which again, let's be clear. We are in today. Like we are there. Donald Trump made the decision. He is the decider at the top of the food chain. Use the negotiations as a ruse to create the conditions for Israel to launch a surprise attack, supply the munitions, provided the defense like we are in this thing.

And even for him and others who have been vocally critical of that possible direction, you know, they have to pretend like, oh, maybe Trump didn't know this was going to happen and to not direct fire directly at him and criticize him directly for his choice.

to destroy his own diplomatic negotiations and throw in with the Israelis and their desire for a regime change war. I mean, that's where we are. And so I think you're right, Sagar. Like, I think Steve Bannon is a very astute political actor. And he knows that you can't actually...

on the right in the MAGA coalition, you cannot actually directly criticize Donald Trump. I already know. Dave, he's going to get... Dave earlier on our show said Trump should be impeached. I mean, I don't... Look, I love Dave. And if I was advising him on his influence in the Republican Party, I'd be like, you shouldn't do that. But I don't think he's...

He's interested in his influence in the Republican Party. That's the point. That's what we're dealing with. Me and Dave, we don't give a shit. Okay, whatever. I'm just going to say whatever I want. I've burned all the bridges that I have in Washington. Dave, you know, he's a guy who says what he thinks. That's great. But for these people, if you want to preserve your influence, all it takes is one critical comment of Trump.

And as evidence of that, you look at what Trump says about Tucker Carl. I mean, look, Tucker has been one of the most vociferous supporters. He was sitting next to Trump at the RNC. Defenders of Trump. I mean, he has done- He helped get-

J.D. Vance on the ticket, right? J.D. Vance on the ticket. I mean, this guy, nobody's taken more bullets for Trump than Tucker. And when Tucker has the temerity to say Trump is complicit with Israel's war on Iran, that we should cut Iran off, Trump immediately disregards and basically hits back and says, I'm the person, not you, Tucker. So,

So it's like even just a single critical comment is enough. And that's the thing is what did he say? Tucker, in a newsletter – we can put that, by the way, E3 up on the screen. These are basic right-wing comments. He just says all we have to do is cut off Israel. He said we should drop Israel and we should have no involvement in this and that Trump is complicit.

Kind of muted, if you ask me, in terms of what should be called for here in terms of the – even that, not enough. And now what do I see this morning? Laura Loomer, Tucker Carlson is a MAGA faker. They're turning. The machine is working already. Already, Mark Levin says Tucker Carlson is a Qatari asset.

Because, why? Because he interviewed the prime, or whatever, the king of Qatar, the emir of Qatar. So one of these idiots actually, you know, you'll love this. They accused me of being agent of Qatar. You want to tell me what I've been saying about Qatar here for the last five years? That'd be news to the Qatari government who hates my guts. But it's one of, it's just, it's hilarious. Yeah. Like, uh,

The way that this all works, this machine. I was taking a look at, you know, Marjorie Taylor Greene put out this long post that she's getting, like, a lot of credit for, for, you know, as being, like, anti-war, and even the lefties giving her credit for this. Guess what word doesn't appear in this, like, long-ass screed once? Trump. I mean, and that's the thing. It's like...

If you're going to pretend like the commander in chief who, you know, blew up his own negotiations to do this for Israel and continues to ship the weapons and continues to go along and celebrate the impact, et cetera. You're going to pretend like he's not involved, like you're just not. No one's going to give you any credence that lacks any sort of credibility or honesty. So, again, that just shows you these are political actors. They're responding to their perception, correct perception.

perception of the political landscape. And so, no, they're not going to turn on Trump. They'll find some cope. They'll find some justification. They'll distract with some culture war thing, whatever. Try not to talk about it. But I think, you know, to go back to Dave saying that he thinks that Trump will lose his coalition over this. I mean, I do think there are some who were not Trump fans previously, who voted for him this time, who believed

in my opinion, foolishly, but listen, I'm not here to rub people's nose in it, that he would be this anti-war candidate, or at least would be better than the alternative. I think there's some percentage, and I think there's independents, especially, who fell into that camp, who will drift away. I'm about to show you Tim Dillon, who was broadly supportive of Trump in this last

election and, you know, he is being very critical at this point as well. So I'm not going to say there's no one that he will lose over this, but the broad Republican Party, they're going to be all about it. They're going to be pushing him to do more. We already see it. We already see Republican congressmen jumping in to say now we need full regime change. And that's the way this works. Not to mention the Democrats are being very

quiet. There's only a handful who have said anything negative about this. So they're pathetic as well. The mainstream media, you know, they're always horny for war. This is like the most bipartisan of bipartisan consensus. And to your point, Sagar,

There has not been a big propaganda buildup to this war with Iran in the near term. Like we didn't have these big presentations of here's how close they are to break out and oh my God, we have to do something right now. We didn't have that, but we have how many decades of...

of propaganda that has been sold to the American people about how they're such bad guys and we can't let them get a weapon and we have to do something and they're a rogue regime. And so all of that is very baked into your normie American psyche. So I think especially in the early phases when it feels very easy and mission accomplished,

you're gonna have some significant support. Certainly in the Republican Party, you're gonna have very broad support and you're gonna have some support among the American population. I hate to say it. - Look, Americans love a winner, right? All right, after Ukraine, the Ukraine flags are still flying, you know, in my neighborhood and they never catch up with the people

With reality. And this is just me lamenting, but it's the truth. I mean, just think, too. And also, it may be true we haven't had two years of propaganda leading up to the war in Iraq. We have had two years of pro-Israel propaganda, OK, across the entire Republican Party. So let's not forget that, right?

It's been kind of ineffective, though. Yes and no, maybe at a younger level. I don't think that the Israelis crying about their civilian casualties, I don't think that's really landing with people at this point, given what we've all seen on our timelines for all these months. I don't know. I have found a real reluctance among the American people to accept tenets of realism because it does admit – it requires admitting moral ambiguity. Like for me to be able to say these things like, yeah, Saddam was a bad guy.

And I'm gonna be honest, it would be better off today if he were still in power. Gaddafi, no one's saying he's a good dude. - Right. - Preferable to the outcome. Assad, he murdered hundreds of thousands of people. We would be better off today if Bashar al-Assad was in power instead of freaking Al-Qaeda.

Okay. I mean, I could go down the list and same here with the mullahs. I don't think the mullahs are great people or the Iranian people are prospering in Islamic freedom or any of this stuff. But, you know, I do know based on that track record that it rarely works out. What? Mubarak. How did that happen? Oh, Muslim Brotherhood gets itself elected. Now Sisi's probably what? Even more dictatorial than Mubarak ever was. I could go on forever in this list. And the point, even Putin's

Everyone's like, oh, what are you? You're a Putin lover? I'm like, no. Putin is disgusting. Their system of government is horrible. But you can acknowledge there's some moral ambiguity here. Americans don't like that. There's like this 1980s Cold War Bruce Willis evil empire stuff that's just been mainlined into their blood, especially if they're boomers. Younger people get it, but that's another thing about influence. My only hope

is this, is remember Keith Olbermann? I hate Keith Olbermann, but his rise was very important at the time. He was the only guy who gave the voice to the people who hated the war in Iraq. And so this is actually a good moment, hopefully for independent media, those who are not bought by the Israelis, like Dave Rubin or any of these other folks. But

you know, for the rest of us, you know, for at least with the platform of the internet and more, just like the blogosphere in 06, that's where Glenn came from. That's where a lot of stars, you know, anti-war stars originally got their start. So that's my only hope is that I do know at least that the people eventually hopefully will be on our side. But, you know, in the interim, I think we're in for a dark

And do I think MAGA is going to say? Absolutely not. The idea of some MAGA coalition taking the streets, no. It will never happen. I'm just telling you the truth. It will never happen. Yeah. There's no such thing. There may be some elite breakage and all of that, and that's part of why I'm pretty outspoken as well. Look, I know the White House officials are just like me. They're all on Twitter all day. Yeah.

you know, they, they see it. And so if you get in their head a little bit, that's good, but I'm not naive. I don't think it will, there will be some grand march against Donald Trump. He will, they'll go along. They always do. They will. They'll find some way to rationalize. They'll find some way to cope. And so, you know, in the, in the, and in the short term, I think the, unfortunately, I think there will be, uh,

public willingness among a good percentage of the population to give another Middle Eastern war a chance. But as we get dragged further and further in, I think that will curdle incredibly quickly. And I think it will, you know, I mean, I think his presidency will be all but destroyed. Of course, for me, that's kind of a silver lining. But, you know, I think that's

inexorably where we are headed. And, you know, for a country, look, here we are declining empire, can't even put on a decent, like, military parade, apparently. Yeah, I haven't gotten direct to that. Friggin' squeaky tanks, embarrassing shit. Marching in formation. The North Koreans are doing better. Humiliating. I was like, guys, what are you doing here? And the worst part, Sponsored by Coinbase. Yeah, I saw that. Sponsored by Palantir, Lockheed, like...

So here we are declining empire in large part because of our previous Middle Eastern foreign, you know, adventures. While the Chinese were like building and creating prosperity for their country and researching, we were, you know, wasting lives, money, you know, lives and treasure and time bogged down in Iraq, bogged down in Afghanistan still in some ways to this day. And so here we are.

set to embark on an even more insane, wild, disastrous adventure

morally horrific adventure in Iran, a vastly larger country with vastly more military resources. And which is also not by the way, like, you know, Iraq was sort of like a fake country that is like arbitrarily drawn. Like Iran has a proud, like this is a proud nation with a long, you know, ancient history. And we think we can just go in there and do what we want to, whatever we want to do and mold it in our image, et cetera. I mean, it's just like,

The scope of the disaster cannot possibly be, you can't wrap your head around it. You know, the number of refugees, the number of deaths, the amount of money, the amount of military cost.

all so that Bibi can get his way. And our president is such a fool that he went along with this rationale, whatever was sold to him, he bought into it. And now here we are. And we're on this chain that it's hard to see how we walk away from. I really appreciate Dan coming on and getting his insights from inside the administration. And just he's been thinking about these issues for a long time. But like,

The idea that the Iranians or anyone else is going to think that it's a good idea to negotiate with us at this point, like, it's a fantasy. We lie to their faces. And even going back to the original deal with Obama, like, if you're the Iranians and you're looking at it with a cold,

calculus at this point, you'd say we'd be better off if we didn't negotiate with them and we just pursued a nuclear weapon. We'd be in better condition today. And they're not the only country around the world who's going to observe that and learn, like, you can't deal with us. You can't. I mean, the tariffs are another example of that. Like, you know, we can't even tell these countries that we launched this trade war against what they could do in order to get the tariffs taken off of them. You can't work with us. You can't trust us.

And that is, that's a disaster for us. It's a disaster for, you know, it's a disaster for the world for hopes of like peace and coexistence. And, you know, but, but yeah, the, the cult of, of Trump being the emblem of America first, he's right about that. He,

He has created it, so it is a cult of personality, and it means what he says it means, and the vast majority of Republicans are going to find some way to rationalize and go along with it, whatever it is. Absolutely. You're absolutely right. Okay, let's get to Tim Dillon.

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So all that being said, we did have an interesting dissent from Tim Dillon, who has been, you know, one of the comedians who was in the, you know, Trump-aligned sphere important for their election this time around. And he's been increasingly critical of some of the actions that have been taken by this administration, Iran being no exception. Let's take a listen. Israel is fighting a proxy war on behalf of the UK, just like Ukraine is on behalf of Western Europe against Russia. We have to get serious. Stop it right there.

Israel is fighting a proxy war on behalf of the United Kingdom? Is that the most insane thing anyone's ever heard? Are people right now in the United Kingdom, is their biggest problem Iran? What is this woman speaking of? What is she talking about?

What is anyone talking? Is Iran the reason that no one can afford a house? Is Iran the reason that there's fentanyl everywhere? Is Iran the reason that we've got political corruption? Is Russia the reason? Is Iran the reason that we have 12 people that own everything in this country? Is Iran the reason that we have, you know, an epidemic of poison food that's killing people and children and...

Is Iran the reason for any of this? Is Iran the reason that corporations in America just pillage and leave a trail of death and destruction in their wake? Can you imagine knocking on the door of a double-wide trailer and...

And grabbing a person who is five months away from being homeless in our country and asking them their biggest problem. How how do you think the word Iran is going to come up much? Amen. But Sagar, there is going to be a massive media effort to convince people that actually Iran is their biggest problem.

This is what they should be focused on. Yeah, of course. And, you know, we'll watch this all continue. This is actually a good test as well as, you know, there was a lot of talk about the podcast election and new media and all this. I can only speak from my own just general assessment. I don't think a lot of the MAGA podcasts, you know, they're not MAGA podcasts.

They're branded that way by the media. But whatever. I don't think a lot of those people would necessarily go along with this. I could be wrong, of course. But there will be, you know, a good pop culture test as to how this is all going to play out. But broadly, what Tim is getting at is that, you know, look, America first. Yes, operationally it is what Trump, whatever Trump means. We talked about that earlier. But it's a potent idea. Yeah.

And look, it's been smeared for almost a century now, but there is a reason that that term arose, because hundreds of thousands of Americans were shipped to Europe and killed in the trenches of France for what exactly?

To this day, there's a good argument about it. And then we didn't even pass, you know, whatever the treaty or the 14 points of Treaty of Versailles and the League of Nations. Like it was a huge waste. That was a general democratic uprising movement in the same way. The 2016 could probably be considered that of saying out loud, this was a disaster. We were sent off for nothing and it has nothing to do with improving our own lives. And that's why it's offensive for Trump to say that it's about him.

And it's also, it's up for the taking. It's a real idea. It's something that, you know, is at the heart for a lot of us. So look, I hope to see more from this, like from Tim, from Bill Burr, from Rogan, from any of these guys to be able to speak out against this because they do have cultural power. They do have the ability, you know, to sway or at least highlight public opinion, you know, and others, because at this point, like,

That could be all that saves us. And I will be honest, I don't even think that could save us just because of how captured Washington is by these neoconservative men. I mean, we have the Democratic leader of the House, of the Senate, the Democratic leader of the Senate who's supporting the war.

with his, you know, basically talking out of both sides. He was goading Trump into the war. He was like, oh, taco Trump won't really go to war with Iran. Democratic leadership is asking for this. Like, they are supporting it. We have the entire establishments. Mike Johnson, pray for Israel. You know, it's, we are totally, totally captured at this point on the question of Israel's war with Iran. And so, look, you know, the outside forces, this genuinely may be all we have got.

at this point. - Yeah. - I wanna upset people's expectations. You're not gonna win for a while. It took, I mean, what?

what, '06? The '06 midterm elections for the anti-war voices to really be heard. And to be honest, they didn't really do what they were supposed to do. The surge ended up happening in '07 and all of that. And it took really four years till the apotheosis of the Obama campaign. He screwed it up too. So also be a lesson. Don't be trusting necessarily carnival barkers out there saying that they're anti-war. And then when they get in power, shocking, you know, they change their tune. - It's why it's so important. Not that people can never change and learn lessons,

But it's really important to see who was right about war when it was unpopular. Yeah. Because it's very easy, you know, 10 years later to be like, oh, the Iraq war, that was bad. Yeah. At the time when there was a cost to be paid, who said it was wrong at the time? And like I said, it's not that there can't be exceptions. People have changed their mind and like really, you know, come to realize, okay, that was absolutely foolish. And I, but...

But broadly, you know, the people who are like Iraq's a great idea, Ukraine's a great idea, and they only shift once public opinion changes and it's safe to do so, you should be very leery of those people. Now, in terms of the media landscape, yeah, the Democrats are just so utterly pathetic. I mean, I think they are...

wildly on foreign policy. They are so at odds with the Democratic base. They are so at odds with the Democratic base. And yeah, they are ripe for the day. I mean, look at what's happening with Zoran in New York City. Right. And he has a really quite dramatic. I mean, I mean, he's a BDS supporter and he's on the verge of potentially winning a New York City mayoral race. Like it shows you how ripe the rotten husk of

of the Democratic Party is for the taking if you had people who are willing to be aggressively anti-war, because that is where the base is. But the media organizations, they're going to be lockstep in support of Israel, in support of hawkishness. They're going to be cheerleading for more and more and more escalation. And they still have significant purchase

Not to mention that there is so many decades of propaganda convincing people that Iran should be a top concern, that where they are in their weapons development should be something that's top of mind, should be something that's a predominant focus of U.S. policy and U.S. foreign policy specifically. That is still going to have some power. So it's really important to see people like Dave Smith, to see people like Tim Dillon, to see new media voices who can offer a place for truly anti-war people.

to go to feel like they are heard, to feel like they're not crazy. And the larger that those

non-establishment media figures are and more significant they are in, you know, our public discourse. On this issue, the better we'll be. Although, you know, obviously I've been like there's a lot of limits there too. Some of the same problems, you know, where you have just like hack partisans in quote unquote independent media as well. And so you'll see plenty of that too. But yeah, it's good to see Tim. So much respect to Dave for going so hard. Yeah.

Yeah, he went hard. Saying Trump should be in. I mean, he said it previously. He did. Trudeau's right. He said, listen, if Trump gets us involved in war in Iran, I will apologize for telling people to vote. And he I didn't even have to ask him. Yeah, that's right. He just did it. You got to get it. I mean, look, there's going to be people like that. But also, I mean, as you said, there's the warning. I mean, there's a lot of so-called independent voices out there that are.

blithering away on the question, why are they always in Tel Aviv? You know, how are these people always in Tel Aviv? It's amazing, isn't it? All of these free trips that they just happen to do. Oh, and it certainly doesn't inform their views at all. But watch out. There's a lot. There's a lot of dark money and stuff flowing out there as well. It's funny, too, because the accusations they're always throwing is that we're bought or somebody else.

When in reality, you know, they have the murkiest finances with the whole whatever that Russian deal revealed. Yeah, Tim Poole doesn't like when I talk about that. Okay, but let's even leave Tim out of this. It's more like how is your business set up? If your business is set up so you don't have any checks and balances to have that amount of cash just flowing into your bank account and you're not asking any questions, you have a problem.

Because that's not about Russia. That's just drobbly about your philosophy. You should know the level of checks and stuff here that happen before any money starts flowing anywhere. And most of the time, you say no. Because what? Because it's about independence. And there's a reason for that. So anyway, we'll see. Because...

Things are not trending in a good direction, but at least we're here. At least we're here to be able to do the show for all of you. So I do hope you guys can help support us, breakingpoints.com, just because this work that we have to do is probably more important than ever before. But we'll have a show for everybody tomorrow and the next day and the next day and more. We're going to continue working around the clock here to bring you all the news. So thank you all very much. We appreciate it.

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