6/23/26: John Mearsheimer On Iran & Ukraine, Tucker Says He Is Done With Republican Party

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Good morning, everybody. Happy Tuesday. I have an amazing show for everybody today. What do we have, Crystal? Indeed, we do. John Mearsheim are going to join us this morning to talk both about Iran. We have some new developments this morning. President Trump says that support for Iran is a humanitarian mission. That's the note he's sounding this morning,

so we'll get his reaction to everything that's developed. We also wanted to do a deep dive again into what is going on with Ukraine and Russia as that conflict continues to get more dangers, with Ukraine striking more and more aggressively inside of Russian territory and really going after the oil and gas facilities. So interested to get his take on that. We're also taking a look at the Republican Party, how things are going overall for the Trump administration, as Tucker Carlson says that he is done with the Republican Party, done voting for Republicans. So kind of an interesting moment, given that he has been one of their top backers for years and years and years. So very interesting when I dig into that. We also have some new numbers on housing. It's not just the ticket price of the house that is too expensive. It is everything that comes along with that down to the HOA fees that has gotten astronomically more expensive over the past several years.

And analysts are saying it may never go back to the level of affordability that we once enjoyed. and both the guys from the blowback pod are going to join us. Their latest special series is about our very special relationship with Israel, going back to the founding of that nation and the way that that relationship has changed and evolved over time. So really interesting deep dive that they're doing. We'll ask them about some modern developments as well. Yeah, I'm excited to talk to them. You know, all that history with Truman and his Haberdashry partner and all that.

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please share an episode with the friend or rate us five stars. It really helps other people find the show. But as Crystal just laid out, we've got the great Professor John Mearsheimer standing by to help us break down the ongoing situation with Iran. Let's get to it.

Joining us now, our great friend of the show, Professor John Meersheimer of the University of Chicago. It's good to see you, sir. Thank you for joining us. It's good to be here, as always. Absolutely. All right, so we're going to start.

with some breaking news from President Trump reacting to a lot of the neo-conservative criticism for allowing the Treasury Department to lift sanctions on Iranian oil. We'll dig some of that lately, but let's put A6 up here on the screen. The president's saying that despite Iranian denials that they have agreed to the, quote, highest level of nuclear inspections long into the future of infinity, he says, I have agreed to allow the Hormuz Strait to remain open and that the money and or sanctions that the Treasury is releasing will go into escrow, will be used for the purchase of food and medical supplies

from the United States, including corn, wheat, soybeans, because these are desperately needed by Iran, and it's a humanitarian crisis, and he feels it necessary to help them now. What do you make here of the president trying to navigate many of these more recent Iranian denials that they actually will allow nuclear inspectors into their country,

despite the fact that the United States did significantly lift all of their sanctions on current Iranian oil? Well, the deal has always said that the nuclear issue would be dealt with later rather than sooner. So there have been no agreements on the nuclear dimension of this memorandum. That comes later. And I would imagine that the Iranians will be quite accommodating on the nuclear issue because that will allow them to benefit on all sorts of other issues. But I think that President Trump's comments are sort of premature. And I think what's going on here is he's trying to put lipstick on a pig.

The fact is that the United States has lost this war. And if you look at the deal that's on the table and where we're headed, it's clear that the Iranians have won. And for President Trump to admit that is well-nigh impossible. So what he's trying to do is prove he's a tough guy. And we're going to get our way on a lot of key-ish. And we should expect more of that moving forward. But the fact is that if we get a deal, the outlines of that deal at this point in time are very clear.

Professor, what are the indications that you're looking at to determine how likely it is that we actually are able to come to some sort of an agreement here after the 60-day period? Well, all you have to do is look at the state of the international economy, and you have to look at what's happening to our petroleum reserves. in the United States. The president has made this clear himself. He has said that we are facing quote unquote an economic catastrophe if we don't shut this war down. He's explicitly said that he doesn't want to be Herbert Hoover the second. He fully understands that this war just has to be shut down. There's a set of economic imperatives at play here. You know, you want to ask yourself, why is it that President Trump is willing to sign on to an agreement where we lose on almost every count? And the Iranians win on almost every count.

They come out of this agreement much better off than they were going into the war. Why did this happen? And the answer is the international economy. And to take it a step further, if you look at the conflict that's now taking place between the United States and Israel, mainly over southern Lebanon, it's quite clear that what has caused President Trump for the first time in his presidency to play real hardball with the Israelis is the fact that he's staring an economic catastrophe in the face. And he wants to avoid that at all costs. And in those circumstances, he's willing to be really tough with the Israelis. Right. And, sir, one of the interesting things is that the vice president and the United States is taking an extraordinary amount, really, of, you know, pushback from the Iranians. Here's the vice president speaking yesterday on the tarmac in Geneva about the, you know, Iranians supposedly walking out and then coming back

and a lot of symbology. Let's take a listen. I've spent a lot of time dealing with the Iranians over the last few months. Sometimes I find them extremely confusing as negotiators. But look, we had a little press conference. They obviously don't quite have the same First Amendment protections in Iran that we have in the United States of America. We talked to you guys and then had a series of really good meetings. What I did find kind of funny is that after that initial meeting, there was this, you know, sort of social media firesform where everybody said the Iranians are going to leave, and then we proceeded to talk to them for like the next nine hours. So I would just encourage the media, mistrust a little bit what you see coming out of

Iranian social media. They can be confusing negotiators, but we feel like we're making progress. There seems to be this just consistent downplaying of any Iranian, you know, pushback or any Iranian and snub intended towards the United States, which is just extraordinary and part of what's sending many of these neoconservatives into a full-bone freak out here, sir. Well, JD Vance understands much like Trump, that we just have to get a deal. And JD Vance is the point man here. And I think that we should all hope that JD Vance succeeds and that Trump succeeds. I mean, we've all been extremely critical, and I'm choosing my words carefully here, we've been

extremely critical of the decision to launch this war and wage it the way we did up to now. It was a huge mistake, but the president and the vice president fully recognized the error of their ways, and they're trying to repair the problem and fix this before the international economy goes off a cliff. And I applaud them for that, and I just hope that they solve the problem. If they don't solve the problem and we enter into a great depression like the one we had in the 1930s, the economic consequences of this will be huge, especially around the world in poor countries. Lots of people will die and it'll have devastating consequences for the American economy,

and none of us want that. So we should hope, in my opinion, that Trump and JD Vance, who have now reversed direction, are able to shut this one down. It's obviously going to be a messy process. How could it be otherwise when you're involved with President Trump, who's shooting off all these tweets that say outrageous things from time to time? He'll make it as messy as he possibly can. But I think in the end, we have an imperative to shut this one down. And I think the Iranians also have an imperative to shut this one down.

And I think there's a good chance. one wouldn't want to say it's 100% guaranteed by any means, but I think we do have a good chance of coming up with some sort of meaningful settlement to this war. Professor, Israel is very, very, very unhappy that there are talks going on at all, that there's even a possibility of a negotiated settlement along the lines of what is being contemplated. What is your response to people who would say to you and Sabin, to Sagar, you people say that the Israel lobby controls everything and we're just there, you know, they're puppets. And here you have Trump going directly against what the Israelis want over their

vociferous objections, creating a complete political crisis for Benjamin Netanyahu and an existential crisis for the Israeli state as a whole. Weren't you wrong about your assessment of how much influence the Israel lobby has in the United States? Up until very recently, there's no question that the lobby had a lockhold on U.S. Middle East policy. There's no question about that. But what has changed here is that we got into this war, and it's quite clear that as a result of the war and what Iran has done in terms of shutting down the Strait of Hormuz, that they have the ability to wreck the international economy. And that is a threat that is so great that for the first time in President Trump's second and first term in office. And for the first time in any recent president's

experience, we are seeing a president really bring down the hammer on the Israelis. And I would imagine that as we move forward and it becomes clearer and clearer that this one has to be shut down for economic reasons, President Trump and Vice President JD Vance will go to even greater lengths to be tough on the Israelis. So this is a an anomalous situation, and it's caused by extraordinary circumstances, in particular the threat of a Great Depression. OnDec is built to back small businesses like yours. Whether you're buying equipment, expanding your team, or bridging cash flow gaps, OnDex loans up to $400,000 make it happen fast.

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And that kind of transparency says a lot. Nothing to hide, everything to love. Go to Just Foodfor Dogs.com and get 50% off your first order. Something that we think is absolutely fascinating, sir, was throughout the war, it became very clear about the role of the U.S. dollar. Throughout this, the petro dollar, of course, has always been a long subject of analysis and of explanation. However, we also saw that China and Iran, you know, by use of course, crypto or denominating these tolls that they were charging in the middle of the war, were able to bring them some revenue.

The recent clues in the U.S. Treasury sanctions, let's put A3 up here on the screen, seem like a clawback at trying to have at least some of the dominance that we previously had before the war, where the most recent, interesting part of the primary sanctions relief actually allows Iran not only to sell its oil, but to actually allow those settlement of transactions in dollars. It means that Chinese buyers could pay Iran in dollars. It also even means that American refineries could buy any Iranian petrochemical products. What do you make here of the U.S. attempt to try and to reverse some of the damage to the global oil market

and what Iran revealed about U.S. sanctions throughout this entire war? Well, first of all, you want to remember that at the start of this war, when the bombing campaign was taking place, We were allowing Iranian tankers to come out of the Gulf and sell their oil on global markets. And the reason is quite straightforward. We needed all the oil we could get on global markets. And it wasn't until President Trump put the blockade on the strait that we cut off, in large part, the flow of Iranian oil into global markets. Now, what's different here is that they can sell those barrenuous. barrels of oil in dollars, and that's different. And the question you want to ask yourself is,

why is President Trump doing this? And the answer is, in large part, because Iran won the war. And this is one of their demands. We simply have no choice if we want to shut this war down. The Iranians have made a number of demands. It's quite amazing how many demands they've made that we have agreed to. And this is one of them. But furthermore, this works to our advantage because it gets more oil out into global markets and it keeps the price of oil down. So that's a good thing. So let's say that the negotiations proceed, that the Trump administration and the Iranians are both committed to coming to some sort of a resolution year. What would that deal mean for Israel? How would it impact their current orientation?

How would they have to change the way that they've been operating? Well, I would make two points here. First of all, overall, the deal is a disaster for Israel. This is widely recognized in Israel. And the fact is that Israel thought that Iran was its gravest enemy and that this war would put an end to Iran's nuclear program. It would end nuclear enrichment. It would greatly weaken Iran and it would put Israel in a catbird seat in the Middle East. That is obviously not happened. Iran is going to emerge from this war in much better shape than it was on February 27th, the day before the war started. So this is overall a strategic disaster for Israel. Then you get to the particular issue of

Lebanon. And the Israelis want the freedom to, number one, keep their forces in. in southern Lebanon, which they're now occupying. Number two, have the freedom to bomb Lebanon whenever they see fit. And the Iranians have told us, you have to get the Israelis completely out of southern Lebanon, and you have to put an end to their bombing of Lebanon.

If we succeed in doing that, that would be a devastating defeat for the Israelis. And they talk about that all the time in their press. So it's quite clear that this war and the agreement that we reach with the Iranians to end this war could have devastating consequences, not just across the board, but in particular on the issue of Lebanon. Yeah, zooming out, sir, you know, something I really saw was part of the reason why this seems such a disaster for Israel is it fundamentally just destroys their primary ambition, which is to be the sole regional hegemon. If you have Iran,

which is unsanctioned and does receive this $300 billion in funds, some $120 billion of which is already theirs, in addition to tens of billions of dollars a month from the sale of oil. It's GDP per capita I checked in 2024. A rump economy heavily sanctioned was $437 billion, only $100 billion or so total off of Israel. A reconstructed Iran, which is allowed to sell oil on the global market, with some significant investment, 90 million people could easily surpass Israel in a matter of a decade and in multiple decades could become a regional superpower in its own right. How do you think that that will shift the global balance of power whenever it comes to the Middle East, let's say with China, with India, many of these other

nations which are just balancing these things on its face and they don't have their own neo-conservative lobbies? Well, if you look at the principal indicators of latent power, and here we're talking about population size and wealth, the Iranians have about 90, million people. And I would estimate that there are about 7.3 million Israeli Jews. There are also about 7.3 million Palestinians inside greater Israel. But even if you add them into the mix, that's still about 14.6 million people. And that's a lot smaller than 93 million. And then if you look at the human capital in Iran, which is a really good indicator of their potential. for generating wealth, they have very impressive human capital.

So there's no question that this is a country with a very large population and the capability to generate a lot of wealth. And it would, in the end, I think, be much more powerful than Israel would be. I think from Israel's point of view, and if you listen to the Israelis talk, this is quite clear. The two countries they worry the most about are Turkey and Iran, because they both have large populations, and they have impressive amounts of human capital. So the idea that Israel is going to become a regional hegemon in the Middle East begins to look like a flawed argument

when you take into account Iran and Turkey. But I would also add to this, if you look at what's happened to Israel since October 7th, Israel is a big mess today. They did not defeat Hezbollah. Hezbollah is really giving them fits in southern Lebanon, and Hezbollah is not going to be knocked out. It's going to be a perennial foe. Furthermore, they did not defeat Hamas. They inflicted enormous pain on Hamas, but Hamas is still in the fight in a major way. They're in a mess in the West Bank. They're in a mess in Syria.

And if you look at what's happening in terms of all the centrifugal forces that are at, play inside of Israel. It looks like a very depressing picture from an Israeli point of view. So Israel today is in really terrible shape, putting aside the whole question of the future vis-a-vis Iran and Turkey. And last thing here on the Iran section with Turkey, let's put A5 up here. It does appear the Israelis are now making it an overt threat towards the nation of Turkey. Here's their foreign ministry saying just yesterday, Hamas terrorists based on. in Turkey are directing attacks against Israelis, funding terrorism, recruiting operatives. The network is exposed, and the facts are clear.

So it appears that Turkey will be the new front in the Greater Israel Project. What is it about their overt targeting here of Turkey? Do they just have no disregard for NATO? Do they just not care? Do they think ultimately the United States will come to their defense here against Turkey? I mean, what makes them even think that they could utter something like this when Turkey is itself a NATO power? Well, the Israelis, in terms of their overall grand strategy, have a number of goals. I mean, obviously, they want a greater Israel.

They obviously want to ethnically cleanse the Palestinians from inside that greater Israel. But another one of their goals is to weaken all of the neighbors to the point where none of them have any meaningful capability to attack Israel. They've already done this with Jim Jordan and with Egypt. And in a very important way, this is what happened with Syria. And their hope with regard to Iran was to do the same thing. As we've talked about before on the show, their overall goal in Iran was to wreck Iran to turn it into the second coming of Syria. And what they'd like to do is the same thing with Turkey.

One of the reasons the Israelis have always been very interested in creating a Kurdish state. I remember when I first used to hear the Israelis talking about creating a Kurdish state, state. I couldn't understand why they were so interested in doing that. Well, huge chunks of Turkey, Iraq, Iran, and Syria have a large Kurdish population. And if you create a Kurdish state, you break up Turkey, Syria, Iraq, and Iran. And that explains why the Israelis want a Kurdish state. In other words, what I'm saying here is they want to do everything possible to weaken all of their neighbors, but especially countries like Turkey and Iran, as we were saying before, which have so much latent power.

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There were some stunning images from last week. A Ukrainian attack in Russia, we can put this up on the screen, created this explosion. Now, I think this was actually a Russian missile interceptor that actually caused this oil tank lid to be blown high into the sky. But it is emblematic of the more aggressive approach that Ukraine has been taking. And also they have been intentionally targeting Russian oil and gas infrastructure. So, Professor, could you just bring us up to speed on the state of play here and what Ukrainian tactics have been aimed at? Well, at a very general level, the Russians feel almost to a person that the Ukrainians and their supporters in Europe and even the United States don't respect Russian red lines. They don't respect the fact that Russia is a nuclear power. And the Ukrainians, with support, especially from the Europeans, think they can launch large-scale attacks into Mother Russia and do damage on the scale that was reflected in the picture that you just had on the screen.

And the Russians are deeply frustrated by this. They want to establish some red lines. And there are lots of people inside of Russia who think that Vladimir Putin has not been aggressive enough in waging this war, and that moreover, the time has come for the Russians to put down some markers, to make it clear to the Ukrainians and to the Europeans that they cannot continue to bomb Mother Russia. But more importantly, they cannot escalate the bombing. I think the Russians are not simply worried about what's going on today.

they are worried that the scale of the attacks will go up and up and up. And if you listen to the Europeans and the Ukrainians talk, there is good reason for the Russians to think that these attacks will become more severe over time. So the Russians say, enough is enough. So there is a large amount, maybe a huge amount of talk inside of Russia about how to end this. And the strategy that most people talk about is launching conventional attacks against European countries or against NATO countries, attacking maybe the Baltic states or Romania or Poland with conventional forces to send a very powerful signal to the Ukrainians and to the West that this has got to stop. And if it doesn't stop, the Russians say that maybe what we have to do then is use a handful of nuclear weapons against a European country.

And I've talked to a number of Russians on this issue, and they believe, and I think it's quite correct, that if they were to launch a nuclear weapon or two or three into Eastern Europe, that NATO would not attack Russia with its own nuclear weapons. In other words, they think they could get away with it. But the important point here is that from their perspective, and here I'm talking about the Russian perspective, they think that they would establish deterrence. They would deter future major attacks on Mother Russia. And they think if they don't do this, if they don't take these drastic measures, and when I just described, there's surely drastic measures, that what will happen here is that the Ukrainians, with full support from the Europeans and even the Americans, will continue to

up the ante in their bombing campaign against Russia. Yeah. Professor, let's stress test the Ukrainian theory. So let's put B2 up here on the screen. You know, you are first and foremost with a major one to highlight. Just the Ukrainian ability to actually thwart Russian ground attacks has never really existed. It's been frozen now on the front line. They continue to lose a war of attrition. So now they've escalated to this cruise missile and drone strategy, largely attacking critical infrastructure. As we just showed you, Ukrainian attacks have dropped Russian oil percent output by about 10 percent or so. I believe they just hit Crimea yesterday, took out almost half the energy inside of Crimea.

Their theory is to emmiserate the Russian population, to force the Russian population to bring the Kremlin to make sure that the war will end on favorable terms. Actually, in somewhat ways, it's similar to how the Iranians achieve victory. They attacked oil infrastructure. They drove oil prices up here at home. American said enough with democratic pressure. Why is that theory incorrect on the Ukrainian side? Well, in terms of the Iranians, their magic weapon or their magic formula for victory was closing down the strait. There's no question that their ability to use Iranian missiles to hit targets

in the Gulf states and in Israel, and to hit American bases in the region did matter. But their magic weapon was economic in nature. Here's the way to think about this. We've been watching the war between Russia and Ukraine for over four years now. We're into the fifth year of this war. And as you well know, the Russians have been pounding the Ukrainians with air power at a much greater level than the Ukrainians have been pounding Russia. Right. You remember all the damage that the Russians have done to the Ukrainian grid, their electric grid, over the past two years of the negative consequences of that, quite great. But there is no evidence that that has caused the Ukrainians to throw up their hands and surrender. And there is absolutely no reason,

given the historical record, to think that these attacks will cause the Russians. to surrender or to put it in slightly different terms will affect events on the battlefield where the Russians are on the march and continuing to win victories slowly but steadily. The bombing campaign is not going to reverse that. The great danger, however, which we were just talking about a minute ago, is that this bombing campaign will lead the Russians to attack into Europe because they will become so desperate, to put an end to those attacks. Let's talk a little bit about the Trump administration's approach.

We can put this final tar sheet B3 up on the screen here. This is an analysis of what he had to say at the G7 with regard to Russia and Ukraine. Apparently, he told a press conference Russia was losing more soldiers than Ukraine in the war, described Moscow as the offensive party in the conflict. Volodymyr Zelensky's goal there was to convince Trump and others that Ukrainians' battlefield position had improved, that they were making gains, that this was not a lost cause. Trump showed a, quote, real change in approach regarding the Ukraine war, according to French President Emmanuel Macron in comments earlier in the day.

Other European leaders made similar comments. So I wonder if you think anything significant came out of the G7 and what you think the Trump administration might do going forward. Just with regard to President Trump's rhetoric, as you know, it changes from day to day on almost every issue. so you can never put too much stock in anything he says at one point in time. The biggest problem that Trump faces, even if he wants to help the Iranians, is that we've expended so many munitions in fighting the Iranians

that we just don't have the weaponry to give to Ukraine, even if we want it to. It's quite clear, and the New York Times had a big piece on this, that Ukraine is desperate for more, three missiles, these are the Patriot missiles, to knock down incoming ballistic missiles, cruise missiles and drones from Russia. And we just have no patriots that we can give them. And it's true of almost all of the weapons in our inventory. We just used up so many weapons in this fight against the Iranians. And we have needs all over the world, especially in East Asia. when you talk about containing China.

So President Trump is just not in a position to really help Ukraine in any meaningful way. But the more important point is Ukraine, despite the rhetoric in the West, is losing on the battlefield. It won't be long before the Russians control all of the Donbass. And I believe they will eventually control all of those four oblasts that they have annexed. and I wouldn't be sure if they even annex more territory. There's no question that Ukrainian drones have slowed down Russian progress on the battlefield, but Russian progress is being made, and the Russians are going to win this war. My last question actually sticks with the munitions points.

Actually ties in with the Iran situation as well. Ray Dalio is out with a new essay this morning, and he points specifically, he's just spent a month in Asia, where Chinese war planners, intellectuals, leaders, and others, been observing both the situation in Ukraine and the situation now would happen with Iran. Iran was the breaking point, but Ukraine kind of showed the roadmap here. To the munitions point, they really do view now the United States, both the population and its defense industrial base, as a second rate in its ability to produce at a level in which the U.S. population does not 100 support, 100% support a war. What do you think that that means then for both Iran and Ukraine in these two situations

just in the last decade for what the future holds in Asia? Well, first of all, we learned from the Ukraine war that if you're going to wage a large-scale conventional war over a long period of time, you need a significant industrial base. The Russians have that. We do not. Which is very important to understand.

We do not have an impressive industrial base that can pump out the weaponry that's necessary to fight a protracted war of attrition. If you go to East Asia and you look at China's capability on this front versus Afront, the Chinese have an impressive capability to pump out weaponry over a long period of time and to wage a protracted war of attrition. And we don't. So we're in deep trouble to begin with.

Second, as a result of the Iran war, during the course of the fight, we pivoted away from Asia. You remember starting with Hillary Clinton's announcement in 2011 that we were going to pivot to Asia. We were heading in that direction up until the Iran War. Well, once the Iran War started, we pivoted away from Asia. We moved Patriot missiles, we moved THAAD missiles, we moved the Marine Expeditionary Unit, all out of East Asia to the Middle East. This weakened their position in East Asia. So if you look at our ability to contain China, our ability to deter the Chinese from taking Taiwan or trying to take over the South China Sea, we are not in an ideal position by any means because of number one, the state of our industrial base and number two, because of this foolish Iranian war.

And last one from me, just I'd love for you to play out the sort of Russian logic that is being debated internally right now. Let's say that they do decide to strike within Europe using conventional weapons. How do you think that will be perceived by the Europeans? How do you think that they will respond? How do you think the U.S. will respond? Do you buy into the Russian logic that this will help to establish a deterrence? Or do you think it will lead to a further and even more dangerous escalation? Well, you have to distinguish between the Russians using conventional weapons and nuclear weapons.

I think if they were to attack with conventional weapons, we would have a powerful incentive, we meaning the West, to retaliate with conventional weapons. I'm not saying we would axiomatically do that because there would be a powerful set of incentives to just shut the conflict down at that point to prevent further escalation. But I think it's more likely that we would retaliate with conventional weapons, which would push the Russians to use new weapons. nuclear weapons. And I think if they use nuclear weapons, we would not retaliate, because you have to ask yourself in these sorts of situations, how does this play out? People like to focus on the

first move or even the second move in situations like this. But you want to focus on the third move, the fourth move, and so forth and so on. And the point is, if the Russians were to use a small number of nuclear weapons in Eastern Europe, it would be almost impossible for the United States to hit Russia with nuclear weapons, because that would give the Russians a very powerful incentive to hit the United States with nuclear weapons. They would not want to tolerate a situation where the Russian homeland was hit with nuclear weapons, and the American homeland was not. So this is a scenario that once it began, once the Russians used a handful of nuclear weapons, the incentives for everyone to shut this down immediately would be enormous because we would be out there on the slippery slope to oblivion.

And this is why if you talk to the Russians, they think there's a serious possibility that this would work. Quite chilling to be contemplating any of these scenarios. Professor, thank you so much for your analysis this morning. really appreciate it. Thank you for your time, sir. On Deck is built to back small businesses like yours. Whether you're buying equipment, expanding your team, or bridging cash flow gaps, On Deck's loans up to $400,000 help make it happen fast.

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And a good place to begin our journey here today is with some interesting Tucker Carlson comments. Let's take a listen. I would not support the Republican Party. There's no chance I would support the Republican Party. Republican Party. I'm not going to support the Democratic Party. I don't know what I'm going to do. But at this point, you know, how could you support, how could I or any American voter support a political party that's not loyal to the United States that puts the interests of a foreign country above those of its own citizens? Like, that's, that's, you know, it's not possible to vote for people like that.

And I'm not going to. And I think I voted Republican my entire life. I worked at Fox News. I've seen In MSNBC, I've been a consistent defender for 35 years of the Republican Party. I mean, very consistent defender. But there's no defending this because it's immoral. And it's exactly the opposite of what a political party in a democracy is charged with doing, which is representing its own voters, its own citizens, its own nation. And they're not doing that. So no, I'm out.

I'm out. Thogger. He's out. Well, MTV backed him up. Tucker Carlson is not the only. done supporting the Republican Party. There's a lot of us that are absolutely fed up and will not support a party that betrays its voters in his country.

That does not mean we're turning into Democrats either, but we are done with the America last Republican Party. I mean, look, in Tucker Carlson's case, right, this is a person who has quite literally been, I wouldn't say party line, but has been a dedicated. I mean, that's one point for sure. That's what I was saying? Total party line. Up until, what's saying, when did he become interesting?

2017? Like, really? that's whenever the Tucker Carlson show started and that's when he started to see some of the breaks and there were some challenging interviews and all that but so let's say that's like the last nine years up until that point I mean he already's had these private views but really he was playing the game

like in public and he was defending a lot of the Republican positions yeah oh I know to this day he says it's the worst job here worse at MSNBC and worse than CNN I don't blame him I couldn't do it either doing some fake like concert in Times Square at 545 a.m.m. Morning show ship.

Oh, my God. He's not built for it. I'm not built for it either. I'd be like, what the fuck am I doing here? We're playing a water gun game in Times Square. Anyway, all right, let's put that aside. I can do it.

You think so? Yeah. Yeah. No, you have a better personality than I do. I'm just too disagreeable. But whenever it comes to Tucker Carlson, this is, I think, the point that he's making is around Israel. And I actually do think this is a very important point. And I actually blame myself for it as well.

So let's think to the calculation that. was made in 2024. The calculation was this. Anybody with open eyes knew Miriam Edelson had given Trump $100 million, all right? And you can all roll the tape in the monologue that I did up and before the election. It was in October. And I said, if you're pro-Israel, you should vote for Trump because you're going to get some of what you want. This was clear-eyed. We knew this. However, what we thought was, well, JD Vance's the vice president. There's all these, you know, Steve Bannon, the so-called anti-war coalition seems stronger, these forces will have equal weight within the coalition, right? In some cases, the Israelis will win. Everyone was clear out about this. We knew

that they were going to get what they wanted in Gaza. Now, did we think we would get the Iran war? No, like, genuinely no. From, we could tell you this from Trump's comments, from J.D.'s comments, from Stephen Miller's comments, I could go on and on. What has happened is that actually, even now, you know, oh, the Israelis are melting down because they're not getting 100% of what they want. But if we look at the long network now of Trump's actions from January 20th, 2025 up until today, the balance of power is overwhelmingly on behalf of the Israel lobby. So I do think Trucker's comments about saying, I cannot support them while they're literally enslaved to a foreign power, is true in the sense that if the Israel lobby is in your

coalition whatsoever, you have to just assume that they will overwhelmingly use their money, their power, their influence, their media arm, the propaganda, to take full control. And that's why it basically just has to be, this is where I'm personally at, is if you are taking Aidelson money, if these people are a part of your coalition, I cannot be part of that. And it's not even just like a morality thing, because now there's that to it too. But we know how much influence and operate they have. I think the Democrats have all discovered this as well. Like there's whole, you know, track A-PAC.

We have to give them credit for it. Track A-PAC made it so they're like, there's no splitting the difference here, guys. Like you're either in or you're out. The voters are on the outside. A lot of the establishment is on the inside. The GOP, there's everybody still trying to play the dance. You know, the aspirational politicians, I don't think politically that it can happen at this point. And look already where we are.

The Iran deal polling that came out in CBS where MAGA Republicans support the deal. 80% of the American people support ending the war now, even though they know that we lost. The political constituency of neoconservatism is so tiny that I actually do think we just need either both parties or one party, whoever it is. But like I personally, and I think a lot of people can as well, you cannot expect to have equal-weight coalitions ever again. After what has happened, we can only go off of what we see now currently. Currently, the evidence exists. And I'm not just talking about the Iran war. How about bombing Iran back in June?

How about deporting all of these, you know, student protests? Have you seen this shit with the coffee shop? Yeah. going on right now? Okay, let's talk about it, right? Because this is important. So there's a New York City coffee shop and what did it. They did not, Dan Goldman, the congressman, the congressman, came in and I think they found out who he was later. They refunded him. They're like, you're not welcome because you support Israel's genocide. Okay. Well, guess what? Now this is a full-blown freak out. The Department of Justice is opening an investigation into this coffee shop.

I've been around since masterpiece, okay? We have the right to refuse service, as long as it's not based on race or whatever the protected classes of the Civil Rights Act is. If it's based on a disagreement over Israeli policy, to me, yeah, I mean, a little weird, you know, to be, but guess what? They just refunded his money. I mean, whatever, right?

Sorry. Like, by the way, I don't give a shit. There's much bigger problems that are all around. New York City has got a lot bigger problems for, I think, for the Department of Justice. But the Department of Anti-Racism stuff or Department of Antisemitism, which I I've been calling it, this Leo Terrell fanatic, this, what with the Florida students with the IDF, sure. I mean, this is, I can't live like this. You know, that's how I feel.

Well, and it comes to the time when JD Vance is out there saying, if everything is Jew hate, then nothing is Jew hate. It's like, okay, well, where is that in terms of your administration's policy? Because it's been quite the opposite in terms of what we've seen. I mean, it's very interesting. It reminds me that going back to the Tucker Carlson comments and also, you know, the way you're explaining your position. It does remind me of some of the disaffected left, basically saying, okay, we're done with the Democratic Party, you know, for many very legitimate reasons, many of them moral, also having to do at times with genocide.

But then it becomes, okay, well, what then? Yes. You know, and I guess it also comes to a question of neither of the parties is going to be a perfect fit for you. So where are your moral priorities? Or are you going to try to do some third party thing? are you Tucker Carlson going to run for president and say you're going to be the one to restore the Republican Party to what it should be, et cetera, et cetera. He said explicitly, he's like, you never would do that in his interview.

I mean, I could be wrong. I know him. I don't think he would run for him. I kind of agree with that. Not because there's not an opening available. He's very talented, I think, and very savvy person. But I'm not sure that, you know, lifestyle-wise, like, it's not fun running for president. You know, he gets to, like, live and maiden do his thing.

And he's got a great life, I'm sure. making lots of money, et cetera. So in any case, it does just become a question of, okay, well, what then? And he immediately says, of course, the Democrats are totally off the table. And it's like, okay, well, at some point you have to evaluate what are my moral priorities? The Democratic Party right now is still very much in the Zionist establishment, Israel status quo, place. And to the Civil War, too. However, yeah, however, you are much more likely at this point, given where the Democratic coalition is,

to have a complete change on Israel and the Democratic Party than you are in the Republican Party. Because the only group out there in the publics that still die hard, pro-Israel, Israel no matter what, are boomer Republicans. And that is who dominates the Republican Party base. Like your average Fox News viewer is way more important to the Republican Party

than you're like super online griper. Absolutely. So in any case, it's interesting to me and we'll see where he goes from here, but obviously very noteworthy that he is coming on so strongly as to saying, I'm done, I'm not doing this anymore, and it really is in a way I don't want to overstay. It's kind of an end of an era because Tucker Carlson has been one of the most known faces of Republican Party defense for, you know, as long as I have been aware of politics going back to the bow tie days and crossfire and all of that.

Literally since when I was born, like that's what's so great. And I, you know, he gave me my job just to show you how long this guy's been around for. I do think, I mean, the left analogy is very interesting. And I don't disagree with you. Like, look, you and I are not third party people, much to the chagrin of a very online slice. Like, sorry, it doesn't work. Trump showed the path. I mean, not Trump.

Every aspiring great politician has shown the path. You take over a party and you make it your coalition. Period. End of story. Some of us thought that's what Trump was doing, okay? And by the way, though, you know, you see now even more clearly, when Trump does pivot and use his cult of personality for good, like, or at least, you know, directify his own wrong, the whole base will come along crawling for you. That's what being, you know, a very powerful leader is. That's how FDR was.

That's how any of the transformative politicians, Eisenhower, any of these people. Actually, the Eisenhower one is a good example. The GOP throughout the entire FDR Truman era was built around opposition to the New Deal. That's where the base was. It was a very small, like Calvin Coolidge, like, oh, the welfare communist. And Eisenhower was like, yeah, that shit's over. Like, we're just going to end that. And guess what?

He won the popular vote, not just in terms of who he was, because he had enormous prestige. He transformed the Republican Party forever and gave birth to this kind of, like, Nixonianism, which embraced the role of government, but in a conservative form leading to the EPA and some of the other good things that the Nixon administration did. My only point is that what you can do is you can use that cult of personality. or leadership or whatever you want to call it to take over. The Democrats, like you said, are in the Civil War. Is he going to vote Democrat?

I mean, honestly, maybe. It depends on who the candidate is. I mean, if I'm thinking about him in Maine. You have to actually think about who is the candidate. Isn't it easier to imagine him voting for Graham Platner than Susan Collins? Well, okay, did you see Susan Collins's interview yesterday? Yeah. I mean, this is insanity.

Like, this woman is not only like nearly 80 years old, but she's like, well, APEC is just a bunch of Americans who love Israel. And what else did she say? And Graham, he's so anti-Semitic for calling on. I'm like, lady, this shit is not going to fly anymore. She said, A-PAC is made up of Americans who care deeply about our relationship with Israel. That's true. Plattenor makes it sound like this is some sort of evil foreign influence.

And that is absolutely wrong. She also said, I remain a very strong supporter of Israel. I think this sadly reflects rising anti-Semitism in our country, the Graham Platner is certainly part of. This is some 2017 nonsense. Like, this shit does not fly. to any politically engaged person. So yeah, I mean, do I think you'll vote for Graham Platner? I don't know.

By the way, I still think Grams should go on his show. I know that that was a significant controversy, I think, in Maine, which is ridiculous because I think very obviously it reached millions of people and Tucker Carlson as Maine resident. They could actually probably talk more in-depth about Maine-specific issues than any other national television host who would interview him. But like you said, zooming out, it depends.

And ultimately, someone made this point. You don't vote for parties. you vote for candidates. Like, it's about the candidate. So let's see. Especially at the presidential level. Especially at the presidential level. Yeah. You're right. Right. Because, you know, Democrat, Republican, in the House, Senate, 90% of the time these people just vote party line. Yeah. And it matters more who has the majority and who's being elected Speaker of the House and Senate Majority Leader than, you know, if you're president, then, yes, the individual person makes more of a difference. Yeah, this is why in red states they often can elect blue governors is because

their executives. So they trust, you know, that person to oversee things differently, even though they might vote Republican. I don't know. I mean, I, and I know this is a bit long way, but I do think is important to talk just about how the coalitions and all of that evolve. Like, let's see who the Democratic presidential nominee is. And then we can all evaluate based on that. A lot of Democrats voted for Trump or former Democrats or any of these other people. A lot of Republicans may vote for a Democrat whenever it comes to 2028. I have no idea, but that's where the candidate matters more than anything. Yeah. Yeah. So we will see. We also want to check in on, you know, I, my thesis is effectively that the Iran war really just destroyed the Trump presidency, like all of the grandiose

goals. Not to say there isn't still lots of harm being done, but in terms of the most maximalist aims of the Trump administration coming out, you know, out of the Bill Gates with Doge, and then they have the mass deportation, they're buying all these warehouses, national guards invading cities, these protests are getting shot in the streets. That has all been dialed back a lot in terms of the, at least, public image and the sort of aggressive posture. A lot of that really happened after Minneapolis. And there was a, I think, I was skeptical at the time, frankly, but I think there truly was a retreat from the Trump administration in terms of their, again, aggressive public posture. You brought in Markwayne Mullin. You got rid of Kristi Noem. And so now we've seen

a few interesting things on the immigration front, which really was the core of their promise, the place where they probably did have the biggest mandate that and dealing with cost of living, which we all know how that has gone. In any case, let's put C2 up on the screen because this was such an emblem of the Trump administration approach, which was very showy. It was meant to be showy cruelty with the intent of signaling to immigrants, just get out before you find yourself in alligator alcatraz or you find yourself, you know, being dragged and your kids being torn apart, all of that, right? That was an intentional, intentional direction

led by Stephen Miller and Kristi Noem. So now Alligator Alcatraz is actually shutting down permanently. This was in Florida. Ron DeSantis was very gung-ho. In fact, Florida taxpayers fronted the $1 billion that went into this monstrosity. It was beset by problems from the very beginning, sewage overflows, worms in the food. You had, you know, abhorrent conditions because it is basically in a swamp. It was never meant to have this many people being held for indefinite periods of time. The federal government was supposed to reimburse Florida. They're still holding the bag on that one. That money has not come through. And now the whole thing is being completely shut down, which again, I think is, you know, very emblematic of the fact that

they not only on, you know, cost of living, but really across the board, they have lost their mandate on even their strongest issue coming in. Yeah. Welcome to George W. Bush's presidency. It turns out that when you launch a disastrous war, you have no political capital to do literally anything. And then you are one Katrina away from being, you know, 25 percent, like 25 percent in terms of your approval rating. You're out, look, you're right. And, you know, whenever, by the way, I hope that we don't bail out Florida and I hope that they have to raise property taxes instead. Anybody else sick of bailing Florida out?

All right? Paid too much money to Florida. I know I've spoken against that type of rhetoric in the past, but whenever they're considering abolishing their property tax, somebody has to draw the line. But on the immigration front, let's just think about this very, very like logically on timeline. They came in with the mandate. The mandate was against chaos at the border.

Then they decided an opt, they had two paths. One was allegedly, I mean reportedly pushed by Tom Homan, which is we need an orderly. arrest, by the way, you know, not a shrinking violet, Tom Homan. He was like, we need to launch, use this new budget to target these criminals, and instead of doing large-scale civilian-tile raids in blue states, he's like, let's just launch across the nation. We can do a few of those types of targeted actions where we need to be unimpeachable

for the media. Kristi Noem, Corey Lewandowski, Stephen Miller decided in the latter to use the political coalition that they had to try and to capture the media and the public attention and also to use it as a strategy to get people to self-deport. It did actually quite work at that. Some quarter of a million people did self-deport. There are still tens of millions of people here living illegally. So at the same time, you burned your entire public reputation. Then Minneapolis happens. Minneapolis happens and is a full-scale disaster whenever it comes to public relations, which is then immediately followed by a major international crisis. So in the interim of this,

what, it's been almost 150 days, something like that, since Minneapolis happened. Well, what happens? You see You're that all of the showiness of Alligator Alcatraz and the warehouse detention centers and all this stuff, which became major political hotbed issues in the states, even where those were purchased. They're like, yeah, that's over. So what are you left with? You're basically left with an overwhelming amount of money, no strategy, and your political capital has been burned.

Also, at the same time, you have come on the heels of this disastrous Iran war. Soon we will have the midterms. We will even have Republicans, I believe, in the future. Once some midterms happen and Trump is officially an actual lame duck, I'm not going to say they're going to speak out against him, but it will be very John Cornyn-esque. Like, things will start positioning for the future. Things will really start to go in a different direction. All kinds of people are going to be opening their mouths in a different direction.

the biggest emblem of, you'll start to see more of that. And you mentioned the warehouses, put C3 up on the screen. This was another one of those big emblems of their, you know, grandiose plans. You remember who? I don't remember who it was that said they wanted to turn the deportation mechanism into, like, Amazon where you had vans zipping around and people being literally warehoused in these type of facilities. And if you're going to accomplish what Stephen Miller and the rest of them, want to accomplish, you would need this kind of space.

To Saugher's point, so now ICE is selling a bunch of these warehouses that they had purchased. They spent $700 million on seven warehouses. Now they're trying to get rid of them. And to your point, it was a problem in most of these were located in very rural, very Republican areas. But it became like a NIMBY thing where they're like, wait, what is this going to mean for my water bill? What is it going to mean for my wastewater treatment plant? I'm going to have all of these people.

Like, what does this mean for my community? And so there are huge backlash in these places. And again, if you were at a different point in the Trump administration where they had more of a mandate and able to just sort of like bulldoze through that local public pressure, especially from fellow Republicans, then it would be a different deal. But the other thing is, you know, all of this was half-baked to begin with. Warehouses are not set up to be able to hold human beings for any period of time, you know, just in terms of what would be required in terms of renovating these things. So it became a complete boondoggle. And even though they have effectively all the money in the world that they could possibly want to buy these places and rehab them to, you know, serve the purpose, et cetera, they just decided, you know what, we're not doing this.

We're getting rid of this. And one more on this front with regard to immigration. Put C1B up on the screen because this just happened yesterday. And we were talking about Minneapolis and the way that that genuinely did Marco Rubio huge turning point in terms of the Trump administration's approach on immigration. You know, have a judge blocking these DOJ subpoenas that were aimed at Tim Walz and other, I think that Mayor Jacob Frey and some other Democratic officials in the state of Minnesota, calling them blatantly unlawful. seeing them as direct sort of political retribution. They said initiating a criminal investigation in order to harass political opponents or coerce them into taking official action, particularly official action, the federal government cannot directly require those political opponents to take

is a blatantly unlawful and unethical use of the grand jury process. This was a George W. Bush appointed chief judge who believed, incorrectly so, that the subpoenas were aimed at sort of bullying and intimidating Tim Walz and cooperating with them on what they wanted him to do with regard to immigration. And, you know, you may think like, okay, this probably would have played out regardless of what happened with Minneapolis, regardless of the strength of the Trump administration. But judges are very political creatures, and they do also put their finger in the wind and see where the public mood is and see where things are shifting. And on that note, we could put C4 up on the screen.

We've got SCOTA set to rule on a few different matters, including the Trump administration's opposition to birthright citizenship and attack on birthright citizenship. And it looks like in these three key rulings, two of which have to do with like, you know, who you can hire and fire and the other one is the birthright citizenship thing, it looks like in two out of the three, they're going to go against Trump. Mostly throughout the administration, they have kind of given Trump what he wanted. The two significant rulings that went against him were on Kilmer-Berger-Garcia, where they said the way you did this was not right. And the other one on tariffs, which I think was a huge, huge deal to treat.

He was very, very mad about the tariff ruling. And now you have this set to go, you know, two of three against him. Again, I think these are highly, highly political actors. They're not just weighing the merits of this case. They're also looking at the public mood and how strong the president is and concerned about their own legitimacy and whether or not there's going to be some, you know, extraordinary actions taken by Trump to, you know, to go around the president. them or pack the courts or defy them outright. And so the fact that they feel comfortable to

issue two rulings against him at this point, I think is also a sign of the times. Yep. Of another, you know, easy historical analog is FDR whenever the court struck down his court packing plan. He never recovered. And that's actually the first time that the Senate and a lot of the congressional Democrats and others decided to defy him. And they had to look to this public pressure. And they're like, oh, we actually do have the ability to. to say no to the man in the White House, which they used to call him FDR. And that was kind of a watershed moment

in the history of his presidency. That's also when foreign affairs become much more important for FDR, also for the world. But I do think you could see there, not everything is one to one. I'm just pointing to, as you said, the political wins, where things go, and when you lose here and what we're about to talk about here

with affordability and with housing very specifically, you just cause yourself, it's like, you know, it's like a, it's like death by a thousand cuts. And there were so many over the course. Iran is definitely the turning point. I think the midterms are going to be a big one. I genuine, my like modus, like the way that I'm thinking framework wise for Trump to this the last two years is just the Clinton presidency. Clinton from 98 to 2000. He lived in hell. He lived in Lewinsky hell. He could do nothing. Everything was just Congress, you know, bitching about this. Congress calling you for this, press conference over this. just constant warfare with the congressional Republicans, with Kennes-Star, and with all that. People were an open revolt. And Clinton still had 60-something percent approval rating, but it didn't matter because the whole political system was against him. He got literally nothing done in those two years. So I think that's basically what it's going to look like. You make a good point, though,

that presidents who are on the rocks with public approval and don't have political support remaining in Congress, what do they do? They turn to foreign policy. I mean, we already see that, really, with Trump. And so even after the Iran war, if it resolves here, which big question marks there. Obviously, what's it going to be next? Is it going to be Cuba? Is it going to be Greenland? Is it going to be Cuba and Greenland?

Is it going to be something else? I mean, I could definitely see him continuing to go in that direction because that's the area where he has the most unilateral power. And we saw the same thing with Biden and his obsession with, like, you know, NATO and August. I mean, it was partly like his declining brain, but it was also his declining power with regard to the public and any sort of political mandate. Dale as old as time. Obama, JCPOA. You know, it's like they all...

At least you did something good with it. No, I know, but I'm more just saying, like, when they lose their power in Congress, they just all look abroad. They're all, you know, egomaniacs obsessed with their own legacy. So that is unfortunate, I think, for us, especially probably for Cuba.

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