4/8/26: Trump Fell For Bibi Lies Before War, Alex Jones Freaks On Trump, Ben Shapiro Meltdown, Professor Pape On Escalation

26:35Speaking of irrational behavior, Ryan, let's move to the 25th Amendment because there are plenty of people on the right, interestingly enough, who were calling yesterday on the brink of potential total war, potential nuclear war, for Trump to be 25th Amendment, if we convert that into a verb. Now, Julian, your guy at DropSite, Julian's great, worth a follow, Julian Andreon, has been collecting responses from members of Congress, mostly Democrats, perhaps entirely Democrats here in this thread that he X. Democratic members of Congress calling for Donald Trump to be pushed out via the 25th Amendment, saying, for example, he is unfit for office.

27:22That's a common language. Alhan Omar said, quote, this is not OK. Invoke the 25th Amendment. Impeach. Remove. This unhinged lunatic must be removed from office. This is in response to the, quote, open the fucking straight, you crazy Bastards post. Reasonable. Ed Markey said, Donald Trump must be removed from office. Not only is he waging a legal war, he's threatening war crimes. It goes on and on. One person captured here in the thread is former Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, who is former Congresswoman partially because she was starting to break with Trump on foreign policy issues in the summer and in the fall.

28:00Now, Marjorie Taylor Greene knows Trump, it's worth mentioning. And I would venture to say knows Trump well, was on the campaign trail with Trump, was meeting with Trump, and has been fairly close to him for a long time. She said, 25th Amendment, all caps, not a single bomb has dropped on America. We cannot kill an entire civilization. This is evil and madness. This was in response to a post that, this was yesterday, Trump said, a whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again, that we have referenced several times here. Meanwhile, as that was happening, let's move on to D2.

28:38Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, both basketball posting, basketball maxing yesterday, Ryan. Congratulations to Coach Dusty May, Barack Obama posts. This team dominated the tournament from start to finish. Well-deserved go blue. Bill Clinton, once again, the best college hoops teams prove there's nothing like March Madness to get our draws dropping, our hearts racing, and our brackets busting. Surely this was written by Bill Clinton, who could not even remember the last time he sent an email in the Epstein deposition. Speaking of our hearts racing, there's a potential nuclear war. So if you got your bracket busted by two number one seeds in the finals, that's kind of funny.

29:20Let's go on to, yeah, that's kind of funny. Let's go on here to Alex Jones, though. Meanwhile, you have Barack Obama and Bill Clinton basketball posting. Alex Jones calling for the 25th Amendment. This is some video of him saying that. How do we 25th Amendment is asked? The problem is to get the 25th Amendment's harder than impeachment. You have to get two-thirds of the House and two-thirds of the Senate to determine. So what do we do? Tackle Trump and let him pretend he's president and publicly report that he's going through a health issue and Vance take over. It literally needs to be something like that.

29:54It's that bad. I am in the twilight zone right now. I am officially in the twilight zone right now. And I'm sitting there watching Trump wreck MAGA, wreck the Republicans, wreck the world economy, maybe wreck the planet physically. and then I'm just looking over at the Democrats smiling and giggling and everything else when they did nothing in Congress to block this, playing with fire, gambling again. There should be a coalition of Republicans and Democrats and they should vote in on the war powers and say, you don't have it. And they should cut the damn funding of this. My God, what's it going to take?

30:31Trump ending the world? So Alex Jones, I also saw Candace Owens, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Ryan, obviously, Tucker Carlson, I don't know if he said anything about the 25th Amendment. I don't think he did. Actually, I have his reaction that he sent in his email newsletter right in front of me. Basically, he's saying this is what happened after Midnight Hammer. He feels like we're back in the holding pattern, post-Midnight Hammer holding pattern, which is not at all an insane position to have at this moment. But brutal reaction from these Trump—I mean, these are people who have talked to Trump. It's worth mentioning.

31:04People who know him. longtime allies who are blowing up their relationship with him over this. That's done non-trivial things when you're talking about the president of the United States. Hakeem Jeffries was on CNN yesterday, and he said, you know what we need to do? We need to bring up the war powers resolution immediately. He said, Mike Johnson needs to call Congress back into session. We need to bring up the war powers. Are you, this is satire, right? Are you joking? like Jeffries and Greg Meeks that had a top Democrat on foreign affairs refused to bring up the war powers resolution before going into recess with Trump threatening this massive escalation.

31:43They said they didn't have enough votes does not appear to be the case. They hadn't made sure that they even had full attendance to have the vote. And now that we have a ceasefire now Jeffries says he's gonna bring the war powers resolution to the floor. it's it's insane now so good for good for a bunch of these democrats who are saying like this is this this is a madman it needs to be 25th amendment good for alex jones like this is a good coalition um some other democrats though uh have i think taken taken the taken the kind of easy political way forward, which at its heart is psychopathic. Trump threatened to annihilate an entire civilization and then didn't do it.

32:32And some Democrats are responding by saying, ah, you wimp. I have to say. Grow. No, no. What are you trying to do? Before we roll this clip of Senator Chris Murphy, Democrat from Connecticut, it. I was last night as this news was breaking, I had CNN on the TV and trying to figure out what's happening. I had it on mute. So that's not helping. No, no, I wanted to specifically see what CNN, how CNN would react. That's basically all you're going to learn from CNN. And I see this come up on the screen with the chyron and everything. And my thought was, we are about to go back to war in an even worse and more brutal, destructive way.

33:11As soon as I saw this and And because it's like they're trying, it's almost like they were trying to humiliate Trump and humiliate him back into war. That's what it looked like. Oh, my gosh. We're about to die. Trump, who clearly must watch this show. Think about this, Donald. If Democrats desperately want you to get back into this war, okay, they are, that's immoral. It's gross. It's despicable. But think about why they want you to get into the war because it's so damaging for you. So don't do the thing that Democrats want you to do. Come on, man. All right, let's roll D4, Senator Chris Murphy.

33:48Donald Trump has agreed to give Iran control of the Strait of Hormuz. That is extraordinary. If you go deeper into the statement from the Iranian National Security Council, they claim that Trump has also agreed to Iran's right to enrichment to suspend all sanctions against Iran and to allow Iran to keep their missile program, their drone program and their nuclear program. Now, who knows if any of that is true, but if at the very least this agreement gives Iran the right to control the strait, that is cataclysmic for the world. And it is just stunning that that's where we have gotten to. Okay, so then, okay, it's cataclysmic for the world.

34:33What is Chris Murphy saying there? That we should keep doing more war? Hmm. Like, is he thinking, like, clearly, like, they think that there's some political advantage in making Trump look like the obvious idiot he is for getting into a war he shouldn't have gotten into. And there is. And now we're worse off. Yeah, but everybody gets that. Right. There's obviously a political advantage. But to make it in that particular way, it's like putting, it seems to me, and I think you're right about this, putting partisanship ahead of the substance of actually keeping the peace. It's true. Trump got us into a war.

35:08now we're worse off. But when you talk like that, it sounds like you should keep like your argument is like, well, let's keep going. Unless unless you start started with I'm glad that he ended this and he bet he best not started again. Yeah. Well, and I'm just Griffin just sent this. Producer Griffin just sent this post. This was just to underscore how ridiculous it is to see a Democrat talking like this from Megyn Kelly. Obviously, my boss who said yesterday on her show, I am sick of this shit. Can't he just behave like a normal human? To Trump? Yep, in reference to Trump. And we can add it in post?

35:42But this is, again, why, and we've been talking. Or it was a Twitter post. This was on, this was a video, but it was on yesterday's show. But we've been talking on Monday about how you have to, when the President of the United States is talking about wiping out entire civilizations and total destruction, it doesn't matter if it's a taco negotiation. You have to take it seriously. It very obviously seemed like a taco negotiation, but you don't have the luxury of saying, oh, this is just a taco. I'll take Trump seriously when I decide to take Trump seriously. I'll take Trump seriously and I'll just take the L if I'm wrong, that he's not serious.

36:15You can't do that with nuclear powers. You can't. We don't have the luxury. I'm sorry. We don't have the luxury of doing that. And then to have Democrats continuing to act as though this is normal partisan politics. Obviously, Republicans are doing it, too, and even worse because they're supporting Trump. So it's not good all around. But then to have even the political opposition taking partisan dubs when you have total destruction of a civilization on the table, as unlikely as that may have seemed, it doesn't matter what the odds are. Any talk of that takes away the luxury of just saying it's possibly a taco.

36:52And here you have the Dem victory lap like, oh, Trump is so weak. Right. It's as bad as the CNBC clip that's been going viral. Sirota posted it. It's like Trump has threatened to end civilization. What should investors do? What does this mean for the Dow? So Tim Miller over at the Bulwark, who's been on fire, I'll probably get him in trouble by even saying that. So he had Democrat Josh Gottheimer on. Gottheimer wouldn't even say he's against the war. He's sort of processing that it's going through the ceasefire. Let's roll some of Miller's interview with Gottheimer. Back to the other thing we were talking about?

37:29No, obviously not. And I said that. Yeah, obviously not. So why would we trust him to do something if we know he isn't going to handle it well? This is a very high stakes situation. I don't think anybody, you know, the Strait of Hormuz has now been closed. We've got the best general, because it's not just Donald Trump that runs this. We've got the best generals in the world and the best military in the world, the best intelligence in the world, the best intelligence community. I mean, but our generals are not the ones that are bleeding out. A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again.

37:55That's the president. That's their boss. Yes, but OK, but fine. So why would you? So, yeah, it's absurd. Why would you let a guy that would tweet that be in charge of a war where American lives are at risk? Because who's going to be? We have a commander in chief. That's his job. What do you want? Yeah, to oppose him, I think, to oppose to say that as a Democratic representative, you do not think that an unhinged commander in chief should be getting us into a war where he's promising genocide. in iran there's a reason why i opposed it why i supported the war powers resolution a couple weeks ago because i opposed him and made it very clear but like that doesn't mean that i'm not going to support our service men and women it doesn't mean i'm not going to back the great work of our military and intelligence community it doesn't mean that i'm not going to say the government of iran needs to be crushed okay yeah that's what i think so i mean you know so you're kind of forward in the abstract like you you wish it would work well but you don't know what the objectives are and you don't want to do anything to constrain it.

38:50I have a huge problem with how this thing is being executed from how it's being executed. The goal of crushing Iran, I think, is the right thing. I think not giving us hearings is a problem. I think not giving us more information, the country and the Congress, is a huge problem. I think firing the Army Chief of Staff, huge problem. right so you asked you asked me if you asked me like do i think the goal of massively diminishing iran is a good thing totally do i think the way this is being executed is going well no so that's so do you think we're stronger do you think we're in a better place now than we were six weeks ago economically geopolitically from a safety standpoint do you think we're in a better or worse place than we were six weeks i think if we've diminished their military i think we're stronger if we've diminished them really what's nice about godhammer i think it's like i think he's speaking openly in ways that yes a lot of democrats feel privately and that that is i don't think that's going to be the case maybe a couple cycles from now i think there's a real reckoning coming inside the democratic party um whether they like it or not whether they cancel hassan piker or not um but yeah that'll do it but yeah this that that from godheimer i don't like the president, but I like that he's going to war with Iran is gross.

40:13And he's in the deep minority of being willing to say that publicly. But yeah, my understanding is that that's a pretty pervasive view kind of privately. And on the other hand, I should add that it's also, since we're talking about the bulwark, wildly amusing to see neoconservatives coping by being so anti-Trump that the war they've wanted forever is still not good enough in one way or the other. I mean, just banana stuff all around. Although Tim was never a neoconist. No, not Tim, no, but speaking of the bulwark. Other bulwark ones. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah, there's interesting times. Speaking of people crashing out, should we talk about Ben Shapiro?

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42:32Well, Ryan and his colleagues over at Dropsite News have found themselves in the crosshairs of people who are in support of, or were in support of, the Iran war, including Ben Shapiro, who, you know, I think, Ryan, I'm catching a stray in this clip as well. Are you? Because he talks about how you're part of the horseshoe, which would involve your right-wing allies. There you go. Are you the woke right? But let's not open up that can of worms. First, let's just roll the clip. People can make up their own minds. Ryan Grimm, who's become a favorite on the horseshoe right and the grievance party right, suddenly quoted by all of these people who have decided that isolationism is the way.

43:12He put out an actual tweet saying this. So Sean McGuire, who's an investor, put out a tweet saying, how did we get to the point where so many Americans are rooting against America? and Ryan Grimm over at DropSite News, which is a left-wing misinformation propaganda site, put out the statement, quote, if this is an honest question, I'd say Americans are rooting against America because we facilitated a genocide. Presumably this would be Israel's action against Hamas, which was not in fact even remotely close to a genocide and followed it with a surprise attack on a girls' elementary school, followed by attacks on universities, medical centers, more schools, a world-famous pharmaceutical research center, a volleyball team, an unfinished bridge we claimed was transporting weapons, and then a nuclear power plant.

43:54We are now promising endless attacks on civilian infrastructure. Okay, so again, every single thing he is saying there is a lie. And the reason I say it's a lie is because we have hit those sites because they are dual-use sites, except for the ones that we hit by accident. If you truly believe that the American military is so evil that we target girls' schools for the fun of it, that there's no military usefulness, no mistakes made, that we just decided to get up one morning and murder a bunch of school girls, get the hell out of the country. Seriously, you hate the country and you hate the military.

44:23There's no other way to explain what you are saying. There's no other way to explain it. You think Pete Hegseth and President Trump are sitting around drawing up a target list and they say, you know what, just for good measure, let's kill a bunch of Iranian schoolgirls. Is that what you think? If you think that, you despise America. Again, you can oppose the war. You can oppose the way that the war is being fought. You can have problems with the general overall strategy. You can have honest questions about the war. That's not what we're talking about here. We're talking about people openly hoping that America loses because they do not like America, because they think a more powerful America in the world is a bad thing.

44:59And Iran is counting on these people to undermine support. Again, this is nothing new. This happened throughout American history. If you go back to the Vietnam War, the Viet Cong were counting on moron university students to claim that the real bad guys versus, you know, the communists who are murdering hundreds of thousands of people that the real bad guys were actually the United States. And that's why you had them literally chanting in solidarity with Ho Chi Minh. Same sorts of people now, and they span a large swath of the left and a large part of the right now, or at least a significant part of the online right.

45:31I shouldn't say a large part of the right because, again, it's not true. But Ryan Grimm and Tucker Carlson are holding hands, walking off into their common isolationist anti-American future together. That's sweet. It's very sweet, isn't it? It does often occur to me that one of the biggest problems I have with you is you're not sufficiently supportive of the Vietnam War. Well, I mean, you cocked on Vietnam. You know, what's funny is that just yesterday, Secretary of State Marco Rubio posted a tweet that was laudatory of the Vietnamese communist government. So like, hey, if Rubio can recognize the virtues of Ho Chi Minh, and why can't university students in the 60s, 70s.

46:14Also, the Vietnamese were fighting off an occupying power in their own country. Well, this... They liberated their country from two occupying powers, French and the United States. Obviously, like, on what planet is that appropriate for us to even be in there? There was, yeah, anyway. We need not... We don't need to get an Uncle Hope. I was going to say, when I saw this clip, I flashed back to this discussion that we had right before Christmas where we interviewed each other. One of the questions I asked you, I was like, Grant, you love the 4th of July. Do you love America? And you responded, I can't imagine loving a country.

46:52That's right. How do you love a country? So Ben should go watch that clip if he wants the full download on Grimism. Ben, even though he read it, seems to have a reading comprehension problem. I didn't say we targeted a girls' school. I hope we didn't. I said we attacked a girls' school. We did. With multiple strikes, there was purple chalk on the sidewalk outside of it. Like, okay, if Ben is sure that it was an accident, I believe that. It also is completely, it completely shows a reckless disregard for human life to not have a person look at a satellite image of a place before you bomb it. There are thousands of people in the Department of Defense.

47:43We hit 1 ,000 plus targets on that first day. It had been updated on Google Maps, hadn't it? On Google Earth. Yeah. If you scrolled in, it was called an elementary school. Yep. So we have such a reckless disregard for human life that we didn't even check. So that's the point. We attacked the school. And he didn't address all the other things. The point is, a country who does that is going to be hated by a lot of people. We did all of those things. I was like, should we even talk about this? But then this IDF guy came at us too. And so I do think it's becoming an actual kind of political news event that is bubbling up in our discourse.

48:27Yeah, let's put the next element up on the screen, because it actually is, I think DropSite, it's something that you all have to think about. This is Aitan Fischberger, former IDF, pretty big, if you're not on X, you probably never heard of him, but pretty big viral X account that shares constant pro-Israel propaganda. It's long past time, he wrote yesterday, for congressional and DOJ investigations into the foreign ties of DropSite news. Here's what we know. It has at least two reporters, quote, reporters on the ground in Iran who feed the site regime approved disinformation and propaganda. Ryan, why don't we just respond point by point to this?

49:04That's what Fishberger says is enough to get you investigated because you're being fed propaganda from, quote, reporters on the ground in Iran. We have at least one reporter. You got that in Gaza sometimes as well. Yeah. Yeah. We have at least one reporter in Iran who is registered with with the government, as you have to do if you're doing official if you're doing a journal journalism of above board. We have other journalists who are not registered, who publish anonymously. And they're not doing regime. They're not. None of them are doing regime propaganda. When CNN goes into Iran, they have to register with the government.

49:39Like that's that's that's what you do. So now, you know, they don't have the First Amendment and the press freedoms that we do. That's for sure. But the idea that, like, because you have a reporter or reporters on the ground in Iran, you are foreign funded. That's absurd. Yeah. Yeah. Well, they also they mentioned the point about Gaza. What else? What else? What are his other? 250K from Soros's Open Society. 2024. We got that grant. Yeah. It's true. And you've talked about it on the show again. By the way, we talked about this a couple of weeks ago. You were like, no strings attached. That's the condition.

50:17Yeah, and I remember at the time being like, if we take this, people are going to like make it a thing. make it a lot of us for it. It's like, but there's no strings attached and we can then fund an enormous amount of reporting in Gaza, which is what it was for. Okay, let's do it. Yeah. Also, you're published by billionaire communist Nepo baby, Nika Soon-Sheng. Her title is publisher. Yeah. Yeah. She doesn't give us money. Her dad doesn't give us money. And they are billionaires, right? He's a billionaire. Yeah. He owns the LA Times and he owns like several, he created several cancer drugs that have become blockbusters.

51:00And so he's a multi-billionaire for having done that. But he doesn't give money to us. And we've never asked him and we're not going to. Dropsite frequently flies. to the Middle East to interview the leaders of U.S.-designated terrorist organizations. I can't even read that sentence. It's so ridiculous. Do we interview people that the U.S. has designated as terrorists? Yeah, we do that. As journalists 1 ,000 million percent should. Yeah. They're complaining about Sharif filed a sympathetic dispatch from the funeral of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah after he was killed by Israel. You can go read the piece.

51:35Go see how sympathetic it was. DropSite is fiscally sponsored by the Social Security Works Education Fund while it pursues its own 501c3 status, an arrangement that reduces transparency and allows the outlet to obscure who its funders are. Fiscal sponsorship is a normal thing for a new nonprofit. All nonprofits are not required, even whether they're fiscally sponsored or not, to disclose like all of the names of all of their donors. That's just not a that's just not a thing. This is that was the last point. Well, he added a bonus that you've tweeted the U.S. is a rogue terror state and a cancer.

52:09I mean, I mean, come on. We're objectively telling the truth in that one.

52:22There's I mean, you and I could talk. Trump just annihilated an entire civilization. He sure did. He sure did. We don't. He's not making my side of that argument any easier by the day. But yeah, as I tell everybody who comes at us about our funding, like, you don't have to subpoena us. I'll look it up. I'll look it up right now. So we have. You have a 990. We have two.

52:52990 should be public. We have two primary streams of revenue. One is subscriptions and the other is just small donations. And then the third is bigger donors who give more than like 2 ,000 bucks or so. That makes up maybe like 10%. The big donors make up about 10%. And we're grateful for them. But it's the small donors that make up the bulk of it. Interestingly, there's not a lot of overlap. We have about 25 ,000 people who've made small contributions. And we have, looking at it now, 18 ,594 paid subscribers. That's incredible. I mean, you're not even two years old. Yeah, and a subscription is$100.

53:34So you can do the math pretty easily on that. But there's not actually a whole lot of overlap between the subscribers and the donors. So that means we actually have about 40 ,000 to 45 ,000 people who have given money at some point or another. Total subscribers, paid and unpaid, right now we're at 792 ,236. and so the bulk of our revenue is from people who read the site and then give money to it ironically um in the first like hour um oh i just asked our i asked just asked our fundraising guy so since etan um put this tweet up we got 178 donations damn of it's been like what not even a day. Yeah, less than a day.

54:23On an average of$37 each, none more than$250, totaling$6 ,700. So Eitan, he's like, who funds these guys? You do, you moron. Like, his penchant for lying has produced in the public a real demand for people who don't lie. And so the more lies he tells and the more wars he encourages Israel to fight and encourages the U.S. to support, then the more people are going to want to support us. And I've told him and others, if you want to gut us, you want to take the legs out from under us, stop with the wars. Like we would, I think our, I think people would be spending less money on our reporting if there were fewer wars for us to report on.

55:14definitely I would happily take that trade off definitely try peace for a while and then we'll go cover other things corporate abuses whatever and there's frankly there's probably less interest in that yeah that's true but that's fine I would I would love nothing more than to make less money and have fewer wars to cover and by the way the reason you mentioned this in your response to him you're like you don't have to snitch tag ways and means right he's trying to get ways and means committee to like subpoena us. I will say, I don't think that's ridiculous from his perspective, because they are opening investigations.

55:47And sometimes I think there are some, because of the way Farrow works and the like that are, um, I think somewhat legitimate. Now they're going to be done on a totally partisan basis. And you can bet your ass that, uh, any Israeli, um, potential like nonprofit schemes aren't going to be folded into these investigations. They're mostly looking at places, China and the like, that may have had, like, nonprofits, like Code Pink, for example, or ones that have direct Antifa ties and are getting funding from different places like China. And there's some interesting stuff, actually, on the table. I don't think DropSite will be on the table because there's so many people on the right that are following your reporting closely and see the value in it.

56:32And also, they could just look and be like, oh, this is where the money comes from. Yeah, exactly. It's like straight up clean American money. 100%. But this is a strategy that is being intentionally deployed by Republicans right now who are under immense pressure from their base to get scalps and stop just chit chatting about, oh, we're going to go after this person and this person. They're trying to actually go deep and do these investigations. They are into groups like Code Pink. So it's not, and that's why I thought it was important to talk about it because it's not nothing. And I think some of it is earnest on their part.

57:05Like, I think this guy, in his addled mind, is incapable of conceiving of a news organization that is supported by its readers and people who want it to exist, rather than a foreign government that is doing it for propaganda purposes. He genuinely can't understand that that's possible. Because that's not how he or they operate. Right. Their approach is we're going to get together some very rich people and we're going to buy me. We're going to produce this media property and we're going to run it. And if it makes some money, great. If not, like the purpose is ideological. Like that, the idea that you would just do honest reporting and that people would support it, I think is a foreign concept.

57:55But it's actually a domestic concept. It's an American concept. Hmm. Well, we'll see what happens, but you should be you should feel pretty good, Ryan. You know, DropSite's fine. Right. Go subscribe to DropSite. Also, does that by that definition, is the studio a dual use property, by the way? Because here is this is a civilian studio. It's it's where all kinds of civilian work gets done. But also it's where the Iranian regime does its propaganda via you. Yes, according to Ben Shapiro, those things I listed, universities, medical centers, are dual use. I'm afraid right now we're in a dual use location.

58:34It is true that schools do produce people who go on, some of them, to become soldiers. Others become scientists. Others work in the nuclear field. So it is true. And in fact, something like 60 % of engineers in Iran are women. So the girls, the 165 plus girls in that elementary school, you know, a lot of them would have grown up to be engineers. So according to that, I guess their logic, it's all dual use and it's all clean. Yeah, sick. Let's move on to Professor Pape. Great day to have him on the show to react to all the events of the last 12 hours. So we'll bring him in now. Are you trying to get weight loss support through telehealth, but it feels overwhelming and rushed?

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1:01:21University of Chicago Professor Robert Pape has been warning that the United States, Israel and Iran are trapped in an escalation trap. That's also the name of his sub stack. He'll be having a live briefing over at his sub stack at 7 p.m. tomorrow. Now, with a tenuous ceasefire taking hold, Professor Pape joins us to walk through, you know, how trapped they still are and what the way out of this is. Professor Pape, thank you so much for joining us here again. Thank you very much for having me. And I really think we need to understand that, yes, this is all fragile, but big things are here in front of us.

1:02:03There's really three issues to discuss. Number one, the trap, why the trap is not over, and in fact, maybe even tightening. Number two, the change in the world balance of power right in front of us as evidenced by the nature of the ceasefire agreement itself. And then number three, the statement by Donald Trump, the president of the United States, to end the civilization in Iran. Those that will endure. That's not going to be forgotten. So the trap, maybe I could just. Yeah, let's start. Let's start with the trap. Yeah, let's start with the trap. So are they out of the trap or is the trap not over yet?

1:02:44No, the trap is not over. In fact, we may be coming to an extremely dangerous phase of the trap. And the reason is this. Number one, U.S. military forces are poised on a razor's edge in the region to strike. So the trap will start to unwind when President Trump literally removes all the carrier battle groups, removes all the fighters, removes the Marines, just literally pulls it back geographically. graphically. Number two, Pete Hegseth, Secretary Hegseth, just before we came on, vocally and publicly said, we're going to get that enriched uranium. We're going to get it. Well, we know that that has been a big part of this whole issue.

1:03:38Iran has enough enriched uranium for between 10 and 16 nuclear weapons. They are now maximally incentivized to have those nuclear weapons. They know if they just did go into those caves where the drones are and the missiles are, we can't get, we can't stop them from building that nuclear, those nuclear weapons. And so you can expect over the next six months or the next year, nuclear tests, not just simply now weapons in secret. But this is going to be incredibly dangerous for this trap because, of course, Iran is going to show, I think, very little sign they're going to just give up the nuclear weapons now that Donald Trump has threatened to kill.

1:04:2892 million Iranians and probably all 92 million will help build those nuclear weapons, all of them, including the pro-democracy movement. And you've obviously studied this for a long time. How viable is it that Iran would be able to reconstitute its missile supply, launchers, and even potentially nuclear weapons? We had Midnight Hammer last June and found ourselves back in the same place February 28th. So what does the immediate future look like of Iran's ability to rebuild its military? Yes, they are building not just dozens, but something like 50 to 100 missiles every single month. That is what happened after Midnight Hammer.

1:05:14They went back to rebuilding, reconstituting, or you could say reloading their guns. And that has been happening on a steady basis and also producing the drones on a steady basis. In fact, they were still shipping drones to Russia for Ukraine last fall. So they're producing them, they're shipping them, they're developing them. And so this is, we will have weakened this some, but without the bombs continuing to fall, even that weakness will disappear. And Iran is making$75 to$100 billion a year in RMB, in Chinese banks, that they will be able to use for all of these purposes. So they will have the money, they will have the space, they will have the materials.

1:06:06And this is why all this destruction of these launchers, this was just not meaningful. It was always at most a temporary stopgap. And we will see within a year, this will be fast and furious. because now, keep in mind, before the bombing started on Feb 28, you had something like 16 or 20 percent of the population supporting the regime. Now, I'm not saying they like the regime's ideology, but you now have 92 million people. Where is their best security coming from? Not from Donald Trump. He just threatened to murder each and every one of them. So what are they going to do. They're going to, the vast majority of them are going to help in these programs because they don't want to die.

1:06:54So this is really quite an extraordinary set of events that have been triggered. And the effects of this are going forward and we will see it. Secretary Hegseth, he sees right away that there has been no disincentive here. And he's saying, we're going to take the material. Well, Iran, I think, is not just going to hand it over. This is how are they going to stop the next nuclear threat by Donald Trump? There's only one way now, which is nuclear weapons with a nuclear test and probably several nuclear tests to just rub it into America's face. You nuke us, we're coming back. And so you mentioned that Trump saying that, you know, tonight a great civilization is going to die, that that is going to leave a permanent or at least a very long-term mark on our geopolitics.

1:07:46Can you explain how you mean that? Yeah, so we need to understand that no president in the history of the United States has made a statement threatening to erase, destroy, kill an entire civilization. Point number one, that is the evidence of genocidal intent that's required in the Geneva Accords to convict for genocide. We need to understand that the genocide accords that we have, they're about the intent to commit genocide. Usually that's the hardest thing to find. It's not the killing of people. It's the intent. Well, President Trump, I don't think there could be a clearer evidence of genocidal intent than you just saw.

1:08:31Number two, President Trump is one of only a handful of people on the planet with enough nuclear weapons that he would be able to actually execute that threat. So we have 500 Minutemen missiles, and they have warheads with 300 ,000 kilotons on them. Hiroshima and Nagasaki was only 12 to 22 kilotons. So these are much, much more powerful than Hiroshima and Nagasaki. and we have 500 of them and within 45 minutes their gyroscopes can be reoriented to iran 20 minutes after that all that uh those all of those 500 can land on iran so i'm sorry to be so blunt but we need to really understand that what donald trump has done here is it's uh it's immoral it is very likely i'm not a lawyer very likely uh contradict the geneva accords but it's also dangerous because now every American is marked here.

1:09:35And this will be wherever we travel in the world. About to maybe get on a plane to go to London here. This is not trivial. And so what you're seeing is now 92 million Iranians, not just these tiny number of, you know, supreme leaders, they're pretty maximally incentivized to show that there's some payback that can come. So this is really an enormously consequential move by President Trump. And it will do no good that he will somehow maybe take it back or his supporters will say, it's just Trump being Trump. No, I'm sorry. Not everybody who's a drunk at a bar has their finger on thousands of nuclear weapons that can be delivered within a matter of an hour or less, as I'm explaining in detail.

1:10:26This is way too consequential, and this will have tremendous ripple effects across the world. Our allies, the idea our allies in Europe will let us even run NATO. NATO, we need to understand, it is a military organization where when the American general runs the operation of a NATO military operation, it's the American general who controls the nuclear weapons of Britain. Do you think Britain is going to go for that at this point? I mean, yeah, you can see right away. Okay. So the consequences here are way beyond what's in it. And then in the Strait of Hormuz, the consequences are there's a new hierarchy of power.

1:11:12Donald Trump just kowtowed to Iran, essentially. There's a new hierarchy and everybody in the Middle East will see that. MBS will know there's no Donald Trump cavalry coming to save him. So that's Saudi Arabia. So you're seeing These gigantic consequences of what's happened are consequences for all Americans. They're consequences for the world balance of power. Iran is becoming the fourth center of world power. And I want to steel man this analysis a bit by bringing in the perspective of people who think this is a massive loss for Iran. This is Noah Rothman writing in National Review this morning saying,

1:12:17keep going here. The Gulf states are now ensconced in Washington's orbit. America's adversaries in Beijing and Moscow did not much alter the balance in Iran's favor. Tehran's defense industrial base is a smoldering wreck. And it goes on to say its stores of long and short range missiles, drones and the launchers to use them are dramatically depleted. What's your response to that, Professor? My response is this is just not on planet Earth. So this is not even just victory rhetoric and so forth. But we need to understand that what has just happened is Donald Trump has just agreed that, yes, ships can pass through the Strait of Hormuz, but only if the Iranian military gives that permission.

1:13:01And that is enormously consequential here. And if it was the case that all of this was going in the other direction, you would not need any ceasefire from Iran. You would not need any deal from Pakistan. The United States would just simply be the power in the region. what's happening is the complete opposite of that. And people can just say whatever they want, of course, but nobody's going to pay that any meaningful attention, meaning they won't actually act on that assumption. They're going to act on the realities that have just been demonstrated by war. War is often clarifying for the realities of power.

1:13:44Before war, we have a lot of talk. We have a lot of bolster. We have basically talk and smack. But once you get into war, the realities start to actually take shape. And what you're seeing here is that the reality is that before the war, President Trump and the United States was guaranteeing safe passage through the Straits of Hormuz, effectively. It had military bases in the region to protect the Gulf states from being attacked and smashed. During the war itself, none of that was protecting the Gulf states. None of it was moving their oil. And the only thing that is actually now protecting the Gulf states is Iran deciding not to attack.

1:14:25So if you want your country protected, who are you going to go to? The United States or are you going to go to Iran? Right now, it's pretty clear you've got to go to Iran. And yes, maybe you've got to hope Iran will not attack you. Because if Iran decides to attack you, there's nothing the United States is going to do to protect you. This is power politics of the first order. The balance of power in the world and in the region is changing. In the region, it is now Iran at the top of the hierarchy, not the United States. In the world, Iran is becoming the fourth center of world power. It's not yet as powerful as the United States.

1:15:08I'm not trying to say, and it's emerging as the fourth center as well. Once they actually acquire the nuclear weapons and do the test, which I'm saying is likely in six months or a year, how would you stop it at this point without ground conquering all of Iran? It will become unmistakably the fourth power center in the world. So I'm not quite saying they're there yet, but they are emerging in all of the ways that we will credit this here going forward. This debate on what's happening will become clarified because the war is clarifying power. And to be clear, your point is that the only way to stop them from within six months to a year acquiring the nuclear weapons, reconstituting, is boots on the ground.

1:15:54Yes, but it's not just a few boots on the ground. This isn't going to stop with 10 or 20 ,000 Americans. And even if we devoted all 1.2 million troops here, this would not be enough. So this is why this was a dilemma. This is why it was an escalation trap. We don't have these hidden secret options if only we would use them. And then you saw what was the hidden secret option? nuclear destruction of every living person in Iran. That's where Donald Trump had to go because he doesn't have all these other weapons that has all these other success strategies here. And you see what that has brought. So what you are facing, we're facing here is a true escalation trap.

1:16:43And the off ramp to stage three, which is the ground war is Iran's world power. That's what I've been explaining on my on my substack is there is a branch here and either it's Iran as a new emerging world power or it's the ground war. And you can see these are the real tensions. Literally, the ceasefire has clarified what I've been saying on my substack just literally in the last week in the briefings, et cetera. And so how does Israel strategic calculus factor in here. As they went into the war, the strait was open, Iran was isolated and sanctioned. If you listen to Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu privately, he was saying they're many years away from a nuclear weapon.

1:17:33Now, they're not isolated. As you said, they're a regional and growing power. sanctions are currently off basically and are likely to come off as a result of these negotiations permanently and you know i think it's it's debatable whether or not they can secretly race for a bomb like but let's let's let's i think stipulate that they're more likely they're they're in a better position and people inside iran are now and this is a thing people don't understand um before the war the people in power in the iranian government were opposed to seeking a nuclear weapon for both ideological and political reasons.

1:18:15Those people were killed and people who support seeking a nuclear weapon are empowered. Not that they are in power completely, but they have been empowered. Their faction has been empowered. So how did Israel respond to this? Because the U.S. is its own power center, but Israel has its own interests that sometimes are aligned with the United States and sometimes are distinct. So how do you see them moving forward in this new arrangement? So we need to understand that before the war, 40 days ago, there was a balance of power in the region. And if anything, Israel was the emerging hegemon with the hierarchy, with the Abraham Accords, counterbalancing against Iran.

1:19:02Iran, as you said, the supreme leader, but the one we killed didn't really want the nuclear weapons. He had fought, was against it. But now you're seeing this shift where even Israel, so Israel was the only country in the region with nuclear weapons. Well, now what you're going to get is you're getting this shift. And as I'm saying, you've maximally incentivized not just the regime, but all 92 million Iranians for nuclear weapons here. And so it's extremely likely, maybe over 90 % likely, maybe not 100, that they will have that nuclear capability. And what that's going to do is it's going to put Israel down on the hierarchy.

1:19:42Now, Israel remains 7 million Jews. It is surrounded by 500 million Muslims. As that hierarchy shifts, this is going to be a dramatic shift against Israel in the region. And so you're going to you are going to end up with Israel, you know, has often said, well, they all hate us anyway. Yes, but only a few hundred thousand at most were ever mobilized to attack Israel. You could now have a much larger pool mobilized. And it's because, again, go back to President Trump's nuclear threat. These these these threats are clearly explaining that for the West and possibly Israel, they're glad to kill them all.

1:20:27This is not going to work to Israel's security. It's going to go in the opposite direction. And their nuclear weapons here will not provide that much security because what it's going to do is even if they use the nuclear weapon, it will only further incentivize not just Iran, but every state in the region to want a nuclear weapon here. We're moving to a world that is going to be dramatically worse for Israel's security. This is one of the things I've been trying to explain to the Israelis. This strategy is not just about, well, we just have to do this for our security. No, it's their own. This is self-defeating for their security.

1:21:11And I think this will also start to become manifest within just a year or two. I don't think you'll have to wait five or ten years. This will come pretty quickly because of the change in the balance of power. And there are only 7 million Jews. Unless there are going to be a rush of another 10 million Jews to go live in Israel now, imagine that. You're probably going to lose seven of the Jews in Israel. You're going to lose more than you're going to gain in the next year. And it's precisely because of the growing insecurity of Israel. And can you respond to the claim that the response from Moscow and Beijing proves that Iran, Tehran, is increasingly isolated and didn't have its allies rallying around it?

1:21:58I mean, Donald Trump posted this morning that anybody who supplies weapons to Iran is going to be sanctioned. So potentially, I suppose that could include China. Can he sanction China to the extent where Iran can't rebuild? What do you make of the international response from potential allies? Well, first of all, Iran is building its own weapon. So Iran was an exporter of drones to Russia, not the other way around. So we need to really understand here, Iran is not Grenada. Iran is not a small state. It's not even Venezuela. I mean, Iran is already a major country here. This is already, it was over 1 % of world GDP.

1:22:40It may be growing that Russia is only 2 % of world GDP. We need to put this in some perspective here. So Iran doesn't really need the weapons. It will make the weapons themselves. What it will benefit from is probably the trade and the oil and all the money there. And also, there may be growing technology transfers here, say, between China, which has a lot of AI, and Iran. And this will be one of the things that I would imagine could easily happen in the future. So as I explained in the New York Times piece, with Iran as the fourth center of world power, you have the United States. But Russia and China and Iran are not at each other's odds.

1:23:25They're against the United States. You don't need a formal NATO among Russia, China and Iran. They've just structurally incentivized to cooperate in a myriad number of ways, all of which lowering America's power in the world. And this Trump is just trying to, you know, do a magician's trick. Sleight of hand, nothing to see here. We're all good. Well, no, the realities here are coming for all to see. And this will just simply be powerful over time. And it will also work to President Trump's domestic political detriment here and probably in the very near future. I mean, this is you're now asking all those Congress people who are running for office to hook their wagon in the midterms to somebody who's threatened the genocidal destruction of an entire civilization led to the rise of Iran as a fourth center of world power.

1:24:26So, yes, there may be, you know, 20 percent here that will or 25 that will stick and ride and die with with Trump. But the bottom line is there's not going to be very much. Every politician will know this is a really, really bad horse to be hooked to. And I think you're going to see the GOP itself is going to have some real question. It's not the Democrats. The Democrats are going to want to keep Trump around for political reasons. maybe not for security reasons. So that's where I would draw the line. But politically, Trump is like the perfect thing to keep around for the Democrats. It's the GOP who's going to have the biggest problems here.

1:25:06I want to get your reaction to this new quote from Donald Trump, which I think you're going to appreciate. It's Jonathan Carl. He says, I asked President Trump if he's OK with the Iranians charging a toll for all ships that go through the Strait of Hormuz. he told me there may be a joint U.S.-Iran venture to charge tolls. Quote, we're thinking of doing it as a joint venture. It's a way of securing it, also securing it from lots of other people. It's a beautiful thing. What do you make of that? Well, again, another statement not on planet Earth. And by the way, there is some jointness to the tolls.

1:25:41It's just emerged. Iran has agreed to share some of it with Oman. Why would they do that? Iran is becoming the dominant power in the region. They can dole out some goodies here to get everybody in line with the new hierarchy. I don't see everybody cottoning up to Donald Trump to do it that way. So again, this is just more evidence that it's just not on planet Earth. So you will get statements, and they can say what they want, but the countries are going to go for their security. The idea that they are going to give up their security and their wealth to somehow give Donald Trump a photo op, I think this is not happening.

1:26:26I think this is just way too consequential what has occurred and will occur. It's not over and will occur. Also, I was just curious. So if people haven't read it yet. They got to go, go read your piece that you had in the New York times. It was about Iran emerging as a new power. That was a point that you made here last week on the show. I was curious when did the times reach out to you and say, Hey, saw you on breaking points or LA have been the best in terms of allowing me to come on and also space to really explain. And you know, we're doing it regularly, you got it first. I actually started that piece several weeks ago.

1:27:06People kept asking me, what was the longer term future? And I wouldn't really, I didn't want to tell them yet because we're still going through the middle parts of the stage one, stage two, stage three. But then when I came on with you, I had the piece ready to go. And before I sent it to the New York Times, I decided I'm going to do, no, so I didn't announce all that on your show and say, oh, you know, it's still just Professor Pape, right? So I just simply wanted to give you the first exclusive scoop, okay? And I didn't, and it was really quite a pleasure. It was like an inside pleasure for me because I really appreciate the relationship here and how much this has really, I think, I get so many emails, by the way.

1:27:50The breaking point, the things for breaking points are just the dominant thing in my inbox. And so it's really just been a pleasure. And and so, no, I'm the one who's pushed it forward here. But they could see right away that that was and it's got like an enormous number of reactions and comments here and so forth and so on on there. And this is and now you're seeing that just in a few days after I published the piece, clear evidence that Iran is in the catbird seat, as I was saying. And we need to understand they don't just have money and they're not just talking about ships. This is power, politics of the first order that is changing.

1:28:32And you're seeing evidence of it right now, which is Donald Trump is essentially having to give, you know, sort of fantasy posts that nobody, I'm not even sure he does even believe. Who knows? But this is that far removed from reality on his side. And I think with our audience, for most people, it actually undermines their credibility if they appear in the New York Times. But I think in your case, we're going to allow an exception. Well, look, I am just pleased and honored to be able to do this. And I definitely take your point. I'll be careful in the future that I don't get sucked into the legacy back.

1:29:12There you go. Speaking of the shifting balance of power. Legacy media, the escalation trap of the legacy media. Well, Robert Pape is a professor at the University of Chicago. He is doing more live streams. Go check out his sub stack, The Escalation Trap. Follow him on social media. Thank you so much for your time, Professor Pape. Absolutely. We'll see you soon. Okay, bye-bye. All right, well, Emily, that was a much happier show than the one I did yesterday with Sagar. Amazing what 24 hours can do. Civilization stands. For now. We live for another day. For another day. But when you hear Professor Pape outlining the potential for the future.

1:29:48It's going to be ugly. Which we appreciate, by the way. Everyone can also see this with their own. You don't have to be a professor at the University of Chicago to see with your own eyes what happened between Midnight Hammer and what are we calling this? Epic Fury? Epstein Fury. Epstein Fury. Oh, and yes, to answer your question, the Epstein files reporting will resume now that we're moving on from this. Trump thinks he put an end to it. No, no, no. It's just on hold. Well, we'll obviously be here throughout the day in case there are any major updates. So obviously stay tuned. And Ryan and I will be back Friday if you want to get the second half of the Friday show.

1:30:24It's free now. I talked to Sagar. Oh, well, there you go. Friday show free. Please do still support the show. Support the show just because we should. Makingpoints.com. Help us bring this independent journalism to you. If you can't, no problem. Just like, subscribe, comment. It helps us so much. We appreciate all of you for making this possible. As we just discussed with Professor Pape, it does really matter to have independent media out in front covering this in the way that legacy media will not. Yes. I think if you followed all this through us, you were better informed than anywhere else. I agree with that.

1:31:01And I think the record is pretty defensible on that point. So appreciate you all. I hope you have a great rest of your day. We'll see you back here with more soon.

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