2/3/26: US Elites Protected From Epstein Files, US Military Equipment Rushed To Iran, Trump Election Takeover

25:45Yeah, for sure. Our daughter, she came to the world under sort of very intense circumstances, which I've not really talked about ever. Growing up on Disney in front of a million, how did that shape your sense of self? I went blank, I hit a bad note, then I couldn't recover. And I had built up this idea that music and being a musician was my whole identity. I had to sort of relearn who I was if you took this thing away. Who am I? Listen to On Purpose with Jay Shetty on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Joining us now is Dr. Trita Parsi to break down this ongoing situation with Iran.

26:26Sir, it's good to see you. Thanks for joining us. Good to see you. All right, so let's go ahead and start with the scheduled talks. Let's put this up here on the screen. It appears some sort of diplomatic negotiations currently happening. U.S.-Iran nuclear talks planned for Friday amid military buildup. We do know, of course, there's ongoing buildup of military assets in the region. Steve Wyckoff, Jared Kushner scheduled to meet with the Iranians. However, they're making a pit stop in Israel. I believe they just landed there this morning as you and I are talking. You are a bit skeptical currently about this diplomatic negotiation.

26:58Just break it down for us what we need to know. Well, there are reasons to be skeptical, and there's also reasons to believe that perhaps ultimately this could work. Let me start with reasons to be skeptical. At the end of the day, we're seeing that the positions on the nuclear issue, as well as on missiles, the two sides are extremely far away from each other. The Iranians have almost zero maneuverability and are not really in a position to give that much. And I think the Trump administration is overestimating Iran's weakness, Iran definitely is weaker than it was two years ago, but not as weak as Trump seems to believe, and as a result, is not ready to just capitulate.

27:41And there is a line of thinking in Iran, which is that there may be a need for at least a limited military confrontation in which the Iranians respond far, far more harshly than they have so far, in order to dispel the belief in the Trump administration that Iran is so weak that it has no choice but to capitulate. Whether that would work out that way, of course, is a completely different story. But the calculation on the Iranian side essentially is they cannot win a war, but they can last long enough to make sure that Trump loses his presidency with the damage that they would be inflicting on him, the damage that would be inflicted on energy markets, inflation in the US, etc., etc.

28:21Very, very destructive approach, obviously. And as long as the two sides are this far away from each other and Trump has this type of impatient approach to diplomacy, this could very quickly lead to an escalation in which the two sides just concluded too far away from each other. all of these military assets in the region already, and the pressure on Trump will significantly increase to go at it. On the positive side, you're now seeing the region being fully involved in this. And the fact that you have countries like Saudi, Oman, Pakistan, Egypt, Qatar being included in the meeting in Turkey, whether they attend or not remains to be seen, is a very significant development.

29:07Because on the one hand, it signifies how the region is once again trying to impose itself on Trump, as it did with the previous Gaza ceasefire, in which by acting collectively, they really can get Trump's attention and get Trump to listen to them rather than to listen to Israel. Now, whether that works out this way in this time around, of course, is a different story. The other point of it is that there is so little trust between these between the U.S. and Iran. And having these regional countries evolve, it provides a bit of a guarantee or a proxy of a guarantee for the Iranians that the Trump administration will uphold its end of the bargain if there is a bargain, given the fact that otherwise it will be betraying the trust of all of these different countries.

29:51And again, Trump, unlike previous presidents, actually really does value the view of some of these countries at least, and does take their collective view more seriously than, for instance, the Biden administration did. None of this, nevertheless, is a guarantee for an agreement. Ultimately, it comes down to where their positions are. And right now, they're very far away from each other. What is your understanding of why there has not been military action to this point? I think the main reason, first of all, about two and a half weeks ago, Trump almost took military action, as you all remember, and then he called it off.

30:23My understanding is that there had been an attempt to get the Iranians to agree to a limited strike in which the Iranians then would respond symbolically as they had done before. And it would make Trump look very good and the Iranians would have escaped a real war. But the Iranian response was, no, if there is an attack, you will have full scale war. And I think that took the president back. And that's why he ended up having all of these other military assets drawn to the region. Whether he's doing that because he ultimately wants to attack or whether he does that because he wants to try that bargain again or try it at the diplomatic table remains to be seen, of course.

31:02Well, I do want to get your reaction. There's a report out this morning from Barack Ravid. He could take it with a grain of salt, but here's what he says. The dynamic has shifted a succession of Israeli spies and generals, including IDF chief of staff have visited DC in recent days. It is safe to say nothing came out of the meeting to chain the president's mind. Quote, it's the really the Israelis who want a strike. The president is not just there. He really does not want to do it. However, it could be boxed currently, like you said, into a situation. Can you talk here about how the Israelis have moved the goalposts?

31:32So the reason for the 12-day war was to destroy Iran's nuclear capability. And they said that they had succeeded in that, and thus, mission accomplished. And yet here we are six months later, and now we might bomb Iran because of a nuclear facility and or nuclear program. And now, in fact, the goalposts are moving to missile production, which is their only possible regional deterrent against Israel. So it does appear as if the Israelis are significantly putting pressure, moving the goalposts to try and move in a direction of war. Absolutely. And I think if you go back to what we talked about back then in July and June, the bottom line is that once Trump agrees to a small bit of the Israeli position, that's when he boxes himself.

32:12He did that last time. He could have pursued diplomacy. He could have pursued it based on his original demand of no nuclear weapon. He accepted the Israeli position of no enrichment. And of course, it led him to a dead end and military action ensued. Now he's then gone along and accepted missiles as a new demand, despite the fact that he just said that, you know, this whole issue is resolved. Then again, he agreed that there's a problem with the missiles, apparently. And here we are again on the brink of war. If he really does not want to go to war, then he should not accept the premise of the Israeli position, because the premise of the Israeli position is designed to bring the United States into this war.

32:51Now, one very important aspect that is not really fully discussed in Washington, in my view, is that you have this regional constellation, not just trying to avoid a war, but they're actually really try to save a certain balance in the region, which requires that there isn't a war and that Iran doesn't become completely weakened, because a new situation has emerged in the region following the U.S. completely lifting all restrictions on Israel during the Biden administration, which then led to Israel bombing seven countries in the region, including U.S. allies such as Qatar. And it turned out that the United States is no protection against Israel for these countries as air defense systems don't even activate when Israel attacks.

33:37And this has now led to such an issue in which these countries need to have their own balancing against Israel. And within that context, a war with Iran that either further weakens Iran, or you have chaos in Iran, or you have a pro-Israel puppet installed in Iran, is a devastating geopolitical development for these countries, despite the fact that there are no fans of the Islamic Republic. They do want to see Iran weaken, but not further than what it already is, because if it is weakened further than this point, it starts affecting their security negatively because they will have a harder time balancing against what they view as an increasingly aggressive and unrestrained Israel.

34:16How do you think Trump is thinking about this? I understand what Israel wants in terms, you know, vis-a-vis Iran. They want either regime change to some puppet regime or total state collapse, and you've laid that out very effectively. What does Trump really want here? Is it just another, you know, sugar high, like he had his successful military, quote unquote, victory in Venezuela. What is it truly that he's actually after? I do think that there is a search for sugar highs and an overconfidence following both the midnight hammer, as well as the operation in Venezuela, in which there is this naive belief that this can just be cookie cutter, cookie cutter repeated wherever he wants to go, and it just simply cannot.

35:02I do think that he wants to be able to deliver something on this issue to pacify those voices that are constantly pressuring him. But here's where that is a miscalculation. They will not be pacified until he has gone into full-scale war with Iran. There is no half measure. Either you tell them no, or you're going to have to tell them yes. And if you give these half yeses, every six months they're going to come back and you're going to have to give another half yes and another half yes. And eventually you will be in a full-scale war on behalf of Israel. So one of my questions here also is there's potential talks of off-ramps.

35:38Let's say the Iranians agree to suspend enrichment but not give up all enrichment. Do these not yet still feel like half measures? Because if you're an Iranian negotiator, the last time that you were scheduled to meet with Steve Wyckoff, it was cover for a strike on your country. And perhaps that factored into their more recent calculation saying, look, we are not taking symbolic strikes. If you hit us, it's on. From their perspective, how are they looking at things? And especially in the context of their regime, as you said, it stands together. However, it is slightly weakened after the ongoing protests.

36:14Talk about the domestic dynamics inside Iran. On the first issue, you're quite right. The perception they have is if they give on enrichment, then there will be missiles. If they give on missiles, eventually it will be kitchen knives. There's no end to this. So I find them very unlikely to give something that is really irreversible. Now, there's some rumors that there's talk about giving up the 400 kilos of 60 % enriched uranium that is somewhere under the mountain. It seems like the Iranians themselves don't have access to it. So the idea that it's leverage for them is a bit of a stretch. So giving it up perhaps is more valuable than it otherwise would be.

36:59But the question is, do you combine that with a complete end to enrichment, zero enrichment? I would be very surprised if that is the position the Iranians take, and particularly mindful of the fact that there are elements, powerful elements within the IRGC who were completely opposed to the ceasefire in the 12-day war, who believed that Iran was starting to win the war. The idea that they would go from that to suddenly completely capitulate seems very, very odd to me. Now, the domestic situation is very, very problematic at the end of the day. Iran is still in a complete state of shock. The killings were on an unprecedented scale.

37:36I don't believe some of these huge numbers are being thrown out there because the methodology behind them doesn't seem to be sound. But it does seem very likely that between 5 ,000 and 6 ,000 or perhaps more, up to 7 ,000 were killed. And that is a huge number. It's never happened before. And this has just left the country in a state of shock. It has further eroded whatever little legitimacy the regime had. It has also consolidated other elements within the security apparatus because they also point to this other factor that is rarely talked about, which is there were also clearly very, very violent elements within the protest movement.

38:13I personally think that they're separate from the protest movement. There is something that was there that was going to take advantage of massive protests to do this. I spoke to one person who was out in the streets. I've been in every protest before from 2009. And he said that they were just shocked to see these men in black acting very fast, you know, looked professional, had clear plans, putting buildings on fire, fighting with police, putting policemen on fire. And in 2009, he told me that whenever there was any violence, the protesters themselves quickly put an end to it because they had such a strong discipline of nonviolence.

38:52This time around, he said, no one there to intervene because people were equally afraid of these violent elements within the protest movement, as well as the thugs of the Basij movement, this militia, etc. So he actually ended up going home because this was not what I signed up for. I wanted to protest against the government about what they're doing, the horrible state of life in Iran, but not this. So I think there's another narrative out there, another reality that is not being discussed enough because even the U.S. government acknowledges that about 300 police were killed. Well, how were they killed?

39:25Who killed them? And with what weapons? Where did the weapons come from? Yeah. Where did the weapons come from? And then you have Mike Pompeo giving interviews to the Israeli news outlets claiming that, you know, the U.S. did everything it could to help the protesters, including weapons. I don't know if that's true or if that's just his way of sabotaging the talks and playing psychological warfare. But bottom line is we know that this was very, very different from any previous protest. But that also then indicates that the regime has, to a very large extent, lost control of the security of the country.

40:00So even if their narrative has some element of truth, it actually is a strike against them because it reveals that they actually have not been able to root out the presence of either violent elements or elements that have been supported by outside groups. My last question for you is, do you have any sense of whether there are elements within the Iranian government or within the IRGC that say, you know what, the logic is such we should actually race to a bomb because that is the only thing that is going to act as a deterrence. That is the only way these people will ever even consider leaving us alone.

40:33They certainly are. And those voices at this point probably are a majority. They never were a majority prior to all of this. The question, though, is or the obstacle they have is that the supreme leader himself seems to be dead set against it. He at least seems to take his own fatwa very seriously against nuclear weapons. There is a lot of frustration within the system amongst those who believe that this is the only rational choice that Iran can make at this point. And it's not being pursued in their view because of him. At the same time, we also have to acknowledge if they were racing behind the scenes for a bomb, they would be acting exactly like they're acting right now, which is continue to insist that they're not doing so.

41:17Pursuing a weapon is a much more quiet endeavor than running a large civilian nuclear program. It could be done in very small labs, in garages, etc. Does the U.S. and Israel have the intelligence to be able to completely detect that or not? We don't know. We have not seen any signs from the Israelis saying that the Iranians are actually building a bomb. They're leaking intelligence reports, valid or not, that the Iranians are trying to revive certain aspects of the program. But they haven't come out and said that there's a secret weapon program going on. So reality is, in the absence of IA inspectors, it's very difficult to know exactly what is happening.

41:55Yeah, very good points. All right, sir. Thank you so much for joining us. We always appreciate your analysis. Thank you so much. It seems like just yesterday that the Two Guys Five Rings podcast was in Paris for the Olympics. And now we're heading to Milan for the 2026 Milan Cortina Olympic Winter Games. I'm Bowen Yang. And I'm Matt Rogers. And we'll join athletes from 93 countries as Two Guys Five Rings hits the Italian Alps for the 2026 Milan Cortina Olympic Winter Games. Open your free iHeartRadio app. Did we mention it's free? Search Two Guys Five Rings and listen now. Welcome to the A-Building.

42:34I'm Hans Charles. I'm Menelik Lumumba. It's 1969. Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr. have both been assassinated. And Black America is at a breaking point. Rioting and protests broke out on an unprecedented scale. In Atlanta, Georgia, at Martin's alma mater, Morehouse College, the students had their own protest. It featured two prominent figures in Black history. Martin Luther King Sr. and a young student Samuel L. Jackson. To be in what we really thought was a revolution. I mean, people were dying. 1968, the murder of Dr. King, which traumatized everyone. The FBI had a role in the murder of a Black Panther leader in Chicago.

43:18This story is about protest. It echoes in today's world far more than it should. And it will blow your mind. Listen to The A Building on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

43:54So beautiful. I can see that got you a little... Yeah, for sure. Our daughter, she came to the world under sort of very intense circumstances, which I had not really talked about ever. Growing up on Disney in front of a million, how did that shape your sense of self? I went blank. I hit a bad note, then I couldn't kind of recover. And I had built up this idea that music and being a musician was my whole identity. I had to sort of relearn who I was if he took this thing away. Who am I? Listen to On Purpose with Jay Shetty on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

44:34So in a podcast appearance with Dan Bongino, President Trump made some pretty wild comments about elections. Let's take a listen to that. These people were brought to our country to vote, and they vote illegally. And the, you know, amazing that the Republicans aren't tougher on it. The Republicans should say, we want to take over. We should take over the voting in at least many, 15 places. The Republicans ought to nationalize the voting. We have states that are so crooked and they're counting votes. We have states that I won that show I didn't win. Now, you're going to see something in Georgia where they were able to get with a court order the ballots.

45:15You're going to see some interesting things come out. Now, if this was a one-off, maybe you could just dismiss it as, you know, Trump doing Trump stuff and just saying some bullshit and not really backing it up. But we have a bunch of other things going on. Number one, as you guys know, because we reported here, they came in, the FBI came in and seized all the ballots from 2020 in Fulton County, Georgia, which was, of course, the epicenter of a bunch of the Stop the Steal nonsense conspiracies after 2020. Furthermore, Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, was there for some reason.

45:46So you have that. You have Pam Bondi sending a letter to the state of Minnesota saying basically, hey, we'll pull our federal agents out of the streets if you hand over your voter rolls. So using their sort of like federal occupation of the city of Minneapolis as a cudgel to try to extract the voter rolls from Minnesota. In addition, the Department of Justice is suing 20-plus states for the same reason, to try to acquire their voter rolls. Trump himself has indicated he does not believe that they are going to organically do well in the midterm elections. He pins that on just so the party in power never does well, etc.

46:23So he's aware that he has an electoral problem here. You couple that, of course, with the fact that this is the same man who did try to steal the 2020 election, And we all watched how that played out and told The New York Times recently that he regrets he didn't go further and have the National Guard seize the ballot boxes in 2020. When you put it all together, Sagar, I would say it paints a pretty disturbing picture. No, we're in crazy town. We're in straight crazy town. Let's put the next one up here on the screen. Trump had unusual call with FBI agents after election search. So Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, brokered the call, and President Trump has directly questioned frontline agents on the inquiry.

47:02By the way, this has not been denied in terms of what happened. Behind closed doors, Tulsi Gabbard, the DNI, met with some of the FBI agents of the field bureau office in Atlanta conducting the election inquiry. They could not say why she was there, but her continued presence has raised eyebrows. Because shortly after the raid, the president addressed the agents on speakerphone, asking them questions as well as praising and thanking them for their work on the inquiry. A call lasted for some one minute. I think more importantly, what it does highlight is Tulsi's own role in all of this. And in fact, we do have a more recent notification from Tulsi Gabbard to Congress.

47:37What it shows here is they say in the letter to lawmakers in a congressional inquiry as to why she even participated in the raid on Fulton County that she has the power under federal law to analyze intelligence related to election security. So they say in the 12 FBI field offices across the country, the domestic DNI rep program was established through an MOU with the ODNI and the FBI. I have visited several of these representatives across the country, and in that capacity is what she participated in. What I have noted as well is that Tulsi Gabbard has been significantly shut out of this administration as of late.

48:15So on Venezuela, they said that the DNI should stand for do not invite. She had her heyday a few months ago whenever she was part of the – remember the whole Obamagate thing? They said this is the biggest conspiracy in American history and that Obama was going to get indicted for treason. Quite literally nothing happened as a result of that. I am looking at this in particular a lot of her more recent actions. This is a way for her to get into his good graces, not just good graces, but to re-raise her profile within MAGA. This is a constant theme in the Trump White House is that when you need to get back into Trump's good graces, you satisfy and are willing to do the absolute craziest shit that nobody else is willing to touch.

48:57And that's exactly basically what has happened here. But look, people should freak out. Like, we should not minimize it. This is crazy. Yeah. Because this is the literally – the whole like national voting thing, we could talk in the abstract. It's kind of like the third term. I'm like, yeah, sure. I agree. Our election systems and all of that are antiquated, ridiculous. I do think there should be federal standards. We could put all of that to the side. The problem in this case is that this is purely a result not only of the imagination, but very specific subset of like MAGA and Stop the Steal, which usually wants to belie all of this is, you know, I've talked about high IQ Stop the Steal, which is my.

49:39Oh, yes, we should have federal election standards and voter ID. Fine. Whatever. OK, you know. Yeah. Cool. But this is not what that is. Right. That's not what Trump is talking about. Dominions. We talked a lot about this during Stop the Steal. It's like, guys, no, that's he doesn't mean the Pennsylvania Supreme Court changed mail-in ballots. Like he actually thinks that somebody wrote in, you know, fake ballots or whatever based on bamboo that were shipped by Venezuelan Chinese Dominions. Like that's what they actually think. And they have photos there posed, for example, with Sidney Powell or the Rudy Giuliani case where everybody pursued now previously.

50:11So that's the direction that this is all heading in and it's not good. Yeah, I mean, I guess the most optimistic reading is that this is just confined to 2020 and has nothing to do with the 2026 elections. Honestly, I think you'd have to be pretty Pollyannish and a fool to really believe that. Now, will they be able to pull off some sort of major disruption that is sufficient enough to stop, you know, we're going to talk about what happened in Texas? Like, things are not looking great for the Republicans in terms of how they're likely to perform in the midterm elections. So will the elections be, quote unquote, too big to rig?

50:45That is certainly a possibility. You know, I mean, they have been they have have had their sales trimmed in certain instances previously in this administration where they haven't been able to fulfill their most maximalist goals for a variety of reasons, usually involving the stock market. But in any case, so I'm not saying it's like it's over, democracy's dead, et cetera. But you should be taking this as seriously as you possibly can. I wanted to mention Seymour Hersh wrote a substack about the midterm elections. And the overall thrust of his article was that, you know, they're not in great standing politically with the electorate and are likely to face significant midterm losses.

51:22But he included this reporting in there. And I wanted to mention it because, you know, he has been right about a lot in the past. He says that Stephen Miller was the author of an earlier proposal to use local National Guard troops to disrupt the midterm elections in critical states if polling predicted the Republican Party would lose the House. That suggestion, given the current negative polling in the fiasco in Minneapolis, is now dead in the water. So he says that's something that Stephen Miller had floated. Now that's not looking like they could pull that off. Another plan that has been discussed in the White House is to disrupt a future presidential election when Vice President J.D.

51:58Vance might be the candidate in case of a loss at the polls. It was conceived by John Eastman. You guys remember him, the disbarred lawyer. He is currently appealing as disbarment in California, who also thought up the failed plan after Trump's election loss to 2020 to have Vice President Pence as the president of the Senate exercise his legal authority or reject certified state electors and electoral votes for the presidency. I was told Eastman's new scheme, recently the subject of informal discussions at the White House, calls for sympathetic election officials in states where the Democratic candidates win simply to delay or refuse to submit the electoral votes at the time mandated by the Constitution.

52:44So at the very least, this reporting suggests that there are some serious conversations going on, seriously radical conversations going on at the White House with regards both to the midterm elections and to 2028. Let's talk a little bit specifically about, put C4 up on the screen about what the plan may be in Fulton County in particular. This was a piece from Greg Blustein, could the FBI raid in Fulton set the stage for a takeover of county's elections? Now, I want you guys to understand, Greg Blustein is a straight news reporter, okay? This is not, you know, some lefty conspiracy or liberal resistance tinfoil hat conspiracy.

53:29This is based on a law that was passed in the state of Georgia in the wake of 2020 that gives the Republican dominated legislature the ability to take control of county election boards in the event of there's like a series of triggers. And one of them is some sort of investigation into malfeasance. So the idea here laid out by Greg is that this FBI raid in and of itself could be the predicate for Trump-allied Republicans in the state, which, by the way, the state election board is now dominated by hardcore Trump loyalists, for them to take over control of Fulton County elections. If Republicans are able to effectively rig Fulton County and make sure that the Democratic vote is significantly depressed enough, it is game over for Democrats in the state of Georgia because the vast bulk of their votes come from Fulton County.

54:26This is Atlanta, Georgia, right? This is the heavy population center. It's heavily Democratic, and they have to run up the score there in order to win the state. John Ossoff is, you know, senator from Georgia. He's on the ballot. He's probably the most sort of endangered Democratic incumbent in the Senate. So he is putting out here that this could very well be the plan. And when he talked to some of the board members on the state board of elections and other people who are relevant to this, they would not rule out the possibility. And one said, yeah, this is something that we are looking at. So with Fulton County in particular, I think this could be the plan that they're going with here.

55:03Yeah. So like you said, I looked into the specifics. The state, Georgia State Election Board has to appoint a superintendent to run that county's election. Now, currently, we should remember that the Georgia Secretary of State is actually the chair of the board and only votes in a tie. That's Brad Raffensperger, who was famous from that previous time period. And it's still kind of an open question, at least for two of these people who would be appointed by the House and the Senate. Don't forget, Georgia does also have a significant number of Republicans who broke with Trump on Stop the Steal and previously, not just broke, won re-election, including from their governor, Brad Raffensperger, and others.

55:39But no, we should lay out the possibility because what the point is around this trigger is that all they need is something called evidence of dysfunction, even if no wrongdoing is proved. Now, to be, I mean, technically, this is Georgia state law, right, in the way that this is all written. The question is whether the FBI seizure and eventual case would then be able to be brought to the state superintendent, be appointed, and whether any of this is going to withstand court challenge. Remember, too, that evidence of dysfunction, from what I read, has to be evidence on its face. And in many cases, Trump and his administration has undermined much of their cases because they will undermine, let's say, the facts while saying, no, this is a political decision.

56:24They're trying to take over, which, of course, would spell problems for them at a state law level when it would face challenge. This is not going to just be quietly into the night. This is going to be heavily litigated if something like this does happen. And Trump making that congratulatory call to the FBI agents that Sagar was talking about before, that does not help the administration's case that this was some neutral fact-finding mission. One more piece here that is very weird. Put C3 up on the screen. So this is in regard to Tulsi Gabbard. This was reported by the Wall Street Journal. They say that there's a classified whistleblower complaint about Tulsi Gabbard that is stalled within her agency.

57:02Tulsi, I'll read you a bit of this. A U.S. intelligence official has alleged wrongdoing by DNI, Tulsi Gabbard, in a whistleblower complaint that is so highly classified. It has sparked months of wrangling over how to share it with Congress, according to U.S. officials. The filing of the complaint has prompted a continuing behind-the-scenes struggle about how to assess and handle it, with the whistleblower's lawyer accusing Gabbard of stonewalling the complaint. Gabbard's office rejects that characterization contending and is navigating a unique set of circumstances and working to resolve the issue.

57:34A cloak and dagger mystery reminiscent of a John le Carré novel is swirling around the complaint, which is said to be locked in a safe. Disclosure of its contents could, quote, cause grave damage to national security, one official said. It also implicates another federal agency beyond Gabbard's and raises potential claims of executive privilege that may involve the White House. The complaint was filed last May with the intelligence community's inspector general, according to a November letter. The letter, which was viewed by the Wall Street Journal, accused Gabbard's office of hindering the dissemination of the complaint to lawmakers by failing to provide necessary security guidance on how to do so.

58:11The Gabbard people are pointing to and the administration is pointing to there was an inspector general who assessed the claims. They found one to be not credible. The other one, they were unable to assess the validity of that claim. they appear on their face, the Trump administration, to be in violation of requirements that they share this information with Congress. This was reported to them all the way back in May. And so there's a lot of intrigue surrounding whatever this thing is and why it is being so closely held that it can't be shared with Congress. Yeah, we're not really even sure if this is relevant to the election question.

58:46Like you said, it specifically said that the allegations specifically about Gabbard weren't credible, according to the inspector general. Well, it said one of them wasn't credible and the other one they couldn't assess. Indeterminate. I'm skeptical only because I've seen enough of these whistleblower reports end up being bullshit and or like Russiagate level of nonsense. Remember Ukrainegate under Donald Trump. But look, I can't put anything past the current administration. So I really have no idea what this entire thing is going to be. Also, you know, one of the reasons why one of the ways it worked on the first Trump administration is you would have these fake whistleblower complaints, which would go to Congress, then they would leak and it would be anonymous.

59:23It would be completely like a manufactured scandal. So I genuinely have no clue what this is. I mean, the story is crazy because it's about being locked in the safe and it does have all this spy novel characterization. I personally, look, the Fulton thing, there's no whistleblower complaint. It's out in the open. She's like, yeah, I'm involved and I was available there. She even put her current Twitter bio as a photo of her on the phone. All right. There's no hiding this. Like it's out in the open. This is, in my opinion, this is what there is to freak out about. Well, I mean, the reason it could connect is that if there is something that is real and that's damaging in this allegation, I mean, this is something that then Trump can use over Tulsi or that she would know that they have on her, so to speak.

1:00:06So, you know, that would make her much more willing to. I mean, this woman's already violated her supposed principles to the extent she ever had one in a million different ways. but in any case would provide additional pressure so that, you know, she's going to be the face of this nonsense, stop the steal stuff. And I mean, to my recollection back in 2020, like, I mean, Tulsi supported Joe Biden in that election. She was not, she was not a stop the steal gal. I, you know, was not aware that she had made this turn. Although again, not surprising given that any other thing that she supposedly stood for in the past has been long abandoned.

1:00:35She totally lost me whenever she did the whole Iran turn. Oh yeah. Basically became Colin Powell. Or how about when Biden withdrew from Afghanistan and she didn't have anything positive to say? That was already when she was on her turn. That's when she was already becoming a Republican. Yeah, I'm looking at this. I was just asked Chachi Petit for quotes. It doesn't look like she ever made a public declaration on stop the steal. But yeah, she supported. I mean, we interviewed her too many times not to know how she used to be. So I don't know. I mean, one of the great lessons over the last five years is that people who you think are for real and will look you in the face, literally, let's say in the Tulsi's case, and you believe them, let's say, when what they're saying, when they come into high office, apparently all of that just goes out the window.

1:01:19You can read about it in a book, which I have many times, but to experience it yourself, you're like, wow, okay. Well, this is how easy it is to be manipulated. And I think you'll both say, too, like, she's an odd one. She's an inscrutable character. So there isn't, you know, I don't know what's in this whistleblower complaint. I don't know if it's credible. I have no idea. But, you know, I don't put it out of bounds that there is some sort of weird something going on here. Well, what I always thought with her was her eccentric character was proof positive that she didn't give a shit. That's why she was willing to buck on Assad.

1:01:51That's the way I read it originally, too. She was like, I don't care. She's like, I don't care about all these – right? And that's why I was very attractive after a while. You're like, wow, this is a woman who really does not care about Washington establishment or anything. She's willing to say whatever is on her mind, like take very unpopular positions. She stood up to Hillary whenever Hillary accused her of being a Russian asset, all this stuff. I really thought she was heroic. And I mean probably the person I changed my mind most about like coming into politics and especially getting to know her after a while.

1:02:17And then, you know, over the years, there were a few breadcrumbs. I was like, that's a little weird. And then you go into the DNI thing. Okay, maybe it's like RFK. She has an agenda, really going to be a fighter on certain issues. And then now we're here. Iran, Obamagate, and now this. you're like, oh, okay. You're just like everybody else. Yeah.

1:03:04and will join athletes from 93 countries as Two Guys Five Rings hits the Italian Alps for the 2026 Milan Cortina Olympic Winter Games. Open your free iHeartRadio app. Did we mention it's free? Search Two Guys Five Rings and listen now. Black history lives in our stories, our culture, and the conversations we still have in today. This Black History Month, the podcast I Didn't Know, Maybe You Didn't Either digs into the moments, perspectives, and experiences that don't always make the textbook. Let me tell you about Garrett Morgan. Bruh had to pretend he didn't even exist just to sell his own invention.

1:03:45Listen to I Didn't Know, Maybe You Didn't Either from the Black Effect Podcast Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or simply wherever you get your podcasts. I Didn't Know.

1:03:591969. Malcolm and Martin are gone. America is in crisis. And at Morehouse College, the students make their move. These students, including a young Samuel L. Jackson, locked up the members of the Board of Trustees, including Martin Luther King Sr. It's the true story of protest and rebellion in Black American history that you'll never forget. I'm Hans Charles. I'm Menelik Lumumba. Listen to The A Building on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed human.