7/27/26: U.S. Munitions Run Low In War, Houthis Pressure Saudi Oil, Ukraine Strikes Iran Tanker

24:57Oh, I'm not going to put some kind of timeline on it. The president has all options on the table and he is exercising both diplomatic, economic and military to achieve a very clear strategic aim. And that's what's different. A few days, a few weeks, a few months, a few years. Been here before, seen the movie. It's not very good. Let's go to the next one. This was from Trump. He posted this yesterday. Strike on Karg, AI. But I think he posted like 50 AI memes yesterday, if you want to go and take a scroll along. Mental illness. That's what that is. And yeah, strike on Karg at the very same time that we're not even bombing.

25:35We also just wanted to give you all a little taste of the rhetoric, which we can also see from a lot of the cheerleaders here of the war. Here is Ben Shapiro assuring the president, we, we, and we truly wonder, Ben, who we is in this sentence, are okay with American casualties. Let's take a listen. I get why people are confused and upset. It feels like things are stalemated, that they're getting broader and more difficult. Why? Well, because what the American people want is victory. there is this bizarre notion in foreign policy that the American people are deeply worried about the immediate cost of war to the enemy.

26:13That the American people, that we can't handle the ugliness of war for even a day, that every conflict has to be totally antiseptic. And here I'm not even talking about the American willingness to undergo casualties. No one in America wants American casualties. It's tragedy and a horror. We do understand that war does come along with casualties and we are willing to undergo those casualties in pursuit of an end and a victory for America. But as far as the idea that, for example, America, we can't hit Kharkh Island because the Iranian people would then be deprived of oil resources. The American people are, I should say, not particularly concerned about that.

26:52We are far more concerned with why we're there not winning. I think what we actually ought to do is say an eye for everything. Like you touch a ship in the Strait of Hormuz and we kill the head of the IRGC. We kill Chalaboff. We kill your entire leadership class. Again, we destroy South Pars and we destroy Kharg. One drone and that's what happens. That is the way you win in the middle. By the way, that's the way you win generally. We are okay with it. I mean, this is what they have come to. We're going to show you a clip here in a second. Mark Thiessen, who, by the way, huge cheerleader of the war, very important figure in the war, who has been on Fox News every single day urging action.

27:28Yesterday, he literally slipped up and said, President Trump, as in his old boss, George W. Bush. It's like a joke. It's like a sick joke that is being played on all of us. This is why these psychos have to be drummed out of the public square. I mean, all of the same people who are cheerleading for the Iraq war are right back in the driver's seat for this freaking thing. It's absolutely sick. I'm with you. We need truth and reconciliation. Genuinely, genuinely, after all this is over. But with Shapiro, there is so much there. So first of all, oh, we are willing to accept American... Who are you talking about?

28:00Who's we? You are? Why don't you go sign up? Go ahead. Go over to the Middle East. They need recruits. I'm sure they'd love to have you over there. So that's number one. Number two, he says this thing about like, oh, Americans don't really care if our enemy suffers losses. I haven't heard anyone talking about, oh, they'll be deprived of oil and gas if we bomb Clark Island. But I have heard a lot of Americans who are utterly disgusted with the fact that we triple tapped a little girls' school, OK? I think we do have actually some morals around this who are disgusted with the fact that Now it's just totally a daily occurrence that Trump floats new war crimes.

28:34Ah, let me bomb the bridges. Let me bomb the civilian infrastructure. Yeah, I think people are disgusted with that. And they are thoroughly disgusted with what we've been complicit in in Gaza, seeing the largest population of child amputees, seeing entire cities that are now no more. Remember when all eyes were on Rafa? Look at how much the politics on Israel have changed because of the horror of what we did with our tax dollars. So actually, Ben, maybe you don't care about those things. Maybe you don't have a moral core. But yes, I do think the American people are deeply concerned with some sense of morality.

29:08They would like to preserve some image of America being a potentially positive force in the world. And through this president and the last one, that has been effectively taken off of the table. It is so disgusting. And so and then the final thing he says there, oh, we should kill their leadership class again. Yeah, I was going to say, how many assassinations is it going to take? Wait, how did that work out last time? Guess what? You traded one supreme leader who had a fatwa against nuclear weapons for one who reportedly is much more open to it. So congratulations on that. But his strategy is the Israeli strategy.

29:41If you murder Golibov, which we already tried to do, by the way, we tried to murder all these people, who are you going to negotiate with? That then commits you to the war. It means that there is no choice left on the table. There is no negotiated option on the table, which is exactly what he wants. That's what he wants. He wants to get anyone reasonable that we could even theoretically have a deal with. He wants them dead. So disgusting. Deeply disgusting. And just the lecturing, the hectoring of the American people for being unwilling to take casualties. America is fine with taking casualties if we think it's worth it.

30:14It just hasn't been worth it since World War II. Yeah, genuinely. Think about it. You know, maybe Korea? I'm not, not my opinion, but most people supported it at least at the time. Since then, not really. And like, that's the point is everything is built on hectoring, on lecturing, on saying you're not enough of a patriot. And then what they have to do is to shape it so that we are the failures and that we can, we can, we are the failures, not the leaders who were elected literally on a specific promise of no new wars. Like that's the crazy part about it. The person who literally ran on a no new wars platform whose advisors – I mean, J.D.

30:53literally wrote the op-ed why I'm endorsing Trump. His best legacy is no new wars. Stephen Miller, I mean, I'm pretty sure said Kamala will send your sons to war and would be a neocon warmongering hawk who would start a war with Iran. And then you come around and you do something which honestly is worse than anything Biden is. I don't even think Liz Cheney and all these other psychos would have – OK, I won't go that far. I wanted to give some people a benefit of the doubt. But at the very least, like what we can see here is this grappling and shaping of Fox News to explicitly be a place to lecture the base and to force them to spread it to all of us that any of us who criticize war are unpatriotic, are fools, that we are selfish.

31:39We're not wanting to pay$4 in gasoline. The vice president is like their chief opponent, but there's plenty more lecturing going on. Let's take a listen. If you look at the end result of our Libya policy after Gaddafi was killed, Libya basically turned into a failed state. You had a refugee crisis. You had a lot of violence, a lot of terrorism come from that. How is it in the United States' interest to have 94 million desperate people flooding into Europe, flooding into the United States, to have, you know, sort of the terrorist infrastructure that can get established when you fan terrorists all over the world?

32:12We've run this experiment before. And J.D. Vance keeps putting up these straw men. He says, well, the people who want President Trump to go back to war, they want to send 100 ,000, 150 ,000 troops. And nobody's saying that. Nobody is saying that at all. You don't have to tear down straw men. We've liberated 400 million people during the Cold War without a single boot on the ground. Nobody is saying that. No, Mark, you actually are saying that. And the reason why is what's your plan? When you hear Shapiro, if that's your plan, that's actually the Libya model. That literally is the Libya model. If you want to listen to Mark to the ultimate end state of what he's actually advocating for regime change and continue dropping, it is sacrificing the full might of the American empire literally for what?

32:56So that we can open a strategic waterway, which was open on the day that the war was launched. It is absolute madness. And then pair it here with Sid Rosenberg, another, you know, ultra Zionist neocon again on the Fox News airwaves delivering this lecture. Take a listen. It is inevitable that President Trump is going to have to do what he doesn't want to do, which is go in there with this massive all out attack. There's no other way to stop this. There's no other way to win this war. So, again, he's trying to do the best he can. He's a very nice man. I love President Trump. He doesn't want people to die.

33:32He really doesn't. He's a nice man. But there's no other way to end this. Once you start this, Midnight Hammer was great. Epic theory was great. Once you start this, there needs to be a finish. And the only finish is complete surrender by the Iranians. I hate to say it, but complete annihilation. Look, I'm not a parent of a of an army person, a Marine person. So I'm very sensitive to that. Trust me. But look, we have the army. We have Marines for a reason. They're not there to shake your hand at the airport, Rachel. OK, they're there for a reason. Last I checked, we don't have a draft in this country.

34:05So these courageous men and women know exactly what they're signing up for. This is war. This is war. That argument really galls me. They signed up. They knew what was on the line. Maybe some of them, like Isabella Gonzalez, or first of all, let's not even talk about the fact that we throw money at the poorest Americans, begging them to join the military. So that's one, right? But two is maybe, maybe some of them, many of them, many of these people joined well before Trump was president, had some level of faith that their lives would not be used as dice rolled on a table carelessly and foolishly by an American president.

34:44I think maybe that's the latter. That doesn't mean that we should never use them, but I think everybody should be extremely careful in what we use or expend their lives for ultimately. And there is nothing happening with the war with Iran right now that is worth Isabella Gonzalez's life, who is 19 years old, or those 168 Minab schoolgirls. Nothing has happened which is worth that. Nobody could say that. And so it's so disgusting when they say that. They're like, oh, they volunteered. It's not even draftees. By the way, this is one of my arguments for a draft. But anyway, it can. I mean, I'm sure, Sokhar, they all signed up to put their lives on the line for Israel and for Trump to secure some sort of a legacy as a world changing leader.

35:28That's they were all willing to die for that cause. I mean, it's just utterly disgusting the way that. And this is the problem with our leadership class. One of many problems with our leadership class is they don't care. Right. They don't care about these service members. They don't come from their echelon of society. So to them, they're completely expendable. If you want a window into how they think about these individuals who sign up, oftentimes, like you said, it's an economic decision that is made here is the reason that they sign up for the military. Just take a look at the Epstein files and the way that they talk about those who they consider to be lesser than them.

36:02They barely see them as humans, if at all. And this guy, by the way, I don't know if it was the same appearance. I think it was or another one. He has the gall to call Zoran Mamdani a terrorist. Meanwhile, a sentence later, he's calling for complete annihilation of Iran. If you want to understand how screwed up and perverted this man's moral compass ultimately is. Last thing we have here, which is an important one to get to, we mentioned Netanyahu coming to town. What is this? I think his eighth visit. Sixth. Still more than any other. More than any other world leader breaking records here. I'm sure bringing his laundry, dirty laundry in tow.

36:39So he was asked about what he would tell Trump when he meets with him. Let's take a listen to that. What can you tell us about any fresh new intelligence that you may have about that nuclear program that you are about to present President Trump with? Well, first, let me say that Lindsey Graham is a terrible loss. He was such a great friend, such a champion of America and a patriot and such a champion of the Israeli-American alliance. He believed in the benefits that Israel gives to the United States in terms of intel, weapons, technology. And, of course, we appreciated very much all the help that we got from the United States.

37:17So he was an extraordinary American patriot, and we miss him greatly. As far as the nuclear program, we constantly exchange information. Our intel services and yours are working so close together that it's not that I'm going to present new information, But I think it's a good thing to have the opportunity to sit with our good friend, President Trump, and to hear what he has in mind, because I think in many ways it's his decision. So our intel community, we're constant communication. We're deeply enmeshed with one another. And, of course, they're pushing legislation to make it even more so between the military and the intel services.

37:56So he's going to come and push whatever his perspective is on why we should go back to an all-out war. Update for everybody. Israel's Channel 12. Netanyahu will present Trump with an up-to-date intelligence on Iran's progress towards a nuclear weapon. Great. Got it. Yeah. I'm sure they were the ones pushing all the pickaxe mountain stuff. I'm thinking two weeks. Oh, that they're two weeks away from a duke? Yeah. What do you think? I'm going to go with two weeks. I would say that's a pretty safe bet since he's been saying that since like 1991 or something. Could be two days. It could be two days.

38:27Yeah. The Dead Sea Scrolls actually said Iran is weeks away from a nuclear weapon. But, You know, the thing is, like, at a certain point, it will become true because not like because that is the direction we push them in. Right. At some point, we keep going in this direction. You know, we murdered the guy who was who was opposed to pursuing a nuclear weapon. We've made it clear you can't negotiate with us. The Strait of Hormuz is an effective deterrent for now, but that's not going to last forever because you can build new pipelines and you can use renewable energy. And eventually over time, that diminishes.

38:58So what's left if you're Iran and this is an existential threat and you want to preserve your sovereignty? It doesn't leave a lot of other options on the table since the negotiated option seems to be a fool's errand at this point. So, yeah, at some point, Netanyahu will be right at some point if we continue to go in this direction. Not only will he be right, he will be the reason that he is right, which is irony in and of itself. All right, let's get to Saudi Arabia. And now, another appliance triumph from our friends at Grand Appliance. I love hosting summer parties, but dread reaching over a hot oven door to juggle appetizer trays.

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40:17Your move. Learn more at yourmoveohio.com My name is Arnold Bogarty and prior to me enrolling in Rasmussen to become a nurse I spent 16 years in the military 12 in special forces as an Army Green Beret and I was recommended to Rasmussen by a former student She said she loved the culture it was a family atmosphere I went to visit the campus the facilities were amazing I knew before I left that that was the school that I was going to attend Rasmussen University Are you ready to be your own hero online and on campus? Learn more at rasmussen.edu. Let's turn now to Saudi Arabia and the ongoing situation with the Red Sea, which is highly determinative of where this war could go and the shortage in oil.

41:05We do want to kick off, though, with Mark Thiessen, who we showed a little bit of you earlier in our show, where here he says and pleads to the American people, if you can't handle$4 gasoline, then maybe we're just not a superpower anymore. Let's take a listen. That sort of is the good news out there. But if we can't handle$4 oil for a period of months in order to disarm Iran of a nuclear weapon, we're not a superpower anymore. Yeah. But there are a lot of Americans who their kitchen table issues matter to them more than foreign policy. But I wanted to ask - Yeah. Easy for Mark to say. I see him at Whole Foods all the time.

41:36I'll say hi next time I see you there, Mark. Yeah. You see Tommy Lahren chiming in there to be like, you know, actually people kind of care about this. That's not unreasonable, by the way. Yeah, you know, it's pretty disgusting to see these think tank people with fake jobs who build their entire— Look, I talk for a living, so who am I? But I'm not lecturing others on$4 gasoline. I'm looking out— Suck it up. Yeah, I'm looking out for the people who—or try to speak for the people who actually$4 of gasoline is going to break them financially. And that's why it's just so ridiculous and disgusting is to lecture people about that.

42:09And you know what's crazy, Sagar, is I'm thinking back to the beginning of the Ukraine war after Russia invaded. Americans were more willing. Remember the polling? They were more willing to pay high gas prices for that because they saw it through a moral lens. They're like, this is a big country picking on this smaller country. This is illegal. It's an invasion. We should stand on the side of Ukraine. We've talked plenty about how there was a lot more going on there. We'll talk more about that actually in the next block. But there was a moral sentiment behind it. And people actually were willing, like, OK, you know what?

42:37I can suck it up for a brief period of time. I can pay more because this is a just cause. It's not that Americans are selfish. They're looking at this and they're going, this is not a just cause. We're bombing little girl school. Like, no, I'm not going to pay more at the gas pump for this. I'm completely unwilling. And this is exactly the opposite of what you said you were going to do when you were running for president and wanted our votes. So, yes, you know what? If it was some sort of truly just cause, I think Americans would be willing to suffer and pay more. But they're looking at this and going, absolutely not.

43:08This is a horror show. And why? And just even if you take it his word, like, to prevent Iran from developing a nuclear weapon, guess what? We had the JCPOA, where you had them in a nuclear deal. Guess what? Before we started this whole disgusting war, we were in negotiations that would have led to an outcome where they were not going to pursue a nuclear weapon. Now they are much more likely to pursue a nuclear weapon. And so we're paying$4 a gas and we're more likely to have a nuclear armed Iran. That's what we're actually doing. Yeah, let's just underscore the oil problem, which ultimately will be really what forces everybody's hand.

43:44Let's put this up here on the screen. This was huge news, which really was underreported in American media. So the top shipping insurers have told brokers they will no longer sell war cargo insurance to any Saudi Arabia linked ships in the Red Sea. following the attacks by Yemen's Houthi rebels in a further risk to exports from the region. Several of the leading marine war insurers at Lloyd's of London said they would exclude vessels, quote, with any Saudi touch points from coverage, including ships traveling from under other flags that have made pass calls at Saudi ports. This is titanic news in the oil market because, as we have shown people previously, it's not the Strait of Hormuz that gets shut down or opened by America or by Iran to a certain extent.

44:35It's the insurance companies on whether they're going to be allowed to sell. Remember, in the early days of the war, Trump actually created this wartime insurance board, which would enable these ships to go through the Strait of Hormuz with an insurance contract, kind of an insurer as last resort. That does not yet exist in the Red Sea. It also shows that the Houthi threat to target any vessel which docks at a Saudi port and tries to go through the Bab al-Mandeb Strait is fair game. And obviously, now, because they have shot at several vessels coming through the Red Sea, that they are able to just tell the insurer, or effectively signal to the insurers they have this deterrent capability, the insurers cancel it, which means very little oil from Saudi Arabia will be able to flow through.

45:19Why does this matter? Maps are actually important. If you're just listening, I'm going to do my best to describe this. Let's put this up here on the screen. And this shows from the Wall Street Journal, Saudi Arabia's vast oil supplies now increasingly depend on a single exit. So as they show you, turmoil and straight-up Hormuz in the Red Sea means the kingdom and world energy markets are relying heavily on the Suez Canal. We've talked about this before, but I actually think this map does a really good job of just showing the various choke points for Saudi Arabia. They have the Yanbu Terminal, which they previously had been able to export oil through the Red Sea.

45:53That shut down. They also had been able previously to export through the Strait of Hormuz. So Hormuz was their number one lifeline. During the war, they shifted everything via the East-West Pipeline to Yanbu to get the oil out of the Red Sea. That's the blue line for those who are watching. Now they have to rely on this alternative route to move oil through the Suez Canal, through the Mediterranean Sea, around the Cape of Good Hope, in this alternative route to China and to the rest of the world or to various other buyers. This is a huge problem for two reasons. As you have said multiple times, Crystal, the very large, what is it, the VLCCs, like the very large, I forget exactly what it stands for, but that type of ship is not going to move through the Suez Canal.

46:34So already, that's a big problem. You also have this SUMEN pipeline, which is what they're able to move oil through, but that pipeline has a much more limited capacity. So already, you're down to basically a single point of failure. So both on their production side and on their export size, they are being squeezed. Actually, right as we were recording this show, Saudi Arabia just fired multiple interceptors after attacks from drones came via Iraqi militias, which are linked to Iran at their Aramco facility, which produces the vast majority of Saudi oil. So their economy is in a serious, serious problem.

47:09Second to that is that you have seen now that the choke on Saudi Arabia was not able to be fully effective with Hormuz because they had that lifeline through the Red Sea. But with both now closed off, relying both on this pipeline or the Suez Canal, they really are in a situation where they're gonna have to shut in the oil and take serious damage to their infrastructure on top of what's going on with these drone strikes that are happening literally right now as we speak. And that alone accounts for, what, four or 5 % of the entire global oil supply, Not to mention the UAE, Kuwait, and Qatar, all of which continue to either be shut down or dramatically lessened to where it was previously.

47:51Remember in the early days of the war, Kuwait did not export one single barrel of oil for 30 days. That's like 3 % to 4 % alone of the entire global oil supply. And we have Ukraine diminishing Russian capacity. You have Yanbu and this other oil infrastructure in addition to Aramco, which is getting hit, that is very vulnerable to future attacks. So they're tightening the screws, you know, bit by bit by bit. The introduction of the Houthis into this, obviously extremely significant. The Iraqi militias, we don't talk that much about them, but in a lot of ways, you know, they're viewed, this is what Professor Mirandi told us, that they're viewed as sort of like their strongest allies in the region that, you know, have not fully joined the fight as well.

48:31So it's not like this is the maximum that they can do. There are more levers that they can continue to pull to squeeze the global economy. And just as we're talking, report from Reuters, Iran says Monday, still in control of the strait and not seeking to resume peace talks with the U.S. after Trump halted a two-week bombing campaign that his top brass told him had run its course. So just as we expected and predicted, the Iranians are saying, well, you might be interested in negotiations. We have no reason to trust you. And we don't think that you're in a place where we're going to be able to achieve and secure what we have actually already secured on the battlefield.

49:04And one other update, as we were talking in the last block, about the, you know, the costs of this war and how casually our foreign policy elite are willing to send service members to die and posture like, oh, they all signed up for this. The Pentagon has just updated their accounting. And you now have over 600 service members who have either been killed or wounded in the context of this war. So that is a, you know, that's a large number that we're already at. over 600 who have, you know, most of those are alive, thankfully. Most of them are wounded, not killed. But, you know, 624 since we launched this war in Iran on February 28th.

49:44And that's with us trying to do this standoff bombing campaign. You can only imagine what those numbers would be if we're actually, you know, sending in some sort of a ground force and taking greater risks than what we've done thus far. I can't, I mean, traumatic brain injury, shrapnel, disfigurement, potential. I mean, there's so many long lists of people from the global war on terror who already had to live with this for a year. You can ask them, you know, was it worth it? Let's put B4 up here on the screen. This also, as I was saying earlier, there have been multiple now attacks on Saudi oil facilities from these either Iran, from the Houthis, or for now from the Iraqis.

50:21So over the weekend, this was on top of the Aramco strikes I just talked about, fired missiles and drones at two of their strategic oil facilities actually on the Red Sea, both at the Yambu facility but at another one. Iran previously had had multiple strikes that were launched at Saudi Arabia or at Saudi Arabian facilities. Many of these more recent ones, though, are coming from the Iraqis and from the Houthis. And so really what you can see is that this new front of the war arguably is the tipping point, if you will, for a decision that has to be made on whether Trump is going to go full-on invasion or full-on fold.

50:57Now, with the pipeline and with oil prices and all that where they are, it may not necessarily be today, tomorrow, but the bleeding and the restriction of supply will, of course, as we said earlier, eventually catch up to reality. In the meantime, let's put B5 up here on the screen. Gas is still$4.11 a gallon. That's the national price average. The entire Estella corridor sees pretty high gas prices and not even mention the entire West Coast. Bathed in red there, California at$5.64 a gallon. Significant amount of their oil actually coming, remember, from the Middle East previously. So you can see that they're facing significant pressure, and this remains just a general nightmare for the American consumer.

51:41Again, as you said, yeah, I mean, I have major problems with the we'll pay more for Putin's price hike and all that. But we've talked about this previously. At the very least, like, we didn't invade Ukraine. They did. It was an external shock. So Putin's price hike was fake. But, I mean, I could understand why people fell for it. There's nothing here. You know, Trump is one of the only wartime leaders in history, in American history, to not give a major address before the launching of a war as to why it was even necessary. To this day, I don't think you could actually point to a single address that he's made and be like, here's what I'm doing.

52:13Here's why I'm doing it. Here's what it will cost. Here's the cost to you. Here's why it's worth it. I mean, straight comments here and there. Remember, the war was launched in the cover of darkness at 2 a.m. Eastern time with a bizarre video of Trump wearing a MAGA hat telling Iranians to rise up and take back their country. That's how the war was. And then he was silent for 48 hours, if I recall, didn't even make any public comments. So that's the comparison, really, with all of the other wars. Yeah, his original justification right after he launched it was basically like, oh, the protesters and human rights and rise up and take back your country.

52:51He'll still go back to that well sometimes, even though now, I mean, it's always been utterly preposterous to imagine that Trump cares about the human rights of the Iranian people and has some sort of a noble reason for doing this. You know, we're still left in the dark guessing. I think we've got a pretty good outline of what it was based on reporting from Jonathan Swan and Maggie Haberman, among others, of what was going on behind the scenes. High on his own supply from Venezuela. Fixated on his legacy, you know, as an old man. Wants to leave his mark on the world. Got persuaded that he could be the one that did what no other president was willing or able to do.

53:27Very casually launches this war, thinking it's going to be over in a few days' time. and then has no plan B when that doesn't work, because anyone who had looked at this at all could tell you that that wasn't going to work. You know, we're going to talk about some of these Lindsey Graham clips. Hopefully we'll be able to get to it today in the show. If not, we'll cover it tomorrow. But one of the clips of Lindsey Graham is him saying that he thinks some Iranian cities are going to fall in just a mere few weeks time. Right. This is a guy who has spent his life thinking about this conflict and, you know, veiling himself of all of the military intelligence that he has access to and talking to Netanyahu about and all these other people.

54:09And he had deluded himself into thinking that Iranian cities were on the verge of collapse. And now here we are, you know, however many months later, and this government is stronger in many ways than it was before we launched the war. So just absolute idiocy and arrogance, truly blinded by arrogance all the way around. Yep, absolutely. All right, let's get to Ukraine. And now another appliance triumph from our friends at Grand Appliance. With three kids, I'm always cramming the washer full. So when we needed a new laundry set, I asked the experts at Grand Appliance for a big capacity washer with a dryer that could keep up.

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55:33Shortly after I enrolled at Rasmussen, I was diagnosed with breast cancer. It was like a bomb had just been dropped in my life. I reached out to Rasmussen. They immediately were like, Rosa, take what time you need. You can come back when you're ready. We are cancer-free today, and I'm just so grateful for Rasmussen for all of their support throughout my journey and for my own village. Rasmussen University. Find your seat and start now at rasmussen.edu. Turning now to Ukraine, some insane developments, again, not getting nearly the coverage that it deserves here in the Western press. Let's start with the foreign minister of Iran, Arachi.

56:14Let's put this up here on the screen. He says, quote, Zelensky has attacked an Iranian commercial vessel, killing a sailor, a blatant UN charter violation done at Israel's behest to drag Europe into its war. In calls with the EU High Representative Kalas and Foreign Minister Lavrov of Russia, he made clear that what the freeloader in Kiev did cannot go unanswered, cannot go unanswered in all caps. So this highlights a new front here that we have in the world war. Let's put it up here on the screen. Iran says that this Ukrainian attack on a vessel in the Caspian Sea killed a sailor. Basically, what has happened is that attack came in the Caspian Sea, which if you want to take a look at a map, it's pretty far from Ukraine, and you might have a lot of questions as to what exactly is going on here.

57:07So Iran's Caspian ports are actually pretty important for trade because of the U.S. blockade whenever it comes to the Southern Maritime Route. So the Northern Corridor allows Iran to import goods from states around the Caspian Sea and to receive Chinese cargo, which is transported overland by rail through Central Asia before it reaches a port on the Caspian coast and then makes its way to Tehran or to any of the other major cities. Arachi called, quote, for a firm response to the strike from the UN Security Council and from the European Union. But the reason why all of this is honestly pretty important is, first of all, the Ukrainians just killed an Iranian sailor.

57:46Now, you could say from Ukraine's side, and I'll be fair, there's a lot of Iranian drones which have killed a lot of Ukrainians. Let's be honest, right? But here in this case, let's just see that Ukraine is a vassal state for the United States and for the European Union. They literally would not exist if it wasn't for us. We give them all their weapons. Even the stuff they produce is all paid for, basically, by the U.S. here. So Ukrainian attack drones financed, supported by the United States, being used to try and block an Iranian export here in the Caspian Sea. But this is where Ukraine's logic breaks down.

58:24They claim ultimately that they're the ones doing the fighting and the European Union and NATO and the U.S. are the ones that are just supporting them. Well, by this logic, Russia could go out and start striking American ships or European Union exports that come from Poland into Ukraine because it's literally being directly used for the war effort. know. This is why, you know, their general escalatory logic is one of, yeah, we're going to fire at them. Largely, we all know why. Because to get on Trump's good graces, to ensnare themselves as part of this, you know, grand plan, what Neocon takeover here in Washington as evidenced now by Laura Loomer and apparently all these other people who have changed their mind Ukraine and supporting the Ukrainian war effort.

59:12The point remains that Ukraine is doing this because they desperately need two things from Washington. Number one, they need more PAC-2, PAC-3 missiles, patriots, and others to be sold from the United States to Ukraine being paid for by European weapons. Number two, they need the sanctions bill that is currently in the United States Congress to pass. Those two things are now directly linked with the Iran conflict. Iran, because we began our story, all talking about what? The stockpiles massively depleted, first for Ukraine, then in the Iran war. Well, Ukraine is still desperate with their handout because the ballistic missiles are the one thing they can't shoot down.

59:51But without any, you know, without the drones and other things, they've been able to shoot down with their own technology. So that means they need us to either pay for them or provide them to them, which you're not going to want to do whenever you have a very limited amount of supply and a supply chain bottleneck for our defense industrial brace. Two, they desperately want those Russia sanctions passed, and Trump has given them the greatest gift of all by linking the Iran and Russia sanctions together, which provides secondary sanctions, and effectively wipe foreign trade with Russia off the map, which is the ultimate economic nuke, I guess, if you were going to call it.

1:00:27Trump never even wanted to do it previously because he knew if I do this, there's no negotiations that are potential with the Kremlin. That's what these two things are about, not to even mention the belligerent behavior of Ukraine. Like, I'm sorry, you can support Ukraine and all that if you want, even striking deep into Russia, which I think is nuts, but, you know, OK, because there are nuclear armed power. Here, you're directly inserting yourself into the Iranian conflict in a desperate bid to ingratiate yourself with the neocons of Washington. And by the way, you have your own war to be fighting, which is with Russia.

1:00:58So what are you doing here if not trying to play the game, insert yourself in the neocons, you know, good graces, and now inviting potential Iranian response? What is America going to do? Are we going to shoot down now Iranian missiles coming into Kiev? I mean, the entire thing would be insane. Well, the other possibility is that Ukraine wouldn't have taken these actions without U.S. and NATO acquiescence and encouragement. And so I think that's a real possibility, too, because this is important. You know, these trading routes through the Caspian Sea are important. I mean, this is basically how Iran is able to import things from China and from Russia.

1:01:36Obviously, two countries very important to them. The worldviews Alinsky is pushing, which does, by the way, have some grounding to it, is that the Ukraine-Russia conflict and the Iran-U.S.-Israel conflict are actually very much linked. and they're part of the same conflict. We've talked here about how there are definitely some linkages here, but Zelensky definitely wants to oversell it. He's constantly pushing how impactful Russia has been in terms of the Iran war. His claim is that Iran would not be able to target U.S. service members and radars and other important assets and facilities without Russian help.

1:02:17I don't know whether that is true or not, but he's effectively selling this worldview of the West versus Iran, Russia, China, North Korea as this sort of new axis of evil. He also, while, yes, Sagar is right, Ukraine obviously needs us for some things, he's also trying to position himself as you need me for some things. So he's been doing, and we haven't covered this on the show, but he's been doing a bunch of deals with the Gulf Arab allies, in particular doing training. Hey, we've been dealing with these Shahid drones. We know how to do it. We've developed technology, selling them that technology in exchange for money and support from those Gulf Arab allies.

1:02:57So he's been striking all of these cooperation agreements to try to further enmesh himself and make Ukraine invaluable to the U.S. So now not only are we effectively using the Ukrainian population in a proxy fight against Russia, but he's saying, hey, you can use this too for your proxy, you know, as a proxy against Iran. And so that's, I think, the context that you have to look at this attack on this Iranian ship is kind of an opening salvo in that. And I would be surprised if they didn't at least have a green light from the U.S. I don't think that they would be entirely freelancing here. And that is certainly the Iranians' view of things, that this is not just Zelensky going out on a limb.

1:03:40This is a new U.S. strategy of, OK, how do we further up the ANSI and apply more economic pressure to Iran, we can use Ukraine to put pressure in the Caspian Sea. No, you're not wrong. It also, this is part of why this is so dangerous. By trying to link it as some sort of world war that would, I mean, let's think about all of the massive risks, or at least right now it's contained to the Middle East. Iran's greatest, Iran's great strategy was to regionalize the war, to say, if you attack us, we attack everything. So Ukraine also knows at the end of the day, no Americans want to die or, yes, continue to pay$5 gasoline so that the eastern Dunbar region can be free.

1:04:22Sorry, I don't care. I know a lot of other people don't care either. He wants to globalize it into this grant. And you can actually even see it. Let's put C3 up here on the screen just to give you an example. Zelensky's new line is to say, I will instruct our intelligence to share with our partners the information we have received regarding Russia's assistance to the Iranian regime. Since the beginning of July, we have recorded active Russian satellite surveillance of the Gulf states and U.S. military facilities located there. These images then appear in Iran. At the same time, there's clear correlation between Russia's satellite imagery of these sites and Iran's strikes, both before the attacks in preparation for them and afterward to assess the damage inflicted.

1:05:02Basically saying it is Russia that is providing the backbone of the intelligence for the Iran conflict, and it is Iran that is supplying these drones to Russia to attack us. That's why you need to support us in this global conflict. Now, the funny thing behind all of this is that Trump is the one downplaying any Russian assistance to Iran. Why? He doesn't want to fight with Russia. He already has a bad enough fight on his hands. He put out a long truth social post saying, President Putin has assured me, and I take him at his word, that he has not provided anything to Iran. President Xi has also assured me.

1:05:38Does he know that's bullshit? Of course he knows that. Of course they are helping Iran. We help Ukraine hit Russia. What, we're not providing all the battle damage assessments and all the technology and everything to go all these deep strikes? You'd be a fool not to believe that. So it's very obvious that this is happening, but Zelensky has this ultimate end of linking the two to become massively supplied by the United States and by the Trump administration, which is desperate to try and to defeat Iran. So these things being linked together because Zelensky knows otherwise in a vacuum he's screwed and basically has been since October 7th whenever he had to compete with Israel for munitions and for resources.

1:06:18But one of the tactics that they are now using is to link these two things together by buying off or supporting many of the neocons here in Washington, as evidenced now by Laura Loomer in her recent trip to Ukraine, where she has made now a huge pivot. And her trip, she says, was financed by donors. Who knows exactly who these people are? Maybe she's speaking from the heart. But she sat down for a very softball interview here with Zelensky. Let's take a listen. We saw that about a week or so ago, President Trump, after the death of Senator Lindsey Graham, tweeted that he wants Iran to be added to the Russia sanctions bill.

1:06:54And by posting that on Truth Social, it seems like the president is willing to sign that Russia sanctions bill when it reaches his desk. So how does that make you feel? And why do you why do you think the American people should get on board with a Russia and Iran joint sanctions bill? First of all, I think that the president exactly understood that who really doesn't want to stop the war. I think so. So, I mean, even not this way. So he understood that we want to stop the war. He understood that we really want peace. that there have been before a lot of voices that Ukraine doesn't want to stop.

1:07:42And they said, of course, we want to win. Right. Yeah, of course, it's understandable. We are people and we are riding on our land, etc. But first of all, we are focusing on the human lives. So if tomorrow we can stop the war to make ceasefire, it's better than to fight 10, 20 years for the victory and to lose your people. Right. Of course, ceasefire is better. Lindsay really was involved to this bill and he was, I don't remember, about one year and a half, something like this. And I think the idea of President Trump to join the sanctions on Iran, we support this idea. Of course, this is a very good idea.

1:08:25I think that this idea is strong because you can join maybe different people in Congress, Senate. You can join people who are, somebody is supporting Iranian sanctions, somebody is Russian sanctions. So this is the idea. So he's thrilled, obviously, very thrilled about the idea. And by the way, after Bibi has his hand out here in Washington, another leader will come here to Washington the very next day. Let's put it up here on the screen. So just tomorrow, don't worry, Zelensky will be here in Washington in the Oval Office to meet with President Trump, literally asking for, I mean, you could look at his Twitter timeline, all he's begging for, Patriot, and Pac-2, Pac-3 missiles, all to be able to shoot down ballistic missiles.

1:09:10But of course, you are going to have to ration them both the U.S. in terms of the defense industrial base and in terms of the future. But at the very least, I think it just highlights one of the major Trump campaign promises was, I'm going to bring the, what did he say, before I even take office? I believe that's what he said, is that I'll have it solved before I even take office. It's July 27, 7th, 2026, almost two years into the Trump presidency. And the war is escalating and now actually joining the war that you started in the first place. So at the very least, it's a total failure. Yeah. And I think part of what is really scary about this is that there is some truth to the fact that this is a broader world war at this point.

1:09:49And those linkages, you know, they are real in terms of the way that these two conflicts interact. You could even expand it to the Horn of Africa, if you want to look at what's happening in Sudan and the way UA is backing that as well. And it's why, you know, we, I mean, it's one of the reasons why we've been very concerned about the launch of this war to begin with, because of the way it could turn into this sort of global conflagration. Sagar's been bringing up some of the World War I parallels. I think you can see it here, all these, you know, linkages between different allies and different commitments to different countries and the way that all comes together.

1:10:25So Zelensky very much wants to make reality that that conception of this is not just separate wars, but that they are in a sense joined because that serves his interest of pushing us to do more against Russia and support him, makes him more indispensable to this entire fight. And, you know, he I think is having some success pushing that. He's absolutely I mean, look, you have to admire it, I guess, in a certain sense. You know, he had a hopeless conflict that just continues to drag on and which he has now escalated and actually convinced everyone that there's no risk. But just like what you said earlier about the risk of pushing Iran to a nuclear weapon, we have the same risk here with Russia.

1:11:02We're going to economically nuke them with the Russia sanctions, link them with Iran. Well, then now there's no negotiation ability. We're really going to draw the line in the sand over the Dunbar region of Ukraine? Seriously? But that's apparently what it is. Meanwhile, Ukraine strikes deep into Russia. Everybody in Washington and the whole blue brigade just wipes it like, oh, yeah, you know, oh, it's OK. There's no risk. They literally have nukes. They can use them any time that they want. It's it. Look, we saw, remember, the Wagner coup that almost I mean, who knows what could happen in this country?

1:11:36The reality is, if that there's any domestic problem in Russia, it will be and Putin is removed. It will be a right wing takeover that is much more likely to escalate the war. And Zelensky is also making that more likely with no pressure from Washington or from anybody else, anybody who's more cool headed to just bring the war to an end. And speaking of cool headed people who truly love peace. Now let's talk about Lindsey Graham. And now another appliance triumph from our friends at Grand Appliance. With three kids, I'm always cramming the washer full. So when we needed a new laundry set, I asked the experts at Grand Appliance for a big capacity washer with a dryer that could keep up.

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1:13:33This is actually quite extraordinary. Apparently, for the last year or so of Lindsey Graham's life, he was being followed by a documentary filmmaker who captured all of this behind-the-scenes footage of Lindsey Graham as the Iran war is being launched, even captured a phone conversation that he had with Netanyahu. All of these sensitive meetings, this filmmaker, whose name is Alex Holder, who has quite a long track record of making a lot of different documentaries, had access to. So we have a few of these clips to share with you because they're quite illustrative. I think we all know Lindsey Graham was one of the most consequential figures in terms of persuading Trump that the Iran war would be a good idea.

1:14:14This was a lifelong project for him. He was deeply committed to it, I think deeply ideologically, principally committed to it. And we have now the live reaction on camera of Lindsey Graham as he's watching Trump announce that the Iran war has been launched and he has overcome with emotion. Let's take a look at that. Look what we've done here. I almost cried. Yeah. I mean, like, how long have we been pushing this? You've been pushing this for years, right? Right. It's here. I'm talking to Trump this morning. Well, he's Jack. It's the best thing I've ever done. He loves. He loves. He loves blowing stuff up.

1:14:55So, you know, there are a lot of people inside that didn't want to do it. So I had my challenges. But President Trump, when he gets into the zone, he listens. He asks good questions. You know, no tweeting. He hasn't tweeted much at all. No drama. He's been a great wartime president. I said last night that Trump and Bibi are like Roosevelt and Churchill. I mean, they're the right two guys to confront this evil. Like Roosevelt and Churchill confronting this great evil. He says he almost cried when the announcement was made. There he is laughing. He's delighted. He's so happy, so happy that this president loves, in his words, blowing stuff up and talks about how many years have I been pushing this for?

1:15:47I mean, it really says it all there, doesn't it? I mean, he's right. You know, watching this, he's dead. His funeral's today, so I'll try to be semi-muted, I guess. But, you know, this man revels in death. Like, he revels in death and in conflict. And I actually think it's his funeral, so let's talk about his legacy, which we did kind of previously. Let's take a look at his actual track record and his judgment. who he is so unhinged in a phone call here with baby Netanyahu, baby has to talk him down. Let's take a listen. Hey, baby, Lindsey. Hey, Lindsey. How are you? I couldn't. I'm just so impressed.

1:16:31Glad to be your friend. I'm glad you are my friend. I'm going to meet with the president this weekend. I'm going down to Doral. I'm going to try to get him to join with y 'all in Lebanon. to maybe fly some with you. Would you like that? Yeah, I get that. I think you have a point, but I've been thinking about the other side of it for a second. We're concentrating right now on Yvonne. If we tell Kizbala that we're going all the way, we threaten them. But if we actually do it, then they have no reason not to go all the way against us. And right now, that's not our interest. Okay. We can do it later.

1:17:14Well, I'll, okay, well, that's actually good counsel. I'll put it out there as an idea. We can always go back to it. Do you guys see that? He's saying, I'm going to go down to Doral. I'm going to get Trump to join you in bombing Hezbollah. And Bibi's like, oh, we're just bombing Iran right now. We'll deal with Hezbollah later. But that's how unhinged he was. He was so unhinged. He wanted to do a bombing campaign that even Netanyahu didn't want. And by the way, his prediction is totally wrong. In all of this, as we're all about to show, in a phone call with Jake Sullivan, former National Security Advisor for Joe Biden.

1:17:48So just to show you all the uniparty in terms of it's a big club. We're not in it. Former National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan and Lindsey Graham like this in terms of their worldview. He starts talking about how all these Iranian cities are about to fall. We're going to take over. Like his level of optimism and enthusiasm. and ultimately he died at a moment where he didn't get to fully see the disaster he unleashed, but he had an idea, at least somewhat. Their predictions in the early days of the war we can never forget. Iran will rise up, we're gonna kill the Ayatollah, this will all be over in a matter of days and America will over and over and over win were catastrophically proven incorrect.

1:18:25At the end of the day, they got exactly what they wanted. They told us for years, no Americans have to die, they've been killing us for 47 years, The 47th president will end the 47-year war with a few bombs and a few Ayatollah. And then the entire region lit on fire and it became a total disaster. And at the end, he at least knew that somewhat. And that's why the Ben Shapiros and the Mark Teastons and all these people in the world have to resort to cheap tricks on Fox News television to cast their spell over these boomers to continue them to support the war. They've got nothing left. Reality has hit them in the face.

1:19:01Yeah. And, excuse me. Lindsey Graham, I think, is someone who, in addition to, as you said, reveling in death and mayhem, he also has been constitutionally incapable of taking in new information. Very good at it in terms of the political landscape here, but very bad at it in terms of his core ideology. I mean, this is someone who never reckoned with what a failure the Iraq War was, Libya was, Syria was, Afghanistan was. never moved completely unreconstructed, never moved his ideological appetite for more regime change wars. Even one inch did not change his worldview and his desire for these endless wars, even one bit.

1:19:41So do I think he was at the end of his life looking at this and going, oh, that was a disaster? No, of course, he was like the rest of these people. We just got to do more. We got to go harder. We got to invade. We got to bomb Kargisland. We got to join Bibi in bombing Lebanon, etc. The other piece of that clip that is consequential is that he feels like he can just go to Dural and talk to Trump and get him to do whatever bombing campaign he wants. He seems to have that level, hey, Bibi, you want me to do this for you? No problem. I'm headed down to Dural. I'll take care of it for you. I'll get us to join in your bombing campaign in Lebanon.

1:20:14And I don't think he was crazy to feel that he had that kind of impact. It gives you a window into just how important and consequential this man, this unreconstructed neocon, ended up being in Trump's presidency, Trump the guy who ran on no new wars. Sagar set up this clip of Lindsey Graham talking to Jake Sullivan and talking about how he thinks the war was going to unfold. You can see how, with our own eyes, as in our lived experience here, how catastrophically wrong he was in every one of these predictions. Let's take a listen. Democrats and Republicans are okay with the treaty. Now, you'll never get the treaty until you get a pathway for the Palestinians.

1:20:54You just can't get there. You can't get MBS to recognize Israel. So what I'm going to tell Bibi, and I just told Leiter, I talked to Bibi this morning. He called me and thanked me for everything. He says he's game. I said, listen, Bibi, and Smoltridge and Ben Gavir are not going to deliver. if you win your election, it's going to be before our election. I think the time for all to do this is Elaine Duck. We'll know pretty quickly whether BB is able to deliver. Well, to be honest with you, I think about three to four weeks we should have them in a spot where they start losing control of some cities.

1:21:37And what we're trying to do is just get a few cities to fall in the next month, get the Arabs more openly involved tomorrow or by the end of the week, and just have almost irreversible momentum. Irreversible momentum. Incredible. Yeah. He's a fool. Three to four weeks, some cities are going to stop. And I think this was all there. You know, they had that crazy cockamamie scheme with Ahmadinejad is going to rise into leadership and Kurds are going to come in. We're going to arm these Kurds. They're going to come in. They're going to start a civil war. They'll be able to take over these cities. Like, they actually believed this crap.

1:22:14They thought that's how it was going to go. And that just like Venezuela fell so quickly into U.S. hands, and by the way, Venezuela now walking away from the ICC because that's what we want them to do. But in any case, they thought Iran would be the same. We'll take out their leadership class. We'll arm these Kurds. We'll barely have to do anything. And it's all going to crumble. It's all going to fall apart. Obviously, here we are months later, and we have, like, we've lost. It's just a matter of time until we actually reckon with that fact. Tomorrow is five months to the day since the war began.

1:22:44So that was almost five months ago that that video was recorded. We're a few weeks away from these cities losing control. Wrong. A few weeks away from being able to accomplish. By the way, even what he was saying there about a treaty, that lets us in on a little secret. Because what he's trying to push, just to explain a little behind the scenes, I assume why he called Sullivan is because Sullivan is still close to a lot of these Democratic senators, is to push some sort, either what we just learned about this Saudi nuclear deal through in a lame duck style session in Congress or some sort of normalization-ish of relations between the Gulf Arab states and Israel.

1:23:19But ultimately, that was his aim. His aim was to support Israel and to topple Iran. I mean, he accomplished the first one. But it's just so crazy to me that he's more of a warmonger than Bibi himself. Like, I just can't get over it. Bibi said something like that in a Fox News, I think, interview, too. He was like, oh, Lindsey, he'd always be saying, I'll give you more aid. And I'm like, we don't even need this much. I had to talk him back because he was always wanting to give us more, more, more. That's your taxpayer dollars we're talking about here. Yeah. And, you know, look, we talked about Zelensky.

1:23:49We talked about Bibi. They're all coming to his feet. I'm like, is anyone from South Carolina going to this guy's funeral? Literally. Like, you have all these foreign ministers and ambassadors from Europe who are all like, oh, he was such a great friend. Any poor people in South Carolina hold their hands up and be like, thank you, Lindsey Graham. Did he fix any roads? Like, anything? He was in Congress for a long time. Not that I can see. You know, what's a post in Corrie or anything? Do they mention anything? Does anybody down there even, you know, miss him? Now that his sister, I guess, will take up his mantle?

1:24:19You know, she's running for the full election. It's crazy. Yeah, who is this lady? Who are you? Yeah, I looked her up. She was on like the library board or something in South Carolina, which he got her the job. Now she's running for his entire term. I can't deal with this country sometimes. I really can't. All right, Ecuador. Absolutely wild story unfolding down in Ecuador that we had to bring to you in relation to some of these alleged boat drone strikes from the Trump administration. Let's go and put this reporting up on the screen from DropSite. Their reporter, Camila Lourdes-Galarza, says that a prosecutor investigating U.S.

1:24:57boat strikes and claims of torture was murdered in Ecuador. So the TLDR here is that this prosecutor was appointed to investigate not only the boat strikes, but there were a number of survivors from these three different boat strikes. And they all claimed a very similar series of events, that after the drone strikes, then they were apprehended by what appeared to be U.S. service members. They were held for more than a week. They were tortured. And then they were dropped in El Salvador. The U.S. denies all of this. They all describe the uniform that appears to be like the U.S. Coast Guard uniform.

1:25:37form. I'll go through some of the evidence that DropSite has been able to compile here that I would say is pretty compelling. They all showed back up with severe injuries, including their feet were torn to shreds. So there was evidence of this alleged torture. And this woman who was appointed to investigate this as a prosecutor has now been assassinated on the street in Ecuador. Her sister, who tried to save her life, was also killed. Her security detail that she was supposed to have because it is unfortunately not uncommon for these types of investigators to be assassinated in Ecuador. That security detail, Sagar, nowhere to be found.

1:26:13So pretty insane all the way around. Let me just read to you the beginning of this, and I'll pull out some quotes so that you can get the full gist of the story and some of the evidence they compiled of these allegations. Alexandra Bravo, the prosecutor assigned to investigate U.S. strikes on three Ecuadorian boats and the 36 survivors' subsequent accounts of torture and kidnapping, was shot dead in the coastal city of Manta last month. According to police, on June 14th, a hitman aboard a black motorcycle opened fire on Bravo as she and her sister were leaving a cafe at about 11 a.m. Bravo's sister, who jumped to protect her, was also killed in the attack.

1:26:47Upon arriving at the crime scene, officers say they found five 9mm shell casings and Bravo's injured driver. No sign of the police detail that had been assigned to protect her. The police directorate, which operates entirely under the executive branch, has launched a probe to determine if there'd been an internal security breach. So part of the political backstory here to Sagar is that the leader of Ecuador is very right wing and very much allied himself with the Trump administration, has wanted to be a part of I can't remember what they call this thing, Southern Spear or something like that, which is the entire operation to drone strike these these boats that they claim to be drug runners.

1:27:25Some have already been proven to have been just ordinary fishermen out there trying to earn a living. So he's really tried to associate himself with that and be a big partner to the Trump administration in all of this. And, you know, while I mentioned before, it's not uncommon for these prosecutors to be assassinated in Ecuador. And she was handling some other sensitive cases. So we can't rule that out. We do know, based on DropSite's reporting, she was under a lot of pressure with regards specifically to this investigation. They wanted her to really downplay what had happened here, even though you had the testimony and the clear signs of torture among these survivors.

1:28:04She had just actually been taken off this case and reassigned. So if you look at where she was feeling the heat internally from the administration in Ecuador, it was this case that seemed to be the hottest button issue. Yeah, that's exactly what I was about to point out, is that recently she had just been taken off of the case inside of Ecuador. Also, Daniel, how do you say his name? Noboa. Noboa. Guess where he was born? Miami. Interesting. Just, you know, my own personal jihad against the city of Miami continues. So we continue to look inside of this. As you said initially, I thought, look, it's Latin America.

1:28:41Prosecutors get killed all the time. You know, they even opened the story by saying that there have been multiple of these, you know, the 26th member of Ecuador's justice system to be assassinated since 2020. The second individual investigating state crimes murdered just that week. But it does seem very suspicious that she was killed at this exact moment when she had been taken off the case. She had previously been fighting, investigating, and releasing some of those details. There is obviously immense pressure from Washington, specifically Marco Rubio. What does he call himself? Like the viceroy of Venezuela?

1:29:19He runs the country from his cell phone. He gets Delce Rodriguez. I mean, yeah, I mean, this is where bringing in the Washington policy of these, you know, cartoonish vassal states just is so ridiculous. like this more recent beef between the U.S. and the ICC, which doesn't even have anything to do with us, has everything to do with Israel. So we're withdrawing from the ICC. We're trying to pressure all these countries to go after the ICC. They're trying to get Venezuela. Now, Delce Rodriguez saying, oh, actually, you know, we also no longer like the ICC, trying to connect it to Nicolas Maduro, ironically, who is currently in an American prison.

1:29:53But when you link these things together, you can see Washington and Rubio specifically love to see themselves as the governors of these territories. Look at 19th century ambition. And in this case, they're putting immense pressure on these governments. They're like, we need this to go away, right? And as we just said, assassination of political justice figures in Latin America is commonplace, unfortunately, for them. And so it's very possible that she was killed either on orders or through a cutout or by a pressure. Who knows exactly what was there? But we do know the U.S. has got a lot to lose if these stories become very public.

1:30:33Also, just as we were talking, just to look at the big picture, a new report actually just came out from the DEA. They had to testify before Congress. Cocaine traffic has not slowed whatsoever. Just in case anybody's wondering. How it's going. In case anybody's wondering. Morality of this aside of just randomly drone striking and murdering people who we suspect may be involved in the drug trade is also not working, even if that was, you know, even if that pragmatic goal was was enough for you to justify the immorality here. Put E3 up on the screen because this has some more details about the pressure that she was experiencing.

1:31:11So it's by the way, fantastic report. Shout out to this reporter. She did such a thorough job.

1:31:44She writes here, found consistent with their accounts of explosions and torture. So let me just remind again what the allegations here are. The allegations are, and this is three separate boats that we're talking about and the survivors from those, you know, collectively three boats that were subject to drone strikes. Very similar pattern in terms of the appearance of the drones, the explosions. Then very similar stories about being abducted by these men wearing military uniforms on a U.S. flagship and being tortured and kidnapped for eight days before being dumped in a country that is not even their home country.

1:32:22What are we doing here? Again, the U.S. denies allegations, but their accounts are very consistent. And DropSite has compiled significant evidence that would point to the U.S. as having kidnapped these guys and then tortured them as if trying to murder them wasn't bad enough to begin with. This is so completely insane. And you can imagine why we would do it, because this is all very uncomfortable. When they don't die and they live and they can tell their stories about, hey, guess what? I'm not a drug runner. I'm just trying to earn a living here. I'm a random fisherman. They don't want those stories to get out.

1:32:58So they are trying to terrify and intimidate these people. And in many instances, that has worked. Let me show you a little bit of the evidence that they compiled here. And I really, you've got to read the whole piece because there's a lot more to it than just this piece that I'm going to show you. Put E4 up on the screen. They obtained exclusive video of U.S. Coast Guard activity in the vicinity of the Negro-Francisco bombing. That's one of the boats that was bombed. Open source intelligence that corroborates the testimonies and police interviews with eyewitnesses that confirm the U.S. involvement alleged by survivors and documented by drop site.

1:33:31With the help of Air Wars OSINT analyst and former U.S. Marine Corps member Tommy McCluskey, drop site accessed additional NASA thermal imagery consistent with the Negro-Francisco bombing and vessel tracking data placing U.S. Coast Guard activity along the route the fishermen say they were taken after the strike. At play here is a particular U.S. Coast Guard vessel, which was in the vicinity, turns off their tracker so that you can't see where they're moving, and then turns it back on, you know, in an area where, again, if the survivors are telling the truth, where it would make sense, OK, they were the ones who came, who apprehended, kidnapped these individuals, tortured them, took them back to El Salvador and dumped them there.

1:34:14The tracking data that we have access to and the very fact that they turned off that tracking data for a time is relatively telling. And then you do have some eyewitnesses who weren't on the boats, who were in the area, whose accounts are consistent with what the survivors have said. So there's a lot here that indicates that what they're saying happened is, in fact, the truth. Right. And I mean, looking through generally with all of this, it just highlights the sheer, I think, insanity of that entire campaign. We've been so focused on Iran. That campaign was insane from the beginning. It's still ongoing, by the way.

1:34:49Right. It's still ongoing. But we covered it. And, you know, every single day when we were going, Venezuela, drug dealers, all this bullshit, nonsense. All I would do was look at the DEA 2025 report and say Trump's DEA says less than 7 % of the world's cocaine even touches Venezuela. To the extent that it does touch Venezuela, it's not coming to the United States. It's usually going to Europe. And then in terms of fentanyl, the amount of fentanyl coming through is zero. They talk about Trende Aragua. in their own report, the DEA report, Trenda Aragua never rose above street-level dealing. It's the Mexican cartels.

1:35:22So if you care about fentanyl, it's all coming through Mexico. They can't actually touch Mexico because of NAFTA and because of all the trade coming through. So we can try all these little diplomatic things. But at the end of the day, nothing is actually going to happen with that. So they had to focus there on Venezuela and use it as a cover. These drone strikes of random civilians, which we now see with the girls' school strike and all the other strikes happening in Iran, doesn't look like our target set or identification is all that good. And then on top of that, we remember all the script was written in this campaign for Iran.

1:35:52The double tap strike, remember, kill them all order that was given by Hegseth after this drone strike, the multiple testimony of the fishermen and others, all of which, just like with Iran, immoral, wrong to do, but also it didn't even touch what it allegedly was about. So foolish, foolhardy, turning the people, obviously, of the region against us, and now resorting to 60s and 70s Latin America dictatorial, you know, prop ups, which, of course, have never come back to bite us in the ass whenever it comes to our old strategy. So it is just, yeah, it begs belief that we even did it in the first place.

1:36:31And I do think that looking back, it was such an important thing for elevating Trump's confidence, this and the Maduro raid for how we can really accomplish Iran. And now with nearly a year or so now, later, we can be like, it's such an obvious failure that it happened. But of course, nobody will even come. Well, not only that, but he could do it and get away with it. You know, I mean, that's part of it, too. And just to speak to that broader picture, let's put E5 up on the screen. The Guardian partnered, I think it was with ProPublica. In any case, they partnered, no, it was a joint effort by 20 journalists led by the Latin American Center for Investigative Journalism.

1:37:08They published identities of 13 of those who have been killed in these drone strikes. There's roughly 194 victims of these drone strike. And so they put enormous investigative efforts into finding, OK, who were these? Who were these men? Right. Who were the people that were being randomly killed by the U.S.? And what they find is none of them could they definitively say they were involved in drug running. But some of them they looked at their only pattern behavior. It's possible. These were even the guys who were potentially involved in moving drugs. These were like deeply impoverished, desperate people in some of the poorest parts of the region.

1:37:49You're not taking out kingpins here, right? Even in the ones where maybe they were moving drugs. You're taking out the low level people who are easily replaced that are, you know, a dime a dozen because you have such desperate circumstances. So that's why you're never going to move the needle with this strategy. You know, you're not taking out the top dogs. They're not the ones that are doing this dirty work. And then in some instances, they were not involved with drugs at all. They were just living their life. They were fishermen trying to eke out a living and doing the best that they possibly could.

1:38:22What they also found is that it appears—and by the way, the U.S. military has never identified any of the people that they have murdered with these drone strikes. What it appears they do is they look at the boat itself, and if there are hallmarks of maybe potentially it's involved in drug trade. So it's not like they know who these people are. There's a case built against them and then they're going out and doing it. I would still object, by the way, because the sentence shouldn't be death for cocaine trafficking. But in any case, that's not what they're doing here. They're just looking at the hallmarks of potentially and then going in with these drone strikes.

1:38:55And then if they're survivors, according to these particular survivors, they're picking them up and they're torturing them so that they won't tell the tale of what happened to them. They won't tell their story. They won't file a lawsuit, which is what a few of the family members of the people who have been killed have done. So it is just as disgusting and counterproductive and nonsensical a policy as you could possibly imagine here. Yeah. Look, the entire thing, it was stupid from the beginning. It was a bad use of resources. It didn't work. It set the United States back in terms of how we should actually approach Latin America.

1:39:33And then it set the stage for the insane Maduro operation, which ultimately is the script that led to this Iran operation. And in the meantime, as you just said, the only people who suffer are the extremely poor, you know, civilians or in many cases, fishermen, or at the very least, the so-called drug dealers, while the actual cartel leaders at the top are sitting pretty in Mexico, completely untouched, who, you know, if anything, they don't care at all about some random fisherman who's out in the middle of the Caribbean. Yeah. And by the way, you know, the leader of Ecuador, Noboa, has his own ties to high level ties to the.

1:40:08It's Latin America. Cartels. But, you know, this is our buddy. We're working with him. Right. And then we're, you know, murdering these random fishermen, you know, torturing them, et cetera. It's just could not be more disgusting. Okay. I am going to step off now. Ryan is going to come in and And Crystal and him are going to interview Kishama Sawant. I will be out tomorrow. I'm going to be in New York City. But I will be back on Thursday for the show. So we'll see you all later.

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