Expert Audits the True Cost of the Iran War and What the Pentagon Is Hiding From You

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And you are probably the most famous person who keeps track. So thank you. Very much for doing this. So let me just ask you, let's start with the Iran war and its popularity. So, like, democracy kind of demands, if you're going to do big things, that you've got public buy-in because you're doing it on behalf of the public, purportedly. How is this war viewed by the public in the United States? It's the most unpopular war since polling began. Really? Yeah. Yeah. Wow. The first poll, according to this joint poll that's been conducted. On a near weekly basis since the start of the war through the present by The Economist and YouGov, they've polled Americans on whether the Iran war has been the right decision or the wrong decision. It started at negative net 13% net support, which means that 13% more people, 13 percentage points more people oppose the war than supported it. So most Americans oppose the war the day it started. From the jump, 13 percentage points. Can I ask you to stop there? That itself is unusual, right? Because if memory serves, when wars start with fireworks and flags and all that, most people are kind of all in. Right. It's sort of cathartic at the beginning. Exactly. But then it wears off over time. And all wars, Tucker, get more unpopular over time. Even World War II, which started off with something crazy like 95%, you know, 95% support, something like that. But even the Iraq war in 2003. Yeah, that started off at, I believe, plus 40% or something. Is that true? Yeah. Wow, I forgot that. I forgot that. Okay. And the Afghanistan war even higher. And of course, those have tumbled down over time. Well, yeah. But the point is that all U.S. wars, major wars since World War II, have started with positive net support. The Iran war is the only one that has started at a negative number in terms of net support. And over time, it's only gotten more unpopular. So at the time of we're having this conversation, according to the latest data, it's at negative 35 net support. Negative 35. Yeah. And for context, that makes it the most unpopular war ever. I bet, I'm not an epidemiologist, but there are diseases with higher ratings than that. Yeah, I would assume so. I mean, it's a near universally unpopular policy. And even if you look at, there's always, you know, additional related Iran war questions on this poll that, you know, you don't get from the summaries. You'd be able to actually dig through the data, looking at the individual questions. And the response is, is that even if you, even among the people who still support the war, say it was the right decision, about half of them want it to end as quickly as possible. So they won't really admit that it was the wrong decision, but that yet say, like, should we end it as quickly as possible? Yes, absolutely. I love this. I hope it's over soon. Yes. Yes. Yes. Right. I really think it was a great decision. Can it end? We needed it to end yesterday. Yeah, exactly. Okay. Well, that's really interesting. I sense that. I mean, I, you know, I strongly felt that myself, but I was also surprised by how little effort the administration went to to sell it ahead of time. Usually these things are the product of a long run up, a rollout. Yeah, there was a steady buildup of military assets, but they didn't, they didn't prime, the Trump administration didn't prime the press. They didn't square the UN in the same way that the Bush administration did in the run up to Iraq. To my knowledge, it seemed, even though there was this, you know, one or two month long buildup, and then there was, you know, the last June, there was the attack by the US on Iranian nuclear facilities, I believe on June 21st, 2025. That's correct. And then there's, of course, that history that had built up. And then Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli PM lobbied the White House famously in, I believe, January, or actually in February. They met in early January, I believe, Trump and Netanyahu. And then in February, after a briefing with Netanyahu, Trump decided to go to war and the US was at war a couple weeks later. Yeah. But during this, during this whole time, there was no real concerted effort to get people on board. And because over time, US presidents have an enormous amount of latitude to just basically go to war outside of congressional opinion, outside of a congressional approval. Rather, as required by law, and they find legal justifications to kind of work their way around it. And the worst part is Congress really, for the most part, isn't interested in holding, isn't interested in constraining presidential decisions. So why the US went to war with Iran, multiple reasons we can discuss. But I think one of the main reasons was there's nothing stopping it. Right. There's no institutional pushback from Congress, which is even from the opposition party. So Chuck Schumer hasn't demanded a congressional resolution declaring war on Iran, even though we've been in war with Iran since February 28th. They've introduced a lot of war powers resolutions. The problem I have with Democrats, among many, is they refuse to take on the budgets that enable wars in the first place. Well, exactly. So we have all these symbolic votes of non-binding resolutions that would. Ostensibly order Trump to withdraw all troops from the Middle East who are engaged in hostilities with Iran. But Democrats are very excited for a very select number of Democrats. And then on the opposite side, a very small, even smaller number of Republicans who are actually willing to take on the military budget. So I think Democrats realize there's a lot of currency and there's a lot of political capital to be gained by coming across as anti-war. So they'll speak out. Right. And they'll say they're anti-war, but they'll vote for the budgets that enable war in the first place. So let's talk about that budget. The defense budget, or I guess now it's called the war budget because it's the War Department, has grown, you know, at higher than the rate of inflation, which is saying a lot. So where are we now on the defense budget? We're at 1.1 trillion. That's the enacted budget for fiscal year 2026, which actually ended on. September 30th. So we're still at that level through this. It's called a continuing resolution. Right, yeah. It just continues the levels. 1.1 trillion. Yes. That includes. That's the base budget that's enacted every year. Plus, it's the amount of money that came from the Big Beautiful Bill. There's about $150 billion in military funding in the Big Beautiful Bill, the first reconciliation bill passed in, I believe, July 2025 under the second Trump administration. So too little attention is paid to this. So 1.1 trillion. So that's by far the largest piece of the discretionary budget. I mean, nothing even comes close. That's the majority of the discretionary budget as far as I know. Oh, yeah, yeah. Yeah, it's. I mean, every year, the budget that Congress votes on, military spending occupies more than half of it. Yeah. Yeah. Right. So the rest being the, what we call entitlements or things that just keep going until the government goes bankrupt. The discretionary budget is the one that the Congress votes on every year, and then entitlement spending, the mandatory spending, as it were. Automatic, yeah. Yeah. The stuff that operates basically as trust funds that keeps going regardless of, you know, whether the government is operating or whether we're experiencing a shutdown is a separate amount that goes on automatically, as you said. But then there's 12 funding bills that Congress approves every year to fund the federal agencies to basically keep the government going. And of that amount, military spending is over half of it. And if you look at all U.S. government spending in a given year, military. Military spending, if you include the mandatory resources included, you're getting to about a third. And if you include, like, militarized domestic security, like, domestic security apparatuses, and the proportionate responsibility each of those has to the national debt, then you're talking about, like, the largest component of U.S. spending every year. And if you include, like, military spending, if you include the mandatory resources included, you're talking about, like, the largest component of U.S. spending every year. You can't beat the Houthis with 1.1 trillion. Try not to use profanity here. What is this for? Well, one way to answer that question is that more than half of the annual military budget goes to for-profit contractors. 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And if you're picking a camera, use the code Tucker to save 20%. But for $1.1 trillion, you could just buy Yemen. No, I'm serious. You could buy the country, which apparently I've never been. Yeah, the military budget is large. I mean, it's larger than the economies of a lot of countries. Of most countries. $1.1 trillion? Yeah, there's no African country with a $1.1 trillion GDP. So like, why wouldn't you just, why wouldn't you buy Yemen? Like, what is the. What is the point here? Is it to enrich Boeing? Is that. To me, it's, it's, if you want to look at it through a lens of, okay, how the military industrial complex operates, it gets an enormous amount of money through the annual military budget. That money flows into, obviously, profits and shareholders and executive pay. The executives are the top weapons manufacturers. You get the majority of their revenue from the U.S. government make $20 million, $30 million a year. And these are basically public firms, statistically speaking, and most of their money comes from taxpayers. But they're allowed the profit, like. They're making $30 million a year? Yeah, top executives are. Yeah. Boeing, Lockheed, General Dynamics, Northrop Grumman, Lockheed Martin. Wow. Might have said that already. But then a portion of that revenue is recycled back into the political system through lobbying, through campaign contributions, and through an underrated method of influence is the funding of think tanks in Washington, D.C. Oh, I've noticed. Which gives them, who produce reports that are not, you know, objectively PR material, but they, they fall within a certain spectrum that is allowable for the arms industry. So it gives arms industry interests a sort of, a sort of academic or technocratic gloss that it wouldn't otherwise have through lobbying or campaign contributions. It makes it easier to justify. So you send money to AEI or Heritage or Brookings? I'll give you an example. So CSIS, Center for Strategic International Studies, is a very establishment-y think tank. I think, like, Henry Kissinger was on the board there at some point or whatever. And it's bipartisan, of course. And it develops Iran war cost estimates in an intelligent way. There, we, the research is actually well-grounded, but they will sound the alarm when it comes to war costs related to U.S. munitions expenditures. So raising that alarm, and again, it's just, justifiably so, the U.S. has burned an enormous amount of munitions in Iran. That helps create a demand to buy more weapons, as the war itself has. But they will also, that's like, you need new toner cartridges. Yes, yes. You've bought the hardware, but the actual profit is on the toner cartridges, the oil changes, the munitions, the stuff that you have to keep buying. And they really, and my main pet peeve in this sort of national security intellectualism that happens in the, in the, in D.C. is they turn political problems into technocratic or technical problems waiting to be solved. So the U.S. is experiencing a shortfall in missile interceptors. Interceptors are missiles that shoot down other missiles. Yes. Everyone, I think, is aware of it at this point. But the U.S. has burned such, burned such vast quantities of these interceptors during the Iran war that has created a shortfall and subsequently a PR nightmare for the, for the Trump administration and the people in Congress who support the war. Now, the obvious solution to the interceptor problem is to look at the main cause of why we've run low in the first place, which is the war. Instead, we're getting these very. Wait, so pointless wars are tough on your munition stockpiles? Is that what you're saying? Tucker, it turns out that that's to be the case. I know this is shocking to some people, but we're getting these 12. Do you have a PhD? How'd you know that? Oh, yeah, yeah. I just, yeah, it's just years of intensive study. But the point is, like, people who do have PhDs are developing these, you know, 20-page reports on how to replenish the stockpiles, but not really calling for an explicit end to the Iran war. So they're just saying, really? Yeah. Yeah. Like, how can we increase the yearly production capacity from the projected 650 Patriot interceptors in fiscal year 2027 to get it to 750? And how do we invest in the solid rocket supplier base? And how do we get the critical minerals we need to accelerate production? Like, what are you talking about? We have a problem that is caused by war. And if your first recommendation isn't to stop that war, then we're going to have to do something about it. I just, I just can't take that seriously. So that's the kind of, that's the kind of analysis you get when, even when it comes to, like, a very narrow subject, like, miss, like, like rebuilding the inventory. So this is part of their lobbying budget. Like, like Lockheed, for example, it's just to pick one, would spend, you know, it's the money it gets from the government building the weapons that it has sold to the government, of course, and employing its workforce and all that. But then part of the money would go to lobbying either directly or indirectly directly, or influence campaigns laundered through so-called think tanks. Yep. Spend money on advertising too. One thing that I've tracked over the years, and this is like, I run this newsletter called Polygraph on, on Substack. And I, one of the main things that I do is I state the obvious, but in a very, very specific way. So for example, for every military budget that Congress votes on every year, I compare the yes and no votes. And I compare how much each respective vote category took from arms industry donors before voting. And lo and behold, as you're totally unsurprised to hear is that the members of Congress who receive more money from arms companies, military contractors are more likely to vote for the military budget and military budget increases. Oh, wow. Really? Yeah. So there's cause and effect. There's at least a correlation. And when people say, duh, I said, yeah, I'm not surprised either. But you know, when we talk about money in politics, the first answer, like people say, oh, like everyone knows that it's a problem, but you know, you approach a certain politicians about it and they say, oh, it's, it doesn't affect my vote. You have no proof about it. It's like here, if every year I'm noticing that members of Congress who vote for a military spending increase, take three to five times more arms industry cash than members opposed to military spending increases. Then we've moved the conversation away. We're suddenly for people who care about the effect of money in politics. We're suddenly now on the offensive because now members of Congress have to say, okay, this correlation exists now. So, and you're a part of this group who on average takes three to five times more money from the companies that profit from war and you've just voted for a record amount of military spending. Yeah. Especially considering the use of these weapons. I mean, it's one thing if we're defending the homeland against a ground invasion from Paraguay or something, or any, you know, defend the home and got it fine. But these are like totally pointless wars disconnected from America's national interest in which unarmed civilians kids get killed. Cause why it re there's like no justification for any of it. It's like repulsive. Yeah. Morally. I, I mean, I'm not gonna, I don't claim to be a moral authority. I can tell you how much it costs though. I can tell you as someone who's followed these things, all these costs, it's incredibly taxing on the conscience. Well, can I just ask too, unless I'm misunderstanding it, you're saying that some of these, maybe all these weapons manufacturers derive most of their income and profits from the taxpayer. The major ones. Yes. So for example, Lockheed Martin, uh, last year, a couple of years ago received, I think, uh, 73% of its income from DOD contracts. And then even more from us government brokered sales to foreign countries. So all in all, when you combine the amount of, um, revenue that Lockheed Martin received from government contracts, plus the arms deals that were executed through the arranged and executed through the U S government, you're talking about a company through which, you know, 97% of their revenue is tied to policy and independent private company. They're just working for us taxpayers who are their customer. They're only real customer rate. What you're saying is they're taking taxpayers. taxpayer money and using it to lobby taxpayers for more taxpayer money. This is how military speak on it. allowed. So they take, if I don't pay my taxes, I go to jail. So they're taking money from me at gunpoint, the majority of my income, because I'm not in private equity and I pay labor tax just like everyone else does on wages. And so the majority of my money goes to the government by force. And then the government sends that to people who lecture and lobby me and my elected representatives to take more of the money. Like, how is that a fair system? That's a question you can ask, you know, in a lot of sectors as well. The difference is. That's right. Thank you. Because that is true, what you're saying. It's not just this sector. But one thing that's special to this sector is that we're not talking, this is a state-run economy. Right. Because, I mean, when we talk about the U.S. armed industry, it's primarily, it's a socialized system. It's top down. It's about state planning. It's about delegation. It's about contracts. And members of Congress really like it because they can. Right. They can. They have. With their districts, they have their own little fiefdom where they can direct, you know, government contracts how they like depending on. You have to usually hire lobbyists for this and they write legislation in a certain way. So that narrows down the list of eligible companies that can bid on a contract. And then you kind of. You work your legislative magic to alter the text in the bills so that you're given a very high chance that one company is be able to. Is going to be able to carry out a certain project and you know that company has links to your district as a member of Congress. Right. So shipbuilding in Maine and Mississippi munitions in Tennessee, aerospace in California. It's like every state, every congressional district has a piece of this. Yeah. Yeah. And through this process called. It's either called like political engineering or geographic engineering that these arms companies deliberately spread out their assets to touch, quote unquote, all. As many congressional districts as possible. So when lobbyists, say, get together to keep afloat a dying and deeply fraudulent project like the littoral combat ship, which was eventually just killed off in the last couple of years. But in the early teens, it had a huge problematic history and there was this huge lobbying effort in the early. In the mid-20-teens to, you know, keep funding going to this very problematic ship, even though it had tons of technical flaws. There was literally a crack developing in the hulls of the ship because they were made of aluminum and not steel. And this massive amount of technical problems that this ship was just never going to deliver and is obvious. But there's this huge lobbying effort where a group of lobbyists organized this lobbying effort where. I'm going to slip into the first person here because I was a part of this lobbying effort, where we organized. All of the suppliers, the contractors and the subcontractors involved in the production of this, what John McCain called the little crappy ship, the LCS. And we just developed a map and this huge spreadsheet of all the different areas that projects were related to and how many people had employed. So when we went to congressional offices to lobby for this project, there was eventually like in the white paper that we provided some sort of security justification, usually that we just grabbed from an arms industry funded think tank. And then, but the real line was like, okay. And at the bottom was just like, and by the way, this company employs 550 people in your district. Well, anyone who uses Cozy Earth will tell you the exact same thing. It's been a game changer. It's wild. The night's getting cooler, creating an extremely comfortable space on your bed and couch is a very good thing. Cozy Earth is here to make it happen. Their bubble-cuddle-blanket project, it's designed to keep you cool and comfortable all night, preventing you from overheating or kicking off the comforter two in the morning, waking up hot and confused. Overheating at night means a miserable sleep, but Cozy Earth solves that problem. Head over to CozyEarth.com, use code Tucker for up to 20% off home and sleepwear. That's CozyEarth.com. Code Tucker. When prompted at checkout, be sure to tell them that you've heard about Cozy Earth right here on this show. Wait, so you were a lobbyist for this. So you're like a whistleblower, basically. No, I was a very small part. I was a very small cog in the machine, but I gained enough understanding to gain enough knowledge to get an understanding of how the system works. From your exposure to the system from the inside, were people cynical about it? Did you feel that what they were producing, these armaments were going to make the world better or was that not part of it? I did get the feeling that they were, that some people I asked about, especially towards the end, because I mean, uh, towards, towards the end, obviously I developed, I figured out who I was and was basically just morally opposed to this through and through. But when the subject came up, when I tried to bring it up indirectly, there's, I got the sense that a lot of people were. Talking themselves into a moral high ground that didn't exactly exist and the stuff that they were saying was less at me and more like re like reaffirmations for them that they, yeah, that they were. I'm good enough. I'm smart enough and doggone it. People like me. Yeah. Yeah. There's that. There's a sense of, uh, entitlement. There's a sense of, um, but also a moral component too. That was just, it was odd to see them to. You know, Steven, the world needs 2000 pound bombs. Yes. Yes. It has to. And we're doing. We're, we're helping, you know, we're helping delivering savings to the taxpayer by, you know, helping the F 35 stay funded, even though it has tons of problems, but yeah, there's, there's a lot of. How interesting. Well, I, I think it makes you much more credible that you have experience from the inside watching all. Yeah. It's trained by the best. Um, so this defense budget, 1.1 trillion, that seems way higher than I remember it. Mm. Yeah. Yeah. In 2021, the military budget was 741 billion. Mm-hmm. This is in, I'm just gonna say in nominal terms, cuz this is how, you know, Congress remembers these things, but a little bit higher if you adjust for inflation, much higher, but over time, I mean, by the time, well, that was when, when Biden entered office and then when he left, it was, I think it was close. It was like 850 or something. So it increased over during the course of the Biden administration before him, it increased under Trump. Um, it increased under the first term. Um, it increased under the first term of the Biden administration before him. Um, it increased under the first term of Obama, then it went down, but pretty much since 2015 or 2016, the military budget has gone upward pretty much every year, even after accounting for inflation. So basically everything Eisenhower weren't warned about has come true. The defense industrial Yeah. Eisenhower was Establishment has just eaten the country. Yeah. Eisenhower was worried about basically the war machine becoming sentient, like this collection of this collection of interest would sort of not necessarily like, well, execute corruption and kind of like the, you know, backfield, you know, smoke filled rooms and cash on the table, although that, that happens, but it's, it's more about like creating the conditions where Capitol Hill is just operating in its own world. It's insulated from the interests of everyone else. And when, you know, we, ideologies are here. We, we, we've all got ideologies, you and I have them of course, but when you start mixing in profit interests to decisions about especially war and peace and people's security, you know, especially war and peace and people's security. I have a bit of a problem with that. I have a massive problem with that. Of course, especially when it's not even working, it's not even achieving your stated aims. Right. Whether, I mean, whether or not I agree with those things, which I don't, but even if I did, I would say, okay, it's fair to measure your performance by the standards that you articulated. We have the greatest military in the world that can do this, but you haven't done it. So like, what's your explanation? Right. And it's one of these cases that we're going to hear this more and more from Trump administration officials like, like Pete, Pete Hegseth, for example, that, oh, it's Congress. That's not letting us win the war. It's like, no, no, no, no, no. We haven't even accomplished the military objectives that were laid out. Like Iran is still able to project power across its borders. Like congrats, you've beat up on a country that has the GDP of, you know, Kentucky or Illinois or something like that. But it's still a, it controls the Strait of Hormuz for the most part. Uh, it's still able to project power outside of its borders. And whenever the cost of the Iran war is, is brought up in any sense, the rebuttal is okay. Well, this war is about preventing Iran from getting the nuclear weapon. So, you know, how much would you pay to, for Iran to not have the nuclear weapon, which is a false, which is a false question. It's, it's patently absurd because one, it requires someone to believe that this war won't actually make Iran's interest in acquiring a nuclear weapon more likely, which I think it would. I mean, if I were them, I mean, it would definitely heighten my interest in acquiring one. Iran's getting a nuke. I think it's. And by the end of this, there'll be nothing we can do about it. Right. And maybe at that point we'll find it in ourselves to actually be honest negotiators to negotiate, you know, an arms control agreement. But. We had a war in June of 2025 that we were told ended their capacity to create nuclear weapons. Right. Which those of us who are watching carefully knew it had nothing to do with nuclear weapons and neither did the subsequent regime change effort that followed it. All of it was a lie, nothing to do with Iran's nuclear weapons. It didn't happen. have a nuclear program that was close to producing a nuclear weapon and they didn't have the means to deliver it they had no icbms the whole thing was a joke there's really a reliance on the trump administration and trump administration officials to it's a performative war in a sense where people aren't expected to gauge success success or failure based on on political outcomes but just actions that the u.s takes like for pete haggis that he expects people to just be enamored with the use of force and violence and derive some sort of you know value from it or entertainment when people are most people are morally opposed to that sort of thing unless it's absolutely absolutely necessary and actively undermining their material interests at home because this war is you it's for the average person it's it's it's morally repugnant it's a betrayal of the campaign promises that trump ran on and it's also just in a material sense making their lives worse both as a consumer because they're paying for higher gas prices and higher prices for everything as a result of the inflationary war spike but also as taxpayers as well because they're on the hook for um the bill that the trump administration is about to send to taxpayers for the war so the bureaucracy of our banking system makes running a small business a lot harder than it should be when entrepreneurs need capital traditional banks drag them through weeks of red tape and paperwork it's highly frustrating if you've done it working with cardiff is totally different cardiff is america's favorite small business lender because it's built specifically for independent business owners who move at a very fast pace cardiff has loaned over 12 billion dollars to small businesses across the country cutting out the delays that big banks inherently put in the way with cardiff there is no long wait if your business has been open for at least a year and makes at least 20 grand a month in revenue that's revenue not 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totality of the cost and you i think you just named the big drivers of the cost it's not simply the defense budget or whatever additional funding they're going to require to backfill all the munitions that they blew doing what i'm not sure but it's also the cost in inflation uh what summarize and then dig into if you would the costs so i pay attention to the narrow set of costs called direct war costs which are the immediate budgetary expenses from the war that the us is on the hook for the broader costs the indirect war costs refer to the costs of the economy so there is a moody's analysis i think that that found that the average household paid two thousand dollars more as a result of the war due to mostly due to inflation higher fuel costs and that sort of thing i pay attention to the numbers that the pentagon is supposed to faithfully report and the u.s government is supposed to faithfully report regarding the war's current costs um especially the pentagon but the pentagon has refused to provide those numbers so that's they provide a top line number that's dubious the most detail they've provided at least publicly is a summary table which left a lot of stuff out didn't count the cost of replacing bases for example it didn't count the cost of moving money around and it didn't count the cost of moving money around in the pentagon budget to pay for war operations that would have gone to something else or have would have gone unused so that has opened up the space for um independent analysts to uh assess the cost of the iran war and for the first 60 days of the iran war i estimated that it cost 72 billion in direct costs between operations between replacing the munitions that were expended damage to u.s military bases and military aid to uh israel so taking those costs into account i arrived at 72 billion for the first uh 60 days then then the next month um the trump administration requested an 87 billion dollar supplemental funding bill which is uh literally money supplemental to the main budget that congress approves every year for iran mostly for iran war related expenses and according to the cato institute and others people who have who have you know read the bill they're not going to be able to pay for it they're not going to be able to pay for it they're not going to be able to pay for it they're not going to be able to pay for it the number i arrived at it also included 72 billion for war related costs um and then for the next estimate i had over the for 120 days i arrived at uh 103 billion and then uh a week later there were two reports from nbc and wired that internal pentagon estimates had the war at around 100 billion as well so by this point i'm feeling very pleased with myself because i had you know you know had a number that was then corroborated with you know uh the amount that the administration requested for the war and then that was coming from um you know internal pentagon assessments through just you know the rank and file people who do the budget work there but then last month or in september the congressional budget office came out with their report on the cost of the iran war and they arrived at 38 billion extremely low number 38 billion shockingly low so the congress and it became the authoritative war cost estimate because the congressional budget office is a technocratic group that's non-partisan its job is to just to it's to assess the cost of legislation that congress passes and various proposals and policies and that sort of thing and because of that they have you know because of their technocratic remit on just you know crunching numbers and their non-partisan status the work assessment was was treated as genuine but when i went through this i mean tucker i mean the mistakes that were made in their support is is is were just shocking just basic matters of fact for example it put as uh under the equipment losses it put that the u.s had lost 24 mq-9 reaper drones um as of august 1 this is a five-month estimate that number came from a congressional research service report published in may that that had that number 24 losses but that report was based on a report from cbs from an unnamed u.s official from the first week of april regarding u.s war losses so effectively the cbo for their you know official war cost estimate or part of it took a number of for the number of drone losses took a five-week estimate for their five-month estimate so what what should the number what should the number of you know drone losses should be for mq-9s if you compare the total aircraft inventory for the air force uh total aircraft inventory is this list that's published each year as part of the air force budget request they give the amount that was enacted their enacted inventory the number of aircraft they have in each fleet for each respective unit the amount they have enacted for that year plus the amount that they want to have you know active for next year in june 2025 as part of their 2026 request the pentagon said it had it would have 189 mq-9 drones in its inventory uh at the end of fiscal year 2026 the next year this past april they said that therefore said that the enacted amount was down to 165 so that explains the 24 drone difference but in may an air force general testified before a senate subcommittee and said that the mq-9 fleet due to wartime losses was down to 165 so that explains that the mq-9 fleet due to wartime losses was down to 165 so that explains that the mq-9 fleet due to wartime losses was down to 165 so that explains that the mq-9 fleet due to wartime losses was down to 165 so that explains that the mq-9 fleet due to wartime losses was down to 135 so or roughly 135 so 135 so or roughly 135 so either way we're looking at an for, at least for MQ-9 drones, that is 100% off. It should have been twice as much as it was. Did anybody else, so CBO comes, Congressional Budget Office comes out with this $38 billion estimate for the cost of war. And it's, of course, dutifully repeated by every new organization. I mean, that's the point of CBO numbers is to get reporters to tell the public that they're real. Did anybody reverse engineer it like you did? To my knowledge, no. Right. So you're just like one guy in Pittsburgh is like, hmm, let's look at how they got to this number. And you find that it's 100% off just in this one category, one kind of drone. And I should say that for the most part, CBO and I were working with the same amount of resources because as CBO notes in its report, the Pentagon didn't cooperate with their estimates. So CBO asked for numbers from the Pentagon, but the Pentagon just refused to provide those numbers. How? Is it its own country? It gets to act independently? I suppose so. And from. And from people I talked to on the Hill, it's that the Pentagon, I got two, two types of answers. One was that the Pentagon does this all the time. And the second version was the Pentagon has done this in the past. And it's also worse than it's ever been in terms of stonewalling other agencies from accessing the data. So Congress is just like in full cuck mode, like no self-respect whatsoever. The Pentagon has never passed an audit. I mean, federal agencies were required in the mid-90s to pass an audit to be able to produce accurate financial documents. And in the private sector, you go to a CEO of a private sector firm who does not produce accurate financial records goes to prison. Oh, absolutely. So I'm thinking, why not have the same standards for the heads of government agents? Well, but also the only enforcement mechanism really is the legislative branch, the Congress, the co-equal branch of government, one of three. And if they don't assert that privilege, if they don't use their power, then it just goes away. So like, what's their problem? Why is it so hard for Congress just to like, I don't know, use the power it was given by the Constitution to make the country better? I think it has a lot to do with what we were discussing earlier about the influence. God, they're so craven. But it also, I mean, you know, feel free to edit this out, but the list of complaints goes on. I mean, CBO, again, under their lists of equipment losses, it didn't include an MH-60 helicopter that crashed in the Arabian Sea as part of the Iran war operations in early July. Understandable, though, it didn't make headlines. It actually did make headlines. I mean, the crash, I mean, made headlines, like one of the crew members died and there's a search forum. It's, you know, not just, you know, independent media. I mean, it was covered by independent media. It was covered in New York Times as well, you know, major organizations as well. So it got enough press attention. I just detected just a level of effort that I wasn't really happy with. It also refused to assign a cost to the bases that are now, you know, in some cases beyond repair, that the U.S. has basically lost and abandoned in the Middle East. We're told that, you know, not to complain about war costs for maintaining this, you know, this archipelago of bases across the Middle East. We're told it's in the interest of our security and that not to complain about the cost of maintaining them and conducting operations from them because it, you know, provides, you know, immeasurable economic benefits. But when we lose one of those bases, we can't even write off the cost, which just strikes me as a bizarre choice. It also didn't, CBO didn't bother asking about the cost to other agencies, even though, you know, the State Department spent, I think, around 80 million evacuating personnel across the world and suffered around 100 million in damaged diplomatic facilities as a result of the war. But the main reason why I believe that there was such a huge discrepancy between the internal Pentagon budget estimates that were around 100 billion, through the first, what did I say, 120 days, then my own draws around 100 billion, is that CBO, when it calculates costs for anything, but including war, it does so based in relationship to a certain funding baseline. So it's not measuring how much the U.S. spent on a war per se, it's measuring how much more the U.S. spent in comparison to a pre-existing baseline. So it's how much the Pentagon spent above its normal operating budget. Now, the problem is the normal operating budget, and so, let me back up. Whenever you measure war costs, you obviously want to separate the peacetime costs that would have been incurred anyway with the additional costs from the war. Fair enough, I get that. And I do that too in my own estimates. The problem is, it matters a lot which budget and which funding baseline you choose to represent, you know, the peacetime budget. So when CBO made its calculation, it was able to write off huge amount of costs because they were, quote unquote, already included in the DoD budget. And you can see this, this is throughout the report. But the amount of money in the DoD budget is the historical amount we were just talking about, that $1.1 trillion. Yes. Which is the largest since 1945. It's, on average, it is, exceeds, adjusted for inflation, the average amount the U.S. spent on its military each year from 1942 to 1945 by about $90 billion. So, wait, it's more? On average, per year. Than we spent during World War II? Yes. Oh, come on. Yeah. Our current budget, adjusted for inflation? Are you sure? Yes. Now, granted, the spending during World War II occupied a much greater share of the U.S. budget. The U.S. economy, because the U.S. economy was a lot smaller back then, and the U.S. had a smaller, you know, population as well. Much smaller. But in terms of, in terms of, you know, inflation-adjusted dollars, that's what we're talking about? We're spending more now than we spent during World War II. On average, from 1942 to 1945, yeah. And the one point— Well, those are the war years, because Pearl Harbor was the very end of '41. Right. I just want to specify that wasn't including, like, the lower costs of 1940 to '41. No, I get it. Right. Yeah, that's— But in the proposed budget for next year, that Trump proposed, is 1.5 trillion— Wait, why have I—I—no, you've blown my mind. It's—it's— It's because it's passed so swiftly with bipartisan appeal. Because the war costs for World War II were very famous. I mean, it had huge effects on the economy at both ends of the war, of course. Those costs, like, transformed the U.S. economy for generations. Everything about it was just at massive scale. Yeah, and I'm not disputing that at all. Like, if you measure it as a percentage of GDP, it was— it was much higher in World War II, because, you know, the economy was smaller. So Christianity began thousands of years ago in what we call the Holy Land. But today, some people would like Christianity to die there. We're talking about the Israeli settler movement— extremist, violent, dangerous, and very anti-Christian— also supported at the highest levels of the U.S. and Israeli governments. American taxpayers literally pay for Israeli settlers to murder Christians and Americans. And attack them. And the Senate, for example, goes out of its way to pretend it's not happening. Senators just voted against disclosure on the killings of nine Americans in the West Bank. Probably the Senate represents you. 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That's what you get when. You have Farmers. Bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum. Learn more at Farmers.com. Underwritten by Farmers Truck or Fire Insurance Exchanges or Affiliate. Products not available in every state. Well, yeah, I get it. But, like, an absolute effrontery. Inflation-adjusted dollars. We're spending more now. you take away all the absurd propaganda about world war ii just the cheering for death and all this stuff but just like just consider the scale of it like what those dollars achieved between 45 42 and 45 it's kind of crazy how little we're achieving even if you disagree with the goal yeah and it's 1.1 trillion right and these numbers come from the office of management and budget which is the white house office where all these historical records are kept but even if you look that's like i went back when i was doing the my analysis of you know polling data that we discussed earlier about um you know polling since i was looking at you know polling from the 1940s on wars but i also was looking at budget documents too and congressional discourse and there was the difference between then and now one of the main things that stood out to me tucker is they the members of congress like were we're openly acknowledging that this is an absurd amount that we're spending this was during world war ii but it's it's necessary and this is going to be wasteful and after this war is done we're going to rescind all the money that was approved that was able that was made allowable for agencies to spend that wasn't spent we're going to take it back and there was there's um recisions bill is how you do this to rescind money you introduce bill that does this and there was you know i think at least one massive one after world war ii that took this money back but the difference now is that this is just this is just normal now and this it was reflected in the cbo's estimate by adopting this by adopting this baseline and you know maybe they were locked into maybe they're that's a constraint by cbo that they have to abide by the most recent fiscal year uh you know funding projections and if happens to be the largest military budget since world war ii then okay so be it but i'm just saying that when because of that choice i just feel like their estimate is detached from reality because they're more concerned about abiding to their budget model which i think was disconnected from reality so if you're spending that much money in an agency that has never passed an audit as you said and there's no obvious sign of what you're getting at all like it's not like you're paying a world war ii size military because we're not the military like in number of personnel is lower yeah and the quality is obviously lower in some ways you could be paying for a lot of stuff that people would have no idea even existed like that would be the pentagon budget's a great place to hide all kinds of projects that yeah nothing to do with national defense oh yeah yeah the pentagon is a great place to hide money intentionally or unintentionally as well and i think the way the way we get this back under control so the pentagon has never passed an audit it's been actually forced to conduct audits over the last seven or eight years and each year it claims oh we've made progress and they claim that oh we're able to account for a slightly higher percentage of our assets and our budgetary resources than the year before but the number the amount the value of the assets they're unable to account for increases every year because their budget goes up so even though even if they make progress in terms of the percentage of their budget they're able to account for the objective resources that they're just cannot provide proper documentation for keeps going up so this last time an american general officer um went to jail for corruption have you ever heard of that happening no i haven't either have you ever heard of the head of a weapons manufacturer going to jail for corruption i haven't heard that either ever yeah i haven't either it's kind of weird that's one of those stories i've never seen yeah and i was thinking i'm sure there is any with 1.1 trillion dollars a year flowing through the system that's producing results that are so embarrassing the failure is so obvious that they're literally just like we're going to use nukes because there's no other way out that's where they are and there's no push and it's like the it's like uh the decision to go to the war it's like there's just nothing stopping it i think if congress was really interested if to get the pentagon to pass an audit you threaten its budget in a serious way you cut its budget so there's less stuff to track or my preference as a first step is to introduce legislation that's like the sarbanes-oxley act for the private sector where ceos who produced inaccurate financial records would go to prison why not a surveillance are oxley act for the pentagon or whatever i mean just or just apply the you know federal inter-corruption statutes evenly across the board yeah and you know reform begins with ending corruption that's like widely understood universally understood and when the new president of venezuela rather el salvador took the country from a state of war for 40 years and tried to make it a peaceful modern country the first thing he did was send his own employees including his own cabinet ministers to jail for corruption like when they committed corruption sorry we're busting you and that goes a long way but that's never happened that you know of wouldn't that be something if the next administration decided to prosecute you know trump and biden administration officials well just if you commit a crime i don't know why do you get a special pass right i don't really get it if i commit a crime i fully expect to go to jail for it i try not to for that reason yeah but um interesting okay well that's that's a you've shocked me um huh so now to the and i'm i'm sorry i forgot the category that you had for it the costs of the war that are not directly related to the congressional appropriations yeah non-budget so that includes even stuff that is budget related but is longer term like veterans care for example okay so each person that is each u.s troop that is killed or disabled it just creates a ripple effect of of money which i think is you know obvious i think it's the u.s should properly compensate you know veterans yeah it's the deal but it's a cost that's not talked about immediately i mean the best person uh the best resource for this is uh this heart professor called linda bilmes who will probably have a report on this coming out soon but um her and an economist called joseph stiglitz wrote a very influential book on the cost of the iraq war called the three trillion dollar war yeah famous book that greatly influenced my thinking and my methodological chops but that that book does a great job in understanding of explaining of how these costs of just you know just one injury just sets off you know decades of costs so how many veterans do you know on disability all of them yeah i don't think i've ever met one who wasn't on disability i'm not i'm not begrudging them disability i'm just saying it's a fact that almost every single person i know who served in the u.s military is continuing to receive money from the va yeah uh and so that's a huge cost i'm not saying you don't deserve it i'm not saying it's fraud i'm just saying it's real that's all i'm saying yeah and it's not talked about so and it's it's hard to project too um but it's a rule of thumb that um i think has been you know apparent over time is that the cost of war current and future costs of war are always underestimated pretty much everybody's heard of timothy mcveigh according to the official story from the fbi mcveigh was the sole terrorist responsible for delivering and setting off the bomb that murdered 168 people in oklahoma city oklahoma in april of 95. but that clearly isn't true eyewitness accounts overwhelmingly differ from the government's story and have for 30 years so we decided to investigate because no one else was our producers were on the road and talked to more than 100 people directly connected to this case we talked to mcveigh's top attorney he shared that mcveigh himself changed his story repeatedly to match the government's story huh even failed a polygraph test about whether he had co-conspirators that co-conspirator might have been a man called john doe number two dozens of people saw this man he was real and has been for 30 years where is he and what was his role in this terror attack and we unpack all of it with first-hand sources in our new series the okc bomb files it's now available at tuckercarlson.com so what do you think uh those costs are likely to look like if the iraq war is any guide i mean in terms of the all-encompassing costs the iraq war we can say we're saying is three trillion uh no it's more by this point that was like the estimate as of 2008 um and then it's it's grown since since now we're in like cost of war project of brown which does you know fabulous work they i mean the cost of the you know post 9 11 wars is in several trillion dollars uh more above three trillion well above three trillion i think it's like six to seven trillion so it's like the cost of these just it's it spirals so quickly and these are you know budgetary costs as well we're again we're not measuring i mean some people are measuring um and rightfully so the cost to consumers so it's like the cost i was just discussing was was the cost to us as taxpayers but not the cost of consumers so you know it's kind of a double whammy as far as you do for the country with that much money like maybe it wouldn't be falling apart like it is uh yeah uh you could pretty much could we have nice airports yeah you i mean the possibilities are pretty much endless like to like to end you know extreme poverty for a year or you know it's like a fraction of that it's just it's very very shocking whenever um a project is proposed that regardless of what it does if it promises to make the world better you have to have an enormous amount of research and cost analysis and all this stuff backing it up and you have to you know survive you have to get it through congress there's tons of you know political effort that sort of thing rarely does you know happen but if you're in the you know arms industry what you're promising is the absence of catastrophe you're basically saying this has to happen for the sake of national security right and as a result there's not enough there's just not that much interest or inquiry of whether this stuff actually these purchases this money and the stuff that it buys actually does what it says because it's preventing a catastrophe instead of you don't know how bad it could have been yeah and it could have been in bed with you like they could be beheading you right now yeah if we didn't we hadn't done what we did yeah so please say thank you exactly exactly and if that if that weapon system that we said is protecting you gets destroyed in the iran war you can't you can't say it costs anything because it's already in our budget hank joined bj's wholesale club the day he became a father of 30 i coach football now coach hank saves up to 25 off grocery store prices 30 pounds of pasta three cases of protein bars 75 sports drinks and that's just pre-game he knows teamwork and bj's knows savings this is your home coach home of the save join for just 20 at bj's.com slash mesquite and save 10 cents per gallon for six months open soon limited time offer new members only bj's home of the save when it comes to my policy farmers gives it to me straight so there's no surprises it's your coverage you should never be confused you hear that an insurance provider with a conscience we're a choir but yes we have that too straightforward coverage you can literally understand that's what you get when you have farmers learn more at farmers.com underwritten by farmer's truck or fire insurance exchanges or affiliate products not available in every state boot season's back which means football season is back and takovas has the denim for game day handcrafted in three timeless cuts every style is made to look great with boots and with multiple washes and colors they might be the last jeans you ever buy find your new favorite denim at takovas.com or stop by your local takova store either way you'll be showing up on game day takovas denim it's made for boots so so if you're uh the pentagon or a member of congress taking money from the weapons manufacturers you're going to have to buy a pair of boots and a pair of boots and a pair of boots the weapons manufacturers themselves and you're paying various think tanks to do intellectual research on issues you've got a massive incentive to scare the crap out of the entire population at all times to engender fear in order to receive compliance and money right and i think i think the defining feature last election in in this one too is about security but it's not the security that they're selling the brand of national security that they're selling that is believed to be advanced to the use of military force the security that people feel about is like an uneven terrain that they're on that they are one financial slip up or one accent away from you know they're tight they're tightrope walking over the abyss in terms of their financial security and their food security yeah so that's the security that they're that i think is the most at the forefront of people's minds when people say they're concerned about the cost of living and the cost of living has been the top issue among u.s voters since referring again to the economist and you go this polling that they've done for the issue that americans identify as the number one issue they started asking about inflation and prices in other words cost of living in july 2022 for the like on a near weekly basis in 116 of the 117 weeks prior to the 2024 election that was the top issue inflation and prices and if you take the monthly aggregate inflation and prices cost of living has been americans top issue since july 2022 it still is so that's a bad sign for the trump administration because the bad sign oh for sure and they're about to get punished i think but who knows what what will happen but it doesn't look good no i mean i think i think republicans will lose in the 2026 they'll get punished in the same way democrats did in 2024 because you know the two main issues that i think have the most political power and most salience among the public are cost of living economic security if you will which is one of the dimensions of human security so that's not national security but it's like the actual everyday security that people experience like from the main threats that are non-military that that happen to them that they're or are liable to happen to them so cost of living and then cost of war as well because people view they viewed the biden administration as more interested in aiding israel arming israel fighting wars on israel's behalf and sending money to ukraine um for that war then they the biden administration was concerned about addressing the cost of living crisis at home and that's going to be a major factor in the 2026 elections sadly they were correct in both cases yep yep there's no no daylight between the administrations on those two issues what is the how much do you think the us has sent to israel in recent years do you have a sense of that there's so much lying on this topic it's hard to know yeah i'm just gonna just stall for a bit so people don't think i'm a nerd but not like i didn't just calculate this but through 2025 the us has provided 352 billion dollars in aid to israel since its founding since the 1950s 352 billion yeah yeah isn't it the size of new jersey it has about nine million people so i don't know how big new jersey is it's the size it's physically the size of new jersey smaller population than new jersey and that so that's crazy so when we talk about the military that's provided each year the number um there's 3.3 billion provided through the state department budget for is called foreign military financing that's the program it's basically a gift card for israel and just in other countries as well to spend on u.s weapons israel is uniquely allowed to spend some money on its own buying weapons for its own agency using u.s taxpayer dollars the u.s government gives money to israel and israel uses that money to buy weapons from american or israeli manufacturers and we say that's good for the us economy that's basically yeah which i have a bit of a problem with why if you're interested in it sounds like an electric windmill kind of we're we're paying to run it if you're interested in creating jobs through public funds through taxpayer dollars if you want to get the most bang for your buck you do pretty much anything besides military spending it's the absolute worst way to create jobs to run it through another country why would we just send the money to lockheed then like what right like what pretty much are once that you brought up the you know the economic benefits i think or maybe i did i don't know but the jobs argument often comes up with yeah with military spending we saw the saw this a lot with uh the biden administration with sending their massive amounts of military aid to ukraine oh the money's being spent here this is creating u.s jobs the link between more military spending and more jobs is hazy at best so for example 1985. the u.s arms industry employed 3.1 million people okay that was in 1985. in 2021 the arms industry employed 1.1 million people so a reduction of 2 million people in the uh arms industry arms industry private sector arms industry employees so despite that so there's a 2 million drop in jobs but the military budget went up by 90 billion in real terms from 1985 to 2021. so despite a nearly 300 billion dollar increase in the annual military budget from 1985 to 2021 there was a 2 million drop in arms industry employment did weapons get that much more expensive or how does that work yes that's part of it and then another part is just factors that affected every industry um that led to the decline of uh manufacturing in the u.s but also profit driven interests as well they want arms arms companies main concern is profit so that when that's their main concern they're interested in cutting down the workforce as much as possible while still maintaining enough of a presence in congressional districts where they're able to say they create jobs but it's just through these cost saving measures to boost profit and take advantage of it that's the main concern they're interested in in cutting down the workforce as much as possible while still maintaining enough of a presence in profit and technological advances that affected every sector in terms of employment in arms industry employment the relationship between military spending and and economic benefit is very very shaky what's happening it sounds in verse so well yeah and it's also a sign when you hear that oh this creates jobs okay that's a tacit admission that their main justification which is national security which is you know security is you know it's the one thing that people can't do without it's the most important thing so if they're making something a jobs argument that means their national security argument is not such a smart point you know i'm a little confused by your your israel aid number so 300 and what billion 350 that's inflation adjusted terms over the course since uh 19 constant terms yeah now as of 2025 so that that excludes the 4 billion uh that was passed uh this year for 2026 and that includes the 3.3 billion that i mentioned for the gift card and then here's the so we're like 360 ish uh they're about yeah because you have to adjust all past so i'm confused with 360 billion so i was reliably in the first place and then i was in the second place and then i was in the third place and then informed more than once by Nikki Haley, who was literally a governor of a Southern state called South Carolina, that we get a lot more from Israel than Israel gets from us. She's probably referring to like a private sector investment, but even that is way lopsided. The U.S. invests way more in Israel than Israel invests in the U.S. So has the Israeli treasury sent us over 360 billion? Like what is she talking about? Or is it a hard to quantify moral victory that's just worth a lot? It's just best not to think about, Tucker. I think you're right. It's in that category. Just ignore it until it goes away. Just do your show, Tucker. God. But here's the mess. It's best not to think about. Here's one thing though. So when you count military aid and military aid is most of that $352 billion, $360 billion I just talked about. Military aid is a category that refers to a narrow set of goods and services provided. To another country, training equipment for the most part, actually for the exclusive part, pretty much. It doesn't include literally assisting a country militarily. So I just crunched the numbers on the how many. Wait, can you, what does that mean? So if the U.S., for example, since October, 2023 fired an estimated 609 missile interceptors for the sole purpose of defending Israeli territory from Iranian, incoming Iranian ballistic missiles and Houthi missiles. Is that the number? Yeah, I just calculated them yesterday for this show. You did? Yeah, it took forever. Why are you doing, why is no one else doing? I'm sorry, I know I'm sidebarring you again and again, but like, why is it up to you to do this? Yeah, I wonder that myself. It's like just some, like. No, but like, where's everybody else? Some guy in Pittsburgh with an internet connection alone. No, but it's like. By myself. You have a background worthy of your job, but I do think that maybe we could have a think tank doing this or the New York Times doing this or. How about the Congress of the United States doing this? Why is it up to you? I'm good at it. I'll admit that. I also think there's a skill set that's required, but also, I mean, I think the main thing is just the effort that's required. No one wants to know. Yeah, there's that too. That explains, I mean, a lot of the disinterest from, you know, whatever number officials give, that's the number. But it's calculated disinterest. It's Nikki Haley up there. Israel gets, you know, give us a lot more. More than we give them. And it's like, okay, I guess. And it's like, actually, one of the funny, one of the most useful bits of information that we got was from this Washington Post report back in May that said the U.S. had fired over 200 of these FAD interceptors, Terminal High Altitude something. But these really expensive missiles. The most expensive, yeah. Close. No, not the most. That was the next number that was mentioned. Actually, so it said more than 200 FADs and then more than 100 of these standard missiles, which include the standard missile three, and then the standard missile six, which operate at lower altitudes. The interceptors, actually, the U.S. has employed four types since October 23 to defend Israel. And they are the SM-3, which are $31 million each for fiscal year 2027. For any fact checkers at home, that first two FY27 discretionary cost, unit flyaway recurring cost, just for any fact checkers out there. Basically, anyone who's pedantic about the numbers like I am. So, you have this about $30 million interceptor called the SM-3, which is the only one that the U.S. has to make space-based interceptions. So, ballistic missiles launch, they go through like a one to five minute boost phase, they leave the Earth's atmosphere, they travel in space for a bit, like 20 minutes or so. And then they come crashing down in like a minute or two window called the terminal phase. And then the middle part is called the mid-course phase. It's tech, you have the most opportunities in the mid-course phase, because it's about 20 minutes long. It's the longest of the three phases. The problem is you need an interceptor that's capable, that's technologically advanced to reach outer space and intercept a missile in it. And also, if you're able in outer space, the, ballistic missile is able to release decoys, chaff, and balloons, because without resistance from the Earth's atmosphere, they just travel along at the same, they basically travel in this cloud of debris and it's at the same trajectory as the missile itself, which makes it, you know, extremely difficult to, you know, separate the wheat from the chaff as it were. So, the U.S. has fired, during the June 2025 award, fired 80 of these things at around $30 million a pop. That was just during the June 2025 award. And then, they didn't, the, the post didn't give a breakdown between that and the other standard missile, but it's been over a hundred combined. How many of those 30 in the first war, the last summer war, were fired in defense of Israel? So, there was, there's 80 launch, 80 SM-3s launched in defense of Israel during the June 2025 award. And then, more than 150 THAADs also launched in defense of Israel during that war. So, if you include that number, all the, all the intercepts, recorded intercepts, documented use of these interceptors that the U.S. has used for just, not in defense of its own bases, but for the sole purpose of defense of Israel, since October 2023 through September 2026, so three years, you get 609. I've never received a thank you note or really any expression of gratitude from anyone in that government. Not doing enough, really. That's what we're told. So, for, you know, it's, it's really quite shocking. And actually, J.D. Vance actually had a slip up where he, like, he was kind of shook from whatever brainwashing happened to him, but he jumped, he kind of had an outburst where a reporter asked him about U.S. support for Israel, and he corroborated the, the Washington Post report where, the numbers I just mentioned, the more than 200 THAAD, and the more than 100 standard missiles, were about two-thirds of all interceptors fired for defense of Israel. So, that includes Israeli interceptors as well. So, the U.S. shouldered around two-thirds of the missile defense burden for Israel during the 2026 war, and close to 70% during the 2025 war. And that, that, I'm not factoring in the $500 million in missile defense aid the U.S. has provided every year. For Israel to buy those interceptors, its own interceptors. I haven't crunched those numbers yet. I was hoping to have it ready for the show. It just takes, I swear to God, it takes forever, man. Um, that is just absolutely remarkable. Yeah. And I, um. Wait, so, $350 billion since its founding for a tiny country. I mean, that's the largest, I mean, is there any, it's unfair to ask you this, having not asked you. To prepare for it, but like, I mean, that's gotta be the biggest source of income to the economy, right? Over time? There's no oil and gas there. As far as, it's, it's the largest cumulative amount the U.S. has provided any other country. I'm. Ever? Out of all countries. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And as far as waging war on another country's behalf, I mean, there's really three costs that I've, I've only, I've only really done two. I'm still calculating, you know, the, the, so there's army in Israel, the, the, aid that we just talked about and then there's you know directly defending israel through the middle missile interceptors i just talked about i'm realizing now that i didn't include um interceptions of iranian drones and houthi missiles too i have to calculate that so i have to calculate those costs as well and then there's the cost of just waging war on israel's behalf because this really is i mean you could i don't think there's any one thing any one reason the us went to war but it strategically speaking like this war doesn't happen without israel and without israel's influence over the us government and for marco rubio said it out loud yeah yeah we followed israel into this and by the way the speaker of the house mike johnson also said that and it's also true because i saw it so maybe you support it maybe you think that's great maybe you don't but that's just a fact that it cannot be erased yeah it's for this it's it's not for u.s interest it's not america first no which i which i still think it hasn't been implemented obviously as we've as we've painfully found out um but i still think that idea has a good amount of currency america first yeah of course if implemented properly you're talking about you know it's called democracy that's what democracy is no it's democracy yeah you serve on behalf of the citizens of your country they own the country i just caught myself over intellectual i was in that thanks for no but you're right it's like it's the only legitimate basis of government in any system including a monarchy if a king rules on behalf of another kingdom he's betraying his subjects lots of kings no american wants to hear it lots kings are super popular actually yeah yeah some are not but some do a good job and they're really popular and people who live there don't want to replace the king why is he popular because they think he's serving their interests he's kuwait first or you know emirates first or whatever but it's that's the only legitimate way to run a country or a family or a military or a business right and it's painful right and it's painful right and it's painful being told the opposite the leaders serve the people they lead right it's the difference between ruling and governing really yeah and it's just a hell of a lot easier to rule yeah but you can even rule that you can rule with the people's interests in mind you know you can yeah but you still have to you know you don't answer to people and you'll pay attention what people think but with ruling yeah you can just you know wage wars on country's behalf you can direct funding to the exact companies you want pretty for all intents and purposes you can well then you have to ask who's actually being a oppressed here you know is it the are we doing this to liberate the long-suffering people of iran or russia or vietnam or name your country somalia all these countries we've gone to war against or within their borders and it's like you know i hope for liberation for everyone but i see the american public is being oppressed by everything that you mentioned i think i think workers across the world are being oppressed i i really think when of this the main political conflicts going on now is the workers versus the war profiteers and the warmongers i really think it's i mean you can define working class how you like but i mean regardless of your definition if you're even just you know vaguely within the bounds of reality you recognize that working class well-being is acutely compromised when governments prioritize waging warfare over promoting the general welfare as it was as it were and if you're not putting workers interests first who make your economy go then you're going to run into some real problems electorally if there's any semblance of democracy in your country it's the oldest story there is the king bankrupted his country through wars and got overthrown i mean like only in an ahistorical moment like this one are people like rediscovering something that every empire has learned serially for millennia which is what i just said king bankrupts his country through hubris in war and then he's going to run into some real problems and gets overthrown or his kids get overthrown or whatever it's like that's how you wreck your empire right do you think do you think more people are starting to realize that especially these last couple years in the general public i think that i have not had a shallow conversation with anybody including convenience store clerks since covid i think america for all of its many faults many of which are like on display and problems that are accelerating i think people are way deeper than they were just a few years ago i mean you you'd be at the airport you're people talking about like celebrity news or something called people magazine do you remember that like chronicle the diet habits of actors or something it was like the whole thing was like so absurd and frivolous and embarrassing really and no i feel like people have been forced to confront real topics so yeah no i think people are starting to figure stuff out of course they are i was thinking about i've been thinking about like for months like what the proper like how the public is is perceiving you know the political elite broadly like the establishment how they perceive like your average politician or the head of state and it an analogy uh occurred to me yesterday when i was boarding the plane here and the pilot was greeting people at the door of the airplane just saying hi hello and i i thought of it then which is what if that pilot was visibly wearing a flight suit i was like oh he's not wearing a flight suit and he's not wearing a flight suit and he's not wearing a flight suit and he's not wearing a flight suit and he's not wearing a flight suit and it's like do i get one no no no your seat's down there don't worry about it but have a good flight okay and i think that's kind of it harkens back to this actual it harkens back to this quote i had or i heard during the 2024 election where it's like young people don't see real hope they just see a dying empire led by bad people hank joined bj's wholesale club the day he became a father of 30 i coach football now coach hank saves up to 25 off grocery store prices 30 pounds of pasta three cases of protein bars 75 sports drinks and that's just pre-game he knows teamwork and bj's knows savings this is your home coach home of the save join for just twenty dollars at bjs.com slash mesquite and save 10 cents per gallon for six months open soon limited time offer new members only bj's home of the save farmers we go out of our way to keep you in the know like by singing everything for emphasis that and by providing you with coverage on a page an easy to understand language so you know what's covered and what's not no confusing legalese that no one gets in full transparency we do have to put a disclaimer at the end of this ad though just being honest that's what you get when you have farmers learn more at farmers.com underwritten by farmer's truck or fire insurance exchanges or affiliate products not available in every state kick off the fall season with the kovas our quality western boots are handcrafted with 200 meticulous steps for broken in comfort right out of the box and each pair is built for all falls festive moments from game day to tailgating to outdoor festivals and long weekends find your perfect pair and customize them with complimentary boot stamps and branding at a takova store near you or shop with us anytime at takovas.com oh i have a stop for you you want to hear about the so okay so this is this is a poll taken may 2026 new york times ipsos this asked whether people support somewhat support somewhat oppose or strongly oppose uh additional aid to israel okay most people oppose it all right so 19 somewhat 38 strongly support it now it it divides that but into like a bunch of different categories like you know age political affiliation that sort of thing among the uh survey respondents who did not vote in 2024 the most popular response was strongly oppose additional aid to israel and 50 50 half of the people who did not vote in 2024 answer that they strongly oppose additional aid to military to israel and i think it's it's a it's a very strong response to that and i think it's a very strong It's not about, it's part of- Military aid or just aid? The question asked about additional military and economic aid. So yeah, that's both kinds of aid. So aid. Right. So I think that's twofold. I think one is the atrocities in Gaza, the genocide have become matters of fact at this point, as much as people really try to talk themselves out of that reality, it's a matter of fact at this point. And also there's, Gaza is like, it's like the Schrodinger's cat of political issues. I don't know if you've noticed it, but it's like, if you are on, this is something I've noticed on Twitter, particularly from this group called, I call a loss, which are, which is short for acrimonious liberal on Twitter, is that I will get yelled at for, if I bring up, you know, polling on Gaza in the 2024 election and how big of an effect it had on Kamala Harris's loss, I will be told in like, in, by someone who'll say, oh, Gaza didn't matter. Or in, in like the next breath, sometimes from the same person, it says, oh, well, the people who didn't vote in 2024 because of Gaza got what they deserved. So, you know, a president they didn't want, I guess. So it kind of occupies these two spaces where critics of, of people, people who criticize other people who have made Gaza decided that Gaza matters to them on electoral level, that it'll affect their judgment and their vote and their voting behavior. That it, it oscillates between this is the most important issue or this is the issue that doesn't, it was a non-factor completely. So people just really can't decide. But I think, I think it did matter. I think the, this and the polling I just mentioned and a bunch of other polls suggested it didn't matter too, but I think it's also the interaction between putting another country, especially one committing war crimes on a near daily basis ahead of the interests of, of people. And I think this is where this intersection between the cost of war and the cost of living crisis, they meet because it's not just the financial resource resources being dumped in. It's the political capital too. Like if you think about the one, it's the attention, right? So this, think about the one legislative priority that Joe Biden took out an Oval Office address to sell. It was the foreign. Aid bill for that provided the record amount of aid to Israel, a bunch of money for the war in Ukraine as well, and a bunch of money for, um, Pacific aid for Taiwan. Taiwan aid as well. It wasn't his infrastructure bill. It wasn't his massive build back better plan that, you know, he fought, he devoted the most political capital to. I didn't remember that. That's amazing. That was the one bit of legislation that he decided was worthy of an Oval Office address, address the nation to sell. Well, they've just, they've given up on our population, on our country, on us. They're looting it now and their parachute is, you know, crypto and then another passport and they're, they're out, you know, and you sort of know that, like they're not lashing themselves to the mast of the SS America. Now they've got their parachute on. For real. And I think we have every reason to be offended by that. Right, right. Do you feel, since you look at polling so much, obviously, you know, the Republicans are going to get hurt. No party's ever earned it more, in my opinion. And I think it's exactly what you said. They're going to get hurt, hurt Kamala Harris, but it's even now the connection between this foreign misadventure and their declining quality of life and standard of living. It's just so it's one to one to block this trade reform moves like even I can understand that. No energy flows like you did this to me. I'm not voting for you. But I wonder how many people see this problem, not simply as a Trump problem or Republican problem or a Kamala Harris problem or a Biden problem, but it's like a system problem, like both parties. I hope a lot of people. That's my read on it. I think it is. Does polling suggest that? I'm still working through the data because I mean, this was just a bit of the research that I have going on. I think I have too many projects going on, Tucker, but you're doing a lot of math. Yeah. Yeah. And it's not my nature to be this fastidious and this, you know, committed to really making sure everything's right. Like, I never follow recipes that I just don't make that good food, I guess. But for this, like, I'm just, you know. All about getting it right and also just being, as you know, being independent means you got a lot of freedom, but it also means that you don't really have any institutional protection. Oh, for sure. Yeah. So if I make a mistake, heaven forbid, like one that's, it turns out to be like a cost assessment that turns out to be catastrophically wrong or I misplace a decimal or something on some sort of bill I'm summarizing the cost of, I have nothing really to protect me. It's like, so like, as I operate this newsletter on Substack called Polygraph, it's like, if I mess up there, then like, I will be punished immediately for it in a very, very harsh way. I forget what I was going on about. Well, also it's like being a sports writer. We always used to say when I worked in a newspaper that the sports writers did the hardest job because their readers knew a lot about the topic. Yeah. So they made any mistakes. So your readers, anybody who writes about something specific like this, your readers were a self-selected group who are coming at it. Yeah. With prior knowledge. Yeah. Yeah. And it's, it's, it's, uh, I have some paid subscribers who are actually mentors of mine. Oh, sure. Yeah. And it's also just like people I don't know. It's like the, like there's some, I get notes from people who like usually positive, um, who really, really know their stuff, learn a lot from my readers. You were asking about whether the people view the Iran war as a system problem. Yes. Because. A partisan problem. Right. I think the Iran war happens if Kamala Harris gets elected. I think Trump is, I think it happens either way. I don't know if the war takes the same shape, but the political establishment, the national security establishment was just headed that way. And if you think like, I think back to this interview that Harris gave in October, maybe of 2024, where she was asked who what's the biggest threat to America. Now, if you look at polling. Yeah. The most popular answer is always America. People always say America is the biggest threat to America. And then the next ones are, you know, Russia and China for obvious reasons that is, that has gotten the most attention as rival powers to the US, I guess, uh, over the last few years in terms of like building up threat and, um, animosity towards each of those countries, Harris answered Iran as the most, as the biggest threat to the US. And that was only, she wouldn't have answered the same way. The same way had the, had October 7th and the resulting genocide not happened. I can't believe that. So I feel like Ron and when was this interview October of 24. Yeah. This was when people are seeing, like, I mean, the answer, the answer, like the number of the percentage of Americans who would call her on the top threat is still probably somewhat low, but it was like in like four to 5% of Americans calling her on the top threat. But here was, have you ever been mugged by a Persian? No. I haven't either. No. I've only just, they've only just been extremely nice to me. I agree. I had breakfast with one this morning, actually. Yeah. He went to Harvard more literate than I am. Yeah. No. Uh, it's not a low IQ group. It's a very impressive group. Oh, it's always so embarrassing when a non native English speaker speaks English better than you. That happens to me a lot. Oh, for sure. As Kant said. Yeah. Uh, but, uh, you know. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's just amazing that she could say that it was Iran. So that she's being paid to say that of course. Yeah. And I, I really viewed her as, and I think she viewed herself through as a continuation of the Biden administration. Yeah. It was the direction of the Biden administration. Uh, you know, the, the effect of the national security establishment, it was like an inner, it's um, like an interaction between, you know, the white house and the underlying establishment, but that's just, that's just the direction I got the sense that the U S was going. It was, it was just the March. Yeah. Towards war. It was just escalating because the U S decided. Oh, I felt that strongly. The U S just decided like, you know, U S foreign policy had always been deferential to Israel for now for the most part, but it wasn't really until October, 2023, where I, I felt, you know, confident calling it Israel first, because there was just, there was just no conditions on it that not just the, the vast amount of the historic amount of resources invested, but arming Israel. But. You know, going back to the numbers with interceptors fired, like directly defending Israel. The U S did that a bit during the initial stages of the golf war with, with, uh, um, scud missiles from Iraq, but this is just an entirely different level, but just overtly waging war on Israel's behalf too, is just an obscene escalation. I've been on TV for 30 years when October 7th happened. And I don't think I met criticize Israel a single time on camera, not one time and not just because I was hiding my true views. Because it was like, ah, you know, I had complicated views on it, but I wasn't mad about it. I didn't think it was a top priority issue. I just, it was like, there's a lot of things going on. Why am I going after Israel? I kind of like the country. And there was just a massacre that took place on October 7th. Of course. And there was that. I was, I was highly offended by the murder of innocence in Israel. And I still am. When I think about it, we just, the anniversary was two weeks ago and I was thinking about, and it's awful killing girls at a concert. But, um, there was that, but I mean the relationship between Israel and the United States, I always thought was poisonous, but I didn't think it was fatal and I could just kind of ignore it, which is what I did when, but it changed after that. It changed after the Hamas attacks in Southern Israel that day, our relationship with Israel changed. Our politicians changed. That's what I noticed. Like it was like kind of crazy all of a sudden. It really was. And it was, and you can see the historical foundation. They're like a buildup over time where it's like this longstanding support for Israel. This, you know, repeating these axioms, my support for Israel is iron. I just kind of ignored it. Yeah. Cause it was just, you know, it's kind of like became white noise to a point. They had it. I spoke at the Republican convention 2024 for Trump the night he was inaugurated. And I was, of course I've had a lot of time to think about that in the last six months since Trump has done things that I like so offensive to me, I can't even control myself. I'm so upset. I'm so upset about it. So I went and watched that speech. I was like, what did I say? I don't remember saying it. I didn't write it down. I don't remember what I said so much. There was really flags flying in the convention center at that convention 2024 is really flags in an American presidential party domination. And I honestly, I did, I guess I noticed, I don't know, I don't remember noticing you're right. It was white noise. I just kind of tuned it out. Like, you know, you've got your Israel thing. You're pretty obsessed about Israel, whatever, have fun with your little Israel thing. And you know, you're into the world cup and soccer and you're, you know what I mean? It was like that, at least that's how I thought of it. I was totally wrong. I didn't realize it was $350 billion. Like I had no idea. It became impossible to ignore. Well that's it. Yeah, exactly. And then, you know, I really think like the main driver for like the change in public opinion in Israel has been morally based. And I think. Do U.S. policy toward Israel even be higher if people actually knew the true costs? If, like, the government actually bothered to investigate, you know, the atrocities being carried out with U.S. weapons? Well, can I say I never recommend Wikipedia for anything that's controlled by the intel agencies, foreign and domestic. Everything about it offends me. But the Wikipedia entry on Gaza, which is probably the most contested entry on the entire site, of course. Yeah, you get all those warnings at the top. A hundred percent. But because it's so contested, I think you can look at it with some confidence, at least for an overview, maybe not in every detail. Yeah. Read the Wikipedia entry on Gaza on what's happening. happened since october 7th and it's like it's bracing you can't dismiss it as israeli propaganda you can't dismiss it as like third world leftist propaganda like you can't nazi propaganda it's like it's it's hard to dismiss yeah i think this is a reckoning that's coming from the political establishment as well where it's like initially opposition to the genocide in gaza was just like oh this is just you know people on the left you know totally totally third worlders yeah and you know you know rich kids you know yelling us from the totally on tiktok from their dad's company car but no it's like no the call was coming from inside the house very much so these are the base these are you know can i tell you i kind of ignored it i i'm so embarrassed to say that but i did i was like i don't i don't get involved in that stuff it's not my business i'm sure israel's mistreating the palestinians they certainly have before but like i'm not getting involved i thought that you the gaza stuff first started i'm embarrassed but i did one of the is really like they're like the defining moment where you felt two churches and i was like i remember that i was like and i you know it was nothing compared with either the rest of gaza and i'm not making the case that only christians are worth defending but i i whatever it's a long not very interesting story but i mentioned it to some evangelicals not on camera of course but just in private and uh i'm not evangelical but i've i don't know what to say about it they're like shut up it's like no no christian churches your you know your faith their churches are blown up it's like how do you not feel connection shut up shut up yeah i'm like this is the sickest this is the weirdest thing i didn't know what it was this is the weirdest thing i've ever heard did they also have their fingers plugged into their ears and go no no no no no they hated me they hated me for saying it i was actually on stage giving a speech about something else and i i got a question from an audience member and i said what's that you know and they they shuffled me off stage true story so it was that actually changed my view i was like whenever someone's like we don't want to hear it and it's true i wasn't speculating and i wasn't even getting that you know assertive or strident about it i was like well you know you're christians you should care about the bombing of a church shut up it's like catholic relief services a humanitarian group and a couple of their faith-based organizations as well they're in the christian denomination reported on it and we're like oh well now then i went right down in the rabbit hole and started talking to people and i spent time in the middle east so i called people i knew and and then i realized wow this is like the worst thing ever but i had almost fully ignored it for about a year and uh i'm not i'm not proud of that at all but i did so anyway not ignoring it now because it's impossible to ignore yeah and the attacks on christian centers in southern lebanon and attacks on all people in lebanon that is one of the most upsetting things and using the war that israel pushed trump its proxy into starting using that war as cover to just like grab southern lebanon south of the river is like one of the worst and then bombay route where you used to live that's you know you feel that in your soul you really couldn't really do one of the things i'm going to look at for a project is i'm going to you mentioned like grabbing land i i think ultimately that this is it's it's about land it's about grabbing land of course and i'm going to compare diligently teach myself how to use satellite imagery or maybe just something rudimentary like google maps or something and outline you know a pre you know october 23 and compare it to like 1967 borders as well but just compare the shift in the amount of territory that israel occupies not only just gaza more in the west bank more in southern syria southern lebanon as well and i want i just want to i just want to number just just to quantify how much of a land grab is happening uh and i haven't i'm unaware of anyone else has done it i hope you know anyone who's done reliable you would consider factually accurate analyses of what's happening gaza oh uh on what level how many people killed let's just start there you know honestly like the most you know the best numbers come from the gaza ministry of health and obviously the the u.s media decided early on this is going to be hamas run if it's like it's the hamas government these are just civil people they're not in the right not in the army you know um but the most reliable figures that you know the verified figures are coming from the gaza ministry of health ultimately and you know you can do your like international organizations can do their best to you know cross reference and verify but you know everyone's ultimately leaning even like israeli intelligence agencies have admitted that they use gaza ministry numbers so i think that's where it's coming from in terms of in terms of people i listen to um kareem mcdc and his brothers who the podcast called mcdc street kareem mcdc was a professor at aub i think he still is uh american university beirut right where i was excellent resource um un special repertoire francesca albanese um nice woman have you better yeah oh cool cool that's probably actually one person i would just be extremely excited to meet her um nora ericott as well he's a law professor at rutgers i believe um those are just a couple off off the top of my head but i mean there's a lot of there's a really a hell of a lot of people doing good work on this um it's just a i've i've just i've thought about gaza pretty much every day for the last three years you know it wears on you a bit so i didn't you know it's not out of interest of like some weird obsession or anything it's just like the feeling of it's not out of interest of like some weird obsession or anything it's just ignoring it though would be far worse than you know having it you know you can't you can't unsee it yeah yeah steven summer i really appreciate all the time you spent and particularly the numbers and we restate one last time where people can follow you in case they didn't catch it best place is to follow my newsletter on substack that's where you hear about um everything i'm up to and that's the main vehicle for publication it's called polygraph and you can find it on substack at steven samler.com i love it thank you thank you tucker