Max Blumenthal on His Iran Trip, Being Detained by Trump & the Globalist Chokehold on American Media

30:06It's so evil. It's hard to get that. One of the lone survivor witness to that provided testimony in Hebrew in Israeli media. And we then conveyed that testimony to an American audience at the gray zone. So they dedicated like a paragraph to my reporting on October 7th. Anyone watching this right now, you can find a documentary called Atrocity Incorporated or Atrocity Inc. in which I detail all the reporting that I did on October 7th on how Israel, in many cases fabricated atrocities like 40 beheaded babies or Hamas carrying out systematic mass rape in order to manufacture consent for genocide.

30:49But there was also the fact that they may have killed hundreds of their own citizens on that day. My reporting was eventually corroborated by the same publications that were attacking me. Yediot Aronot in Israel reported that in an article co-authored by Ronan Bergman, who also writes for the New York Times, over 70 cars were targeted by israeli helicopters heading towards the gaza border with all like many occupants inside haaretz said um a free fire order was given on that day and um you know possibly hundreds of strikes were carried out under the auspices of the hannibal directive so i mean this is getting a little bit off base from the conversation but for about 400 israeli soldiers were killed.

31:34Their bases were targeted on October 7th. Those were active duty combatants who were enforcing the siege of Gaza. And so they were the main targets, but there were many other Israelis who were sort of caught in the crossfire, seized as captives during a moment of opportunity. For example, the Nova Electronic Music Festival, which had been extended for another day right next to the gaza border and then the helicopters come in and start targeting everyone another person who seems to have been targeted under the hannibal directive was named gal abdush and she was photographed outside of a car which had been it looked like it had been blown up with a hellfire missile she had rigor mortis she was wearing a small dress because she'd been at this rave and her her legs were kind of spread because she had rigor mortis so she becomes the subject of a front page New York Times investigation called Screams Without Words about how Hamas had committed mass rape.

32:32And they called her the girl in the black dress whose legs were spread found by her car. Her family comes out and says, this was totally false. Our daughter was not raped. The New York Times tricked us. And it very much appears that she was one of those cars that was targeted by the Israeli military. So, you know, all of this reporting that I've been doing and over the years, I mean, ever since I've been reporting, I mean, you were around a lot of the kind of neocons and pro-Israel characters in Washington, and you heard what they said about me over the years. They hated you with a unique passion, I would say.

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33:44Relight has over 60 trace minerals, great and natural for all of your bodily systems. Whether you're getting ready for a workout or fighting to get through the day, Relight will work. We especially love the mango flavor. It's strawberry lemonade. Visit redmond.com slash Tucker and use the code Tucker for 15 % off your first order. Redmond.com slash Tucker, code Tucker, 15 % off, or click the link in the video description or scan the QR code on the screen. Any way you do it, enjoy it. So they're looking for any opportunity to basically silence me by locking me up. And they have full control over Trump and the Trump administration.

34:21Their best asset is Laura Loomer right now, for whatever reason. And this was kind of their moment. So they get these three figures to call for me to be investigated by the State Department and FBI. And in the letter, they call me, they say, I've been cultivated as an asset by the IRGC, which is complete defamation. Like just, there's no basis for, they have no basis for saying that. It's just defamation that, but typical of Randy Fine. And you look at who they are. Like, who is Randy Fine? This guy is desperate to shut down the constitution for Israel. He's even made littering a hate crime in Florida punishable by five years in prison because some anti-Jewish goofballs called the Goyish Defense League or the Goyim Defense League were like threw leaflets on the ground.

35:16You know, he's enforcing the IHRA definition in Florida of anti-Semitism, which is if you criticize Israel, you're an anti-Semite. The majority of the definitions in the official list of definitions pertain to the state of Israel, not to Jews. Yeah. He said he would like to see, I think he said he would like to see the streets of Gaza overflow with blood. I actually challenged him in Congress on his call for Gaza to starve away, which was an interesting example of genocidal intent. He said Gaza should starve away. and I said, do you think like, how do you think you would fare in Gaza given your - He'd be last man standing.

35:56Yeah, I'm sure. You know, it's ironic to have a figure like him calling for people to be starved. And he's like a walking advertisement for the American Nazi party. I mean, no one produces more antisemitism than him. And he actually said at a meeting of the Republican Jewish Committee that he's glad that people are like, that Thomas Massey is blaming the Jews in his words for being thrown out of Congress. He took personal credit for throwing Thomas Massey out of Congress. And he's someone who's clearly acting on behalf of Israel. Then you have Randy Weber who wears an Israeli tie on the house floor.

36:37This is tragically the guy who replaced Ron Paul in Texas. not exactly a libertarian who believes in the constitution he said that the u.s has to attack israel because israel is the apple of god's eye and keith self i don't know what he does he's introduced a bill to stop sharia in dallas so like the dallas cowboys cheerleaders won't be wearing burkas and laura loomer i mean it's pretty clear she's being backed by some pretty powerful zionists And they're calling me a foreign agent. That's like having child protective services called on you by Jeffrey Dahmer and Jeffrey Epstein. It's like, you can't overstate the irony of that.

37:19But that's what they did. They put that letter out there and - Do you think that you're under investigation? How would I know? Right, you wouldn't. I wouldn't know. And this administration seems to be capable of anything. So I don't know where it can go, but I also wear it as this letter as a badge of honor. I mean, coming from four of the worst people on the planet, singling me out and calling for me to be investigated, criminally investigated for my journalism. I mean, so much of the letter is dedicated to my journalism. To me, it's confirmation that I'm doing the right thing. There's something going on that I don't understand that doesn't make sense in conventional terms.

37:59And you alluded to it a second ago when you described Randy Fine as like an agent of the American Nazi party because he inspires anti-Semitism. So if I've got a product or a place or a person I'm trying to make more popular, if I'm trying to defend, if I'm selling the Apple iPhone, I'm telling you all the things the iPhone does. It's amazing. It's a camera. It's a weather channel. It's everything, right? I don't make you hate iPhones or telephones or technology if I'm trying. But the people making Israel's case in public are people like Randy Fine. Yep. who was just named the 45th most influential Jew in the world by the Jerusalem Post.

38:38But why wouldn't you get someone who is appealing and not hateful and not laughing at pictures of dead children as he has, who's like, it seems like an intentional effort to inspire hate against Israel, actually. That's what it looks like to me. Yep. What is that? Well, that's Zionist logic. I mean, Zionism needs antisemitism. Antisemitism is the fuel for Zionism. What would happen if Jewish life were normalized in the West? it would be a disaster for zionism because there would no longer be a way to justify israel waging war after war building walls and de facto concentration camps around the indigenous untervention unless it were a sanctuary for jews who were experiencing anti-semitism and had nowhere else to go so it's needed then you have a whole anti-semitism industry, what would Jonathan Greenblatt do without the specter of constant antisemitism, which is why they have to keep redefining antisemitism to be pretty much anyone who's upset with the mass extermination of children and does anything about it is an antisemite.

39:57Or anyone who we don't like. Anyone who we don't like. It used to be, what, anyone who hates the Jews. Now it's anyone who the Jews hate. But I wouldn't even say the Jews. I mean, this is like a contingent of Jewish life, which is increasingly extreme and lives in its own echo chamber. Jonathan Greenblatt, like what the ADL is like a multimillion dollar organization with a command center in Silicon Valley. It has its eyes and ears within law enforcement agencies. He basically brags about it being an auxiliary force of the FBI and that they're conducting spying operations inside activist organizations.

40:42With Jewish life, we're normalized and we were just like, hey, we love America. We are experiencing a golden age here. We're like the Episcopalians. His gravy train would immediately end and he'd have to go back to being a bottled water salesman, which is what he did before he was at the ADL. Well, I actually grew up in a country that was kind of like that. I mean. Me too. Me too. Yeah, I mean, I was, we were talking about dinner last night. Like, I don't remember, and I would have remembered since I was around a lot of this stuff as a kid, I don't remember there being like stark angry divisions.

41:21And I don't know, golden age, I don't even, but it was great as far as I recall. Maybe I missed it, but I never heard anybody express hate toward anyone else ever. not one time so i'm not imagining it now that i'm saying it out loud and israel can't be at peace either because of zionist logic oh with if imagine if israel were at peace yeah um first of all it would be like israel was in 1966 when the society was uncertain of its own survival and all of these different groups were at each other at each other's throats the ashkenazim and the mizrahim and the the religious, the secular, within the country.

42:00Then they had 1967 and it was like, suddenly the country became dynamic. And what else happened in 1967? American Jews became very deeply interested. The baby boom generation. And they started going to the kibbutzim and they brought their guitars. A lot of emigration that year from the United States to Israel. Yeah. And so Zionism became this dynamic global force with 1967, which was a war of choice that Israel launched that was totally unnecessary. and they portray themselves as this underdog. Now they have to be in constant war because like think about all of the Jewish or the Zionist billionaire class in the US.

42:38A lot of them aren't even very particularly religious. I don't think Bill Ackman is that religious. I saw someone say like he wrapped Tefillin for the first time after October 7th with Bill Ackman. This guy runs around wrapping Tefillin on people. without if Israel's at peace it doesn't need you anymore and you have nothing to do and then your identity you know your identity comes into question like I don't have anything to do I don't have anything to donate to that makes me feel Jewish that country doesn't need me anymore what do I do what am I like am I going to actually go and like observe real like Talmudic rituals Like, am I going to actually do Shabbat and put my cell phone away, my smartphone that I write 7 ,000 word posts on all the time?

43:28Am I not gonna drive to dinner in the Hamptons on Saturday? So, I mean, Zionism has become a central pillar of identity for so many American Jews who wouldn't know how to otherwise be or feel Jewish. And for them, they need this transcendental identity as they start to experience mortality. Sheldon Adelson, I mean, he got into Israel late in life and he said, I want an Israeli wife. And Miriam Adelson comes in and now she's directing his whole empire. So it has to be in a state of war. Netanyahu is a master of it. He understands the thinking of American Jews and what they need. He understands how Zionism can be carried forward and he cares more about that than he does about the actual reality of Jews in the world or even Jews in Israel who are in a state of complete social crisis right now.

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45:00Prescriptions are filled by American-based pharmacies using ingredients sourced from FDA-registered facilities. Tons of quality testing, no stone unturned. You're getting the best. You don't have to guess about what's going in your body. Starting now, this show's listeners can get 65 % off labs plus 20 % off peptides and supplements by going to joyandblokes.com slash Tucker and using the code Tucker at checkout. This is one of the biggest discounts any of our partners have ever offered. That's joyandblokes.com slash Tucker. Can you just give a short summary of what that crisis is? Well, first, I don't think these were, I mean, first of all, I did a book, I published a book in 2013 called Goliath.

45:38and that was a portrait of jewish israeli society from the inside um i spent off and on like i was going for a few months and i come back for a few months and write off and on for five years i was working on that book and um it's mostly about jewish israeli society it's a portrait of a society that was poised to commit genocide um and why why saw that then i saw it then and you know I took a look at the psyche of particularly Jewish-Israeli youth. And you can just look at the polls that the Israeli Democracy Index conducts. The vast majority of them have genocidal attitudes, at least anti-Palestinian attitudes.

46:21And they're more hostile to Palestinians than their grandparents were, for example. um so the right now jewish israeli society they don't necessarily care about the fact that most people in gaza are living in tents and their faces are being devoured by rats at night uh there's no empathy there but internally they're in crisis because the part of the population that's producing the most children um and giving them like a positive child replacement rate birth rate are the ultra-Orthodox. And the secular members of Israeli society or the religious nationalist members who believe in Zionism, they have to subsidize all ultra-Orthodox men to simply be there and read Torah all day.

47:09And so there are constant bills being pushed to force those ultra-Orthodox men into service in the Israeli military. And what are they saying? The Torah forbids killing. We will not do it. And they've been having huge protests around Israel. Like you could call them anti-Zionist protests. They get very little attention in US media. They block traffic and the secular part of the society or the Zionist part of the society hates them. And what - I don't think hate is an overstatement based on what I've seen. Yeah, in many ways, they hate them more than they hate Hamas. I totally agree. I've seen it in Israel.

47:43It's sad actually to see it. The division is so bitter. Yeah, and this is going to, this bitterness is going to grow along with the bitterness of the world towards Israel. Then you have all these reservists who served in Gaza, who committed horrific crimes. There's a film out right now that's coming out, a documentary that is getting rave reviews called Naza. And it's made by Yuval Abraham, who's an Israeli journalist and a filmmaker, I think her name is Rachel Shore. These are Israelis, Israeli lefties. And it consists of 24 interviews with Israeli soldiers. Most of them were like in military intelligence involved in targeting on rooftops and you can't see their faces, their voices are altered.

48:35And they're describing the most sickening crimes you can think of. One of them talks about how they were hacking into phones. I guess this is unit 8200, their cyber division, hacking into the phones of young girls in Gaza to determine when their fathers would come home. And then they would order an airstrike on their home and listen to the girl burn alive through her phone. The soldiers are comparing themselves to Nazis in this film. And now Israeli ministers are calling for stripping the filmmakers of their citizenship and punishing them. Netanyahu just a few hours ago released a statement calling the film a blood libel.

49:12Then you have other reservists who you can see them in Knesset, they're like, we're not getting the support we need. We're all on drugs and we're all suicidal. They, you know, are playing out their trauma in a different way against their wives, against themselves. And they see these ultra-Orthodox men who aren't serving and they want, they just like, they want them to be forced into service or they're going to go crazy. And the ultra-Orthodox parties are keeping Netanyahu's coalition together. United Torah Judaism and I think there's a good chance Netanyahu could win. So this crisis is going to increase.

49:50There's civil strife now. Could it be a civil war later? Very possibly, especially if Netanyahu doesn't have a big war to distract everyone like the war on Iran.

50:03And should we condemn the ultra-Orthodox? Who are the good guys and who are the bad guys here? You got a secular Israeli in Tel Aviv who loves to go hang out in Berlin and have vacations in Bali or wherever they go. And they're totally secular, but they participate in the Israeli military. They help find targets in Gaza. One of them just told this group breaking the silence that they asked their commanding officer for a target and they were told there are 2 million targets, just find anything you want. So they go and do that. And they believe in political segregation, that the Palestinians have to be segregated from them behind walls so they can have their European lifestyle and their raves inside their little, what former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak called their villa in the jungle.

50:55And then you have the ultra-Orthodox. What do they want? They want religious segregation in a very traditional Jewish way. They want to live a kind of medieval Jewish lifestyle, but they have no interest in Palestinians. They don't care. As long as they're left alone, the Palestinians are immaterial to them. They don't want to kill them, but they don't see them as particularly like, they're indifferent. So who's the bad guy and who's the good guy here? The ultra-Orthodox are saying killing is against the Torah and they are going to be forced into the world's biggest, most ruthless killing machine if these bills go forward.

51:37That's Zionism. And so we're moving towards the terminal stage of Zionism in our lives. And it's creating crisis here and it's creating crisis there. And we don't know where it ends. That's within Israel. And yet all of a sudden, despite, I've lost track of how many fronts Israel is fighting on. According to Netanyahu, it's eight. We are the eighth front in the United States. He said that at a meeting with US influencers who seem to be on Israel's payroll. I don't even know what that means. You mean like attacking you? Well, sure, sure. I am a target in his war. You are the top target probably.

52:22and it's a propaganda war. Yeah. It could turn into something else if the situation grows more dire for Israel. But right now it's an information war. And it's a legal war. And it's a political war. Right. So if some kind of economic collapse were imminent, what would the signs be? Well, the behavior of the central banks that control money supply might be a good clue. So let's take a look at the world's largest economy. That would be China. China imported nearly as much gold in the first half of 2026 as it did during all of 2025. Why? Well, because, of course, they're hedging against coming instability.

53:03But it's not just China that's doing this, buying up more gold. Central banks around the world are doing the same. They're dumping U.S. treasuries and buying gold. And they're doing it at historic rates. Huh, that's worth paying attention to. So how are you going to prepare for what's coming? Are you ready? We'll tell you what we do, what we have done, and will continue to do. We buy gold, actual gold, not abstract gold, but gold you can hold. Gold has always been a store of value and a safe haven investment for all of history. And more than that, it's turned out to be a great investment. It's outperformed the S &P 500 over the last 25 years, since 9-11.

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54:27So that's a lot for any country of 9 million people to undertake simultaneously. It's also obviously disgusting, but it's just, it's a lot of stuff. It's expensive. It's a lot of things to pay attention to simultaneously. But at the same time, and this does amaze me, Israel seems to be like everywhere. all over Latin America, Africa, Somaliland, Argentina, Venezuela, Colombia. All of a sudden, there are Israel-related stories popping up in all these countries around the world. And you're like, wait a second. First of all, how do you have time to do that? Second, what are you doing? And third, what is the point of all that?

55:04What are we watching? Yeah. I mean, these are... Am I imagining this? Trump has won every election in Latin America over the last two years. I mean, these are candidates that Trump incorporated controls. Most recently, I think it's Abelardo de la Espriella in Colombia. And in one of the first speeches, he basically pledged loyalty. After he won, Abelardo, who was the former lawyer for the cartels, pledged loyalty to Israel. Why Israel? What does Colombia have to do with Israel? um evo i think it was evo morales the former president of bolivia he called colombia the israel of latin america um they were getting a lot of israeli weapons training i mean going back to um 1984 this will help explain some things about this um very weird phenomenon but the congress passes the boland amendment during the height of the contra war um that requires that required Reagan or any executive to sign off on covert action.

56:08Great piece of legislation. Remember when Congress used to do intelligence reform? That was the last real attempt was the Bolan Amendment. Yeah. So Ephraim Rios Montt was a US-backed dictator who was also close to the Christian right and Christian Zionists like Pat Robertson. He was the first evangelical president. and Israel comes in and says, we will supply him. We'll give his soldiers Uzis to basically mow down the Mayans and what's left of the Guatemalan insurgency and destroy entire villages and we will train them. Rios Montt said that our model for the Guatemalan soldier is the Israeli commando and Reagan won't have to sign off on anything and we will show how valuable we are as a US ally.

56:56So Israel provided them with the computer they used and the surveillance systems to round up activists who opposed his rule. And from there, you know, it was the beginning of a beautiful friendship with these pro-US governments that were seeking to destroy their supposedly leftist opposition. But it's like across the board, like Ecuador, they have a billionaire president who was born in Miami, Danielle Noboa. And I saw a report a few weeks ago that in Ecuadorian schools, they're now going to teach Holocaust education. And there's nothing wrong with learning about the history of Jewish genocide or the genocide of others in World War II, but it just seems a little bit on the nose.

57:43And he's, of course, extremely pro-Israel as all of these leaders are. Juan Orlando Hernandez was collaborating with Israel as he was, in his words, shoving cocaine up the Yankees' noses, which led to him being jailed in a federal prison in Miami along with his brother, who was marking bags of cocaine to the US with his initials, Tony Hernandez. Trump pardons Juan Orlando Hernandez because they needed to legitimize his national party so they could win another election in Honduras. What happened in Venezuela? As soon as Delce Rodriguez, who Trump says, we'll do whatever we want, comes into power following the violent abduction of Nicolas Maduro and Celia Flores, his first lady, there's an earthquake, a very fortuitous earthquake, which brings in, who else?

58:42Israeli rescuers. I mean, they'll rescue people all around the world, except in the Gaza Strip, where they have destroyed like 80 % of homes. And they come in, I don't know how many people they rescued, but the next thing you know, Delce Rodriguez is meeting in Miraflora's palace with Israeli military officials. And Israel's relationship with Venezuela is then normalized. In 2009, Hugo Chavez, the nationalist leader of Venezuela, whose first priority was sovereignty, kicked out the Israeli ambassador in protest of Israel's assault on the Gaza Strip that year. And actually the first time I ever saw Delcey Rodriguez speak, she was wearing a keffiyeh to show her solidarity with Palestinians.

59:26Next thing you know, the US is in charge and Israel's on the ground. Why would that be a priority for anybody? Like, who cares what Venezuela's posture toward Israel is? Yeah. Yeah. Why would Maduro's son have to go do a very public meeting at a pro-Israel synagogue in Caracas. Actually? Yeah. We never saw that before. But it seems totally irrelevant. I mean, it's across the world. It has no historic relationship. Well, nobody has a historic relationship with Israel. It's been around since 1948. Like this whole thing has no grounding in like a practical understanding of the world. Like what is, I'm just confused.

1:00:04I mean, here's one like concrete thing Venezuela did that Israel got out of this. Venezuela removed itself from the International Criminal Court, a country whose diplomatic corps, ever since Hugo Chavez came into power in 1998, has emphasized the importance of international law and the Geneva Conventions to guarantee their sovereignty because they've been under constant attack from the US. So they remove themselves as a signer of the Rome statute and leave the ICC. Because what did the ICC do? They indicted Benjamin Netanyahu for war crimes in Gaza. And Netanyahu essentially boasted that this was being done on behalf of him by Marco Rubio when Marco Rubio sanctioned the ICC, like days before Venezuela did that.

1:01:00What is another thing Israel gains out of Venezuela? uh the iran war is is is failing it has failed and one of the biggest political problems for trump is the price of oil and u.s strategic oil reserves strategic petroleum reserves the spr is that has been at a lower point than 19 it was since 1983 and And so Venezuela has the largest oil reserves in the world. The U.S. just signed a deal at gunpoint with Delcy Rodriguez to exploit one-fifth of Venezuela's oil reserves. And this means that the oil will be instantly transferred or transferred as soon as possible in violation of the Venezuelan constitution with no guarantee of any return to Venezuela to the U.S.

1:01:55strategic petroleum reserve. And then it will fuel the drive for World War III in a war for Israel. So there are many things Israel can extract from this relationship. I just don't understand why, you know, whatever you think of what the Trump administration did in Venezuela. And, you know, it's kind of hard to defend, impossible to defend, really. But at least you thought, well, maybe it was for the United States. But it seems like the first thing they did when they arrested the leader of the country was to force the new leaders to make nice with Israel. Why is that the number one priority of our State Department?

1:02:39The same reason the U.S. went to war on Iran. I mean, this is an administration that's acting on Israel's behalf. It's a slave to Israel. Absolutely. I mean, in many cases, personnel is policy. So look at the kind of people in the administration. Susie Wiles, she controls everything the president sees and hears. And you have to get through her to meet with the president, which is why when you saw the photos of the administration when they launched the war on Iran on February 28th, there was Team A in Mar-a-Lago. And what was it? Susie Wiles, Marco Rubio, John Ratcliffe, and Trump. And then there was team B who was on the outside, Joe Kent, Tulsi Gabbard, JD Vance, the so-called restrainers.

1:03:31Susie Wiles wasn't letting them in the room and she never was. What was Susie Wiles doing before she was in the Trump administration? Well, she was a major lobbyist, but she also was working for Netanyahu. And no one knew that when she came in. It was subsequently reported by the Washington Post that when Netanyahu was in a little bit of political hot water and was campaigning for re-election, he called in these super Trump consultants, including Susie Wiles, to help him stage Trump-style rallies. So she literally worked for Netanyahu. um you know it just goes down the line like harmeet dylan she's the head of the office of civil rights in the doj which you know really increasingly looks like the office of israeli rights her law firm is currently she she she i think she put her brother in charge of it she's not technically in charge of it's called dylan law they um are representing a federally registered Israeli foreign agent called Show Faith by Works.

1:04:30They're listed on the FARA form. Show Faith by Works, their job is to basically propagandize evangelicals for Israel, geofence their churches and distribute Israeli propaganda. I got leaked audio from an AIPAC congressional meeting. It was a private off the record event. And someone who identified themselves as a 40 year veteran of AIPAC said, you know, the importance of our lobbying is we go down to congressional districts and recruit people right when they come into Congress. One of them was John Ratcliffe. He said, we went down to Dallas. We heard he was running. He was really good. We've loved working with him ever since then.

1:05:11Marco Rubio is another one. And Mike Waltz is another one. These are our lifelines inside the administration, he said. And of course, Marco Rubio's career has been sponsored heavily or advanced by Paul Singer's donations, Paul Singer being a major Israel first billionaire. So you look at the personnel in there and look at what happened to anyone who tried to resist their agenda, which was essentially Netanyahu and Israel's agenda. They're not in there anymore. They're like sitting at this, they come by this desk and talk to you. Look at what happened to you. So it just simply follows that Israel will get more or less what it wants.

1:05:52What is the big picture goal? Because I think any rational person assessing the facts as we find them right now in mid-September, 2026, sees the US and the UK really is the last allies that Israel has in the world. And the populations of, but I'll speak for my country, the population here is becoming aware of the cost, excuse me, of this relationship and aware of the genocide in Gaza, et cetera, et cetera. Like people are mad at Israel. It's just obvious and young people especially. Yeah. So like if you're Israel, you're not stupid. You know that this relationship is going to change, not to your benefit.

1:06:38What's your plan? What's their plan? What are they doing right now? you mentioned the uk being a key israeli ally i just wanted to um mention something that recently happened andy burnham comes in and he recognizes where public opinion is in the uk on the israel question so he announces some form of uh sanctions or or the like that they're not going to buy products from the occupied territories yeah in support of a two-state solution which is by this point dead. It was a symbolic move. Israel went bonkers. They shut down Heathrow Airport in two hours and 35 minutes. Well, there you go. So hours after his announcement, Heathrow Airport's air traffic control systems had a glitch.

1:07:23Yeah. Coincidence? Was it? I don't know. Just kind of odd. I had family members stuck in the airport that day, so a couple of them. So I don't know. Was there any foreign software at work in that airport? you know i don't think the uk is going to come out and say we point the finger at israel and escalate the situation i mean they essentially israel essentially toppled the leader of the labor party uh prior to kira starmer they have a lot of power in the uk uh what are they doing in the uk they're destroying they're destroying whatever's left of democracy there through the courts in order to prosecute uh activists from this group palestine action yeah which is and Correction, terrorists.

1:08:08Terrorists. They're now defined as terrorists by the Trump administration because Israel told them to define these British activists as terrorists almost on the same day that Trump lifted sanctions on the leadership of Al-Qaeda in Syria, which we can talk about in a second. So what they're doing in the UK is they're having these trials of these activists who have removed or stopped production of Israeli weapons at four state weapons facilities owned by Israel, Elbit Systems, in the UK. And what they do is they'll come in, they do direct action where they'll smash up the clean room. They will vandalize some things.

1:08:47They try to avoid harming people. and then they go to court, they go on trial and they have been exonerated or let out in case after case by juries of their peers because the juries sympathize with the argument that what these activists are doing is actually saving lives as Israel's committing genocide in Gaza and that the harm that they prevent is worse than the harm that they caused. And so this has become a real threat to the, not just the British system, but the Israeli project of essentially occupying Britain and its war machine as well. So now what's happening in these trials is the jury won't be told that they're terrorism trials.

1:09:29They think that they're convicting them or acquitting them on criminal charges. And then the judge applies the terrorism charges after. The media is not allowed to know about that either. The media in Britain is not allowed to report on these trials. So we've been reporting on them at the gray zone because we're American. And one of the barristers who's defended Palestine action has himself faced contempt of court charges because his defense was too effective. He was defending his clients too effectively. So they want to bring that system here. They want to, Israel needs to de-democratize Western societies in order to maintain control because the population is turning against them.

1:10:12They need to brainwash youth and bring like PragerU curriculum into state education systems. They basically need to jail journalists in our country who have interfered with their propaganda objectives like me, and they will activate all their assets to do so. But what they ultimately want, and it sounds kind of extreme, but this is what I've had to conclude, they want global control. as the world forms into a more multipolar world and U.S. empire seems to be receding somewhat, Israel is still determined to gain control at the heart of Eurasia. And that's where Iran is situated. So imagine if they had achieved regime change in Iran.

1:11:05There is a group associated with, I'm going to forget the acronym for it, but it's like the lobbying group for Reza Pallavi, the Potomac, Maryland-based self-proclaimed crown prince. And they put forward a white paper for like the day after in Iran. And the white paper, it said basically the Mossad will come in and help us purge the Islamic Republic, will carry out a mass purge. Israel will be assisting us in renewing the economy. And they're basically putting Israel at the center of everything in an Iran post-Islamic Republic, post-Ayatollah. So Israel gets control of this strategically located country that represents a 3 ,000-year-old civilization with control over the waterway through which 20 % of the world's liquid natural gas passes.

1:11:56What do Russia and China do then? Certainly, Russia would have to deal with Israel, and China probably would as well. And then Israel has the United States. It's pretty much under its thumb through Trump or some democratic tool like Joe Biden was. And they have Russia and China being forced to deal with them directly as they exist at the heart of this country that's being plundered as Venezuela is. What they're doing in Latin America, I mean, that's what they would do in Iran. So that's the objective. But do they have a plan? Did they have a plan? Did Netanyahu actually have a plan? No. He marched right into the White House.

1:12:33Remember when he came in February? February 3rd. Yeah. I remember I was trying to get across town and they were shutting down traffic. It was like a presidential style visit. There were helicopters everywhere. We knew what he was up to, but we found out the details later. He marched into, or maybe you already knew them. He marched into the situation room, sat at the head of the table. Trump sat to the side, which doesn't seem very Trumpian to me. And David Barnea, the Mossad director at the time, was brought in on a big screen. He's now the head of a U.S. weapons company, which is just absolutely wild.

1:13:09Yes. He's in the private sector now. Private sector. And they give Trump his marching orders. You are going to bomb this meeting of the Ayatollah and his advisors in Tehran on February 28th. We know it's taking place. And Trump just said, okay, all right, boss, I'll do it. And no one was willing to stand up to Trump. He was surrounded by a bunch of yes men. And that was the plan. And Netanyahu said, look what happened. I don't know if he said this, but I know what Trump was thinking was, look what we just did in Venezuela. We're going to get an Iranian Delce Rodriguez. Maybe it'll be Reza Pahlavi.

1:13:47And it'll happen in four days. And he was also, he believed his own bullshit about the protests in January, which I can talk about, which were absolutely like a militarized operation, instrumentalized by foreign intelligence services, including Israel and the U.S. Very violent. But he believed that the Iranian people are going to come out into the streets and just sweep away this regime. And the opposite has happened. So Israel actually had no plan except to get Trump in the war to get the U.S. in a state of constant escalation with Iran for as long as possible. That was their only plan. And look at the result.

1:14:26It has been disastrous for the U.S. economy. As you've been saying week after week, it's been disastrous for Trump politically. He's at historically low approval ratings. There was a poll out today I saw that showed that most people who believe that the war is affecting their pocketbook interests are going to vote Democrat, 64%. Of course. And the deficit is 40 trillion. This has a lot to do with the war. The war is going to cost over a trillion dollars There's, once you factor in, in 10 years, inflation, the cost of paying veterans and the rising cost of weapons and so forth, the US is expending munitions to the point where it's having to reposition THAAD batteries and PAC-3s from other supposedly more strategically significant locations.

1:15:15So it's been a blow to US empire. The US has a maritime power is being kind of exposed as a paper tiger. Like its sailors can't reach land until they go to Thailand. as they've been having food rationed because they were being supplied by bases that were put out of service by Iranian missiles. So it's been a total disaster because Trump followed Netanyahu's marching orders. And that was the only plan. There's no real long-term plan. No, he's an instinct player, Netanyahu is, obviously. And his instinct is aggression and expansion. And it's worked incredibly well. I don't think it'll end well. for him.

1:15:57But it doesn't answer the question. Everything you said is consistent with what I know to be true. I think that's exactly what happened. But it doesn't answer the question why Trump, who intensely dislikes Netanyahu, as everybody does, why would he sit in the subordinate position in the situation room? Why would he take orders from Netanyahu? He took orders from him before the 12-day war. Netanyahu said we're doing this and Trump followed him. That's a fact, I'm not guessing. And Rubio confirmed that in his meeting with the Gang of Eight when he came out. That's right. He said, we did this because Israel was going in and we couldn't just like leave them alone.

1:16:33Yeah, but I mean, last summer, even the same thing. And yeah, Bibi called him in the sit room, said we're doing it this week. And the rest is sad history. But the point is, Trump went along with the leader of a country of 9 million people who he dislikes personally and who was under indictment in his own country. So that's not a picture of power, at least conventional power. Why would you listen to a guy like that? Why would you follow a guy like that to your own political death? What am I missing? Really? You think that's what it is? I mean, that's one big factor. And you would, I mean, Miriam Adelson is someone who Trump has said has visited him more along with her late husband Sheldon in the White House than anyone.

1:17:16And when he was speaking at the Knesset, he said, well, I don't know if she really cares about America. Israel's her cause, but she's an important person. I mean, he openly said that. He's like very important. Who was, I mean, you were at the inauguration. Who had the best seat in the house? Better than any member of Congress or incoming secretary. Who breezed right through the magnetometer without being checked at the church service that morning with Trump. I mean, I was there. She walked right past me and everyone else standing in line, blew right through without a security check. She's not even an American.

1:17:46She's an Israeli warlord, essentially. Yeah, and I was born here and she marched right past me and Charlie Kirk was standing right there. And it was like, this is not a good sign at all. I remember watching it and I was thinking, we're going to have a war with Iran. Just looking at her right behind Trump. I was like, that's what's going to happen. And we're talking about what? $300 million of donations to Trump over the years or to his PACs as well. But he got elected. That's where the, of course, I completely agree with you. And I should say you're from Washington as I am too. so we've spent our lives watching this.

1:18:21So you're right. But by this point, Trump has been reelected. He wanted to get reelected to be vindicated. They called him dead in the water. They called him a criminal. They called him all these things and he gets reelected president. So it's like he doesn't need the donors anymore for the Republican Party, but he doesn't care about the Republican Party. So he's basically throwing away his entire legacy, his family's future. All of this is being destroyed because he's following Israel So why is he doing that? Well, let me just make another, just tack on a few things to the point I made before and then move on to another more psychological motive that a theory about his psychological motives.

1:19:05So a week, about a week after Charlie Kirk was assassinated, his podcast, which was being broadcast on Salem Media, was effectively taken over by a federally registered Israeli foreign agent, which was being - What? Yeah. It's called Clock Tower X, which is operating this gigantic, I don't want to say multi-million, it's like 100 million, 50 million. It's one of the biggest foreign lobbying contracts ever. It's operating it on behalf of the Israeli foreign ministry. It's being run by Brad Parscale, who was Trump's chief of staff in 2020. Remember he got Baker acted, like his house was raided and they on video on video it's a very ugly scene he was fired um i'm actually surprised they fired him given who else they don't fire but he uh you know and he had created like trump's whole facebook strategy like the including like the seemingly like bots and probably he was a talented guy israel hires him plucks him out of the wilderness and he takes over Salem Media, which is one of the largest pro-MAGA, pro-Republican, conservative media platforms.

1:20:19They had Charlie Kirk's podcast, but they have Scott Jennings' podcast, who's being talked about as possibly the next White House press secretary. All these people are kind of involved with the Israeli foreign ministry now. And if you don't like that, then you can leave, but none of them are leaving. And who got a 30 % stake in Salem Media? uh laura trump trump's daughter-in-law and i believe don jr so they are seemingly involved somehow in this contract and then they also have um themselves are doing business with israeli drone companies uh which are getting contracts also to do uh anti-drone technology in iran there's all kinds of incentivization to maintain this relationship but the break breaking away from the relationship and we were just talking about what's happened what happened in the uk at heathrow the day that andy burnham did a symbolic what happened in spain remind me well oh the seyuta the yeah exactly they get invaded you know give the middle finger to israel the next thing you know morocco is sending tens of thousands of people into your country yep yep and like every pro-israel influencer and israeli official down to itamar ben gvir was like, aha, this is what you get.

1:21:39F around and find out. So, you know, not doing, not following the program laid out to you by Benjamin Netanyahu on February 3rd is also de-incentivized. Yes. And this really needs to be - De-incentivized. That's a soft way of putting it. Yeah, you're terrified. So back in, what was it, 2020, Mike Pompeo and Benjamin Netanyahu convinced Trump to assassinate the second most powerful official in Iran, who's the head of the Quds Force for the IRGC, Qasem Soleimani. Only one person in mainstream media criticized that decision. I'm not bragging. It's the only thing I'll brag about. I was that guy, and I took a huge amount of crap for it.

1:22:21I remember. But I thought that was the beginning of war with Iran. Seemed obvious to me. And it was also the beginning of something else, where you bring the US and Iran into a cycle of escalation. And that's what Netanyahu needed to get. He needed Trump to begin to escalate with Iran and that he wanted Iran to retaliate. The Iranian retaliation for Soleimani's killing in Iraq as he was on his way to a peace conference was pathetic. And everyone I interviewed in the Iranian establishment believes that today, if they had hammered U.S. bases the way they're doing now, that this war wouldn't have happened, but that they allowed themselves to be set on this course to war.

1:23:01But what happened with Trump was he also began to be kind of a psychological prisoner of the retaliation. Right. And the Israelis started to exploit his worst fear. How is assassination different from murder? So, yeah, I didn't even mention assassination, but you know where I'm going. Assassination is murder. And the distinction that we make between the legitimate use of force by the state and homicide is either imminent self-defense. Someone's coming at you and you have to kill the person to protect your life or the lives of others. Or a process sanctioned by the state called a trial. Yeah. So any killing outside of those two is murder, right?

1:23:43Yeah. I thought that was, aren't those the definitions or no? I would think so. but even if you believe assassination is legitimate you have to think about the consequences of a figure like Soleimani being taken out and how did how do Iranians regard him millions of Iranians saw him as a hero who prevented ISIS from swamping their country with jihadist fanatics who would come and kill them because they were Shia and he was a direct US ally in the fight against ISIS who is very effective in defeating them. Actually, ISIS attacked Iran's parliament in 2017, killed a number of civilians, and Trump essentially mocked Iran and said, if you support terror, you will get terror in return.

1:24:27So Soleimani was fighting that whole project. He was, and again, he was a national hero. Many Iranians wanted revenge on Trump for that. The Iranian establishment does not have a policy of assassinating because they did not want an escalation. They wanted negotiation. But all of these plots start getting rolled out through the FBI that always seem to involve confidential human sources and informants who are pushing these mentally vulnerable characters. One in particular involved Asif Mershant, who was a Pakistani national who had traveled from Iran. He was led into the U.S. despite having been flagged on a terror watch list.

1:25:08And apparently all of the intel that got to the FBI about Mershant was coming from Israel. What happens as soon as Mershant comes into the U.S.? He's seeking some sort of business deal or something. they throw a confidential human source the fbi at him who starts pushing him to enact a plot to assassinate trump he seems to be going along with it in his his defense in court was like i felt like i was a doomed man and there was nothing i could do he had a very weird trial um but the plot was to have a mob uh at a like a group of people create a distraction at a trump rally and then to have a sniper exploit the distraction to target Trump.

1:25:57Butler happens soon after. Butler PA. Thomas Matthew Crooks, who's sort of one of these lone wolf guys who, I mean, you exposed that he did have a social media footprint, but they were just like, he's seemingly apolitical. Quite a large social media footprint, which he was clearly in contact with people from foreign countries whose identities we don't know. It didn't seem like there wasn't anything you could find or any investigators could find that connected him to Iran. Oh, I don't think he had any connection to Iran. Right. Well, the day after the Butler PA plot misses Trump's ear by a millimeter, the FBI rushes down to Houston, I think it was Houston, where Mershant was being held in prison.

1:26:39He had just been arrested. And they interrogate him about Butler. And then Mike waltz who is i think he was in congress at the time one of the lifelines of apac one of israel's greatest allies in congress he starts uh using the opportunity to try to point the finger at iran for butler uh through the butler investigation investigative commission war israel initiates war in june on iran it's unclear what the u.s is going to do the war is not going very well for Israel. I think they underestimated Iran's capacity to hit back and to recover after its leadership was assassinated. And Netanyahu has a desperate interview on Fox News with Brett Baer, where he's trying to get the US into the war.

1:27:27And he said, Iran is responsible for Butler. He said, Iran is responsible for two assassination attempts on Trump. He's referring to Butler and the Mar-a-Lago attempt by Ryan Roth, which I can talk about in a second. But he He understands that's the way into Trump's head is - He's such a liar. And Brett Baier is astonished. He said, what are you talking about? Do you have intelligence on that? And Netanyahu said, yeah, through proxies. But it's just his own BS. And he's trying to push Trump to get into the war by saying, Iran's trying to kill you. You have to take them out. So after Trump flash forward, what, eight months, Trump carries out Netanyahu's wish to assassinate Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and his staff and his children and his grandchildren.

1:28:17And Trump comes out and said, I got him before he got me. So clearly this psychological pressure and a lot of these very dubious assassination plots were affecting the way he was thinking. He actually, during the 2024 campaign, he went on a decoy flight because the FBI told him that IRGC agents were in the country with man pads and he went on Steve Whitcoff's jet and left the rest of his staff to go on Trump Force One. So I was in Iran to see this funeral and I was stunned by the amount of anger there. This is after the signing of the MOU. The anger ended the MOU, like along with Trump violating eight of its terms.

1:29:03But people were in the streets crying. They were furious. They considered Soleimani a hero, but killing Khamenei was like another level. And what they would say is, we considered him to be a father, a teacher, a guide. How could you do this? He was 87 years old. And also you slaughtered our children in Minab. You slaughtered 130 school children on the same day you killed him. We're not gonna take this. We're a strong nation and we want retaliation. And that means that Trump has to be targeted. And people were holding signs that said, kill Trump. A woman, one woman held up a gold chain and said to me, you know, we're basically collecting a thousand chains for the person who will exact just who will get justice for what was done to Khamenei, like a bounty.

1:29:52So I went, I interviewed the mayor of Tehran, who had run for president, is in the more conservative camp, a critic of the MOU, like a very big critic of the current reformist leadership that wanted a deal. His name is Ali Reza Zakhani. And I asked him, like, is this the policy now? Like, what do you think of all these calls to target Trump and Netanyahu in the streets from people who are furious about this? and he i should also mention he was a friend of soleimani's and of hassan ruhani who died a mysterious death the former president who probably should have who could have been the next ayatollah and he said to me um you know we have to respect their call for sacred justice um if we support the revolution and you know he goes on but justice could be achieved by closing the strait of hormuz justice could, like revenge could be achieved by removing US bases from the region.

1:30:52Revenge could be achieved through actually rolling back the empire that has been suffocating us. And that's kind of the response of the Iranian establishment. They do not want to target Trump. They don't see any point in it. I also interviewed an Iranian academic who understands her society much better than me. And she reinforced that point and said, Trump is just a figurehead. It wouldn't make any sense anyway. Abbas Aragchi, the current foreign minister, said Trump is doing a good enough job of destroying his own career in society. Why would we want him dead? And I believe that that's the case.

1:31:33So right after that funeral took place, This is July of this year. NATO happens in Ankara. And the Israelis feed intelligence to the Secret Service that Trump is going to be, they're IRGC assassins with, again, with man pads, remember that, who are in the country and he can be targeted. and according to many reports in mainstream media, Trump was hidden in a food cart. It's like a scene out of a Leslie Nielsen comedy from the 90s. He's hidden in a food cart and taken out of Air Force One and put on another decoy flight. So the Israelis manipulated Trump into this epic humiliation of hiding in a food court as they had manipulated him into war by exploiting his greatest psychological vulnerability, which is his fear of mortality and his very legitimate fear for the safety of his family.

1:32:36How is this resolved, do you think, the war against Iran? It's going to be a protracted war. And I think it could escalate right before the midterms. I saw a report about Trump appointing two unnamed advisors. It's an Axios today, which is never to be trusted, but it's an important indication of what Trump administration's thinking because it's basically like a bulletin board for them. Two U.S. officials are putting forward a post-election plan for the Middle East. Well, they have no plan, and it's going to fail, and the war will likely continue as a protracted war. There are many dangers in that, as Joe Kent has pointed out, former director of counterterrorism center at DNI, who is now considered an enemy of this administration because he told the truth and tried to prevent this war.

1:33:38He's one of Trump's only real friends in the entire administration. I would agree. Just to say he told the truth in a way that Trump really needed to hear. It was almost nobody else would. The fact that they consider Joe Kenan an enemy says everything about that. Well, he believed in America first. Yes, sincerely. So many others who've held on seem to just believe in Trump Incorporated. Yeah. He is warning of a nuclear strike. Yes. I think that's the most dire scenario. I don't think a US ground invasion is very likely. Iran's economy is suffering. Like when I talk to people I know there who are just like regular middle-class people They are suffering inflation, but they're not going to head out into the streets anytime soon and seek to overthrow their government.

1:34:27There is a real coming together that I saw in Iran. I was walking through the Tajrish market in northern Tehran. I was just wanting to get some souvenirs on my way out. and you know that's an area where the opposition is to the islamic republic is very strong where wealthier secular iranians live and you know talking to shop owners and people around there you see so many women without what not wearing hijab around there yeah um and you go into the malls at night or the hotels women are like they're dressed like they're going to a club in the united states just to give you an idea of the you know the the vibe there the atmosphere and people were just, when I said I'm from the US, they're never furious with me.

1:35:13They just wanted me to know how furious they were about the murder of the girls and the kids in Minab. And there's a rally around the flag effect. So they're willing to take economic pain. The question is, are we as Americans willing to take so much economic pain? Like gas prices went up like 20 cents this week per gallon. Are we willing to take that for Israel? Are we willing to take more dead American soldiers? for Israel, who are like black and brown kids who are just trying to advance in life and maybe save up money through the military, who are being wasted at these bases that no Americans even knew existed?

1:35:50Are we willing? I don't think so. So what I can say is this war is just opening up contradictions that didn't exist before between the American public and the Israeli agenda, and Trump has been caught in between, and he's siding with a foreign country. Except the pain hasn't really started. And it was yesterday, the diesel fuel, on which the entire economy runs, hit 10 bucks in California, a gallon. Yep. That's the, what? The Zionist price hike. Yes, it's not even, I mean, our fuel pumps aren't even designed to register$10, right? I mean, they're going to have to change the pump. So that, you can imagine this becoming not just a squeeze or a downturn, but a catastrophe where people in the United States get poor and people in other countries starve.

1:36:44And like the cost is really high if the Strait remains closed and if the Red Sea remains closed because of Yemen. It's an epic, epic catastrophe. I agree with Robert Kagan who said that this is a greater catastrophe for the U.S. than Vietnam. He's coming at it from a different angle than me. Not even close, yeah. And it's an economic catastrophe because it threatens the dollar as the global reserve currency. The$40 trillion deficit is costing the U.S. the confidence of investors permanently. So that's what they're risking here. And this war is a major factor in that. How long? So this is like another way to gauge what's actually happening.

1:37:27So Trump does follow commodities prices. Get them on your phone. and he is worried about it. He's absolutely worried about fuel prices, for example, and not just fuel, food. Those prices go up. He really feels that. The only way out is to constrain Israel. So it's a binary. It's a choice. It's like disaster at home or loyalty to Israel. And he's, at least as of right now, he's choosing loyalty to Israel. So like, what could possibly explain that behavior? I just think it's the weirdest thing I've ever seen. And like, nobody's being held accountable in the administration. Pete Hegseth, he's not being held accountable.

1:38:08He's hiring propagandists as secret special employees. They just put Erica Kirk, essentially, they just made Erica Kirk essentially a Pentagon propagandist too. She was appointed to the board of the Air Force Academy. It's an absolute joke what they're doing. There's no sense from Trump that anything that has happened has, that anything hasn't gone according to plan. He keeps saying the Iranian military is destroyed. The Iranian Navy is destroyed. The U.S. controls the Strait of Hormuz. Meanwhile, Ansar Allah, the Houthis, are advancing and taking unprecedented amounts of territory from the fake Yemeni government, which is based in a hotel room in Riyadh.

1:39:01They could close the Bab al-Mandeb, which is another extremely strategic waterway. What would that do to the US economy? There are more cards that Iran can lay down on the table if Trump doesn't start to pull back and find a way out of this. I think he probably does want to find a way out of it. He just doesn't know how. Well, he can't do the one thing that's necessary, which is to constrain Israel. And I just don't understand why. I mean, no matter how much money they promise you or radio shows they sponsor or whatever they're doing, in the end, you're looking at like becoming the most unpopular president in the history of our country.

1:39:37Yeah, and I mean, the midterm strategy is all about getting out the base. It's, you know, Trump won because he went beyond his base and people - People who would not have even voted decided to vote for Trump in 2024. His base is dwindling. And part of this also is weaponizing the government to target dissenters and calling everyone to the left of Barry Goldwater in 1964, a communist. The insane anti-Muslim hysteria that they're trying to whip up, exploiting the 25th anniversary of 9-11. a socialist and accusing me of being too pro-Muslim, then you know things have gone completely crazy. But that's all they have left is a very dwindling cult-like base that largely consists of, you know, Fox News boomers.

1:40:31Is Matt about Sharia law? I know they don't like Sharia law because it prohibits usury, so I get it, okay? But just kidding, sort of. Sorry, it does. But no, but the point is, whatever, I'm not defending Sharia law. Of course, I'm an Episcopalian. However, I don't remember the last time I was frustrated by Sharia law. It's not like an issue in this country. Prices are an issue. Lack of opportunity is an issue. Drugs are a massive issue. SSRIs that are making everyone crazy and causing mass shootings. There are a lot of issues, right? But Sharia law, they're running on Sharia law? Who thought this up?

1:41:06That's their strategy against Abdul Syed. You saw Jesse Waters ask him about that. in their... That's the candidate in Michigan I supposedly endorsed. That you supposedly I think like some Manhattan Institute front group said you officially endorsed him. Which is absurd. I don't know anything about him. Did you? Of course not. I don't endorse anybody. I'm a podcaster but moreover I just know the guy he's running against who's a loathsome person who is exactly Mike Rogers is exactly the Republican can you run if you want to lose? And they ran him before and he lost. Because no normal person would ever vote for Mike Rogers.

1:41:45He is the embodiment of everything that is ugly, immoral, and stupid about the national security state. He is a tool of repression. I mean, he's totally for warrantless spying and searches and like everything that conservatives should be against. Mike Rogers is not a conservative, to put it mildly. So I said, this is craziness. You're Mike Rogers? No way. and they're like, well, you endorse the Muslim guy. Okay. He's like the distillation of everything disgusting about the neocons. Actually, actually, craven, stupid, like, but mostly just doesn't care about the United States and what's happening here.

1:42:27People will say, oh, well, Max Blumenthal, he's a leftist. If we Google him, it says far left. So fine. It's not about me or what I think about this race. It's about what Michiganders think. and their economy is linked to Canada. Trump kind of screwed Mike Rogers with initiating a trade war with Canada. I mean, so much of Michigan's exports depend on Canada. Cars are being assembled, like they're getting parts from there. So, I mean, there are all of these kitchen table issues that are being completely ignored for these boutique fanatical causes like creeping Sharia. And there's not, Trump is not setting the stage for a new generation of conservatives to come in enthusiastically and support whatever comes after him.

1:43:18I think what happened at TPUSA is a great kind of metaphor for what's happening overall with MAGA. It's sort of like a microcosm for what's happened to MAGA with the untimely death removal of Charlie Kirk, who was being forced to reckon with the fact that his base, the young conservatives, were done with Israel. They were sick of it. They didn't think it comported with America first. And he was starting to get in tune with them. I see no evidence, just in case anyone's watching this and trying to call me some conspiracy theorist. I see no evidence. I have no evidence that Israel was responsible for his assassination.

1:43:59But what happened was with one bullet, one of the greatest threats to Israel's control over the movement he represented was removed. He was like the only guy with that level of power who could get in the Oval Office with Trump, who was even willing to lobby Trump against joining the Israeli war on Iran back in June 2025. He was the only one who could get in the way and get in tune with the younger conservative base that was filling up TPUSA events. And he's gone. And what replaced him? uh erica kirk who seems to be herself a complete tool for the national security state which is why she's on the board of the air force academy now um whose mother was a defense contractor who helped kind of launch her first foundation and who has allowed israel back into the building remember i mean i broke the story about dr bob bob shillman the largest donor to tp usa who is an Israel first centimillionaire who also sponsored the career of Laura Loomer.

1:45:06He wanted his name on a building at TPUSA's campus in, I think, Scottsdale. And days before Charlie Kirk was assassinated, he denounced him at a private gala, an awards gala in LA and said, I'm not giving him the$2 million. I managed to confirm that and reported it. It's true. I don't know if Bob shillman is funding tp usa but i uncovered a contract what why did he not give the money what was he mad about that's a great question that i haven't explained charlie kirk was opposing the war on iran he was questioning the is he was he was questioning israeli the pro-israel control over himself he went on megan kelly's show in may of 2025 or was it later and complained about Jewish stakeholders and supporters who are becoming hyper-controlling and demanding and telling him that he has to care obsessively about a foreign country.

1:46:06I also exposed how there was a secret influencer summit convened by the pro-Israel billionaire Bill Ackman in the Hamptons in August of 2025. And Charlie Kirk was there and he was screamed at by this Zionist lawyer, Natasha Hausdorff, because he started questioning why he had to center everything around Israel and why he couldn't host you at his youth conferences. That's what they were demanding. No Tucker Carlson on the stage. I spoke at a lot of them and really enjoyed it. Every one, you know. So now it's like TPUSA, if you look at the way it's talked about in the conservative grassroots, like anything or any organic person would talk about it.

1:46:51It's seen as an op or like a psyop. It's regarded with deep suspicion. And I got a leaked contract between them and a group called the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews, which is a very shady organization, which is the second largest non-governmental donor to the government of Israel. Its president is based in Israel And they had pledged$700 ,000 to TPUSA in May of 2025 when Charlie Kirk was alive. And he was, you know, I think what he was saying about Israeli control over the movement, about Iran, was threatening that donation as well as many others. But under Erica Kirk, it's very clear that that donation has continued.

1:47:37and now the TPUSA faith events that you see, including one recently in El Paso, where an Israeli flag was draped on the stage, those are being sponsored in part by the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews. And these events are in churches? They're in churches. And this is just - Why would an American church put, by the way, any national flag in a Christian church? I've never understood that, but certainly a foreign flag in a Christian American church, like why would you do that? Yeah. Well, if you are the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews, you basically want them to be good little foot soldiers for this foreign country's agenda by exploiting their interpretation of the Bible in the end times.

1:48:26the international IFCJ, this group, they have an agenda to plant 3 million flags in churches globally. But also what they do, they're a deeply corrupt organization. Their founder, who's now dead, Yaquil Ekstein, he paid himself$1.2 million. He paid his family hundreds of thousands of dollars. They raise money from poor and working class Christians around the, not just in the U.S., but in Latin America, where like half the population lives below the poverty line. And they give it to Israeli organizations and extremely wealthy pro-Israel American Jewish organizations like the Jewish Federations.

1:49:06They also are giving money to failing media organizations like Ben Shapiro's Daily Wire, which has had to lay off executives. They have dwindling viewership. He's been bleeding YouTube subscribers. and so he has a paid partnership with IFCJ and he hosts interviews with their new president, Yael Eckstein. Who else gets paid partnerships with them? Mark Levin, I think has one. Ted Cruz, and this is wild. This is so wild. Ted Cruz has a paid partnership with IFCJ and - Now? Now, and - He's a senator. He's a sitting senator. Well, seemingly that would be legal because they're technically a non-governmental group, but he's also taking ads.

1:49:52Ads are running on his show on iHeartMedia from the Israeli government itself. And iHeartMedia has an arrangement with Ted Cruz to donate that revenue to a PAC, I think it's called Truth and Courage, associated with Ted Cruz that supports his re-elections. What? So indirectly, it looks like the Israeli government is supporting Ted Cruz, whose office is basically... Wait, is that illegal? Can a U.S. senator take foreign money for a campaign? You would think it would be, but I don't know. Pam Bondi got rid of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Division of the Department of Justice, which is involved in Farrah right when she came in.

1:50:37So there's all kinds of... This is shady. I don't know why it's legal. It was upsetting Charlie Kirk. and now there's no resistance to Israel or these Israeli proxies. Actually, after Charlie Kirk was killed, the IFCJ, International Fellowship of Christians and Jews, which channels money from working-class Christians to powerful Jewish groups and Israel, hosted an event in Jerusalem alongside the Israeli foreign ministry, and they gave an award to Erica Kirk in the name of Charlie Kirk. And they wanted to basically claim Charlie Kirk and bury this whole thing, this whole crisis that he had caused for them.

1:51:22And Erica Kirk started getting criticized when word leaked that she was going to accept the prize because, as we understand, younger conservatives are not very happy about the way Israel is influencing the US government. and so Andrew Colvett who's their PR guy said no this is all fake Erica Kirk had nothing to do with this uh and it was too soon it was too soon for them to embrace Israel but then she goes on a town hall with uh Barry Weiss on CBS like a very eerie and cringeworthy town hall um the whole thing felt staged Barry Weiss tried to humiliate her really I thought there was an element of that Barry Weiss being the self-proclaimed Zionist fanatic who is the editor-in-chief of CBS News installed by Larry Ellison's son, who's himself very connected to Israel.

1:52:16And Erica Kirk said, why would anyone hate Israel? Me and Charlie went there and we walked when we saw the Bible come alive. How could anyone hate that place? Charlie loved Israel. And so she's already trying to reverse his position. She was asked, do you oppose the war on Iran? And she refused to answer the question. So that's gone. But what's also gone is TPUSA's credibility. And since I published that leaked contract and my whole analysis of everything that's happened over the past year at the gray zone, all we've heard from TPUSA is that a statue of Charlie Kirk was defaced at their campus.

1:52:56And that's all they're focusing on. They're not responding to anything. Like Andrew Colvitt didn't respond to me um and you know i hope they produce cctv footage showing that and they catch whoever did that which is disgraceful but they have that that's what they're focused on it's so sad to see and i really have obviously i know all those people and i've tried to get and i like a lot of the most of them really i like most people but um i try to give everyone the benefit of the doubt and they're in a super tough spot and i get it oh yeah one thing i really do resent is the idea that when you bring up stuff like this, some of the people you mentioned will say to you, you know, you're kind of obsessed with the Jews.

1:53:36It's like, well, I'm in no sense obsessed with the Jews, obsessed with my kids and a lot of things, but not the Jews at all. Other people are obsessed with Israel in a way that's really destructive and ugly, I think. But it's not even, quote, Jews who are doing this. It's the Christian Zionists who are doing it. And so it's like not a good faith response. at all. Why is there an Israeli flag in a church at your event? Shame on you. Like, it's super simple. And they'll be like, oh, you hate the Jews. Okay. Nope. Don't hate the Jews. Hate that behavior. Isn't the point of Christian Zionism to make Christians obsessed with the Jews because you place Jews at the center of history and you are dependent on the Jews in order to achieve the rapture?

1:54:23I've read the New Testament a lot, like every day, and I just don't see any of that in the New Testament. So I really don't know what it is exactly. I think there are an awful lot of very nice Christian Zionists who are decent people, and I would give them my routing number and have no fear of theft. However, there is a spell that settles over people, and you wind up with a lot of people, including some I know, who are like, no, no, no. We need to support people who reject Jesus as they kill Christian children because Jesus wants us to. And it's like, can you hear yourself. That is not what the New Testament tells us.

1:54:56I don't know where you're coming up with that. Well, yeah. I mean, that would be one Christian interpretation. I don't think it's a Christian interpretation. Another Christian interpretation comes from Pastor John Hagee, which is that all Jews need to be gathered in the quote-unquote Holy Land, which is greater Israel, in order for the rapture to take place, and that Hitler actually was part of the rapture, because he helped establish Israel through the Jewish genocide in Europe and that Herzl was also part of the rapture and that he brought, he created this concept through which Jews could be gathered.

1:55:35He said that. He calls it Hitler was a hunter and Herzl was a fisher or something like that. He also said that the anti-Christ, I mean, he said so many bizarre things, But the point is, they want Christians to be obsessed with the Jews, and they want them to be phylo-Semitic to the point where I get deeply uncomfortable. Philo-Semitism feels like the other side of the coin. Of course. From anti-Semitism, have you ever heard the ads that IFCJ, this Israeli-based group, which is sponsoring TPUSA, has been running all across the radio in the US? they come on and they say, you can save one Jew for$700.

1:56:22You can rescue a Jew from a life of anti-Semitism by sending them on one of our freedom flights to Israel. Give us your money and save a Jew. And it's like, look at the state of Jewish life in the US. Do we need to be saved? I mean, this is crazy, but they've convinced people that they have to give them their money to do that. I think that's such a smart point. I used to, yeah, I used to hear this from, you know, I knew a couple of black leaders who I didn't agree with on a lot of things, but they always hated white liberals and I did too. We hate them for different reasons, but they dislike white liberals because they would have this sort of fake worshipful attitude like you're holy because you're black.

1:57:02And like, it makes me uncomfortable. Like I'm just a person. It's important to treat people as human beings and not obviously denigrate or dehumanize them. Of course, that's evil. but also not deify them. That's also evil. Like they're people just like us, just like me, just like you. Do you know what I mean? Like there's a very, that is the flip side of hate actually. Yeah, and you are told in Christian Zionist churches and there's actually a film, I'm forgetting the name. It was made by Israeli filmmakers showing a church in Appalachia where the pastor is telling young people that the Jews are better than you.

1:57:42Those are his exact words. It's going viral on X right now, clips of this film. But I've seen that, you know, going to Christians United for Israel conferences and seeing the way they treat me when they see my name is Blumenthal. How do they treat you? They're like, oh, Blumenthal, wow. Well, you know, you're Jewish and we just believe that, you know, you are special and you are blessed. And they want to be Jewish and they blow shofars and they wear talit, you know, the Jewish prayer cloth. And they basically like impersonate Jews. It's kind of like a minstrel show. I had the same reaction like a black person would have to seeing like Al Jolson, you know, in his prime.

1:58:22and and in israel's behind this whole thing apac helped set up that organization uh they are dependent on that organization and they are running a basically philo-semitic minstrel show across the heartland so how does this i mean it doesn't feel like this whole moment can end well like what's your how do you think in the end this is resolved i don't know will this podcast end well like Like what's going to happen to me when I walk out of this barn? I don't know. I mean, by the way, I don't think you've said, I mean, I know you haven't said anything hateful or unfair. You know, you said a lot of things I haven't personally reported, but I think you're a meticulous reporter.

1:59:05I don't think you've been attacked too much for being wrong. I think you've been attacked for having unpopular opinions, which are two different things. Yeah. I mean, how will this all end? From my point of view, I can't. We've got two wars. I'm not Professor Jang. No. I kind of love that guy. Every time we had him on, I must have gotten 100 texts. He's, this is an op. It's a psyop. And it's like, okay. First of all, what isn't? But I'm not even sure. Whatever. But I still think he's interesting. Yeah, I crossed paths with him in LA. So I interviewed him driving around and we were like driving around Skid Row and I was just getting his impressions because I'm in favor of engaging with people with different perspectives.

1:59:46Oh, me too. And I got the same thing, like a hundred people, probably from another perspective, saying he's an op or he's this or that. But don't you think he's interesting as a thinker? It was an interesting conversation. I avoid, people love to hear people make bold predictions and then try to back it up and double down even when they're proven wrong. Of course, oh gosh. And I'm just not gonna do that. I guess I just feel like we've got simultaneous crises accelerating at once. You've got this war in Eastern Europe, you've got this war in the Middle East, and you have the collapse of the two-party system.

2:00:19Well, it hasn't collapsed, but I mean, it's been revealed as fake. And you have very intense discontent at the center of both parties. And then you have this looming financial disaster. That's a lot at once. Yeah. It would seemingly be a major blow to unipolar US power. Yeah. I think, you know, the whole, the whole world of that, the, the, the whole psychological world that the neocons created in the 1990s as reality, like they actually convinced the American political class, a large section of American society and the U.S. corporate media that their worldview was reality. and they got the Iraq war out of it and so on.

2:01:13They did. That reality has completely shattered. And what we're going to see is just an increasing growing clash between our, I don't know what to call them. It would be crude to call them the ruling class, but that's what they are. A 0.1 % of the United States who is increasingly afraid of the rest of the public, knows they no longer have consensus for their agenda. No leadership in either party has real credibility or identity after Trump. We can't even, no one can even visualize who the Democratic candidate might be. That's right. There is a deep-seated fear. Or the Republican candidate, for that matter.

2:02:01There's a deep-seated fear of stochastic violence or terrorism from the 0.1 % carried out by lone wolf individuals like Luigi Mangione against the ultra-rich, as well as direct action protest. and they're classifying everyone as terrorists, which we all saw coming after the Patriot Act was passed. And now it's sort of reaching its culmination. And so what we can say is the U.S. will be less democratic. The U.S. public will be less economically stable. The country will be more politically unstable. and there will be more and more desire for a kind of political insurgency, yet there's no clear leadership.

2:02:52Who are the leaders right now? Who are the figures that people look to? One of them is you. I never would have thought that, although having known you for several years, I'm not entirely surprised that now you can walk through an airport in a liberal city and people are like approving of what you're saying. People look to comedians like Jimmy Dore or Tim Dillon. Comedians have far more credibility in our culture than politicians. And people are looking for real, credible, independent journalism that isn't corporate journalism because they finally understand the point that Michael Parenti made in his book, Inventing Reality, which is one of the most important books about the media, which is that the concept of reality or of objectivity within the media is a ruse or a device which corporate media enforces in order to enforce their own ideology, which is now coming out.

2:03:59What is their own ideology? It's whatever Palantir's ideology is. It's whatever Larry Ellison's ideology is. It's whatever their corporate master's ideology is. And of course, they are militantly Zionist as the U.S. population is turning against a special relationship with Israel. So in that respect, it's a generally good time for media. And the problem is there's no political leadership to guide this anywhere. And it may be off limits in our political system that will be exposed very shortly. Yeah. I mean, there is a red line there somewhere. I mean, it's one thing to talk about what changes we should have on a podcast, say.

2:04:45It's another thing to try to affect those changes in the political arena. And that's when we find out exactly what's up. yeah i mean i agree uh but i think do americans want a violent revolution no no of course they want to see real reforms and we haven't seen them i don't think there have been any important reforms in my entire life never all we've seen we still have carried interest in the tax code nafta and what happened to ross perot when he campaigned against it uh the the um the the the federal communications act the deregulating media um no and real antitrust legislation nothing to bring down prices i mean it's just a constant uh constant conveyor belt of deregulation and uh still the public has nothing to hope for right now so that's so i don't so what can i say It sounds like a black pill, but I think - I just got to say one thing because I can't, and it's about me, so I'm embarrassed.

2:05:50But I just have to say it because I just realized it. So 1996, 30 years ago, I'm working at the Weekly Standard for Bill Kristol with Bob Kagan, David Brooks, and the whole cast of Neocons. I got along with them all, John Puttarts, and I'm 26 or whatever, and Bill Kristol assigns me a piece on Ross Perot. And basically my marching orders are, he's crazy, go prove it. So I write this piece and it was my first cover story and it was called, Is He Nuts? And Bill Kristol called around and got me in every TV show to promote this piece or whatever. And I remember feeling, you know, it was a decently written piece.

2:06:29It was incredibly nasty in the way that young people write really nasty magazine pieces, as I know you know. And it was 25 years before I realized I'd been completely used. It's to my shame. I mean, I agreed to it. I did it. It's all my fault. but I was used to stop Perot, not because he was crazy. Everyone in politics is crazy. He's like one of the least crazy people in politics. He married to the same woman his whole life, right? He wasn't crazy really compared to what? Lindsey Graham, John McCain? No, because he had a take on economics that wasn't populist exactly, but it wasn't neoliberal.

2:07:04And that was the real threat. And they hated him for that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, and he was a extremely wealthy, eccentric character who was comfortable in his rank, who couldn't be pushed around and didn't care. Smart. That's the fear, or the fear of someone like a Roosevelt taking on the economic royalist who comes from American aristocracy. That's right. I think there's a fear of you for the same reason, that you just feel too comfortable in who you are. I don't know if you would ever consider running. I have no interest in running for anything ever, but I certainly feel comfortable in who I am and I'm not intimidated by them.

2:07:39That's for sure. Who are these people? Yeah. That's how I feel. But anyway. Yeah, and I want, you know, that's how I come out of this whole episode of being targeted by Randy Fine and Laura Loomer. It's like, I'm not going to be intimidated. I'm going to escalate journalistic activities. I was actually a couple of weeks ago, not far from here in Vermont at the Bread and Puppet Farm. And that's, you know, it was one of the first and now the last sort of anti-imperialist puppet troops. And they put on this really fun anti-war circus and people come from miles around to watch it. And I gave a talk there.

2:08:20They hosted me to talk in a barn. And I learned about the history of Bread and Puppet. It was founded by this figure named Peter Schumann, who's now 92. His family were liberal Germans. They were not Jewish, but they opposed the Nazi regime. They fled Nazi Germany. He met a woman, Elke Neering, I believe her name was, who helped him sharpen his politics. And I learned about her grandfather, who was named Scott Neering, who apparently with his wife had a farm not far from here where we're sitting. And he helped popularize the homesteading movement. Scott Neering was one of the major opponents of World War I.

2:09:01He saw it as kind of a war for the plutocrats, that the only winners of this war in which the senior class of Princeton was liquidated in minutes in battles was the plutocracy. And you read his arguments then and what he was saying in debates. It's very similar to what I'm hearing now from opponents of the Iran war. And he ran for Congress in New York against Fiorella LaGuardia, who was coming back from World War I as this great war hero. And the Republican Party and the Democratic Party closed ranks and essentially conspired to stop Scott Neering from winning a congressional seat because he opposed what both parties truly agreed on.

2:09:47He opposed the duopoly back then. He was prosecuted under the Espionage Act. He was basically driven out of polite society, and that's how he got into homesteading and selling maple syrup. He thought it was the only way he could have intellectual freedom, and it brought him up here to where you spend a lot of time. And so I think we have to consider that. Politics within both parties is increasingly off limits to people who think independently and are willing to call out bankers' wars. Where is the path forward? And I don't have an answer to that. I'm a journalist. Could there be a third party, including in this upcoming presidential campaign, that could actually bring people together, that could put the divisive culture war issues to the side and focus on what people really seem to be agreeing on?

2:10:39Opposition to AI superintelligence, Skynet. Opposition to data centers taking over our resources and communities. Opposition to flock cameras. opposition to the special relationship with Israel, which is driving us to war and destroying our economy, support for like reforms. Do you think that's possible in America anymore? I haven't the faintest idea. I hope so. I hope so. But I do think it'd be tough with the current system. I do think. But I don't know. We'll find out. It's mid-September. We've got the midterm elections, the first Tuesday in November. and I think it'll be a much clearer picture after that.

2:11:26I will be reading you as I always do. And I'm just grateful you spent all this time here. Max Blumenthal. Great seeing you. And good luck, man. They want to hurt you, but I'm thankful for you. Same to you. Thank you.