Trump's Military Options: Is A Strike On Iran Necessary?
01:02:57 Share

Should Donald Trump strike Iran? Should he wait out the process in order to try to find peace? I don't want America to put boots on the ground anywhere in the Middle East ever again. But you can't have that conversation and leave out all the context of what's happened for the last 50 years. And not for nothing, but like, who do you think was killing all those American service members in Iraq? Was Qasem Soleimani, who we turned into salsa, who was putting those IEDs with the Shia militias across Iraq?

None of this is without that important context. America's beverage companies are investing in America. We're American companies making American products with American workers in America's hometowns. We're local bottlers and manufacturers operating in all 50 states, employing more than 275,000 Americans in good-paying jobs, delivering for the nation because we believe in the promise of America.

and the people who make it great. Learn more at wedeliverforamerica.org. Paid for by the American Beverage Association. Ladies and gentlemen, your attention, please. Keep the faith, hold the line, and own the lips. It's time for our main... Welcome back to the Ruthless Variety Program. I'm Michael Duncan, joined with me, Comfortably Smug, and John Ashburn.

No Josh Holmes again today, unfortunately, but we have a great show for you. Yeah, there's a lot going on. Yeah, there's a lot going on. You may have noticed. But we do miss our friend. We do. And we can't wait till next Tuesday when he comes right back here to you. Tuesday, you know, to quote our good friend, Tuesday. But we have a great Thursday for you here. Obviously, the big news.

Should Donald Trump strike Iran? Should he wait out the process in order to try to find peace? There's a lot of things that is being discussed, particularly on the right in our political discourse right now and a lot on Twitter. Right. I think my complaint with all of it, though, is that it's really decontextualized from the history of what Iran has become.

What they've done and what the stakes of all of this is. You're saying sometimes Twitter fights can lack contact. Yeah. Unfortunately, there's a character limit. Right. We have a great show for you. I'm not going to spoil everything here at the top because what I first want to get to is sort of that history. The thing I think is sort of lost is

that context for all of us, in particular for our younger listeners and viewers, you know, those Zoomers and millennials who maybe don't remember a lot of this stuff. So Iran, 1979, the Islamic revolution, the Ayatollah takes power. And they're very clear from the front end that they're in opposition to the West and to the United States. And Iran has, through its proxies, made war on the West. Right.

over the period of all of those years. But let's take a step back and go down memory lane. Let's go to clip number one, please, Spaghetts. The special report that we planned to bring you tonight was about domestic politics, the battle among the Democrats.

But we think the crisis in Iran is more urgent right now than the campaign here at home. Some 60 Americans, including our fellow citizen whom you just saw bound and blindfolded, are now beginning their sixth day of captivity inside the U.S. Embassy in Tehran. It's Friday morning there now. But throughout this night in Washington, officials will continue their search for some way to negotiate the hostages' freedom.

Yeah, so that was the hostages being taken from the U.S. Embassy in Iran. They were there for 444 days, I think 52 of them, that entire period of time. And so you saw the escalation from the beginnings of...

of the Islamic Republic of Iran led by the Ayatollah that they had an opposition view to the West yeah and that's something that happened just a few years after the mullahs this sort of like radical religious regime took over in Iran yeah but it didn't stop stop there obviously Iran

basically projects power in the world through these proxies, whether that's Hezbollah or Hamas or all these sorts of people.

Let's go to clip number two, please, Spaghetts. The gruesome search for bodies continued today. Rescue workers did in fact find more bodies, and with each discovery, the task became more painful. The official toll now tops 160 dead and more than 180 wounded, not counting one body that was pulled from the debris while News 4 was on the scene this afternoon. Rescue crews worked quickly today, clearing tons of rubble, but much remains to be done.

Marine officials expect to find even more bodies, and they have all but given up hope of finding anyone else alive. Yeah, so that is the Beirut Marine Barrack bombing carried out by Hezbollah on behalf of Iran. Killed 241 American service members. Mm-hmm.

And so your point here is that there is a long history of the Iranians activating and attacking Americans. And there's context that's worth knowing. Right. Right. It's important. Doesn't end there. Let's go to clip number three, please, Spaghetts.

At the White House, the American flag flies at half staff as the nation mourns the loss of 19 lives in a bombing at a U.S. Air Force base in Saudi Arabia. Good evening, everyone. I'm Nadine Woodward. And I'm Charles Rowe. Tonight, CREM 2 team coverage of the truck bomb in Saudi Arabia. That powerful blast left a 30-foot crater as it ripped through base housing. Yeah, so 10 U.S. airmen were killed in the Khobar Towers attack in Saudi Arabia.

It doesn't really even end there. I mean, look, we're really just talking about a few of the attacks carried out by Iranian proxies. Iran funds Hezbollah, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Hamas, the Houthi rebels in Yemen. You're talking about terrorist groups that have conducted bombings, hijackings from everywhere from Argentina to Athens. I mean, Hezbollah alone.

bombing in Argentina. They hijacked Air Afrique. They hijacked Air France. They hijacked a Kuwaiti airline. I mean, these are people that have been doing terror all over the world for the last 50 years. A legacy of state-sponsored terror. Right. It's important to say that, you know, when people talk about, oh, well, what is America's interests here in the Middle East? Well, they brought the war to us for the last 50 years. Mm-hmm.

It's about whether America gets involved in this. I want peace. I don't want America to put boots on the ground anywhere in the Middle East ever again. But you can't have that conversation and leave out all the context of what's happened for the last 50 years. And not for nothing, but like, who do you think was killing all those American service members in Iraq? Was Qasem Soleimani, who we turned into salsa, who was putting those IEDs with the Shia militias across Iraq?

None of this is without that important context, I don't think. Yeah, no, I think it's really important to understand history. You need to know the facts that led up to the situation that we're at right now. And there's so much... If you look across the country at schools...

These teachers, these teachers unions, these public schools refuse to teach actual history to kids so that they can know and they can make decisions based on actual facts and actual knowledge. And there is nobody who wants another 20-year boots-on-the-ground mission where American service members are sent to just –

on something that they don't necessarily even understand, right? And I don't think that President Trump is even considering something like that.

Yeah, I mean, I think that's what, well, for me, I'll say that colors my opinion tremendously is looking at the American foreign policy experience of the past 20 plus years, you know? Right. We'd been told before that, well, listen, you know, these countries yearn for democracy and, you know, we can start building bridges and there'll be a verdant society waiting for us on the other side of this. And

It didn't work out. And it took a cost of blood and treasure and time and heartache. And I think any kind of foreign policy interaction...

For the United States, that instantly is the first thought that comes to people's minds is because that's what we have lived for the past 20 years. And, you know, just as recently as you see Joe Biden's withdrawal from Afghanistan, like, I remember I was rewatching at the same time the Ken Burns Vietnam documentary. It's like, I see helicopters flying.

carrying people fleeing from rooftops. And I'm like, am I watching the Vietnam doc or am I watching live footage of Kabul? It's like at some point we got to learn from history. So that fear of let's not do this again, folks, is what's driving a lot of things. It's certainly something that I'm extremely concerned with. I think when you bring up the example of Qasem Soleimani, to me that is flawless, flawless foreign policy where it's like,

Can this problem be solved using intelligence? I guess, you know, that some came, I guess, from our allies or something. Can we use intelligence and then American weaponry? Right. And it's not like there's no American in harm's way. There's somebody flying the plane. There's somebody gathering the intelligence. So, like, let's not pretend like there isn't an American who is putting their life on the line. But there's a difference between...

that, and sending thousands and thousands of people from the Midwest to the Middle East. But we should be clear-eyed on the opposite side of what they've done to us. I mean, after that Beirut bombing, you were talking about the intelligence that's on the ground, that there are Americans over there in the Middle East that are gathering that intelligence in order to do things like turn Soleimani into salsa. After that Beirut bombing...

Hezbollah kidnapped the CIA station chief, tortured him. He's an American. Killed him, right? So it's not without precedent that Iran has declared war on the West. They've done it for the last 50 years. I just wanted all that context out there for when people are talking about shooting from the hip like, oh, well, you know, I don't know if this is really in America's interest. And fine, if you don't want to do anything about Iran,

Okay. Okay. No, no. It's very important to know the history. And it's one thing to say, oh, I know how many people live in the country. It's quite another thing to understand what they've actually done to us. Right. And I think it's very clear that, you know, the American people don't want a regime. The Islamic Republic of Iran, the revolutionary country in the Middle East who says, you

Death to the great Satan America to have a nuclear weapon and I think we have polling on that spaghetti Can we put that up and tonight the American people? Overwhelmingly agree the country's most accurate pollsters. That would be Trafalgar insider advantage. They nailed the 2016 2020 2024 Presidential elections they posed the following question and it is right to the heart of the issue here a

What is your opinion of President Trump's position that Iran must be prevented from developing a nuclear weapon, adding, by any means necessary? Take a look at your screen. A whopping 75 percent of the American people agree with the president. Right. So that's where the American people are.

And they're probably there because a lot of them know the history of what we all just discussed here on the Ruthless Variety program. But far too often our conversation, especially on the right, is devoid of any of that sort of context. I want to play a clip from Ted Cruz and Tucker Carlson's exchange. They had this wide ranging interview about this whole conflict. Let's play that clip.

And if it's true that Iran is trying to murder Trump, we need to move militarily against Iran immediately. That's not isolationism. That's the most... That's a cult of violence, which I am calling for. If we believe that Iran is trying to murder our president, we need to strike Iran. OK, but isolationists say things like, well, then just nuke them, which is what you just said, which is kind of a weird... Because I'm upset, because I'm taking you seriously. You don't take me seriously.

Take your own statements seriously. I take my statements very seriously. So I've asked you, where's the evidence this is true? And you've said, well, they're trying to assassinate Brian Hook or something, which I'm against, by the way. I'm against hurting any American, period, no matter... So you dispute that they're trying to murder... I'm not disputing it at all. ...Hook, Pompeo, and Bolton? I'm not disputing it at all. They literally arrested the hitman with Bolton. I'm not... I don't know why...

That's even relevant. I'm asking about the president of the United States. Wait, it's not relevant that Iran hired hitmen to murder cabinet members in Trump's administration? That doesn't go to how credible is it that they're willing to spend money to do that? I've already said that I'm totally opposed to that. Okay. So I guess my complaint with the Tucker thing here in this line of questioning is that it seems like it's always a moving target. Like there's always this pedantic thing that Tucker does where he changes the question in the middle of the question and

to not actually say whether he thinks that's bad or not. Right, but the point of view he's expressing is something that's shared by a not insignificant group of people on the right. People are concerned. Like, Smug was going into this. You've gone into this over and over again. People are worried that we might be on the precipice of sending...

another group of Americans, another generation of Americans into a 20-year land war against Iran. Of course, that is not what President Trump is talking about at all. These guys name-checked someone that was familiar to us here at the Ruthless Variety Program, a guy named Brian Hook, who because of everything that he did in service of our country, the Iranians are trying to kill. Right. So maybe we should ask Brian Hook what he thinks about this situation.

That's right. Our interview today is with Brian Hook himself, who's going to give you a rundown of the state of play currently in the Israel-Iran conflict. Let's go to that.

♪♪

Well, with all the news out of this conflict between Iran and Israel, we thought it was only fair to the listeners and viewers of the Ruthless Variety program that we get somebody actually smart about this stuff, way smarter than us. So welcome to the show, former Assistant Secretary of State Brian Hook. How are you? Thank you. Good to be back on the Variety show. Yes, you are a repeat guest here on the show. And

And given your CV, I can't think of anybody better to come here to educate us about how we got here, right? Because, you know, we've heard about the Iranian nuclear threat for a long time. Why this moment? Why did Israel pick this time to take it out? I think it starts on October 7th. And even though the Iran nuclear program predates that, um,

Right after October 7th, Prime Minister Netanyahu said never again. And the only time in Israel's history they said that was after the Holocaust. And so when I heard that, like around whatever it was, shortly after October 7th, I realized this was not going to be a mow the lawn operation in Gaza. That when Israel says never again, the last time they said it, they built a country. Mm-hmm.

And so my conclusion at that time was there is going to be a new security architecture in the Middle East. It's going to start in Gaza. It's then going to work north up to Hezbollah. And then it's going to work its way ultimately to what Israel calls the head of the snake. And now the bill has come due from October 7th. And Israel has prepared the theater in a way that Iran is going

doesn't have anywhere near the capabilities that it did. Iran's defense and its power projection rests on two pillars, proxies and missiles. You don't hear about the Iranian army and you don't hear about an Iranian air force because all of their capabilities rest on those two things. Israel took out the proxies with the exception of the Houthis, I would say is the last

functioning or you know that that has throw weight and then they're taking out all the missiles and so now we're now israel is in a position where it is ready to take that last step which is the nuclear program and you know you can do it from the air or you can do it on the ground um and it's it's unclear how it's going to be settled at this point there's the the option set here is quite

It's quite a spectrum. So when you talk about the nuclear program, a lot of people, I've heard this term about the Fordow facility underground in Iran, and it's 300 meters underground. It's about 30 stories deep. 30 stories deep. Is that, that's likely where all of their nuclear enrichment is taking place, and it's not easy to get to. I mean, I wonder if you could describe. Yeah, by design. By design.

Um, you, Fordo is like the Fort Knox of Iran's nuclear program. It's where all of the most sensitive nuclear research is done. And they decided to do all of this 30 stories below ground because at the time of its, you know, design, it's not something which Israel has the capabilities to penetrate. But with the, with the weapon set that we have, the 30,000 pound bomb,

You can penetrate 30 stories down and take it out. And so that would be sort of the last component to this, you know, all these strikes that were happening in Iran. I'm curious from your perspective as somebody who's obviously studied Iran and the region, you know, for your whole career.

Did the first 72 hours of all this surprise you at all? Like how tactical Israel was in taking out the leadership of the Iranian military and the targets they did take out in that first 72 hours? Think about this. Russia, President Putin, over three and a half years of war against Ukraine has not established aerial superiority. The Israelis did it in 72 hours.

And this is something which its significance cannot be overlooked. So I think the success of that was compelling because the Iranian regime is responsible for the deaths of like 603 Americans in Iraq alone. Then when you look at how Iran has funded its proxies like Hezbollah, Hezbollah is responsible for the deaths of more Americans than any terrorist organization pre-Al Qaeda. Mm-hmm.

So America has had interests around in this space, plus the nuclear piece. So now that Iran has largely been, I mean, amazingly over the last, its proxies have been wiped out. It doesn't have an air force. Its missile launchers are being taken out by the dozens. And so now you have this option that has presented itself to President Trump.

that I don't think, like to your question, I don't think 70, you know, the first 72 hours, I don't think anybody would have ever thought that that could be the state of play. Israel, I think, because it's got great capabilities through its air force, through the Mossad, through other channels, cyber, everything, plus America, President Trump helping on the defensive side, right? Our engagement to date has been defensive. And now there is this option set that

that has revealed itself as a consequence of the success that Israel has had. Okay, so I want to talk about that option set. And I saw you on Fox News this morning, and you were talking about, you know, obviously they have a lot of missile production in Iran, but there's a disproportionate number of actual launchers to launch the things. And every time that, you know, Iran launches these missiles, they're identifying new targets for Israel to then go and strike and take out more of their capability.

How much runway does Iran have here to continue at this pace with the degradation that's already happened before, like, by necessity, they're forced back to the bargaining table? This is the question I was asking myself just an hour ago reading the tweet storm of the Ayatollah. Right. All of his options are bad. He's out of his defense's.

He doesn't have the proxies. He can't. Typically, what would he do? You unleash Hamas. Yeah, drones from Hezbollah. Drones from Hezbollah, rockets from the north. Right. You've got Syria with Assad, right? Gone. Yeah. You've got these proxies running around Iraq. I mean, there's not much left. Right. So if you are the supreme, if you're the Ayatollah, you're looking at this. And by the way, all of your generals are dead. Mm-hmm.

And so I was surprised that he is not taking the off ramp that President Trump has offered. And it's just, it's bewildering. It's starting to look like it's not a rational response to just the box that he's in. He's in the corner. And so right now you've got various military options that I think are available to the president now, which include, now it's the offensive piece.

We've done the defensive piece by helping Israel intercept the missiles, right? Which is Iron Dome has historically dealt with rockets, but now they're having to deal with Iranian missiles coming in, hundreds. And they've intercepted most of them, but not all. And you're having every day in Israel anywhere between like five and 15 people dying. So...

But as you said, they're running out of missile launchers. The vulnerability of the Iranian regime is they didn't match their missile production with their missile launch capability. And so now, as you look at the statistics on the number of missiles coming over, they're declining dramatically every day. Because as you said, every time they launch something from a fixed or mobile launcher,

They've now notified the Israelis where to hit, which is what they're doing. They've taken out, at least, I mean, the last time I checked, like a third. And I think what the Israelis want to do is they want the runway in the coming weeks to destroy all of it. And if they can take out all of them, there aren't going to be any missiles or rockets coming in from anywhere. They're not coming from Hezbollah or Hamas or Syria or Iran, right?

The risk is around the Houthis, but they're already bombing, you know, they're bringing the fight to the Houthis. So I think the option set for President Trump is you could do, you can help Israel more offensively. You can help them logistically, materially, right? You can help them by, you could give them weapons maybe that they don't have, which could include that bomb. This is the bunker buster bomb. The bunker busting bomb. Okay. Okay.

You can help with refueling. There's a lot of stuff that you can help on the offensive side. The Ayatollah already thinks that it's there. But you can move this up by degrees. You could do joint strikes. And then at the very end of that spectrum is a B-2 bomber that flies over Iranian airspace and drops the massive ordnance penetrator, the MOP, on Fordow to deal...

the decisive blow to Iran's clandestine nuclear facility. So we were talking about this before we recorded, Ashbrook and I, about this facility. I have to imagine that Israel or us or some combination of the two has to have some sort of high-altitude drone surveillance of this facility to know what's going on.

Are they moving material out of it? I'm just curious. It's like the threat has been made that like we might engage offensively and drop this bunker buster bomb. What's to stop Iran from moving material out of that facility? I guess it's the only one that's deep enough that it would then be protected. So maybe they wouldn't do that. But I'm sort of curious what that what happens there.

It's clear now that the Mossad has penetrated deep into Iran, and they even did that before when they took out the political leader of Hamas in Tehran inside an IRGC compound. That was proof, I don't know how long ago that was, that's now been some time ago, so they had already penetrated it.

You have a massive population in Iran that is deeply dissatisfied with the Iranian regime, and those people can be recruits for Israel to conduct operations against the regime. And this is something which Israel is now talking about fairly openly, that they have achieved that kind of penetration. And so they did that in Lebanon, and now they're doing it in Iran, where they decapitated the leadership of Hezbollah. They did it in Gaza.

Now, they did it with the IDF in Gaza. They did it with airstrikes in Lebanon. And they're now doing it in Tehran and in Iran and taking out the sort of the leadership. And so there are, as I said earlier, I think there are ways I'm sure that that Israel has mapped out every inch of Fordo. Yeah.

just like they mapped out Bashir, Natanz, Isfahan, the Iranian nuclear infrastructure is not centrally located. It is by design dispersed. But Israel has now demonstrated an ability to know exactly how to hit, where to hit, when to hit. And they're doing it with impunity. The IAEA, the UN Nuclear Agency,

confirm that Israel has penetrated the Natanz nuclear facility and got below ground. And if they just keep landing ordnance on the same spot over and over again, you're going to get to the basement. Now, Fordow is a different story because as we talked about, it's so deep. To really get to it, you're either going to have to get inside the building with human assets that destroy it, or you do it from the air. And I would not rule out either option.

It's just, it's wild. And to think about the intelligence that the Israelis have. And I mean, you know, the Iranians have always talked big. You mentioned the tweet storm from the Ayatollah and there was something on Iranian television promising, like it was two nights ago, promising a giant surprise that's coming soon.

And, you know, my mind automatically goes to, well, maybe they're trying to move nukes out of out of Fordow and somewhere else in the Middle East. And they're going to I mean, what do you what sort of thing do you think they're capable of doing when they make a threat like that? It's a lot of bluster. It's starting to sound a little bit like Baghdad, Bob and Iraq.

There is a fair amount of hyperbole and propaganda. That's kind of the stock and trade of this regime.

The Israelis are just the reverse. It's like very quiet until the pagers go off. Yeah, yeah. They don't brag about it until it's already done. No, no. It's all after. Yeah. And Iran's all about putting out the hype video before they launch the missiles. And then everyone's like, OK. Well, you remember when President Trump was out of office during the Biden administration, they were putting – there are videos on the Ayatollah's website of them assassinating President Trump on a golf course. Mm-hmm.

And this is the weird sort of propaganda machine of the Iranian regime, and this is kind of how they operate. I don't know if they can back this up. It kind of surprises. I don't know if they actually have...

in light of the Israeli strikes, I don't know if they have the surprise capability that they're advertising. - Is that more domestic politics than it is actually projecting strength to the rest of the world? - Yeah, I think you're right. I think that the Iranian regime is always trying to figure out its domestic survival.

And if at any point they look like they are losing to the great twin Satan of Israel and the United States, it's an existential moment for them because the whole apparatus, the whole revolution, the whole thing is premised on Israel and the United States. And if they admit any defeat...

you undercut the purpose, the entire reason for it's the 79 revolution. So I think they don't have any choice but to say, you know, we're still winning in the Zionist entity.

is going to lose. And this is the sort of the, you see it in all of the tweets that the Ayatollah sent out. He's doubling down. We'll see if he takes the off ramp. Just based on the outside looking at this and my experience in the first term, President Trump very much wants to get to a deal with the Iranian regime. He much prefers that to war. There is a path where all of this can be avoided.

But the Iranian regime needs to recognize that the nuclear program is going away. And you can probably have a peaceful nuclear power. The United Arab Emirates, right across the Gulf, has a nuclear program. They don't enrich. Over half of the nations in the world that have nuclear power don't enrich. So you can have a nuclear program, but you can't enrich. You can have Russia do it. You can have a consortium, right, where the fuel bank...

comes to countries in the region. Then you take away this question. If you can't enrich, you remove the question, well, how close is Iran to a nuclear weapon? Right. But for as long as they can enrich, like the Obama nuclear deal left intact the entire nuclear infrastructure. So what does it say about the strength of the Iran nuclear deal that as soon as we're out of it, they can race to a bomb? Right. Right.

The deal should be structured in a way that prevents Iran from racing to a nuclear weapon. And that's the infirmity. For as long as you allow Iran to enrich up to a level to get a nuclear bomb, it's going to incentivize an arms race in the region where either it's Saudi or it's anybody. We're like, well, we need to enrich if they're going to enrich. Yeah. Well, it's terrifying. It is. It's terrifying stuff. Yeah.

existential for the Iranian regime and really the whole Middle East. Hopefully we can get to peace because I know we all want that. Brian Hook, every time I talk to you, I get smarter. Thank you so much for coming in here. Enjoyed it. Thanks. Thanks, Brian. You bet.

Man, that guy is so smart. You always learn something when he stops by the Ruthless Variety Program. And there is a lot of context that he provided about the region and everything that the Israelis are doing right now that I thought was very interesting. It's very interesting. I mean, where do you get this? Where do you get this in media? Right. In 18 minutes, Brian Hook covered a vast array of potential outcomes here.

And it seems like, to me, like the ball's kind of in the Ayatollah's hands right now for how he wants to play this. They're degrading his capacity to launch these missiles. The strike over the first 72 hours that Israel conducted, taking out the military leadership of Iran, it's...

And he knows he is facing against an American president who is as strong as any president we've had in a very long time, and he is no bullshit. He's been unequivocal about his statements. And the Ayatollah has to know that he's in a corner. I thought those were some pretty good points. Well, I guess what I love about it from our perspective, at the end of the day, my interest is what's best for America, is...

Every night when Iran wants to fire more missiles into Israel, they're painting more targets for Israel to take out from these surface-to-air launchers, which they're losing capacity of. And so at that point, what are you going to do? You've lost all of your proxies. You've lost Hamas. You've lost Hezbollah. And now you're losing your capacity to actually fire missiles into Israel. So where are your options? And so what time does that provide Donald Trump

to see if he can get the Ayatollah to the bargaining table. That's our question of the day. Does Trump strike Iran or does he buy time to negotiate peace? Maybe it's peace after a strike. Maybe it's you buy time into next week.

and see if you can get the eye told to the bargaining table. I don't know. I'll tell you my take. He has been very clear consistently over a number of years that Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon. He's also been very clear consistently over a number of years that he wants world peace. Right. And so I think that of anybody living and breathing in this entire country, there is one person who's capable of achieving both goals, and that's Donald Trump. Yeah.

Couldn't have said it better myself, dude. 100%. Yeah. So that's the heavy stuff, fellas. Right, the vegetables. That's the vegetables. We have a lot of other great stuff here in the Ruthless Variety program today. We got Senator Padilla crying. We got some great clips from the WNBA. Just a lot of great content. And we're also going to be reading your comments from the question from last episode on Tuesday. On Tuesday. Great. We're going to get to all of that right after this.

America is built on hard work and powered by American energy. Chevron has spent $44 billion with local businesses across all 50 states since 2022, fueling infrastructure and communities, all while strengthening local economies. Last year, Chevron increased U.S. production nearly 20%, powering communities and businesses from the heartlands to the coasts. We're helping to fuel America's energy advantage.

Building a brighter future right here at home. Visit Chevron.com slash America to discover more. All right, and we're back. All right, so we got to get to our question of the day from last episode. Will no kings revitalize the left? It seemed like everybody in Democratic politics was really spun up about this thing and how successful it was. They were really happy about it.

And they haven't had a lot to cheer for. So who can blame them, really? But that's sort of our question, and we want to know what you think. And to do that, we always start with a voice. Okay, first comment comes from Jimmy Major. And Jimmy writes, social media was lighting up after the No Kings protests with participants celebrating how they stuck it to Trump and boasting how they had many more numbers than attended the, quote, fascist parade.

What America saw was a gathering of hate-filled leftists deep in denial that they lost the election and who collectively lifted their leg and peed on the 250th celebration of the United States Army. All they accomplished was to label themselves anti-military, anti-patriotism, and anti-American.

Rumors are they will mount another protest on July 4th. I say keep digging that hole. And fellas, keep pumping out those banger shows. Love you guys. Oh, I love the comment. And I love how he illustrated that juxtaposition. You've got us celebrating the 250th anniversary of the Army. You've got guys like

in Revolutionary War garb, and then you got World War II garb. We're just celebrating the army, and they're like, fascist parade. You love it. Smug, what do we have for comment two? Comment two comes from Michael DeChudius. Michael writes, the No Kings protests can't revitalize the left as they are horribly condemned to jump from crisis to crisis with the intelligence and attention span of a squirrel. That is very true. That's a great point because that is part of their problem. It's like...

I remember seeing all these after-election polls, and they were like, what issues does Trump stand for? Boom. They could be like, well, deportation of illegals, economy. Boom, boom, boom. Fighting crime. What do Democrats stand for? There were like 70 issues each at like 3%, 4%. That's the problem with intersectionality. They just have to run to the next fire in order to complain. I love it.

I love it. Yeah, me too. Comment number three here. This is from Bill SMB. Bill writes, listener from the St. Louis area enjoyed the show. My wife encouraged me to start listening to your podcast. My thought is that I find it remarkable that Trump has now been elevated from Hitler, Nazi, scum, rapist, convicted felon to a king. I guess his approval rating is on an upward trajectory. That's good. That's very, very, very funny.

All right. So for a little bit of the lighter side of the news now, we got to get to our lightning round. Donald Trump, he would like to install two huge flagpoles at the White House. And he did that on Wednesday. Let's go to that clip. Clip number five, please, Spaghetts. I've had it for a long time.

And the first time I had it, you know, you guys were after me. I said I had to focus. I was I was the hunted. And now I'm the hunter. It's a big difference. That's like the hardest line. It's the hardest. You know what I love when Trump sometimes keeps things super vague, you know, where he's like, I was I was the hunted. Now I'm the hunter.

And you don't know if he's talking... So sick, dude. You don't know if he's talking about Iran. You don't know if he's talking about like, oh, well, you know, I came into office last time and it was Russiagate and all this bullshit from the beginning and I was on defensive posture. Like, he doesn't elaborate. He's just like, I was the hunted. Now I'm the hunter. Yeah. I mean, it's in so many ways because like the vindication he has of being elected after they tried to kill him, after they tried to jail him. Yeah. And it's like...

All the American people were with him. He's here now. Now he's on the offense. Just living his best life. So cool. And you know what? For too long throughout history, the North Pole and the South Pole of our planet have been, their location has been mislabeled. That's right. Okay? It's been Antarctica, and it's been up...

in the Arctic Circle. All right. I love this take. And right now, the North Pole and the South Pole are exactly where they belong in the north side and the south side of our White House surrounding our great president, and he paid for them himself. That's great. I love it. All right. So you remember, I think it was last week, Senator Padilla from California. Oh, yeah.

He did his best LeBron James flop, where he went into a press conference that Kristi Noem was having and basically tried to make a scene and get detained so he could get attention. He has now recounted that harrowing experience. Let's go to clip number six, please, Spaghetts. You've seen the video. I was pushed and pulled, struggled to maintain my balance. Ha ha ha!

I disrupted an event. I'm shocked.

If it isn't the consequences of my own actions. A huge problem is that for the longest time, the left has been allowed to run amok. You've seen it in cities across this country where crime was essentially made legal and it turns the city into a shithole where you don't want to be...

They were like, "Well, we can just run amok and do whatever." And anytime you go into a drugstore or Target or something, every single thing is going to be in plastic cases. You're going to have to get someone to run over with keys if you want to buy some toothpaste.

We're back to consequences, folks. Like, welcome to the world of where you are held accountable. Thank God. And, like, another part of the problem with this clown is, and you've seen it before, California is the bluest of blue states where clowns like that get appointed and they get put up by the party bosses and they fail their way up and they fail their way up. And the most ultimate, like, order of failures is Kamala Harris...

essentially gets handed that Senate seat. Right. Then she gets appointed to be VP for Joe Biden because he made a promise to cut the deal so that he would get the nomination.

And then this guy gets promoted to his job. Like, they're not good at winning elections. It's not good. Not much of a farm system. And it's such a good point. It's such a good point. And you're right. Like the talent atrophies when you're left with this. Well, especially when you're in a state like California, where it's one party rule and like they have no actual competition of ideas. Their media is completely subservient to the Democratic Party. So you don't actually have to be talented to get elected. No, you're absolutely right. Yeah.

But the talentless Democrats are not without competition. It isn't just Padilla here. We got Ilhan Omar. He's decided to talk a little bit about these ICE arrests. Oh, boy. Let's go to that clip, please, Spaghetts. To be coming out of our country, I mean, I grew up in a dictatorship.

And I don't even remember ever witnessing anything like that, to have a democracy, a beacon of hope for the world to now be turned into one of the worst countries where the military are in our streets without any regard for people's constitutional rights, while our president is spending millions of dollars prompting himself up

like a failed dictator with a military parade. Unbelievable. That makes my blood boil. I mean, that really made me irate when I saw that. Because for her to say we're turning into one of the worst countries on Earth, there are so many videos of her

at rallies where she's saying that I want folks to think of me as the congresswoman from Somalia and I'm going to do everything to support Somalia and use my role in Congress to support Somalia. And it's like, OK, wait a minute. All we're hearing is you're saying America is one of the worst countries on Earth. You're doing everything you can to try to get taxpayers to support Somalia. And you're like, when I was in Somalia, I never saw anything this bad.

You got to go. Go back. You got to go back. It's a failed state. Like, there's literally pirates. What a... And America is one of the worst countries. I mean, this is a place where you immigrated and you became...

A member of the United States House of Representatives. What an insult. And you think this is a bad country? What an insult that she was allowed into this country and is allowed to stay, let alone elected. That's an insult to every American. She should be sent right back. It's unbelievable. It's outrageous. It's outrageous that people say that. Have some gratitude for this country. Right. They didn't just save your life. Now, for some reason, some foolish voters have put you in office unless you get say in Congress, and that's your take.

Yeah, that's crazy. Get her, Kristi Noem. Put her on the plane. You know, and on a related topic here, Smug, I saw Arnold Schwarzenegger was on The View recently, and they basically asked his opinion of these ICE arrests happening in California. And this is a guy, obviously, who immigrated to the United States. And they were very disappointed by his response, where he basically was like, I owe everything to the United States of America. I was impressed that

by the American people like that. I mean, imagine they came over here with the age of 21 with absolutely nothing. And then to create a career like that. I mean, in no other country in the world could you do that.

I just think the world of the great kind of history that we have with immigrants in America. But the key thing also is at the same time that we got to do things legal. That is the important thing, you know, so you got to do things legal. And those people that are doing illegal things in America and they're the foreigners, they are not smart. Because when you come to America, you're a guest and you have to behave like a guest. Like when I go to someone's house,

and I'm a guest, then I will do everything I can to keep things clean and to make my bed and to do everything that is the right thing to do rather than committing a crime or being abusive or something like that. I'm shocked. I didn't expect that from him. Isn't that unbelievable? Because he's been going super left lately. Clearly they didn't. That's why they asked the question.

Oh, man. It's great stuff. There's just great content out there. But we have even more. Even more. We have two incredible clips, including one from the WNBA, which you're really going to want to see right after this.

American strength starts with American energy. As a leading pipeline and energy infrastructure company, Williams is leading the way, delivering low-cost natural gas to power American energy dominance. Here's the truth. AI, tech innovation, manufacturing, and America, as a global leader, require a lot of energy. And there is no better way to meet growing energy demand than reliable, abundant natural gas.

For over 100 years, Williams has led the charge to safely deliver that energy. But now, outdated permitting laws slow American innovation and economic development, blocking access to the abundant resources we have and need to stay ahead. Expedited permitting is critical to meet growing energy demand, drive economic growth, lower prices, and fully unlock America's energy potential.

Williams is ready to get back to building the pipeline infrastructure that will keep our economy growing, strong, and secure. Learn more at williams.com. You've heard us talk before about the effort by legacy media to stop you from accessing shows like this one. They do it by eliminating spectrum available to consumers like you to access shows like this one. They say it's a national defense issue, absurdly enough.

While Trump isn't buying it, neither is Senator Ted Cruz. In the big, beautiful bill, Republicans have heard your voice and they're providing more spectrum. So what does that mean for you? It can reduce your monthly broadband bill and preserve your ability to watch, listen, and stream all the content that you choose, not what's chosen for you by some big cable provider. The sale of spectrum will also generate tens of billions of dollars to reduce our national debt. What's not to love about that?

Don't let the giant cable providers and legacy media continue to filter your information. Tell your senator and your member of Congress to work with Senator Cruz and President Trump to expand spectrum and end the legacy media monopoly for good. You can learn more at endthecableopoly.org. All right, we got to go to this clip. I don't know if you guys saw this going around social media, but like,

There has been a lot of targeted violence on Caitlin Clark in the WNBA. Oh, yeah. Has there? I mean, we saw some sort of stuff with like Angel Reese and this back and forth. And I think to some extent the WNBA or sort of like sports journalism writ large is sort of amping all this up because conflict is good. Conflict gets attention and attention means ratings.

Good for the WNBA. But it seems like it's sort of systemic now. Like, anytime Kaitlyn Clark is in a game, she's, like, targeted for her harassment from players on the opposite team. It's crazy. It is crazy. All right, let's play this clip. Clip number eight, please, Spaghetts.

Okay. She gets hit in the face and then hit again and then knocked over by another chick. So it was kind of fast. Can we play it one more time? Yeah, let's play it again. So you got to notice, so she goes after a player, Clayton Clark. You saw the blonde. She goes at her face. And that's when the other player came in.

to defend her teammate. Wait, hold on, hold on, hold on. You're against Caitlin Clark here? Yes, yes. But she got hit in the eye. She gets hit. Look at that. It's possible. She gets hit. It's a sport. Stuff happens. Someone just bumped into her. The ball wasn't in her face. And then intentionally you see Caitlin Clark hits the other player right after this. Well, she just turned around. So she wants beef. Well, there's beef. Okay. Oh, no, consequences. Now that Smug wants to make this a brooder film,

Let's go ahead and play that again, because what I see is Caitlin Clark gets hit in the eye and then turns around to see who hit her there. And then a linebacker comes from the paint and knocks her to the ground. After Caitlin Clark hit the linebacker. So here's the thing. If you want to see a woman run fast, offer consequences. Right. And that's what's happened to Caitlin Clark. So.

She decides, I think it was a few months ago at this point, to go woke. Yeah. No, I remember. You remember that? I remember that clearly. I remember we did a whole segment on Megyn Kelly's show about it. And Kellan Clark was like, I would owe everything. I owe everything I have. And the WNBA owes everything that we have to black women players. And the WNBA would not be here without them. I owe everything to them personally.

The WNBA won't be here without the NBA. Okay? That's who's subsidizing that whole league. Right. It doesn't actually make money. When you throw in with, like, the woke mob that wants to destroy you, you get what you asked for. She deserves all of this. These are the friends that you wanted to make. There they are. They're all there. Look at your friends, how they treat you. So take their side. I delight seeing that. I want that wanted clocker some more. That's who I'm rooting for. Okay, I'm not going to cheer on violence here. I will. Sorry.

It's consequences. Sometimes you got to learn from them. It's interesting. You know, women are terrible to each other. And like what we just saw happen on the court is nothing like I mean, it makes Ron Artest look like patty cake.

You know what? It's like... He got a bad rap. He got a bad rap, dude. The malice in the palace was a little more than that. I don't think so. Because this is every night in that league. The fans caused that, dude. The fans did. I feel bad for Jermaine O'Neal. Yeah. Like, man, they didn't deserve that. But Kaitlin Clark deserved that. This is every night in that league. And it's on the court. And it is just like... Good. Kaitlin Clark, keep it up. Women are terrible to each other. And I don't understand what that...

What drives that? It's not go woke, go broke anymore. It's go woke, get broke. Look at that. Catch that beating. You deserve that. She does not deserve it. Yep, she wanted to be woke. Have fun. She's a great player. Who's the blonde that got her on the sun? I don't know. That's the one I'm rooting for. I need to find out who that is. Although what I've also noticed is that on the Indiana Fever, that's Kaitlyn Clark's team, she has a little bit of muscle now that I saw later in the game there was a flagrant foul settling the score.

It's sort of like Sidney Crosby out there playing in the NHL, and he's got an enforcer out there on the ice to basically settle any scores, which I kind of like. It makes it interesting. I will tell you, I went to an Indiana Fever game when they came to play the Washington Mystics. Nice. You took your girls there? I took my girls. It was packed, like...

All the way to the ceiling, every seat filled. And the second that Kaitlyn Clark hit the floor, whenever she hit a shot, it was like the crowd got to their feet. Everybody went nuts. So there is something about what she's bringing to the sport, the attention that she's bringing to the WNBA that they never had before. Yeah.

Well, all is not well with liberal white women in this country. And that comes brings us, excuse me, to our final clip here of the show. Something that I have never seen before. Katie and I, my wife, we like watching some crazy stuff, you know, sci fi stuff and things like that. We love ancient aliens. Right. Which is an insane show.

where they're basically like... That's still on History Channel, right? It's on History Channel. It's not history, but it's on History Channel. Like one episode we watched recently was like, what if Thor's hammer was real and it was given to the Norsemen by aliens? You know, and each one of their premises always has this dependent clause where it's like, ancient alien theorists say the answer...

Is yes. And the thing I love is that you saw the show description and you read it and you were like, yeah, click. Yeah, click. I want to see this episode now. Are you for real? I'm watching that. Every single episode of Ancient Aliens has a banger just like that. I'm watching it. It's incredible. But I preface this clip we're about to play because nothing that is described on Ancient Aliens is as crazy as about what you're about to see. So let's go to that clip. Nine, please, Spaghetts.

Okay, so the 4am club is a term coined in a club founded by Gia Prism. I've tagged her and linked one of her pinned videos that explains. But basically on November 6th, thousands of people were woken up around 4am and those people were called to anchor in the higher timeline where Kamala was the winner. This is not a small club. This is thousands of people and I was one of them.

My specific experience was that I woke up at 4 a.m. on November 6th and I had a knowing without looking at my phone that he had won. But everything in my body, in my mind, in my soul, in my energy felt like that was not true. It felt like she had won and I was somehow being made to watch a parallel timeline where he won. And I have existed in that alternate timeline since 4 a.m. on November 6th, just as thousands of other 4 a.m.ers have.

You are.

We have been existing this whole time on a completely different timeline, and we have been holding the light. We have been holding the vision. We've been anchoring that timeline while the rest of this country has been going through the necessary steps to merge with that timeline. And I believe if I'm interpreting my meditation downloads correctly, that we will begin collapsing those timelines tomorrow, June 14th.

I mean, maybe Donald Trump is a dictator if he's powerful enough that he's putting people in other dimensions. I mean, I've heard he can put people in crystals. Like, that's widely believed that, like, you know, he can put people in crystals. He can? That's been known. That's been known for a while. I thought that was a Superman plot. Her claims are, like, loony. Like, like...

What is happening that not only can a person be having a psychotic breakdown, but they're compelled to videotape themselves? Because there was a time where – what is that term where you can be held at an asylum without –

Baker Act. It was like a 50-50 or something? Yeah, involuntary hold. Yeah. Like, if someone saw that, there was a time that that's it. You're getting locked out. Yeah, it's done. You're not safe. Yeah. And they are now videoing themselves and putting it out there. Yeah, it's helpful, though. You know, at least we know where the crazies are exactly. I just...

I don't know. You know, on Tuesday, we played that clip of that elderly woman at the No Kings protest. And it's painful to watch somebody be that psychologically broken. And then you see stuff like this. And this is somehow funnier where it's like the cope is so real, like the opposition to Donald Trump is so strong in her brain that she could literally invent an alternative dimension in which Kamala Harris is still. This is crazier than like QAnon stuff.

Dude, it's absolutely crazy. After 2020, there were some conservatives who were like, oh, maybe the foreigners were stuffing ballot boxes. Can we please get to the bottom of it and check to see if ballot boxes were stuffed? The left right now is like, no, there's an alternate dimension. I swear to you, at 4 a.m., I had a feeling come over me. And Kamala Harris is actually the president on June 14th. It will be revealed. Get out.

Out of here. This is the most outer space type space cadet thing I've ever heard in my entire life. And this is on the internet. I'm telling you, if you are not on Twitter, if you are not following all of the people who are sharing this sort of thing, you're missing out on the greatest comedy that ever walked the face of the earth. I'll tell you what, this is, in all seriousness, there is a very deep level of like,

mental derangement in the left in plain sight. We just had, by God's grace, the Supreme Court ruled hospitals cannot perform gender surgeries on children and that that was controversial and that the Washington Post and the New York Times wrote the headline as soon as the news broke as like, "Conservative Supreme Court is going to deny healthcare to transgender children

So the performing surgeries on children is the most psychotic and deranged behavior I think a human could possibly engage in. And that had been mainstream to the point that the major publications in this country are like, wow, how dare this be stopped? So like...

That's a hop skipping away from a kooky lady being like, I'm in an alternate timeline for Kamala's president. It's basically Heaven's Gate without the Nikes. Yeah. Right. They're already there. Exactly. And how would the AP write it? Republican podcast pounces on women expressing concern about the election outcome. There you go. It's absolutely crazy.

What an incredible clip. What an incredible segment. What an incredible show. Yeah. This has been a lot of fun. We've given people the vegetables. We've given them candy. Unfortunately, we missed King of the Hill this week. Holmes is out, unfortunately. But we'll be back with that next week and a lot more shenanigans that, you know, given the content we're seeing on Twitter every single day, we'll have plenty to cover here next week.

Thank you for listening. Thank you for viewing. If you'd like to advertise with us, we have a new email account, ads at ruthlesspodcast.com. A lot of interest in reaching the listeners and viewers of the Ruthless Variety Program. Subscribe to the YouTube channel.

It's important. We love seeing that subscriber number go up. We love when you like and you share and you comment because that helps it get seen by more people across the country. And that's really, really important, especially for a show like this. We went through a lot of really important stuff. Had a great guest, Brian Hook. Thank you again, Brian, for coming in. I know the Iranians are trying to kill you, but I appreciate you spending 18 minutes with the Ruthless Variety Program. And with that...

I think we did it. I think so. Absolute banger of an episode. Gentlemen, thank you so much, Brian Hook. And thank you to our listeners and viewers. Just like Duncan said, if you have not yet, go to the YouTube, hit that subscribe button. It's more fun and video. So until next time, minions, keep the faith, hold the line and own the webs. We'll see you Tuesday. Stay ruthless.