2/4/26: Melinda Gates Blasts Bill Over Epstein, ICE Victims Testify, US Shoots Iranian Drone

28:41I'm looking at one email right now to this guy who was at the Gates Foundation at the time, Boris Nikolic, who says, Jeffrey Epstein says, let's think up NSA types for Washington meeting. All these mentions where, do you have contacts at NSA? Can you find me the best codebreaker NSA type? I mean, it's just like over and over again. And that's really interesting that he was helping Ehud Barak build the Israeli surveillance state and then looking to mine codebreakers at the American surveillance state for his science. Like he had these, what's the right, were like these almost like millenarian ideas about technology.

29:24Like he can bring about. Right. And unusually, he brought it about. I've seen a lot of people who've watched his like interview with, either listened to that conversation or they watch his interview with Bannon and they're like, oh, this guy's just a stoner. Yeah. Like who's just like highfalutin and ideas, but he's actually a dummy. And I would just strongly encourage people to give that analysis a second thought. This guy, this is not a dummy. This is a guy who can explain and understand extraordinarily. He can take extraordinarily complex systems, whether it's global finance, global politics, science and medicine, global surveillance.

30:07he can he can understand them intuitively and then he can explain them in a way that allows you to understand them that is an extremely rare quality in somebody that is not a dummy that is that is not somebody just sitting around pontificating um and mansplaining like do don't under don't underestimate this guy is what i would say well one person who was not charmed by Jeffrey Epstein is Norm Finkelstein. Let's put this one up. 8-5. Oh my gosh, Ryan, this is a great email. This is fun. So, yeah, what's, so the context here, you've got some reporters who are kind of reaching out for comment, right?

30:54Yeah. About Dershowitz and, and Epstein, Norman Finkelstein, 2015, responds, my guess is if Epstein put your daughter at age 15 in such a position, you wouldn't publicly describe him as a, quote, friend and person of, quote, integrity. In fact, I would hope that you'd promptly throttle both Epstein and Dershowitz. Epstein is CC'd on this email, by the way. Yeah, she CCs, yes. Probably Dershowitz, too. I was just going to say, yeah, I bet Dershowitz is one of the redacted names. And we had Dershowitz on the program a couple of years ago before. Oh, Rising. We had him on. Yeah, Adam Rising. And I remember before Finkelstein was the celebrity he rightfully is today, I asked him about his, the context for this is Dershowitz basically destroyed Finkelstein's academic career because he didn't like a review that Finkelstein wrote of Dershowitz's book.

31:52This is another piece of drop site reporting. Well, that was about the Israel lobby, Meersheimer. That was Meersheimer, that's right, okay. That Epstein and Dershowitz both collaborated to try to undermine the book, the Israel lobby with Meersheimer and Walt. They probably did the same thing with Finkelstein too. Well, absolutely. Collaborating behind the scenes. Was Epstein involved with going after Finkelstein? Probably. Yes. Oh, the other fun thing, we don't have them here. epstein and woody allen hated alan dershowitz so much that which is the funniest the girls were gossiping behind his back it's the funniest ending to this that alan dershowitz has dragged his own meager reputation through the mud to defend woody allen and uh and jeffrey epstein to the bitter end And now to find out they despised the guy.

32:53They thought he was full of himself. The worst, they call him a completely shameless name dropper. Yeah. Like they just go in on him. Especially Woody Allen. I mean, Woody Allen just. Might have been his wife. Because sometimes his wife is writing from Woody Allen. Is writing for him. Either way. Sometimes she's just emailing as well. It's just a lot of Sunyi and Woody in these emails. But the. And Epstein says to Woody Allen, no, no, he's even worse than you think. And Woody Allen's like, that's not possible. He's like, I'm Woody Allen. There is no bottom to what I think of Alan Dershowitz. Yeah.

33:27Those are his best friends. What a team. What a team. Just going around the world. All right. There's also an email we should talk about here where Jeffrey Epstein, March of 2018, subject line, writes to a redacted recipient, quote, he was passed away. That's the subject line. And it's a actually it's a the quote of an article that I think was published in the Mirror in 2002. And Epstein put in Robert Maxwell and then went to the quote, which is, quote, threatened Mossad. He told them that unless they gave him 400 million pounds to save his crumbling empire, he would expose all he had done for them.

34:06In that time, he had free access to Margaret Thatcher's Downing Street, Ronald Reagan's White House, to the Kremlin and to the corridors of power throughout Europe. Maxwell passed on all the secrets he learned to Mossad and Tel Aviv. In turn, they tolerated his excesses, vanities, and insatiable appetite for a luxurious lifestyle and women. He told his controllers who they should target and how they should do it. He appointed himself as Israel's unofficial ambassador to the Soviet bloc. And then, Ryan, this is, it's a quote. It's quite interesting that Epstein, yes. And then he says he was passed away.

34:40Passive voice. As BFF is Maxwell's daughter. Right. Before Jeffrey Epstein, there was Robert Maxwell. Like the biggest, the most similar scandal to Epstein today is actually Maxwell when he was killed, as this is the as this is the allegation from Epstein. Maxwell and it was similar also in the sense that there were so many obvious clues that he was an Israeli intelligence asset, including his like his burial, like in Israel at the like most prestigious place, including Ari Ben-Manash saying out loud he was an asset and I worked directly with him, including all of this evidence. and you'd have the press calling it a giant conspiracy theory.

35:32So it was similar in that sense. And the public, eventually, I think, that followed. It was like, no, yeah, don't believe the press on this one. The conspiracy theory is true. And now it's a pretty, I don't, now it's barely even a controversial thing to say that Maxwell was an Israeli asset. Like he just was. Yeah. And he was he also was like Epstein, a bit of a con artist and a flim flam and and frittered away hundreds of millions of dollars. According to Ben Manash, the thing that actually broke his empire was there was this intramural dispute with the Israeli weapons traffickers involved in Iran-Contra.

36:17And so they moved their money from banks that were guaranteeing Maxwell with the Iran-Contra money to the East Bloc so the money would be safe from the CIA, which they were now starting to fight with. And so once that money got pulled, now Maxwell all of a sudden couldn't meet his monthly obligations. Maxwell then threatened that he would blow the whistle on all the things that he was doing for them. and just a pro tip for assets out there, don't do, you're not going to win that one. Don't do that. Like, don't warn them. If you do it, just do it. Don't tell them, do X or I'm going to expose all of your secrets.

37:01Don't do that. You're not going to make it to that point. If you're going to leak stuff, leak it. Blow the whistle. You might end up falling off the back of your yacht. Don't walk into the room with a whistle and be like, I'm going to blow this if you don't give me. Yeah, exactly. You might wind up falling out of a window or off the back of your yacht. One guy, they said he got, he'd played tennis and like two days later, they said he died of an aggressive form of cancer. That he picked up like the day before. Like, oh, that's interesting how that happens. Yeah. It's one of those things. One of those crazy things in life.

37:42So yeah, pro tip, don't do it like this. And this is, I mean, the gist of what it's like going through these emails. And it's probably everyone's having this experience on social media right now. You're seeing little tidbits in these single emails that, like this, seem to confirm Epstein buys the conspiracy story. It's not really a conspiracy anymore. but what has been treated as a conspiracy in the past about Robert Maxwell being, quote, passed away. And it's just in the subject line of an email. So there are, it's wrong to call them gems, but like gems in the context of getting to the bottom of what's actually going on, they're everywhere.

38:23And that's what makes it so addicting to be buried in the Epstein library, is you never know which silly email riddled with typos is going to be so significant. And one, throwaway email he sent 2018 it has huge consequences. And I love it in the sense that it's teaching people history and very recent history that is still quite relevant to us. We're going way long. We should probably move on. Yeah, let's do it. Van Lathan is joining us next to talk about the ice hearings. 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.

39:08I'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. Hey, I'm Jay Shetty, host of the On Purpose podcast. On a recent episode, I sat down with Nick Jonas, singer, songwriter, actor, and global superstar. The thing I would say to my younger self is congratulations. You get to marry Priyanka Chopra Jonas. And also, you know, your daughter's incredible. That's beautiful, man. Yeah.

39:48Thank you. That's so 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've not really talked about ever growing up on disney in front of 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 i 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.

40:27Welcome to the A-Building. I'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 out of 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.

41:13This 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. Congress probed the behavior of ICE in hearings yesterday. Miramar Martinez was there, who was shot five times by ICE agents in Chicago, but survived one of the more high-profile survivors of ICE violence. We're going to be joined in a moment by friend of the show, Van Latham, to discuss the hearings. Let's start first with Martinez up on Capitol Hill. This is B1. As my attorney showed the court the disgusting text messages Exum sent to his fellow Border Patrol buddies, literally bragging about how many times he shot me, I got sick to my stomach, seeing how a federal law enforcement officer would talk this way about shooting me, a woman who he swore into.

42:17It was both eye-opening and heartbreaking. Is it true that in the body cam footage, the CBP officer told you to, and I'm so sorry for saying this, the officer told you to, quote, do something, bitch, before he fired? Yes. It's disgusting, shameful, and it gets worse. Ms. Martinez, these are images of texts sent by the agent who shot you. And they're actually disturbing to read, but I think it's important for the public to see this. The agent linked an article about your shooting and texted, read it. Five shots, seven holes. I fired five rounds and she had seven holes. Put that in your book, boys.

43:02oh well, it is what it is. Shit happens. This is someone that works for the United States government. I fired five rounds and she had seven holes. Now he was talking about you and it's our understanding that he was actually bragging about his aim shooting an unarmed American citizen. Is that right? Correct. Correct. And so we're hearing from Miramar Martinez because she survived that attack. We didn't hear from Renee Nicole Good, though we heard from some family members. Didn't hear, obviously, from Alex Preddy, who's no longer here to testify. But Van, I'm curious, when it comes to your audience, is this level of brutality kind of breaking through?

43:58And how have you seen the conversation around immigration enforcement change? And also, welcome to the program. Oh, thank you very much. Glad to have you back. I hope you had a good time down there. I see no tan. There was work to be done, I can tell. I'm feeling good and ready. Now, what I'm seeing from my audience is rage. I'm seeing rage and I'm seeing a sort of wake-up call. uh now miss martinez you guys just featured her that was a story that i saw you guys cover that i saw majority report cover i saw a lot of places in independent news media cover but i did not see too much coverage of what happened to her anywhere else i say that to say that i think that there were overreaches, brutality, and violations of the Constitution by ICE prior to Renee Good that the general public wasn't aware of.

44:59I don't think they understood. I think people got the sense in cities, particularly with large ICE deployments, of how ICE was roaming their communities and papers, please sort of culture, you know, scaring people that they share their communities with. And there were headlines being made. Don't, don't, don't get me wrong. But as far as ICE agents taking out their guns, shooting people and putting their lives in danger, American citizens and undocumented people, I think that Renee Good and Alex Pretty was a wake up call to those people. And I do not think there is a way to put the genie back in the bottom.

45:37Let's roll this clip of Renee Good's family testifying at the same hearing yesterday. B2. My name is Luke Ganger, and I'm here with my brother Brent. Renee Good is our sister. We're here on behalf of Renee's big family and those who loved her. We're here to ask for your help. I was talking to my four-year-old last week when she noticed I was not doing well. I had to come here today and talk to some important people. She knows that her aunt died and that somebody caused it to happen. The deep distress our family feels because of Ney's losses in such a violent and unnecessary way is complicated by feelings of disbelief, distress, and desperation for change.

46:47In the last few weeks, our family took some consolation, thinking that perhaps Naye's death would bring about change in our country. And it has not. The completely surreal scenes taking place on the streets of Minneapolis are beyond explanation. This is not just a bad day or a rough week or isolated incidents. These encounters with federal agents are changing the community and changing many lives, including ours, forever. So then I kind of disagree respectfully with Renee Good's brother there on the point he's making about feeling as though her death has not brought about change. Public opinion has put a lot of pressure on the Trump administration.

47:50And that really I mean, the Renee Good death was the moment that changed from my vantage point, at least. I'm curious what you make of that. And one thing I wanted to ask, too, is people talk and we've talked here about the kind of Dem Tea Party moment. It feels to me like the abolish ICE movement has become a really critical part of like Obamacare for the Tea Party movement was that rallying policy question. It feels to me like abolish ICE has kind of emerged as that for the Tea Party moment. Yeah. So I'll take your first question first. I tend to agree with you. I think from his vantage point, and I hate to speak for him.

48:34but when you are the victim of an injustice that's as profound as the loss of a family member then the only elixir is for the source of that injustice to be held accountable and then for that to stop it would probably be difficult for somebody that's dealing with that type of tragedy to see what we're seeing, which is that event being a flashpoint for really a political and cultural awakening for a lot of people in terms of like how far ICE has gone, what ICE really represents right now. you're seeing it in all the podcast spaces with a lot of the guys who are part of laundering trump's reputation prior to the election and just how they're being held accountable by their audiences for what they told people they should do which is go out and support this regime uh all that's political i think what would be cathartic to that gentleman probably is to see one there be accountability in the death of his loved one and on top of that to see ICE abuses stop or for there to be some plan for them to stop.

49:48And we frankly haven't seen that quite yet. We've seen a lot of political tug of war happening, but nothing that seems like an answer to the problem of how they're being deployed in certain cities. To your second question, which I have totally forgotten in that really articulate and eloquent rant. What was it again? No, about how, so you have some Democrats voting with Republicans on the shutdown yesterday. And basically, the Dem Tea Party moment seems to me like it's coalescing around abolish ICE in the way the Republican Tea Party was coalescing around Obamacare. And I just wanted to get your thoughts on that.

50:28Yeah, that's funny. How can I be? That's funny. The Democrats don't get it. And it's... I feel like you're about to uncork something, man. No, no, it's, you know, I had a homeboy back in the day. And he used to like to, you know, have an occasional drink on Sunday night. You know, you come and he polished off three or four 12 packs. And he'd be like, he's a light, he's a light drinker. I remember his, his girl telling him, hey, enough. It like enough, enough of it. Like everybody had had enough. And I remember talking to him, talking to him. We go out one time and he goes, hey, man, I'm just going to stay around here.

51:17I'm just going to have a couple of, I'm like, nah, man, you have an issue. You have a problem. We're dealing with you in love, but I'm telling you this is a serious thing. You're going to lose your family. I'm telling you, I'm telling you, I'm telling you. And it wasn't until he was seeing his kids at Barnes & Noble that he really got the idea that she wanted something different. And he had a serious problem. The problem was a part of his makeup and it was time to address it. I wonder when the Democrats are going to see themselves in the mirror, like when they're going to. What Barnes and Noble visitation are we going to have to arrange for them for them to see that they are orphaning their base?

52:02As you see me search for words, I really don't know how to articulate it. They do not get it. We're not going for it. That's it. Like, we're not going for it. We're not going for it. It can't be negotiated. There's so many things that we're not going for. Like, it can't be negotiated. You can't talk nice about it. I'm aware that up on the Hill, everybody, there's all these histrionics, and then they all go out and have a steak together and then go to Epstein's house and all of that stuff like that. I get that that's how it goes. But, like, at this point right now, that's over. we want this to stop and how much ever pain has to happen to the general american public and project for this to be headed off for this for this part of it ice ice overreaches for us to say hey abolish this this can't be reformed the guts of it have to be torn up torn up immigration enforcement is a part of having a country you have you're gonna have borders you're gonna have immigration reform and enforcement, excuse me, enforcement, should I say?

53:13You guys piss me off with the question. I'm so mad at the Democrats that I'm not coming across as articulate as I would want to. But I have conversations with politicians. I talk to them a lot. They call me. And they honestly don't get it. They are still in the phase of this where they are attempting to launder the reputation of ICE to convince me and other people like me the usefulness of ICE where they're attempting to soft-pedal it. And it really is, I'm not even baffled, I'm fascinated. Right. I think that a lot of people, if they had the conversations that I had, they would be gobsmacked by some of the political weakness.

54:01And I get it, it's complicated. I understand that it's complicated. But I was on the phone with somebody a couple of days ago. I said, man, figure out what desperate looks like. Figure out what truly obstructionist looks like. Figure out what 10 is and go there. Figure out what 10 is. There are all kinds of things. ICE is funded for a long time. I get it, all that stuff. Figure out what 10 is and go there. Because the disconnect between what I feel like the political intelligentsia of the left in Washington, that disconnect as it relates to the people that I'm having conversations with that listen to my show, that talk to me, it's vast.

54:51They're talking about this issue as if it's regular where there are people who are seeing Americans killed on the street and they're like, what are you guys going to do? And it feels like for a while, and tell me if this connects with what your conversation been like, it feels like for a while Democrats thought their answer needed to be to grow a beard and start using profanity. Yes. And like that that was going to show like how serious they were about changing, you know, their approach to Trump and to and to politics. I see I can't tell if I see a little bit less of that like they started realizing okay it actually it's not authentic and like if it's not coupled with something meaningful it doesn't doesn't really land what and so maybe this is like an answer to what they could do like the MAGA movement they they were serious about changing the country like they like they told you if we get into power we're doing we're doing we're going to build the wall we're going to do mass deportation we're going to do tariffs like they they had these big ideas that stood in for the expression the anger that people had like you've got this anger and we're going to do these big fundamental things democrats don't seem to have that like they've got profanity some of them some of them have grown beards but they're not really there's nothing that you can grab onto that you can say oh if If they get into power, this is how the anger that I have at what's going on is going to be expressed.

56:26Abolish ICE would be would be one of those things to say, like, ICE is irredeemable. We're getting rid of it. We're still doing immigration enforcement. But this rogue agency that's killing people in the streets. Like CBP is actually like killing more people in the streets. Deal with that separately. They got to go like something like that. Like, does that track that, like, they feel like all they have to do is channel the anger by sounding angry themselves, but without any kind of meaning or substance behind it? I think you're dead on, and I think that comes, or that exists, because they have for so long been a harm reduction party.

57:10And that robs you of vision. Right. The Republican MAGA, Trumpism wing, they provided a vision to America. Now, in my opinion, an opinion of a lot of people, that vision was grotesque. But it was a vision nonetheless. And behind that vision, in order for them to be taken seriously, there had to be action. Now, that action is disorganized. It violates the Constitution. It's inhumane. It's the entire list of things. But it had to exist. It had to be there. abolish ICE is vision. Defund the police. I know you guys don't like it. That's a vision statement. That's a statement. It's a big idea. It's a big idea, right?

57:57It's something that says, hey, let's reimagine that. And this and whatever. Is it the most popular thing? No. Is it something that should have been discussed for the merits of what it actually was? Yes. are some of these things jarring and shaking to the milquetoast, boulet, bourgeoisie person who doesn't want to see society set on flames and reimagine? Cool. Get all of that. The question is, what's your version of that? Like, what is your vision? Okay. We know that this needs to stop. How do you imagine it stopping? How do you imagine immigration enforcement? How do you imagine a path to citizenship?

58:42How do you imagine humanity for people that we share borders with? What is your version of this? And it's very difficult. They are so concerned with not being rude that it seems like they care more about that than actual victory and the protection of the people who put them in power. And the politics of it, the political value of being able to milk the energy to have the hearing like they put together yesterday without putting their policy, like you said, whatever they're reimagining, putting it on the table, you can talk and end up never actually, Republicans did this with Obamacare. It's a perfect parallel.

59:21They never put anything, right now they don't have anything. It's been 15 years. Right, because their resistance to Obamacare has nothing to do with what we're trying to talk about, which is how are people going to get to the doctor? Yeah. Okay? Like, how are people going to get care? And I think that really on both sides of this, there is something happening, and I really desperately hope that we can take advantage of the moment, people that want to live in a society of freedom, that people are really getting to a point where they're starting to ask the question, And it's a question that all Americans should always have asked themselves, but it's a hard question to ask.

1:00:10Like, what's in this for me? I think the biggest thing about what ICE is doing and the overreaches is people are seeing in their communities, in their societies, this dysfunction and chaos. And they're going, is this changing my life? Are things cheaper? Are societies better? or are you injecting a whole bunch of chaos into my world for political reasons for your power right we voted for a long time to uh i guess we we know what it's in what's in it for trump we know it's in it for chuck schumer we know what's in it for all of these people they get power they get to continue to pull the strings of society well just ask yourself like what's in it for you?

1:00:58What have you gotten for this? Have you gotten better medical care? Do you get lower grocery prices? What's the, is any of this working for you? And I think on both sides of the aisle, people are going, it doesn't seem like anyone's really thinking about me. Yeah. Van, always a pleasure to have you on. Um, look forward to your next appearance, uh, higher learning podcast, everybody check it out. Thanks so much for joining us. No problem. I wore this hat because next time I want to come. I want to fish. I want to fish and go to fish. We fish in the day, and then we go to fish in the evening. Ryan, don't leave me out, brother.

1:01:30I'm in. He'll take you. You're in. All right. You're in the crew. All right. See you. See you, man. All right. Up next, Iran talks are moving to Oman. Is it just a—are they just, like, faking this so they can get their assets in place to bomb Tehran again? Probably. We'll talk about it next. 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.

1:02:08Open your free iHeartRadio app. Did we mention it's free? Search Two Guys Five Rings and listen now. Hey, I'm Jay Shetty, host of the On Purpose podcast. On a recent episode, I sat down with Nick Jonas, singer, songwriter, actor, and global superstar. The thing I would say to my younger self is congratulations. You get to marry Priyanka Chopra Jonas. And also, you know, your daughter is incredible. That's beautiful, man. Yeah. Thank you. That's so 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've not really talked about ever growing up on disney in front of 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 i 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.

1:03:09Who am I? Listen to On Purpose with Jay Shetty on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to the A-Building. I'm Hans Charles. I'm Menelik Lumumba. It's 1969. Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr. have both been assassinated, and Black America was 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.

1:03:521968, the murder of Dr. King, which traumatized everyone. The FBI had a role in the murder of a Black Panther leader in Chicago. This 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 iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Details out of the Arabian Sea. Let's put this first element up on the screen. As Fox News says here, the U.S. military shot down an unmanned Iranian drone after, quote, it aggressively approached a U.S. Navy aircraft carrier with unclear intent. A U.S. Central Command spokesperson told Fox News the USS Abraham Lincoln was transiting the Arabian Sea approximately 500 miles from Iran's southern coast when an Iranian Shahed 139 drone unnecessarily maneuvered toward the ship, according to that spokesperson for CENTCOM.

1:04:51Ryan, this is a reminder of how fragile the conditions in the Middle East are right now. And I know a lot of people on the right who are disappointed that Trump has not made good on his promises in Iran. But reminders, they got a drone reminders aplenty. Yes, they got a drone of how quickly, quickly, quickly this can escalate the second an American is hurt. You have a different, completely different war. The, the, the like asymmetry here is wild. Like if you try, If we tried to add up the amount of money the U.S. spent to shoot down this, what is it,$20 ,000 drone, it would reach well into the probably hundreds of millions.

1:05:35I mean, if you count the billion-dollar aircraft, although we can keep aircraft carrier, we can keep using that, the missiles, the equipment, this is a fundamental material problem for the U.S. going forward. that it's up against this new cheap drone warfare and it is using its older, like multi-billion dollar assets where in a war of attrition with somebody who can actually produce them like consistently like China, like we run out of like$10 million missiles pretty quickly and they can just keep slapping together these drones. And I will see in this case, Like there's a you and I may disagree on this, but there's, I think, an interesting test case happening right now for the peace through strength doctrine at its best.

1:06:30So if Trump de-escalates by having aircraft carriers in the Arabian Sea and threatening Iran, but not actually going much further, like doing what they want him to do, and they being the neoconservative bulwark that remains in power through Lindsey Graham and many, many others here in Washington, though not many others around the country, average voters, not a huge constituency, of course. But by not giving into their demands for like full scale war and using the big stick, it's possible that fewer people die and you're spared a broader conflict. But just. Yeah, at this point, I would take that because my expectations of Trump are so low.

1:07:21But I'm really tired of him taking credit for not doing bigger wars that he didn't have to do at all. I'll still he's like, look at Venezuela. Like we went in and we went out and could have done a long term occupation and invasion. Well, you could have also just left them alone. We still don't know that it's not going to. It's the same thing with Iran. I mean, there's so many people who were taking victory laps after June. Like, oh, you guys were wrong. Yeah, we only did 12 days. By the way, I'm happy to take an L. Happy to take an L. But it's February, and here we are back again. Yes. Why? Like, again, why?

1:07:56Like, what? And here we are with Delce Rodriguez in charge of Venezuela. Like, what was your, what are you actually doing? Yeah, good question. So, nuclear talks are kicking up. So, we can put up C3. So talks are scheduled now in Oman. They will not be, news media is calling them between the U.S. and Iran, but Iranian officials are saying there are indirect talks in the sense that the U.S. is still refusing to kind of be in the same room. Qatar's going to be there, and they're going back and forth. There's some reporting out of Iran that they've gotten hints that Kushner might end up becoming involved because we can put up C2.

1:08:41This is from Amwaj Media, which is very well sourced among Iranian insiders. They were saying that one of the problems with the last round of negotiations, besides the fact that Trump killed all the negotiators, is that Whitcoff consistently had to fly back to the United States to get answers. which you can imagine how frustrating that is you're you're in the you're in an office you're trying to buy a used car salesman's like i gotta go talk to my manager see if i can give you you know a discount on this true coat and he comes back 10 minutes later he's like great news you know as long as you do the 10-year warranty we can do this true coat at this at a discount um imagine he had to fly back halfway around the world every time this is like then the iranians are sitting there twiddling their thumbs oh and then they get bombed yeah so you can imagine that those are not ideal negotiating circumstances.

1:09:33So they're trying, they're saying like, can you get some more people who are empowered to actually make deals? To me, the whole thing is absurd. Like it seems pretty clear Trump is not serious about negotiations and is just stalling because they launched most of their, you know, anti-missile defenses during the 12 day war. And so they need to restock so that they can defend Israel from whatever counterattack comes. They can defend their other assets around the region, and they need to get all of their own naval and air assets close enough to Iran so they can launch an attack. That seems to be what they're doing.

1:10:14In the past, every time that they have invited the Iranians to negotiate, including Soleimani, who I'll keep reminding people, Qasem Soleimani, was in Baghdad when he was assassinated. because he was lured there for negotiations towards peace like like it's what it's trump's move he thinks it's clever he thinks nobody sees it coming and he's correct at first because that's like a maniacal thing to do right yeah because for thousands of years like the one thing that even like engus khan or whatever would like recognize and be like yeah people go out and talk like it's just not pragmatic to kill that person but talk to them and then you can go back and kill each other later.

1:10:55Trump was like, oh, but what if we kill them at the negotiating table when they're not looking? Have you thought of this before? Have you thought of that? Yeah. So, you know, there's only so many red weddings until people show up at the wedding being like, so that's why I suspect that the Iranians are assuming that an attack is coming. You still got to take the invitation. You can imagine being tapped for these negotiations if you're an Iranian diplomat. No, I cannot. Like, uh. No. Really? This weekend? Helping my friend move. Like, this is a chance of a lifetime. I would really love to do this.

1:11:38But, you know, if they can move it to Oman. Oh, they moved it to Oman. Oh, God. There it is. Can't do Oman, actually, it turns out. Yeah, I'm going to warn out in Oman. Things got a little out of control a couple years ago when I was there. Would really love to. Would really love to. Can't go to Oman. So, yeah. And there's also reporting in that article that you can go read, which backs up reporting that Jeremy Scahill had done earlier at DropSite, which is that Iran had felt that the best way to de-escalate these Trump attacks was to forecast exactly what they were going to do, tell Trump ahead of time so that there's minimal amount of damage and no actual damage to people, to American troops, and to announce ahead of time, we consider, after we respond, we consider this finished.

1:12:31And so that's what they did multiple times. And there were people arguing at the time inside Iran, this is only going to convey weakness and invite more attacks, that you have to hit Trump harder. And the people who advocated for the restrained response, a lot of them were killed. And now they're being replaced by the people who had said, you're gonna get yourself killed with this restraint. What Trump doesn't want is a forever war that he can't control. He's been very clear he hates those. So what we need to do is show him that we can pull one of those off. So we need to hit American assets in Iraq, American assets in Syria, American assets in Doha, and they need to hit Israel as much as we can.

1:13:23And they've even talked about killing as many as 500 American troops to send a signal that there are going to be consequences to you continuing to attack us every six months. Yeah. They feel like that's this faction feels like that's the only way to get this to stop, that that's the only language Trump understands. And the people in the room to argue against it were killed by Trump. So maybe they're all bluffing and and or maybe the U.S. can just annihilate their response capacity. Who knows? And hopefully we won't find out. Yeah. That's the current state of play. Yeah. Well, that's I mean, just the drone strike yesterday is, again, a reminder of how quickly this can completely change completely.

1:14:15You can wake up one day and an American could have been killed on an aircraft carrier and we could be sending more and more troops. We could be sending boots on the damn ground in a heartbeat because of how fragile this is.

1:14:57We'll see you next time. Olympic Winter Games. Open your free iHeartRadio app. Did we mention it's free? Search Two Guys, Five Rings and listen now. Hey, I'm Jay Shetty, host of the On Purpose podcast. On a recent episode, I sat down with Nick Jonas, singer, songwriter, actor, and global superstar. I went blank. I hit a bad note and then I couldn't recover. And I 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.

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