Speaker 1: Hey, guys, Saga and Crystal here.
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Speaker 2: So Sager did a good job breaking down all of
Speaker 2: the details we know about the shooting that occurred at
Speaker 2: the White House correspondent center of the attempted assassination attempt.
Speaker 2: We can all say that with some confidence because we
Speaker 2: do have a manifesto from Cole Allen. We're going to
Speaker 2: talk to Joe Kent more about that and the failures
Speaker 2: that led there, what he's seen from inside the administration,
Speaker 2: about the investigation or lack of curiosity about previous assassination attempts.
Speaker 2: Let's go ahead and start here with Trump being asked
Speaker 2: on sixty minutes about his experience of what went down.
Speaker 2: And interestingly, I'm sure you guys all have seen the
Speaker 2: video probably one hundred times by this point. There's a
Speaker 2: moment when he appears to fall down, but he will
Speaker 2: assure you that, no, he did not fall down. It's
Speaker 2: just the Secret Service told him to get to the ground,
Speaker 2: and so that's what he did. Let's go and take
Speaker 2: a listen to that.
Speaker 4: You see the security moving quickly within seconds, grabbing the
Speaker 4: Vice president by his coat, lifting him up, bringing him out.
Speaker 4: Then the counter assault comes in. Took ten seconds for
Speaker 4: them to flank you, mister president, and then twenty seconds
Speaker 4: to get you out. It looked chaotic. At one point
Speaker 4: you were down. What was happening?
Speaker 5: Well, what happened is it was a little bit of me.
Speaker 6: I wanted to see what was happening, and I wasn't
Speaker 6: making it that easy for him. I wanted to see.
Speaker 5: What was going on.
Speaker 6: And by that time we started to realize maybe it
Speaker 6: was a bad problem, different kind of a problem, bad
Speaker 6: one and different than what would be normal noise.
Speaker 5: From a ballroom, which you hear all the time.
Speaker 6: And I was surrounded by great people, and I probably
Speaker 6: made them act a little bit more slowly. They said,
Speaker 6: wait a minute, Wait a minute, let me see wait
Speaker 6: a minute. So you know, I'm telling just.
Speaker 4: At that moment where it looks like you go sort
Speaker 4: of down with the sort of wait.
Speaker 6: Well, I know what happened is then I started walking
Speaker 6: with them. I turned, I started walking, and then said
Speaker 6: please go down, Please go down on the floor. So
Speaker 6: I went down, and the first lady went down also.
Speaker 6: But we were asked to go down by the agents
Speaker 6: as I was walking.
Speaker 4: In other words, I wanted you almost to crawl.
Speaker 5: Were standing up pretty much.
Speaker 6: I was standing up and then turn around the opposite
Speaker 6: direction and started pretty much walking out, pretty tall, a
Speaker 6: little bent over because they you know, I'm not looking
Speaker 6: to be standing too tall.
Speaker 5: And but I was walking out.
Speaker 6: It was pretty about halfway there, and they said, please
Speaker 6: go down to the floor, Please go down to the floor.
Speaker 5: So I dropped to the floor Soda the first lady.
Speaker 4: You can see the gunman running through the metal detectors
Speaker 4: and he fired.
Speaker 1: Off one or two rounds.
Speaker 5: The speed was rather incredible, actually, it was like a blur.
Speaker 5: How did he get that close?
Speaker 4: With the place swarming with security.
Speaker 5: I will say.
Speaker 6: I say it because I'm a big fan of the
Speaker 6: people of law enforcement, and you know, some of these
Speaker 6: people they may be crazy, but they're not stupid and
Speaker 6: they figure things out. He ran forty five yards, they say,
Speaker 6: and he just went to it and then boom, he
Speaker 6: popped through it. I mean he ran like I think
Speaker 6: the NFL should sign him up. He was fast when
Speaker 6: you look at it, and it's almost like a blur, right.
Speaker 6: But it was amazing because as soon as they saw that,
Speaker 6: you could see them drawing their guns. They were so
Speaker 6: professional aim their guns, and then they took them down immediately.
Speaker 2: So the president there impressed, apparently with the shooters athletic prowess.
Speaker 2: In case you know what appears to have happened, we'll
Speaker 2: talk to Joe Ken about this a bit more. Is
Speaker 2: that there was basically no security to get into the
Speaker 2: hotel lobby. Cole Allen had booked a hotel room there.
Speaker 2: He took up, he took the stairs down to the
Speaker 2: mezzanine level where he's able to exit at a point
Speaker 2: that was close to the magnetometers there, and then he
Speaker 2: just tried to make a mad dash for it through
Speaker 2: the metal detectors and that's when Secret Service is able
Speaker 2: to detain him. But you know, Saga, I feel like
Speaker 2: back in the old days with these shootings, everybody would
Speaker 2: be waiting with bated breath for like, what's the name
Speaker 2: of the shooter? What sort of ethnic or political affiliation
Speaker 2: can we find here so we can make it either
Speaker 2: the fold of one side or the other. There's still
Speaker 2: a lot of that go that goes on. You know,
Speaker 2: is the Muslim is ze black?
Speaker 1: Is the white?
Speaker 2: What's the what's the overarching framework we can have here?
Speaker 2: But more of what people do now is to figure
Speaker 2: out what's going to be the conspiracy theory to run with.
Speaker 2: And I do have to say they have some things
Speaker 2: to work with here. Definitely has some things to work
Speaker 2: with here, some weird details.
Speaker 3: So before we get started, I just want to guys,
Speaker 3: I get it. I get where we're all coming from.
Speaker 1: I really do.
Speaker 3: I'm a UFO guy, which is probably the biggest.
Speaker 1: Conspiracy in the world.
Speaker 3: I believe in the JFK assassination theory, not theory, I
Speaker 3: mean at this point in fact, fat yeah, that's just
Speaker 3: established fact. I think Vegas still a lot of questions
Speaker 3: about that. I've talked about it here, I do not
Speaker 3: believe the official story on the Vegas shooting on Steven
Speaker 3: Paddock whatsoever.
Speaker 1: I'm with you, okay.
Speaker 3: We were one of the first people to call out
Speaker 3: You've all day, all right. I think our credentials here
Speaker 3: are well established. Whenever it comes to conspiracy theory, to
Speaker 3: giving them like seven years ago covering Epstein, Okay, right,
Speaker 3: whenever it was allegedly a conspiracy, the idea that they
Speaker 3: would stage a shooting to construct a ballroom which was
Speaker 3: already being built, it is ridiculous.
Speaker 1: I'm sorry. Look, I truly I love everybody.
Speaker 3: I understand that this is a societal reflection of where
Speaker 3: we are. I talked to you guys on the phone, Crystal,
Speaker 3: to our team. I said, this is very much like
Speaker 3: the nineteen seventies. There's been all these attempts on Trump's
Speaker 3: life about political violence, about the rising tides. Very much
Speaker 3: like the nineteen sixty eight to nineteen seventy five period
Speaker 3: with the weather underground and political consternation and deep levels
Speaker 3: of distrust and conspiracy theories explode.
Speaker 1: So I understand it as societal level, but.
Speaker 3: The knee jerk idea that they would stage a shooting,
Speaker 3: which again it's not like Trump came out looking good
Speaker 3: from this. You know, the idea behind Butler is that
Speaker 3: he had helped, you know, help his what was it,
Speaker 3: his help his re election campaign and fight fight fight,
Speaker 3: Like he either fell or was pushed.
Speaker 1: Down on the ground. It didn't look that good.
Speaker 3: They also took the vice president out first. I'm sure
Speaker 3: he's seething about that. It didn't make the Secret Service
Speaker 3: look good really at all. So I just I don't
Speaker 3: see it, Like you got to ask the quibono, like
Speaker 3: who benefits here?
Speaker 1: We'll show you all the stuff.
Speaker 3: I just want to put that out there because I'm like,
Speaker 3: I don't see it all right. I mean I can
Speaker 3: usually get there in terms of the path, but yeah,
Speaker 3: I mean Caltech grad, high IQ guy who went Schitzo
Speaker 3: just seems a lot more of a reasonable explanation.
Speaker 1: I just want to put that out there. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Well, I mean, you say, the staging some sort of
Speaker 2: false flag to push for a ballroom is ridiculous, But
Speaker 2: people look at this administration like these are ridiculous people.
Speaker 1: I know, even.
Speaker 2: With I mean, you know, I'm with you. I agree,
Speaker 2: Like I don't see enough evidence to be like, you know,
Speaker 2: this is a false flager to buy into any of
Speaker 2: the particular conspiracies that are floating around. There's a variety
Speaker 2: of them. This also ties in we'll get to all
Speaker 2: of this, but also ties into the like the scientists
Speaker 2: dying and disappearing thing as well. So you've got sort
Speaker 2: of unified spectrum of conspiracies coming together in this one.
Speaker 2: But one of the craziest things that happened here is
Speaker 2: prior to the event, there was all this leaking to
Speaker 2: the process. Oh, Trump's really going to go after the media,
Speaker 2: and so Caroline Levitt got asked about this before the event,
Speaker 2: and she said, yes, there will be quote shots fired.
Speaker 2: Let's go ahead and take a listen to that.
Speaker 1: It'll be funny, it'll be entertaining. There will be some
Speaker 1: shots fired tonight on the road. Wow, everyone should tune in.
Speaker 7: It's going to be really great. I'm looking forward to
Speaker 7: hearing it.
Speaker 2: So very unfortunate in retrospect wording choice there that I'm
Speaker 2: sure she probably strongly regrets. But there was another weird
Speaker 2: moment involving Caroline Levitt's actually husband, where right after this happens,
Speaker 2: you know, Fox News, all the networks are trying to
Speaker 2: get somebody on the phone. The reception in this ballroom,
Speaker 2: which I remember from back, you know, years ago when
Speaker 2: I went to this thing. The reception in the ballroom
Speaker 2: is complete. Tried very hard to get any sort of
Speaker 2: a cell signal in any case. Fox News was talking
Speaker 2: to a reporter that they had there and she was
Speaker 2: telling the story about how Caroline left. It's husband was
Speaker 2: warning her that she needed to be really careful tonight.
Speaker 2: And in the middle of telling this story, the line
Speaker 2: cuts and she's unable to finish her thought there, let's
Speaker 2: take a listen to that.
Speaker 7: I want to just quickly tell you. I was sitting
Speaker 7: next to Caroline Lovitt, the press secretary's husband. He was
Speaker 7: one of our guests. He was seeded right next to me,
Speaker 7: and you know, right as the dinner was starting, you know,
Speaker 7: the national anthem happened, and then he kind of leaned
Speaker 7: over and said, you know, I watched you on TV.
Speaker 7: You do a great job. You need to be very safe.
Speaker 7: And he was very serious when he said that to me,
Speaker 7: and he kind of looked around the room and he said,
Speaker 7: you know, there are.
Speaker 8: Some sounds like we lost Aisha's phone there. And this happens,
Speaker 8: by the way, especially when you have so many people
Speaker 8: attempting to utilize the same cell service at the same time.
Speaker 2: So after Caroline Lovett saying there will be shots fire,
Speaker 2: and then her husband was apparently is showing some sort
Speaker 2: of dire warning to this woman that gets cut off
Speaker 2: midstream Zagera while she's trying to explain this to Fox News.
Speaker 1: Look, I'm enjoying a segment, all right.
Speaker 3: I mean I get I could see it if I
Speaker 3: was sitting at home and you know, and I was
Speaker 3: just checking in and I'd already was predisposed to distrust.
Speaker 3: I totally get it, and you know, in this in
Speaker 3: that way, I mean, what's the innocent explanation? It's weird, Okay,
Speaker 3: let's at the same time, Yeah, that's weird.
Speaker 1: Thing.
Speaker 3: Why is he telling her to be careful? What like
Speaker 3: careful with what in Washington, d C? Because a crime?
Speaker 3: And then the phone cuts out. That's nuts. Shots fired?
Speaker 3: Shots fired is actually one where I could see that's
Speaker 3: much more of a like, you know, a turn of phrase.
Speaker 3: Very obviously they would say the maga or sorry, the
Speaker 3: Caroline husband one is much stranger. We also have which
Speaker 3: what we're pointing to D four. Let's put this up
Speaker 3: there on the screen about how immediately afterwards, all of
Speaker 3: the biggest MAGA accounts on Twitter, we're saying, now you
Speaker 3: know why the left is suing to block Trump's privately
Speaker 3: funded ballroom.
Speaker 1: We need a ballroom.
Speaker 3: I don't want to hear any more criticism of Trump's ballroom.
Speaker 3: Let me again, though, just go into this a little bit,
Speaker 3: both to defense straight the MAGA retards that are pushing
Speaker 3: this and the people who think they're doing this to
Speaker 3: push the ballroom guys, is the idea that the president
Speaker 3: would just never speak at any event that's not in
Speaker 3: a ballroom or at the White House ballroom. This is
Speaker 3: not a White House event. It is a White House
Speaker 3: Correspondence dinner. So would the White House Correspondence Association pay
Speaker 3: rental space to the government because the president.
Speaker 1: Is going to come?
Speaker 3: And then what about all these other events which the
Speaker 3: president is going to come speak to? Is that the
Speaker 3: idea is the idea that every private organization in the
Speaker 3: nation can only host events with the president at the
Speaker 3: White House ballroom. Because, by the way, if so, that's
Speaker 3: a real argument against the ballroom, that the president has
Speaker 3: absolute veto power and hosting authority over any future event.
Speaker 1: Just so everybody knows.
Speaker 3: This is the first White House Correspondent Sinner Trump has
Speaker 3: ever attended while in office ever, so that the whole
Speaker 3: first four years I was there, he never attended any
Speaker 3: of them. So if he's not going to a does
Speaker 3: that mean the White House correspond Center can happen? I mean,
Speaker 3: people who cover the White House, it's already a grotesque event,
Speaker 3: right do you agree with that? Like the whole nerd
Speaker 3: prom and all of that, like taking selfies with the
Speaker 3: people you cover.
Speaker 1: It's gross, all right, And that's.
Speaker 3: Already like baseline, we all know what happens, and then
Speaker 3: they do it out in the open. But then it's
Speaker 3: a whole other thing to actually host the event all
Speaker 3: in the White House grounds, Like that's nuts. So yeah, Like,
Speaker 3: and I don't actually think no matter what who is
Speaker 3: in office, and I think very little of the White
Speaker 3: House Corresponds Association I was a member, is even any
Speaker 3: somewhat self respective for like, you cannot hold events, all
Speaker 3: events at the White House co or the White House Ballroom.
Speaker 3: So that's just the one thing. And also the ballroom
Speaker 3: is going to cost four hundred million dollars. How much
Speaker 3: would it have cost to just have a competent barricade
Speaker 3: put up by the US Secret Service, probably what twenty
Speaker 3: grand a barricade with a couple of age, maybe thirty.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's a lot cheaper to just have a
Speaker 1: good secret service.
Speaker 3: And honestly, that's the part I want to talk about
Speaker 3: to Joe Kent the most that I just don't get.
Speaker 3: Why is the administration so united and how great the
Speaker 3: secret service of a job here is done? I don't
Speaker 3: get it. It's bizarre. If anything, that is the conspiracy.
Speaker 2: Let me go ahead and indulge the conspiratorial thinking. Okay,
Speaker 2: so you just said something that's important. Trump has never
Speaker 2: been to one of these before, and he decides to
Speaker 2: go this year. And this is just crazy. The number
Speaker 2: of cabinet officials that were there. We were looking through it. Okay,
Speaker 2: not only is Trump there, JD. Vance is there. After
Speaker 2: he gets pulled from Islamabad, Mike Johnson, who would be
Speaker 2: next in the line of succession, is there. If the
Speaker 2: worst of the word, you know, worst thing, imagine what
Speaker 2: happens and like the whole place goes up and smoke
Speaker 2: and everybody that's there is taken out, which given that
Speaker 2: the hotel lobby was apparently you know, totally open and available.
Speaker 2: Is not like that crazy to imagine something like that
Speaker 2: having happened at this event. We would have ended up
Speaker 2: with Chuck Grassley as president. He was the next in
Speaker 2: the line of succession who was not there at the dinner.
Speaker 2: He's like one hundred and eighty years old. It is
Speaker 2: so ridiculous to imagine that that was like a real possibility.
Speaker 2: But anyway to go back to sort of like the
Speaker 2: conspiracy brain. Okay, so Trump has never gone to this thing.
Speaker 2: He decides to go to this one. Not only that,
Speaker 2: I don't know if you guys can pull E three
Speaker 2: from the next block E three. So they decided to
Speaker 2: use like this came from the White House. They decided
Speaker 2: to use the lower level of security in spite of
Speaker 2: the fact that the entire cabinet was there. I mean,
Speaker 2: Rubio was there, Cash, Mattel was there, heg Seth was there,
Speaker 2: like they were all whole basically advanced and the president
Speaker 2: obviously they were all there, and yet they opted to
Speaker 2: have this lower level of security. Okay, So here's then
Speaker 2: immediately afterwards, immediately afterwards, everybody's on the same page of
Speaker 2: like this is why we need a ballroom. Okay, then
Speaker 2: put D five up on the screen. So a judge
Speaker 2: had just recently said that, you know, had temporarily blocked
Speaker 2: the construction of the ballroom, and one of the things
Speaker 2: they said is basically like, you know, to not get
Speaker 2: authorization from Congress, there would have to be some national
Speaker 2: security rationale. Well, the DOJ has already sent a letter
Speaker 2: now using this attack at the White House, corresponds or
Speaker 2: to further push the ballroom. So you're like, what is
Speaker 2: going on here? Why are we like using this whole
Speaker 2: thing to try to push forward a ballroom that had
Speaker 2: been at least temporarily blocked by some judge. So that's
Speaker 2: kind of the that's the ballroom direction of like this
Speaker 2: was a false flag to create a ballroomhich. I agree
Speaker 2: with you. Sounds ridiculous, but I guess I don't know.
Speaker 2: I think to your point earlier about like the seven
Speaker 2: people just don't believe anything anymore, and I don't blame them.
Speaker 2: I don't believe anything anymore. You know, at the time
Speaker 2: of the Butler assassination attempt, you and I were both like,
Speaker 2: you know, I don't see any indications that there's more
Speaker 2: here than some deranged loser who climbed up on a
Speaker 2: roof and the Secret Service was incompetent. That appears to
Speaker 2: be the thing. I am no longer so confident that
Speaker 2: it is as cut and dry as I thought it
Speaker 2: was at the time, simply because of the weird way
Speaker 2: that the government has acted afterwards, and the fact that
Speaker 2: we know so little about this shooter, that Trump talks
Speaker 2: so little about it, and there are some things about
Speaker 2: that that I'm like, I don't know, maybe people were
Speaker 2: onto more than I really thaw it at the time.
Speaker 2: So anyway, with all of that as backdrop, and with
Speaker 2: the Epstein files and just a total collapse of trust,
Speaker 2: I don't blame people for looking at these events and
Speaker 2: going whatever the official story is. I don't think that's
Speaker 2: all that's going on here. There must be something else
Speaker 2: going on here, And I'm going to dig into this
Speaker 2: to try to figure out what that thing is hundred percent.
Speaker 3: And I think, if anything, that's my takeaway. The fact
Speaker 3: is is that the vast majority of people, let's say,
Speaker 3: who are online and in politics my age, they're all like, oh,
Speaker 3: it's fag, And I was like, well, I mean, here's
Speaker 3: the thing. Can you blame people for not being trustful
Speaker 3: of official information. It is very nineteen seventies. People like
Speaker 3: my book Rerecks. I've recommended it many times over the years.
Speaker 3: Days of Rage. I highly recommend people go and read
Speaker 3: about the entire like underground violence movement that was a
Speaker 3: huge part of, you know, like the anti institutional rage
Speaker 3: of the.
Speaker 1: Post like new Left era era.
Speaker 3: At the very same time that conspiracy theories and everything
Speaker 3: exploded across the nation. And it was all happening in
Speaker 3: a post Watergate, post Nixon, post LBJ.
Speaker 1: Vietnam War environment. Oh and yes, humans were going through
Speaker 1: the moon. There's always a you know.
Speaker 3: Like a NASA connection, Like there is an eerie rhyming
Speaker 3: I think that happens with this. Were tons of assassination attempts,
Speaker 3: bombing's riots even remember and so look, not everything is
Speaker 3: the same, but the same forces are very similar, except
Speaker 3: this time around we have algorithms and we also have
Speaker 3: something unique. What do we actually know about Cole Allen?
Speaker 3: The hard fact that we know about this guy is
Speaker 3: that he went to cal Tech University. He was also
Speaker 3: an intern at JPL. In fact, there's a connection to that.
Speaker 3: Can we put D six up here on the screen.
Speaker 3: This is actually crazy this is very stornge. Yet, according
Speaker 3: to his LinkedIn, he interned at NASA in twenty fourteen,
Speaker 3: and in twenty fourteen they published a paper and the
Speaker 3: quote Henry Martinez was an author an ex user named
Speaker 3: Henry Martinez made in twenty twenty three, made only a
Speaker 3: single post on December twenty first, twenty twenty three, and
Speaker 3: the post simply said, Cole Allen, So yeah, that's weird.
Speaker 3: All right, I'm not going to say it's not weird.
Speaker 3: Maybe he's a you know, Patsy name, and all of
Speaker 3: that we could get to. Here's what's the more likely story.
Speaker 3: Let's take a look at two our most high profile
Speaker 3: assassins or attempted assassins that we have in the what
Speaker 3: the last couple of years. We have Luigi Mangioni and
Speaker 3: we have here Cole Allen. What do these two gentlemen
Speaker 3: have in common. They are reasonably well educated. They come
Speaker 3: from either a rich or a privileged or middle class background.
Speaker 3: They went to you know, decent enough schools and a university.
Speaker 3: Everything seemed to be normal, and then something happened, right,
Speaker 3: and that seems very clear in this guy's story. He's
Speaker 3: basically been not up to the snuff of the employment
Speaker 3: status that a normal Cayletech graduate he is working as
Speaker 3: a tutor didn't seem to be really like ascending to
Speaker 3: some great heights. It's pretty obvious usually in that case
Speaker 3: that something happened in the personal life increasingly went down
Speaker 3: an algorithmic rabbit hole.
Speaker 1: There's been a lot of jokes going on. This is
Speaker 1: our first like Blue Sky terrorist.
Speaker 3: You can see his like many of his re tweets
Speaker 3: and other things on the platform over at Blue Sky,
Speaker 3: Like he was a through and through shit lib. And
Speaker 3: I know people think I overuse that term. I think
Speaker 3: even you would agree with that, Like he hated Hassan
Speaker 3: Piker because he thought he was too radical, and he's
Speaker 3: the guy who literally went out and tried to shoot
Speaker 3: a bunch of people, which is a whole other side
Speaker 3: story in this year.
Speaker 2: I mean, I do want to just pause on that
Speaker 2: for a moment, because I think it's worth thinking about
Speaker 2: the ideological content to the extent we know, right, and
Speaker 2: all of this is very you know, we're trying to
Speaker 2: figure out something that really is unknowable, right, But it
Speaker 2: does look like he was a kind of dining the woole,
Speaker 2: like Blue Sky liberal, and I saw Jermentum making this
Speaker 2: point on Twitter. I think it's a good one, which
Speaker 2: is that you know, if you are a standard issue
Speaker 2: liberal and that's kind of your worldview. So you have
Speaker 2: this very like individualistic worldview and you're steeped in all
Speaker 2: this very very radical rhetoric, but you don't have a
Speaker 2: broader like for example, class base lends, any broader political
Speaker 2: project that you feel like can change the situation, and
Speaker 2: you have it more personalized that it's these individual evil
Speaker 2: actors who are the source of all the problems. Then
Speaker 2: you can see how someone who you know has this
Speaker 2: mentality would see themselves and you get this from his manifesto,
Speaker 2: see themselves as doing something genuinely like noble and good
Speaker 2: to try to conduct this these assassinations. And so I
Speaker 2: do think that there it does kind of make sense
Speaker 2: to me that he would have come out of like
Speaker 2: a blue sky radical centrism versus a sort of like
Speaker 2: Marxist analysis. It does have a logic, and again I
Speaker 2: don't want to read too much into his posting history
Speaker 2: and you know what his mentality is, because again some
Speaker 2: of these things are ultimately unknowable. Though Ken Klippenstein had
Speaker 2: a good piece about him, and he talked to people
Speaker 2: who knew him. He looked at his resume. He's like,
Speaker 2: on the surface, there were no warning signs here. You know,
Speaker 2: he wasn't known to the FBI, he wasn't on their radar.
Speaker 2: He was just, you know, this very intelligent guy going
Speaker 2: about his life. People said he was nice, and he
Speaker 2: was gentle, and he's very thoughtful. He was actually very Christian,
Speaker 2: involved in Christian life and his own church and other capacity.
Speaker 2: But in any case, to get back to the conspiracies here,
Speaker 2: because we got to tie in the you know, Jet
Speaker 2: Propulsion Lab and the missing scientists and all of this.
Speaker 2: So if you could go back to the element that
Speaker 2: we just had up, which includes that this part, it
Speaker 2: really is really weird. I mean, this is just really weird.
Speaker 2: So he has this connection to NASA, he has this
Speaker 2: connection to the Jet Propulsion Lab, which a number of
Speaker 2: the other scientists who either you know, died or ended
Speaker 2: up missing or whatever also had connects there. Okay, so
Speaker 2: you've got that tie in, and then you've got this
Speaker 2: account that has one post created December twenty twenty three,
Speaker 2: and on that day, December twenty first, twenty twenty three,
Speaker 2: he tweets out Cole Allen. Okay, not only that, but
Speaker 2: you see it's a it's the avatar for this account
Speaker 2: is the Pepe meme. But it's not just any Pepe.
Speaker 2: It's Pepe in the tucks holding the wine glass. Well,
Speaker 2: were people wearing at the White House correspondence dinner when this,
Speaker 2: you know, attempted assassination occurred. They were wearing texes, they
Speaker 2: were holding glasses, et cetera. Okay, then we go the
Speaker 2: Henry Martinez thing you already laid down. Henry Martinez also
Speaker 2: was at NASA same time, overlinking with the time that
Speaker 2: Cole Allen was interning there. Okay, that's really weird. Okay,
Speaker 2: Then now we're really going down the rabbit hole here. Okay,
Speaker 2: you see this background with like the like lines and
Speaker 2: all the colors and stuff. If you look at this
Speaker 2: and you super impose over it one of the most
Speaker 2: famous pictures of modern history, which is the Trump fight
Speaker 2: Fight fight after the original assassination attempt. Okay, you say
Speaker 2: you don't see it soccer, but.
Speaker 1: I thank you.
Speaker 2: I think, look, i've it there. There, It is not
Speaker 2: nothing there. You can see.
Speaker 1: Do it again and run it again.
Speaker 2: You can see Trump's face, you can see the hand
Speaker 2: like there, there is a resemblance here, and this image
Speaker 2: comes from something called like the time Machine project or
Speaker 2: something crazy like this. So anyway, now we're getting like
Speaker 2: totally down the rabbit hole in terms of like this
Speaker 2: will make you insane if you take it seriously and
Speaker 2: think about it too long. But it is really the
Speaker 2: tweet is I can't I have no reasonable explanation for
Speaker 2: how this person with this NASA connect tweeted out this
Speaker 2: name with this particular picture and the Pepe meme and
Speaker 2: what it is. I have no reasonable rational explanation. I
Speaker 2: just I don't know. It feels like a total sci
Speaker 2: fi black mirror episode. That aspect of it.
Speaker 3: We've got our guest standing by. I can't go too
Speaker 3: deep into it. I think you could see anything you
Speaker 3: want to see whenever it comes to the image. It's
Speaker 3: also you know, in terms of that slide, I'm like,
Speaker 3: you know, I don't know. I just think I've seen
Speaker 3: enough of this over the years. The Pepe talks thing,
Speaker 3: that's a meme. It's been around for ten years. The
Speaker 3: only weird thing is Henry Martinez tweeting out Cole Allen
Speaker 3: that one you're like, okay, I mean, yeah, there's something.
Speaker 3: Look if you want to get big brained with it
Speaker 3: and you want to go back all the way back
Speaker 3: in the day Caltech, Hi, I Q grad who when
Speaker 3: semi schizo is textbook Ted Kaczinski right, ultra for these others.
Speaker 3: So maybe he's a failed experiment like a Charlie Manson
Speaker 3: or any of that. I think blue Sky lib who
Speaker 3: semi schizo who you know clearly look, he did it
Speaker 3: more of a planning job than most very similar I think,
Speaker 3: you know, to allegedly what Thomas Matthew Crooks are these
Speaker 3: people type did and he did, you know, eventually evade
Speaker 3: the security barrier and all that and in fact bragged
Speaker 3: about it. So I don't know, maybe there is something
Speaker 3: more there, and we have a good guest to speak
Speaker 3: to that. Joe Kent, the former National counter Terrorism Director who's.
Speaker 1: Standing by, let's get to him.
Speaker 3: Joining us now is Joe Kent, the former National counter
Speaker 3: Terrorism Director who has long sounded alarms about the presence
Speaker 3: security barriers and is asking a lot of questions about
Speaker 3: the shooting. Joe, thank you so much for joining us.
Speaker 3: We appreciate your time.
Speaker 9: Fithisleaks for me.
Speaker 3: So let's start off with this. This was perhaps the
Speaker 3: most noteworthy part of the manifesto. Let's put it up
Speaker 3: here on the screen, which was released by Cole Allen
Speaker 3: allegedly sent to his family, he says, Okay, now all
Speaker 3: that sappy stuff is done. What the hell is the
Speaker 3: Secret Service doing? Sorry, gonna rant a bit here and
Speaker 3: drop the formal tone. I expected security cameras at every bend,
Speaker 3: hubuged hotel rooms, armed agents every ten feet, metal detectors
Speaker 3: out the wazoo. What I got, who knows, maybe they're
Speaker 3: pranking me, is nothing. No damn security, not in transport,
Speaker 3: not in the hotel, not in the event.
Speaker 1: He even muses.
Speaker 3: At one point that he could have been an Iranian
Speaker 3: trying to attack Trump with some full on weapon. This
Speaker 3: highlights a breach of the president's security perimeter, something that
Speaker 3: you highlighted after you left the administration.
Speaker 1: How are you assessing this news right now, Joe?
Speaker 9: You know this is just obviously a third breach that
Speaker 9: we've had since President Trump was back on the campaign trail,
Speaker 9: where an assailant got within the president's perimeter with a
Speaker 9: long gun. So he got in there with a shotgun.
Speaker 9: I think you're right. The most interesting part of that
Speaker 9: manifesto is when he even comments himself, which I guess
Speaker 9: he was updating somewhat before the event, almost in real time,
Speaker 9: where he is even amazed that he made it that far.
Speaker 9: We had obvious breaches that led up to Butler West
Speaker 9: Palm Beach, and these issues haven't been addressed. And then
Speaker 9: since then, we had multiple breaches of President Trump's perimeter
Speaker 9: at the UN We had the incident at the restaurant
Speaker 9: in Washington, d C. The incident where the police officer
Speaker 9: armed came up and shook the President's hand. So these
Speaker 9: have been noted. While I was in the administration, we
Speaker 9: had members of the Secret Service that had mentioned that
Speaker 9: they had very big concerns about the president's security. The
Speaker 9: DHS inspector General who was looking into Butler, he has
Speaker 9: been blocked by the top leadership in DHS and potentially
Speaker 9: even higher. So this just speaks to the fact that
Speaker 9: we have a clear problem here that is not being addressed.
Speaker 9: I mean, they can go and say that the guys
Speaker 9: on the inside perimeter near the president did a good job.
Speaker 9: It appears that they did, but these issues have not
Speaker 9: been addressed. Now for several years, and the fact that
Speaker 9: they haven't been addressed leads to more and more questions.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, let's put this Real Claire Politics article up
Speaker 2: on the screen because this is getting a lot more
Speaker 2: attention now in the wake of this latest attempt at assassination.
Speaker 2: So the headline here is exclusive is from Susan cap
Speaker 2: Crabtree Gunman mir White House eluded Secret Service two weeks
Speaker 2: before the dinner shooting. For two weeks before an intruder
Speaker 2: broke through security at the White House Correspondence Association dinner
Speaker 2: in DC. The Secret Service had been investigating a mystery
Speaker 2: shooting near the White House but had come up empty handed,
Speaker 2: to the frustration of both President Trump and top DHS officials.
Speaker 2: Multiple Secret Service sources told Real Clear Politics. Just after
Speaker 2: midnight early in the morning after Easter Sunday, Secret Service
Speaker 2: Uniform Division officers responded to a shooting near the White
Speaker 2: House in DC's Lafayette Park, which is right there by
Speaker 2: the White House for people who don't know, But the
Speaker 2: Secret Service could not pinpoint exactly where the shot landed.
Speaker 2: They investigated and found rifle shell casings at Sixteenth and
Speaker 2: I Streets. A video located the shooter's vehicle, but nomage
Speaker 2: of the gunmen. So you know, what does this incident
Speaker 2: also tell you? And you know, obviously every president faces
Speaker 2: significant threats on their life.
Speaker 9: You know.
Speaker 2: Between the three of us in the segment, I think
Speaker 2: we all have variety of views about President Trump. I
Speaker 2: think we would all agree that he's a fairly divisive figure.
Speaker 2: So I guess, unfortunately it's not a surprise that there
Speaker 2: would be, you know, attempts of violence against him. But
Speaker 2: have we seen these types of failures in previous administrations.
Speaker 9: Not that I know of, And like you said, there's
Speaker 9: been more threats against President Trump. He he is a divisive figure.
Speaker 9: And had we had Butler, we had West Palm Beach,
Speaker 9: we had people getting shots off at the president. He's alive,
Speaker 9: you know, just by the grace of God. And so
Speaker 9: for there to continue to be these issues again, that
Speaker 9: screams that we have a systemic failure here, and why
Speaker 9: is the failure being tolerated? I think that that's one
Speaker 9: of the questions that the American people deserve the answers to,
Speaker 9: and President Trump, Franklin deserves those answers as well, and
Speaker 9: so does his family. I just have a hard time
Speaker 9: believing that we continue to have these breaches in a
Speaker 9: security perimeter. The incident that you just pointed out, that's
Speaker 9: a very heavily surveilled area of Washington, d C. Any
Speaker 9: one of these incidents, like in isolation, you could say
Speaker 9: general incompetence. You know, circumstances just led to this event
Speaker 9: unfolding this way. But this continues to happen, and if
Speaker 9: we don't step in and take drastic action right now,
Speaker 9: I'm afraid a tragedy will streng But Joe.
Speaker 1: It's to connect it bigger. This is why I want
Speaker 1: to talk to you.
Speaker 3: You have long connected the breaches in Trump's security to
Speaker 3: the decision to go to war with Iran. And you know,
Speaker 3: I know that you speak and you choose your words
Speaker 3: very carefully, but you got to lay that out for
Speaker 3: people because the app in thet now in the aftermath
Speaker 3: of this and this more recent attack, does that more
Speaker 3: confirm what you're trying to say and make very specific
Speaker 3: like what you're alleging whenever it comes to those breaches
Speaker 3: in a security I really.
Speaker 9: Don't want to come to this conclusion. However, if you
Speaker 9: look at the breaches in the security, the attempts on
Speaker 9: President Trump's life, and you put that on the timeline
Speaker 9: of how we've made key decisions, you can't help but
Speaker 9: ignore it. I'm not saying it's one hundre percent driving
Speaker 9: all the decisions that are being made. But President Trump
Speaker 9: is facing very critical choices right now in the war
Speaker 9: in Iran, and you have an incident like this something
Speaker 9: else that really I think can't be overlooked. There is
Speaker 9: a lot of radical political violence right now. There is
Speaker 9: a pool of very radicalized folks on the left who
Speaker 9: have been told for years that President Trump is a Nazi.
Speaker 9: That rhetoric cranks things up and it radicalizes individuals, but
Speaker 9: that also gives intelligence agencies or other organizations a very
Speaker 9: ripe pool from which to recruit from. So I just
Speaker 9: think we have a combination of factors right now that
Speaker 9: can't be overlooked, and it's time for someone to step in.
Speaker 9: I think the DHSIG and others within the government would
Speaker 9: be a good place to start and just to take
Speaker 9: a look at everything that's taking place right now and
Speaker 9: why these failures continue to happen. But again, for those
Speaker 9: of us that are trying to assess why President Trump's
Speaker 9: making the decisions that he's making. I think it would
Speaker 9: be foolish for us to not take a look at
Speaker 9: everything that's taking place that could be providing some leverage
Speaker 9: on him driving his decisions.
Speaker 2: Okay, so another thing that is odd to me is
Speaker 2: that we can put this Washington Post piece up on
Speaker 2: the screen. So first of all, just the number of
Speaker 2: cabinet officials that were at this dinner was pretty wild.
Speaker 2: I said earlier, if you know, somebody had bombed the
Speaker 2: whole thing and everybody there. You know, if you if
Speaker 2: you had the worst situation, you can imagine everybody there dies.
Speaker 2: You would have had Chuck Grassley as President of the
Speaker 2: United States. And yet it says in this article that
Speaker 2: the Trump administration provided a lower level of security for
Speaker 2: the White House Correspondents dinner than it has for other
Speaker 2: gatherings of high ranking officials, even though the President and
Speaker 2: many cabinet members were in attendance. They go on to say,
Speaker 2: you know that Trump and Vance were both evacuated quickly
Speaker 2: to safety when a gunman charged the security perimeter. But
Speaker 2: it seems like the decision is just very stranger. And
Speaker 2: then you add to that the thing that I've always
Speaker 2: you know, found I was very persuaded that the official
Speaker 2: story that we got about the Butler assassination attempt was
Speaker 2: more or less correct. I didn't see any other indications otherwise.
Speaker 2: And to be honest with you, some of the things
Speaker 2: that you've said have given me pause there just because
Speaker 2: it seems like you would want to really investigate know
Speaker 2: who this guy was, no, what motivated him, see if
Speaker 2: there's any you know, other people who he was connected
Speaker 2: to that we need to have our eye on, et cetera.
Speaker 2: And according to what you've said, that just there just
Speaker 2: wasn't that level of interest, And in fact, further investigation
Speaker 2: there was blocked.
Speaker 9: Exactly when we looked into to Butler from the intelligence
Speaker 9: community perspective, we came across some things in terms of
Speaker 9: the confidential human source, the origin of the intelligence that rose,
Speaker 9: other that gave us other questions that came to mind
Speaker 9: that we raised and were blocked by the FBI from
Speaker 9: looking into further. And then the DHSIG who was not
Speaker 9: working with us, who was not coordinating with us, working
Speaker 9: a separate track to look at what took place on
Speaker 9: the ground in Butler, specifically, like asking the most obvious question,
Speaker 9: how did crooks you know breach the security perimeter and
Speaker 9: get up on the roof. He was blocked from that
Speaker 9: very aggressively by internally by the DHS and didn't get
Speaker 9: anything back from the FBI. We were told by the
Speaker 9: FBI that there was nothing in Thomas Crooks's digital devices,
Speaker 9: on his cell phone, computer, etc. And then Tucker Carlson's
Speaker 9: investigative journalists actually dug up Thomas Crooks's online profile. So
Speaker 9: there was obviously a lot more work that needed to
Speaker 9: be done in terms of Butler. Those questions still haven't
Speaker 9: been answered. The issues with the security perimeters still haven't
Speaker 9: been addressed, obviously because West Palm Beach happened right after that,
Speaker 9: and then we had the other breaches of President Trump's
Speaker 9: security to include this one. So there's obviously a systemic issue,
Speaker 9: and these questions just simply aren't being answered. And again,
Speaker 9: if we don't look into this quickly, and if there
Speaker 9: isn't someone who steps in and says, why were these
Speaker 9: decisions being made? You rose a great point that I
Speaker 9: think most people were asking when they saw the you know,
Speaker 9: even the Vice president the president in the same spot
Speaker 9: basically on the same stage, was who authorized all the
Speaker 9: cabinet essentially for the most part to me in this
Speaker 9: one location. And I don't think that was a conscientious
Speaker 9: decision made by President Trump or by the Vice president.
Speaker 9: I think it just happened that way. But we should
Speaker 9: have people that are in charge that are looking at
Speaker 9: the security situation and the posture to make sure something
Speaker 9: like this doesn't happen.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Joe, I was talking about it.
Speaker 3: You know, you and I, we've all all three of
Speaker 3: us have been to multiple high level VIP style events
Speaker 3: where you have lots of members of the line of succession.
Speaker 3: You don't get several thousand yards in front of that
Speaker 3: building without different magnet you know, you go through the
Speaker 3: you go through the metal detectors, there's multiple barricades, there's
Speaker 3: already layers of security. And if you're going to a
Speaker 3: DNC or R and C, you're walking a mile without
Speaker 3: even being able to drive up. And yet I'm looking
Speaker 3: at stories about people being able to take pictures of
Speaker 3: the Beast. Again, the only time I've seeing the Beast
Speaker 3: is when I was in the motor gate as a
Speaker 3: member of the press. I've never been able to take
Speaker 3: a picture of the Beast just casually, even whenever I
Speaker 3: was cleared by secret Service on the White House grounds
Speaker 3: or whenever it was parked, let's say, at one of
Speaker 3: Trump's properties, which he was accompanying on the shakedown. Here,
Speaker 3: in terms of the level of security is not even
Speaker 3: for a normal potas style event. And yet you have
Speaker 3: eighty percent of the line of succession. So this is
Speaker 3: obvious to you. It's obvious to me. Probably more important
Speaker 3: for you, you're the former National Counterism Director. But help
Speaker 3: us square this. Trump is out here on sixty minutes
Speaker 3: saying that Secret Service did a great job. He doesn't
Speaker 3: seem to be shaken. I'm going to take that genuinely.
Speaker 3: In terms of his public messaging. The Deputy Attorney General,
Speaker 3: the Acting Attorney General, Todd Blanche said this was not
Speaker 3: a security failure, it was a security success story.
Speaker 1: Why is it.
Speaker 3: Top to bottom every member of the admin is consistently
Speaker 3: defending the Secret Service when people like you and many
Speaker 3: others are like, hey, there are serious problems here.
Speaker 9: I wish I knew the exact answer, But what I
Speaker 9: can point at it from being in the administration is
Speaker 9: a culture that's almost zero fail or. This constant quest
Speaker 9: for good vibes and good news stories. There's not a
Speaker 9: lot of tolerance right now in the administration for saying, hey,
Speaker 9: we're on the wrong course, Hey there was a screw
Speaker 9: up here, we need to correct it, which I think
Speaker 9: is part of any healthy organization. We do after action
Speaker 9: reviews in the military. It's almost a religious requirement in
Speaker 9: the military to do an after action review. And then
Speaker 9: in after action reviews, we're usually very critical and very
Speaker 9: hard on ourselves. That is not the culture coming from
Speaker 9: the White House, and that is a leadership issue. And
Speaker 9: I think that folks below President Trump, the chief of Staff,
Speaker 9: deputy chiefs of staff, those levels, they could be looking
Speaker 9: much more critically at this. And look, the American people aren'tdumb.
Speaker 9: You don't need to be a security expert or have
Speaker 9: done protective details before to understand that things went very
Speaker 9: wrong two nights ago and that have gone wrong in
Speaker 9: the past Butler and all the other assassination attempts that
Speaker 9: we talked about. So I think just being honest with
Speaker 9: the American people would help in terms of credibility. But
Speaker 9: then they've got to break this culture within the White
Speaker 9: House of we can't ever bring bad news to the boss,
Speaker 9: we can't ever bring any friction. President Trump is a
Speaker 9: pretty forward facing individual. I have no doubt that he
Speaker 9: wants to get out there all the time, but I
Speaker 9: do think he needs someone to say, hey, sir, we're
Speaker 9: not going to do that. You cannot do that today.
Speaker 9: You can't have this massive event, or if you're going
Speaker 9: to have it, we're going to have to scale back.
Speaker 9: We're going to have to put in more security restrictions. Unfortunately,
Speaker 9: that's just not the culture that's been created in the
Speaker 9: White House.
Speaker 2: That's a good pivot, actually to the Ron warwoll we
Speaker 2: have you a figure. We could ask you a few
Speaker 2: things about where you believe this conflict is right now.
Speaker 2: You've been floating the idea that perhaps the US could
Speaker 2: just kind of walk away. I mean, we are in
Speaker 2: this kind of limbo state right now. I'm concerned. We
Speaker 2: had Robert Pape on the show as well, who is
Speaker 2: also concerned that that wouldn't be a stable outcome. That
Speaker 2: it's almost very difficult to avoid the idea that because
Speaker 2: the economic damage would persist so long as the straight
Speaker 2: of hormones remains closed, so long as you have Israel
Speaker 2: very much eager to get back into a hot war,
Speaker 2: that it would be a very unstable outcome. But how
Speaker 2: are you assessing where we are right now?
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 9: I still think the best thing that President Trump can
Speaker 9: do right now is look at what Ronald Reagan did
Speaker 9: in nineteen eighty four. Ronald Reagan was smart enough to say, hey,
Speaker 9: I got into this, I didn't calculate all the risks.
Speaker 9: Something came, it hit us, and now this simply is
Speaker 9: not worth the continued risk. And he made the political calculation,
Speaker 9: and I think the morally right calculation. He pulled our
Speaker 9: troops out to save more lives. But then politically he
Speaker 9: knew that he could take some slings and some arrows
Speaker 9: and through the strength of his personality that politically he
Speaker 9: could get through it, and he did. And I think
Speaker 9: President Trump can do the exact same thing. If President
Speaker 9: Trump were to basically just do kind of what he
Speaker 9: does in most of his press conferences and interviews about
Speaker 9: the Iran War, if he just listed off all of
Speaker 9: the leaders that we've killed, all of the things that
Speaker 9: we've bombed in Iran, and just say we won, and
Speaker 9: then just bring our guys home, pull the vast majority
Speaker 9: of our forces out of that region, because our bases
Speaker 9: and our continued presence in that region has proven to
Speaker 9: be more of a strategical liability than an asset. If
Speaker 9: he pulls them out and says that we've won, that
Speaker 9: buys us time. Now, Ultimately, I can't disagree with professor.
Speaker 9: With what the Professor laid out. I think he has
Speaker 9: a very good view of how things have strategically changed. However,
Speaker 9: we will avoid the most catastrophic outcome, which would be
Speaker 9: us getting sucked into a further escalation cycle because if
Speaker 9: we double down militarily, the Iranians are going to hit
Speaker 9: us back. Then we're going to take losses and we're
Speaker 9: going to be in this cycle that takes you know,
Speaker 9: around twenty years for us to be able to break
Speaker 9: if we just look at recent history. So I think
Speaker 9: the most pragmatic thing he can do is just declare victory,
Speaker 9: declare it loud in a very Trumpian style, and pull
Speaker 9: everybody out.
Speaker 3: But the problem, Joe is right now at literally today,
Speaker 3: This is part of why I wanted to have you on.
Speaker 3: You had this shooting and now Monday the situation room meeting,
Speaker 3: literally that's going to happen where they're going to discuss
Speaker 3: whether they should resume bombing or not. By basically leaving
Speaker 3: us in this quasi you know, like semi cease fire,
Speaker 3: but with the blockade and yet the still closure of
Speaker 3: the streets of our moves, we have this impending energy crisis.
Speaker 3: Considering where and how you've seen a president act, and
Speaker 3: considering your own experience, you literally resigned tried to plead,
Speaker 3: you know, basically elevate the profile enough to try and
Speaker 3: change decision making. Where do you think, and I'm sure
Speaker 3: talk to a lot of people still who are around
Speaker 3: where is Trump's head at and are people willing to
Speaker 3: speak a little bit more truth to power?
Speaker 5: Now?
Speaker 3: The war has gone so poorly, how do you think
Speaker 3: things are going to go in that situation we're meeting today.
Speaker 9: I'm concerned that he is just going to have people
Speaker 9: around him that are going to tell him that the
Speaker 9: blockade is working and that this idea that we can
Speaker 9: somehow get a backlog in Iranian oil, and that's going
Speaker 9: to make the Iranians basically tap and say that they'll
Speaker 9: they'll do whatever we want and they'll give up, you know,
Speaker 9: their nuclear enrichment redline, they'll give up their proxies, et cetera.
Speaker 9: They'll give all the blistic missile capabilities. I just don't
Speaker 9: see that as happening. The Iranians have shown over the
Speaker 9: course of you know, forty seven years, that economic pressure
Speaker 9: really doesn't move the needle very much with them. And again,
Speaker 9: we've killed a lot of the moderates there, so our
Speaker 9: trade space for negotiations is limited. This is why I'm
Speaker 9: also more skeptical of us getting a deal with the
Speaker 9: Iranians than I was just three four weeks ago, or
Speaker 9: even at the beginning of the conflict, because we've continued
Speaker 9: to kill the moderates. Every time there's a ceasefire, the
Speaker 9: Israelis do everything they can to break the ceasefire, and
Speaker 9: the Iranians are squeezing international energy and they know that
Speaker 9: gives them leverage. So I think the President is going
Speaker 9: to be told, hey, sir, the blockade is working, just
Speaker 9: give it more time. The problem there is that the
Speaker 9: Iranians can endure much more pain than we can. They
Speaker 9: then risk there's a major risk then of the Iranians
Speaker 9: taking a shot at one of our ships in the region,
Speaker 9: which again starts that cycle all over again. The hard
Speaker 9: lighters in Iran, the IRGC, I think that they almost
Speaker 9: prefer that outcome because the more that we fight, the
Speaker 9: more emboldened they are, the more the population rallies around them.
Speaker 9: So us staying there in that region, I think is
Speaker 9: just a massive mistake. I truly hope that the President
Speaker 9: also understands that if he wants the blockade to work,
Speaker 9: even if even the status quo is to work, he's
Speaker 9: got to do more to restrain the Israelis. The Israelis
Speaker 9: are doing everything they can to light Lebanon back on fire,
Speaker 9: which you know, the Iranians didn't have a lot of
Speaker 9: control over before this war, but now they do and
Speaker 9: they're playing that card. So this is the situation that
Speaker 9: we've created. But now we have to restrain Israel, and
Speaker 9: it's got to be more than just like we put
Speaker 9: a truth social post. We actually have to take away
Speaker 9: features of their the military aid that we give them,
Speaker 9: so they know that we are serious and we're not
Speaker 9: going to let them dictate terms or drive the direction
Speaker 9: that our country is taking.
Speaker 2: Yeah, let's say, Joe that Trump pursues your advice or
Speaker 2: goes in that direction. We stay in this kind of
Speaker 2: limbo state where we are right now. We all know
Speaker 2: Trump can spin a victory narrative and that there's a
Speaker 2: significant chunk of the country that will be like, yes,
Speaker 2: you're right, this was great. How would you though, looking
Speaker 2: at this independently at this point, how would you assess
Speaker 2: even if we were able to walk away and extricate
Speaker 2: ourselves now, how would you assess the long term impact
Speaker 2: and cost of this war?
Speaker 9: And clearly it hasn't been worth it. I mean, we've
Speaker 9: lost thirteen American service members. They did not need to
Speaker 9: die for this. But also just in terms of our
Speaker 9: alliances in the Golf, there has been this illusion for
Speaker 9: decades now that the Gulf State can be our partners
Speaker 9: and partner with us and they don't need to have
Speaker 9: much of a defense system because we will be there.
Speaker 9: Their security guarantees will provide all their defenses. That that
Speaker 9: has been shattered. The Arinians have shown that they can
Speaker 9: reach in and they can they can penetrate all the
Speaker 9: defenses that we in theory had the idea of us
Speaker 9: having a basing a basing presence in the region. Again
Speaker 9: that that those are basis have proven to be more
Speaker 9: of a liability than an asset. So we're going to
Speaker 9: have to relook at our security arrangements. I'm also concerned
Speaker 9: that a lot of these Gulf states, they're they're not
Speaker 9: going to come out and you know, completely reject us.
Speaker 9: They're going to want to keep us as their friends,
Speaker 9: but they're going to start moving away from the petro dollar.
Speaker 9: That's going to harm our economy, that's going to harm
Speaker 9: our status as the world's reserve currency holder. But then
Speaker 9: also I think a reality that we're just going to
Speaker 9: have to deal with is if we if we do
Speaker 9: pull our troops out and we do look to have
Speaker 9: have a more pragmatic solution to get in the straits
Speaker 9: of horror, moves open back up again, We're going to
Speaker 9: have to just deal with the Iranians as they are.
Speaker 9: There's no military solution there. So at some point, whether
Speaker 9: it's after we fight a bloody twenty year war or
Speaker 9: it's relatively soon, we're gonna have to just deal with
Speaker 9: the Iranians. And I think the as soon that we
Speaker 9: can get over that and realize that Iran is not
Speaker 9: going to be exactly as we want it to be. However,
Speaker 9: Iran has proven to be pragmatic. They are not the
Speaker 9: insane Jihadis, they're not the new Isis, the Persian version
Speaker 9: of Isis. They can be dealt with. So I think
Speaker 9: the sooner that we realize that and just realize if
Speaker 9: we're going to maintain any standing in the region, any
Speaker 9: kind of relationships, the faster that we can start having
Speaker 9: realistic diplomacy with them, the better off will be. And again,
Speaker 9: I think if President Trump starts thinking bigger picture, this
Speaker 9: is something he's uniquely postured to do. He's a strong leader.
Speaker 9: The Iranians still, even though they don't trust him, they
Speaker 9: view him as a strong leader. I think he has
Speaker 9: a potential of resetting our relationship with Iran. Even in
Speaker 9: the wake of all this. I think you need to
Speaker 9: take the tensions down first. That's why I'm recommending for
Speaker 9: us to get out of there. But I do think
Speaker 9: there's a potential for us saying, hey, a strong Persian government.
Speaker 9: I mean, right now we're dealing with the former leader
Speaker 9: of al Qaeda in Syria. It's not a far cry
Speaker 9: for us to deal with an Iranian leader, a group
Speaker 9: of Iranian leaders that maybe we don't like, but we're
Speaker 9: going to deal with because they are an energy superpower.
Speaker 9: Geographically there's a superpower. It's much better to be friends
Speaker 9: with them than having them shut down the straits of
Speaker 9: her moves. Every time we get into a dispute with them.
Speaker 9: So I think if we just recognize the world as
Speaker 9: it is and move past our own pride, I think
Speaker 9: will be in a much better spot.
Speaker 1: Totally agree, Joe. Thank you so much for your time.
Speaker 1: We appreciate your analysis, sir.
Speaker 2: Thank you.
Speaker 9: Guys really appreciate it.