2/24/26: Trump Polling Freefall, Dire Warning On Iran, Lord Mandelson Arrested

15:51Saagar Enjeti:And you're like – I remember trying to explain it to them before the election. I was like, guys, like unless we're going after the Pentagon or Medicare, like nothing is going to change. They're like, oh, he's a hater and all this. Well, I don't know. Tried to tell you.

16:02Krystal Ball:He did a long bit in the speech about like, oh, all these 110 year olds on Social Security, blah, blah, blah. Again, this all turned out to be total and complete bullshit. And the only thing they did was like destroy the quality of service at the Social Security Administration. So it's so much harder for people who are legitimate Social Security beneficiaries to actually access their benefits. That was the kind of thing they actually did. But, you know, I mean, I understand why someone who is, you know, not super versed in the budget and how this works and where the actual savings would have to come from and the type of, you know, the type of elites that you would have to go after, for example, to deal with like Medicare or Medicaid fraud.

16:42Krystal Ball:You're talking about these are, you know, wealthy people and many one of them is a U.S. senator for the Republican Party. You're talking about people who have significant power. Those are the types you would have to go after. And so I can understand why people who weren't deeply ingrained in that process and understanding those dynamics would think that there was something cool about this energy of like, OK, this guy's this, you know, if you're buying Elon hype, he's this great businessman. He's this great tech genius. He's going to bring in this cadre of like super smart autistic geniuses to like run rampant through the federal government.

17:14Krystal Ball:And there is something aspirational about the idea of bringing back like the top of the top, the cream of the crop into the federal government and taking a look at it, making it more efficient. I mean, Zoran's trying to do a version of his own version of Doge in New York City of saying, listen, if you're going to, you know, if we're going to ask you to pay taxes, we want you in significant taxes in New York City. We want you to feel like that money is being well used. So I can kind of like empathize with people who thought that this was a great project. Of course, everyone wants to cut the fat in government.

17:44Krystal Ball:And there's definitely places that there is fraud, that there is fat to be cut. But, you know, here we are a year later. And not only is Doge, did Doge completely fail and just sort of like crumble? It made things worse, which I think, frankly, was that. And like data siphoning was the point. And we've also seen like multiple seasons of Elon and Trump's relationship since then. Right. They were besties here. Elon was camped in D.C. Prior to Trump's inauguration, he was like, hanging out at Mar-a-Lago all the time. Then they have this parting of the ways, but still amicable. Then they have the total falling out.

18:19Krystal Ball:And Elon says the reason the Epstein files aren't getting released is because Trump's in them. I'm not backing any Republicans. I'm done spending money.

18:25Saagar Enjeti:Eight months ago. Yeah, that's how long ago.

18:28Krystal Ball:And now there's obviously been a reproachment. Elon's not backing the administration, but he's funding Republicans again. He is, you know, shut up about Trump being in the Epstein files, especially now that he's been revealed to also be significantly in Epstein files. So even just with that one relationship, you can see how this year has been really been quite a journey.

18:44Saagar Enjeti:It's been something else, hasn't it? I actually think the war stuff is important as well, because as we're on the brink of the potential war with Iran, you know, we're going to talk about this with Ro Khanna. There were, and remember our interviews with some of those AOC Trump voters in the Bronx? So I'm not going to sit here and claim it was everybody. But there was genuine, not just promise, but hope that this person actually meant it on the war in Ukraine. Well, here Trump is a year ago. By the way, it's the four-year anniversary since Russia invaded Ukraine. It's been a year now since Donald Trump spoke, and here he is promising to end the war in Ukraine, and nothing has been ended.

19:21Saagar Enjeti:Let's take a listen.

19:21Krystal Ball:I'm also working tirelessly to end the savage conflict in Ukraine. Millions of Ukrainians and Russians have been needlessly killed or wounded in this horrific and brutal conflict with no end in sight. The United States has sent hundreds of billions of dollars to support Ukraine's defense with no security, with no anything.

19:48Saagar Enjeti:So, yeah, where are we now? And it's actually really interesting, you know, even to think. Again, I never believed we will solve it before I even get into office. I think I genuinely did underestimate. There are people who do believe stuff like that. You know, whenever I think back to the election, I have met like five people who actually believed that the IVF thing was going to happen. And I'm like, come on, man. You know, I'm like, what are we doing here? But they bought it. So, I mean, apparently even in the year 2024, there were a number of voters who were like,

20:21Krystal Ball:oh, okay, I believe you whenever you say X, Y, and Z.

20:24Saagar Enjeti:Now, again, you know, I don't think that that was realistic. But the Ukraine one is the one I actually did think was more realistic because it wasn't. So I cannot recall a single hawkish thing Trump said on the campaign trail. One of those most viral moments. What was it? Twenty twenty three November whenever he did the CNN town hall with Caitlin Collins. And he's like, I want to stop it. Like everything. Pick J.D. as his vice president. I mean, it was a believable thing. Now, again, I've always been clear and even was at the time if you thought that the Israel stuff wasn't going, maybe not as much like it has.

20:58Saagar Enjeti:But, you know, it was obviously always going to be pro-Israel. But on Ukraine, I think there really was hope. It has been a disaster. I mean, we have had the failed summit, remember, in Anchorage, in Alaska, and then Zelensky. What, it was about a year ago, right? He was in the Oval and they got into a fight and then he came back and now they're friends. And now it's like business as usual. We had all the European leaders here. Nothing has changed. the entire thing, it's like Afghanistan. It just keeps going on and on and on and on. It'll never end. It's been four years to the day. It'll just keep going.

21:29Saagar Enjeti:Putin and them are like, as I said at the time, they don't care. They're like, look, we're happy to keep this war going all day long. Fine, no problem. You know, for us, we'll talk about this soon with Iran. One of the reasons the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff says, hey, by the way, it's a bit of a problem if we do a war with Iran. We gave it all to Ukraine and to Israel. Shocker. Only been saying that over here for the last four years. So a year is a long time. It also, you know, it's not that long, but it does feel like an eternity, I think, since Donald Trump. And I do think this speech will be much more of a salesman speech about trying to bring people back into the fold.

22:05Saagar Enjeti:We saw Obama give many of these state of the unions when I remember 2011, right after Obamacare, where his approval rating was very low and he kept trying to like try to sell people a dream to keep it going. Trump is not running for reelection. It's also a very different moment. But Trump has not been in this type of position for a long time. And, you know, he also famously likes to go off prompter. So we'll see how that works out. There potentially could be some interruptions from Epstein, you know, related stuff in the gallery. So who knows how that will be. So there's, you know, look, all the norms around politics, like when Joe Wilson shouted at Obama, like, this stuff is gone, right?

22:42Saagar Enjeti:So we're living in a different universe. It's very 1890s in here.

22:46Krystal Ball:Even though the Supreme Court justices, like Trump is pissed at them right now, even some of the ones that he put on the bench. What did he say?

22:53Saagar Enjeti:He was like, he's like, they're barely invited. Yeah. And only nerds like me are like, sir, actually the House of Representatives invites the guests.

23:02Krystal Ball:Not really your decision. It's actually not your decision.

23:04Saagar Enjeti:You're technically invited by the State of the Union, by Congress, because we have co-equal branches of government. But again, only idiots like me.

23:11Krystal Ball:Yeah, co-equal branches of government, LOL. Yeah, one other on the sort of like broken promises list. Remember in the campaign and then even after the campaign, he claimed he wanted to cap credit card interest rates. And this was one of the populist promises. And there are a few Democrats like on the progressive side, Bernie and Elizabeth Warren in particular, who are like, OK, bet. Let's do it. Trump even called Elizabeth Warren at one point because she was like, listen, I'll work with you on this. She just came out and said, you know, after that, nothing, totally ghosted, you know, any efforts to put together some sort of bipartisan proposal, all dead and gone.

23:45Krystal Ball:So, you know, some of those like sort of sexy populist promises, and that would be a significant one. I've just completely fallen by the wayside as one example of how things have shifted over the year. But it'll be interesting to see what he what he tries to persuade people of tonight. And I know he's going to brag about all of this supposed investment in the U.S., which is just like the number is just completely invented. I think there'll be a lot of gaslighting about a lot of tariff talk.

24:15Saagar Enjeti:If I had

24:15Krystal Ball:to guess, there'll be a lot of gaslighting about how great, you know, America's back and how great the economy is. And people are not going to believe that because, as we've said many times in the past. Like you have your own personal experience of the economy. So you know whether it's going well for you and your family and prospects for your kids or not. And the last thing I'll mention, and we've got a lot more talk about this later in the show, is the AI concerns, which I think last year at this point were pretty, you know, they were pretty niche. It was, you know, we started talking, we were talking about it some, there was some, but now this has become a really mainstream concern.

24:51Krystal Ball:There has been significant local activism. We talked to one of those local activists yesterday. There has been a groundswell pushback against the location of these data centers. And the politics of that keep turning more and more toxic, even as the Trump administration has made this truly a central push. I mean, this really is the center of their economic policy and their idea for the future of the country. So I think that's another thing that is very different in terms of the sensibility and awareness of the American people now versus last year at this time.

25:23Saagar Enjeti:Well, it'll be an interesting speech. If you're joining us, you can come torture yourselves by being awake at 11 p.m. for our reaction. No, but if you're in California, you can join us. I guess it'll be 8 o 'clock for all of you. All right, let's go ahead and get to Iran.

25:38Krystal Ball:What if mind control is real? If you could control the behavior of anybody around you, what kind of life would you have? Can you hypnotically persuade someone to buy a car? When you look at your car, you're going to become overwhelmed with such good feelings. Can you hypnotize someone into sleeping with you? I gave her some suggestions to be sexually aroused. Can you get someone to join your cult? NLP was used on me to access my subconscious. NLP, aka Neuro Linguistic Programming, is a blend of hypnosis, linguistics, and psychology. Fans say it's like finally getting a user manual for your brain.

26:15Saagar Enjeti:It's about engineering consciousness.

26:16Krystal Ball:Mind Games is the story of NLP. It's crazy cast of disciples and the fake doctor who invented it at a New Age commune and sold it to guys in suits. He stood trial for murder and got acquitted. The biggest mind game of all? NLP might actually work. This is wild. Listen to Mind Games on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. In 2023, a story gripped the UK, evoking horror and disbelief.

26:48Saagar Enjeti:The nurse who should have been in charge of caring for tiny babies is now the most prolific child killer in modern British history.

26:56Krystal Ball:Everyone thought they knew how it ended. A verdict, a villain, a nurse named Lucy Letby. Lucy Letby has been found guilty. But what if we didn't get the whole story? The moment you look at the whole picture, the case collapses. I'm Amanda Knox, and in the new podcast, Doubt, the case of Lucy Letby, we follow the evidence and hear from the people that lived it to ask what really happened when the world decided who Lucy Letby was. No voicing of any skepticism or doubt.

27:28Saagar Enjeti:It'll cause so much harm at every single level if the British establishment of this is wrong.

27:33Krystal Ball:Listen to Doubt, the case of Lucy Letby on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

27:43Saagar Enjeti:China's Ministry of State Security is one of the most mysterious and powerful spy agencies in the world. But in 2017, the FBI got inside. This is Special Agent Regal, Special Agent Bradley Hall. This MSS officer has no idea the U.S. government is on to him. But the FBI has his chats, texts, emails, even his personal diary. Hear how they got it on the Sixth Bureau podcast.

28:10Krystal Ball:I now have several terabytes of an MSS officer, no doubt, no question, of his life. And that's a unicorn.

28:19Saagar Enjeti:No one had ever seen anything like that. It was unbelievable. This is a story of the inner workings of the MSS and how one man's ambition and mistakes opened its vault of secrets. Listen to The Sixth Bureau on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Turning now to the situation with Iran. Huge leaks coming out of the Pentagon yesterday. This time, if you want to believe this, the Pentagon is leaking about how desperately they don't want to go to war with Iran. That is how bad the current situation is. But Donald Trump is trying to head off all of these leaks. Let's go and put this up here on the screen.

29:01Saagar Enjeti:Here is Trump's truth yesterday. Numerous stories from the fake news media have been circulating that General Daniel Cain, sometimes referred to as Raisin Cain, is against us going to war with Iran. The story does not attribute his vast wealth of knowledge to anyone and is 100 % incorrect. General Cain, like all of us, would like not to see war. But if a decision is made on going against Iran at a military level, it is opinion that everything will be easily won. Bookmark that for history. He knows Iran well in that he was in charge of Midnight Hammer, the attacks on Iranian nuclear development.

29:33Saagar Enjeti:And it is a development no longer, but rather was blown to smithereens by our great B-2 bombers. So if that's the case, then why do we even have to go to war? All right? This is why everybody should actually read these things carefully. Raising Cain is a great fighter. He represents the most powerful military in the world. He's not spoken to of not doing Iran or even the fake limited strikes that I have been reading about. He only knows one thing, how to win. And if he is told to do so, he will be leading the pack. Quote, I would rather have a deal than not. But if we don't make a deal, it is a very bad day for that country.

30:02Saagar Enjeti:And very sadly, it's people. because they are great and wonderful and something like this should never have happened to them. So this followed an extraordinary amount of leaks that came out of the Pentagon. Let's go and put these up here on the screen. I wanna kind of Washington explain. You hear one story, that's one thing. When you have Axios, the Washington Post, and the Wall Street Journal all write this headline, Trump's top general warns of Iran's strike. Trump's top general foresees acute risks in his attack on Iran. Pentagon flags risk of a major operation against Iran. Here is what is happening.

30:33Saagar Enjeti:These are authorized leaks from the very, very top of the Pentagon. What they want is to get on the record as close as they can without going outside the chain of command to say, this is a really, really bad idea. And if you actually read all of their warnings, if you've been watching this show or if you've been paying attention to the news, none of this will be a shocker to you. They say, we have a limited amount of air interceptors. We used 25 % in the 12-day war. The Houthis were a huge problem. Because of our four-year support now of Israel and of Ukraine, we are dramatically low on munitions.

31:08Saagar Enjeti:They point to a CSIS war game from 2023 which said that the United States would last one week in terms of munitions if we were ever to get into a war with China against Taiwan. Yeah, you think I'm joking. This is 2023. The situation has gotten worse. We've actually given more to Israel and Ukraine since that time period, and the amount of spin-up in our defense industrial base has actually gone down. So you can see that for them, they know, look, we can kidnap Maduro all day long. We can Midnight Hammer, six B2s with a place with no real aerial defense or any of that, whatever. But a real war, like ballistic missiles flying around, which we saw in the 12-day war, that alone drained 25 % of our THAAD interceptors.

31:52Saagar Enjeti:The Pentagon is doing everything they can to try and have their Eric Shinseki moment. And look, bear with me. It's a little bit of a trip down memory lane. But back in 2003, February 2003, the Army Chief of Staff, Eric Shinseki, was forced to testify before Congress, before the invasion of Iraq. And the Army Chief of Staff stunned America and the world when he said it would take several hundred thousand troops to invade Iraq successfully. The neocons like Mark Levin and, you know, Bill Kristol and the Bush administration said he's a raving lunatic. It's an absolute lie. And they fired him. They forced him out of office.

32:28Saagar Enjeti:He was the Army Chief of Staff, but he was trying to warn all of us. And there were multiple other top generals internally, some even who resigned, people who told the president to his face, this is a bad idea. They leaked as much as they could, but our media was very propagandistic, just as it is right now. They were trying their best to do something like this. The professionals, and remember, these are not bleeding heart liberals. They're not anti-war like me. Dan Cain was one of the foremost proponents of the Maduro raid. He knows the capabilities of the U.S. military. When you have these guys going like, please get us off, like do not make us do this, it is a blaring, like a flashing red light.

33:06Saagar Enjeti:Yeah. Because nobody knows our capabilities more than them. So when they're warning like this, they're doing their best. First of all, they want to survive. They want to be able to have the headline there in the future so that when a Democrat comes into the power, they're like, listen, man, we tried to tell him he ordered us to do it. But more importantly, they're trying to signal for those of you who are close watchers and observers to say this is not going to go like the propaganda is. And it's already happening. Mark Levin, it's been 20-something years. He's doing the same thing. These are Democrat, deep state, isolationists trying to destroy.

33:40Saagar Enjeti:You have Trump now trying to box the general in. he's going to try and force him to go on the podium and say, actually, it's going to be a cakewalk. I hope he says the word cakewalk. I really do. Just so we can have all the Iraq stuff happen again. I'm not claiming it's going to be the same as Iraq, but it's the same type of playbook. These are very sophisticated actors. This is the biggest warning. And when, again, when the professional warriors tell you this is a big, big problem, you should listen because what they're talking about, this isn't ideology. This is about logistics. This is about munitions.

34:11Saagar Enjeti:This is about defense industrial base. Nobody knows this better than them. This is the most worrying thing that I've seen yet. Because this means it's happening, in my opinion.

34:19Krystal Ball:Yeah, this is like a desperate cry for help, a last ditch Hail Mary pass to try to persuade Trump and whoever that this is going to be a terrible idea. This is a warning to the American public. It's all of those things. And I think why the neocons are pushing so hard right now is a few reasons. I mean, the Iranian government is genuinely weakened at this point from the 12-day war, also from the protests and the opposition movement, from the economic warfare that we've waged against them has been quite successful. So they are weakened in this moment. But are they weak enough where an airstrike will take out, take down the government?

35:03Krystal Ball:Because that's their fantasy is, let's put aside, oh, nuclear, ballistic, blah, blah, blah. What they really are after is regime change. And at the same time, the Israelis, who are obviously, you know, constantly pushing for war with Iran, and Netanyahu has been pushing for war with Iran, like before you were literally born. Literally, you can go back and watch the clips from the 80s. Anyway, you know, they have their own sort of looming crises internally. You know, even though there was a lot of unity around the Gaza genocide, the reality is they have major demographic and major economic issues.

35:40Krystal Ball:And they've had a lot of brain drain from their country. The fastest growing part of the Jewish population in Israel are the type that don't want to serve in the military and don't want to work and just want to rely on the social safety net. So they have their own timeline here of like, we've got to act now or else we're not going to be able to cement our grander ambitions of the Greater Israel Project and having total regional hegemony, which is their ultimate goal. So they're pushing very hard right now as well. And that's why you see the Mark Levins of the world, the Lindsey Graham's of the world, et cetera, sort of freaking out and aggressively pushing in this direction.

36:17Krystal Ball:But I think the reason there's been hesitation at this point is because there's no, I mean, the whole thing is insane and it's going to be bad. But even from their perspective, like there's no Delce Rodriguez type option that's available in Iran. Yes. The thing we covered previously, this idea of, oh, we'll do a limited strike and then that's gonna force them to buckle to our demands. What even are our fucking demands, right? I mean, they're constantly changing. The American people has not been bought into any sort of, you know, rationale for why we need this war with Iran right now. So, you know, and the reality is a limited strike is likely to have the exact opposite impact.

36:55Krystal Ball:It's going to harden the Iranian government against any sort of deal. What, you're going to bomb somebody and you think that's going to make them come to you? That's going to, you know, open them up to further talks? I don't think so. So, yeah, I don't know. It's looking pretty, it's looking pretty grim. It seems very unlikely that you amass this level of military power in the region to just to have fun, to spend money as a threat and don't do any of it.

37:21Saagar Enjeti:Venezuela is the playbook. Oh, we're negotiating. Maybe, maybe not. Listen, all right, you don't just bring carrier strike groups and all this naval armada for the biggest buildup of force in the Caribbean since the Cuban Missile Crisis just not to use it. Same with Iran. You've got two carrier strike groups. You've got all the bases. You had the evacuation just yesterday of non-essential personnel from Lebanon. You've got all this diplomacy theater that's going on. I mean, basically what they're trying to do, it's very Iraq-like. We give Saddam 90 days to resign, to let in the inspectors or hell will reign.

37:56Saagar Enjeti:It's not going to happen, right? Like you know eventually how the story is going to end. This diplomacy is fake. This entire thing was allegedly about the nuclear deal. The Iranians have said, fine, we'll do a nuclear deal. They're like, well, it also has to deal with ballistic missiles and your regional terror threat. And they're like, no, we're not giving up our ballistic missiles so that Israel can attack us at will at any time that they want and regime change us at will sometime in the future. Why would they do? That's effectively surrender. We might as well fight and actually try to convince the Americans that we have some sort of credible deterrent.

38:29I mean, this is where, to highlight the Israeli problem here,

38:33Saagar Enjeti:it is immense because if it was just up to the United States, I do believe that we could probably reach some sort of nuclear deal. But the Israel angle here is that you have this rogue state, which has now built up years where they have been bombing every seven different countries with total impunity, with diplomatic cover by the United States, with a population with its blood, you know, boiling, ready and believing that they can do anything, not to mention Gaza. And they're like, look, we're going to do it no matter what. And so if they go in and attack Iran, kind of like in the 12-day war, what happens?

39:09Saagar Enjeti:We're going to get sucked in. And this is an argument, by the way, from the neocons, because they're like, oh, well, that's why we should just go ahead and do it and defend Israel in the process. But the point around it is if we actually dealt with the Israel problem, we wouldn't even have as much of an Iranian problem, but we can't get away from it. And it's, I was telling you this morning, it's like World War I. Does anybody just sit for a second and just be like, do we have to defend Belgium? Do we have to, you know, decimate our youth and kill millions of people just because of a piece of paper, because we've always done things that way, but this is how it happens.

39:43Saagar Enjeti:You read about it, but nobody sits for a second and says, maybe we just tell the Israelis, you're done if you do this. That will actually cut you off. Nobody in the White House can even think this way. Nobody in the previous White House could think this way either. Nobody in Congress is even doing anything. I talked about the Eric Shinseki. At least he testified before Congress. Raisin Cain is leaking this shit to the Wall Street Journal and to Axios. We have no opposition. We have nothing. Like, if anything, this is 10 times worse. We're sleepwalking, just like the book, The Sleepwalkers, right into this disaster.

40:17Saagar Enjeti:And, you know, even though it's all out in the open, 99 % of Americans have no idea that this is going on. They're living their lives. You know, they're vaguely, oh, Iran, something, you know, didn't we bomb them before? But they have no idea. They're going to wake up, though, you know, when something like this happens. It could all go south like this.

40:33Krystal Ball:And you have to layer on that the mentality of they just did this Venezuela thing that they see as this grand success. They see the 12 day war last year as this grand success. There's nothing Trump loves more than, you know, his glorious soldiers going into battle and him being able to, like, feel like a real man based on what other people actions that other people took. And, you know, he's itching for that. I think that's, you know, an important part of this mentality is they feel like, oh, the naysayers like us previously who were warning about all these dire consequences. They're just a bunch of panic hands.

41:05Krystal Ball:You know, they were wrong. Everything turned out fine. This was all great. And, you know, this will be another glorious success for us to be able to talk about and, you know, take the focus off of Epstein and the poor economic numbers and everything else that's going on. the ice killings, all of that stuff, and be able to have this win and assert our dominance heading into the midterm elections. Kyle always brings up, and I think it's worth pointing out, Trump during the Obama era used to talk constantly about how Obama was going to start a war with Iran to save his political prospects. And I think that's worth pausing on because it does give you a window into how he thinks about these things.

41:44Krystal Ball:He thinks it will be a benefit. He thinks there will be that rally around the flag effect and it will help to bolster him and bolster his party. I think that's insane. But based on his past comments, I genuinely think he views it that way, especially when you pile on top of that, the Venezuela thing and the previous Iran war.

42:02Saagar Enjeti:Bad sides coming out of the White House. Trump is truthing out Mark Levin videos about why we got to attack Iran. Take a listen. The problem isn't negotiations. The problem isn't they won't agree to this or that, or we can get the best deal in world history. The problem is them. The West needs to understand what we're dealing with for 47 years. I don't know what it's going to take, but we need to comprehend what we're dealing with. That regime needs to be eliminated. Oh my God. Yeah, that's what we're dealing with. Meanwhile, before, let's put this up here on the screen. Tucker Carlson was spotted at the White House yesterday after his explosive interview with the ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee.

42:46Saagar Enjeti:By the way, very funny from that one. Mike Huckabee's interview, full-blown diplomatic crisis and even a problem for the Iran situation because, as you pointed out yesterday, if you want to attack Iran, you got to use all these bases and you got to make sure that all the Gulf Arab allies are on your side. Well, guess what? the U.S. ambassador to Israel just said, actually, all of that land and all of your countries, that belongs to Israel if they want it. And they have been calling the White House and they're like, is this a statement of official government policy? Are you going to repudiate this?

43:17Saagar Enjeti:Yeah, what's happening here? Oh, and you think you're going to use my bases? No, no, no, no. That's not going to be happening here. So that's been some of the fallout. But look, I mean, we have to be honest here. The Tucker faction thought and all of that, it's not ascendant right now, at least from what I can tell from the outside. Put the next one up here. Laura Loomer immediately attacking Tucker Carlson. Everybody needs to be pressuring the White House to condemn Tucker. His effort to derail the GOP and sabotage must end. He thinks he can just walk into the White House like he owns the place because his son works there.

43:47Saagar Enjeti:Everyone with moral clarity needs to pressure the White House to end this insanity once and for all. President Trump must condemn Tucker Carlson. Not Mike Huckabee, by the way. Not the guy who literally started a full-blown diplomatic crisis because of his insane Christian feeling, because of his insane dispensationalist psychotic beliefs. It's the guy who revealed those beliefs that is a problem. I want to continue on the munitions side. I'll just point you to some experts. Here's Tyler Rogway. He runs a great outlet, by the way, TWZ.com. They do amazing, in-depth, real logistical nerd stuff.

44:22Saagar Enjeti:And here's what he says. If this Iran thing really pops off, our stocks of critical interceptors, which take years and huge sums of money to build, will be really depleted. The stockpile is already an emergency. If Iran goes full send, SM3, THAAD interceptors, PAC-3s will ran through. Once again, it takes years to restock. He says it is a dangerous game with the state of China's military activity. And then there is Russia. That is beyond North Korea. We have never built enough, Lots of smoke and mirrors. Now it is critical. This will send it into another realm of crisis. Just watch. You know, one of the dangers with open source is that you actually start to learn, you know, how, like, you start to learn if you read enough.

45:05Saagar Enjeti:You're like, wait, oh my God, we're really not prepared for this. You have the CSIS war game from a couple of years ago. You have multiple generals on the record. You have the fad stockpile numbers. And you're like, what a disaster. or 25 % just spent on a 12-day war, which didn't even involve us? And then not to mention all the short-range stuff, which the Iranians could use. Look, the US military's good, but is it that good? It's one of those where, would you really risk it? And originally I thought, okay, well, we're pretty good at taking these things out and the CIA and from all of that. But once the top general starts to speak out, I'm like, oh, this is bad.

45:42Saagar Enjeti:Clearly they see some, I don't have all the information, they do. And for them to come out and to leak this, I really, I urge everyone to take this very, very seriously. Like these people, like I said, the guy who literally supported the kidnapping operation against Maduro, if he says it's a bad idea, you should listen. These are not liberals or, you know, some, they're not like bleeding heart liberal code pink activists.

46:04Krystal Ball:Or anti-interventionists. Or anti-interventionists.

46:05Saagar Enjeti:Yeah, exactly.

46:06Krystal Ball:Yeah. Yeah. And listen, I think the Iranian government is weak. I don't know what capabilities they have, but we also shouldn't underestimate their will to fight. Because for us, this isn't existential. This is like a stupid luxury war of choice for the president's ego that almost no one wants. OK, it's 80 percent of the U.S. population that is like, no, we don't want this at all. In spite of, you know, whatever war propaganda is constantly fed to us about, you know, how terrible Iran is, what a threat it is. Like Mark Levin said to our children and our grandchildren, blah, blah, blah. Like we don't have the will to fight this thing.

46:41Krystal Ball:And Iran, you know, it's in a very strategic position. They know the cards that they have, and they also will be looking and understanding this information about the drawdown of our stockpiles and understanding where some of our vulnerabilities are and where some of Israel's vulnerabilities are as well. So, and, you know, things are not going too great, I guess, in terms of mechanics in the buildup to this potential work of a B7 up on the screen. You know, we are already taxing our sailors incredibly. You have people who are potentially going to be deployed for 11 months. It would be the longest deployment for sailors on this USS Gerald Ford in years.

47:27Krystal Ball:And you also have issues on the ship. Apparently, some of the toilets are clogged and there's raw sewage. Apparently, they've gotten some of this under control, but it's been a mess. and a bunch of people who recorded in this piece in the Wall Street Journal are like, after this, I'm done. Like, I have kids and this is, I don't want to be away from them for years at a time. This is not my understanding of what we were going to be up to. So even putting aside the, you know, the stockpiles, like there's been a human cost already for all the various adventurism from the Trump administration.

48:03Saagar Enjeti:Yeah, look, I mean, you know, oh, it's so funny. Ha, ha, ha. Oh, you signed up for this. It's not funny. You put these guys on a carrier. Look, it's not fun. You've ever been on a carrier? Like I've only been on the decommissioned ones. It's small and you got to sleep in these barracks and if a toilet breaks, that's life or death, man. That sounds like a disaster. And you're gone for 11 months shuttling yourself across the globe for a bunch of nonsense. Now you've been there and you might be getting into a war for nonstop operations. I mean, and these are what, like 19, 20-year-olds and all that who signed up?

48:33Saagar Enjeti:Yeah. Had no idea potentially they were getting into this. This is why it's not a game, right, to play around with their lives and just shuttle them back and forth all to put pressure or potentially just put them into war for Israel. It's crazy. I mean everyone is always like, oh, you know, it's almost like a low IQ conspiracy. Like, oh, America is always getting into a war on Israel's behalf. Like, guys, this one actually is it. Like this is the big one. This is the big one. And unfortunately, like I said, Washington, everybody is going along. The Democrats, there's nobody out there. Silence.

49:02Saagar Enjeti:War Powers Act. Shout out to Massey and Ro Khanna. But like that's going to be like a Barba Lee situation in terms of we can look back on in history. But at the time, they're complete – they're jokes. That's how people look at them. A bipartisan elite is – they're either silent because they want it to go wrong or they support it. So there you go.

49:20Krystal Ball:Yeah. And just one note on the impact of that morale and fatigue. Remember when those like fighter jets slid into the sea when the Houthi operation? Yes. The after-action report, the analysis there was that fatigue basically played into that. That's the reason why they were making whatever errors were causing these fighter jets to be lost at sea. So it can have real operational impacts as we head into whatever we're heading into. Yep.

49:51Saagar Enjeti:There you go. All right. Let's get to Epstein.

49:55Krystal Ball:What if mind control is real? If you could control the behavior of anybody around you, what kind of life would you have? Can you hypnotically persuade someone to buy a car? When you look at your car, you're going to become overwhelmed with such good feelings. Can you hypnotize someone into sleeping with you? I gave her some suggestions to be sexually aroused. Can you get someone to join your cult? NLP was used on me to access my subconscious. NLP, aka Neuro Linguistic Programming, is a blend of hypnosis, linguistics, and psychology. Fans say it's like finally getting a user manual for your brain.

50:32Saagar Enjeti:It's about engineering consciousness.

50:33Krystal Ball:Mind Games is the story of NLP. It's crazy cast of disciples and the fake doctor who invented it at a New Age commune and sold it to guys in suits. He stood trial for murder and got acquitted. The biggest mind game of all? NLP might actually work. This is wild. Listen to Mind Games on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, this is Jo Winterstein, host of the Spirit Daughter Podcast, where we talk about astrology, natal charts, and how to step into your most vibrant life. And I just sat down with a mini driver.

51:10Saagar Enjeti:The Irish traveler said when I was 16, you're going to have a terrible time with men.

51:16Krystal Ball:Actor, storyteller, and unapologetic Aquarian visionary. Aquarius is all about freedom loving and different perspectives. And I find a lot of people with strong placements in Aquarius, like, are misunderstood. A sun and Venus in Aquarius in her seventh house spark her unconventional approach to partnership.

51:36Saagar Enjeti:He really has taught me to embrace people sleeping in different rooms, on different houses, in different places, but just an embracing of the is-ness of it all.

51:44Krystal Ball:If you're navigating your own transformation or just want a chart-side view into how a leading artist integrates astrology, creativity, and real life, this episode is a must listen. Listen to the Spirit Daughter podcast starting on February 24th on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your podcasts. In 2023, a story gripped the UK, evoking horror and disbelief.

52:10Saagar Enjeti:The nurse who should have been in charge of caring for tiny babies is now the most prolific child killer in modern British history.

52:19Krystal Ball:Everyone thought they knew how it ended. A verdict? A villain? A nurse named Lucy Letby. Lucy Letby has been found guilty. But what if we didn't get the whole story? The moment you look at the whole picture, the case collapses. I'm Amanda Knox, and in the new podcast Doubt, the case of Lucy Letby, we follow the evidence and hear from the people that lived it to ask what really happened when the world decided who Lucy Letby was. No voicing of any skepticism or doubt.

52:51Saagar Enjeti:It'll cause so much harm at every single level if the British establishment of this is wrong.

52:56Krystal Ball:Listen to Doubt, the case of Lucy Letby on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

53:05Saagar Enjeti:Turning now to the fallout from the Epstein files, Lord Mandelson in the UK. has been arrested. Let's go and put this video up here on the screen. You can see the perp walk of him being led from his brick mansion, you know, in his stately outfit there of what befits a British Lord being led by the Metropolitan Police into a waiting car. Now, remember, the British system is weird. And for some reason, they don't just say so-and-so has been arrested. But we do know, C1, let's put that up here on the screen. You can see right here, Lord Mandelson was arrested on suspicion of conduct in public office.

53:45Saagar Enjeti:A short while ago, the former minister being led from his London home to an unmarked car by police officers, the ex-US ambassador, is under investigation. Over allegations, he shared market-sensitive government information with Jeffrey Epstein while a government minister. He has not yet publicly commented on the matter. But, you know, to say allegedly shared is not even true. Like, he shared it. It's in the file. So the only thing, the email, right?

54:11Krystal Ball:The only defense is,

54:12Saagar Enjeti:is it, were you hacked into that? Can he pull a joy read and say Russian hackers in 2010 actually sent the email on my behalf of privileged non-public information? Or did you send it bro? Because I'm pretty sure you sent it. Now what's even crazier is that's only the tip of the iceberg. Gordon Brown has said he's already shared more information with the, uh, with the current authorities. There could be all kinds of, think about it. Epstein files is just Epstein and his emails. They have access to his real email. So they could subpoena and look at all of their stuff and share it over with the authorities.

54:45Saagar Enjeti:It could be the tip of the iceberg. If a person is willing to share non-public market information with one person, you really think they've never done it before? Or is this maybe a ring where this happened one time and we just so happened to get the email in this one point? Again, for the British authorities, I don't have any proof for that. I'm only speculating, not even necessarily impugning the character of the great Lord. But when you think about how this has exploded across the world and comparing it here, it's unbelievable. You have now Lord Mandelson and Prince Andrew. Prince Andrew is going to literally lose his line in the British succession, which that's the Prince shit that I'm talking about.

55:22Saagar Enjeti:That's what I want to see, is if we're going to have the institution, then we got to be like declare his blood unworthy of sitting on the throne. But now you have Lord Mandelson. He might get getting his title stripped. He's going to jail, potentially getting arrested. You have the former Norwegian prime minister. He just tried to commit suicide. Apparently there was just a report out this morning. I mean, you've got multiple of these of Slovakia. You've had that official here in the U S former governor is just got some professional consequence. Peter Atiyah, by the way, we can give an update and see six.

55:52Saagar Enjeti:Let's put that on the screen. He has, uh, he either resigned or he's no longer at CBS News over this correspondence. We have the leaders of Apollo Group, of that major law firm here in Washington. All of these people have stepped down. But all of the accountability in America is in the private sector. And over there, it's the official governments who are, the French authorities, they're reopening the investigation into the suicide of Jean-Luc Brunel and his suspicious debt, in addition to raiding the offices of file of people named in the files, the Macron government being mentioned in the Epstein files actually caused like kind of a political earthquake over here, over over there.

56:33Saagar Enjeti:But here it's like business as usual. And I think that's just what I want to highlight.

56:37Krystal Ball:Yeah. There's two points to make about this. Number one, all these various investigations that now have been launched around the world are going to be really important because not just in the case of Mandelson, but in France and other countries around the world where they've actually taken this seriously, you are going to have some sort of discovery process where you're going to see more, where you're going to learn more. So in effect, you'll have more Epstein files that are released as a result of the actions in these various countries. The other thing that I was thinking about is like, it makes me a little bit more sympathetic towards cancel culture because that's literally the only elite accountability that we apparently have in this country.

57:11Krystal Ball:And that's the only mechanism we have. That's the only reason Kathy Rumler or the Pritzker guy or Peter Attia or any of these people are having to face anything because there's not, we've already been told from the government, we're not going to do any criminal investigation. This is done. We're closed. We're not releasing any more files. We don't want to talk about it anymore. We don't think there's anything to investigate here. We don't think there's anything to prosecute here within our own government, let alone among any other business leaders. We are moving on nothing to see here. So essentially, our only real recourse is through shame and pressure of various corporate entities to try to make people who are implicated lose their jobs.

57:49Krystal Ball:That's all this public has. So you can see why there has been in the past, you know, and I think currently within the context of Epstein files, why there has been such a frenzy around these type of pressure campaigns, because there's no hope that there's going to be any sort of like criminal justice accountability. That's the

58:05Saagar Enjeti:problem though, right? And this was always the criticism of cancel culture is like, look, you're literally going after like a podcast host or a comedian while people who are in power are facing nothing. It's like literally an inversion of the way that democracy is supposed to work. Well, here you go. This is the same problem. You've got Peter Atiyah, who's, look, I mean, yeah, it's creepy emails, all right? And like I said, I'm sketched out by it. Gonna take everything he says from now on with a grain of salt. It's really disgusting. But it's not the same as former governors and presidents and - Or like Howard Lutnant, you know?

58:35Saagar Enjeti:The commerce secretary. Or the president of the United States. If the guy who's talking to me about Metformin sent a really disgusting, creepy email to Epstein faces some professional consequences, he's like, okay. But the guy who sets the tariff policy of the United States of America lied about his relationship. That's kind of a whole other story, you know? And for him, and then not just that. He said, oh, well, I never – what do you say? I visited the island and I had lunch with him years after I said I was never going to see him again. And that's pretty different in terms of accountability.

59:05Saagar Enjeti:But for some reason, because we know that we can't have any accountability at the top, that we try to search for it with all of these former governors. I'm like, sorry, I don't care about the former. I mean, I do, but not in the same way as what's happening or some head of a law firm or something like that. Sure, it's good. Fine. But it's not the same as actually looking at the top. And that's the problem I have.

59:24Krystal Ball:Yeah. Well, cancel culture is a form of like digital vigilante justice. Yeah, there you go. Exactly. And you can understand why in a time when you feel like the justice system, why there's clearly different rules for different people depending on whether you're part of the Epstein class or whether you're not. And that's how you end up with a mass system of vigilante justice. And I continue to maintain that one of the major problems in this country has to be dealt with going forward is the total elite impunity that has been enjoyed over decades. If you go back to the Iraq war lies, if you go back to the financial crisis and the fact that these bankers destroyed the entire economy, ruined millions of people's lives, people who still haven't recovered from what happened to them in that crisis, and there's no accountability there.

1:00:14Krystal Ball:And then you get this little window into a completely depraved network that operated, you know, above the reach of any sort of nation state, any sort of system of laws. If you don't grapple with that, you are going to continue to have societal breakdown. There has to be some sense that even elites are subject to some sort of accountability for their malfeasance. And so I think Americans are looking at the Brits with jealousy right now. You know, you've got literal royals facing more accountability than our supposed, you know, democratic administration here. Like we're supposed to be the no kings people, right?

1:00:52Krystal Ball:And yet the actual royals facing more accountability and justice than, you know, our representatives.

1:00:58Saagar Enjeti:See, I've been defending the monarchy for a long time, Crystal. This is why.

1:01:01Krystal Ball:Yeah, I'm coming around on that one.

1:01:03Saagar Enjeti:When you have hundreds of years in a culture of accountability, this is what happened. Oh, the Brits are going to be furious. And the Indians are going to be mad at me about that one too. But look, fundamentally, I love separation of the head of state and the head of government. I just think it's an amazing system. It works out well for a lot of people.

1:01:19Krystal Ball:I just want the free health care.

1:01:21Saagar Enjeti:Well, yeah, that one's more complicated. Let's go to the next one, shall we? Just to show you, fall from grace from the great Lord of Lord Mandelson. This one is C2. Here he is just nine months ago in the Oval Office presenting his credentials to Donald Trump. He was the lord. He was the ambassador. If you've never seen it, the British residence ambassador here in Washington is like a country estate with a little garden lawn. And it's a palatial mansion. They wine and dine the Washington elite. And that's where he was not that long time ago. And here he is now being led away, literally, into a waiting police car.

1:02:04Saagar Enjeti:We also did want to update a few emails which have come across our desk. Let's put this one up here on the screen. This is a pretty crazy one. Perhaps a slip of the tongue. 2020, one year after Epstein died, an assistant U.S. attorney for the Eastern District discusses a confidentiality agreement, quote, in connection with the investigation into the murder of Jeffrey Epstein. Perhaps a slip of the tongue. He says, into the death of an inmate at Brooklyn MDC. The OCME, I'm assuming that's a medical examiner, told me it signed a confidentiality agreement in connection with the investigation into the murder of Jeffrey Epstein.

1:02:37Saagar Enjeti:We were hoping to extend a similar agreement, and I wanted to see if you could share the agreement or a boilerplate version of it. I'm happy to speak over the phone if that's easier. My cell is X. So basically, he says we're going to give this deal to another inmate, but this is about the investigation into the murder of Jeffrey Epstein, hoping if there's some similar agreement, it's in place. Here's why it's a little bit suspicious. It's not just the word murder. Clearly, this is an investigation into the death, which they think is a murder. and he's referring to the death of Epstein as a murder, which maybe it was considered that at some time.

1:03:13Saagar Enjeti:Now, remember, the official conclusion is suicide, but they never even claimed that they investigated a murder. They ruled suicide from day one, basically from the very first announcement. From the press release that was drafted the day before. So you're like, okay, man, I mean, this is pretty crazy.

1:03:29Krystal Ball:I mean, it could be that when they drafted that press release announcing his death. They just messed up on the date. Right.

1:03:37Saagar Enjeti:Which is actually believable.

1:03:38Krystal Ball:Just happened to mess up here as well and call it a murder, even though it was totally, definitely a suicide. Right. And it just happened. The cameras didn't work. And it just happened when they put out the video that supposedly proved that there was nothing to see there. There was, you know, not to mention one person in the video that they claimed, that they pretended wasn't there. And there were minutes missing. And the guards happened to be asleep. and et cetera, et cetera. And people who look at the body say this couldn't -

1:04:06Saagar Enjeti:Plus the cameras. Yeah, and we never found the news.

1:04:08Krystal Ball:But yeah, that all makes a lot of sense. That all just really, just a comedy of errors. That's all it is. It's just nothing to see here, Sagar. Yeah, that's right.

1:04:16Saagar Enjeti:Let's go to C4. This is another interesting story. This one came out yesterday from Ryan Goodman over at Just Security. They're like a legal blog and they look into some of this. They say, the FBI issued a stand-down directive to the NYPD on Jeffrey Epstein investigation and more. Five days after Epstein's arrest in the summer of 2019, federal authorities directed the New York Police Department to stand down its investigations related to Epstein. New documents released show the directive applied to the NYPD Special Victims Unit, the group that was specially trained and equipped to handle sex crimes.

1:04:49Saagar Enjeti:At the time, the Manhattan DA had an ongoing investigation with the Epstein victims, but the FBI assumed that would come to a halt as well following the Bureau's directive. Revelations are part of the chronology, which spans 1996 to 2005. The timeline amounts to the most comprehensive record to date of the publicly available information of New York law enforcement authorities' actions and inaction whenever it regards Epstein and is provided below. You can read very specifically not only the origination of the claim about Maria Farmer, but then the NYPD stand-down order. And sometime around 2012, Epstein and one of his victims' assistants actually discussed NYPD contacting her.

1:05:27Saagar Enjeti:her. And so you have this years long kind of investigation and discussion with Epstein, the NYPD, who's constantly kind of monitoring this case and potentially getting involved until they get this federal stand down directive. Now, again, we always got to present the innocent explanation. Anybody ever watched a cop show? There's always turf war. They don't want them to get involved. It's possible. It's possible. But like you said, with the murder investigation, you're like, well, you know, if you look at it as a one off, sure. But if you put the totality of it all. It's a little bit, it's a bit sketchy, right?

1:05:58Saagar Enjeti:And so that's why I think this is worth highlighting as well.

1:06:01Krystal Ball:Yeah. And this was, you know, during the first Trump administration, Bill Barr is AG. His dad is the one who hires Jeffrey Epstein when he's wildly unqualified for his first job at the elite Dalton school. So he's put in contact with the children of Manhattan's elites. And, you know, that's the era that we're talking about here in terms of A.G. Bill Barr being in place and Trump being the president at the time that this stand-down order is ultimately issued. Exactly.

1:06:44Saagar Enjeti:This is Special Agent Regal, Special Agent Bradley Hall. In 2018, the FBI took down a ring of spies working for China's Ministry of State Security, one of the most mysterious intelligence agencies in the world. The Sixth Bureau podcast is a story of the inner workings of the MSS and how one man's ambition and mistakes opened its vault of secrets. Listen to The Sixth Bureau on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

1:07:14Krystal Ball:What if mind control is real?

1:07:16Saagar Enjeti:If you could control the behavior of anybody around you, what kind of life would you have?

1:07:19Krystal Ball:Can you hypnotically persuade someone to buy a car? When you look at your car, you're going to become overwhelmed with such good feelings. Can you hypnotize someone into sleeping with you?

1:07:30Saagar Enjeti:I gave her some suggestions to be sexually aroused.

1:07:33Krystal Ball:Can you get someone to join your cult? NLP was used on me to access my subconscious. Mind Games, a new podcast exploring NLP, a.k.a. neurolinguistic programming. Is it a self-help miracle? A shady hypnosis scam? Or both? Listen to Mind Games on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Amanda Knox, and in the new podcast, Doubt, the case of Lucy Letby, we unpack the story of an unimaginable tragedy that gripped the UK in 2023. But what if we didn't get the whole story?

1:08:07Saagar Enjeti:Everything's been made to fit.

1:08:09Krystal Ball:The moment you look at the whole picture, the case collapsed. What if the truth was disguised by a story we chose to believe? Oh my God, I think she might be innocent. Listen to Doubt, The Case of Lucy Letby on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed human.