10/13/25: Trump Demands Bibi Pardon, Laura Loomer Crashes Out, Peter Thiel AntiChrist Obsession

26:46It is a group of buildings that will be built to handle training and maintenance for Qatari troops. And the agreement with Qatar has been in the works for years. So there's a little bit of additional context here. But even in the additional context from the reporting, it says it is a group of buildings that will be built to handle training and maintenance for Qatari troops. They say, in fact, on-site training agreements with allies are common in the U.S. The Republic of Singapore squadron have been hosted at the base since 2008. German forces trained at the Holloman Air Force Base in New Mexico for decades.

27:16New facilities to train F-35 fighter pilots were completed at Ebbing Air Force Base in Arkansas last year. But again, Crystal, obviously, this is Qatar. It's different than—it's completely different than Germany. It's different than Singapore. Different than all of that. So, yeah, it's different for Trump because they like give him money and stuff. I was just going to say it's the timing of Hegseth making that announcement that people are like, wait a second, what's going on? Yeah. Well, also, I mean, this may be another instance of why Pete Hegseth has been relegated to like just lecturing generals about being too fat and shaving their beards or whatever, because we covered earlier how apparently Rubio and Stephen Miller are the ones who are actually really running the Department of War policy at this point.

28:04So anyway, the fun part of this was Laura Loomer crashing out. We can put E3 up on the screen. She went on like a multi-dozen long tweet tirade about this before the clarification. She says, never thought I'd see Republicans give terror financing Muslims from Qatar a military base on U.S. soil so they can murder Americans. By the way, that line from her, that was Trump's line back in the first administration, which again shows you just how arbitrary even the label of terror ultimately is. I mean, Syria is the perfect example of that. But in any case, she says, I don't think I'll be voting in 2026.

28:40I cannot in good conscience make any excuses for the harboring of jihadis. This is where I draw the line. We've got another one here from Laura Loomer we can put up. What the hell is going on? Why are we trying to train more Muslims how to fly planes on U.S. soil? Didn't we already learn our lesson? Why are we encouraging more Islamic infiltration of our country by the funders of Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood? This is very bad for our national security. Qatar is one of the largest funders of Islamic terror. Now they're being rewarded by getting a Qatari Air Force base in Idaho. This is outrageous.

29:10We're allowing the Islamic enemy to gain so much ground in our country. I will never support this. And I mean, Loomer is just like brazenly, outwardly, unapologetically Islamophobic, which certainly comes out in this particular message on it. I think she would actually describe herself. Oh, I don't think she would object to that characterization. No, no, I don't think I actually I don't know. I'd have to look it up, but I don't think that she would would be my my strong assumption. But yeah, I mean, so as the Associated Press reports, this has been like they say it's been in the works for a while.

29:39But I think it's pretty obvious that the Trump administration's timeline here has to do with negotiations just in general. And so, yeah, it's different than Germany. It's obviously different than Germany for many reasons. But there you have it. This is you can see where the Laura Loomers of the world are like, hey, wait a second. Wait a second. I mean, the sort of this is going to be an interesting thing for Trump down the road because the Israel hawks who are very supportive of Donald Trump bitterly hate Qatar and see Qatar, obviously, in one way. Laura Loomer does. Exactly. And so Trump is extremely close to the Qataris.

30:22Steve Whitcoff is extremely close to the Qataris. They're going to be instrumental in executing any—I mean, if you want this peace deal to stick and you really want Netanyahu not to go back into Gaza and make this conflict kinetic again, they're going to need the Qataris. Probably why this was partially sealed when it was sealed. So that's going to be a problem for him. They're the ones that gave Trump his jet. Yeah? Yeah, his new Air Force One. Yep. And so this is going to be a problem for Trump long into the future. Like this doesn't stop with this controversy. It's always just interesting to see what issues, too, are like a red line for people, you know.

31:05Yes. That's kind of funny. You know, all of the other shit he's done you're cool with. And then, you know, this like weird Air Force partnership, whatever, like that's the thing where you draw the line. So that's always fascinating to me. I mean, isn't the Trump Organization, I feel like they have a, it's hard to keep track of all of the deals, but I thought they were doing something in Doha. I thought they had just done something in Doha for the Trump Organization, which is led by Eric Trump, which is. Let's see. Very likely. Yeah. Yeah. They're building a luxury golf resort. Trump Organization signed a deal with Qatar's government.

31:48Yes. For a luxury beachside resort, 18-hole golf course north of Doha, valuing the billions, includes villas, has drawn ethics scrutiny from watchdogs, called a potential conflict of interest. Gee, do you think? It's like so obvious. Gee, do you think? This is Ryan's point about when does the deal happen. It's when the Israelis bomb his money in Doha. Like Trump, like a principal, if you get called into the principal's office, makes Netanyahu call his parents, like makes Netanyahu call Qatar and apologize in front of Donald Trump. I'm not speaking from experience. I never had to call my parents in the principal's office because I punched someone that did not happen.

32:25But it's exactly what Trump was doing that like you I'm going to watch you. Yeah. Tell Qatar that you're sorry. Well, and yeah, exactly. And look, the Israelis, I mean, they had gotten away with literally everything. Nothing had been too far. I guess it's another example of like, oh, this was this was your red line. But from Trump, it makes sense that this would be the issue that would be like, nope, we're done here. But that being said, if they had pulled off the operation and successfully murdered the Palestinian negotiators, then they would have been able to forestall the deal into the future, you know, additional length of time, which was certainly their goal.

33:05So I just final point that golf resort deal was struck in April. So as the Trump administration was negotiating for an end to this war and the Trump administration was negotiating an end to this war, the Trump organization was negotiating a golf resort in Qatar. And Eric Trump at the time said, we are incredibly proud to expand the Trump brand and to Qatar through this exceptional collaboration with Qatari DR and DAR Global. So if you think these things are completely disconnected, if you think Jared Kushner having backing from the Saudi government, the Saudi royals, if you think these things are disconnected, I mean, obviously that is untrue.

33:46You know, there's it's all blended together at this point, obviously. Yeah.

33:54Up next to the Antichrist. Let me let you set this one up. I mean, I'll give you the bare bones. Let's put this up on the screen from the Washington Post. So Peter Thiel, we all know and love, he gave this series of four private lectures, like two hours each. You had to agree that they were off the record and not to record, blah, blah, blah. Well, they got leaked. The audio got leaked to the Washington Post, so they wrote up this piece. They say inside billionaire Peter Thiel's private lectures, warnings of the Antichrist and U.S. destruction. Tech billionaire, they write, Peter Thiel recently warned that Swedish activist Greta Thunberg and critics of technology or AI are, quote, legionnaires of the Antichrist in private lectures on Christianity that connected government oversight of Silicon Valley to an apocalyptic future.

34:43In the four roughly two-hour lectures, which began last month, Thiel laid out his religious views to a sold-out audience, told to keep the contents off the record, according to an event listing. He argued those who propose limits on technology development not only hinder business, but also threaten to usher in the destruction of the U.S. in an era of global totalitarian rule, according to the recordings. Now, for a guy who, you know, helped found Palantir and is invested in this whole world, very convenient that he sees any sort of infringements on technological development as helping to usher in the Antichrist.

35:21And there's also, I mean, there's a lot that's really noteworthy about this too. I mean, the fact that he, like, it's explicitly religious and Christian in a Silicon Valley setting where that hasn't always been the association. I know from listening to some of the other things that he's said publicly, you sent me some of the lectures that he'd given or the talks that he'd given previously, that he also likes to connect it to, okay, well, even if you're not religious, like there's a secular concern about the end of the world. You can think about nuclear weapons. You could think about climate crisis.

35:49You could think about AI, but he believes that while AI development is dangerous, that the risks of not developing AI are more dangerous and will lead you potentially down the path as legionnaires of the antichrist to an era of global totalitarian rules. So a very convenient set of beliefs for him to hold. Right. So Peter Thiel has started over the last year framing this in explicitly biblical Christian theological terms by focusing in on the catacomb, which is from Second Thessalonians. I'll get into that a little bit more. We can put F1 up on the screen. This is the Washington Post article on a sort of leaked lecture, leaks from a lecture that Thiel gave in San Francisco, but he has been doing these lectures in multiple different places.

36:35And one of the interesting parts of this Post article. There's been a Wired article on some leaks that came out. You're seeing this drip into the media in recent months. He did this long interview with Ross Douthat. We're going to get into that as well. In fact, we actually already covered this too, because as you said, the top is Joe Crystal. Anytime someone with the power that Peter Thiel has starts talking like this, you have to pay attention. So he's saying the same thing over and over again. Every time you see a new article or a new interview, he is making the same pitch over and over again.

37:03and he's doing it as there's this kind of Christian revival happening in Silicon Valley, like a real, the vibe shift that's happening nationally, there's a real, not even an undercurrent anymore of that happening in Silicon Valley. You see it in people like Nicole Shanahan, you see it in an organization that Teal is involved with that's bringing in a lot of powerful people in Silicon Valley. And you hear it a lot, a lot, a lot in the conversation about generative AI language models and that sort of thing. So here's a pretty representative encapsulation of the Teal argument. We can go ahead and roll F2, and then we'll do some more breakdowns.

37:44I think it was Ivan Illich who said that in the time before Christ, there were many forerunners to Christ. In the time after Christ, there'll be many forerunners of the Antichrist. In some sense, it's a type. So Nero was a type of the Antichrist, or maybe Napoleon was a type of the Antichrist. It's someone who aspires for world domination, creation of this one world state. In some ways, Alexander the Great was sort of a pre-Christ prototype of the Antichrist, very parallel to Christ. They both die at 33. Alexander conquers the world. Christ saves us. It's a sort of a compare and contrast. But in some sense, the Antichrist as an idea is something that really comes into being in the world after Christ.

38:31And so there's a lot of things about it that are mysterious. In some ways, the Antichrist copies Christ. The Antichrist pretends to be greater than Christ, hyper-Christian, ultra-Christian, and then maybe only ultimately deeply, deeply anti-Christian. You can think of it as a system where maybe communism is a one-world system. So it can be an ideology or a system. And then, of course, you can also think of it as Newman did, where it's sort of the final dictator of the one world state, where it's still, you stress it more as a person. You can think of it as a type, a system, a person. How does a sort of world takeover actually happen?

39:16And it's kind of a, not a deus ex machina, but it's like a daemonium ex machina. It's like the Antichrist just gives these hypnotic speeches where nobody can remember a word and then sort of just swindles people's souls out of them and they submit to this totalitarian state or something like this. And I think if we were to speculate on how to solve that plot hole, we have an answer in the world after 1945 that people are, in 1900, early 20th century, people were not yet scared of apocalyptic weapons. They could not imagine anything of the scale that we'd have by the second half of the 20th century.

39:59And so the Antichrist takes over by talking about Armageddon. The Antichrist takes over by talking about Armageddon. Now, Ross Douthat, in his interview with Peter Thiel, which we covered earlier, picked up on what many of you are picking up on after hearing Peter Thiel say the Antichrist talks a lot about Armageddon while he's been on a year-long tour talking about Armageddon. Let's roll the next clip. But wouldn't the Antichrist be like, great, you know, we're not going to have any more technological progress, but I really like what Palantir has done so far, right? I mean, isn't that a concern?

40:32Wouldn't that be the, you know, the irony of history would be that the man publicly worrying about the Antichrist accidentally hastens his or her arrival?

40:46There are all these different scenarios. I obviously don't think that that's what I'm doing. To put it terribly, that was a pregnant pause after Rostov basically asked, are you the Antichrist? Are you seeing any of this in the mirror? It's giving Antichrist. Well, and this is the thing. It's like, OK, if your fear is a totalitarian one world government. Yes. Nothing creates a possibility of that more than the technology that like a Palantir is developing. And we see this right now in our country. Like part of the threat of the Trump administration's, you know, fascist tactics and goals is that the technology is there now, like in a way that it wasn't after 9-11.

41:30You know, there were incredible like owner's restrictions, like assault on civil liberties. That was all there. But we did not have the level of tech that we have now to actually be able to sweep up all of our social media communications and give us all, you know, credit scores and put us all on the, you know, the list of, oh, you don't like Trump. So you must you might low key be a terrorist like that all exists now in a way it didn't before, in part because of someone like Peter Thiel. So that's one part of it that is just glaringly obvious. And then the part that I mentioned before about how incredibly convenient it is that you would see the people who oppose any sort of restrictions on unfettered AI development as a true threat to the world and legionnaires of the Antichrist in his language.

42:24So that's one piece of it. And then just to flesh on to lay on a little bit more of what his argument is, because he says, OK, yeah, there's dangers of AI development, but the danger of not doing it is even more so. He believes we're in this period of stagnation and that if people aren't able to, you know, if there isn't enough growth and people aren't able to, you know, satisfy their own, you know, material needs, then you're going to have, you know, greater peril and greater dangers. and there's a part of that that's true and I certainly think that you know growth is important etc I'm not a not a de-growther here but he completely ignores the distribution of wealth which AI is only set to further consolidate all of that growth in the hands of an already wealthy elite and there's a complete you know blind spot as is true I would say of a lot of libertarians, which is what he is, there's a complete blind spot around how that wealth is distributed.

43:21And the fact that the technologies you're pushing are going to make us even more wildly unequal and deny people. I mean, the goal of this tech is to make it so that human labor is basically irrelevant so that people don't have jobs. Like, how do you think that is going to go for society? What sort of peril do you think that creates for society? This is the big question. I mean, a lot of the libertarians who accuse everyone else of being de-growthers say that what we need is a democratized AI marketplace where you can have small AI and big AI, big tech getting challenges from small tech. But that's not at all what's poised to happen, what it looks like.

43:59And this is, we break down some of the theological stuff coming out here because a lot of the coverage refers to Peter Thiel as like a devout Christian or dedicated Christian or something like that. And he's very eccentric. I mean, he may be devout in his own way is he does think very deeply and often about Christianity, and he does apply a Christian framework, but his Christian framework is not orthodox, lowercase o, orthodox Christianity at all. He's very inspired by Rene Girard. He has almost a, I was going to say Petersonian, but like Jordan Petersonian belief in the mimetic power and the mimetic roots of Christianity.

44:35Again, like this is not lowercase o, orthodox Christianity at all, but I think there's an undertone here of him trying to make this argument palatable to more lowercase or orthodox Christians as this more lowercase orthodox Christianan Christian revival happens in Silicon Valley and in other places. And what he's talking about is this, so the verse of the catacomb is in second Thessalonians where Paul writes, don't you remember that when I was with you, I used to tell you these things and now you know what is holding him back, referring to the Antichrist, so that that he may be revealed at the proper time.

45:13For the secret power of lawlessness is already at work, but the one who now holds it back will continue to do so till he is taken out of the way. And so Carl Schmitt, who is infamous, very influential in like new right circles, infamous for becoming a Nazi basically. And then later - A lot of the intellectual sort of architecture, like moral architecture for Nazism. Friend-enemy distinction, right. Carl Schmitt read a lot into this question of the catacomb because he saw one-world communism, which Peter Thiel just used that exact same phrase, as the potential antichrist. So what Ross Douthat was getting at is you say that this is holding back the antichrist.

45:57That what would hold back the antichrist would be this open marketplace of AI technology and little tech, whatever it is, because maybe Greta Thunberg is the antichrist, this degrowth, he seriously does. Maybe these degrowth environmentalists are the Antichrist because this gets into the very famous verse from Revelation describing the Antichrist. And it's, it is eerie. I understand why people right now have their sort of the goosebumps when you read this, because this is from Revelation. It says, the beast also forced all people great and small, rich and poor, free and slave to receive a mark on their right hands or on their foreheads so that they could not buy or sell unless they had the mark, which is the name of the beast or the number of its name.

46:49So Revelation is really, again, it's the sort of dream prophecy and you can project a million different things onto it and you can, people take really literally certain things out of it and say, this is what's happening right now. The world is ending right now. It's about to be the rapture. Even the rapture itself is something that you can take really literally and not everybody believes in. But this is a very specific prophecy. They could not buy or sell unless they had the mark. Receive a mark on their right hands or their foreheads so they could not buy or sell unless they had the mark. Again, understand why people right now look at crypto, potential, Tucker just had a podcast where he was talking about potential verification processes that you would have to go through once everything moves to crypto and digital currency as a literal like mark to prevent you from buying or selling unless you can verify that this is your wallet or something like that.

47:44So again, like people have read this into everything over the process of industrialization. But what Thiel is pitching here is kind of what we saw as Cold War anti-communism, that communism is reflective of the Antichrist, that the Antichrist is something where you see, you know, this, so this is, this says, the second beast was given power to give breath to the image of the first beast so that the image could speak and cause all who refuse to worship the image to be killed, exercise all the authority of the first beast on its behalf and made the earth and its inhabitants worship. It just goes on, great signs causing fire to come down from heaven and earth in full view of the people.

48:26So this idea that there's a wonderful utopian antichrist that speaks in ways that are very seductive to modern people and then stamps you with a mark basically where you can't buy or sell. Teal sees the catacomb as something that is holding that back. And so he is now pitching AI, which of course he's heavily invested in, as the catacomb that holds back the antichrist. And again, is it sincere? Is it a defense of his business and his worldview. I mean, Thiel is somebody who, I'm curious if you agree with this, Crystal, I think whatever you think of Peter Thiel, the man does have a very coherent libertarian ideological commitment.

49:15Like his whole career is about what he sees as this American dynamism powered by libertarianism. And I don't know if this, I've listened to just about everything he's done. The both of those Peter Robinson lectures, I don't know how sincere it is. It's obviously awfully convenient. My suspicion is that he is trying to make generative AI palatable to skeptical Christians like the Tucker Carlson's of the world. Yeah. I don't know if I could say that Peter Thiel has been ideologically consistent in his libertarian values when I see the Trump administration infringing gravely on any sort of civil liberties.

50:00But he's never been a civil libertarian. He pitches himself as a civil libertarian. That was the whole investment. Right. And I mean, Palantir is like directly contrary to civil liberties and J.D. Vance is his guy. Also, he talks about how he thinks nationalism, which is, you know, anti-libertarian. He thinks that's like the direction to go in. But so I'm not sure that I could say he's been faithful to his libertarian values. But but what I and whether or not it's his genuine held view or his business, you know, or his business alignment or whatever. or those two things sort of mesh in a way that he couldn't possibly untangle them, which I think is most likely the case.

50:41I can see why he would be concerned about Christians looking at this tech, which is frightening on any number of levels, which Naomi Klein, and I brought this up many times, describes as anti-creation because you're basically sucking up the energy and water resources and land resources in order to create this sort of like robotic mirror world, like twisted mirror world, feeding into it all of humanity's greatest works. Right, operating on inertia and not human energy. Yes. And if you read these Silicon Valley AI guys who are all about it, they are creating, it is like its own religion. I mean, it is complete with its own like redemption arc and creation myths.

51:34And like they, some of them actively see themselves as creating a kind of a God in a machine that's going to save us all. So I could see, I'm not Christian, but I could imagine some Christians looking at it and being like, I'm not so sure about that. That doesn't feel right to me in line with, you know, my religious beliefs and my teachings and, you know, my like belief in humanity, et cetera. So there is very much a possibility, and this again touches some of the AI conversation we had in the first block, there really is a possibility of a sort of like pro-human, pro-creation, cross-ideological alignment against this stuff, both because of what it's doing to our minds, what it's doing to our world, what it's doing to our futures, you know, what it's doing to our job market.

52:21Those effects are already starting to be seen. What it's doing to consolidate wealth and power in the hands of a very few number of people, Peter Thiel being among them, You can imagine a very unique coalition coming together that includes a lot of Christians to deeply oppose that. So in that vein, just from a political perspective, as like a political operator, I understand why he's trying to make this pitch and make this appeal to this one particular community. And the CIA basically invests originally in Palantir because Thiel, as a civil libertarian, was pitching it as a way to surveil without infringing on civil liberties.

52:56Like that's what the pitch was. And that's where the CIA, people don't know this, has a venture capital fund. I don't even know. It sounds so crazy to say it's true. And that's where the seed money or some of the earliest big injections of capital into Palantir come from because Thiel was able to. So that's where I think it's been consistently inconsistent to your point. Can he even disentangle these things from each other? Because he has this idea that he can make the deep state work with civil liberties, which is not true. I mean, it's just not true. I just don't buy it, never have. Well, a lot of libertarians think if you just take it outside of government, then it's not oppressive.

53:37That's exactly right. And of course, a CIA investment, this is like saying Millay with his IMF bailouts. Yeah, like a libertarian experiment. Like these two things are not compatible. It is a spoiled experiment. Your lab conditions are imperfect. But we've all seen examples of LLMs doing extremely dark, having extremely dark consequences, saying extremely dark things, pushing other people to do extremely dark things. This is a huge question with Elon Musk, for example, how he is now using X. Elon Musk, who is flirting with becoming a Christian at Charlie Kirk's Memorial and all of this, creating bots that are hypersexual.

54:21This is a man who's concerned about the birth rate and is giving more people incentives for more people to just be behind their computer screen and not get out there and actually have to, you know, find. Engage with other humans. Yes, exactly. Kind of a necessary ingredient for procreation, at least to this point. Right, yes. So Teal is saying this is an obvious, like there's this Christian revival happening. Is that going to push Silicon Valley? Because we have seen so many concerns from people who have been deeply involved in LLM world, developing LLMs, godfather of AI. How many times have you seen headlines about people who have been deeply involved in the creation of LLM saying this technology is going to destroy humanity.

55:01It could destroy civilization. It is literally demonic is another thing that people have said who are involved in this part. So he realizes that's a problem. And it's like, okay, well, maybe we can work more on this catacomb idea, this Schmidt idea. And maybe there's a case that opening up AI is what holds back the Antichrist. And hard to say if it's sincere. I've listened to him do this for hours. So I think he actually is probably sincere, but whether he's sincere because he was trying to get from point A to point B or because it was just organic, like, oh, yes, this is the catacomb is a different question.

55:34High IQ people can be very slippery because they can talk themselves into things. And really convince themselves of things. And so it doesn't really matter whether he's sincere or not. Like, the impact is the same. And it's not going to work. Like, it's not going to work on most Christians. I mean, this is the fundamental battle over J.D. Vance. If you listen to like how Nick Fuentes, for example, talks about J.D. Vance. Yeah. There's this deep suspicion that he is an anti-growth, anti-creative, anti-human. He's indebted to them in some ways because Peter Thiel was so instrumental in his career.

56:06He's also just like racist and hates his Indian wife, too. Nick Fuentes? Yeah. Oh, of course. Yes, of course. But like I'm saying, speaking politically of the divide on the right now, it's even with Trump, he becomes fully pro-crypto after being anti-crypto. Like, this is the signature divide on the right, and Peter Thiel is recognizing it before other people are. It's anti-human versus pro-human, basically. Where does Marjorie Taylor Greene fit into that? I'm sure she's anti-Thiel at this point. I'm sure she would be against all of this. And I don't know. But we should ask her. Come on the show.

56:38Come on the show. It's in your inbox. It's in your DMs. Let's go. Yeah, I wonder, what has she said about crypto? Is she a crypto? She is very worried about crypto. She actually was against the crypto bills because of them creating the ones that over the summer because of them creating a digital currency, which is a good reason to be frightened about crypto. Interesting. All right. Well, I learned a lot from that, Emily. Thank you for breaking all of that down for me. And thank you guys so much for watching, supporting the show. We're going to go do our AMA Live if you want to take part in those in the future.

57:12Sign up at BreakingPoints.com. And Sagar and I will see you back here tomorrow. See you then.

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