Libertarian Power Hour?! - September 5, 2025

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Welcome to the Young Turks, I'm your host, Anna Casparian. I know I don't host on Fridays often. I was pressured to do so for today. And so I'm gonna do the show I wanna do. And so joining us today, we've got incredible guests, what's gonna be a foreign policy heavy show. And I think it's important to focus on foreign policy for a number of different reasons that will become clear throughout the next two hours. Joining us for the first hour is Dave Smith, comedian, foreign policy aficionado, and the host of part of the problem. A wonderful show you should check it out. And we also have Scott Horton, who is the director of the Libertarian Institute, and someone you may have seen. absolutely crushing war hawks on various shows online, including his own, by the way, the Scott Horton show. He's also the author of several incredible books, including enough already, time to end the war on terrorism, and provoked how Washington started the new Cold War with Russia and the catastrophe in Ukraine. Welcome, gentlemen. Thank you. What's up Anna? Thanks for having us. Yeah, of course. It's so wonderful to have you together to do some of these stories with us. And Scott, I just wanted to note that. I became politicized in the lead up to Iraq War II. You know, in 2002, when it was really starting to become clear that we were going to do a preemptive war in Iraq. I remember being in high school, in English class, reading a New York Times article that was quoting Bill Crystal. And I hadn't seen your incredible debate with Bill Crystal, which I think was about two years ago. That was an amazing debate. I feel like you had the same experience with Crystal that I had. I debated him on something entirely different. He was ill prepared, had no idea what he was talking about. So it was amazing. So good job with that debate. Everyone should check that out. Thanks. Yeah, I mean, I went in there on a mission to whoop them and get a little bit of revenge for Ron Paul and the rest of my friends. We have all of us libertarians have owed Bill Crystal one for a while now. He kind of took the wind out of my sale by just being so absolutely horrible on his own that I didn't even really need to show up for the thing. He destroyed himself anyway. He really did. I mean, the lack of preparedness was incredible. Well, anyway, I wanted to get started with a story about what I feel is just American belligerents when it comes to foreign policy. A lot of different things are developing simultaneously. And if you thought that. Donald Trump would really represent an anti-war administration. It's really not shaping up to be that. So without further ado, let's get to the details.

authority to defend it on invoke to strike that boat full of drug smugglers. We have the absolute and complete authority to conduct that. First of all, just the defense of the American people alone. 100,000 Americans were killed each year under the previous administration because of an open border and open drug traffic flow. Was there an imminent assault on the American people? I said we smoke the drug boat and there's 11 narco terrorists at the bottom of the ocean. And when other people try to do that, they're going to meet the same fate. Not a good sign. Members of the Trump administration, including Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, are struggling to explain what authority they had to blow up an alleged cartel boat leaving Venezuela, which killed 11 people. Now, the boat was allegedly carrying Trenda-Aragua drug traffickers, which Trump has designated as a terrorist organization. Normally, the U.S. Coast Guard would intercept suspected drug traffickers in international waters. Also worrying is the fact that our government hasn't even bothered to identify any specific targets. So all of this begs the question, was the US strike on that boat legal? Reuters reports that the United States can argue it was taking anticipatory self-defense action, and Trump said Trenda Aragua was under the control of Venezuela's president, Nicholas Maduro. However, that falls short of international law without evidence of an imminent attack or past attacks by Trenda, Aragua, according to legal experts. Now, the administration has not provided any evidence that the US was in fact an imminent danger or that the vessel was even armed. Plus, our own laws here in the US indicate that drug trafficking is not punishable by death. And it appears that the administration is well aware that they acted outside the parameters of the rule of law that they purport to care so much about, at least when it comes to democratically run liberal cities. In fact, the New York, the New York Times had this. incredibly fascinating sentence in one of their reports recently having to do with the strike. They wrote that Pentagon officials were still working Wednesday on what legal authority they would tell the public was used to back up the extraordinary strike in international waters. Nonetheless, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, a known Warhawk who inspired groans from the America First faction on the right when Trump nominated him for Secretary of State continues his saber rattling. We destroyed a drug boat that left Venezuela, operated by a designated narco-terrorist organization, which is what these are. And he's been clear that the days of acting with impunity and having an engine shot down or a couple drugs grabbed off a boat, those days are over. Now we are going to wage combat against drug cartels that are flooding American streets and killing Americans. Venezuelan President Nicholas Maduro has responded to the airstrike using an interesting tactic. In recent comments, he decided to blame the escalation almost entirely on Marco Rubio and tried to appeal to Trump's anti-war rhetoric.

Mr. President Donald Trump, you must be careful because Marco Rubio wants to stain their hands with blood, South American, Caribbean, Venezuelan blood. They want to drag you into a bloodbath to tarnish the Trump name forever with a massacre against the Venezuelan people, with a terrible war across South America and the Caribbean. This would be a full-scale continental war. But there are other signs of escalation. The US has significantly ramped up its military presence in the Southern Caribbean in recent months. The amphibious ready group and roughly 2,200 Marines from the 22nd Marine Expeditionary Unit are operating near Puerto Rico in the Northern Caribbean Sea. They're joined by two guided missile destroyers and a cruiser, which are also operating in the Caribbean. And I mean, let's keep it real. Marines are usually deployed for... boots on the ground? Not a great sign here. And just today, the Pentagon announced that it's sending 10 F-35 fighter jets to the Caribbean to be used in operations allegedly targeting drug cartels. And I say allegedly because honestly, I personally don't believe this is about drugs for a single second. And Dave, you recently had Dave DeCamp on from anti-war.com. And he mentioned something that even I didn't know about in regard to the Trump administration blowing boats up. Let's take a look. I mean, the U.S. military just blew a boat out of the water in the Caribbean, claiming that it was carrying drugs. And actually, they did something similar in Somalia a few months ago. They bombed a boat and claimed it was smuggling weapons. And I remember thinking, like, how could you know that? How could you know everybody on the boat? Is even aware that they're smuggling weapons? Like, how could you really know that? And they're probably just relying on, like, whoever their allies are, whatever they tell them about that boat. And now we see it. I mean, this is a precedent has been set now. If you want to get into this by this U.S., I believe it was an airstrike, it hasn't been confirmed, maybe a drone or something. The U.S. bombing a boat claiming that it's carrying drugs and killing, according to President Trump, 11 people, which he calls terrorists. Okay, so what the hell is going on here and how many conflicts is the United States involved in that most Americans don't even know about? So I opened it up to you, Dave Smith. I want to know what your thoughts are about what's really going on with Venezuela. Well, I like that you played that clip of Dave DeCamp, which I should give a shout out to him. He's the man. And he's really Scott's absolute best guy over there at antiwar.com. And I read him every single day. And he's, if you really want to stay informed, read Dave DeCamp. Absolutely. Antiwar.com because he's. He's all over like every conflict and puts out like multiple articles every day about it. Yeah, it's kind of like, you know, the war on drugs, times the war on terrorism. And they've both been such successful policies that why don't we merge these two things. And for some reason, this seems to be like catnit to a lot of the Trump supporters that they just, yeah, all right, we're narco terrorists is all you need to hear for right wingers, I guess, to get excited, or at least some of them.

And of course, you know, what does that even mean exactly? Like, can we define that term? Can you demonstrate it? In this case, we haven't demonstrated that they were drug dealers or that they were terrorists. Like what act of terrorism are you accusing them of committing? And of course, I mean, this policy is just, you can see it's Trump just flirting with another disastrous idea. We'll see how far he ends up going with it. But, you know, when they, when Pete Hegseth is mentioning. that 100,000 people die of overdoses every year. What he's leaving out is that that's after 50 years of the war on drugs. Like this is the result of this big government tyrannical policy of regulating what Americans can put in their bodies after all of these years and filling up so many prisons with with drug offenders and drug dealers. This is where we are now. And as Dave DeCamp also pointed out when I was interviewing him the other day, you know, where when you're talking about, you know, say drone bombing, narco terrorists. Well, can you can anyone point to one example where that's worked in the war on terrorism? Like in any one of these theaters, where is that, you know, it was in Afghanistan in 2009 when General McChrystal came up with the insurgent math. you know that term and basically just being like we're creating more and more terrorists with all of these these every time we take people off of our list of course as Scott has covered in his phenomenal book enough already in in Yemen before the Saudi invasion when when Obama was fighting al Qaeda there from al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula from 2009 to 2015 He was drone bombing them and they just, their numbers kept growing and growing and growing. And the same was true in Syria and Iraq. And so I guess we want to bring all of that success right into our hemisphere now. And as Dave DeKamp also pointed out, and I'll take it over to Scott after this, but yeah, if you really were even concerned about. the drug trade, it's not as if Venezuela is the main problem. It's much more stuff comes through Colombia and Mexico. And so it just happens to be the regime change that Marco Rubio has had a hard on for for many years happens to be the target of narco terrorism. I don't know, I'm gonna need to see some evidence. I'm not buying any of it.

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Well, to your point, and I'm gonna kick it over to you, Scott, you know, in Trump's first term, for all of the, you know, celebrations that you'll see from the America first crowd in regard to Trump's so-called isolationism, in reality in his first term, he did attempt to topple the regime in Venezuela, I believe twice and essentially install Juan Guaido as like some, you know, puppet leader for the United States. Am I wrong to think that the drug war is really a cover story here for what is really going to be a regime change war with Venezuela? Well, yeah, that's certainly my concern as well. And by the way, it was on the very bad advice of Marco Rubio back then to do that. And when, of course, Juan Guaido had no real charisma whatsoever, much less a real base of support in the country to support him. It's a very small faction. And then he called for military intervention on his own behalf, which of course is treason and the death knell of any domestic popularity ever could have and is, I believe, widely regarded as a joke now. So I don't know who they have in mind to do it, but I think you're right that this very well could be a pretext for that. As far as the war on drugs itself here and fighting it in this way. Senator Rand Paul came out today and said, this is illegal. And the law says you just interdict these guys. If they have drugs, you prosecute them. This is America. We should presume whoever's on that boat, who we know from that bird's eye view, from that drone's eye view, they don't really know who those people are. They should be presumed innocent. We're not at war with Venezuela. That's a criminal matter. They should be arrested and if necessary, prosecuted. But as Dave said, you know, all of that is essentially an endless jobs program for a bunch of DEA agents anyway. Never accomplish anything. That's exactly, yeah, that's right. But why would, why would Trump want to do a regime change war in Venezuela? Like what are the motivations, the possible motivations here? Well, they have a lot of oil and they've maintained their independence from us. And of course, they've been essentially a leftist regime. you know, to the left by leftists, I mean to the left of progressive, you know, since Hugo Chavez and Maduro has, you know, made himself no friend of the United States. And so they have a full sanctions regime on them. You know, people complain for good reasons about Venezuelan gangs in this country. But America's international sanctions regime has done as much to destroy Venezuela as their, you know, pseudo-Marxoid economy that they've had. Because. You know, any national government can still hire some French company to come in and run their oil company for them or whatever like that. But they're not allowed to. The sanctions regime prevents that. So America is, I don't know what percentage, but roughly half the reason Venezuela is as poor as it is and why they have such crime and so many refugees and economic refugees and others emigrating from there in the first place. So. Yeah.

You know, and, you know, force is very tempting. And especially Donald Trump is the kind of guy who his people tell him, look, the solution to this is just make it go bang, then he's listening at least. You know what I mean? Especially when it seems like, you know, kind of high benefit, low cost. Like what's the worst that could happen if he attacks Benzwell? It's not like picking a fight over in Mesopotamia or something. So you could see how for him. You know like Bush senior in Panama, this is one that we could do and get away with probably without too much trouble, you know, maybe. I'm not saying that's true, but I could see that being there thinking. You know, but my concern is that we're getting mixed up, well, we're making a lot of different enemies all across the globe right now. So in regard to the interview that you had, Dave, with DeCamp. He talked a lot about what's currently transpiring in Somalia and how the airstrikes, the US airstrikes in Somalia have really ramped up under the second Trump administration. Most Americans don't know about that. You know, we're doing what we're doing right now with Venezuela. We are aiding and abetting a genocide in Gaza and the annexation of the West Bank in the Middle East. I mean, there's a lot going on. It's very easy to kind of get caught up in this ideology of, well, we're this military superpower and no one's going to attack us and no harm will come to the United States. But we also know that the way wars are fought has really changed. And with the emergence of drones, I think that really does change the game in regard to U.S. security. I'm a little bit concerned about what's going on right now and whether our foreign policy is actually attracting a lot more hostility that could put Americans at risk. What do you think about that, Dave? Oh yeah, I mean, I think it's a real concern. And of course, like, you know, the this is what this is what? created the terrorist problem to begin with. And I think what we've done here now being completely implicated for facilitating the genocide in Gaza, all these military campaigns where there really is no clear threat to US national security, but the hatred that we engender from these campaigns is a real threat to US national security. And I do think, you know, I get caught up a little bit. You know, like obviously like the war hawks are always trying to make people scared. And this, you know, back if you could remember Dick Cheney after 9-11, talking about it's not a matter of if, but when. And so they're always playing up this like you have to be afraid and therefore give all of your, you know, give us additional power and kind of turn your brain off. But the policy of in immediately after the the terror wars. having the Joe Biden de facto open borders. And now just getting right back into the game of of wars of choice. And of course, backing Israel's just horrific genocide of the Ghazans.

It does just seem like, I mean, like this policy is just so insane. And yeah, I'm very concerned about potential blowback terrorism from all of these conflicts. So who knows? I know Scott said the other day, you know, I interviewed Scott on my show about a week and a half ago. And even Scott was saying as upset as some of us are with Tulsi Gabbard and the way she handled both the bombing of the Houthis and the bombing of Iran. Scott was saying, man, I hope she really is focused on Ben Ladenite radicals every day because this is a real threat that we should be concerned about. Yeah, absolutely. And you know, It's interesting because there's this cover story when it comes to what's happening with Venezuela. The US is also along with Israel kind of threatening the government of Lebanon. You need to disarm the, you need to disarm Hezbollah or else there could be some military action taken against you. You also have, I don't think the Iran conflict is over by any means. And of course, there's still pressure from Israel for the US to go back in. But there's also like this. other side of the Trump administration or Trump himself where he's actually very honest. So I actually want to pivot to what has just happened with a new executive order because Donald Trump is expected to sign an executive order today, which would in my opinion accurately rebrand the Defense Department as the Department of War because it does seem like the Defense Department does a lot less defending. and a lot more warring. So according to a document describing the EO, restoring the name Department of War will sharpen the focus of this department on our national interest. I don't know if it's really in our national interest to start wars, but nonetheless, and signal to adversaries America's readiness to wage war to secure its interests. I think that the international community is well aware that we're willing to wage war pretty much over anything. But there are suspicions that this all stemmed from a single passing comment that Trump made to Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth. Pete Hegseth has been discussing the issue internally since March, said a person familiar with the matter, apparently inspired after a White House meeting at which Trump quipped. You look more like a secretary of war. In August, Trump also said defense is too defensive and we want to be defensive, but we want to be offensive too if we have to be. He has argued that defense was to politically correct a term. It's too woke, I guess. And that war and that war department just sounded better. So Scott, thoughts on that. Well, look, I mean, there's some truth in what he's saying that this always was a politically correct term for it, right? They renamed it the Department of Defense in 1947 after they passed the National Security Act and really made it the Department of World Empire, right? And the Department of Aggression. Before that, they were at least honest enough to call it what it was. So as far as dumping the euphemism and getting back to calling things by their proper names, I'm all for it.

you know, in the spirit of George Carlin and the originators of this language. You know, we deserve that. But if the whole point is to reinvigorate that Marshall's spirit, well, yeah, no, we've had enough of that. America first doesn't mean be George W. Bush, the idiot, selfish jerk who goes around calling things America's national interest and then doing them. It means defend America first. It means we're not the world's policemen, leave the rest of the world the hell alone with their own problems and to solve them too in their own way. Makes no sense a middle part of North America has got to be the world empire forever. We clearly just cannot afford it anyway, even if we had the mandate of heaven to do it, which we don't. Well, luckily, there is a growing group of, you know, conservatives in America, conservative voters who are speaking up more and more about how they don't want to intervene and get involved in foreign conflicts. And when we come back from the break, we're going to get into that. We're going to talk a little bit about this growing rift and what transpired over at the National Conservatism Conference. So stick around for that and more. We'll be right back.

Welcome back to the show, Anna Casparian, Scott Horton, and Dave Smith with you. I want to talk a little bit about this growing trend on the right. And it's real, it's not fake. There are more and more voices on the right who don't want to intervene in foreign conflicts. They don't want to aid and abet genocides. And they certainly don't want to engage in regime change wars. But they are up against the traditional right, if the interventional, those who want to intervene. And that was really on full display during the National Conservatism Conference. Take a look. Why are these armed wars? Why are Israel's endless problems, America's liabilities? Why are we in the national deservative bloc, broadly speaking, why do we laugh out of the room this argument when it's advanced by Volodymyr Zelensky Erzolensky? What are slavish hypocrites for Benjamin Netanyahu? Why should we accept America first asterisk Israel? And the answer is we should. The conservative divide over what it means to be America First was on full display this week at the annual national conservatism conference. And the guy that you just watched is named Kurt Mills. He's the editor and executive director of the American conservative who went up against interventionist Max Abrams, an assistant professor of political science at. Northeastern University. Now the two butted heads over America's unconditional support for Israel and Donald Trump's decision to drag the United States even deeper into Middle East conflicts. Now here's how Kelly Vlalos, who is over at responsible statecraft summed up the debate. Abrams came out swinging to call all realists today, by the way, I personally identify as a realist, but all realists today, especially John Mearsheimer, wrong on the issue of Iran and the Middle East writ large. In fact, he called them all MAGA isolationist realists who have become insane in their wrongheaded analysis since being right on the failures of the post 9-11 wars. Now Abrams also referred to Trump's bombing of Iran. as successful and argued that the isolationists said any American intervention in Iran would be just like the Iraq war. They said that Trump and Tulsi Gabbard, were lying or at the very least totally wrong about Iran's nuclear weapons capability.

That the US had no strategic interest in Iran, that Trump is some kind of a weak snowflake who can't ever stand up to Israel, that he'll only intervene due to Israeli pressure against his own volition. And that Israel may well deliberately kill Americans all over the Persian Gulf in a series of false flag operations. Now this is some really insane stuff. This is some really crazy stuff. It's probably the most inaccurate mid-east punditry that you can find anywhere. Now, Abrams also accused his anti-interventionist foes of being paid mouthpieces for George Soros and the coax. And honestly, I think that's a pretty ridiculous thing to say when you know what's happened with USS Liberty or with the Beirut bombing in 1983. In fact, Scott Horton briefly weighed in on what Mossad likely knew before the Beirut bombing even happened. This was on Pierce Morgan show. In Victor Ostrovsky's book, by way of deception, he says that the Mossad knew that Hezbo, or I guess, Proto Hezbo, at that time was making a giant truck bomb and decided explicitly not to warn the Americans before the Beirut attack. It killed 241 American Marines in 1983. I have to wonder if that's why Ronald Reagan went ahead and pulled out at that time instead of doubling down. It's because he knew of their treachery. That's again in the book by way of deception. It just goes to highlight the vast daylight and discrepancy between the interests of the nation state of Israel, which as the gentleman said, of course, they're a very small nation state. It's in their interest, obviously, to get America to do what they want. So, Scott, I did not know about what you had revealed on Pierce Morgan Show at all. And I want to just kind of pause and have you elaborate on that a little more. Because, you know, I think that Americans, maybe it's because of the kind of, you know, public school education we received. You know, our textbooks were published by. you know, Robert Maxwell, who was the head of two publishing houses here. McMillan and McRaw Hill, those two publishing houses publish the textbooks that our students read in public schools. So these types of, you know, what you revealed is not something that the typical American ever hears about. So I wanted to give you an opportunity to kind of elaborate on that a little bit. Yeah, you know, I really should try to interview this guy. I think he's still around. He's a former Mossad spy, Last I Her Living in Exile in Canada. And he wrote this book by way of deception, which that's the slogan of the Israeli Mossad by way of deception. Thou shalt do war.

And which I don't know what the origin of that is. But anyway, that's their slogan. And that's the book. And he says in there that they knew, as I said in that clip there, they knew that this group of Shiite fighters were making a truck bomb. And they knew that there was only one or two targets available. There were only one or two targets that were the potential targets for this thing. There had already been a couple of truck bombs back and forth at that point. So it was brought up, well, we better tell the Americans. And he has quotes, which it's a single source, but his quotes are that they said, well, that's what they get for sticking their nose into our business. And I forget the other one was, I forget, I don't want to say what the second one was because I forget, but that was what they get, that's what they get for sticking their noses in was one of them. And there was a second quote to being dismissive. It may have been just the Americans, it's up to them to take care of themselves. You know, we don't owe them anything, stuff like that. So, and then real quick. You know, they said that to this day. This is why we have to hate the Shiites and the Iranians to this day is because of that bombing in 1983. Even if Ronald Reagan sold the missiles a year and a half after that, you know? That's incredible. And just for anyone who doesn't know the context. So we had, you know, a U.S. peacekeeping mission. And the whole point was to, you know, just kind of prevent an ongoing war with the Israelis. And I guess that's what Israel was salty about. And they didn't tell us that our soldiers, that Americans, hundreds of Americans were under threat from a potential Hezbollah bombing in Beirut. Look, the reality is it's clear that the leadership in Israel, past and present and probably future, that they don't care about the American people any more than they care about the Palestinians, right? We're all just grasshoppers to them. And so they got to sink our Navy ship or try to. You know, if they got to. you know, refuse to share all that they know about the hijackers hiding in Florida or if they got to, you know, keep it under their hat that there's about to be a truck bombing against our Marines in Beirut or whatever it is, if it's in their interest in the short term. And this is actually always very surprising to me, in fact, because. You could obviously argue that this is not in their interest to treat the American people like we're absolutely just cattle, you know, on their ranch. What if we start to resent that and refuse to pay their way and fight their wars anymore? So you can see why things like this might be in their interest in the short term, but then they do things that end up leading to a lot of resentment against them. which from their point of view, you would think would jeopardize their interest for the medium and the long term. But, you know, politicians tend to think in very short cycles, I guess. Yeah. Well, I want to get back to the conference and the response to all of these allegations, you know, toward the isolationist. Because look, like what about Mills? Okay, like how did he respond? Well, according to the reporting, Mills quickly pointed out that there was a deal with Iran on the table and Trump

could have achieved much more and without bloodshed if he had let the negotiations go on and had not gotten sucked into the vortex of Israel and its supporters in Washington who so desperately wanted to bomb Iran. And here's a little gem from Mills on the power Israel has exerted over the United States. Why have I become a hater and utterly convinced that the U.S. is a relationship, particularly when Republicans hold national power, has become a world's historical, perhaps the world's historical case of the tail wagging on the dog. As former White House chief strategist, Steve Bannon, as mentioned by Max, a longtime source of mine, as well as that of most fun journalists. in this town has taken to labeling the dynamic, Israel is a vassal state calling the shots in the world's most powerful empire and regime change in Tel Aviv. His words, not mine, is necessary. Finally, Mills chided the Trump administration's crackdown on critics of Israel's genocide under the guise of preventing anti-Semitism, saying one could be forgiven for believing the only people this administration is reliably deporting our supporters of the Palestinian cause after. riding back into power on the appeal of free speech enshrined in the First Amendment of this country's constitution. If conserving that isn't conservatism, I don't know what is. This administration has used its influence to attempt to curb and intimidate speech on Middle East issues, particularly the State Department. After assembling and potentially generationally realigning a cohort of voters disgusted with woke pieties and suffocation of dialogue with incessant accusations of racism, Republicans have all too eagerly embraced holding the whip themselves, accusing countless critics as anti-Semites instead of engaging on the issue. And what makes this particular debate even more interesting is Nat Khan, which hosted the event, of course, was launched back in 2019 by a guy named Yoram Hazani. a staunch pro-Israel nationalist. Historically, this event has avoided foreign policy discussions, but this year there were luckily two sessions featuring anti-war voices. As for the reception, well, Kelly Vlalos reports that the questions from the audience were 90% sympathetic to Mills, but that there was some audible support when Abrams said that Palestine cannot be given a state. And even though we're hearing from more and more anti-war voices on the right, and that's a good thing. Unfortunately, it does appear that most Republicans are still in Israel's corner when it comes to the genocide in Gaza. So take a look at this chart. It shows that a July Gallup poll found 71% of Republicans say they approve of Israel's action in Gaza. And I'm curious about that, Dave, because honestly,

I've been hearing from so many high profile people on the right who identify as right wingers who are pushing back against, you know, the Trump administration's foreign policy. I don't know if that polling is accurate, but I am curious what your feel of the situation is. Well, I think there's there's no question that something major is happening on the grassroots level of the right wing in America. And this is a good example of it. You know, I was at a Turning Point USA event a couple months back and I did a debate there, moderated by Charlie Kirk. And it was certainly a divided crowd, but I mean like twice as much of the the The portion of the crowd that agreed with me was twice as big as the one that disagreed with me. And I know Charlie Kirk put out a poll after that and I won the poll. And this is Charlie Kirk's event, you know, like of all places you would think would be a pro-Israel space. And I certainly have seen a lot of polling with the young people, young right wingers. There's been a massive shift in terms of supporting Israel. And you know, I think a lot of it is like even like Max Abrams points are just all so ridiculous. He can try to point to like, oh, okay, there's some conspiracy theorists who think Israel might launch a false flag or something. But the bottom line, you know, it's funny, you brought up Scott's debate with Bill Crystal from a few years back. And one of my favorite parts of that debate is at one point, someone in the audience asked a question to Bill Crystal and says, what's the last U.S. intervention that worked out well? Like, which one is the last one that you can defend? And Bill Crystal, son of Irving Crystal, Arch Neocon. Super genius. I think he said the Baltics. Was that right, Scott? Was that the one he? He said Bosnia, 95. Oh, Bosnia. I'm sorry, it was Bosnia. So in other words, even Bill Crystal couldn't even begin to attempt to defend Iraq or Afghanistan or Libya or Syria or Somalia or Yemen or any of these. And so you can call us isolationists all you want, whatever that means. Like we're arguing don't fight another stupid war of choice of aggression. That makes you an isolationist. Meanwhile, what's going on? China's having military parades with Kim Jong-un and leaders from India and Vladimir Putin and all of them. It seems like the policies of George W. Bush and Barack Obama and Joe Biden and Donald Trump have been doing a lot to isolate America. Good point.

bringing us all together. What is that unifying us? And yet we're the ones that people like me and Scott who are like, hey, just be friends and trade with everybody. Somehow we're cast as the isolationist. The bottom line is that every last one of these wars and including the war in Ukraine, including the war in the genocide in Gaza. All of them are just sold off lies and perpetuated off of lies. I mean, we heard for years through all these things. You know, it's like all the years that they said, we're really building up this Afghan army that's going to hold the country after we're gone. And, you know, the we were supposed to recover all Ukrainian territory according to Biden and Nancy Pelosi and all of these things. It's just, and so all that's happening, Anna, as you know well, is that the. The control of the corporate media has been destroyed. And now people aren't being propagandized in the same way. And so they're seeing through things like nobody has a good response to the stuff that Kurt Mills was saying there. And so all they could do is call you an anti-Semite or, you know, I don't know, maybe they jump on the worst excesses of some conspiracies. And yeah, people get into kooky stuff sometimes on Twitter or whatever. But none of that is really getting at the point, which is that. They had control of American foreign policy for many decades. They've completely blown it. They've bankrupted the country and just left millions of corpses of innocent people in the trail to show for it. So people are rejecting that. It really is that simple. Yeah. And you know, what I'm worried about is. As this anti-war sentiment within the United States grows, I'm seeing more of an effort to engage in censorship, engage in labeling people terrorists in order to punish them for speaking out against the support that we're providing. for a genocide in Gaza. And so when we come back from the break, I actually want to delve into that a little more because some pretty scary things are happening, not just in the United States, but particularly in Europe, in the UK, when it comes to silencing, you know, peace protesters, peace demonstrators. I want to get everyone's thoughts on that when we return. So stick around.

Bonjour, compadre. It's the Priceline Negotiator. How do I negotiate so many great travel deals? My greatest gadget. The Price Line app. It's got hotel deals, flight deals, rental car deals, all of those deals in a bundle, deals, game day deals, concert trip deals. No one deals more deals than Price Line. Hold your horses. There's more. The app let you filter hotels by neighborhood, vibe, star level, and amenities like pools and spas and beach fronts. Wait, I'm not done. Stop cutting me up. I believe that dismissing people, dismissing their concerns, or worse yet, shutting down media, shutting down elections, or shutting people out of the political process protects nothing. In fact, it is the most surefire way to destroy democracy. And speaking up and expressing opinions isn't election interference. Even when people express views outside your own country and even when those people are very influential. Vice President JD Vance received quite a bit of backlash for his allegations that free speech is under threat in Europe that was at the Munich Security Conference. But in reality, there is some truth to what he was saying. And he is right, there are many examples that we're about to get into. But what's ironic is that months after giving that very speech at the Munich Security Conference, The Trump administration began engaging in arrests, attempted deportations, and sanctioning pro-Palestinian groups that are critical of Israel's genocidal acts and fight to ensure Palestinian civilians get a modicum of justice. So we'll get to the latest examples of that in just a moment, but it is worth noting that some pretty wild things are going down in the United Kingdom. In fact, seven people have been charged with terrorism over Zoom meetings. More specifically, the alleged offenses relate to a group called Defend Our Juries, arranging public protests in support of Palestine action in London, Manchester, and Cardiff, as well as a demonstration planned for this Saturday in London. The charges also cover 13 Zoom meetings allegedly held between July and August in support of the prescribed group. Oh my God, Zoom meetings, crazy. Now, the seven people who were charged are all members of Defend Our Juries. Defend Our Juries is a UK activist organization linked to Palestine Action. It criticized the arrests and said they would not deter people from taking part in this weekend's.

protest. So why are officials in the UK up in arms about Palestine action? And how are they justifying the label of terrorist when it comes to peace activists? Well, the UK-based Palestine action, which aims to disrupt the operations of weapons manufacturers supplying the Israeli government, was prescribed in July, a month after two of its activists broke into Britain's largest air base and damaged two military aircraft. It's a ballsy thing to do. So the group's ban makes it illegal under UK law to be a member of or even invite support for Palestine action. The terrorist designation also puts them on par with organizations such as Hamas, al-Qaeda, and ISIS. I should note that the US armed al-Qaeda and ISIS in Syria to topple Bashar al-Assad. But anyway, let me move on. Six people aged. Between 26 and 62 were charged on Wednesday as part of an investigation led by counterterrorism command of London's metropolitan police. A seventh person was charged on Tuesday in a connected investigation by police in Scotland. And just to see how ridiculous this all appears to be, like take a look at one of the people who got arrested, take a look at what that scene look like, and just how scary and threatening this guy looks. Just that, what's your response? So yeah, this is what happens. Britain in 2025. Right, can we have a hand? Reposing genocide. But I'm going to be placed you under arrest, okay? And I'm going to read out the reason before that. The time now is 10 past 7 in the morning. It's the 2nd September. So, Patrick, you are under arrest on suspicion of committing the offence of Section 12, Subsection 3 of the Terrorism Act 2000. You are registered to address an online Zoom meeting between the 10th of July 2020. and the 21st of August 225. The purpose of encouraging support and furthering the activities of prescribed organisation, Palestine action. We do not have to say anything, but it may harm me defence. Do not mention one question, something which you later arrive in court. Anything you do so may be given evidence. So the arrest is necessary to prevent loss of evidence, prevent collusion with co-suspects, and to allow the searches under the Police and criminal evidence act and facilitate this interview. Hundreds of people have been arrested in the United Kingdom over their participation in pro-Palestine demonstrations. More than 700 people have been arrested and 114 charged by the Metropolitan Police in connection with this summer's demonstrations, with over 500 people arrested during a singular demonstration in August alone. But things are getting pretty bad in the United States as well. Marco Rubio posted on X yesterday that...

This is the latest example. Today, the Trump administration is sanctioning three NGOs, Al Haq, al-Mezan, the Palestinian Center for Human Rights, for assisting in the ICC's illegitimate actions against Israel. The United States will continue to protect our own sovereignty and the sovereignty of our allies from the ICC's overreach. That's insane. So the overreach that he's referring to is the prosecution of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu from Israel, of course, who is a war criminal that is guilty of carrying out a genocide in Gaza. Last year, the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Benjamin Netanyahu and former defense minister Yoav Galant on charges of crimes against humanity and other war crimes. So those warrants came as a result of the three groups now being sanctioned. asking the ICC to investigate Israel's airstrikes in Gaza in 2023. But the US State Department made clear that they're in bed with Israel regardless of how loathsome their war crimes are. In a statement, the State Department claimed that the ICC has a politicized agenda and declared that the ongoing actions of the ICC set a dangerous precedent for all nations. But that's not all. In February, the US moved to prohibit Kareem Khan, the ICC's chief prosecutor from entering the country or doing business with the US. And in June, it's sanctioned four international criminal court judges involved in the probe. The following month, the State Department announced sanctions against a top UN Human Rights Council official who has called on the ICC to prosecute companies and corporate executives tied to the Israeli government. Al Haq has responded by calling the sanctions a heinous and draconian measure that constitute a cowardly, a moral, illegal, and undemocratic act. The group also wrote, as the world moves to impose sanctions and arms embargoes on Israel, its ally, the United States, is working to destroy Palestinian institutions working tirelessly for accountability for the victims of Israel's mass atrocity crimes. I'm just gonna pause a note that reporting. Using internal IDF data indicates that at least, this is the IDF's own data, at least 83% of people killed in Gaza by the IDF happen to be civilians. These are obviously war crimes. And just last week, the State Department also announced sanctions against the Palestinian Authority and the Palestine Liberation Organization ahead of the UN General Assembly in New York, which could prevent PA leaders from traveling to America for the meeting. This is all happening with the backdrop of student visa or green card holders becoming targets for arrest and deportation if they participate in pro peace protests or write op-eds for their school paper, by the way, critical of Israel's actual war crimes in their student papers.

This is really concerning because I think that you're onto something, Dave, when you talk about how the paradigm shift is clear, corporate media has lost power, legacy media has lost power. There's this explosion of independent sources that are informing the American public about the reality of our foreign policy and how detrimental it is to the American people and to others abroad, by the way. I'm worried that now our government might move to engage in unconstitutional acts against our freedom of expression. Yeah, well, it's, you know, like when they say when, when a woman leaves an abusive husband, that's the most dangerous time. Right. That's when the guy might flip out and actually kill her. And that doesn't mean it's like the correct move is still for her to leave that guy. But it's also the most dangerous time. And so there is a concern where as their kind of ability to control the narrative through their more traditional means, which. They always had, they didn't really need to resort to these type of tactics for a while because they could say just get Donahue fired from MSNBC or get, you know what I mean? Like they would just, if somebody was against the war in Iraq or was getting a little bit too close to it, they would just kind of get rid of that. person and you know me and me and scott's intellectual hero murray rothbard was really driven out of kind of polite society in his time and and relegated to you know form his own institutions and stuff like that but he was like a guy who was writing for national review and then and was a founder of the cato institute and then they totally boxed him out and that's the way the old system used to work for for a long time And that they don't really have that anymore. And so now they're trying to crack down in these other ways. I think the only answer to this is that we got to overwhelm them with numbers and all of us just have to not budge on this to the point that it's like, well, there's no way they're going to shut this conversation down anyway. It is disturbing. You know, it's so many of the people who like defend Israel blindly, like the Bill Mars of the world or whatever. You know, they always say it's a battle of civilizations. And Israel represents liberalism and Western civilization and democracy and all these things. But then you'd be like, but what does that even mean if the bedrock principle isn't that you're allowed to say what you want to say? You're allowed to criticize a government policy, especially when that government policy. is mass murder. And in some sense, you know, the people who say that about Israel, like there is a kernel of truth to it. I mean, Israel in Israel proper, there is some degree of that liberal tradition of freedom of speech. And that's why Israeli newspapers will tell you about the war crimes that Benjamin Netanyahu is committing every day.

And they don't seem to get arrested for it. And even, I mean, they had just a couple weeks ago, there were protests in the hundreds of thousands people protesting the war in Tel Aviv there. And I don't think I heard about anyone there getting arrested or shut down for it. But. You see, because we have to support Israel and everything they do, we have to give up our freedom of speech in the Western world, which is just so totally outrageous. But I should say there is a long tradition of this in the United States of America. I mean, it's not as if it's what a lot of, you know, in the mind I think of a lot of young people, they'll be like, you know, cancel culture is this new phenomenon that just started. But people can go read up on what Woodrow Wilson was doing to anti-war activists during World War I. And these type of tactics are, you know, this is I think probably one of maybe not the number one reason, like the humanitarian reason might be number one, but certainly one of the top reasons why guys like me and Scott are so anti-war is because. You know, war is the health of the state and it's the biggest indicator of what the relationship between the citizen and the government is and that it's always true in times of war that governments crack down on civil liberties and first amongst those is speech, that's anti-war. In fact, I feel like the trend of labeling anything the federal government doesn't like or anyone who pushes back against the federal government, certainly when it comes to foreign policy as terrorists, like really. like ramped up during the, you know, war on terror under the Bush administration. And I remember at that time, shows like the young Turks, like warning against that, right? Warning against just labeling fellow Americans as terrorist supporters or terrorist sympathizers if they were speaking out against U.S. foreign policy. And it was difficult to do that, by the way, especially in the early years of the Bush administration. Americans were understandably terrified of what could happen if we didn't engage in this war against terrorism. You know, we had just been victimized in the largest terror attack in American history. I think that the politics of fear should be something that's top of mind for most Americans, because if the government is trying to scare you, it's usually because they want to engage in some pretty nefarious policies. So I'm gonna let you have the last word on this, Scott. Thoughts on all of this, what's happening in the UK, what's happening in the US, and what the future might hold as more and more people speak out against our unwavering commitment to Israel. Yeah, I mean, it's another tragic piece of blowback, another side effect of American support for Israel, another demonstration of our support for that country being against.

the interests of the American people, regardless of what the people in DC say. But, you know, as previously discussed here, there's a great crackup coming on the left. It's virtually the entire voting population of the Democratic Party versus its rulers. And more and more it's becoming that way on the right. I saw your poll, but there was a different one recently that had it a 50-50 split as far as Republican sympathies. with the Palestinians or the Israelis. So it depends on how you ask the question and all that. But it's really changing quite rapidly on the right. And as Colonel McGregor says, time wins more arguments than reason. And it just turns out, we just had nothing to show for all of our pro-Israel wars in the Middle East and the rest of these policies. And more and more people are finally just turning against it. America first or Israel instead. You can't have it both ways. So then this is what's really exciting is we're gonna have a situation where just like on the Democratic side, on the Republican side, you have the rulers of the party versus more or less the voting population and in its majority on this issue. And it's not gonna be as stark of a difference as it is on the left, you know, quite soon enough for my taste, but it's coming. And then we'll have just like over there, it'll be apartheid, right? With the small minority rule in the rest, despite the overwhelming consensus of the American people. We don't want any part of this anymore. And then that's untenable for the long term. So the crackup is coming. I encourage everybody to keep pushing. Well, I credit the two of you for focusing on foreign policy so heavily and informing people about things that we aren't going to get in corporate media or legacy media. So everyone, please support the work that Dave and Scott do. As I mentioned earlier, Dave Smith is the host of part of the problem. Please subscribe to the show. Is there anything else you'd like to promote before we go, Dave? Oh, can I just say, you know what, Scott's got this sitting in back of them, but I'm out on the road doing comedy shows and I'm in a hotel, which is I got little kids. So this is the only time I get my reading done. But so I've literally just been cracking into this. I'm like halfway done. It is so good, dude. Creative chaos by William Van Wagonin is just the story of the CIA's covert war in Syria and how Barack Obama and John Brennan started that whole catastrophe. And I've read like. I'm halfway through this thing in my first setting. It's so great. It was just published by the Libertarian Institute. So I don't I don't see any money from that, but I just wanted to plug it because it's a really good book. You're amazing, Dave. I love it so much. I love it so much. And by the way, thank you for doing your best to inform people about how we. were attacked by al-Qaeda but are, or did arm al-Qaeda in Syria under the Obama administration. I don't think most people are aware of that. But Scott- No, it's okay Anna, you can be friends. You can be friends with them now. Hezbollah was always the enemy of the American people. That's what you got to worry about. It's just wild. And Scott Horton, again, is the director of the Libertarian Institute. He's written many books. Scott, I want to kick it over to you to promote anything you'd like.

Yeah, well, so you can see all my books behind me. I wrote enough already. Oops, enough already timed in the war on terrorism and provoked about the Cold War with Russia and the war in Ukraine. I have a brand new project coming out. You can see on my mic flag here. It's the Scott Horton Academy of Foreign Policy and Freedom. And we should be launching here, I don't know, within the month, I hope, at Scott Hortonacademy.com. And this is... a major project like Tom Woods Liberty Classroom, long form seminars by myself and other great experts on all different aspects of American foreign policy and freedom. And so that should be kicking off soon and people can watch a great promo video and sign up with their email address there at Scott Horton Academy.com. I love it. All right, we're massively out of time, which like breaks my heart because there was another story I wanted to cover with you. But hopefully you gentlemen will be willing to come back in the future. I really enjoyed the conversation. And thank you so much for doing it. Thanks, Adam. Anytime. All right, we're going to take a brief break. And when we come back, Trita Parsi will be joining us to talk a little bit about what the future holds in Iran and whether the United States is going to get dragged into a war with that country. So that and more coming up, don't miss it.

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