- 2 days ago
Category
🗞
NewsTranscript
00:01so what is going on uh in this war it's again hard to know because of the censorship but there
00:07is a man an independent analyst called brandon weikert who we think after spending a lot of
00:14time looking at analysis from a bunch of different people is one of the most informed people in the
00:19united states who can speak freely and publicly about what is actually happening and not just in
00:24a conceptual big picture way but in a detailed way and coming at this with an understanding of
00:28the technology in use the tactics and the strategies we've been super impressed and we
00:34think you will be too with that brandon weikert joins us now brandon thank you so much for coming
00:40on thank you for having me and thank you for those kind words that was very i'm very honored well
00:44it's
00:44true we've never met but i've just been watching your stuff recently and you know wars tend to bring
00:48out phonies and people like oh i was on seal team 27 and i know what's going on they don't
00:52know
00:52anything um but your analysis has been i'm just a nerd i'm just a nerd yeah well i have been
00:57very
00:58impressed by your by your grasp of what's happening so can you just give us really quickly
01:01the overview of where we are today what are the big developments well the big developments
01:07as you saw with secretary of war i guess he's calling himself now hegseth is uh they're transitioning
01:15the munitions so now the claim is that uh it's been so successful this air war they don't need to
01:22use
01:22what's known as standoff weapons so think the tomahawk cruise missile uh and they're going to
01:27now shift the air force and the israeli air force are going to shift now to flying large sorties of
01:35war planes into iran uh and bombing targets with what are known as gravity bombs and these are things
01:42like the joint directed attack munitions jdams uh they require you to be close to the target so the
01:48the risk factor to our pilots is now increasing exponentially but i would just like to posit a
01:54theory and it's just a theory um i actually think the real reason we are doing this shift is not
02:01because of realities or facts on the ground that are amenable to the u.s and israeli strategic position
02:09i think we are being dictated to by the depletion of our stockpiles yeah and what i mean by that
02:15i have
02:16some numbers for your audience we all know the tomahawk cruise missile going back to the clinton era
02:22where he would just pop those things off you know as soon as lewinski the lewinski impeachment got
02:26underway uh 4 000 tomahawk land attack cruise missiles are believed to be in the arsenal we have been
02:33draining those since 2022 2023 in ukraine at a disproportionate rate uh in the last four days of
02:42this conflict we have expended 400 of those systems which means that's a hundred per day
02:48with the operational and tempo not ceasing uh in 2026 the budget request was only for 59 new missiles
02:58we need several hundreds every year the reason we're getting such low numbers tucker is because
03:05our defense industrial base is broken and we have no business starting a world war or a major regional
03:11war as we are in the process of doing so i believe the real reason the the u.s and
03:16israeli militaries
03:17are starting to get more daring and dangerous with their airstrikes is because they cannot afford
03:24to blow through the munitions that are already depleting and it is in fact a race to depletion between
03:31us and iran and right now i think the iranians still have a very sizable unused increasingly
03:38sophisticated missile arsenal colonel rob manis is a friend of mine he's a former air force colonel
03:44he disagrees with me he says look these these missiles that are being popped off by iran are
03:48basically a bunch of dead enders it's going to fizzle out and hegseth made a sort of argument about
03:54that today that there was a decrease but i actually think that those dead enders if that's what you want
03:59to call them uh actually are probably still combat effective and that is why we are now having to still
04:06continue the war even though we have blown through these standoff munitions uh which really were
04:12protecting our people in fact i got word from a source of mine who's monitoring this uh on open
04:17source which it looks like the uss abraham lincoln is going to be repositioned to within anti-ship
04:24ballistic missile range of iran so either the u.s really believes we've degraded the iranian capabilities
04:32sufficiently or we're just throwing caution to the wind because we got to get this thing over
04:36before we run out of materials and that'll probably start happening this weekend
04:42this is not a surprise to people who watched carefully the few days in the run-up to this
04:48conflict where there were uniformed servicemen i mean there were flag officers who apparently
04:54made this case yes exactly that we just don't have the munitions to sustain any kind of real
05:01conflict they they said that right yeah in fact it is my understanding and this is again take from
05:07this what you will uh it is my understanding that last friday the order went out at 3 38 p
05:13.m eastern
05:13uh before that there was a quote particularly contentious meeting between general uh dan raisin
05:20kane who is trump's hand-picked chairman of the joint chiefs of staff he was pulled out of retirement
05:27uh by trump so this is trump's guy and kane tried to get to the word to the president that
05:32this thing
05:33is not going to go like you think it is this is not venezuela this is a very different operation
05:38and the president for whatever reason still decided to ignore the best military advice he got
05:43and went forward with this in turn vice emerald fred kotcher who was an adjutant basically to kane
05:51leaked parts of that meeting to i think it was reuters now the question that i i've been hearing from
05:57people is uh was that kotcher acting on his own volition or was that in fact kotcher executing some
06:05kind of informal order from dan kane because kane is the rest of the military is very the high level
06:12is very worried about the blowback from this operation and it is my contention that they the
06:18permanent bureaucracy is desperately trying to push blame away from itself to the politicians and even
06:26as we're seeing marco rubio now to israel itself which is not how a winning war would look like there'd
06:32be no blame shifting so do you have any insight into how the decision was made to kill iran's
06:41head of state slash chief cleric and i this has not been a conversation anyone's been willing to
06:47have because of course the proponents of it have been screaming about how he's hitler he's the worst
06:51person if there's any question about whether it's a good idea to kill him you're a you're an ayatollah
06:56lover you know just the normal low iq crap that you see on fox news but it's a real question
07:02like why
07:02would what what was the thinking there do you know so um again this is all you know background and
07:09sort of
07:09piecing the puzzle together with what i know about how it works up in that horrible city we call dc
07:15um but basically what it sounds like is the administration used the idea of diplomatic talks
07:23uh to lull kamani into a false sense of security uh we were going into a holy week at that
07:31time and
07:31the iranians wanted or kamani wanted to basically come out of his hole and uh he thought okay we're
07:38going to get a reprieve we'll we'll kick this down the road until monday which i think was march 2nd
07:43they got the word on friday that hey we're open to negotiating so kamani and his cadre let their guard
07:49down and at the moment they did israeli uh missiles were fired at a very interesting it was actually
07:55if i can nerd out here for a second the israelis did a very interesting performance with their missile
08:01into space from i believe f-16s or f-35s it went into the space above iran and came down
08:09at hypersonic
08:10velocities and it came within millimeters of the the known position of kamani so it was from a tactical
08:17standpoint yes it was very technically um impressive but the the key thing here was that the u.s used
08:23its
08:25honor in to lull the the counterparty into a false sense of security using our diplomatic word that
08:33hey we're going to hold off and try to talk to you and i actually think and i say this
08:37as somebody who's
08:38a fan of steve whitkoff i actually think whitkoff and probably kushner uh were probably in on the
08:43whole thing uh to to basically lull um the iranian uh leader into a false sense of security so we
08:49could
08:49clip him and i think tucker i think the assumption was that if we lopped off the head of the
08:57regime
08:57kamani that the whole thing would implode like a house of cards in about 72 hours which is why i
09:03think
09:03trump didn't really care when uh dan kane was warning him last friday that hey we've got eight days of
09:09munitions and centcom before we have to start cannibalizing indopaycom and then we have a real
09:14crisis on our hands i think trump was thinking uh we can probably do this in about 24 to 72
09:18hours
09:19we'll get kamani the israelis will and then it'll all work out it's all gonna it's all gonna work
09:24out and obviously nobody took the time to brief the president on and i could have done i wrote a
09:30whole book about it um on basically what the iranians have been doing for for pretty much 47
09:36years to harden their regime and to make it relatively survivable and that is why now we find
09:43ourselves what is it day four or day five now and they're already having to panic and change the
09:50munition structure because we're depleting them too fast this is why by the way the heads of those
09:54defense uh companies are now being summoned to the white house because trump is going to try to read
10:00those leaders uh the riot act saying you got to boost production and they're going to say to him
10:04sorry we can't do it because the defense industrial base is both broken and corrupt i don't know the truth
10:12about what you said about the the diplomacy uh as a cover for action lulling community into
10:18uh vulnerability um i have heard just the opposite that the israelis are telling everybody
10:23that the u.s knew the strike was going to happen and and they're doing that to shake the faith
10:30of any
10:30of our partners in the region in our diplomacy and make us sound dissatisfied that that would that
10:36well i don't and obviously i like i said take from this because this is all you know i don't
10:41have
10:41evidence of this to present either but i i find it just if i can speculate here for a moment
10:47i find it
10:48impossible or improbable to think given the level of fusion between the u.s and israeli command and
10:56i mean for goodness sakes there are israeli officers permanently stationed in the pentagon and i was just
11:01told uh by a former cia case officer at langley so um basically i find it really hard to believe
11:08that the administration did not have any involvement in this now they want to say that they did it and
11:15i
11:15think they are saying this because they're worried that there's going to be significant political
11:19and possibly legal blowback um you know over time because this war is anyway but so i don't believe
11:27that particular story when they say oh we had nothing to do with it i think we probably did
11:31not have an active role in the sense of bombardment but i do believe that we we were aware of
11:36what was
11:36going to happen and i think we probably nudged it along if that's true that's one of the craziest
11:40things that's ever happened i mean we're trying to negotiate an end to the war we've been waging
11:44against russia which is right are we yeah well exactly and the russians aren't stupid the iranians
11:51aren't stupid not everyone other than us is stupid and which is our assumption they're all a bunch of
11:55savages they're all pashtuns you know living in the hindu kush but they're not actually they're
12:00really smart and they look at this like why would we enter into negotiations with the same negotiating
12:05team that just did this so okay but here's my macro question which is what about the safety of the
12:12united states like when you kill an 86 year old leader of a global religion which islam is it's the
12:20smaller but still enormous branch of islam yeah you're gonna you're gonna expect to create
12:25religious extremism you kill the religious leader during ramadan like was there no one in the room
12:31and i know you're not supposed to say this because it makes you like a muslim lover or something i
12:35just
12:36want to say this as a jesus person but as an american who wants peace in my own country nobody
12:40stood up
12:41and said like hey what what are we doing here like we're going to create a generational war that our
12:48grandkids are going to have to deal with at the shopping mall did anyone say that no no i think
12:55i think general kane was the closest and he was making sort of a tactical technical argument and i
13:00have to say as much as i do like the general and i do like him i think he's a
13:03decent guy yeah i i think
13:05i think he's gone down in my book a little bit because he didn't resign in protest because whatever
13:11they're saying in public the logistics does it's like math it doesn't lie it's it's gravity it doesn't
13:17lie and uh the logistics are not in our favor if this becomes trump said it was a forever war
13:23yesterday
13:24now he's putting in sneer quotes but uh you know this could become at least a five to eight week
13:30war
13:30hegseth said eight weeks today um and so i i'm starting to remember covid and two weeks to flatten
13:37the curve became you know years of you know dealing with fallout so i am i i am very concerned
13:44that the
13:44president has really bad advisors uh these are not people that i think have the best interests of
13:51maga or america first the coalition that got him elected uh in in their hearts i think these are these
13:58are deep staters masquerading as maga lovers um and i think that that this is why we're here this is
14:04one
14:04of the most um strategically irresponsible moves i've ever seen and the fact that the president i
14:12don't believe was informed the truth about what was going to happen in the way it was going to happen
14:18i think now that's why you're seeing the administration expanding the war talking about giving kurds
14:24weapons and and and money and and we're going to now expand it into iraq and destabilize iraq as if
14:31that's another thing we need on our plate this to me is somebody who this to me is is a
14:36country that
14:36has made a very serious mistake with triggering this war and now they're just making the mess
14:41bigger and bigger and bigger hoping that they can clean it up once it's totally you know out of hand
14:47or maybe they don't even want to clean it up i don't know that's speculation but i do believe that
14:51we were involved on some level with what was going on uh behind the scenes the day that and by
14:56the way
14:56i just want to make something clear i am very much anti-islamic republic of iran that regime all that
15:02i've i'm on the record people know this about me so i'm not saying this because i'm mourning the loss
15:07of kamadi but but it is it it is very dangerous what we're doing and i think that we really
15:12damaged
15:12america's credibility for a long time for a long time when it comes to diplomacy yeah i mean i'm i'm
15:19not going to put up with that for one second that whole like call your patriotism some guy working
15:24for israel is calling me unpatriotic in a country right ancestors founded i don't right i'm not
15:29going to play along with that at all um and it's shocking that they would even be throwing that out
15:32there uh at the most patriotic i've gotten it in the world i bet you have so let me i
15:38mean you look
15:39at this and it's so heartbreaking and it's so potentially catastrophic that you keep thinking
15:44all right point made can we pull back can we just pull back and declare victory and go home in
15:50the famous phrase are we at a place where that's possible well i'm reminded of a 2004 interview
15:57that donald trump gave to your old colleague neil cavuto and it was during the iraq war at the
16:02height of the insurgency and at the time everybody made fun of trump but i thought it was brilliant
16:07trump told george w bush on that interview he said listen just declare victory bring everybody home
16:13we got saddam you've won let's just call it a day and let the middle east figure out the mess
16:18now people mocked him at the time but i actually thought actually that's probably the best at that
16:23time way out well he could do the same thing right now because get this he got rid of kamani
16:28he got rid
16:29of very top bad irgc guys he's he can claim that he has done what he can to help the
16:36people there is a
16:37way forward it's a golden off-ramp but he's got to take it in the next probably 48 hours because
16:43if he
16:43doesn't take it tucker this thing takes on a life of its own the iranians are not going to surrender
16:49they're not going to stop popping off missiles they have planned for this like i said for 47 years
16:54yeah they're degraded yeah they're hurt but so are our allies by the way and the oil coming out of
17:01the
17:01region is not coming out of the region we are now looking at spikes in the price of energy
17:06um i saw a report from seeking alpha which is an investment uh publication saying that but if this
17:13continues for four to eight weeks this could take oil over 200 a barrel that's recession territory going
17:19into a midterm election yeah so i think 200 is depression is to i mean well who knows right but
17:26now that's the extreme uh yeah that's the extreme but i mean yeah listen the listen they're destroying
17:31not they're not just blockading the strait they're destroying the refineries in qatar in saudi arabia
17:38and the qataris are saying they're not going to get this stuff online for months if not years
17:43so that's going to be a gaping hole in the global economy uh for for oil and natural gas so
17:49even if
17:49trump gets a quote victory here in iran and i don't even know what victory looks like anymore
17:54um we're going to be cleaning up this mess economically for many many years thereafter
18:01all of that is awful all of it is they don't call me dr doom for nothing all of it
18:08is manageable
18:08though you can imagine working through those problems and convincing yourself that it was
18:13worth it somehow or you know you could concoct a story to tell yourself there are certain things that
18:18are not uh possible to recover from and yes one is the use of unconventional you know highly
18:26destructive weapons that just change the calculation forever and i worry about that and everyone i ask
18:33that's oh no no that would never happen do you worry about it yeah yeah yeah so i think i
18:38tweeted
18:39about this in the last 24 hours trump trump responded to what i've been writing um and i i'm not
18:45going to
18:45get into how i know that but but he he somebody told him what i've been writing and he's quite
18:49cross
18:49with me and uh you know i'm a i'm a three-time supporter of trump i'm saying this out of
18:54love
18:54you know not out of hate um but i was told that the statement he made yesterday in the oval
19:02office
19:02was partly was responding to my claims about the stockpiles and he said something very specific he
19:09said not only we have enough weapons to fight a quote forever war which holy cow um but uh he
19:15said that
19:16we're you know we're depleted a little bit on the and i'm paraphrasing he would on the lower level
19:20weapons but we've got we've got enough higher end and middle tier weapons to fight forever well the
19:27higher end weapons would be things like i don't know uh low yield nuclear weapons um and you know
19:34you don't want to think that an american president would go there especially over something like this
19:38where we weren't attacked which we were not and i i'm not a fan of the iranian regime and they
19:44do
19:44support terror but we were not attacked the israelis weren't even attacked um this was all sort of the
19:50machinations of netanyahu's worst fears um and uh uh it is my concern that if we truly are reaching
19:58depletion that we might have a an incident where a nuke is used and um you know it's it's not
20:07the
20:07likeliest but it's no longer impossible it's now moved into sort of the realm of it could happen
20:13and the longer this goes on and the more that we run through these stockpiles um and if we start
20:20losing planes to some of the remaining iranian air defense systems then we're going to have some
20:26problems and i want to also say something about the uh strategic side i was on uh i was on
20:32bannon show
20:33earlier today and there was one of the guests was saying basically saying i was wrong and maybe i am
20:37well you know who knows um but he was saying that we've got local air superiority and from there we'll
20:43be able to grow out and go farther and the only reason you get local air superiority is because
20:47you've degraded the enemy so much well yes and no but that's just a small slice of a very large
20:54country
20:55um they probably in iran if they've decentralized those missile capabilities to the local commander level
21:02anticipating that we would degrade command and control they likely have hidden and decentralized
21:08their air defense capabilities uh and that means we have to do sort of a long-term air defense hunt
21:14and in the meanwhile the iranians are still combat effective uh and the longer this lasts the longer
21:21that strait is closed down the more the oil is disrupted and basically the more we get to these
21:27really nightmare scenarios in my book i said a war over iran will likely trigger a world war three
21:33now that book came out in 2022 um i remain convinced that we are at the the opening salvo of
21:40a true
21:41world war and it's happening because of our actions and the actions of our partner israel
21:49i would say even more precisely it's happening because of benjamin netanyahu and the hammerlock he has
21:55over the american government including masad officers at cia headquarters and idf yeah that
22:01one came at the pentagon i mean that one came from a you you would know this individual he's a
22:06very
22:06famous cia guy i got off the phone with him about an hour before i came on with you and
22:11and and uh
22:12it's scary it's i mean remember though gary vogler who wrote a great book uh for the libertarian institute
22:19it was called i think israel was the winner of the 2003 iraq war something like that he was an
22:24oil
22:24guy working for the coalition provisional authority and he identified this guy named makovsky who was a
22:30pentagon bureaucrat who ran the iraq war desk for the first part of the iraq war in 03 and he
22:37was a masad
22:37officer not just idf and he was doug feith's son-in-law so you know this is uh you know
22:44our country is is
22:45is unfortunately not being run entirely by the united states of the american people no it doesn't
22:51you don't see a lot of software i'll get emails for that one which is well it's true it's factually
22:55true the secretary of state god bless him admitted that two days ago and said we did this because
23:00israel made us do it right we're going to go anyway right so what about the question of hypersonic
23:04weapons you read that iran has them they've been given them oh yeah oh yeah they've got them uh in
23:09fact
23:10i got an interesting report from overseas yesterday and again you know these i'm sort of
23:14i i take with a grain of salt but they've been right when they're right though they're really right
23:18uh this one came from our friends in russia so take from this what you will but the the report
23:22that i
23:22received was a retired russian general is telling the press over there that he knows for a fact there
23:29is a cluster of chinese um high-tech officers or technical officers on the ground in iran right now uh
23:38uh perfecting and maintaining iran's growing they're still building them uh growing hypersonic
23:44weapons capability and the reason is because the chinese want to test these systems because they're
23:50basically very similar to the chinese asbm which of course when and if and i really hope it's if um
23:56the war with china erupts the first thing the chinese are going to do after they knock out our
24:02satellites and disrupt our electromagnetic frequencies is they're going to use thousands
24:08of asbms ringed in those man-made islands to either keep our carriers at bay so that we can't
24:15launch planes in range or to sink or destroy the carrier's flight deck uh and the iranians are the
24:21ted the iran rather is the test bed the same way that we've been using ukraine as a test bed
24:26against
24:26russian tech uh and so the the iranians have them uh they're buried in those underground missile cities
24:33they have not really fired them i i i believe they fired four ballistic missiles at the carrier
24:39after kamani was killed that was a symbolic attack though if the iranians really wanted to go ham on
24:46the carrier with a missile swarm they absolutely could the only thing that would be preventing them
24:52was if we had degraded their c2 functions enough and i at that time i don't believe we had what's
24:57the
24:57c2 function i'm sorry that's command and control so basically their ability to control their systems
25:04uh and issue commands that's why before the war began the iranians um basically the the government
25:12said to their local field commanders we're going to give you permission to take command of your
25:17individual missile batteries so that if something like killing kamani happens you can just start going
25:22and you won't have to call in for orders or for range and by the way the chinese are using
25:26their
25:26yaogan i think i think it's their yaogan uh satellite constellation to do surveillance of the carrier
25:33and of the u.s air bases in the region and they are providing increasingly accurate targeting sets
25:40to the iranians in fact i believe the reason the iranian missiles have been so effective in damaging
25:46our bases and boy have they done a doozy it is not being reported accurately they have done a real
25:51doozy to
25:52these bases um it's because of the fact that the chinese are providing direct real-time signals
25:58intelligence and electric and electronic assistance to the iranians so we're fighting a proxy war with
26:04china right now it's a world war i mean this is a world war and um the chinese are more
26:10than happy to see
26:11us stew now there's this there's this like story that uh the politicians keep telling us it's really the
26:19republican side that keeps saying this that well you know we went after venezuela and we went after
26:23iran and that's gonna really kill china because they they rely on these countries for their oil
26:28it's not really accurate um the chinese got less than i think four percent of their oil from venezuela
26:34it was a nuisance if anything to lose if anything they were sinking more money into rebuilding the
26:40refining capacity because the communists had ruined the oil industry in venezuela over 25 years
26:46and then with iran they get at most i think i think 14 of their oil and natural gas from
26:53iran
26:54what they were doing is the chinese knew because they could read the room they knew we were going in
26:59so what they started doing was shifting their purchases of oil from iran to places like neighboring
27:07russia and to other middle eastern countries in fact i think that the largest amount of oil purchased
27:14by china in saudi arabia occurred two weeks before the war began so while this will hurt the chinese
27:22absolutely economically it's not going to trigger a collapse it's not going to the chinese were prepared
27:28for this just as the russians were prepared for what we were going to throw at them in 2022
27:34these regimes have been studying us for years for years and they know our pressure points
27:39and uh you know we're like the gentle giant we're like the lovable giant we're just too stupid to
27:45realize you know these these people are serious and they're killers they're killers and uh you know
27:51we're trying to lecture the world about you know transgendered rights in namibia and uh you know these
27:56guys are playing hardball and they're playing for keeps and i was actually speaking to brendan o'reilly
28:00who's probably one of the foremost uh china scholars uh real real world intelligence type scholar
28:07practitioner uh he wrote a great book called everybody is everyone is wrong about china
28:11and um i just talked to him this afternoon and he tells me he's convinced that at the end of
28:17the
28:17day the real winner of this conflict is china of course that we are going yeah and i think actually
28:21this this this conflict worst case scenario because you you laid out a pretty bleak scenario too
28:26um but worst case scenario is this is the end of american military power for a generation
28:31i mean i think that's clearly the goal um and that's up to us at this point i mean to
28:36you know
28:36the second you it's the same in a fist fight the second you punch someone everybody standing around
28:42finds out how tough you actually are would you say would you say but the second the blows start it's
28:48like we know and you don't always want to reveal that it's better no it's better to keep it mysterious
28:53i would say same with nudity like you know none of us look better naked um so but i would
28:58okay so
29:00the hypersonic weapons missiles which yeah they possess um yeah you suggest they might be deployed
29:07against surface craft right yes what about israel would any of them wind up so yeah yeah yeah so
29:14you've got you've got two classes of hypersonics i apologize i was fixated on the carrier because i got
29:19that text um but yeah so you got the you got the maritime targeting of uh surface warships but then
29:27you
29:27also have what you've seen a couple of times in the last year where the iranians did deploy hypersonics
29:33against israel and it did an incredible amount of damage uh to tel aviv if i remember correctly in
29:40the 12-day war and i think although this might have been ai i think in the last 48 hours
29:45they deployed
29:45another the iranians did another hypersonic against tel aviv that did a lot of damage so the the these
29:52hypersonic weapons there is no active defense against them our our air defense systems cannot
29:58and the problem is it's really what makes them very interesting is they come in fast and then they
30:04sort of zigzag unpredictably right before they land and this is the problem for our ad systems our air
30:10defense systems because they sort of just track and then go but if you've got a target coming in and
30:16they you know those ad systems are not because the ad systems are older and they they're they're based on
30:22older generation being able to track incoming regular ballistic missiles uh so this is where
30:29we get real concerned because we i don't think we really know how many hypersonic weapons they've got
30:35i would imagine they've got at least i would say at least a hundred or so because they've been just
30:39churning them out and the chinese have been helping them and of course the chinese have overmatched with
30:44us in terms of industrial mass production what is the damage right now to to israel and to and to
30:53u.s bases in the gulf do you think oh well well the the the bases in the gulf um
30:58you know i i i
30:59wish i had kept the window open that i was reading but basically at least three of the bases have
31:04been
31:04devastated the uh fifth fleet headquarters i i am told and if you look at the satellite imagery that you
31:10can find on open source information it looks like actually the base in bahrain looks like gaza it's
31:16completely uh moonscape uh so the the american fifth fleet now i don't believe i don't know if there's
31:22any because i i think we might have evacuated that base before this started so i don't i don't want
31:27to
31:28say there's casualties because i don't know but just looking at those satellite images that it looks like
31:33that's been flattened and that's a very expensive base that you and i paid for um and that was the
31:40sort of the hub for the u.s navy in the middle east for many years and it has been
31:46completely taken offline
31:47and i i have serious doubt i was talking also to a middle east expert not long ago and he
31:53was saying
31:53that with these bases being obliterated basically to use a turn a term um essentially he doesn't think
32:01because he thinks the arabs are going to be so irate with us for having kicked over this hornet's
32:06nest because it is not going to end anytime soon his belief is that once the war does end or
32:11settles
32:12down enough for us to say hey we're good we're done the arabs are going to say you're not building
32:16back
32:17in our in our countries anymore so why would they we didn't defend them i mean that's this is a
32:22reciprocal relationship they're not doing this because they love us they give us deals on the
32:27billions hundreds of billions in foreign investment in the united states all this
32:31but in exchange we promised to protect them and we didn't that's right and in fact there's there's
32:37reports and i think they're credible um in fact the saudi official was complaining about this two days
32:42ago basically whatever air defense systems were in these arab countries were sent over to israel yeah
32:48and they actually left our own bases and people um vulnerable our own government did to protect
32:54israeli targets rather than to protect our our men and women in uniform do you believe that's true
32:59do you believe the u.s government prioritized israel over our own troops if you had asked me this a
33:04year or two ago i would have said no way but after seeing that huckabee interview by the way bravo
33:09uh after seeing that huckabee interview uh i can't imagine how we didn't do that i mean it is very
33:15clear the united states is being led around the nose right now uh by its by what should be its
33:20proxy
33:20i mean let's get it real i mean of course it should be you know so they're the housekeeper
33:25we're the homeowner like what is this i don't i don't get it no i'm serious i don't understand i
33:29agree i agree so so i do believe yeah we probably did and the worst part here one of the
33:33worst parts
33:34is uh i have a colleague who's who's in the gulf states and he tells me he sent me a
33:39picture uh of the
33:41the warning he got from the state department to get out and to cut to cut to the chase it
33:46basically said
33:47you're on your own to get out like we're not doing flights we're not true and meanwhile i i hear
33:52that
33:52until 24 hours ago the british government was evacuating their people no questions asked so
33:58you mean to tell me that the sole superpower is picking a fight with this missile city that is
34:04iran and we're not even going to provide exfiltration for our people that's not an empire that's not a
34:09superpower that's a power in decline that's what the chinese see by the way and the chinese think their
34:15time is at hand because we are committing national suicide with this insanity i i wish i could
34:23disagree it's one of the saddest things i wish i didn't have to say these things in my life no
34:27i
34:27totally totally agree and you think of the men whose lives are going to be taken americans who
34:32are like the best people already have been well already have been and you look at i think the
34:36dood's only released the hometowns of four of them i think but it's like iowa a couple from i
34:41and it's like the oh yeah the best people we have these are our people these are our people
34:45no private equity kids in that group i know that's right um that's right and i just want to just
34:50say
34:50something and i probably shouldn't but um i was i was as i said a very early supporter of hegseth
34:57as secretary of defense i thought his takes on hypersonics were good i thought that he was a war
35:02fighter so he understood in a way that maybe you and i could never understand but i was mortified by
35:09his
35:09press conference this morning the glibness six americans are dead because of a political decision
35:14that was made obviously i don't expect him to challenge the president on this publicly but at
35:19the very least it's a solemn day and we should probably not be acting like this is just another
35:24walk in the park because this is not this is not this is not going to plan now hopefully we
35:30can pull
35:30it out of the fire whatever that looks like but right now this is not going the way we were
35:35told it
35:35was going to go and certainly not the way the president assumed it would go once he once kamani
35:40was whacked so the the question i think is do we commit ground troops americans on the ground they
35:48already are on the ground okay so explain what you know if you don't mind so it's just again i
35:53don't
35:53have any but just for the record because i know i'm gonna i have no access to classified information
35:58right i am an open source guy um but i can read a freaking room and i can tell you
36:04right now
36:05if the president went into this air war thinking i'm going to be over in three or four days i
36:09don't
36:09have to worry about the stockpiles and now he's waking up and going holy cow everything's running
36:14out and i got to keep fighting he's talking about now opening up a front in iraq using the kurds
36:18which
36:18is lunacy what are the turks going to do um well by the way the point is because israel's next
36:25priority
36:25is turkey so the point is to diminish turkey that's the truest yeah yeah and um yeah and so there's
36:34that and then there's the fact that the president wants to be seen as quote unquote winning and
36:40winning means you've got he's already outlined what the objectives are and this was this was also a big
36:45bugaboo of mine war and strategy is about objectives attainable political objectives
36:51clausewood's war is an extension uh of politics through other means trump came out on saturday
36:57he's repeated it since the aims are regime change the aims are denuclearization and the aims are
37:03getting rid of the ballistic missile system he's now added on getting rid of the navy of iran so those
37:09four objectives what is the objective of the iranian regime survive that's all they have to do survive
37:15long enough because they know because the chinese and russians are giving them the intel they know
37:20that our stockpiles are about to be depleted so all they have to do is hold out until we have
37:25to start
37:25cannibalizing indo-paycom and there's going to be a real political fight at that point i'm told that
37:30indo-paycom leaders are already raising quite a stink behind the scenes because they know once those systems
37:35are gone out of their arsenal they ain't coming back anytime soon so uh the question of ground troops this
37:42gets us to that um i don't believe it would ever be an invasion like iraq in 03 first of
37:47all we don't
37:47have that capability anymore which should scare every american because we don't have that capability
37:51anymore second of all uh there the the way the country is arrayed trump is trying to do this in
37:57like a light footprint methodology so he i think is going to replicate the uh us strategy in afghanistan
38:05in 2001 where we sent a bunch of special forces a teams and cia paramilitaries infiltrated the country
38:13linked up with already organized locals it was the northern alliance in afghanistan this time it'll
38:19probably be the mujahidini kalk m-e-k uh to try to basically organize a movement with the kurds coming
38:27in probably from the iraqi side uh in the i think it's the north i think it's the northwest of
38:32the country
38:33uh and we'll be coming in from the south and it will kind of link up in whatever's left of
38:39tehran
38:39that's the plan i think using air power as an interdiction like we did exactly like we did against
38:45the taliban in 2001 well first of all the the mek is not the northern alliance at its height it's
38:53not
38:53second of all you're talking about far greater ground that's going to have to be covered and a
38:59logistics tale that is going i mean we're talking like this is not going to work then you're going
39:04to have to deal with the rugged terrain of iran iran is basically like switzerland it's just surrounded
39:10by mountains it's a desert in the middle i mean this is not good geography for the kind of tactics
39:16we're talking about uh and again the size matters this is a much bigger country than afghanistan with
39:21many more people um so we're talking about a much longer end uh commitment on our part and i think
39:28the president knows this and i think he's sort of like the frog boiling the water boiling in the
39:33water he's just sort of slowly getting us used to the idea before he has to send troops in because
39:39he wants to quote win and well winning for him is regime change the regime is not going to change
39:44on
39:44its own it's not going to be the people who can do it because they're not organized enough they're
39:48too divided amongst each other so he's going to need to send in special forces and cia to basically do
39:53the organizing on the ground and to do force multipliers and uh i'm sorry to say that the
40:00likelihood of this working is very very low and now we're talking about being seen in this region
40:06as strategically defeated uh by what we were told was a backward military uh force in iran the first
40:14american to die in the war in afghanistan was a cia officer johnny michael spann yes right that's right
40:19um yeah so these forces the cia paramilitaries special forces uh would be deployed to do what
40:30the goal is what here well it's exactly what well again the the goal that we are told and that
40:36trump
40:36continues to say is regime change regime change we don't want the islamic republic of iran in charge
40:41anymore we want i don't know mek or the shah's son who's a lobbyist in northern virginia i'm sure he'll
40:49do great uh or you know any of these other uh you know groups the thing is we don't really
40:56know and i
40:56think it's very interesting that we can i just guys ask who is the problem i mean i do detect
41:02i don't
41:02detect i i notice it's very obvious efforts by israel and its proxies in the united states to foment a
41:09religious conflict in our country hate all the muslims deport the muslims as if that's better
41:15than saying hate all the jews it's not better it's the same thing but they're trying to turn
41:20religions against each other in our country and i that's right i see the same and which i resent
41:25more than anything i've seen in a long time because it's it's not going to make a peaceful country for
41:29my children no but i see that in this effort so the idea is like they're not allowed to have
41:35an islamic
41:36country or something like half our allies are islamic countries like what what kind of country
41:41are we calling for it's their country no clarify i was just using the official name of of the i
41:46don't
41:46know if this i'm sure for for some people it is but but they just want to replace it with
41:51anyone other
41:51than the current crop of of leaders and i believe that that is not possible because this regime is
42:00deeply embedded so you know we killed kamani and a dozen new leaders replaced all of these other
42:07leaders this is this reminded me a lot of the early days of the ukraine war when the ukrainians and
42:12the
42:12nato types would be oh we killed this russian commander we got this guy well within 24 to 48 hours
42:18the
42:18leadership was replaced and the russians kept going so this is you know who knew a nation of 96 million
42:24people would find other generals and people to promote you know you know you know it's like
42:29well also you wonder like how much if you really believe that killing an 86 year old cleric
42:35is going to topple the government how much do you know about the country and how much of what you
42:40think you know well that's my point is filtered through some cia source who wants to be president
42:45like the former king exactly like do we know a lot about iran i don't sense that we do
42:51well i i know a lot about iran but you know i was boxed out of the administration almost from
42:56the beginning so it's like why and people like um i think well i think there's some personnel in
43:03the white house that doesn't like me and i and i think that they don't like that i don't play
43:07ball
43:08and you know i moved i got out of dc moved to florida and i never looked back but um
43:13there are people
43:14like me as well who were boxed out who know a lot about these things and we are not can
43:18i ask you who
43:19if you can say who because you're clearly very knowledgeable you seem sensible you seem
43:24pro-american i'm going to tell you i'll tell you offline i really don't i'm really not looking to
43:30start a mixture rating i understand so but let me take you a broader question which is and i know
43:35the
43:35answer but i won't hear you say it was there from the very beginning of this second trump term
43:40an effort to exclude anybody who might conceivably stand in the way of an iran invasion yes yes
43:48even though i again again understand i i hate the regime you know i don't like that regime i'm just
43:54not like i'm some lover of you know but i i wasn't i was a friend of mine joked i
43:59wasn't sufficiently
44:00on board with this program with this iran invasion program or on war because i think it's this is the
44:07stuff of of lunacy and this is literally this is like the mad king you know this is this this
44:12doesn't
44:13make any this doesn't make any sense yeah it doesn't unless you know what you were saying
44:18in your monologue which i think you're probably right i think that's definitely at play here
44:21yeah i mean i do i just want to be clear i don't i don't think that most u.s
44:25policymakers have any idea
44:26what the foundation stone is or alaksa or dome of the rock or the third temple this is just so
44:32far from
44:32the concerns of average people in this country even their reminders are not paying them to know
44:36their reminders are not well that's it but there are people who do know and certainly in
44:40the region in the middle east and the rest of the world people are religious they're not
44:44americans like they care so these are big questions to people around the world just not i will i care
44:51these i'm i'm a christian and well i care too actually so let me ask you since you said that
44:55you're constructing most of your analyses through open source materials you're reading publicly available
45:00yeah things on the internet have you noticed an effort to clamp down on videos okay tell us what
45:08you've noticed there's also an interesting effort tucker to and i think this is coming from our
45:13guys to spread ai videos of what look like war scenes and then you share it and then they say
45:21ah
45:22that's ai we gotta get him dinged now we gotta get him d you know this is all you know
45:28we have it
45:29is a um tucker it is a sad day in this country when we have official and i and i
45:36have a feeling i know
45:37the group that's doing it we have official u.s intelligence people being paid with our tax dollars
45:43to sit around a basement in langley or arlington virginia and harass american citizens online for
45:51sharing their opinion but that is where we are at in this country that is where we are at and
45:56i can
45:56tell you right now i have been the victim of bot attacks um i've been the victim of cyber attacks
46:02in
46:02the last 24 hours on my personal email which i didn't know people had but apparently they do
46:07um we have been i had to file a police report in fact yesterday with my local police uh on
46:12this ever
46:13since coming out in the last week and sharing my my opinion um and this is not an organic phenomenon
46:19this
46:20is either ours or israel or the british uh you know because they're always in there somehow or the
46:26friends that's right or the french that's right that's right so this is you know this is where we are
46:31this isn't really america anymore this is some censorious state um and i thought that we were
46:37going to be cleaning that up but we're instead we're instead giving the keys to these guys and
46:43telling them to go start world war iii i wonder if we're going to see this is purely speculative but
46:49wars tend to create an environment where there's actual persecution of critics of the war
46:56well i was told and again take from this what you will because i i have no way of proving
47:01it i was
47:01told two years ago that the biden regime had concocted a list of high profile maga supporters
47:08that they were going to basically go to and say if kamala had won uh say that hey you you
47:15got to leave
47:15the country as you know you kind of get out or we're going to basically prosecute you until you're
47:19broke and can't do lawfare and uh thank god that never happened but those lists are still around
47:26and you know in 35 months we have an election coming up and if this keeps going the way it
47:33is
47:33uh tucker i don't think the republicans stand a chance to to win the next election if things keep
47:38going the way they are less jd or if it's marco i yeah well this i unfortunately agree with you
47:45last question so put and i hope you'll come back because i think this has been any time you need
47:49me i live near you thank you so here's my question i saw video maybe ai of the governor of
47:58california
47:58today gavin newsom saying point blank israel led us into this war israel leads us around by the nose
48:05israel's genocide in gaza and we can't we're not getting anything out of this and we need to reassess
48:12our military support for israel and yeah that's probably your next president right there well
48:17and and i don't i know him and i wouldn't credit a single word he says with sincerity he doesn't
48:23believe anything but he's smart and i know that donald trump thinks he's formidable he has said that
48:27in public a lot i mean if that's real then i mean that guy has a shot do you think
48:35yeah yeah i think
48:36i wouldn't be surprised look this can all be i just want to make it clear this can be reversed
48:40in the
48:40next 48 hours if trump thank you his victory thank you and just gets out and says look i got
48:45everybody we needed to get if the people of iran can't do it then they're never going to do it
48:48you know this is this is it's it's an easy out it's a golden off-ramp mr president it's a
48:53golden
48:53off-ramp with your name on it take it and you'll be in israel will israel allow that
49:00i you know i i don't i probably they'll they will probably try something but um
49:05you know i all like i can't dictate what's gonna israel's gonna do all i can say is the president
49:10has got to make it clear he's getting out now we've achieved our objectives we're done that's what
49:15he needs to do um in terms of uh in terms of newsom um you know i don't i he
49:21he will probably be the
49:23nominee because he is wily enough uh he kind of reminds me of bill clinton a little bit in a
49:28weird
49:28way oh yeah um but i wouldn't be surprised if his veep is uh in my old state where i
49:34used to live
49:34virginia is abigail spanberger because the cia wants to have one of their own sitting in the white
49:40house man that's not democracy that's really really dark i hope you're not it's a deep state man and
49:46we're supposed to dismantle it brandon weichert that was great and thank you so much for doing
49:51this thank you so much for having me great to meet you thanks