4/7/26: Trump Journo Jail Threat Backfires, US Low On Interceptors, Tucker Turns On Trump

25:32Both are a horrific disaster for the world, for us, I mean, for the economy. In the middle, so many millions of people are going to be affected. And this is the danger. Not even to think about the bigger picture about the Asia Pacific, our real allies. I mean, you know, we talked earlier in the show, how crazy is it that Trump is like, yeah, our only real allies are the Gulf and Israel. You're like, what? Australia? South Korea? Japan? I mean, look, you know, people know I hate Europe, but like, come on. Like, I'll take London over Tel Aviv. Like, what are we doing here? ASML? Like, all these companies that come out of there?

26:11Again, you know, sure, they're sclerotic, but it's not. What are we getting from Israel? Waze? All right, I'm good. All right. You know, if I have to choose between the two of those things. Waze is pretty good. Yeah, it's fine. Yeah. Yeah. But if I had to use Google Maps, I could suffer through it. And at the same time that we're getting exhausted, Israel is getting exhausted too. You know, as we're told, the number of interceptors that Israel has left that are capable of taking on ballistic missiles is at a critically low point. And that's obvious. Like, we don't have to be told that, though we are.

26:48It is obvious just from the math, the numbers that they had, the numbers that they've been using. And at the same time, the Iranians haven't deployed many of their most sophisticated hypersonic missiles, which are capable of more precise targeting and of evading, you know, these very interceptors that they're running, you know, critically low on. And so Israel is relying, you know, very heavily on the U.S. Navy and its interception capacity as it is much more vulnerable to attack. And also, and this is why I just like Israel's decision to want to continue going forward with this at this point is so maniacal and so suicidal because it is, I've heard somebody describe it as an energy island because it is, you know, this country that is isolated from all the other countries in the region.

27:44It's not connected in a lot of ways. It has its own kind of energy island grid. If a few different nodes of that are hit, it is plunged into darkness. Iran, you can plunge it into darkness. We have, we still have enough munitions that we can do extraordinary kinetic damage to Iran, no doubt about it. But Iran has hundreds and hundreds of power plants. Israel has, what, 10? Yeah. Eight? Like not many. So if they're hit and if they can't protect them from getting hit and if Iran decides to use its hypersonic ballistic missiles against a much depleted ballistic missile defense, they're going to get through and hit Israeli power plants.

28:31which then kills like it kills people i was just in cuba yeah you should tell people about this because you were just in cuba yeah and tell them what you saw what does it mean when you lose power the most immediate thing and so we might have for a range of different people but the most the most immediate obvious thing is patients who are in hospitals on ventilators die they die or the nursing staff has to run to them with their iphone camera on or their smartphone can't phone light on and hand pump, which is not what you want because you also want to be able to check their vitals constantly and you want to be able to give the right amount of oxygen.

29:08So you can keep them alive for a while, but like not forever. We also talked to a mom whose kid is on an oxygen tank and she said in the hospital, the nurses are so good that they're not as worried that when the power goes out. But at home, they have to rush to get the oxygen tank, get the mobile one, the one that's battery powered, make sure if the battery's not charged up, you're screwed. Also, the shutdown, the immediate shutdown of power damages all of this equipment. I talked to a researcher at Cuba's neuroscience center who was saying that they're losing a bunch of data to corruption because you can't just done shut down like you just lose stuff um mri machines crash because the cooled helium that the cooled liquid helium that is essential to an mri machine you mri machine loses power that helium becomes a gas ryan do you want to tell me where liquid helium comes from do you want to tell me where 30 to 40 percent of the helium comes from cutter makes that from the fields that um we we even bombed one of the fields that makes that helium.

30:16Yeah. So, you know, if you're Cuba, you can't get it just because you're sanctioned and told that you're terrorists. But if you had money a month ago in the United States, you can buy new helium. Now, you might not be able to. If Trump goes through with what he threatens and the entire strait is mined, if Qatar's gas field is destroyed, there is a world where in a year, Europeans are waking up and there's no helium in your MRI. And that's also, it's for AI. It's a perishable good. It's for AI. Yeah, like it is a it's very critical for semiconductor manufacturing right you so you you what I didn't know before I went to Cuba Because I know this is not this kind of stuff.

30:52I know you cool helium to an extraordinarily low temperature and that interacts with the magnets in these semiconductor and MRI technology in ways that allows it to move very frictionless and that lack of friction is essential to the advanced sophisticated technology and economy that we have today. When that stuff warms up to anywhere remotely approaching, think about a helium balloon, right? Like it becomes a gas, it seeps out, it's gone. You can't chase it. You have to produce it and cutter and then ship it around. If those facilities are on fire, you can't. So if you need an MRI, like get it now.

31:37Yeah, you're right. And I would suggest you don't get cancer or anything else that's going to require an MRI in the near to medium term future. And who knows all the other petrochemicals and all of these other things. We're going to find out how physical our economy is. We think our economy is fantasy and imagination and we just press these buttons and things work. We're going to find out that there are actually things underneath here that matter. Yeah, in our last AMA, someone was like, how do I prepare for this? And I was like, honestly, just save your money. I was like, have cash. I was like, that's all I can really say.

32:12Because we'll be okay. We're a rich country. As in, like, we won't starve to death. A lot of other people will probably starve to death or may starve to death if, you know, things become the worst case scenario. For us, we won't. But things will become massively expensive and effectively unlivable. So, yeah, that's the only advice that we can give. By the way, that's an extremely privileged piece of advice because most people, if they could be saving, they would be. So there you go. What a disaster. All right, let's move on. In 2023, former Bachelor star Clayton Eckerd found himself at the center of a paternity scandal.

32:48The family court hearings that followed revealed glaring inconsistencies in her story. This began a years long court battle to prove the truth. You doctored this particular test twice, Miss Owens, correct? I doctored the test once. It took an army of Internet detectives to crack the case. I wanted people to be able to see what their tax dollars were being used for. Sunlight's the greatest disinfectant. They would uncover a disturbing pattern. Two more men who'd been through the same thing. Greg Gillespie and Michael Maricini. My mind was blown. I'm Stephanie Young. This is Love Trap. Laura, Scottsdale Police.

33:25As the season continues, Laura Owens finally faces consequences. Ladies and gentlemen, breaking news at Americopa County as Laura Owens has been indicted on fraud charges. This isn't over until justice is served in Arizona. Listen to Love Trapped podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Why hasn't a woman formally participated in a Formula One race weekend in over a decade? Think about how many skills they have to develop at such a young age. What can we learn from all of the new F1 romance novels suddenly popping up every year? He still smelled of podium champagne and expensive friction.

34:08And how did a 2023 event called Wagageddon change the paddock forever? That day is just seared into my memory. I'm culture writer and F1 expert Lily Herman, and these are just a few of the questions I'm tackling on No Grip, a Formula One culture podcast that dives into the under-explored pockets of the sport. In each episode, a different guest and I will go deeper into the wacky mishaps, scandals and sagas, both on the track and far away from it, that have made F1 a delightful, decadent dumpster fire for more than 75 years. Listen to No Grip on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

34:48Hey, I'm Jay Shetty, host of the On Purpose podcast. My latest episode is with Noah Kahn. the singer-songwriter behind the multi-platinum global hit, Stick Season, and one of the biggest voices in music today. Noah opens up about the pressure that followed his rapid success, his struggles with mental health and body image, and the fear of starting again after such a defining moment in his career. It's easy to look at somebody and be like, your life must be so sick. Man, you have no f***ing clue. Talking about the mental illness stuff, it used to be this thing that I was ashamed of. I'm just now trying to unwind this idea that I have to be unhealthy physically or in pain in some emotional way in my life to create good music.

35:29If someone says that I did a good job, I'm like, yeah, I'm good. Someone says that I suck. I'm like, I suck. Getting to talk about this is not common for me. Right now I need it more than ever. Listen to On Purpose with Jay Shetty on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. All right, turning now to Tucker Carlson. Extraordinary new remarks in his latest episode, effectively calling Donald Trump the Antichrist, blasting him for his Easter message. Let's take a listen. Who do you think you are? You're tweeting out the F word on Easter morning?

36:08You'll be living in hell. Just watch. Praise be to Allah. so obviously you're mocking the religion of iran okay if you seek a religious war that's a good idea but by the way no decent person mocks other people's religions you may have a problem with the theology presumably you do if it's not your religion and you can explain what that is but to mock other people's faith is to mock the idea of faith itself. And we should never mock that because at its core is the acknowledgement that we are not in charge of the universe. We did not build it. We won't be here at the end of it. We can destroy life.

36:53We cannot create it because we are not God. The message of all faith at the biggest picture level is the message in our Bible, which is you are not God. And only if you think you are, do you talk this way. but it's not just mockery of islam and no president should mock islam that's not your job this is not a theocracy we don't go to war with other theocracies to find out which theocracy is more effective we are not a theocracy and god willing we never will be because theocracies corrupt the religion no this is a mockery not just of islam it's a mockery of christianity to send out a tweet with the F word on Easter morning, promising the murder of civilians and then saying, praise be to Allah without explaining any of it.

37:41You are mocking me and every other Christian because we're Christians. We can't support that. That is evil. That is an intentional desecration of beauty and truth, which is the definition of evil. So defending Islam, didn't think I would see it in my lifetime. But the bigger thing that he's talking about there is uh the departure first of all major political implication here this is the biggest shot tucker's taken i you know i i took a shot at trump on tucker's show and i will admit it's not really just about tucker but joe kent as well but there was this you know like oh it's israel's war and kind of the bad boyars like the czar has bad advisors but like that's out the window now right it's very odd this is trump it we look it when we had to be honest about it And now it's just so obvious, I think, to everyone.

38:30But I think with the Easter message and now the departure of the open the strait and now this morning civilization will die, this is, I mean, genuinely probably one of the most insane statements by a president at war ever in modern history. And when you open the door to nuclear weapons like he is in that statement, it actually does – that is the time to start talking about good and evil and humanity. And I'm a secular person as people know. But like this is then the time I think to be talking in explicitly apocalyptic terms. And yeah, religion is going to be a part of that. Ryan. Yeah, no, agree.

39:09I'm secular too and so I really like avoid phrases like good and evil. Right, same. But you're right. Like, there's no other way to describe this sort of thing. And I'm somebody who, even though I'm secular, I don't have the, like, Bill Maher, like, hatred for religion. I did when I was a teenager. Sure. Yeah. That's a normal teen thing. But as you grow older, you see the beauty and the wisdom. And he expresses it, I think, quite well, that, like, that there is beauty in faith. And it is rooted in faith and humanity, ultimately. And it is in a kind of Islamian submission or a sense that there's something greater than us and that we have to all love each other.

40:02And that part is terrific and essential to what it means to be a human. and Tucker, yes, just absolutely obliterating him on every level. Let's roll F2 as well. On Inauguration Day, the president did not take his oath of office with his hand on the Bible. His wife stood next to him holding it. I was about 15 feet away and saw it, but he did not put his hand on the Bible. and that should have been maybe a clue that we need to pause and think about what is this why wouldn't you put your hand on the bible if you don't believe in the bible you think it's just a book there's no cost to you to putting your hand on it just kind of following the protocol going along with the tradition all presidents do it why aren't you doing it and you're not doing it intentionally you're choosing not to put your hand on the bible when you take that oath.

41:00That suggests not that you don't believe it's real, because if you didn't believe it was real, why would you care? You'd put on the costume and take it off. It doesn't matter. That suggests you know it is real and you're rejecting it intentionally. You know what you're doing and you're doing it anyway. That is immoral. That will never be moral. That can never be justified. That is always wrong. It can be expedient. We need to do this. It doesn't mean that's right. It's the most wrong thing. And we should always remember that what we do will be done to us. Live by the destruction of civilian infrastructure, live by the killing of children, the bombing of elementary schools and colleges.

41:49And you will die and your children will die by those same things. That's just a fact. Yeah. And I was thinking about that a lot as he was... I watched this last night and listened to it a little bit again this morning. It is a very interesting observation, actually, because his point is, to me, correct, that if you actually are just a straight-up atheist... Like you or I. Yeah, just put your... Yeah, I don't care. I'll put my hand on the book. It's a book. Yeah. Yeah. Like if that's if that's what you believe. I have two Bibles in my house. Right. I have Gita too. I've got a Koran. Interesting books.

42:27Right. There's something profound in that gap between his hand and the Bible, which I guess people are going to now OSINT and fact check as much as they possibly can. Have you noticed if they're. No, I haven't. All I've seen actually. By the way, breaking news. Here's a response. President Trump is responding. OK. All right. Tucker is a low IQ person that has absolutely no idea what's going on. He calls me all the time. I don't respond to his calls. I don't deal with him. I like dealing with smart people, not fools. Liar. He says he likes to be surrounded by losers. Yes, that's right. The best part, too, is when Tucker does call him, it's usually to try to say, because as he said openly, I try to maintain an open line so that I can try to talk to him about things like, hey, don't do this.

43:12Yeah. Right. And in the latest time that he attempted to, you know, get some sort of the latest time that he tried to make contact with Trump, he was told he told me this explicitly on the air. So I'm not like I'm not breaking any confidences that he was told even by the White House, don't bother coming because we're being he's being shown polls that 95 percent of people support this war. Yeah. Yeah. That's that's the reality of where we are. Look, I do think this is commendable and important from Tucker. And I do think at this point, any of us who were, you know, who were in any way like supportive of Trump or were supportive of the Trump project or boosted for years, many of the people who work now in the Trump administration, like I alluded to earlier, it's over.

43:57This is a time of choosing. If you do not resign by the time of 8 p.m. and that's when the bombs are going to drop, you are in this. We will never forgive you. We never – look, Trump for me was already long ago over. But I do think for everybody else at this point, low level and all the way up, you all talked a big game about the Iraq war. If you stay for one second when we're going to destroy a civilization, call us a panic and I don't care. You people have the power of God in your hands, as Tucker is saying, which alludes to what? To power to destroy great civilizations. Also, I was just looking this morning.

44:33Apparently, one of the only parallel to Trump's civilization, civilization will die, quote, is from—please forgive me. I'm not as read up on Greek history. but it is the Delphic Oracle said to Crocius of Lydia in the histories that if you cross the Halles, you will destroy a great empire. But the irony is that he thought that the great empire was Persia, so he attacked Cyrus the Great, a.k.a. Iran, of that time. But what actually happened is his own kingdom was destroyed. The Oracle was right. So this isn't even talking about Jesus. Well, let's take it back to the Greek gods of what they were trying to tell us about this.

45:13That's the only comparison that we have here. So if you have complicity in that, it is so beyond over. You're done. We will never defend you, protect you. In fact, we should go to the greatest lengths possible, that if you did not do what you could to stop this, when you had real power in your hands, you are now beyond complicit, and we will treat you the way that we should have dealt with George W. Bush, with Dick Cheney, with Paul Wolfowitz, and with every single other person. In fact, my lesson from all of this, Ryan, is we didn't do enough to punish the people who were complicit in the Iraq War.

45:49We should make it clear. Like I'm about to dye my hair pink. We're going for truth and reconciliation, bitch. That's exactly right. And in 2009 when Obama came in, he had this famous quote where he said, we're looking forward, not backward. Yeah. Right. And the left at the time, what little there was of it, absolutely freaked out, making the argument, you cannot allow that to be business as usual. Yes, yes, yes. If you don't have some consequences for somebody, and the next two years, there were many opportunities for consequences. There's an entire movie about the Senate torture report that was circulating.

46:29and the Obama administration's intelligence apparatus doing everything it could to suppress this report and water it down and make sure that there were no prosecutions. You didn't even have to go after Bush and Cheney and Wolfowitz, which I thought at the time you should, and I think you're right today that we should have. You could go after some mid-level or even slightly higher CIA officials that engaged in torture and rendition. Even just that small amount of criminal accountability is a shot at the heart of that impunity and would and could have reshaped how people think about what's allowable.

47:10I think you're right. Do you follow that up by bailing out the bankers and not prosecuting any of them as well? Instead, you went after like Joe Giudice for like some mortgage fraud. That was like the extent of the prosecutions. And it created this sense that the swamp was in control. And so you needed somebody who alone can fix it. And so he comes in and he, instead of fixing it, absorbs the lesson that there are no laws and there are no consequences. I can do whatever I want. See, this is why, you know, a lot of people attacked the hell out of us at the time, Ryan. This is why Russiagate was such a disaster.

47:45It resuscitated all of these Bush era neocons, like Bill Kristol and Liz Cheney and all of these other people who were elevated, exonerated them. And in service of not actually looking at what really happened. In service of what really happened, exactly. It became Russia did it and not, oh, we screwed up generation of policy and all of it. And that, I mean, I know Takt has said it so often at the time, but it is so deeply true. And then now you have those very same people whitewashed, famously now trying to control whether people are allowed to talk to Hassan Piker. it's like bitch head out in the iraq war and you're right yeah what are we doing here you know who do you think you're talking to and so one of the guys that's been tightest with trump and taken so many arrows for him was alex jones yes uh he's now calling for the 25th amendment and so is marjorie taylor green um do you see any is there any movement inside the administration i don't see it i mean obviously not for look at the amendment but like some high profile about J.D.

48:47Vance, wouldn't it be him? As I understand it, he would be the person who has to do it. He's going to care more about his career. Sad to say. I thought I knew somebody different, but the truth is that we didn't, is that absolute power does corrupt absolutely. I've read about it in a book. It is another thing to experience it on a deeply visceral and a personal level. Now is the time for action to literally save the world from the precipice of disaster. This is what people do movies about, and now you find yourself a central character. And it's not just about him. It's about all the other people who surround Donald Trump who are inside of the White House.

49:22Do they have the courage to actually do something about – let's even put the 25th Amendment aside. Offer your resignation. Create a titanic political scandal. Do you have the courage to do something like that? And I think the answer right now is pretty clearly no. So we're in it now. And the irony is if all you care about cynically is your own personal advancement, showing courage in this moment is actually the way to advance your own individual interests. Anybody who stands up to this at this moment will be rewarded by the public and by the global public, but particularly by the American public, as Tucker clearly knows.

50:00And we could have a whole conversation about electoral implications, all of that, but it feels crass in this moment of absolute desperation for the entire world. But if you are cynical in this moment, the play is courage, not, well, maybe Mr. President, go ahead and do it. You're the greatest Mr. President ever. Which the problem, though, is ironically that might be the only way to do it if you were in power. That's the story that they always tell themselves is that, oh, well, we have to gas him up in order to give him – to get him to do what we want. But at this point, things are so dire. Like there's only one language, right?

50:38The Joe – by the way, look, Joe can't – maybe he didn't change anything, but he created a problem, right? He created a problem. Create problems. Resign. Do something, all right? Because look, maybe you can't stop Trump and it probably is unstoppable. That's the truth. The way that the constitution, the nuclear codes and all of that work, look, this fantasy, it's not going to happen, all right? If he wants to do it, he's going to do it. And I mean, look, I hate to say that, let me tell you. But at the very least, for whoever of us survive, you need to be able to put it down in the book, X and Y and Z did something whenever they could.

51:11Tucker's joined, he's done whatever he could. I did what I could, I guess, at a certain point where we're just YouTubers. Like we're looking for people who are in power for God's sake, right? And for them, outside of Kent, we've seen nothing, nothing. All right. Very depressing show. I apologize, but I mean, when you set the tone from the beginning of Civilization Will Die, that's gotta be the least fun bro show we've ever done. I believe so. Yeah. All right. Well, Ryan and Emily will be on tomorrow. Hopefully not for a very historic show. So you'll see them all then. And we'll continue to give you a special coverage as much as we can.

51:50And I guess Ryan and I are gonna go do the AMA. Every question's gonna be about the Civilization Will Die truth. So there you go. All right. We'll see you later. Thanks so much for watching.

52:26The Grits and Eggs podcast, Deontay Kyle and Big Ice Cup Cat. We got Club 520 with Jeff Teague and the gang. Don't call me white, girl. Mona will be there. Keep it positive, sweetie, with Crystal Renee. We got Reality with the King with Carlos King. And yes, Drink Champ will be in the building. Plus, you know, we're going to have a lot of guests. So you need to join us. And we got the Black Effect Marketplace, the picture podcast, and everything you expect from the Black Effect Podcast Festival. Tickets are on sale right now. Go get yours at blackeffect.com slash podcast festival. Don't play yourself, okay?

52:59Pull up.

53:05I'm Lori Siegel, and this is Mostly Human, a tech podcast through a human lens. This week, an interview with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman. I think society is going to decide that creators of AI products bear a tremendous amount of responsibility to the products we put out in the world. An in-depth conversation with the man who's shaping our future. My highest order bit is to not destroy the world of AI. Listen to Mostly Human on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

53:53is not common for me. Right now, I need it more than ever. Listen to On Purpose with Jay Shetty on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed human.