Scott Horton

30:30They weren't getting any closer to any of their goals at all. And the strait was closed and getting worse as far, you know, and the economic consequences were bad and getting worse. So the American, the Washington side had to give up. They, you know, they launched this whole war as a New York times reported, I think totally credibly. They launched this war. Trump launched it, not Congress, the president on his own authority, which he doesn't have launched this war based on essentially a whim based on a promise from Netanyahu that trust me, dog, it's going to work, man. It's going to be cool. And, and once we get the Ayatollah, The whole regime is going to crumble.

31:09Pro-American forces are going to come to power and it's going to be fine. You know, prove all the naysayers wrong. And he just rolled the dice on it. Yeah. He must have realized within just a few days how well it was not working. You know? Yeah, I think so. And, you know, I as you said, and maybe this is kind of like my background and having read a lot of Austrian economics or something like that. But I was I remember I was on Pierce Morgan's show. It was like that, like a couple of days after this latest war launched. And this was also the first the first takeaway that I had was it was it was after Iran's first response after the first day, you know, and it was like, look, clearly, man, this is what you guys did.

31:51You tipped the incentive structure here. You know, it's no longer it's not that a certain point when you just don't want to fight. I think the comparison I used was like, if someone comes to your front door with a gun and they pull a gun on you and they go, at first you might be like, okay, hey, listen, what do you want? I got jewelry. I got money. Calm down. Let's talk here. And then they go, give me one of your kids. And you go, okay, well, that I can't do. Like now you've changed the incentive structure to be like, well, now I have to, even you having a gun, I have to fight you with that gun.

32:23Like, I just got to take my chance because I can't let you, if that's what you're here for, then we get. And so once you come like we're here to kill you and your whole family and destroy your country and overthrow your regime. Well, now the calculation changes. And obviously, if you're looking for deterrence, now you got to land a black eye. You got to get a bloody nose on the bully here or something. And it's funny. I remember on that first day, all the war hawks being giddy. They're so confident every single time. It's really unbelievable to be around me in your age and have watched this play out so many times now.

32:52So many times. these confident plans, these crazy predictions. And, you know, one of the things I've thought quite a bit about, I try, I'm not just bringing this up for like the petty point of like, who was right, you got it right, or we were right about this. But it's important to understand that the people who saw this would be a disaster saw that for reasons. And those reasons can help us in the future if we listen to that. And we ought to listen to the people who warned against what this would turn into rather than the ones who spun you some fantasy about how this would go. And, you know, for whatever it was, was it seven months, seven or eight months in between the 12-day war and the launch of this war, the amount, like people gave it to me, I don't really care about it.

33:39And honestly, I didn't really get over my skis much on the 12-day war. But the amount that people would rake friends of ours, people who we admire a lot, like Tucker Carlson and John Mearsheimer and Jeffrey Sachs and guys like this who who we largely agree with on foreign policy, maybe not on a lot of other issues, but they would rake them over the coals for like not having qualified warnings about the 12 day war. And if we're being completely fair, like, yeah, they did get a little out over their skis and like say like they went, this will result in World War three if we start bombing Iran or they said this will result in Iran destroying all of our bases and closing the Strait of Hormuz.

34:18And then after the 12 day war, the Hawks, man, they just could not have been happier to smear them and play those clips and go, where's that World War Three you promised? And then I got to say, obviously, this didn't result in World War Three. But dude, people used to, I remember literally there were commenters that would mock me and you on episodes we would do uh we're talking about Iran years ago and I remember people would go I don't even need to watch uh the episode let me just let me guess escalation dominance we don't have escalate because we would just always say this over and over you know and it's like they were making fun of us for saying this but it's like no that's the point dude this is the point and so yeah like it it really is something to go like oh okay you guys had so much fun with this little game of of mocking Tucker for not saying instead of saying this action carries an unnecessary risk of triggering a world war.

35:18He just said this will trigger a world war, which like, OK, he should have qualified that statement a little bit more. Yeah, but let's go through all the hawks. Let's go through all the hawks and what they said about what would happen after the 12 day war versus what we said would happen after the 12 day war. How many times did me and you publicly say we're at halftime after the 12 day war? How many? Count them up. How many of you how many of you guys said it was done after the 12 day war and bragged about the fact that no Americans got killed? Oh, you're not bragging about that anymore. How many of you told me there was going to be regime change or that there was going to be no more support for Hezbollah or that?

35:55You know, go through the list. Someone who's got more time on their hands than me and who knows how to do video editing. Go through it. Please go through it. There's such a goldmine there of a compilation video to be made about those guys trashing Tucker and Mearsheimer and all them and then give their predictions of this war. Because, man, looking back at it, those guys at least had an obvious point. OK, maybe they should have qualified their statement, but still the essence, the spirit of the point was like, look at the risks of this thing, man. and honestly, Scott, we still don't even know right now how much the damage is and still will be.

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37:07Now they have pouches that help you wind down, fall asleep and stay asleep. They deliver better, deeper sleep and they're all properly dosed and made from nothing but natural ingredients. New customers can use the promo code PROBLEM and get 15 % off at takeultra.com. that's take ultra and for 15 off use the promo code problem all right let's get back into the show yeah well yeah speaking of which somebody should go back and do a thorough research project on youtube and find from interviews of me by other people over the last 20 years how many times i warned about this stuff oh man at least like 05 07 whatever um you know um but yeah look here's what's fun about this though is first of all, Trump did call it off before it got too much worse.

37:58Instead of just tripling down, he went, that's true. And, but the loss is terrible for the empire. And this is something that it's funny. I see whatever people are in their silos and they don't get to hear each other's ideas enough or whatever kind of thing, I guess. But it seems like even now the war party types who supported this thing don't seem to appreciate that america's entire conventional military power and ability to coerce has been called into question everywhere and we'll see and and they can choose either way but it's obviously still a short or medium term question to be revisited constantly, which is all the nations in the Gulf were not able to be defended by the United States when Iran came after them.

38:52And they were able, again, to shut down our bases there. They had to evacuate our bases even before they launched the thing, mostly. And then Qatar, I read, was spared a bit of this because they promised the Iranians they would not allow us to fly any sorties out of their our main air base the headquarters of central command at the al-udid air base in cutter so um justin logan from cato who's been absolutely great on this brandon buck and um john hoffman and cato's just been fantastic on all this stuff and including calling out the israel lobby and everything but logan said what good is a military base that you can't fight a war for them the whole thing is completely pointless so and then i'm not sure if I misattributed I think I misattributed that quote to Colonel Douglas McGregor, by the way.

39:37So I should make a correction from previous. But it is a great quote. What good is a military base if you can't launch a war from the thing? Well, that's kind of like Donald Trump's what's a country without borders? You know, like it does make you scratch your head a little bit and go, yeah, I guess that is the whole thing of it, isn't it? In fact, this would be one that I used to say over and over over the last couple of decades, too, would be that meme whenever I've said this ever since it first came out, at least. that meme of Iran and they say, well, if Iran doesn't want trouble with us, how come they put their country so close to all our military bases?

40:08Well, that was along the lines of the Order 66 in Iraq thing was, in fact, our aggressive empire had put a giant break on its own ambitions in the region by putting all those bases there within missile range. And so that was why we could not fight a war there was because we had all those bases so close to iran and but i guess trump just didn't get the memo or didn't read it till the end and went ahead anyway but that was one of the reasons that we couldn't fight that war is because we had all our bases so close but so now trump essentially called his own bluff right like he um you like these analogies here's one a bully say like me picking on a nerd who turns out has an older brother and upper body strength and my nose and then i learned the lesson that oh actually like i might be mr cool guy but mr dorko there is stronger than me or at least in his front yard he is yeah so that's the lesson that america has already learned here again trump called this thing off on april the 8th i declare that i already won he said or something like that and called the thing off because the thing wasn't working bluff called but so the consequences from there are this bully has lost his credibility across the entire junior high now right now i mean imagine what the chinese are thinking after this performance and what would it take to hold off the u.s navy not much i mean we weren't able to get our star destroyers anywhere near iran's coast imagine imagine a conversation about Taiwan now.

41:50Right. You want to have a conversation, like not even saying like what, you know, cause there is something when you take the element of force away, we are having a completely different conversation. That's true with all human interactions, all human interactions. I mean, like, like male to male human, all human interactions are governed by the fact that there could be violence. Like you, you know, like this is a big part of the reason why you just don't go up to some random dude on the street and say whatever you feel like saying. Cause like, Hey, you don't know what's going to happen or how strong he is or what weaponry he has on him.

42:24And, and in a similar sense, even having the conversation over Taiwan, everything about the conversation completely changes. If you start from the starting point that, well, we don't have any option of force. Like that is, that is not possibly something we can do. And that changes everything because right away you're like, Oh, all right. Well then, well then we're just in negotiations but yeah imagine if we couldn't get if we militarily can't open the strait of harmoose but we're going to have a confrontation with china over there right i don't think so hey it only depends on how many tens of thousands of guys you're willing to lose in the thing or whether you're willing to break out nuclear weapons or not but then iran has not just a real nuclear deterrent even a thermonuclear deterrent and in fact they just tested a brand new submarine launched icbm yesterday the chinese did so but then so this gets to my point actually sometimes i like to finally get to my point in this case the point is that everybody knows we got h bombs and you can't mess with the united states of america do you i mean even our conventional force we really were that angry we could send our air force and decimate your capital city especially if we're willing to lose some planes doing it We can beat y 'all's ass even with conventional power, like if we're that mad about it.

43:47But basically, as far as like our overall security umbrella around the world, it's nukes or nothing. Nobody should look at what just happened in Iran and think that America could win a war in Ukraine or a war for that matter in the Baltics or Poland or anywhere in Asia, you know, in Korea or in Japan or whoever. and and yet we have our nuclear deterrent we can i think it's a idiotic bluff to include all these other nations and in our treaty alliances and and spread our so-called nuclear umbrella to them because it means we have essentially now no options but to use nukes to defend all of them our conventional military is exposed is just completely bankrupt so but the good news is though, is that if anyone wants to be rational about this, well, that we can just have a minimal, hopefully, thermonuclear deterrent or atom bomb deterrent and just abandon the empire altogether.

44:49In fact, Dave, if we have this complete strategic defeat and humiliation in the Middle East, who cares? Why do we care about that? I don't own stock in Exxon and I don't give a damn what happens to Israel. End of the argument. The American people do nothing but get taxed and lose in order to dominate the Middle East. None of this is in our interest. And it's in fool's error. Pardon me, in enough already. I have the quote from this guy from Princeton, who's an economic geographer or a geographic economist. I can't ever remember, but something like that. But anyway, his point was that, I hope I get the number right.

45:32I think it was that he said we spent$7 trillion between the 1970s and the end of the Clinton administration. And then we spent another whatever,$10 trillion over there since then to supposedly secure Middle Eastern oil when we spent not even a tenth of that on Middle Eastern oil. So what are we doing? We're lording it, our military dominance over these oil supplies. Look at what's happened in this recent war. Who's dependent on Middle Eastern oil? our allies in Asia, South Korea and Japan and our commercial adversary, hopefully not real state adversary, China. So we have to dominate the Middle East at the cost of unlimited, infinite American inflated dollars in order to extort our friends and potentially be able to blackmail our enemies, even though if it came to a real war with China, we could sink any ship on its way to China.

46:29You don't have to completely dominate every sheikdom and, you know, emirdom in the Middle East in order to do that. And what right does any American have to complain about Iranian dominance after America's the one who gave them Baghdad and then, in fact, re-solidified Iraqi's dependence on Iran in Iraq War III by building the caliphate. That was when they created all those Shiite militias or many more of those Shiite militias that are a huge Iranian proxy in Iraq now. And kicked our own self in the teeth in this stupid war and demonstrated to the entire region that we can't protect you. And actually, all we can do is get you in trouble.

47:13So whose fault is that? It's Washington's fault. And so they don't get to complain about the consequences. They shouldn't be able to just complain about the consequences and demand even more intervention to try to make up for it. they should in fact do like trump is apparently doing now which is say yeah screw it and sign up their dotted line we actually have nothing to lose all right guys let's take a moment and thank our sponsor for today's show which is cowboy colostrum summer is here and if you want to actually feel confident less bloated and energized this summer not just look like it on the outside it starts with your gut a lot of people think that feeling bloated every day is just normal but it's not.

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49:06Well, there is, I think, and I think I guess this is some of what you were saying maybe stated slightly differently. but even though I think me and you would both agree that this has got to be the worst way to do it. Like there was no way, there was no reason to do it this way, you know? Like, and so it's almost, if I make one of these, you know, dumb metaphors that I like to use or whatever, but it's like, if you were trying to tear a wall down or something and like, we have sledgehammers here and then you just sprinted into it head first and like knocked a little piece of the wall down. And now you have a concussion and you're bloody and all this, I might go, all right, well, at least we got a little piece of the wall down here.

49:44Like that was the dumbest possible way to do it. So just to be clear that we're not, it's not like there's a 5d chess argument here or something like that. This was the absolute dumbest policy ever. But that being said, if we're being honest here, there is, and I said to Ryan Grimm, when I interviewed him on the show that I was like, I got to say, this really does feel like we're covering like the Berlin wall falling or something. Like, it's not clear exactly what this means, but this means a really big thing like something is shifting here and one thing i would say is i think one of the things that we we haven't even covered yet you kind of got to the point that donald trump lost the war and then pivoted to like a ceasefire economic war but then he lost that war too i mean there's real there were really two losses in here that were devastating one is that we can't go the tit-for-tat missile for missile game with you and then we have this genius they tried to spin it as a genius thing of like, you know, we'll blockade your blockade and that will hurt your economy more than that will hurt the world economy.

50:45And so we'll get into a game of chicken where we're both hurting each other until someone swerves. And then Trump had to swerve on that one too. And, and I will say this man, and I don't know, this is above my pay grade. I don't know this, but I do, I am really worried about the economic impact that we might feel over the next few months and over the next year of this thing already. I, you know, like, you know, one of the things I did like that Jordan Peterson used to say, uh, was that, uh, um, economies are like, uh, fighter jets or something like that, where he'd go, you don't just start tinkering with stuff, you know, and you, you know, people do not understand how delicate the whole economic system is that delivers these miracles that we take for granted.

51:29You turn a switch on and the lights go on. And that's just the way things work. You hold up 20 % of the world's oil supply for like three months. I don't know. Okay. Maybe that's, maybe that's a shock that's easily absorbable and calling it quits. Now we can get past it, but geez, I don't know. I wouldn't be cocky enough to just say, yeah, sure. That's no problem. But anyway, to your point, losing both of those. Let me just say right there that I really, I got to highly recommend Larry Johnson, the former CIA officer. His website is called sonar 21. You can sign up for his email list and he sends out an article.

52:03every morning and he is just swims in these stats he loves it and he you can tell he already has a deep base knowledge of these kinds of issues so he talks about you know the holdup of helium and ammonia for fertilizer and all the different things and all the expected bottlenecks and ramifications and gluts and all the different things from the now release whatever so just i can't recommend him to your people here larry johnson sonar21.com but anyways absolutely absolutely i'd love to interview him someday he's great um but you know so so look though the the point being essentially if i could crystallize all of i think what both of us are saying here this was perhaps the dumbest war in american history to launch um it was not as of now the humanitarian catastrophe that some of these other areas have been i mean we really should point out that they're on a human toll there really is no comparing how bad it got here to like the catastrophe in Iraq, the catastrophe in Libya, the catastrophe in Syria, the catastrophe in Yemen, catastrophe in Gaza, the catastrophe, you know, I mean, like Ukraine.

53:05I mean, these are places where in Ukraine, I don't even know what the numbers are at this point, man. I mean, it's something that, but yeah, it's, it's really, really bad. And so the, but I mean, it was, it was like super charged. It was like, they fit 20 years of failure in Afghanistan into three months or something like that. I mean, the amount of contradictions, the nonsense it was, and, and it ended in disaster and it killed maybe not in the numbers of those other realms, but it killed a lot of real people. There are real people alive today who have lost their little girl or their mother or their brother.

53:40And it's a horrible thing to do, but we, it would be crazy of us to not acknowledge that we do seem to live in a moment where there are real opportunities that could arise out of this. And unfortunately, that is what happens in human history sometimes. Really bad things lead to some positive silver linings arising out of them. And I will say that. I'm a man you will agree. Yeah. I mean, hey, listen, the bad guys. Well, look, they do have a point about it. Like if they could exploit it for bad stuff, maybe they did exploit it for bad stuff, you know. But you go, look, and I know I heard you talk a little bit about this unprovoked, but I kind of want to get you to give your thoughts on it here a little bit.

54:21And the there's a lot of there's a lot of speculation out there on what exactly it is that Israel has over U.S. politicians. I mean, how exactly do the levers of power work? I mean, we know about AIPAC and we know about other members of the lobby and we know about the Adelson's. We know about the Murdoch's and we kind of know about Christian Zionists like that. But then there's like Epstein questions. And then there has been such, I think there has been such, there is such a weird religious-like worship of Israel from so many political figures. And there is such a strange uniqueness to the U.S.-Israeli relationship where there is this unconditional support given to a tiny proxy by this huge empire, which seems to punch enormously above its weight.

55:11And that's fertile ground for people to speculate on what's really going on here. But if we're really correct, which I kind of I'd like to not get too conspiratorial if we can't really prove that, you know, let's try to rock him, Occam Razors, this thing as much as possible. But if we're correct, that what Donald Trump was actually up against and what he was actually briefed on were like military and then economic realities. It's like, you know, there's no option here. You have to bail off of this. And it does seem like he got that memo because the pivot was quick, man. And all of a sudden, and of course, because Donald Trump only has one speed, which is 10 ,000.

55:49Now he's using all of our best talking points to throw back at the Hawks about how dumb the war is. And it's a weird moment. But if we're right, that really global economic collapse or true military depletion or something like that was on the horizon. And so we just don't have an option here. And if it's anything less than the most conspiratorial version of how Israel actually has its control, like, is it really that they got tapes of Donald Trump doing shit to kids? Probably not. You know that maybe, but I don't think so. Well, if it's anything short of that, then we might actually have a real opportunity for the crack up of the U.S.-Israeli relationship here.

56:25Now, I'm cautiously optimistic. I am not suggesting that this is coming and I'm not suggesting that the total collapse of that is coming at all. I'm just suggesting that a pressure has been put on that relationship that might be different than any pressure we've seen before. And that is happening in a context where popular support has plummeted by like 50 points on approval for Israel. And like, let's just not be doctrinaire about this. Like history isn't already written. Stuff could happen. Hey, that's an interesting dynamic where there might be possibilities there. So you got the possibility of the fact that essentially the paper tiger bluff has been called, that the U.S.

57:02empire can't actually protect these people. And why be in the business of having military bases if you can't launch a war from them? Why should other countries be in the business of hosting our military bases if we can't protect them from that? You know, like the whole thing's been blown up. There's more pressure on this relationship than ever. Public sentiment is more with us on foreign policy than it ever has been in the years that me and you have both been doing this since before there were any grays in these two beards. I don't know. this seems to be like a very very cautiously maybe something positive could come out of this disaster what do you think of all that well yeah i mean um certainly public opinion has changed over the last couple of years and the fact of them dragging us into this war with iran is sort of like just the ultimate insult on top of the injury of forcing us to all pay for what they've done to the past last couple of years and so right when people were already sick to death of this stuff then they lie us into another war same guy netanyahu promises that it'll be real easy we just got to take care of the weapons of mass destruction and overthrow this dictator and everything will be fine um and after trump just bellowed right w bush mumbled something up i don't know humble foreign policy maybe or something yeah yeah king kong on the empire state buildings beating his chest going i am the greatest peacemaker in the history of dudes who ever ended conflicts and just did it over and over and over again in a way where his flip-flop on this is just unforgivable it's just amounts to not just a broken promise but the damnedest of lies of you know what he told people there so i think people are really upset by now trying to flip back I mean, it just seems like an impossible.

58:46Yeah. Sorry. Again, like, hey, man, there's only one actual like, you know, legitimate, but also useful scapegoat here. And that's the government of Israel. That's who did this. That's who lied us in the war. That's whose policy this was. And you know whose fault it is? Them. And that's what I want to hear from Trump is just the never ending scapegoating of Israel. And he doesn't have to lie. All he has to do is tell the truth about it and it'll hold up because the role that they played in our foreign policy over the last generation is just absolutely obscene. It's the worst thing in the world.

59:21It's the worst thing about our country by far. And so if he wants to make a break, he's got all the ammo in the world to do it. But I don't think he's going to, Dave, because the problem is he's friends with Benjamin Netanyahu. I think they get along just fine, you know. um and i don't trust barack ravine from nothing so yeah i tend to think you might be right about that yeah and you know i'm not sure that what they're doing is all just professional wrestling because they're waiting to restart the war i know some people think that i don't i don't think that yeah i think the split between them is professional wrestling because they have to end the war and so netanyahu obviously has to make his complaints about it and donald's very well you know he he shouldn't have made me do it in the first place whatever but i'm sure they arranged all that on the phone beforehand.

1:00:08There's no hard feelings there. No, I agree. I completely agree. Go ahead. No, okay, so I completely agree with that. I just really wanted to emphasize that point because I think that's really important. You know, look, when J.D. Vance is coming back and all of a sudden trash in Israel, it's like J.D. Vance has been tasked with something very specific, and there's a reason why they tapped J.D. Vance and not Marco Rubio or not Pete Hegseth. Like, he's the one they think can get this. But what do you got you got a crazy unpopular war that we were lured into by a crazy unpopular country he's playing a pr game obviously his best pr game here is to go ah screw all this and screw those guys and say some stuff that sounds nice to the overwhelming majority of people who were against this whole thing to begin with if he's trying to make get popular support for the memorandum of understanding he almost has no other option than to use some of the language to stop it don't buy this for a second he was just selling the war and talking about what was he talking about in the nuke vests a couple months ago or something like that.

1:01:07He's as bad as any of them. But so no, that doesn't, that doesn't demonstrate that there's a real split between Trump and Netanyahu or the administration Netanyahu, but it also doesn't demonstrate at all that this is all a ploy to try to restart the war because it could just be what it is in attempt to do PR on behalf of bailing on this whole thing. And that seems more likely to me. No, Scott, I think the most likely scenario here. Honestly, I think I might get some pushback for this. I think ultimately that Donald Trump might bring Netanyahu to heel at least to this extent, like at least to like, okay, you got to slow down in Lebanon and you can't blow up my ceasefire here, but you still get everything else and we still keep the same relationship.

1:01:48I think that's probably the most likely scenario that it doesn't blow up the whole relationship. It does get the lobby real pissed off with Trump. I think it's going to be a rough little period for Trump in the lobby. But I guess I would say there is the X factor that Netanyahu is personally and he has painted into a very tight corner. And as you know, you make this point all the time, Scott, and you make it better than everyone that, you know, public choice theory is a real phenomenon. And that means that it's not it's even too collectivist to say the powerful are making decisions on behalf of the powerful.

1:02:23And think about an example like Joe Biden, where he had to be forced to drop out of the nomination because he wasn't even making decisions based on what's best for the Democratic establishment. He's making decisions based on what's best for like Hunter Biden or something or Jill Biden or something like that or himself. And so, again, you're just in a situation where Netanyahu has his own personal sense of incentives that are pretty. I mean, even when you see this thing coming out now with the Supreme Court over there in Israel, which I guess is not Netanyahu's scandal yet, but you're like, oh man, this is, it almost seems like something out of a novel.

1:02:59Like the guy can't stop the war or he goes to jail or he, you know, and so who knows what he'll do here. I have, I think even you, somebody who's studied this for, for a very long time, it is shocking how, how provocative and blatant they will still be. Yeah. Well, so, Okay, a few things there. So first of all, I'm totally making this up based on, you know, pseudo educated guesses, speculation type thing. I don't know of any real good reporting about this. But just from the tea leaves thing, it looks to me again, like, Trump has to come to essentially Iran's understanding of the deal, and and make a deal that includes letting them keep their civilian nuclear program and all these other things, because he doesn't really have a good choice to restart the war.

1:03:45It's either sending ground troops like World War II, which he ain't going to do, or drop atom bombs, which he ain't going to do, or go ahead and recognize Iranian sovereignty, which is the third and only other choice. So he's going to have to come to the table there. Now, my speculation is that he, you know, Vance and whoever, speaking for the Americans and the Iranians, they must have already said to each other that like, hey, look, we know that Israel and Hezbollah are going to keep squabbling on a lower level in Lebanon throughout this process. Let's not let that ruin it. Let's go ahead and get this done.

1:04:23And at the end of the deal, we'll make them really cease fire and call the thing off. because it may just be too much to ask Netanyahu to go ahead and get all the way back behind the true southern border of Lebanon and all of that in an instant. And then it gives, you know, the Iranians and the Americans a little bit of cushion and then ability to declare victory too, that they got the other side to do what they wanted. We got Iran to restrain Hezbollah and then they got us to restrain Israel and, you know, a little something to brag about there because otherwise, yes, that is, of course, the total wild card is Israel in Lebanon.

1:05:01They could destroy the deal. Now, he would have to be willing to just completely give the middle finger to Donald Trump and say, you're not having a peace deal, dude. My priority is Trump. You're staying at war and whatever. Sorry to use the, I didn't mean to make a stupid name. But anyway, but then yes, like you say, like if there's one thing that could make Netanyahu, because look, you know, Netanyahu's willing to defy Bill Clinton or Barack Obama over this or that, but he wasn't willing to drag Obama into war, no matter how much he hated him. Right. He's not going to do that to Donald Trump.

1:05:33Right. But if there was one thing that could make him just out of desperation, keep the war going, ruin the peace deal, bomb Tehran, do something to disrupt it and keep it going. It's the fact that he's going to jail. He's got a date with the warden over down at the pokey and he's just busted dude and for anyone who's never seen the bb files you can watch it yeah carlson site or get the pirate bay um and get you a vpn and watch the bb files and essentially the whole documentary is just video footage of police interrogations by the shin bet which is their fbi their national police force interrogating netanyahu and all of his cronies so there's miriam adelson going i had to buy his wife all these diamond bracelets and champagne bottles or whatever because what am i gonna do they're shaking me down dude i got all the money and they got the power and so what right like it's right there on video just open and netanyahu too sitting at his own desk being interrogated by the national police they got him dead to rights he's just guilty as hell and it's all about his evil wife demanding you know luxuries furs and champagne and jewelry and things and this is just absolutely against the letter of the law in israel felonies basic pure and simple just caught him just busted turns out the hitlerian mass murderer also has an unscrupulous wife who likes to shop it's a long bit you know um maybe at the core of the whole damn problem you know um but then yeah so um he might have already gone to jail but remember this This is why and how he created the current coalition at the end of 2022 with Ben Gavir and Smotrich.

1:07:20And he had never allied with kooks that far to the right before, but he had to do. It was the only way he was going to get back in there. And he had to do that so he didn't go to the penitentiary. And so, yeah, you talk about public choice theory for a psycho like Netanyahu. I mean, this is the wildest of cards. And honestly, like, I don't think there's anything short of Trump absolutely putting his foot down in the most severe manners that could really rein him in. Well, I don't know. It's possible that there's like some amount of respect there that he just knows not to push the line and anger Trump too much.

1:07:57But I don't know, man. The guy's the walking definition of chutzpah, right? He's going to go as far, spin out as far as he possibly can before he's railed back in, you know? yeah that for that uh that seems that seems to be for sure hey listen man i got to uh i got to wrap up here you know i did plan on um and maybe we'll just do this next time but i did want to like talk about um a little bit like economic stuff with you because despite the fact that scott um you know specializes in foreign policy he's got great insights on on uh economics and he's good on everything as well but i will and i just wanted to say that um because i i just uh posted this on Twitter.

1:08:35But Keith Knight from the Libertarian Institute just put out this video called 64 Arguments Against Democratic Socialism. That is just phenomenal, man. I mean, it's just so great. It's about four hours long. I'm only about three hours and 10 minutes into it now. But it's just, I mean, so good. If you like this type of stuff, just take just destroying the myths of socialism and statism and stuff like that. More important than ever these days, especially especially since, you know, a lot of people who have economic views that we really don't agree with have been really great on these horrible wars.

1:09:12And so they've kind of rightfully, fairly kind of been empowered by being right on such an important issue in the moment. And now those of us who are also right on that most important issue, but aren't so bad on the other one would like to point out to them that they're stupid. I say that with love. I love, I love you anti-war leftists. You're very smart on war. Very stupid on economics. All right, Scott Horton, it's been phenomenal, as always, talking with you. Remind people one more time, if people really want to learn more about this stuff and understand Scott Horton Academy of Foreign Policy and Freedom, where can they, what's the site to sign up?

1:09:47That's it, scotthortonacademy.com, and use the promo code P-O-P-T, or P-T, where? I don't know how to say it. P-O-T-P. Yeah, that. I thought it was Dave or something. Anyway, you figure it out. You get a 10 % discount or a 20 % one if you sign up for the lifetime subscription there. And also, I have a show. I have two shows. The Scott Horton Show is my interview show here on the YouTubes and Spotify and all those things. And then also Provoked every Thursday night with Derek Cooper, Marta Maid. So check me out there too. And that is Provoked. And of course, Scott Horton Show. But these are my favorite podcasts to listen to.

1:10:21So definitely go check them out. All right. And I'll see you guys this weekend out in Houston. Thanks for listening. Catch you next time. Peace.