#291 Joe Kent - His Message to President Trump on Ending the War With Iran

Moro, mitä äiä? No moi, tulit sä esittelen uutta filmeviä svaen. Aika siis. Ei, tää on sun pyörä! Mä vaan pesiin sen vaihdon, keet jut saa tulee pari muuta osa. Aha, no kitti, pitäiskö me elähtee pyörä linkkiin? Hei, mulla on maan fillaria. Tai itse asiassa. Itse asiassa. Vilti emasta löytyy eduliset välineet hommakuin hommaan. Olikysymä sitten omasta tai kaverin projektiista. Itse asiassa. Vilti oma. Salku X. Viisi numeroa. Viisi vihjettä. Arvauksia. Tätselvä. Poveria. Kymmenen viikkoa aika ratkaisista kodi. Kymmenen tuhainen euron lahjekortti palkintona. Salku X odot ta avaajansa. Lähde mukaan kilpailuun osoitteessa poverpistefi kautta X. Välkeen, kuten? Tää on kuten. Tää on kuten. Tää on kuten, että järjestelmä on tärkeä. Rubeo saa, että järjestelmä on tärkeä. Tämä on tärkeä, että järjestelmä on tärkeä. Tämä on kuten, että järjestelmä on tärkeä. somewhat true. So I hope it lasts. The problem is the Israelis have said they won't stop striking throughout the entire period. They came out and said they don't care. Right. So this is this is the fundamental problem. The fundamental problem is that we right now are not capable of restraining the Israelis. I think if President Trump focuses on it, I think he has the power to restraining the Israelis, but that's that the key first step in any formula towards peace. He's got to restrain the Israelis before he can even get the the Iranians to the negotiating table. Now there's a lot of speculation that maybe the president made that statement to jet launch the stock market today. Here's a post. Just minutes before Trump's announcement of talks with Iran, massive traders hit the market in one move, 1.5 billion in S&P 500 futures were purchased. This trade was so large it sent the entire index 83% higher that exact minute. 192 million in oil futures were also sold. These orders were four to six time larger than anything else at that time. Whoever made those trades made $60 billion. I wonder if that was Congress. I wonder if that was insider trading Congress, the administration, the Senate. I hope people look into that. I hope they look into it. I'll look into it because it's definitely should be researched. Well, a lot of people are looking into it because going viral on X right now. And you know, it's the problem is even good point. Even if it was, you know, worst case scenario, and this would be very bad, a way to make money. At the end of the day, the five days expire were still in the exact same spot that we're in where there's going to be a stranglehold from the Straits of Hormuz. There's going to be continued escalation. Energy prices, even if they stabilize for this five days, what's going to happen when, when day five arrives? We have a problem that we have to solve. Again, look, I, I, I believe that President Trump can solve it. Restrain the Israelis, work with the GCC countries. That's the way to get out of this. Would you let me give you a quick, just a quick introduction because I think a lot of people have forgotten just exactly who the fuck you are and what you've done for this country. So Joe Kent, former director of National Counterterrorism Center, retired Green Beret, former member of a classified special missions unit, former CIA paramilitary officer, gold star spouse with 11, with 11 combat deployments, six bronze stars, author of Send Me, the true story of a mother at war, a tribute to Shannon's courage and a testament to what real service looks like trusted by President Trump is his foreign policy advisor and leader. And the leader who most recently served as head of counterterrorism for the United States of America now being investigated by the FBI for leaking classified information. I wonder how many of the pedophiles that were in the Epstein files. I wonder how many of those pedophiles are having active FBI investigations on them. Probably fucking zero. Probably fucking zero is if this recording polymarket says there is a 13% chance that US forces will enter Iran by March 31st in a 19% chance of a US Iran ceasefire by March 31st. What do you think about those odds? A ceasefire. I'm skeptical again until the Israelis are restrained. There won't be a ceasefire. Butch in the ground as you know, when you have combat resources in theater and you've got active combat going on, saying that you can control any of these factors is more of a wish than a plan. So my fear is that we could rapidly escalate. Let's talk about your resignation. And what was it? I mean, how long have you been frustrated with what's going on? Basically since the lead up to the first iteration of our conflict with Iran in June, I was I was very frustrated that we had kind of backed ourselves into a corner artificially. I was and remained a big supporter of President Trump's overall thesis of foreign policy of peace through shranks of stopping us from getting involved in costly wars. In particular with Iran, I think President Trump was was uniquely posture to cut a great deal with Iran. He had in the first Trump administration, he had killed Cosm so money in the tear mastermind. Once he left office, the Iranians went right back up to their old tricks. They they funded their proxies. They were attacking our troops in the region October 7th happened. America generally was not respected by by the Iranians. When Trump came back into office, the the Iranians automatically said, okay, wait a sec. This is a whole whole different administration. We might be able to cut a deal this guy. But also if we don't, he will use force like he did against Cosm so money. So they stopped their proxies from attacking us. Last time I was on your show, we were talking about how there had been over I think 150 200 attacks against our forces in Iraq and Syria. That's stopped when Trump came into office because the Iranians knew who was back. They also knew that President Trump was willing to make a deal and actively seeking a deal. President Trump deployed, I think, a very, very competent diplomat Steve Whitcough to go get a deal going with the Iranians. Now this was a major threat to the Israelis because the Israelis viewed this as the prime time and Trump is the prime vehicle to use for regime change in Iraq. Now President Trump stated policy had been and he says this all the time that Iran can't have a nuclear mom. Now the Iranians actually agreed with President Trump and they had a prohibition, a photo, a religious decree on actually producing a nuclear weapon that had held since 2004. And what the Iranians did say was like, hey, we're not going to make a nuclear mom, but we want the ability to enrich uranium because they had seen what had taken place in Libya in Iraq and they said, hey, if we go the Qadafi route in Libya and say, here's all of our nuclear making material. Then they're sitting duck, then they can be invaded and regime changed any given time. They saw the Saddam route if they actually pursued a weapon or even like kind of beest that they had a weapon. That same thing they would be immediately invaded. So they kind of had this this ability to say, hey, we have a prohibition on the American weapon, but we have some ability to enrich. This was a major threat to the Israelis goal. So what I watched the Israelis do over the course of last year was use their government officials engaging with our government officials. But then also their surrogates in the media, Mark Leven who I'll talk to you tonight mainstream media think tanks foundation for defense democracies a lot of talking heads on Fox news. To move the red line. So Trump had said my red line is no nuclear weapons. Die toll said great. I don't want to do to happen to you. Let's talk. So they move the red line by saying enrichment Iran can have no enrichment enrichment equals a nuclear weapon, which is just fundamentally not true. So that would be paraded from officials in the Israeli government and then also on the news. I mean, let's backtrack. Yeah, I don't think that now one of our 18 intelligence agencies had mentioned that our ram was enriching uranium. Correct. They were doing enrichment to some degree. So there was enrichment. No nuclear weapons. No, no, no, we knew all 18 intelligence agencies agreed that the FATWA against actually making a nuclear weapon was holding in the Iranians were not making a nuclear weapon. So that Tulsi Gabbard testified to that last year she just testified to it again this year that the Iranians under the premium, previous Supreme leader who was, who was just killed. Now the Iranians more than likely are going to change their strategic outlook. That's my guess. My guess is like, Hey, a lot of their hardliners are now saying, Hey, do you see what this moderation got us. And now they're going to attempt to buy one or spread. That's just my guess. But for the last year, prior to this last conflict kicking off, we did not assess that they're trying to make a nuclear nuclear weapon. So that's why they had to move the red line and say enrichment. And so fun. So finally, through official engagement engagements and the media continuing to echo this. They basically got the US talking point to change that Iran could not have any kind of nuclear enrichment. And that was a non starter for the Iranians. And that's how we basically got into the 12 day war operation midnight hammer again, 12 they were launched by the Israelis. We said, Hey, we're going to come in. We're going to do a series of limited strikes to take away any nuclear capability that Iran may have. And then we're done. Now at the time, we had seen myself and others had seen how aggressive the Iranian, the, the Israelis were about wanting regime change inside Iran. So when midnight hammer and the lead up to it, we assess that, Hey, even if we did these strikes, the Israelis were going to come right back to us after a couple months and say, No, no, now is the time for us to do regime change. And that's exactly what happened. The difference is we had robust debates and lead up to midnight hammer after midnight hammer, President Trump's decision making circle was very, very tight. And that's his prerogative. He can do that. However, he had all pro Israel hawks, like really in his year Lindsey Graham Ted Cruz. And then on the outside again, the media echo chamber, knowing that President Trump was watching Fox News, knowing what media he was consuming. And they're all saying the same thing Iran can't have any enrichment. Which basically put us on this collision course towards a conflict. I think the Israelis once again got nervous about a month ago, because they knew that Whitcaw and Kushner and others in the administration were actively engaging with the Iranians to get a deal. And that's why the Israelis launched their attack, knowing they could force our hands. And that's why I think you saw Mark Rubio and others come out immediately and say, well, yeah, there was an imminent attack. And the imminent attack was the Israelis attacking the Iranians. And then then we knew that they would retaliate back against us. Why do why would they retaliate against us? Why would the Iranians retaliate against us? If they know that the Israelis are the ones that hit them, why would they retaliate against us? Because they know that basically we find the Israelis that Israel would not have the offensive capability without us. The Israelis are very competent at conducting, I'd say, like, smaller, more clandestine intelligence type of assassinations. Very good at doing that. They don't need our help to do that. They don't need our help gathering very much intelligence. But for big military lifts that involve deploying strike packages several thousand miles, they need our help for that. -Truths. -Truths. -They want us to die for them. -In order for them to commit that air power to go strike Iran, they're leaving some of their airspace vulnerable. They need us to back them up in that regard as well. Without us providing the defense and the offensive capability, Israel can't do it. Iran, in the lead up to the 12-day war, during the 12-day war and after Midnight Hammer, they observed the Escalatory Ladder very, very carefully. They didn't have their proxies attack us and they also didn't attack us until Midnight Hammer. They let the Israelis strike them throughout the entire 12-day war. They didn't target any of our bases in the region. Then after Midnight Hammer, they shot back an equal amount of missiles that, like, the empty sector of one of the bases in Qatar, as we dropped bombs inside of Iran. I think this next iteration, they said, "We're not going to be the Escalatory Ladder. If you guys come after us this time, because they knew that the Israelis were going for a regime change. They were going to try to take out the supreme leader." And that's what led them to say, "If you guys are going to do this, then we are going to retaliate with the full force, because they didn't want to get pushed around again." 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About them enriching Uranium. It wasn't even intelligence. It was literally just talking points. I mean, I don't even think it was portrayed as intelligence because this is what the Israelis. They're very good at fucking serious. The Israelis are very good at doing this. The Israelis will come and they will have engagements with our intelligence services, with our diplomats, and they will give information. And they will say something like, "Well, this isn't an intelligence channel yet." Because as you know, we formally share intelligence with the Israelis. But that makes this way through our own checks. And it's not a perfect system, but it's at least a system. And they'll say, "Hey, this isn't an intelligence channel yet." And then we'll go back and we'll check it to see if it's actually an intelligence channels. And a lot of times it's not. And that's the way this enrichment talking point was really, really, really spun. Because they just basically said, "No, no, America's policy has always been no enrichment." And I went back and I looked and people can fact check me. The only American official who ever said America's policy is zero enrichment was Mike Pompeo in the first Trump administration. So the Israelis in this Trump administration came and they're basically like, "Here's President Trump's policy." So from his last administration. And he contained Iran. This is it. This is the policy. And they equated it over and over and over again. Whereas all President Trump had said was no nuclear weapon. And so the short circuit, the agreement, essentially, that the Supreme Leader and Trump had that got them to negotiate in table, the Israelis moved the red mine by basically having their official government interactions. But then also the media echo that. It's a very clever, pretty sophisticated plan, but they got it done through repetition. You got a lot of flack for something that you said on my show last time you were here. Oh, I think he said that we'll roll the clip right now. But I believe he said that Iran's the attack just over 150 times. Use the proxies. And people are calling you a flip flopper. What do you have to say to that? I think they look at the totality of everything I've ever said. I am neither an isolationist nor am I a hawk. On Iran, if their proxies attack us, we should hammer them. I will debate anybody on the utility of killing Kossum Solmani. President Trump was justified. And he was correct. And he was bold for killing Kossum Solmani and his deputy, Abumani Mahandas. He was really bold in the fact that he took them off the battlefield. But then he didn't get suckered into what we're in right now, which is a regime change war in a massive country like Iran. So I've always been against us doing a prolonged connect extraction side of Iran. When I ran shot ballistic missiles at our troops, I thought we would have been justified to basically counter-battery and take out some of those ballistics. Now, right after the Iranian shot the ballistic missiles in retaliation for Solmani at our troops at El Assad, they accidentally shot down that Ukrainian airliner. And that basically ended the conflict right there. But I have never been in favor of a regime change war inside of Iran. If their proxies attack us, if they attack us, we hammer them back. But again, going back to the Iranian escalatory ladder, if you look at how Iran has behaved since President Trump basically killed Solmani. And then since he came back into office, they were very, very deliberate about what they weren't going to do. They didn't hit us until we hit them. And then again, again, just for the record, I'm not a fan of the Iranians. I'm not a fan of the Kudzforis. Like, I thought them, you thought them that killed friends of ours. But at some point, we do have to find a way that we can de-escalate these situations and move on. The default answer can't always be, well, we're going to do another regime change war and get sucked into this place for 20 places. That's my beef. I mean, the way I look at it is you got in there. You have access to a lot more information and you changed your mind. And yeah, you're right. You know, they did, they were, I think they were in charge. They were the ones that developed the EFP bomb too. Correct. They killed a shit ton of our friends. Yeah. But I think we both agree we shouldn't have been in the Iraq war. We should have. And then also just in terms of being effective. If our goal is to stop the Iranians from doing things like that, I argued, I've argued this for quite a while, we would only strengthen the hardliners in our Iran. We would only strengthen the Kutsforz, the IRGC, and the hardline Iatolas if we go in there and try and take them out. It's the basic rally around the flag effect. And I think we've done that. I mean, the Supreme Leader, Ali Kaminai, that we killed, not a great guy, probably a bad guy. But by killing him, we basically said the next guy who's in charge, he's going to say, we're not going to have a prohibition on developing nuclear weapons. And if we end up killing him too, and we end up killing some of the other folks that are more moderate, they're not going to be replaced by like a mini-Thomas Jefferson. They're going to be replaced by more and more hardliners. There's always been attention in Iran between the clerics and between the IRGC. And the IRGC, that's full of pipe editors, man. I mean, it's the guys who fought the Iraq around war. They fought us in Iraq. They fought against the Israelis in Lebanon with Hezbollah. So if we give these guys the ability to basically say, hey, don't listen to the moderates. Our job is to fight the Americans. It's to fight the Israelis. Then this is going to get harder and harder. There's going to be more terrorism. There's going to be more blood. And then basically the only recipe for getting out of this is going to be more and more continued war. Problem is, though, you've got the Straits of Hormuz as a choke point for major world energy. So this is going to become, it already has become a major geostrategic issue and a major issue on the world economy. That's like 22 to 25% of the world's oil comes out with everybody's post-autos. No, back to the Iranian proxies and them killing US service members in Iraq and Afghanistan as well. That's not why we're there, though. So I see everybody in there that they're talking about the hostages. Back in the day, they're talking about how they and they're clipping you on my show. But that's not why we're there. You can scrounge around and find all funds of justifications on why we would be starting a war with Iran. But none of that relevant stuff is the reason that we're there. And it hasn't been stated either by anybody but just fucking internet trolls. If we wanted to clean the deck on Iranian proxies that were outside of Iran or even inside of Iran, fine. Do it. Do limited strikes. That's fine. These Israelis are very competent. I mean, they've killed many of them. They've killed at least one Hamas leader inside of Tehran. They've killed how many members of the pesable and decapitated them with the the pages. Operations like that are pragmatic. They make sense. They're limited in their scope and they target exactly where we're going. we need to target. Again, back to the policy of the first Trump administration, President Trump would use force where required. But then like, no other president I've seen, he would apply other leverage that only America has in terms of economic power and in terms of diplomacy. So after he kills Somani Mahanis, he goes and he slaps maximum pressure sanctions on Iran that makes the economic life in Iran very, very challenging. That results in waves and waves of protest that we were seeing. Back in January, just not that long ago, we saw Iranians out on the streets protesting against the current regime because of the cost of living. Now, the Iranian, the regime knows that their own people could overthrow them if they're not happy, especially with just how expensive it is and challenging it as to live. That organic protest movement was already happening, but it was happening in large part because of the economic pressure that President Trump had put on them. Now, if you want to ruin all that, you go as an outsider with the Israelis and you strike them because then everyone is gonna rally around the flag. That's why we're not seeing any protest. That's why even the Kurds have said, "Hey, we don't want to be part of any kind of regime change." Right now. Yeah, I've heard rumors that we wanted the Kurds to back us in this. My answer to that is, why the fuck would the Kurds back us in this? We abandoned them in Iraq. They got fucking slaughtered when we did that. We just abandoned them about a month ago in Syria. I got buddies over at fifth group that were complaining about it and they fought with them. And we fucking abandoned them again and now they're getting slaughtered and fucking Syria. And then we ask them, the US has a, I mean, we have a pattern and that's what the pattern is. We come in, we pretend like we're your friend, we get what we need and then we fucking abandoned you and they slaughter your ass and we do nothing. Happened in Afghanistan, happened to the Kurds twice in Iraq and in Syria. One, just a couple of months ago, the Syrian one, just a couple of months ago. Now we're already back asking them, like of course they're gonna fucking say fuck you. Yeah, I think that was, I think that was the Israeli's trying to basically use a media campaign to will that into existence. I don't know if that was ever a very real thing. But again, if our goal is to get rid of the Iatola and is to get rid of that government, the last thing that we should have ever done was strike them. 'Cause now, I mean, the Persians have their pride. I mean, it's not that hard to imagine to put ourselves in their shoes. Like none of us, most people probably watching this show or me or you, we didn't like Joe Biden, but if a foreigner would have attacked America, hey man, like I'm gonna saddle up and I'm gonna defend my country. I don't think they're that much different than we are and we're seeing that right now. There's a massive rally around the flag factor happening inside of our land. And again, we're only gonna get more and more hardliners now. - Let's talk about the strategy. - Yeah. - What is the strategy? What are we doing? - Well, right now, this is their strategy. Well, the problem is, we have a drastically different strategic goal than the Israelis do. So we will say that Israel is our ally in this. They're basically our co-equal in this. People like me will say, actually, we're not really even co-equals, they're leading because we're having to react to them. But either way, we're basically joined at the hip with the Israelis. Now, the problem is they have a much different strategic goal and a much, I'd say, higher threshold and tolerance for chaos and bloodshed than we do. Now, we have stated that our strategic goal, you'll hear Secretary Hague Seth rattle these off as morning briefings that he gives to the media. It's to destroy the Iranian navy, to destroy the IRGC, to destroy their ballistic missile capability, to destroy all their enrichment. So we kind of have a checklist of things that we want to bomb, essentially, to take off the battlefield. That's about as far as we've gone with stating what our strategic goal is, which I think is a big problem that we have with the G-Wat, is we never really said what our strategic goal was. Obviously, there was getting in line and making sure the homeland isn't attacked. But I just remember being in Iraq being like, "What is the goal here? Like, we're building a government." So same thing, we didn't really learn that lesson. We even stated our strategic goal, the Israelis, is critical as I am of our relationship with the Israelis, the Israelis have a very clear strategic goal. And that is to take out this regime, lock stock and barrel. That's to hit rid of the IOTO, is the clerical class that rules over, and then also the IRGC, which is a huge lift. It's a big country. Those institutions are massive. They've got a lot of support, but that's the Israeli's goal. Now, the Israelis don't really care necessarily if that happens and Iran then slips into chaos. And the straight support moves, remains inflamed, and there's a migration crisis, there's an ongoing war. The Israelis don't care about that. They care the IRGC and the IOTO, as can no longer fund their proxies or cause them problems inside of Israel. So again, you've got us footing the bill, doing the majority of the combat, doing the dying, doing the fighting. We have a very, very murky strategic objective, whereas the Israelis are driving this. They're driving essentially our commitment of combat power. They're driving us, having people lose their lives. They have a very clear strategic objective. And this is why I say the number one thing we have to do in order to get out of this is to restrain the Israelis and get our relationship with Israel straight. Otherwise, it's all gonna be for naught and we're gonna continue to get sucked in further and further. - I mean, if we're attached hip to hip with them, I mean, it's gotta be the same goal, right? - You would think, but it's not. - Is it just not articulated or is it really not? - I feel like it's truly not. And the Israelis don't have a hard time articulating what their goal is. - Oh, I mean, us articulating. - Yeah, so we just list off the tactical punch list of things we want to bomb to take out so the Iranians don't have anymore. And to me, that's not our real strategic goal. - You know, you had a, I wanna bring out this up, you had a really good article on the Washington Post. I think it released today, but you, we're talking about some strategy here and then made me think the potential deployment of US ground troops makes me very nervous. Siting recent reporting that the president is considering season, "Carg Island," Iran's main hub for oil experts. This is you quoted. I just think that would be a disaster, Kent said, of deploying US troops there. It would essentially be giving Iran a bunch of hostages on an island that they could barrage with drones and missiles. Are you the only fucking person up there that's thinking straight? Because that's exactly what would happen. You're putting US service members in a fucking, in a fishbowl for Iran to kill. Because they are stranded on a fucking island. - Yeah. This is our strategy. - Yeah. - Who came up with this fucking strategy? - It sounds like Lindsey Graham. I mean, Lindsey Graham was on the Sunday shows yesterday talking about how great it would be, it would be just like you, Ajima. I mean, just insanity. And I mean, I don't think the people who are pragmatic and are expressing their concerns. I don't believe they're being listened to. Now, obviously the administration will push back and say, "No, no, we're doing robust planning "and we're hearing all voices, et cetera." But when I see ideas like that floated and there's much worse ones out there as well, basically most of the formulas for putting boots in the ground inside of Iran are problematic, I guess it's too late of a way to put it. They're bad plans. - They've already stated they want us to do it. They're ready for it. - 100%. I mean, that would be handing Iran basically a strategic victory. Because once they get our troops on the ground there, they're going to be able to kill some of them. They're going to take a losses. And then we fall back into that cycle. Once we take a losses somewhere, we say, "Oh no, no, now we can't leave. "We have to stay to avenge our fallen. "It can't be all for nothing. "We have to stay, we have to keep fighting." We saw this over and over again in the G-Wat. Every single time we talked about any kind of withdraw in a rock or afghanistan, it was the same argument. We've lost too much here. There's still more that we could do. So I mean, in terms of the Krog Island, that makes me nervous because I have heard so many people like Lindsey Graham and others that are not military people, that are not independent on, that are not reading intelligence every day, talk about it very flippantly. Like, "Oh, we'll just take that island. "We'll just take their oil." I'm gonna tell you guys, like, it's not 2003 anymore. You can't just put guys there and they'll occupy it. Like, there's ballistics, there's drones. They would be sitting ducks in that area. And as a matter of fact, like you said, and the Iranians would probably be like, "Please, take the island. "We'll roll out the red carpet for you guys." - I mean, do I need to read your bio again? Why is he taking advice from Lindsey Graham and Ted Cruz and whoever else that's just career bureaucrats? - This is the problem. - And then you got a guy like you in there with tons of experience in war and intelligence. - Yeah, and there's others too. There's plenty of us in there that can give him much better advice. I just hope the president reflects, and I know he's mad at me. I hope he reflects, and I hope he looks at the advisors he has around him currently, that got him to the state that we're in right now, 'cause we're not in a good state. He knows that, and he needs to start listening to people that are going to give him better advice. They can give us a clear pathway out of this. - Who are some people that would give him better advice? - Vice President. - Well, they're better than yourself. - Vice President, DNI, Gabbard, and their teams, I think are absolutely key. - The Vice President and the DNI. - And the DNI, yeah. Yep. And there's good people depending on that can give you off. - So he's not taking advice from his own vice president. - I don't know. I wasn't at the vice president's level. I think they have a good relationship. I just, based on what I've seen, and based on what we've seen in the public sphere, he has been taking more advice obviously from Lindsey Graham, from Ted Cruz, from Mark Levin on TV, than he has been from people who may say, - A Mark Levin on TV. That's who's a good advice from fucking. - In terms of how easy and great an idea this will be. I mean, so the media ecosystem, they're not giving them tactical military advice, but they were, I believe, in my opinion, a big part of echoing the Israeli talking points about no enrichment. You have to strike now. If you strike now, you'll be a hero. There was also this false narrative, basically, that said, like, "Hey, because the people "were on the streets in January, "if you take a couple strikes right now, "and you really hammer them, the rest is gonna be easy. "It's gonna be a kick walk. "The people are gonna rise up. "They're gonna overthrow the regime. "They're gonna love you. They're gonna cut a deal." It's gonna be quick and easy, like, a Venezuelo was. I think Venezuela did a lot to give us some false confidence in how quick and easy a regime change, regime modification, whatever you wanna call it, can be. So people like to live then, people on Fox, New York Post, New York Times, et cetera. A lot of those talking heads, you know, coincidentally, not sequentially, a lot of them are the same people who talked us into the Iraq war, can then somehow quick and easy this would be. But I mean, to your point, I think if he took some more advice from Vice President, from VNI Gabbard and their teams, I think we'd be in a much better spot and I think we'd be able to carve our way out of this mess. - Man, wow. - How many troops do we have over there right now? Waiting, just 25 or more. - I honestly don't know. - I don't know. I mean, I see what you see on the news. I'm disconnecting from all of them. - How many is Israel, son? - Far less than us. The most there are military operations that are taking place in Lebanon. They're doing a lot of air, air support and power projection via air, which is heavily funded by us. - Are they talking about funding and ground force? - If they could, it'd be tiny. They just don't have, I mean, - Paul or so we'll do it. - So we would have to do it. - Oh, okay. I mean, they'd do it for them. - They could do a commando rate or something, you know. That'd be about it. But in terms of any kind of meaningful hold ground, even for a limited amount of time, that would have to be American boots. - Oh, okay. That's kind of what I thought, but, you know. I'm getting angry, Jill. - I can tell, I hear you, I hear you. - I hear you, I hear you. - I'm getting really fucking angry. But, oh man. It's just no new wars, no new wars. It just echoes in my head all day long. And here we are, here we are, right back in war. - Completely avoidable, completely avoidable. And I pray, again, he listens to some of the voices that they can get him out of this. I think they're still time, but this is very bad and this could get worse. And I think platforms of yours are important because people like you, big podcasts, I think you guys brought a lot of people out to vote for President Trump. And I think it's really important that all the people that are watching this show and all the other podcasts, call their senators, call their representatives, make their voice heard because there is, again, that media ecosystem that kind of exists oddly in the White House, we've got to penetrate through that. They were listening during the campaign. And I think they'll listen again if people take this as a call to action. - I mean, so we're talking about war strategy a little bit here. What is the rest of the world's pulse on us? Is anybody other than Israel encouraging us to hit Iran? - I doubt it. I strongly doubt it. I mean, China gets like, not the China's our front, China's not our front. They get like 75% of their fucking oil from the straighter her moves. - They're still getting it. The only difference is they're selling the transactions in Yuan. And so I think China may like this because obviously we've taken our eyes off the Pacific for people who care about Taiwan. The Pacific is truly our border, we're a Pacific power. I think a lot of that is kind of gone by the wayside 'cause we've had to move so much combat power into, into sync comp. So I'm sure China's happy with it. Russia too, we've taken our eyes off of getting a peace agreement between Russia and Ukraine because there is scarcity now. And we've created scarcity while it's taking place in the straights of our moves with the energy sector, Russian oil, Russian gas, all that is gonna be worth more on the market now to fund their war. So I think our major competitors, Russia and China, I would say they're probably pretty happy about this but all of our regional allies I think are probably pretty furious about it. - And China's becoming more aggressive towards Taiwan since we started this. - Right. - Right, and then two in terms of, like-- - Now that's a real fucking threat. - That's a real threat and then-- - And then take those chip plants, that's a real fucking threat. They will win the AI race like that. - It is and-- - Yeah, and it was always debatable. - Going after fake nuclear weapons. - It was always debatable if we could defend it before but now with all the combat power pushed into SENTCOM, that's a huge issue. Another major issue is the strength of the dollar. The dollars already been weakened so much because of our deficit spending. We can deficit spend because we're the world's reserve currency holder. And a lot of that strength comes from the petro dollar that any money that gets bought from the GCC or any oil that gets bought from the GCC, you gotta sell the transaction in dollars. China's already kind of short-circuited. - And then they reinvested in our stock market. - Right, right. So if you wanna keep that system going, which I'm not sure if it's the best system, but we should at least deliberately move away from it if we're going to do it, it shouldn't disappear over the course of a month because of a war because the straights being choked off. Iran knows this. They know that if they choke off the straights and they only let Chinese ships, etc. come through and they settle the transaction in another currency that they're eroding away at the petro dollar. And we also need the GCC to be on board. All the gold cooperation countries in the region, they've gotta be on board with the petro dollar too. The reason why they went with the petro dollars because we provided their security guarantees, well, how are the security guarantees now? We can't defend them against what's taking place. We can't defend them from Iranian blistics or Iranian drones. They know full well that the war was launched by Israel and now they're suffering the consequence. So all of a sudden, we're not the best ally. So how long do we expect them to continue to settle their transactions in the dollar? So the ramifications of this conflict, I think are massive. - What about Europe? I mean, when the facility in Qatar got hit, I mean, they're now having to renegotiate all their contracts with China, Italy, there was a handful of European countries that did get the majority of their oil from there. Now they have to renegotiate because they're gonna default on the contract. - Yeah. There's only one country that gains in this and that's Israel. - I mean, that's just the bottom line. - Is there anything that we gain? Do we gain anything at all by doing this? - I don't believe so. I mean, my critics would say no, we're finally, once and for all, taking you out there in the regime. Again, for all the reasons I previously outlined, I just disagree with that. And again, we don't seem to have a strategy. It's working in that direction. And minus the punch list of things that we're bombing. - Well, Joe, I wanna take a break here real quick. But before we do, I saw Trump's speech this morning about you to his poke and fun that she lost. That she lost her congressional run. So I pulled some stats. So I'm poking fun at you this morning about losing in Washington, losing your Congress race. Trump actually lost their in the last presidential election by set by a 17% margin himself. You only lost by a 3.8% margin. Who's the fucking loser? All right, let's take a break. Aging is inevitable. And if you're anything like me, you feel it a little more every year. 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If you're ready to upgrade your daily routine with Bubs Natural's collagen, head to bobsnatrals.com/SRS and use code Sean for 20% off your order. Again, that's bobsnatrals.com/SRS and use code Sean for 20% off your order. Take care of your body. It's the only one you've got. Hi, I'm Sarah Adams. The host of vigilance elites, the watch floor, where we highlight what matters. It became a permissive state. Explain to you why it matters. And then aim to leave you feeling better and formed than you were before you hit play. Terrace, hostile intelligence agencies, organized crime, not everything is urgent. But this show will focus on what is need to know, not just what is nice to know. (whooshing) All right, Joe, I know we were gonna move on about strategy from the Epstein War. I mean, the Iran War, but I got a couple more questions for you. So one, what is Rubio doing in all this? I'm not sure. I mean, I think he's doing the best he can to. Give the president options. I mean he came out right away and I think was pretty honest when he said We had to attack otherwise. He's really is we're going to what are the other options that he's given? Are you aware of those? I'm not no. I don't know is he for this That I don't know honestly. Yeah What you know, there's a lot of strategy. There's a lot of of stuff floating around about strategy attacking their infrastructure Taking away the fertilizer further food creating famines and their water supply starving them of water I mean hitting their energy. Great. Is there any validity to that? I'm sure it was looked at because we look at everything but that I that I don't know the only those are some people The only strategy I've seen is the punch list of military targets And I don't I still believe the US military would not deliberately target Civilian infrastructure in that way You don't think we would do that. I Don't think we would I just based on my experience in the military. I don't think that we would Now will the Israelis? This is the problem. This is the problem that we have being partnered with someone who has Different values than we do Look the Israelis believe this is existential the Israelis. We've seen what the Israelis, but what they did in Gaza Like they have a different 20,000 kids. They have a whole different way of fighting wars than we do They they fight total war they fight very very biblical wars We do not I mean in all honesty they fight of war how you should fight a fucking war precisely So you want to win like we that's not that's not that's not to win That's not in our interest because at the end of the day Like if you're going to do that then you're gonna occupy the land you're gonna fully take the land We're not gonna do that. We've never been a very good occupying army America has not been a good occupying army I don't think Americans have the colonial mentality. I don't think we have the total war mentality. I'm glad that we don't However, if we're gonna be again, it goes back to are we gonna be partnered with the Israelis and attempt to pretend that We can have a different strategic goal, but then also a different appetite for how war is conducted Like at some point we should just say there's certain things we can partner with the Israelis on like limited strike counterterrorism operations Absolutely but when it comes to Fighting and to try and take over and quell and dominate an entire population we cannot be Join at the hip with the Israelis just do the different strategic goals, but then also just a different value system Is there anyway at all to differentiate that to have our goal and their goal and being this together It's one same to me. I don't believe so, but we're paying for the Israelis. We're paying for everything that they're doing And so we are the dominant one in this relationship. We need to assert ourselves as such I honestly and I know I've gotten a lot of crap and people said oh you're anti-Semitic whatever I've got no issue with the Israelis. They're pursuing their objectives I have an issue with our reaction to the Israelis like our government should not be our action should not be directed by a foreign government That's my biggest issue. You have an yeah, you have You're upset because we are under their influence. Yes, exactly and you know in your resignation letter You had talked about how the Iraq war yeah Syria yep That was because we were under their influence too, and I want to ask you how were we under their influence in Syria? So I think The war in Syria wouldn't have happened if the Iraq war wouldn't have happened So the Iraq war was driven obviously by the the neo conservative movement here in America military industrial complex But a big part of that was also the Israeli lobby Benjamin Netanyahu at the time who had just gotten done being the Israeli Prime Minister I think he was still in government. He was like the finance minister He came and he aggressively lobbied and testified in the House and the Senate that Saddam was developing weapons of mass destruction So he helped launder that narrative that Saddam was developing weapons of mass destruction in conjunction with the military industrial complex and the conservatives to say that we had to go in and we had to take away the the nuclear weapons You also had others in like the think tank realm the same thing the media echo chamber who was saying that Saddam was linked to Al-Qaeda and to 9/11 potentially and they so they laundered those talking points as well now Benjamin Netanyahu and the Lecude party really wanted us to go in and take out Saddam so that they could have basically a launching pad for operations into Iraq and then also Into Syria they wanted us to do the heavy lifting so they could eventually get their goal of taking out Assad who was supporting Hezbollah and Hamas And then also taking out Iran so that's why they supported the the war in Iraq the Prime Minister at the time Ariel Sharon initially said no I don't support this I want America to focus on taking out Iran first But then eventually he got on board so you basically had both major political parties inside of our Israel pushing for the war in Iraq the Israelis also wanted access to Iraq's oil supply so that they could get a pipeline of oil coming out of Iraq and Directly into Israel circumventing Syria because they didn't want to go through Syria because Assad was supporting the Iranians and supporting Hamas and Hezbollah so once we got into Iraq and got into that quagmire we the US government screwed things up so badly that we basically handed over Iraq as you know To Iranian back she is that we're there So by the time we were done in Iraq Iran pretty much controlled Iraq through their through their proxies help them circumvent sanctions made Iran even stronger So then you had the shea crescent you basically had a unification of Taron Baghdad in Damascus forming that crescent that land bridge Iranian supplies going right into Israel's backyards So the Israelis at the end of the Iraq war were like no, this is not going to work at all We have to break this up. We have to go to war in Syria. We have to take down Assad Arab Spring happened there was some energy From the people I think there was somewhat organic But then in short order we came in and we said we're we're going to work with the Israelis But we're also going to have to work heavily with the Sunni population on the ground in In Syria to create an uprising and that's where ISIS came from we worked directly with al-Qaeda Hillary Clinton's emails confirm this The operations that we were doing to support the so-called free Syrian army and there was some moderates there But the most effective guys initially were al-Qaeda and then eventually ISIS now obviously ISIS got out of control And they started plotting attacks in Europe. They started plotting attacks in America They took over large swaths of Iraq So we then had to go back and put out once again the brush fire that we had started and go after ISIS And that's where I lost my lay wife But Israel was the driving factor in that we took down Saddam who is a strong man against Israel We then had to go in and take out Assad who is a strong man against Israel as well And now this is the third phase we're going now into Iran to take out that strong government for Israel Who do we put in charge of Syria? Oh, we handed that whole well again We screwed the whole thing up so much we handed it to a leader of fucking al-Qaeda Yep, he was an ISIS initially he was an al-Qaeda initially in Iraq if I'd be funny against us We had him in jail joined ISIS broke off from ISIS hand selected by Ben Laden's right hand man I'm in Zawihiri to lead Nusra and then they rebranded and this is that like the number one way to to fool Americans as a Geodas is just put on a suit and get a good PR company and then apparently we'll just believe whatever you say there's videos of this guy holding people's heads that he cut off Yeah, he's I mean he's the thought he's shaken. He's a brutal person and Trump's hand. Yeah horrible advice Yep, and so what the fuck are we doing? What are we doing exactly president Trump at the beginning again, this is where Trump Skies and inviting a fucking terrorist yeah into our house The in the first Trump administration he had Syria right he said we're gonna go in we're gonna take out the caliphate Because opposed the threat to us and then we're gonna get out and this is why I support a president Trump even after losing Shannon Because he was trying to get our troops out the military was fighting him um and then when Assad fell in December right before president Trump even even took office when Assad fell in Jalani whatever HTS took over Syria president Trump put out a truth he can still probably pull it up where he says whatever happens in Syria It's not our business. I always said it was a bad idea. I don't want to be involved in Syria That was actually the right approach Because it was too late for us to go back in and you know fight the new government etc Best thing that we could have done is back off let the Turks let the Israelis let our regional partners kind of take lead there But instead we we went all in with the Shahra government and we embrace them and now we're pretending they're part of like the deis's coalition and It's just it's an entire mess like look the Middle East basically and president again president Trump you should understand this The Middle East is a place where you can just get involved in these never ending Quagmires and you start one fire to put out another and you never fully extricate yourself and at the end of the equation There's never a clear benefit for the American people and that's that's gotten us to a state this state that we're in right now and we have to stop that What about the IAEA inspections We were going in there and inspecting all these facilities in Iran correct and then Trump cut that Oh, yeah, it's part of the and his first administration is part of getting rid of the jcpa Why would we do that? I think the idea with the jcpa was it gave Iran access and and I partially agree with this it gave Iran access to more capital with sanctions Circumvention that was the whole famous initially Obama unfroze a bunch of the assets that we had we had frozen And that's why we flew over the palatza cash that that everyone talks about so frequently And then as part of throwing out the jcpa we got rid of the inspections and we did and there was Because when they got when they put in the inspectors there were some sanctions relief that came there By getting rid of the jcpa and slapping the sanctions back on them that made it more challenging for the the inspectors to to get back into the Iranian sites Again, though like trumpet uses leverage. He killed Solmani, we were in a really good place. At the beginning of this administration, President Trump was in a great spot with Iran. Him and the Supreme Leader both agreed, "No nooks, we need to have a discussion about enrichment, we need to have a discussion about how that's going to be supervised and checked." But this was a discussion that could have been worked out by diplomats sitting at a table as opposed to a massive military conflict. And I ran, and again, I'm no fan of Iran, they were restraining their proxies. They even restrained their proxies throughout the first iteration of the 12th of their war. So again, I go back to, "Why are we doing what we're doing right now? Look at the ramifications, look at how little we're gaining from this." And again, all roads go back to, "Israel is the benefactor in all of this." And we've got to get that relationship to a place where it actually benefits us and not just them. As far as these proxies, I mean, you know, Sarah Adams correct. I mean, she's been talking about the sleeper cells in the US for probably two years now, maybe longer. Yeah. You know, so there's thousands, thousands of terrorists and sleeper cells all around the country. Now, how are we going to know if Iran is the one that activated them? Right. Or were they just inspired by events that are over there. So I testified publicly in December that we at NCTC had identified 18,000 known suspected terrorists who had access to America. The more we dug into the data of the last four years, the more I realized we have no idea who's in our country. Just because there was no border, the CBP1 app and the ability for people to come into the country, undetected, but then later apply for a benefit knowing they'd get a parole status, which gives them a legal status in America, which we're still caught up in the courts and fighting the courts with. We just simply don't know. At the beginning of this war, we were looking at other data sets of people who could have come from either Iran or Lebanon or Iraq countries that have large sheet of populations. And again, the data was, to me, it was as murky as the numbers of who came into the border. Like it just, the one consistent factor I kept coming away with or one takeaway I kept coming away with was that we have no idea who is in our country right now. And that has incredibly dangerous. So again, I think we should be focusing the majority of our efforts on securing our homeland and making sure the people who came into our country in the last four years are located and we get them out. Now, sleeper cells, I think a lot of people when they hear sleeper cells, they'll think like it's a handful of guys who are specifically trained and infiltrated to conduct an attack at a certain time. There could that could be taking place. I don't think that's the main threat. I think the main threat is people that have come here legally and illegally being inspired by media. They consume or by seeing social media clips and then saying now I'm going to conduct an attack as a lone actor because that's even harder for us to pick up on. Like cells when they infiltrate they have to communicate with each other. The US intelligence community and law enforcement were pretty good at infiltrating those cells and detecting them. It's not 100% it could still happen. But when it's a lone actor and someone who's just inspired to take action based on the fact that they shouldn't even be in our country in the first place and they see some media. And they take action then that's hard for us to actually get ahead of and stop until it's too late. And at the beginning of the conflict, we've already seen several attacks. There's a guy down in Texas who went into the bar and shot up several I think killed three people shot several more. He hadn't Iran T shirt on. Is that O.D.U. too? Older than in the universe? Exactly. Exactly right there too. And then how do you know that they so it's how do you know they're they need to communicate in that we would pick that up because it's been reported by Sarah and her counterparts that they are only communicating back to HQ and Afghanistan through couriers. And that they have they're totally isolated that you don't know each other so the only way they have to communicate is through couriers which we would not pick that up. They're still impossible to yeah that's that's certainly possible yeah yeah I wouldn't roll it out again it goes back to like the board was open for four years so it's kind of like if you and I wanted to attack our adversaries and left the board open for four years like how creative could we get. And that's the opportunity that we gave all of our enemies so when people would say well well how many bad guys do you think you're in the country like seriously what's the number i'm like i i don't know i'll tell you the truth i'll tell you the truth is that the more we dig to the data the more we realize we really truly don't know. And then people would say what do you think it's sleeper cells do you think it's this that or the other thing it's like well honestly again we get and we kind of go back to. The only thing we created for the last four years in the previous administration was a massive opportunity for terrorists to exploit our country and and to kill people here. If they were to attack with a proxy would you be a hundred percent competent that it was them. And if I ran or i mean at this point what we've seen more of is we've seen younger people some of whom were born here conduct these attacks and they were just inspired by something that they saw and then a lot of them too i know Sarah has her theory of the case i think the bigger threat based on what we saw last year we saw the terrorist actually saw here in America. Most of those people were inspired by by media content they had consumed coming out of Gaza the Gaza conflict and they cited the Gaza as being a driver pushing them towards violence so yeah obviously if we intercepted a cell of Iranians that you know we could prove they had ties back to Iran then yeah then absolutely we have to hold them accountable for that. I mean there are other motivations for this as well. To get us all riled up oh for sure 100% do you think that's a possibility. I think it's i think the i think we're always presidents and opportunity for people to exploit to further their objectives so if you want to sell more of surveillance state more infringements upon our civil liberties now is the time to do it. Because like i just described it's a very scary security environment you can legitimately say like hey we don't know who's in our borders terrorist attack is what's taking place in the middle east. There's been a massive decline in law and order in general in our cities so therefore we need take your pick what what kind of intrusions on our civil liberties it becomes easier than the more people are scared of what's happening. The easier that is to sell so i definitely think there's going to be elements of the government big tech that will exploit this chaos. You're being accused of leaking classified information yeah what classified information did you leak it's a good question i didn't leak any i didn't leak any classified information i had my i had my full security clearance until last week when i walked out the door i'd full access to everything so my security clearance was never suspended never pulled. i think most of the most of these leak allegations are just immediate narrative to take away from the conversation that you and i are having the first leak accusations surface right as i was going live with tucker so they were just trying to take the wind out of my sales i think a little bit by saying no no no no less than this guy's leaker i mean that's that's. That's what i think yeah seems very reactionary to me when when did the investigation starter you were. i don't think there is an investigation there isn't no one no one is come to me and said you're being investigated the only the only proof there of there being an investigation is someone in the government leaking to the media saying that can send her investigation for being a leaker so they had to leak. That i'm a leaker another leaker right exactly that's why like i mean i take it seriously the FBI has ruined innocent people's lives like general Flynn with an accusation before so i take it seriously i'm confident i leak any classified information. Um but at the same time like we kind of know what the game is here and if they really were going to investigate me they would come to me and say hey you're being investigated or we're going to ask you some questions etc. If they really were going to investigate me too i don't think they would tip their hand ahead of time by leaking it that doesn't work out in their advantage at all. So i think it's a media if they do you are leaking why wouldn't they have fired you and then continue to on with the investigation they were just going to wait for your resignation right they at least would have pulled my clearance. He's going to resign soon don't fire him he's i won't we know he's leaking classified information but just he's going to be gone so exactly yeah it doesn't make any sense. What's going on with the Butler assassination attempt. So um are we looking into that yeah i think there's there's basically two schools of thought as to what's taking place right now and how we got in the situation with with Iran that you know Trump should know better and i think he he does know better i just gave you that more than likely i think he just got a lot of bad information. There's a much smaller chance but i think it can't be ignored the fact that there was several assassination attempts against president Trump that really haven't fully been explained. One of which the butler itself no one is saying is linked to the FBI but two days before the butler assassination attempt we arrested a guy named Asif Mershant he was just you know prosecuted and i think going to jail we arrested him for being recruited by Iran to come here and attempt to assassinate president Trump to avenge the death of two the village of killing him costs him some money. Mershant had a a a FBI informant that was working with him Mershant didn't know he was an FBI informant obviously and they basically set up a scheme to conduct an assassination against president Trump using a sniper. They arrest Mershant and then two days later, I tried to kill Trump at Butler. I wanted to look for potential linkage between those events, was completely shut off and blocked from that. - You were in CTC, was the National Counterterrorism Center. - Why would they cut you off? That seems like definitely possible terrorism, especially considering the first one was supposedly sent by Iran. - Certainly. - Yeah, exactly. - I don't know. Again, we were told that, "Hey, the merchant trial is ongoing." So you can't look into any of the information. You can look at a little bit of the information, but we can't really do much there. But my question was always, is there any linkage between anyone that Mershant talked to and the people who were there at Butler and Crooks? 'Cause we can say all day long, they're not linked, but are we sure that we had everything that Mershant was doing under control? Is there any linkage between those two events? Under from my vantage point, I didn't see that investigation being done very thoroughly. I think this matters. - It was conducting that investigation. - That was all they had the FBI. - Oh, the FBI. - Yeah. I think this matters in the terms of what we're talking about because you had Butler, you had the other assassination attempt at West Palm Beach, and then you had, once Trump came into office, you had several breaches of his security perimeter. You had the famous stoppage of the escalator at the UN. You had, when he went out to dinner, there was the table of code paint protesters who sat down next to them. And then you had the police officer, who I think is probably a good patriot of American, when he was armed, he wasn't part of the president's detail, he'd come up and shake President Trump's hand, so basically circumventing the secret service. And then you had the assassinations of Charlie Kirk, and Charlie was one of the most vocal advocates against a regime change war inside of Iran. And he was advocating heavily that we change our stance in regards to our relationship with Israel. He was in the White House lobbying President Trump to not attack Iran and lead up to the 12-day war. So Charlie would have been very, very much against what's going on right now. He's then killed in September. And so I think it's irresponsible for us not to look at all of these things on a broader timeline and see where they fit into what's taking place right now. - Are you saying that you don't think that the kid that's been propped up to have killed Charlie is the guy? - I'm not saying that at all. I mean, that kid, his fingerprints around the gun, that case is gonna be made. What I do know is that NCTC was investigating the foreign, any foreign linkage not necessarily just to the suspect or Robinson, but any foreign linkage that could have taken place regarding that case. And again, we were stopped really early on from thoroughly investigating. And all that I can say is that we had more foreign connections. I'm not saying a foreign government, but I'm saying foreign connections to look into, to thoroughly do our due diligence from an investigatory standpoint that in my opinion was not done. Now the FBI will tell you, we got our guy, he turned himself in, his fingerprints are on the gun. There's been some debate over whether or not he confessed. I guess we'll see when he goes to court. But now that the case is being handled 100% by Utah. And again, considering how prominent Charlie Kirk was, I think it's important that we continue that investigation and that every angle is looked into and that a complete investigation actually takes place. And from what I saw, that did not happen. - So this is gonna wind up just like JFK. - I hope not. I hope not. I think we have the ability to really look into every aspect of it no matter what the truth is. And no matter where that leads us. And again, like people are saying, why are you speaking cryptically? I can't speculate, I can only tell you what I know. And the only thing I know for sure is that our due diligence was not done on looking at the foreign links. The rest of the case can be rock solid. If they've got Tyler Robinson, - And there are foreign links. - There's foreign connections we need to look into. - What are those connections? - That I can't get into 'cause that's gonna, that's all tied up inside of a classified channel is essentially. But there was more work we needed to do. And now I'm not saying, like you know how an investigation works, you chase down 99 leads and 100 leads and 99 of them are BS and you get one good one. So even the things that I know of that I don't wanna speculate about half of them could be half 75%, 90% of them could be trash leads. But there's stuff that we need to look down. Charlie was a very influential figure. He traveled the world, he traveled the nation. There was a lot of people from all over the place looking and watching Charlie Kirk speak there. There was people speculating about what was gonna happen to Charlie Kirk online ahead of time. So there's more work that we need to do in regards to foreign linkage to the Kirk assassination. Man, I just don't understand why you wouldn't wanna know. Why you wouldn't conduct a full investigation on who tried to kill you if you're the president of the United States. Right. I just, that does not compute in my brain. Right. Why would you not want to know? Especially after we were told for quite some time that Thomas Kirk was in a negama, we didn't know who he was. He's just this crazy kid. He had no online footprint. We were told for a while that they couldn't get into his devices that they were locked, couldn't get into his devices. And then when they said they finally got into his, they up be eye finally said they got into his devices. They're like, no, there's nothing there. Well, fast-forward a couple months and Tucker Carlson's investigative journalist finds a full online persona of this kid. He's communicating with other people. He's commenting on YouTube videos. He's interacting with people that are overseas. So there's more work there to be done clearly. And there was a big rush to say, like, well, we shot the sniper. He's commenting on the negama. We don't have anything about him, but Case closed. You know, cremate the body 10 days later. It occurs the one that came up with all that. Tucker's investigative journalist that he, that works on Tucker's team, found Crooks' online persona. Yeah. And the FBI didn't. The FBI, or the FBI didn't report it. I don't know what the case is. Or just Tulsi standing all this stuff. She's obviously in a tough spot. So I don't want to say anything else. It's going to put her in a tougher spot than she's already. And she's doing the best that she can. How many people up there are against what we're doing? It's hard to put a number on it. Look, I mean, you know how the government is. Maybe a percentage. Yeah. Most people that serve in the government, I found they want to make their boss happy. And they don't want any friction at work. And they want to salute and they want to move out. You know, I think that's where everybody's lost it. 100% micro. Fucking job is to protect and serve the people of the United States. Yeah. Yep. Yeah. And look, there's a lot of good patriots that are still there who think that they're doing the right thing. And this is a dilemma that I had. I was like, well, do I stay here? And do I soldier on a me a good soldier? And do I show up every day and do my darnness? And then if the big strategic picture gets messed up, well, that's not really on me. You know, I did that for 20 plus years in the military and in the agency and kind of see where that got us, right? When we knew better, see where that got us. And so like I said, you know, 20 plus years ago, I've been a promise to myself if I ever had the ability to speak out and try to get us on a better path I would do so. If my late wife hadn't gotten killed, if I hadn't been through the experiences I had been through, I wouldn't, I don't think I have the clarity and the courage to do what I'm doing now. So I am sympathetic to people who are inside who are still like, hey, I'm just a, you know, I'm just a guy. I'm not that important. I'm trying to do my job while doing what I'm told. However, the people who came in, you know, with President Trump in key leadership positions that are a part of this movement and leading this movement, I think they've got to reflect on what we ran on 'cause this is not what we ran on. And they have to live with it. And so they can either make a decision to try and influence the situation from inside, but once they realize they can't influence that situation inside, then they have a choice to make. Do they stay and be complicit with it or do they leave and try and get us back on the right path? - In your mind, how do we get out of this thing? I'll be more in it now with Iran. We're in it. How does this end? How do we get out of this? What are the options? If we don't deal with the Israelis, then this thing will just keep going. There might be fits and starts, like maybe this five days ceasefire will work. I'm a little skeptical, I'm hopeful. But unless we restrain the Israelis and tell them like you're done, and if you continue to attack and you continue to do things without telling us and asking us, without asking us first, we're paying for it, you're going to ask us first. Then we are going to negate our other part of the deal and our part of the deal says that we defend Israel. And we provide their iron dome system, we provide their air defense, we provide a lot of their defense. - We provide their iron dome. - Well, we provide, - We don't even have a fucking iron dome. - We provide a lot of the funding for the iron dome, for sure. For sure. So I would say to the Israelis very bluntly, you're done going on the offense. We will tell you what operations you can conduct. If you disobey us and you don't run your operations by us that we're paying for, then we're going to start taking away features of your defense system. To the point where all you can do with your military, basically, stay on the defense. That's the only way to restrain the Israelis, in my opinion. I think we're past the point of being able to have, like, hey nice conversations, like, hey, could you guys please not? Because every time we say, could you please not, the Israelis say, yeah, sure, that sounds good. And they turn around and they conduct strikes that basically negate any kind of negotiation. that we're trying to pursue. - I mean, it didn't, and Yahoo! literally just say that. - He, he, yeah, again. - Just with the statement I just saw. - Again, as frustrating as people, as I get with the Israelis sometimes, they're not very subtle. Like the Israelis are not doing a lot of like a lying and BS-ing to us. Like they're pretty upfront with what they're doing and what they plan to do. So I would take them at their word, and I would just say, no, you're not, 'cause we're paying for all of this. And we have to restrain them. And I know a lot of people are gonna be very, very frustrated what I say that, 'cause there's people who really like Israel. And I'm not saying like you cut off Israel, you know, you, whatever, I'm not saying any of that. I'm saying you take away their, the resources that they have right now to go on the offense. Make it so Israel could only defend themselves. That's fine. But they can't go on the offense anymore. Once we do that, and once we restrain the Israelis, then I think we have a place where we can use our allies in the Gulf, we can use the homonies, the Qataris, et cetera. To get the Iranians to come to the table and come up with a way that we can reopen the Straits of Hormuz. I think we're gonna need to say to the Iranians, okay. We need to lift sanctions on some of their, we have to give them something. So I think lifting the sanctions and letting them get a lot of their oil introduced back into the world market, I think that's actually a pretty good carrot to get them to the table. And that's also gonna help lower the price of the pump and lower the, and get more oil and petrochemicals flowing for the further lighters and everything else the world needs in terms of energy. But again, step one is restraining the Israelis. That's the only way I can see out of this. And look, we're gonna have to make some concessions. We're gonna have to say, "Hey, we'll work with whoever there is there in Iran." We're gonna have to give them red lines that might need to be enforced every now and again. Like your proxies will not attack us. You will stop attacking the Gulf countries. Otherwise, this will continue. But at this point, they know we're pretty serious about using force. I think we have to show them now that we're serious about using diplomacy and getting into the table. What are the chances you think that'll happen? - Every day that goes by, less and less. Right now, again, look, I know you're frustrated to President Trump. I know a lot of your viewers are frustrated to President Trump. I think if President Trump sits and thinks about where we are and how we got here, I think he'll understand that we're in a bad spot and we need to get out of it. And in order to get out of it, he needs to take drastic action. Now that's where the good news is. And this is what gives me some hope. President Trump is good at taking drastic action. He is decisive, he is unpredictable. But in terms of doing big things, that's the story of President Trump's life. He can do it. So I think other presidents in this situation, they wouldn't be able to rapidly extricate us from this. I think Trump can. He needs to listen to his core beliefs and he needs to listen to different advisors. And he needs to have the courage to restrain the Israelis. Then I think he can do it. It gets harder and harder every day that goes on though. If he's got this five day window that he's created for himself, he needs to use it and he needs to pursue it aggressively. At the end of that five day window, I think it's gonna be exponentially more difficult. I mean, what do you think? I mean, I've rants literally saying there are no negotiations going on. Right. I mean, this thing, I think there are or do you think there are not? I'm sure we're trying. We have some people that I know are probably aggressively reaching out. Now, are they getting responses? I don't know. I just think that the Iranians after us killing so many of the negotiators and so many of the leadership there. And then us, basically saying after the 12th day war that we use the negotiations as a ruse, I don't think that helps. 'Cause I think, before again, there was that tension inside of Iran where you had the clerics and you got some of the moderates that were saying like, okay, we won't make a nuclear bomb. We are interested in some engagement with the Americans. We would like a deal. But then you had the hardliners. You had the students of Cosmsoh Mali who were like, uh-uh, absolutely not. Let's go on the offensive. Let's use our proxies to kill these guys. Let's bleed them out of the middle east. So right now, who's winning that argument inside Iran? I fear the hardliners are winning that argument inside of Iran because every Iranian leader that they target and they kill, I mean, Trump even said it today when he was at the plane side, when he was plane side, he was asked, who are you talking with inside of Iran? And he said, I don't wanna name them 'cause then they might get killed. Well, they might get killed by the Israelis 'cause the Israelis don't want us to have negotiation. This is fucking crazy. It's insane. No, no, it's insane. It's insane. So the Iranian is saying that he's not saying that because if he names the name, the Israelis will kill them. I didn't say anything. He's saying that you're saying that we can't, that I just don't understand how, essentially you're saying we just need to tell them no. We have to do that. And not just tell them no, you have to take things away from them. You can't just say, we've said no to them before. How forcefully, I don't know, I think it's pretty debatable. But right now they're having their cake and they're eating it too. I mean, we are doing all the heavy lifting in this war for them, but we're also continuing to provide them so much military assistance. We're providing their defense package for them. So we have to go to them and we have to say, not just no, but you're gonna run any strikes by us. And also, you're not going on the offense anymore. You're dunding on the offense. If you're attacked, we'll back you up. If you guys want to do military operations on your own border, that's your country fine. What takes place now in Iran, that affects us, that affects the GCC, that affects the Straits of Hormuz and World Energy, you're done. We have to say that to them and we have to take away things that make it so that they can only do their own defense. They can't go on the offense. Until we do that, I don't think the Iranians actually will take us very seriously. - We don't have a problem doing that to any other country in the world. - Pretty crazy, right? - Why do we have reluctancy to do it to Israel? - I mean, there's obviously the Israeli lobby factor, A-PAC and all the other surrogates that spend so much money on our elections. There's major donors, Miriam Adelson gave, I mean, someone can look to sub 100, like I think $100 million to the Trump campaign. And she's not the only, she's the only one. - I think someone can look it up. I'm not sure exactly what that meant. Significant. And there's other really prominent donors that are very pro-Israel, many of whom are dual citizens. - Oh yeah, I mean, the owner of only fans, he just died today. - Right, big A-PAC. - He was the biggest donor day, A-PAC. - Right, did you know that? - I just learned that today actually. I had to check that myself, 'cause I wasn't aware of that until he was faster than that. - It's good now. - Yeah, so we've got a PEP who funds A-PAC so that we can go to, yeah, make it make sense. But I think the Israeli lobby is part of it, but I also think that there is a massive outpouring of support from the evangelical community in America, evangelical Christians. And also I think a lot of people, especially the baby boomer generation, have just been led to believe that Israel's a democracy. The Israelis, the other speakers, they sound like us. I've dealt with the Israelis quite a bit. They're pretty pleasant to deal with. They're easy to deal with. I mean, 'cause a lot of them are educated in America. It's easy to get complacent around the Israelis, 'cause they don't have that foreign feel. And so they do a good job of selling, hey, we have the same interest here, man. We're just the same, same. So a lot of it is financial. You have a spiritual component to it. And then you also have the Israelis basically by providing us with a lot of intelligence and potential access, even though I think a lot of that is to inform us is to influence us rather than inform. - Yeah, you had already mentioned that a lot of that stuff is in the Intel pipeline. - Right, exactly. - What is the Intel pipeline? - What is it? - What is the flow of Intel from the field to the top? - Well, I mean, it depends on what manner of intelligence it is. But stuff that we get, and you know this from your past life, when we get information, especially from like a foreign liaison service, like it always has that caveat, like could be used to influence and informs. Everyone knows what they're reading. If you wanna lean heavily on the informed side and you're a partner of ours that has access to senior decision makers, you bypass the Intel guys, 'cause they're gonna check your stuff. They're gonna put it through a vetting process. They're gonna put it through analytical trade craft. If you wanna short circuit that, then you go directly to key decision makers. And you say, "Hey, I've got some Intel for you." It hasn't gone through the Intel channels. And a lot of those senior decision makers, although they have access to 18 intelligence agencies and top secret clearances, they're not familiar with Intel. And so they might not know that there's a vetting process that needs to take place, or things are happening so quick, they don't have time to think about it. So these railways with their access, and again, a lot of that access comes from the media, it comes from the donors, it comes from just a certain familiarity and comfort that we have with the Israelis. They're able to push that in there. We get Intel, I mean, Intel, as you know, it's not 100%, it's not always accurate, but when we get intelligence from the field, whether it's from a human source signal or a liaison, there's a vetting process that has to take place there before it goes and finished Intel. And then usually it's explained, how we got the Intel. Again, the Israelis have done a really good job of putting an in run on that system, to circumvent it. - Yeah, you know, the reason I'm asking, I'm just wondering if the, which pretty much already described it, if the intelligence that Iran had nuclear weapons went through the proper channels. - It didn't, we know it didn't. - Yeah, it just didn't. - It just didn't. - Who's the gate? Who's the gate that's keeping real Intel from getting to Trump? - That's a good question. I mean, he, in theory, has control over who he has around him. He's the president, he's the commander in chief. - Somebody's stopping real information to getting from getting to them. - Yeah, clearly. Or maybe he just doesn't want to hear it. - I think he might not want to hear it. - I think he got sold like a pretty clean equation. They were like, hey, the protesters are protesting. the Iranians at the negotiating table said they still want to enrich because they, again, they moved them moving that red line, the Israelis and their allies moving that red line and making Trump basically think the US policy is new enrichment. It was very effective. And so they made it seem like the negotiations had stalled out. But in fact, I don't think they had. I think Steve Wikofke had gotten us to deal back in June. I think they just sold them a very simple rushed, rushed equation to get us into this conflict. A big part of getting a quick action like this is rushing the president and telling him, hey, the protesters were just out there in June. We don't have time in July. I'm sorry, in January, we don't have time for a long deliberation. We need to conduct these strikes now. And so I think they took away a lot of his decision-making space and time and only put a handful of advisors around him. And maybe there's the people that he requested. But because he thought that he was under the gun for a time crunch, I don't think he had enough time to really fully assess that. A lot of people are saying that your resignation and change of heart is because of influence from your wife. No, no, no. I mean, we share very similar views. One of the reasons we probably got married. I got to address it. It's out there. Sure. Sure. But all right, Joe, I want to take a break. 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In the best part, Patreon members can ask our guests questions directly. Your insights can help shape the show. Join us on Patreon now, support the mission and become part of the Sean Ryan show's story. All right, Joe. We're back from the break. Midterms are coming up. Yeah. Next elections coming up. Maga split. Yeah. CNN just put up what a pull out that said 100% of maga. What do they say? 100% of maga supports the iron war. I don't think they're wrong. I just think a lot of people have left. I think a lot of people have left. Well, that and I think our our political opponents would love us to believe that this very unpopular thing we're doing is popular to convince us to keep doing it. I mean, I just I'd be very wary of CNN. I don't know why we're even listening to CNN. It's insane. I'm not that they came from somebody on the staff. No, but I saw that too. Yes. But I don't actually don't watch any mainstream media and not Fox. I'm not saying any of it. It's all fucking garbage. It is. But what does this mean? I mean, what do you see? So I think the conventional wisdom would tell you and I think the president was told this. I think the president was told that wartime presidents are always popular. Like if you look at Bush's approval rating after both the launch in Afghanistan and Iraq, it was it was the highest highest ratings yet. So that's the conventional wisdom. The conventional wisdom also says that most Americans they don't really care about foreign policy. But what they do care about is they care about the price of the pump and look at what this conflict has already done at the press. The pump, what it's already done to cost living. We already had an inflation crisis and Trump was working on getting us out of it. But look at the effect that the war, especially what's happening in the streets is going to have on all these everyday issues that your average really hardworking person who's, you know, busting their butt to stay above water. They might not say like that's because of the Iran war and dig deeply into the policy. But they're going to be like, oh, the party that's in power right now screwed this up. I'm going to vote for the other guy. And then you have the mag issue. It's not even just this country. Yeah, we're talking about the global economic depression here. Yeah, staring at fucking global economic depression. Yeah, potential famine because the fertilizer, I mean, it's just the mag the magnet fans. I don't I America, I don't think we will. But the amount of fertilizer that needs those petrochemicals that come out of the come out of the golf that are relying on the streets or moves flowing freely. I mean, that's a major problem. It's going to be a major problem. I think first for Europe, I think for Africa, for Asia, I think America, we can we can insulate ourselves to a certain extent. We're definitely going to feel in terms of the inflation. We're already feeling it. The gas prices are back up like we're back in the in the Biden era again, unfortunately. So I think that's that's going to factor heavily on on voters. And then the mag issue, man, the people that like were hardcore who don't who are small dollar donors to President Trump and and to candidates like me when I was running with his endorsement, them not coming out of them being disenfranchised or then being he endorsed one of this war. He endorsed me twice. Trump endorsed you. Yeah, twice. On a speech day, it sounded like he just felt sorry for you because your wife died in combat. And he just like handed you a job, which honestly, I was listening to that. I'm like, if that's how you hand jobs out to your fucking administration, no wonder we're in the fucking place we're at. Yeah, you just handed out pity jobs. Here you go. Yeah, I mean, maybe look at their background. And so, you know, this is how we wind up with people like fucking Sebastian Gorka. I think Trump just got into a they put him into a position where he needed to say something about me. And I think he's frustrated because I'm doing these I'm doing these media appearances. So he's going to fire back like I just for me, I don't take it personally. I want him to just focus on what we're talking about. Focus on getting us out of this crisis. And then also like you said, for the midterms, I mean, you're going to need a lot of hardcore, mega people to come out to knock on doors to do that hardcore work because working elections. It's not easy. It's not fun. It's not glamorous. The mega base, Trump's base, they're hard working people and they got them across the finish line in 26. A lot of them now it's debatable how much, but a good chunk of them are going to have a really hard time doing that because of the way this last year has gone. Don't come banging on my fucking door. I don't want to hear I don't want to hear more of this fucking lies. I hear that from a lot of people. It's everything, Joe. It's everything. Did you see the glyphosate stuff? I did. I did. The make America healthy again movement. Right. Immunity. Immunity. Yep. Because of what? A national security issue. Do you know what people fucking died of cancer last year? 618,000. That's not a national security concern. You know where the highest concentration of glyphosate is? It's in Iowa. Do you know where the highest concentration of cancer is? It's in Iowa. Yeah. And he just gave him immunity. Yeah. This is called the fentanyl crisis of national security concern. That's 100,000 people. Cancer is 618,000 fucking people in one year. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think your frustration, your anger is felt by a lot of people who voted, who campaigned. The Epstein files. Really believed the Epstein files. Yeah. The buck is that. Right. Are you serious right now? We're just going to let people that are raping, in killing, in exploiting kids sexually. Right. Just run free. But we're going to put, we're going to set the FBI on Joe Kent. It's insanity. And it's going to have a ramification. I know he's probably not being told this at the White House, but it's going to have a ramification on the elections. It just will. I mean, the coalition that we had was something I think very, very special in the sense that you had a lot of people who probably didn't don't consistently vote who we got mobilized with our message. President Trump's economic populism, his desire, at least stated desire to go out for the deep state, no new wars, the make America healthy again movement. All of those coalescing into what became the Maga movement in 2024, giving him the electoral college and the popular vote. I think over the course of the last year that coalition has been very, very fractured and people will say I'm fracturing the coalition right now. I'm not fracturing the coalition. The coalition is very fractured because of our actions. I want to preserve the coalition. I want the coalition to last because I think that formula, I think what President Trump and Vice President Mance ran on in 2024 is the right message. It is the right formula for America and for our country. But we've got to be serious. If we promise to deliver and we didn't deliver, we've got to be serious about that and we've got to show people that we're going to correct that. I don't think there's any coalition left. I don't disagree with you. The formula they made in 2024, shows that it can be done. And we go on after the deep state. We haven't seen one indictment. We haven't seen anything. Nothing. We've seen, look the other way. Are we still talking about Jeffrey Epstein? That's what we see. No, the CIA, the FBI, all these powerful institutions are still very much in tech. And they're still very much calling the shots. And that's a huge problem for the freedom and security of our country. So there's a lot of things that the administration, I think, needs to get serious about if we're going to fix things. Obviously, this war being the most pressing. But I think this last year of us attempting to govern is going to have a major ramification in the midterms and then definitely in 28. If we don't get serious about turning it around, for sure. What are your aspirations now? What steps for you? The next week or two, I really want to push as hard as I can to attempt to reach the president. And I know that puts me in the line of fire and in the news cycle and people sniping at me online. But that's the only plan I truly had leaving this. The way I look at it is I already kind of got to do my shelter in dream. Our old line of work, you know, I got to do that and everything else is kind of kind of grave. I want to be able to serve my country. I care deeply about the future of this country. I care deeply about the future that we leave for our kids. So whatever capacity I end up working or serving at, as long as I feel like I can influence to make sure I'm using my life experiences and what I've been through to affect a better outcome for our country. And I think national security is probably the best place that I can do that that I'm happy. I didn't take resigning lightly, but once I made the decision, I felt clarity that I don't think I felt ever in my life that this is the right thing to do. So you're the first of many. Yeah. Did make a statement like that. Are you worried for your safety? No, I'm not. I'm worried for my family. But as a father, you know, you're always worried. I always worried for your family. I have a strong family, strong extended family, strong friend network. Like we were just talking about, you know, at the break you want to go out here, the outpouring of support from veterans, from people I served with, from, you know, people that are part of the, whatever, whatever movement this is, it's been amazing. So obviously the security worries are always there in the back of my head. But, you know, I think God's on our side and I think we'll be okay. Are we going to see you in a midterm, your name pop up in any midterm elections? Not in a midterm, man. I got, I got the running for, for Congress out of my system. I'm living in Virginia right now. I don't think there's much of a prayer where I live for a, for a Republican of my politics to get elected. So no, definitely not in the midterms. I don't really have a desire to run for office again. It was a good experience. I'm glad I did it. I'm also glad it didn't work out because I've kind of had to interact enough now with Congress in my, my last job that man that does not look enjoyable at all. But I want to serve in this capacity. If we're able to get someone into the White House who wants to put this country first, they're going to need people that understand that the national security apparatus and how to tackle it and reorient it towards American priorities. So I'd be, I'd be happy to serve in that capacity. What about 2028? Same thing. I think I think I get help craft good policies and, and come up with attack plans. I mean, about a run run. I have no plans to run for, for president in 2028 running for Congress is challenging enough. I can't imagine doing it in 208. A problem with our president, with our politics in general is the amount of fundraising that you need to do. And I hated doing that. And I really have zero desire for again to go ask people to cut me a check. But you have to. Like you, you, you've got to be a relentless fundraiser to make it in politics today. And it's tough because there's so much money out there. And this is, this is like literally how our politicians end up getting bought. Like if they don't take the check, then the other guy, their competitor is going to take the check. And so that's what a lot of it comes down to. And I'd much rather stay in the, the national security realm where I think I can contribute more anyways. Then, then ever have to go beg donors for money ever again. How do we solve the APEC problem? I think we need, we need a heavy legislation and regulation on the ability for foreign governments to come in. And even using cutouts because APEC will say, no, no, no, this isn't, this isn't affiliate with Israel. These are Americans who support Israel. And that, I think, by and large is true. But they're advocating for policies that just support a foreign government. So there's got to be some regulation on foreign, foreign agents. There's got to be some regulation on having political fundraising packs and mechanisms that just support the agenda of a foreign country. What that is, I don't exactly know. I mean, there's, there's, what is it? What is that change if they register as a foreign agent? Because the Saudi's got a huge, huge lobbying for. Yeah. So what does that change? I don't think it changes much. I think you just are aware. It's more of a upfront, to my knowledge, someone can fact check me on this. I'm not a foreign agent registry expert by any means. But I think once someone is registered under FAR, like they can't get a government contract. Okay. I think they can resign from the position they're in where they had to register under under FAR. And then I think they can slide back into. And it's not like a forever thing by any means. The problem with the money side is that the Supreme Court basically ruled that money is speech. And just like they can't tell you what you can and can't say, the government can't tell you how you can spend your money. So if you want to put your money into a super pack, you can put an unlimited amount in there. And I think that's basically been the death of our political system ever since. That makes it makes it very possible for for elections to be bought because money is fungible. I think it's hard to actually create a firewall around that. All right, Joe, we're wrapping up the interview here. Got a hot question for you. Totally different to change a pace here. So try to lighten it up a little bit. Joe, the last time you were on the show, we aired a clip called Inside the Military's most secretive unit. That thing did 2.8 million views on YouTube. This time around, we actually had Claude, the AI, scrape the data on your YouTube performance, dig through sources across the internet and help us build this question. Oh, man. It what came back was very interesting. When you were operating in that secretive unit, doing those missions, most people never hear about what was your go-to combat loadout and why? Oh, that's a great question. So it depends on obviously where I was working. I would say a consistent factor for me because I was predominantly in the Middle East in dangerous places was either a Glock 19 or a Glock 43 or for an EDC. A Glock 43? Yeah, the little guy. Holy shit. You know, running around with a Glock 43. Depends on what I was wearing and where I was. There's the else, what was it? The 20s? Is it the 26 as well? The 26s. I think it's the little fatter double stack version. But usually a Glock 19. I like the Glock 19 because it's a good, you can conceal it, but it's still a full-size pistol. You know, you got the 15 plus one. Cameras heavily as well, just for the type of work that we did. A small digital camera. Like a small pocket size. Some of our guys would use bigger ones, depending on what mission they would do. But then I did a lot of human intelligence. So a huge part of my EDC was a pen in the paper and probably about a thousand dollars a cash on me. Because no pen, no paper, no intel. And if you don't pay them, they don't come back. Yeah. Yeah. Did you carry a bolt bag or anything? I like a go bag. Yeah. Yeah, I did. Yeah. I had a little beat up north face career bag. But I still have somewhere that I got like an O5 and it was like almost a super station that I had to take down every deployment with me. And that would be like one of the little bug out of the vehicle bag. Never a long gun? No, definitely long gun. Yeah, for sure. Well, long gun. For sure. So we had four sixteenths for a little bit and then I just standard, you know, AR. No MP7. I, you know, I rolled from MP7 a couple times, but it's just a little thing. The bullet, I was always a little skeptical on I never. I know some guys, I'd heard people say they shot folks with it and it was fine. It did the job. It always seemed really little to me. There's pictures of me with it with the newsy. I use the newsy for a trip as like a lap gun in a car. Use the newsy. Yeah. That's awesome. Yeah, because I had the super we added great suppressor on at the time We didn't have we had to be five but we didn't have suppressed ones and the suppressor on the uzi was sweet So I use that kind of my lap gun in the car big fan of the ump 45's - I thought that was shit I like that those we had those yeah and it run around Baghdad I thought that was great because everything was so close quarters and Baghdad He just needed to stop the stopping power especially working in a car Now damn boy. I got you a present You want to say it absolutely it's a long gun. It's long gun. Are you serious? I thought it was gonna be gummy bears You're in love My kids will be happy. This is what they care about I'll give you another one. Can you see me? Yeah, dude You know what the FBI investigation. I don't know if you're gonna get cleared for this thing but But yeah, this is this is a sig the sig spear chambered in 6.8 brand new optic and then So sig wanted me to give this to you Wow, that's incredible man. Thank you so much. And then silencer shop jumped in too So they put this Suppressor on here and the good thing about silencer shop is once you sign up with them and you get everything done That makes the process go a lot smoother a lot easier getting suppressors the class three items So anyways This is incredible mad. Thank you so much Say what a beautiful gun You want to rip a couple off out back Definitely man, this is beautiful Thank you, you're welcome. Thank you, man. Why'd you happen to have some 6.8 out there? So yeah, we wrap this up. We'll go you definitely This is amazing. We'll blow some shit up. I really like that thing. That's nice. Yeah, I've never I've never shot this before it feels Really good. Yeah, I think you're gonna like it. I think so too. There's a follow on question You're gonna go back into combat tomorrow What would If they institute the draft and we don't have to go back to Iran or the Middle East, I'd be like jokes I knew smart asses What would your loadout look like today with all the new tech and weapon systems the military has developed since you were on the ground last I would need to get spun up on the drones and the counter drones That's what I was gonna say. I mean I can you know talk about long guns and pistols all day long But the fighting out days man with those FPV drones and that technology I would I would get hot on that as fast as I possibly could and then how to defend I think how to defend any kind of like small formation that you have Like what system can you carry around At least at least have a fighting chance against those things that'd be my my first My first task. I think I'd get really good at 3D printing. Yeah, exactly exactly Yeah, some that the technology coming off the battlefield in Ukraine. It's just incredible All right last thing you know this is live this is live on my patreon right now So we took some questions as we were doing the interview So let's crack through some of these this is from Ava Evans Thank you so much, Mr. Kent for your bravery and honesty What is your advice to the younger generations who may have to drive to severe To excuse me to serve humanity in the midst of this chaos But also do not agree with the objective and agenda of this current administration To serve humanity Yeah, I think she's saying you know join the military. Oh, to join the militant with Iran. Yeah, that's what she's alluding to Look, I hope we can be effective and and walk this back and get us out of it I think a key part of that and especially for the people that are what you have a huge audience I think for people who feel like they can't do anything. I think them calling their senators calling their congressmen Going to the president's websites and social medias and just saying politely that they are against this I think that's probably one of the most effective things we can we can have to to do to get out of this I think for people that that find themselves in the military have to be in the military I think your first obligation really is to the man and woman on your left and right like make sure they come home You got a job to do that's why we're trying to sort out the policy from from from our end But before you join I mean take a good hard look at what's going on right now and Only you can make the decision if this is something that you're willing to support with your with your life And don't rush that decision Again, my goal is to make it so that we can send people back into the military knowing their leaders will only deploy them against A vital national security interest Yeah, right now we need to have all all voices need to be heard right now to say that we we are against what's taking place Let our elected leaders know that well said man well said This is from Lila rest of all what criteria should be met before deploying US troops into conflict How can we ensure accountability from leadership when wars do not have clear objectives or protection out of or protection of outcomes? It's a great question and they basically give the answer in there I think our leaders need to say before they deploy people into harm's way This is the object. This is why I'm sending you to this country I'm sending to this country to accomplish this military objective and then quickly be able to articulate why that objective is in our vital national security interest In America's vital national security interest why if we don't take out this threat It's going to harm Americans that has to be very very clear up front and it has to come from the commander in chief I understand there's like the war powers act and there's certain things that Congress should be able to do But as fast as things move this largely rests at the executive branch Unfortunately unless the Congress is willing unless we elect enough people in Congress that are willing to withhold funding From the military unless for or for operations unless there's actually a war powers declaration Roger that this is from Zach Since you know All that we can do which change which changes would you like to see at NCTC that would be most beneficial to citizens that we protect? Hmm That's a tough one. I think in terms of Yeah, that's a very good question I think in terms of a screening and vetting it's a big part of what NCTC does to make sure when people come into the country Then I'll tie us to a terrorist organization There's a lot of different agencies that touch screening and vetting in America and in the US government It's a very complicated bureaucracy I think there basically needs to be one central clearinghouse for screening and vetting to decide if someone has ties to a terrorist organization or not and whether or not they should be allowed and Problem is there's a bunch of different ways and there's a bunch of people who have Equities and are able to say whether or not folks are let and I think there needs to be one agency for that and that should be in CTC Roger that It's from Declan Iran is known to harbor many terrorists who are actively training and planning to attack the US home Front through sleeper cells former CIA target or Sarah Adams has proved this through open intelligence channels All this considered why is Iran not a threat to the United States So the question was is Iran an imminent threat and Based on what secretary Rubio said and what we've talked about here today the only imminent threat was Israel attacking Iran is is is I ran a threat to America Iran has been a threat to America and there's other countries that are threats to America as well The question is how do you deal with those threats might my issue is us Dry us being part of the Israelis agenda, but then also using a massive Conventional attack on Iran as the way of dealing with the threat that Iran poses I think is wrong I think we'd be much better off doing targeted CT operations Against Iranian proxies or Iranian leaders not doing a massive regime change that results in Straight to our moves being closed and then also a rally around the flag that reinforces the hardliners inside of Iran Do you think they would institute a draft if they had to for this war? If they do that then the war is going to fail really quickly because I just don't think the American people are willing to to saddle up their their sons and daughters or the draft If they could get away with it. I think they they'd be tempted to do it because it'd be like all I mean all options on the table right like if they say like if we get so far sucked into this thing Kind of like we did in the Iraq war where it's like we we can only win by Applying a massive amount of ground troops Iran is so big we can't do it with the standing military that we have right now as big as it is we would have to do a draft now I think a Negative to the a downside of the all volunteer force we've had is that it's been very easy to deploy us and most Americans Not really know or care that we've been deployed because we volunteered for we have professional soldiers I think a draft is actually a good check on that. I think compulsory service I think if there was more people right now who They had to go do two years in the military and they were like oh crap my two years are gonna involve this or an deployment I think a lot more people in America and that was felt by the entire American population that every able-bodied man and woman Was eligible for a two-year period to go serve Wars like this wouldn't happen in my opinion that is a very interesting Point of view that I have not thought about yeah As much as I don't like the idea of conscripting people or having mandatory service because I liked the professional warrior class that we are part of I like serving the volunteers From a volunteer is a man. We'll just keep going back and you'll create a professional warrior class and then well like I did We'll inner Mary And we'll live in our tight communities. Everybody I know is a veteran. And so we have an insular community. And we're the only ones that experience the war, experience the loss. And we keep going back over and over again. Whereas if you spread out that burden to the entire country, it makes it almost impossible to keep us at war for a prolonged period. The only reason the Vietnam War ended is because there was popular, that the people basically revolted against it because of the draft. And that's the big reason why I think after Vietnam, they were like, we can't draft people anymore. Let's create a professional military. Damn. I have not thought about it like that. Makes a lot of sense. This is from Donnie. If Iran was not an immediate threat, then what threats are there that we should be the most concerned about? If Iran was not an immediate threat? If Iran was not an immediate threat, he wants to know what are the threats that we should be most concerned about. I think we should be worried about the fact that we had open borders in this country for four plus years, like we talked about, and the sheer volume of potential known suspected terrorists, known suspected terrorists that are here, our main focus should be getting our homeland straight, first and foremost. There's other threats from Al Qaeda and Yemen, Al Qaeda and Syria. There's a lot that we don't know that's taking place in Afghanistan that Sarah's talked about at Nazim on your show. So there still is CT threats out there. I mean, there still are people that we do need to hunt down and kill because they seek to do us harm. Again, that's why this, another reason why this conflict in Iran concerns me so much because all of our resources are going to be sucked up there. And Al Qaeda and ISIS and all of our adversaries are going to take this time to rebuild and probably attack in China. And China, man, just they're raking in the cash right now. I mean, this is working out in their favor for people who are very, very worried about Russia. Same thing. I mean, their energy is, their energy surplus is going to be reintroduced to the market at a greater value. And so that's what I'm saying. I mean, I'm going to have to do this. No matter where you're watching the Sean Ryan show from, if you get anything out of this at all, anything, please like, comment, and subscribe. And most importantly, share this everywhere you possibly can. And if you're feeling extra generous, head to Apple Podcasts and Spotify and leave us a review.