'You're Wrong' With Mollie Hemingway And David Harsanyi, Ep. 154: Israel And Iran

Join Washington Examiner Senior Writer David Harsanyi and Federalist Editor-In-Chief Mollie Hemingway as they debate U.S. involvement in the Iran-Israel war, dissect the nationwide “No Kings” protests, and review the U.S. Army 250th Anniversary Parade. Mollie and David also discuss their summer activities, including watching The Accountant 2 and The Harvey Girls. 


If you care about combating the corrupt media that continue to inflict devastating damage, please give a gift to help The Federalist do the real journalism America needs.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:20):
Welcome back, everyone to a new episode of Your Wrong
with Molly Hemingway, editor in chief of the Federalist and
David Harsani, senior writer at The Washington Examiner. Just as
a reminder, if you'd like to email the show, please
do so at radio at the Federalist dot com. We
love to hear from you. I've got a lot of
mail this week, Molly. People are very concerned about my health.

Speaker 2 (00:40):
Yeah. Last week you broke the news that you had
broken all the bones in your body in a horrific
bicycle accident. We got a lot of mail about that,
people sharing their stories about when they took tumbles on
bicycles or broken bones.

Speaker 1 (00:55):
I have to say it was very nice. It made me.
It was very nice to see people concerned and telling
me their own stories and not just saying that you
Sometimes I just say that, but no, I mean it.
You had related story to us, Molly, about your brother
who had a horrific bike accident about you know, years ago.

(01:17):
Was it a decade ago or something?

Speaker 2 (01:19):
Decades ago?

Speaker 1 (01:20):
Decades ago? And we got this email. Should I share
the name? We didn't get permission Mark from Mark, which
I loved. Hello, this is the email I respect Molly's
quest to avoid noughty language, but during Bicycle Talk TM,
she mentioned her brother's accident and she said, quote he

(01:41):
went bum over handlebars and tore his scrotum close quote.
The term bum was used as a polite substitute for ass.
I just want I just want to say that it
would be much softer on my yours personally to hear
five fifty thousand consecutive f bombs and ever hear towards
growed them. Please avoid that one, unless, of course, you

(02:03):
want to somehow weave the term torn scrowed him into
every podcast from now on a comedic device. Of that,
I would be supportive. So that's an excellent email.

Speaker 2 (02:11):
So when we got this one, I actually read it
out loud to my husband, and then also the team
that gets the email at the inbox and like sends
it to us posted it in the staff chat. They
were like, this is the best email we've ever gotten
for you're wrong. I will admit that I got a
lot of I don't know if I want to call
it angry email, but like horrified email from men who

(02:36):
could not believe I so casually told that story.

Speaker 1 (02:39):
It's tough on the ears. I have to say when
you said it, it was a bit. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (02:47):
One of our regular listeners was like, this can never
happen again. You can never tell me. But also, in
the spirit of this last email, to just say it
fifty thousand times. In an episode, I was my brother
happened to be visiting. I was in a different state
and happened to be visiting last weekend, and we went
to the Army two hundred and fiftieth. And while at
the Army two fiftieth I introduced him to someone who said,

(03:10):
is this the brother who tore his scrub? Anyway, my
brother's wife so this is my brother was not married
at the time, he was in college. But my brother's
wife was saying that every single person he encountered after
that accident, like the EMTs, the ambulance drivers, the doctors

(03:32):
at the hospital, every single person was a female, which
he felt just somehow made the situation even worse because
it was just so embarrassing but or not embarrassing but uncomfortable.

Speaker 1 (03:43):
Yeah, but I don't know.

Speaker 2 (03:45):
I wouldn't know. I'm a woman. So I apologize for
horrifying all of our male listeners with that story. But
someone asked me if my brother was upset at being shared,
and I was thinking, I don't think so, like I
think going through it was horrible, and he just wants
other people to know he survived, happily married.

Speaker 1 (04:03):
He wants other people to know he wants the most
horrible thing that can ever happen to him.

Speaker 2 (04:08):
Man, right, Yeah, it didn't make you feel like maybe
it could have been worse David Hurst?

Speaker 1 (04:14):
Yeah, yeah, for sure. But remember last week I was
kind of showing off and I told you I'm not
wearing this cast anymore. I hate it. Well, I went
to the doctor. They found me one other broken bone
and maybe a third one in just my hand, and
they put me in a hard cast. So I will
I will be in this for six weeks. I didn't
get away with anything.

Speaker 2 (04:32):
It's like a complete cast over the hand and arm.

Speaker 1 (04:36):
It looks me what color I wanted, I got dark blue.
These casts are amazing. Yeah, fiberglass, Yeah all right, Well.

Speaker 2 (04:46):
Godspeed and you can't ride your bike with it on.

Speaker 1 (04:49):
I can't ride my bike. You can't do a lot
of things.

Speaker 2 (04:50):
What do you do to work out?

Speaker 1 (04:53):
Walking? Which I hate. I I've been typing columns with
one finger on my left hand. So it takes all
long time, but all the wisdom is still within it,
within those pieces.

Speaker 2 (05:04):
Yeah, we talk about we got war, war, it's happened.

Speaker 1 (05:10):
Oh, there's so much to tackle here and so much happened.
But I just to preface this whole thing. I just
want to say, because I think now it's lost because
of everything that's happened since. But let's just talk about
the day the attack happened. I don't know if people
appreciate how, you know, take America out of it. We'll
talk about all that later, but appreciate what kind of

(05:31):
incredibly precise, widespread kind of military operation this was. It
is one of the most impressive of all time in
my view. You know, just the way that they took
out the leadership of the country they were attacking, the
way the president of the United States and the Israelis

(05:52):
lulled them into complacency. I think that was really incredible.
The way they took out many of the bad the
way they just the way they the way Mosad built
a drone factory within the enemy country and used it
to take out nuclear scientists and revolutionary guard generals and

(06:13):
so forth. I just think it was an incredibly impressive
military operation, especially for a small country to pull off
that initial wave at least. And I mean now they
do control the air, you know, over Iran, and I.

Speaker 2 (06:26):
Think let's just take it like piece by piece. I
also thought it was really impressive, although I get nervous
about evaluating something based just on what you're told happened,
and what I mean by that. We like even I
saw people talking about the drone operation and how they

(06:47):
had people on the inside building these drones and deploying them,
and I wanted to be.

Speaker 1 (06:52):
Like, shut up, I think that's true.

Speaker 2 (06:55):
They're in there, and like you don't want to like
brag about everything you're doing at of those people's lives
being quite you know, Like I think it was cool
to talk about it later, you know, I think it.

Speaker 1 (07:05):
Was blown by then. That and I think that Israel
likes to create paranoia within Iran that things are going on,
that there'll be more surprises, you know what. I mean
that they used to do this as well when they
were fighting against the Arabs, and part of is true.
I mean mostly does have impressive operations. I mean, think
about what they did to his ball on the pagers.
I think this was way more intricate and you know,

(07:27):
impress it. But yeah, I'm sorry, going.

Speaker 2 (07:29):
Well, even like what you just said, it is possible
that they were playing that up for the purpose of
making the surviving leaders feel very paranoid, and that's fine.
I just want people to understand that at times of war,
you basically can't believe at least half of what you're
being told. And there was this weird thing where on

(07:50):
Thursday night it was clearly a very very effective strike,
but there was this like triumphalism among the chattering class
of it being like it's over, Israel just did the
best thing in the history of the world, and like
Iran is decapitated and it's all over. And then like
two days later they're like, oh, and by the way,
we need you to help us with this war. And
I just want like everyone to just calm down a

(08:12):
little bit, like be more mature, learn how things are
being done, assess the situation. And then you also said
you thought, okay, so the precise nature of the operation,
I agree with that. That's pretty impressive. The lulled into
complacency thing, I think you're right, but I also want

(08:33):
to make sure that Okay, this is a complex thing.
But you think that Israel did this with the full
support and approval of the United States. Yeah, and so
you think that when Trump said he would like them,
and when he continues to say he would like them
to deal, that that's just like.

Speaker 1 (08:54):
A ruse or no, you like them to deal. No,
I think he Well today he said complete surrender, exclamation point.

Speaker 2 (09:03):
On a conditional surrender.

Speaker 1 (09:04):
Unconditional surrender. I think, of course he wanted a deal.
I think Israel really wanted a real deal. You know,
this idea that Israel's out for this is hard on
that nation. It's a small nation. It shuts everything down
for a long time. There were lives lost, there's danger involved.
But yes, I think that he wants a deal. I think,
you know, he'd like a deal. And I think he

(09:25):
gave them the sixty day warning. On the day sixty one,
Israel attacked people. Pretend like, boy, if we just went
a little further piece was on the horizon. We've been
sanctioning Uron since nineteen seventy nine. For two decades, we've
been negotiating with them. They're constantly playing us, you know,
for Swiss, Franks and europe palettes filled with Euros and
things like that, and I think Trump just had enough.

(09:47):
I think he saw some intelligence whatever that is or isn't,
that he didn't like, and sooner or later this was
going to happen. Now, it should happen a long time ago.
Whether they're two months away or two years away, completely
irrelevant to me. I at this level, at this level
of sorry of uranium enrichment, there's only one reason for it,

(10:10):
and everyone on Earth knows what that reason is. So
the rest of it is just you know when and
why things happen sort interrupt.

Speaker 2 (10:18):
I just want to acknowledge to everybody that I am
going to annoy everybody because I feel like I'm in
the middle, and it's only popular to be in the
like one extreme or the other extreme, and so I
basically find myself agreeing with like half of what everybody says. So,
for instance, what you just pointed out, they're clearly trying

(10:42):
to develop a nuclear to nuclear warfare capabilities, and they
have explained that they want these so that they can
eradicate Israel off the face of the earth. They have
been very clear and consistent about why they want it
and why it's so important for them. Now certainly many
other bad or you know, not great countries have nuclear capabilities,

(11:06):
whether it's Pakistan or North Korea, including you know, countries
with leadership that doesn't seem totally saying or always operating
in their nation's best interests. It's also true that, you know,
you can kind of understand in this day and age
why every country is seeking nuclear capabilities, because if you
don't have them, it's very easy for other people to
run rough shot over you. But even acknowledging all that,

(11:32):
I think most people agree that Iran does not seem
like a country that can be trusted with nukes, and
so then the question is what do you do about it?
And I think on that score there is a lot
of debate, and so like this weekend, I think it
was Antan Yahoo with the Brett Baer interview, was saying

(11:55):
that they had that Israel had seriously diminished Iran's nuclear
capabilities and set them back quite a bit. That's great news.
I love that. I think for Trump, he's like, I'm
just sick of playing this game, period, and I don't
want to have to come back in a few years
when they've gotten back up to speed. And so you

(12:16):
can also understand that. It's just that most people don't
ever in any way think through the long term consequences
of major action. And I'm not hearing anybody do that now.
And it's terrifying to me, Like you're actually hearing people
say things that I just thought we'd never hear again,
like they'll we'll be greeted as liberators when we take

(12:36):
Tran and it's like, oh, my gosh, that's a cliche
or like that's a joke from the Iraq War because
of how wrong we were, and Iraq is so much
more simple of a country than Iran. And I'm just
worried it's going to be a mess.

Speaker 1 (12:51):
I have not heard anyone say that. Who says that.
I don't have but listen, I don't want to argue
for someone act like that.

Speaker 2 (12:57):
Oh a lot of people are saying it. They say
things like like Iran, all the people are just yearning
to be free, that the Iotola commandity. It's like this
realization I had that Russians weren't persecuted by Putin. They
all pretty much like him or think he's too squishy.
Once you realize that sometimes the problem is the countrymen themselves,

(13:21):
or even when you just recognize that it's a complicated
situation and that the culture of Iran is not Western
and they're not going to respond to the same things
that like George W. Bush thinks everybody is going to
respond to. Like it's just different countries are different, and
they have different interests, and they have different ways of living,
and that goes back millennia in the case of Iran

(13:43):
and is pretty persistent, you know. And they're not like
a freedom loving country necessarily.

Speaker 1 (13:48):
I'm not going to say they're a freedom loving country,
but I think that they are different than Iraq in
other Arabic countries. The Iranian nationality is much more cohesive now.
Obviously there are many minorities there. It could be a
huge blow up. I don't think that Israel cares very
much about that. By the way, here, let me take
a step back. Israel is fighting a war the old

(14:10):
fashioned way to beat the enemy, not to rebuild them,
not to have democracy there. I don't think Israel really cares.
I mean, yes, they want to undermine the regime, but
they are hitting every military target there and they're never
going to land troops there, and Americans aren't going to
land troops there. Either. No one is rebuilding that country,

(14:30):
no one. There's no appetite for that. No one other
than maybe Lindsay Graham has said anything in that, Cindy,
Donald Trump is not landing troops to police and a
nation building Iran. I just don't think that's in the
cards at all. I don't think Israel wants that. I
don't even think Israel cares very much who's in charge there,
as long as whoever is in charge doesn't have nuclear weapons.

(14:52):
It's that simple. But you said something before about the
US asking Israel asking us to intercede. Yes, that's what
the reports say. I have a theory about that. It
could be wrong about a lot of stuff. I think
Donald Trump is using American involvement as leverage to scare
the crap out of the Mulahs so that they will
surrender and give in. I don't you know, Listen, I

(15:14):
have no problem with it. By the way, I know
we can argue about this. If there's a bunker buster
for Fodrow or whatever it's called, nuclear facility buried in
the mountain because there's no way to get to it,
I think that would be good for the United States.
But I'm not one hundred percent sold on this whole thing.
I think it's also kind of a disinformation in a way.
I'm sure I saw reports that Israel hadn't asked yet

(15:35):
for any help. I think they're doing a pretty good job.
You're right, we don't know what's going on completely, but
so far as wars go, they're doing a relatively good
job and controlling the airspace over Iran. I don't know,
and America helps, of course, America helps with intelligence with
knocking down some rockets and things like that, but the
Israel's taken on most of the load, especially, and all
of the load as far as offensive military action.

Speaker 2 (15:58):
Okay said about the intel saying that they were within
days or weeks or whatever of having a nuclear bomb?
What is that intel? Can you tell us?

Speaker 1 (16:12):
No? I can't. I mean, what are you think Israel's
going to share their intel with us? I mean the journal?

Speaker 2 (16:18):
Yeah, why do you believe it?

Speaker 1 (16:21):
I believe that they've been close forever?

Speaker 2 (16:25):
I do too, I mean, or I should say they've
been saying it for I mean, how long has Israel
been saying that Iran is within days of getting.

Speaker 1 (16:33):
Not days or weeks? But I mean I've heard this.

Speaker 2 (16:37):
If I'm mad, and has they been going on for
like twenty years? So why now? What is it about?
Right now?

Speaker 1 (16:42):
I'll give you why. Years ago, in the nineteen nineties
when they first started on this program, which they said
they weren't doing, but later we found out they had
been trying to get news till two thousand and three,
supposedly stopping then. Since then, the Israelis have stucksnet or
whatever it was called, virus, flame, virus, stars, virus. They
blew up a bunch of facilities, they killed a bunch

(17:06):
of nuclear scientists. They've done a lot to slow down
that process. On top of that, the Iranians are always
doing that. They're speeding up, slowing down their nuclear program
to use his leverage in their own negotiations, so the
Americans will send them pallets of cash not to go forward.
I mean, who knows, you know it all. The point

(17:29):
is not how far they are from actually like putting
together a nuclear warhead. The problem is there's a point
of no return where they've been rich uranium enough that
they can do it in two weeks. And the Wall
Street Journal says, now today a new story that broke
as I'm reading, you know, as of an hour ago,
and we recorded that the Americans didn't believe that, you know,

(17:50):
the Commanee had given the go ahead, but that they're
only two months away or two weeks away, you know,
from doing it. Israel can't afford that this is a
clandestine operation by an enemy that wants a weapon that
will essentially cause a second Holocaust there, you know, or
a holocaust there for them if they got these weapons,

(18:11):
and they have to be perfect So why would would
America not attack a country that was two weeks, two months,
two years away from a weapon that they threaten to
use against you. This is I don't even understand the
argument of why they have to be perfectly on, you know,
to nail the exact date that there'll be a nuclear
weapon to throw in it.

Speaker 2 (18:29):
No, I actually think that's a really good point. And
then also I was thinking about this as it relates
to October seventh, which I think was a really big
wake up call to the people in Israel. It's like
they had convinced themselves that when the people when Hamas
said we would like to kill you, or like from

(18:50):
the river to the sea, we're going to eradicate you,
they like to think, oh, that's just like a slogan,
it's just something that they say. And then after October seventh,
they've realized, oh no, they really truly will never stop,
you know, wanting to wipe us off the face of
the earth. And so they started taking things much more seriously,
and that does lead to, you know, the very serious

(19:13):
loss of life thanks to the way Hamas has kind
of captured people in in the Gaza strip. It is
why I think you saw these amazing operations against Hezbola
in Lebanon, and it's also why you see them being

(19:34):
much more worried about Iran. I mean, like Israel's always
taken Iran very seriously, but I do think this latest
action shows that they realize, like, once they get it,
they're going they're going to use it, and they don't
seem to care. People would kind of understand what it's
like to be Israel in this situation and be facing

(19:57):
a legitimate existential threat.

Speaker 1 (20:00):
Well, I just wanted to take a quick step back
and say, I understand why Americans would be nervous about
getting involved in anything in the Middle East. Like, I
get it. Iraq was a disaster, it was we should
not be involved in what is it the pottery barn rule,
Like we don't have to fix things there every time
we break something we didn't. This whole conflict falls on

(20:22):
the shoulders of one nation, and that's Iran. They've been
given a million chances by the United States to just
have a civilian nuclear program to keep doing this, and
sooner or later Israel could not had to do something.
And you made a great point about October seventh. Israel
has real People don't realize this because of all the
protests and everything, but in the real world, Israel has
can completely transform the Middle East. Tamas is nothing, Habala

(20:46):
is almost finished. Syria fell, There might be a person
in Syria right now. Once peace Syria. Let Israel use
its airspace right now to deal with Iran, just so
people know. You know, Israel's at peace with most sonny nations.
Iran is the only sort of real problem in the
Middle East for Israel right now. And the Middle East

(21:06):
has changed. It's changed since October seventh. It was just
a horrifying event. And obviously Israel had been planning for
this for a long time. I mean to track down
all these like you're saying, we don't know everything, but
to track down the virtually the entire military leadership of
a nation, you know, and blow them up as planes

(21:26):
are coming in. So the chain of commands all messed up.
I mean, I don't know, it wasn't as bad as
they thought, you know what I mean, like like you acting.

Speaker 2 (21:36):
Like on night one that it was over and they
were all being like, haha, anyone who thought there was
any downside to going to having an Israel a rack
war or US involvement in Israel wor they're losers and
they're wrong. It's like we literally like eight hours into
it and people were acting triumphalist. And it's not even
about whether the war part can happen pretty well, like

(21:59):
the war part in Afghanistan actually went great. I think
people forget that, like it was a really decisive victory.
It was what happened after also a rock. It's what
happens after that is of a concern. And let me
just say on that point, well before I say another
critical thing, I want to say why I'm not like
totally freaking out here is that I don't think any

(22:21):
president in my lifetime has handled like had has done
a better job of moving toward his foreign policy really matches,
in my view, the American foreign policy, which is not
to not use our military. It's also not to get
involved in lengthy wars with no chance of success. He

(22:42):
likes to strike hard and then leave, basically, and that
is very much aligned with I think the vast majority
of Americans. They are not at either extreme that you
hear so much of in like on Twitter and stuff
like that. And Trump has done a really good job
in his first term and he has built up a

(23:02):
lot of credibility with that, and so I think that's
why you're seeing so much support for this. At the
same time, people are right to be worried because if
you do. You know, one of the things that Israel
had said at first and then they kind of walked
back from, was that they did want regime change. And
if they did that, and it's understandable why, right, they've
got a crazy regime. But the history of regime change

(23:26):
in the world is just not a good one. Almost
always you get like a bad guy, a really really
really bad guy replaced somehow with an even worse guy,
or even just the chaos and unrest that happens. And
so you hear a lot of people being like the
US is the only country that can do the bunker
busting bomb to go after the nuclear facility, and so

(23:47):
that's why they need to go to war also against Iran.
It's also true that the US would be the only
one that could nation build if true chaos broke out.
And that's what I think people are worried about, is
that they would be dragged into a really long, intractable

(24:07):
situation like we always are, and always for like really
good reasons, you know, like Saddam Hussein has weapons of
mass destruction and he's a tyrant against the world, you know,
and everyone goes yay. I mean, i'd like that war
was probably even more supported by Americans than this one,
and it was supported for years and then it became

(24:28):
this albatross around Bush's neck. But people are nervous about that,
and for very very good reason.

Speaker 1 (24:35):
Well, first of all, let me go back to you.
You were saying how people were triumphant on the first day. Well,
I'm sorry, a lot of people out there made predictions
about World War three breaking out, and that's a fact
who have big audiences, Tucker Carlson and others who were
wrong about it completely. That's a fact.

Speaker 2 (24:53):
Wait, wait, wait, I actually don't agree with them, But
how do you know they're wrong completely?

Speaker 1 (24:58):
Well, wait another week, because they said, for instance, very specifically,
what was going to happen. Tucker said that Russia was
going to come in and help, that China was going
to come in and help, the world war would break out.
Russia said, we're not helping you at all, and he
mentioned bricks. Which is this not even a military treaty.
It's an economic group that they're part of with India
and others. And India doesn't want Iran to have a

(25:21):
nuclear weapon either, or probably does Russia frankly, and China
probably doesn't care. They want oil from Iran, but they
don't want any rn to be a nuclear power. So
this was just scare mongering.

Speaker 2 (25:32):
Well, I don't think that's fair. I want to again
say I don't agree with that assessment. I don't think
that the world is clamoring to help out Iran. In fact,
I think it's the opposite. I think it's interesting how
quiet the neighbors of Iran who've been about this. You've
heard a little like some performative like please the Israel
shouldn't do this, But it's not like the kind of

(25:54):
saber rattling that you've heard in the past, and I
think it's because the whole region views Iran as a
and you also, as you noted, Russia said we're not
getting involved and all that. So I don't agree with
the assessment. However, I think it's worth remembering what the
predictions were about the Ukraine Russia War when Russia invaded
Ukraine and a lot of people said like that the

(26:19):
whole world would unite against Russia, and it's worth remembering
that those bricks countries did not. They did not join
with the US battle to do sanctions or to otherwise
do support of Ukraine against Russia. It was a very
limit like nobody seemed to want to get involved in that.
And so a reference to bricks is not the stupidest
thing in the world, because we are a very powerful country,

(26:43):
in part because you know, we have the reserve currency
of the world, and a lot of countries would love
to see us fail. And you can fail in part
by being overextended economically, or being involved in a lot
of things far field of home, or having a country
that has a lot of crumbling infrastructure and institutional crumbling

(27:03):
while being involved in wars in Russia, Ukraine, Iran, other
areas of the Middle East, and in China. You know,
like we can get over extended pretty easily. China oves
when we do Middle East war. They think that there's
nothing better because they go and they build and they

(27:23):
expand their domain while we are distracted in the Middle
East or in Ukraine or whatever. So I don't find that.
I don't find the assessment of some of the people
who are like, world War three will break out within
five hours. True, but even World War One it took
a month, which was like the quickest time ever to
a world war. Still took a month to have World

(27:45):
War one breakout right from the first action to everybody
being at war.

Speaker 1 (27:51):
I think it's scare mongering. There won't be World War three.
No one's coming to Iran's aid. Everyone knew no one
was going to come to Iran's aid. The US is
not going to be involved in some protracted forever war
in Iran. It's not happening. They haven't literally not dropped
a bomb yet.

Speaker 2 (28:07):
Right, Okay, So do you think the US is involved
in the Russia Ukraine war?

Speaker 1 (28:12):
Yeah, we are. We are selling just as we are
in the Israeli war. We're selling one side weapons. We're involved,
but that doesn't you know, I mean, and what's the point?

Speaker 2 (28:23):
Well, it's been a lot of money. It's also turned
out that we have been doing all but having boots
on the ground, like supplying the intelligence, providing the infrastructure,
doing everything, but actually calling the shot, you know, for
where to go. It's turned out that the people who
were nervous about support for Ukraine there were absolutely right

(28:45):
and that was born out. And it's been a lot
of money for basically no success, you know, like's been
a lot of lives lost, and like a horrific loss
of life, actually horrific, and nobody talks about it. I
don't even understand why nobody talks about like the daily
loss of life in Ukraine of the Ukrainians and also

(29:06):
the Russians, the casualty numbers that war.

Speaker 1 (29:09):
Whose fault was that war? That was Russia's aggression? Right,
as you agree? Right? So what is you I mean?
So what is the solution persc of all? Trump said
he was going to deal with that, right, It's very
difficult to deal with that situation to make peace there?
What should we do? Should we pull all the money
out of Ukraine. They're fighting for their country. I don't listen.
I have complex thoughts on what's going on there, but

(29:34):
I'm not exactly sure why we are the bad guys
in that. In any way, if we pull their June right, if.

Speaker 2 (29:40):
It were up to me, we would be helping out
Israel and we would have always been understanding that is
like a closer area of our interest in Russia Ukraine,
which is a very complicated, Like Russia has nukes. As
we were talking about, nukes give you leverage. They have
six thousand nuclear warheads, they don't have to accept conventional defeat,
and they have an absolutely like very real interest in

(30:05):
securing a route to the water. And they also are
not dummies, and they know that Ukraine has been used
as a proxy for the United States and also you know,
sort of NATO and so like all of that is
just Russia's Russia's the bad actor, but they're acting in
a way that makes sense. Do you think the situation
is different with Iran, which is a country that has

(30:28):
promised to wipe Israel off the map as soon as
they get nukes, and they're trying very hard to get nukes,
Like that's just a very different situation to me given
our alliance, which is, you know, our laws.

Speaker 1 (30:42):
Uran's an enemy of the United States. I mean they
killed so Mung. Thank you for bringing the Marines. They
from nineteen seventy nine onwards have been regularly taking American hostages.
They undermine us everywhere, They fund proxy groups that kill Americans.
I mean, I think it's worth just mentioning. I'm not
saying that they're you know, landing troops in California or anything,

(31:05):
but they are geopolitically and.

Speaker 2 (31:08):
Okay, this is one of the things that Babe said
that kind of lost me this weekend. He's like, you
have to fight them over there so that we don't
fight them in New York City. And it is enough
to me to say that we are ideological allies of
Israel in our country. You know, we also like we

(31:28):
also have interests there, like a lot of Americans live
in Israel and all this kind of stuff. The fact
that Israel, that Iran wants to wipe Israel off the map,
is a legitimate concern and something that is worth our interest.
It is not true that they can reach the United States.
They could go through ros additional means a state sponsor

(31:49):
of terrorism or other things like that. But it's total
golf war rhetoric again or and even like it wasn't No,
that was what Zelenski said too. You got to fight
the Usians here or she'll be fighting them their ice.
People want to America realize how annoyed we are with
his claims.

Speaker 1 (32:05):
It as an ally. So Bbi's going to try to make,
you know, say things that bring us you know that
he thinks will appeal to Americans in some way that
they're part of this, you know. So I get why
you would say that. I agree. It's not like you
run as an existential threat to America In the end, though,
I think the world is would be in serious trouble
if they had a nuke in the sense of oil

(32:26):
routes and other things. Yeah, you're going to say something, well.

Speaker 2 (32:30):
Yeah, although it's kind of funny, like Iran sends most
of its oil to China, so that's there's a there's
a reason why they wouldn't want to shut down the
straits of her Moves or whatever, because they because China
needs their oil. But in the same way that it
would be very bad for the US if Iran wiped

(32:52):
out Israel with nukes. It also is bad for the
US if there's a great deal of like even if
you just think of it in terms of this, should
there be major disruption in Iran regime change and the like.
You're talking about millions of refugees flooding into Europe, which
we've already had from all these other situations as well.

(33:14):
That's actually not good for the United States or for
the West as well. That's caused a lot of disruption
and destabilization and long term problems to the you know,
like the health of our alliance and NATO and stuff.
There are people just need to realize there are consequences
and be a little like calmer, un less raw Rah,
let's immediately be harabulous Iran.

Speaker 1 (33:35):
I agree me, I'm rah rab Aut destroying Iran, But
I will tell you this, You're right, of course, there
are always unforeseen side effects, you know, with with a
big you know, with with the anarchy that comes post
war and things like that. But also Iran is not Iraq.
It is also not Syria. The Iranians are not Syrians.

(33:58):
They're different and they have a different society there. I'm
not saying that it wouldn't be bad or things couldn't
go wrong, but they're.

Speaker 2 (34:05):
Oh, but the ways that are there aren't there. It's
actually worse though. They are a much more complex and
complicated country than a rock or Afghanistan, and it's another
reason why people should just proceed with caution if they
don't want to get involved in another like regime change,
land war in the Middle East.

Speaker 3 (34:31):
There are some ugly numbers when it comes to four
oh one k balances. The Watch Dot on Wall Street
podcast with Chris Markowski every day Chris helps unpack the
connection between politics and the economy and how it affects
your wallet. Studies show people in their thirties have a
staggeringly low amount of money in their four oh one
k's even when companies match, they're wasting free money. Millennials

(34:51):
have to put more money away when it's happening in
DC or down on Wall Street.

Speaker 1 (34:54):
It's affecting you financially. Be informed.

Speaker 3 (34:56):
Check out the Watch Dot on Wall Street podcast with
Chris Markowski on Apples, Spotify, or however you get your podcasts.

Speaker 1 (35:09):
I and by the way, I don't this is not
the place or time, probably because we take a long time.
I completely disagree with your contention that regime change or
changes are always bad. In fact, I think most American
regime changes were quite good, starting with Germany and Japan,
talking about Chile, or which we put in a bad guy,
are a bad guy, or a place like Iraq in

(35:30):
nineteen fifty four Coup d'eta where we put in pro
American Shah. So I don't get this idea that every
regime change is bad. There are plenty good regime changes.
In my view. Yes, Iraq was a mistake, so now
we can never do anything because of Iraq. I literally
no one can talk about anything in the Middle East
without bringing up Iraq and Afghanistan. And by the way,

(35:52):
Afghanistan is a bunch of warlords. There's no national consciousness
there as there is in Iran. Different place anyway. I
don't know why we're talking about this because no one's
going into that regime change. People inside Iraq might want
to do it, and if they want to be free
and fight for it or whatever they want. I mean,
I don't know that it's going to be a bad thing.

Speaker 2 (36:13):
I think we're talking about it in part because people
who advocate a lot of interventionism, people like Bill Crystal,
are out there just like cheering this on or a
Lindsey Graham. They do tend to like boots on the ground,
and they tend to call for it. So once you
get the nose in the tent, then all of a sudden,
the whole camel's in there now. I'm not as worried

(36:33):
about it as these people on one extreme are because
and I don't say this about a lot of topics,
and I might, you know, and it might not be true,
and it might be made out to be a fool.
But I kind of trust Trump here. I think he
does a good job of balancing American interests having the
right amount of military force without and he doesn't like

(36:55):
the whole idea of an extended conflict. I think the
military industrial complex sees that the Russia Ukraine, the appetite
to fund that is declining, and so they're looking for
their next war in the same way that the Russia
Ukraine thing broke out like four months after Afghanistan, you
know what I mean. It's like we're always moving from

(37:16):
one war to the next.

Speaker 1 (37:18):
Israel can't and won't fight protracted wars. You can't, it
just can. It's not big enough.

Speaker 2 (37:23):
And you want to be like when you're at a
bar with like a guy who picks a fight and
then counts on you to actually finish it because he's
with you.

Speaker 1 (37:32):
So I think that Israel has done a pretty good
job so far of taking care of Iran, obviously with
help from the United States weaponry and so on, very
good weaponry. I think there's just the concern is this
is just my theory right now. The concern is that
there are still remnants of the Ranian nuclear program that
haven't been touched. Is an incredibly just really informative article

(37:55):
just for people to know the on the website tablet
called ken Israel and Iran's Nuclear Program. It is the
is super informative if anyone's interested in this. But it's
very difficult to get into some of this, you know,
buried Centrifugia's So maybe that's what Israel wants the United
States to help them with because they don't want this

(38:16):
to have to happen again over and over again. And
who would you know, it's been a real pain for
many years of the United States. I mean, and let's
just talk about Trump for a minute. You know, I'm
critical of Trump whenever because I'm critical of politicians, but
I'll tell you something, he is the greatest president for
Israel that's ever lived. I mean, they're better than Truman,
better than Reagan, better than Bush, better than any of them,
because he saw right through this BS, right, this constant

(38:40):
game that all that the Blob plays, that the Brookings
Institution plays, where you got to sit down with these
Iranians and listen to their you know sob stories and
pretend that we don't know what's happening here. And he did.
And I saw a report I think it was in
the New York Times, so who knows if it's true,
But it was interesting that Trump asks Natagna, who, if

(39:03):
you do, this will be a home run. Trump wants winners, right,
like that's what he's about, whatever it is, and Natahao,
I think, laid out some of the plan form and said,
I think it's going to be a home run. And
so far as far as war goes, it's still terrible.
People are dying, but not as many civilians are dying
in this war as one might have expected. On the

(39:23):
Iranian side. For instance, Now the Ranians just lob missiles
at civilians. They don't care. I think Israel has a
real purpose here, so we'll see what happens.

Speaker 2 (39:32):
When you were saying that you think that Trump is
the best president for Israel, I was thinking about how
the anti Trump extremists there was like, he's anti Semitic,
and that never made sense for a wide variety of reasons,
but they kept trying it even during the twenty twenty
four election. And it's like, right, the guy who did
the Abraham Accords, who constrained Iran during his first term,

(39:56):
whose daughter and grandchildren are Jewish, that guy's anti Smitic. Okay,
whatever you say.

Speaker 1 (40:03):
I've thought about this issues, you know quite a bit,
so you know, I don't think he's anti Semitical all.
I think that's nonsense. But there's people who are functional,
functionally anti Semitic, let's say, and people who say stupid things. Right.
I don't care what you say. I care what you do.
And I think he would be remembered as a hero.

(40:23):
I bet you his approval rating in that country is
like at ninety percent. You know what I mean? For me,
at least, there's such a clear moral divide here. We
know what the Supreme Leader Cumani's about, and we know
what Israeli is about They're imperfect, they're a democracy. They
make mistakes, but their morality is like our morality in general.

Speaker 2 (40:44):
Right, they believe the things you think of Hakabe's note
to Trump that Trump posted to truth Social.

Speaker 1 (40:53):
Oh you know, I don't remember what did. Can you
give me some highlights on it.

Speaker 2 (40:56):
Was earlier today It was like, you are going, God
has anointed you for this moment to be the most
consequential US president since nineteen forty five, and everybody Israel,
are you saying that he should drop atomic bombs on Iran?
And it was all this like sort of dispensationalist theology

(41:16):
about you know, that was coming through a lot of
evangelicals have, in my view, incorrect theological views on the
current state of Israel. And it's just like it's just
yet another thing I feel weird about. I am a
supporter of Israel, but not because I believe that they
are like any They're related to the Old Testament, Israel

(41:41):
and protection by God has chosen people for the delivery
of the Savior, Like I don't think that. And most
people who support Israel, you know, on the right, weren't Jewish.
They're kind of in this weird like theological space.

Speaker 1 (41:56):
I think they work incredibly hard as a nation and
have great focus defend themselves. I don't think it has
anything to do with divine you know, intervention or anything.
But it is miraculous to me because I am Jewish
and I love ancient history to read about these same
people in the same place, you know, in the year
one thousand BC, speaking the same language now and defending

(42:19):
that themselves. I mean, Jews have not been We're not
able to defend themselves, probably from Roman times or even before,
from the time of the Maccabees, maybe until nineteen forty seven.
And it is not a miracle in the sense of
a divine miracle in my estimation. But a lot of
things came together to make this happen. And you know,

(42:39):
for me at least, you know, when people say never again,
this is what that's about. It's not about asking people
to like you. You know. I love these people who are
like Israel's creating more anti Semites because they're doing this,
you know what, I don't care. They're saving lives. So
to hate me whatever you want, I have.

Speaker 2 (42:56):
I hate it when people say, oh, I'm being criticized
from left and right. Therefore I'm correct. I think that's
such a logical fallacy. But I do think it's funny
that I've been called like, I'll say, well, the Constitution
says that Congress should authorize war action, something I've said
about Republican and Democrat presidents for years, and people will
be like, you hate Jews, you're anti Semitic. It's like,

(43:18):
I'm just talking about what the Constitution says. And then
if I say that I think Israel has a legitimate
interest in dealing with Iran and it's nuclear ambitions, and
people are like, you're a pawn of netting Yahoo, and
it's just very annoying.

Speaker 1 (43:34):
There is a Democrats, by the way, and it's almost
like I don't even think about them anymore. They're that
inconsequential these days. But you know, are completely anti Israel
except for a few centators. But there is a contingent
on the right that's become monomaniacally obsessed with Israel, like
it's just their obsession and they think everything is These

(43:57):
people are not going to be important for very long,
am I You know, I think there's Katari money there.
I'm not like a conspiracy theorist. You own your opinions.
I don't care is giving you money or not giving
you money, But I just think that those voices are
far louder if you're on Twitter, you hear them all
the time than they are in the real world when
you look at polling. Now people are behind Trump for now.

(44:17):
You know, you can make a mistake, We can get
him broiled in something we don't want to because he
has a very clear eyed moral understanding of what's going on.
There's a war he wants Israel, and he wants America
to win it. Period. You know what I'm saying. And
that is not what we've had. That's not what Biden
was about, or Obama or even Bush. So it's a
very different world. And on foreign policy I'm with I

(44:41):
think Donald Trump's doing an amazing job.

Speaker 2 (44:43):
So I want to say one last thing about Lindsey Graham,
who's very excited about what's going on here, and other
US senators on the right who are very excited about
the prospect of war with Iran, and the fact that
Trump is at the same time trying to get his
big beautiful bill passed, and it does make me wonder

(45:06):
if there's being pressure applied on Trump to get like,
we'll pass your bill so long as you do this
action kind of thing.

Speaker 1 (45:17):
Seems unlikely to me.

Speaker 2 (45:19):
Okay.

Speaker 1 (45:19):
I have to say I was surprised that Trump actually
went did this in a way because there are people
in the administration now we're far less inclined to want
to be involved in military action. No John Bolton in
this administration, right. But it seemed to me that probably
a lot of naysayers were in his ear and he

(45:41):
just went and did what he thought was right here.
That's just my perception of what's happening. I'm not saying, you.

Speaker 2 (45:46):
Know, what do you think he's done?

Speaker 1 (45:48):
By the way, I think he was part of the
the I think he was part of the plan to
hoodwink the Mullahs into believing that there was going to
be a meeting that Sunday to discuss the deal. I
think that he knew what Israel was up to. I
bet you America helped with intelligence and all kinds of
other ways. I bet you America shot down incoming rockets.

Speaker 2 (46:12):
No, No, they've they've said that they were involved in it, and.

Speaker 1 (46:14):
He is moral, but they have not.

Speaker 2 (46:16):
I'm just pointing out they have said they were helping
with defensive from a defensive posture, and that has been
unified across Like every branch or you know has said
that they have denied that they were involved in the attack,
other than in the way that we have supported Israel's military.

Speaker 1 (46:34):
From the weaponry.

Speaker 2 (46:35):
H So on a basis are you saying, I just.

Speaker 1 (46:39):
There is no way on earth, in my view, that
Israel undertakes such a big operation without a lot of
people in the US government knowing it's going to happen
and in some sense helping them. I just don't see it.
History tells me that it's just can't be. But I'll
tell you. Let me take a step back and just
say this. I mean, I know I'm talking a lot
about this, but I don't even care as much about

(47:01):
that as his backing of Israel. No prevarication, no equivocation,
you know what I mean. It's not like Biden like, oh,
both sides need to do that, and both sides, you know,
we should. He knows Iran's evil. He calls them out.
He says, we know where you are coming, Andy, and
I could kill you if I wanted to. Like, there's
none of this. He's just speaks about it like a

(47:23):
normal person thinks about it, you know what I mean.

Speaker 2 (47:26):
And I appreciate that a lot, so I do too,
And that's why I was asking, like, what do you
think he's done? Because I actually like the negotiation the
I like the aggressiveness of the negotiation, the moral clarity
of the negotiation. I also like that he hasn't gotten
involved yet. And I'm not saying that you can't have
any involvement, but it's just funny to see some people

(47:48):
being like he's done the most, and it's like we
actually have, Like officially, we haven't done anything other than
helping out when Iron struck Israel, which it's just interesting
to know.

Speaker 1 (47:59):
Well, I've made this argument for many years that the
American government was constantly holding Israel back from doing what
it wanted to do. I think it was p J
O'rourk once said that if Israel could do what it
wanted to do, like the Damascus would be a suburb
of Jerusalem by now, you know what I mean. So
the point is that he saw he gave He gave

(48:19):
the Iranians a chance, he gave them two months, right,
and they wouldn't. He saw that they were playing games again,
and he let Israel do what it wanted essentially, and
I think that is the best thing for Israel.

Speaker 2 (48:31):
And okay, I just I have to mention one more thing.
We talked previously about how it had been reported that
I was at a meeting with bib Nanna and it
was reported it was reported that I asked about request
for US involvement in a war with Iran. I don't
even remember when that was. It was quite a few
weeks ago, but my thinking was at the time, and

(48:53):
I mean, I keep on saying it was reported because
it was Chathamhouse Rules and other people. I don't have
no idea who talked about it. I certainly did not.
But heading in to that meeting, what I was thinking
is why is bb Neatnyahuo coming to the United States?
And in my mind, I'm thinking, okay, we've been moving
our air craft carriers into the region, we've been having

(49:15):
a much more forward posture, and I was thinking he's
coming over to tell Trump what his plan is and
to look him in his eye and say like, do
you have my back? And so that's why my questions
were all focused on, like what are you seeking for
involvement and whatever? And you know, I have said that
I say privately what I say publicly. You know, I'm

(49:35):
a very consistent person. So my views, my concerns I've
said privately to high level officials and publicly as well. Sow. Okay, well,
let's hope that we have really good news to talk
about by next week on this front.

Speaker 1 (49:51):
Yeah, I just say, one last thing. All they need
to do is surrender their nuclear program. That's it, and
it's over, just like Commas only needs to get back
the hostages. I mean, this is not a g you know.

Speaker 2 (50:00):
So I would just like to point out here in
your annals of like amazing regime change that we've been
involved in, you might remember that we told Libya that
if they just got rid of their nukes that it
would be a wonderful thing for them, And so Gaddafi
got rid of his nukes and then soon he was
like being dragged through the streets in horrific fashion. And

(50:21):
I just want to put out there, contrary to your
illustrious history of regime change, that maybe that wasn't like
our best move ever, and that it taught everybody one
and one main lesson, which is don't give up your nukes.
And if you're you know and get your nukes.

Speaker 1 (50:36):
Okay, that's fair enough. And by the way, I don't
didn't say every regime change was good. I think Libya,
Iraq these kinds of places we should have whatever, be careful.
I'll give you another one. Yes, then maybe that taught
people to hold onto their nukes. But if Trump dropped
a bunker buster on the Mountainside nuclear facility, the world

(50:59):
would say, I better not have a nuclear weapon program
when Donald Trump's around, if he doesn't want me to
have one, right, I mean, it would change the complexion
of things because everyone has been threatening Iran forever and
no one does anything. I was viewed Iraq like this
nine to eleven happened and someone was going to pay
the price. We decided it was going to be Iraq,
which was a mistake. Now I see people blaming Israel

(51:22):
for that too, But Charon told Bush invading Iraq would
be a mistake. He did not. Israel has always thought
of Iran as a much bigger threat than Iraq. But
it was a huge mistake. I agree. Afghanistan's a different story.
We had to, don't you. Didn't you support Afghanistan? I
mean we had to go in there. Didn't we?

Speaker 2 (51:42):
Okay, I have two things I just want to say
really quickly. First is related to Iraq, which is I
don't know who, which, what the what the office was,
but I saw this Israeli official telling the Ayatola like,
don't forget what happened to Saddam Husseining, and I wanted
to be like, right, but also the US shouldn't forget
what happened in a rock, right, like that was not

(52:06):
a great story for US. Okay. The second thing on
Afghanistan is that, yes, actually my idea for Afghanistan was
that after nine to eleven we should have just had
the had the planes take off and basically carpet bombed
Afghanistan and then not even landed, and then just come
back and like never think about it again. And by

(52:28):
the way, that would have been so much cheaper and
end a better result and better for life too in
general than what we did, which was to spend a
lot of money and treasure of human life and political
capital on return and giving Afghanistan to the Taliban. But anyway,
so like I mentioned this because there is an argument

(52:51):
that just doing the bunker buster and just and then
never landing, you know, just turning around that that might
be the way to go here.

Speaker 1 (53:00):
I just don't. I just don't think that it's going
to be the same. But I think we should also
remember I keep saying last thing, but this last thing
that Rock war was won. It's the ridiculous nation building policing,
reconstituting democracy, imposing regime that we put there. That was
a problem that was never going to work. It wasn't

(53:21):
going to work in Afghanistan. For sure, we should I
felt I am against that.

Speaker 2 (53:27):
I felt like such an idiot that it took me
until the Ukraine War to realize the point for our
military industrial complex is to not win a war and leave.
The point is to have it go on as long
as possible and have the money, you know, keep going.
Do you think something I should have figured out probably

(53:49):
thirty years earlier whatever, And I was like, Oh, the
point is to have a long war, That's the whole point.

Speaker 1 (53:54):
Like do you think that the neo conservat so called
New York conservatives of the Bush and Minuet had good
intentions when they wanted to build a democracy in Iraq?
Or do you think they just wanted to cause war
for a decade?

Speaker 2 (54:07):
Oh? I think It actually totally depends on who you're
talking about. But I don't even think nefarious motivations. I
think it was just failure to think strategically. And there
can be any number of reasons why you fail to
think strategically, but that was clearly a failure. You know.
I love my former colleague, my deceased colleague, Charles Crowdhammer,

(54:29):
truly loved the man, but you should revisit his speech
calling for nation building like regime change. He said it
was a modest call for regime change. I think he
called it democratic realism, which was to get rid of
all the regimes, he said, modestly from North Africa to Afghanistan,
just that crescent there and replace them with democracies. And

(54:52):
it ages so horribly, horribly. And in the speech he
actually talks about the realists, who you know, people like
Brent sco Showcroft, who said, like, this is a bad
idea to go into a rock and he's like, maybe
they'll be proved right, but shouldn't we give it a try.
And so we tried, and we should learn lessons from it.
And I was opposed to it, but almost everybody was

(55:14):
for it, and at the very least we should learn lessons.
So when we keep hearing people say the same phrases
or arguments, it's very frustrating, which is not to say,
which is not to say, don't do anything. And that's
why you know. I began by being like, I'm gonna
annoy everybody because I'm in the middle. But I do
just beg people to be more cautious and less like

(55:34):
raw raw on something as serious as this, This.

Speaker 1 (55:37):
Is a very serious thing. I turned against the whole
democracy building stuff when Hamas was I mean that Palestines
were handed Gaza and Hammas started chucking FATA people off Ruse.
I realized that maybe they didn't want freedom there. And
I think that's the case. I don't know what the
uranium people want, and if they want something, they need
to fight for it themselves. You cannot hand people democracy

(55:57):
in that way. And let's move on to move on
to no kings. We don't have kings here, right, But yet,
what do you think about that giant protest, the largest
protest in history. I was told the no Kings protest
last weekend.

Speaker 2 (56:10):
So I saw people saying that five million people participated
in two thousand rallies nationwide and I wondered where that
number came from. But even as that may be, like
let's say it was five hundred thousand nationwide, it's not
a nothing number. And in my neighborhood, which is extremely liberal,
you know, there was a gathering, and there was one

(56:32):
in the next town over, which was also you know,
sizable for people like us. But I kind of missed
it except for seeing people get off the metro, like
from DC to go to the to the one in
my neighborhood. Because I went to the two hundred and
fiftieth anniversary of the US Army, and it was kind
of hilarious because it was like coming off the metro

(56:53):
were people with green hair, everybody wearing face masks like
it was April twenty twenty, and or like older white,
elderly white people like even having walking assistance. And then
for the Army two fiftieth, it was like everyone was
wearing their red, white and blue flag colors, and you know,
it was just like two ships in the night. So

(57:15):
I didn't really see it. What did you think.

Speaker 1 (57:17):
I went to a movie. I will talk about it
in the culture section. When it came out, there were
just cars everywhere, and I'm like what is going on?
And there was just a lot of noise coming in
the giant crowd. And where I live, there's not a
lot of that kind of a mixed community here, I'd say,
you know, but there were a lot of people there.
My point on this is, first of all, I don't

(57:38):
think you can quantify how many people are at these protests.
They can go from one to the next, or you
know who's counting. I don't buy it.

Speaker 2 (57:44):
Corporate media uncritically repeated the claim that it was five million,
so I'm sure they checked those numbers and demanded evidence
for them.

Speaker 1 (57:52):
Protests are kind of irrelevant, That's the truth. I was
looking through the largest protests ever, like what was the
one where they wore.

Speaker 2 (58:00):
Those hats, Marsh for Women's Lives, Marsh for Women's Lives
so or March for Our Lives.

Speaker 1 (58:06):
Now there's a separate one that was a gun one,
but they don't really accomplish much or of anything. It's
even if there's five million, it's just a small number
of people getting out there, and it's fine, you get excited.
But I just saw a lot of liberal commentators, you know,
talking about it like it was a game changer, like
it was a Vietnam march. Well, guess what. The Vietnam

(58:28):
marches didn't do anything. Either of Vietnam went on until
seventy four. You know what I mean, the marches in
sixty seven sixty eight, we just sent more troops. But
here's the thing. The marches seem less and less coherent.
The funniest thing I saw is that they had these
marches in Europe, in Sweden and in UK they have
literal kings in those places. It's like, what are you doing?

(58:49):
I thought it was a kind of a joke. But anyway,
here's one thing.

Speaker 2 (58:52):
I thought was interesting about it is it's actually so
much smaller or so much There seems to be so
much less protest than we saw during the first term,
from front to end. So like, even before Trump took
office in twenty sixteen and early twenty seventeen, there were
massive pro illegal immigration protests and the people going weren't illegals,

(59:18):
they were you know, typical libs. And that just continued
from one cause to the next, all the way through
the BLM riots that besieged the country for the entire
summer of twenty twenty. And that was like really effective
street action because they would have legitimate protests, you know,
supposedly like concerned about quote unquote racial justice, and then

(59:40):
behind the legitimate protests would be the Antifa people like
throwing bricks at the police. Made it very difficult to
get control over them because of the size of the
legitimate part of the protest that was not a riot. Well,
here you have had such difficulty getting any street action
from the time Trump was elected to now this beginning

(01:00:03):
with the la riots for illegal immigration and abolishing ice.
Beginning with that is the first we've really seen of anything,
and it hasn't been too legitimate. And one of the
problems that the left has is they don't have like
an issue to have a legitimate protest over and then
have a riot behind it. So the riot happened really
just totally like pro illegal immigration. That is not a

(01:00:26):
great message for Democrats going into the midterms. The no
Kings thing was their idea to kind of get back
to the anti Trumpist rhetoric that worked so well for
them in the first term. But the problem is, you remember,
like in the first term, they said, you cannot you
cannot normalize this guy, because if you normalize him, it's
all over well, bad news for Democrats. He could not

(01:00:48):
be more normalized if he tried. You know, he was
re elected after an unbelievable lawfare campaign and bank fair campaign,
tried to bankrupt him, put him in prison, put on
anyone who liked him in prison, and he was re elected.
And his numbers are the same or better than other
two term presidents at this point in their second term.

(01:01:11):
So I'm not sure like the anti Trump rhetoric is
good for mobilizing the base, as we saw with these protests,
they need a little bit more than that, and I
think they're going to have to come up with a
cohesive message and support for illegal immigration and cutting off
the healthy body parts of children or permanently sterilizing them.
It's just not like a big tent building message, you know.

Speaker 1 (01:01:34):
No, there's no I agree, there's no real coherent message here.
No Kings is not a good message because Biden and
Obama and all these people acted like Kings far more
even than Trump. And I have my criticisms of Trump
overstepping his presidential power. But just to punctuate something I
said about these protests not mattering, maybe they do matter.
Maybe the opposite happens. Think about BLM that backfired in

(01:01:56):
a massive way. Right now, dips are sort of like,
you know, no one is talking about it. Think about
all the Free Palestine protests. Look it was Israel's doing,
and look at Trump's demeanor towards Israel. Has it changed anything.
I don't think Trump's going to lose a single point
in the polls over and may even help him. So
I don't think it's it's very important. You're right. I

(01:02:19):
think it's just base people coming out and a lot
of kids coming out because it's a protest or whatever,
you know, with green hair, because that's what they do.
Let's do culture. Great, we went along on the war.

Speaker 2 (01:02:31):
I'm so sorry, but there's a lot to talk about.

Speaker 1 (01:02:33):
No, it's a really complicated issue. Actually you want to
go first or yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:02:38):
So last week I mentioned that I was going to
go to the two hundred and fiftieth birthday for the Army,
and then I said it earlier and I did go
and it was so much fun. I'm so glad i went.
I probably only went because my brother was in town.
And you know how when you live in a place,
you stop doing things that are fun at that place
unless someone comes and visits, so because he and his

(01:03:00):
wife were coming, we got the access and it was
so much better than I thought it would be. Like
I thought it was. I thought it would be good
and interesting, but they went through the history of the
army from before the country began, and they had different
people representing that, you like, each each major conflict that

(01:03:20):
they were involved in and telling their successes. They had
good music, they had amazing fireworks. The people down on
the mall were great, and it was like a big
cluster to get through everything, and you know, like you
couldn't drive down there and you had to metro and
walk very far. But everyone seemed to get through it
and it was a nice, large crowd and it was great.

Speaker 1 (01:03:45):
My instinct was to be against a military period. I
thought it was kind of an American to do. That's
my instinct, right, But when I watched it and I
saw what Trump said, he didn't make it about himself
very much at all, And despite what people were saying
about it, I just couldn't help but feel patriotic about it.
You know. I don't think it was the kind of
military march that you see in some kind of dictatorship.

(01:04:07):
It was just the celebration of the people who served.
So I thought it was actually quite from what I
saw tasteful and tasteful military parade, but you know what
I mean, it was just a celebration rather than like,
here's the force we can you know, exert and to
control you type of attitude. So I liked it. Happy

(01:04:28):
you went sounds like fun anything else.

Speaker 2 (01:04:31):
Yeah, Well, last week I also talked about how Mark
and I are speaking at the Issues, et cetera, Making
the Case conference, and so there were some questions and
including that it is going to be in Chicago. It
starts in one month Friday, July eighteenth and Saturday July nineteenth.
It's that premier conference for Christian lay people. And you

(01:04:57):
say Concordia University Chicago when people are worried about what
we just talked about, which is riots. So I should
clarify that Concordia University Chicago is actually in River Forest, Illinois,
and it's like eight miles from downtown Chicago, so it's
far away from any We've done it there like year
after year and frequently there are problems in Chicago, but

(01:05:17):
never at Concordia University Chicago. So yes, it's Friday July eighteenth,
Saturday July nineteenth, Mark and I will be speaking, so
will CNN political commentator Scott Jennings, who, by the way,
was in Israel at the time of the Iran rockets
coming in, which is I cannot even imagine what that

(01:05:38):
was like doctor Carl Truman, who's the author of The
Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self. And if you
want information, I know some of you already signed up
and told me you will be going, but you can
learn more about it and register at Issues Etc. Dot org.
So Issues etc. Dot org. And if you sign up,

(01:05:59):
if you don't mind letting me know so I can
keep an eye out for you screen we're doing that.
We're also going to go to Colorado at some point
here and do some hiking, which is good. And I
was trying to think while I was talking about this,
what movies we saw. Did I already talk about meet
me in Saint Louis.

Speaker 1 (01:06:20):
A while back? Is it possible or is this something now?

Speaker 2 (01:06:22):
Last week I couldn't remember which day I watched it,
but I watched it with my kid and that was
really interesting. And I've been kind of going down a
Judy Garland rabbit hole and after meet Me in Saint Louis,
which is sort of like a collection of songs with
a very little plot. But then I watched Oh dang it,
I can't remember the name of it. It's like a

(01:06:45):
really weird movie about this dining company that set up
diners around railroad stops and it's about I'm going to
look it up. You tell me what movie you looked?

Speaker 1 (01:06:56):
You? Uh? I watched The Accountant Too with Ben Affleck
and how was that? So you know, it's funny the
relationship between the two brothers, which is Ben Affleck and
John is it berthnaw something like that. It's quite good
and funny, but the like spy shooting plot is kind

(01:07:18):
of born. I see in your ice can tell from
your demeanor that you have figured out.

Speaker 2 (01:07:22):
What movie it was The Harvey Girls, and so the
Harvey diners or restaurants were the place where all these
girls would come out and work. And so it's kind
of weird how movies in the fifties or whenever that was,
like they're dealing with complex topics, but they do it
in such a cheerful way. So like the plot of
this is that Judy Garland comes out because she's a

(01:07:43):
mail order bride kind of. And then she meets the
guy and realizes she can't marry him, and then she
falls in love with a brothel owner and then like
the end of the movie, she's like, I'm willing to
become part of your brothel and he's like, no, I'm
leaving the brothel business. Sorry for the spoiler. I should
have done a spoiler alert. And I'm like, you're saying
it in such a cheerful way, and it's like horrific.

(01:08:03):
So one of my kids was like, oh my gosh,
that's horrible, but I still kind of liked it.

Speaker 1 (01:08:07):
Angela Lansbury's in it. I can't believe she's been around
that long.

Speaker 2 (01:08:10):
Yeah, she's great. Okay, what else have you seen? Oh?

Speaker 1 (01:08:16):
So, for Father's Day, my kids took me to see
Raiders of the third Raiders of the Lost Arc movie
was in the theaters for like old dads like me
to go see, so that was a lot of fun.
The third one was Sean Connery. Oh my god, The
Last Crusade Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade. It's just
so funny, so great. It makes me wish people made

(01:08:37):
movies like that. Still I sound like an old man.
But so that was a ton of fun. Uh sorry,
one second's that's oh. And I watched this like mob
movie that's been around a while called Killing Them Softly
with Brad Pitt and James Gandelfeini and Rayleioda, and.

Speaker 2 (01:08:57):
Uh oh, I saw one more movie what It was
so bad and so good at the same time. It
was the original believe it or not. I've never seen
any of the eleven or whatever. It was the original
Fast and Furious.

Speaker 1 (01:09:13):
Oh, you've never They all melt into one movie, so
whenever I'm watching it, I don't know. I actually don't
love those movies. I find them kind of boring. The
first one, actually, I think is my favorite one because
there's some kind of like story that makes sense in it.
It's kind of small compared to the others. Did you
like it? It's terrible, not a.

Speaker 2 (01:09:32):
Lot of character development. But I did like the car scenes,
and I feel like the movie is about the car scenes.
So there you go.

Speaker 1 (01:09:41):
That's great, nice that you watch it. It's like when
it's you and The Godfather.

Speaker 2 (01:09:46):
So I didn't see The Godfather until I was like
twenty eight years old, and then I went around telling
everybody for two weeks that there's a really good movie
they should see and it's called The Godfather. And Mark
and I were dating at the time or whatever, and
he was like, this is so embarrassing.

Speaker 1 (01:10:02):
Did he say, you know there's a sequel?

Speaker 2 (01:10:04):
And then I saw, well I actually saw the sequel
at the same time, and I loved them both.

Speaker 1 (01:10:08):
Yeah, they're gread of course. Yeah, all right, great. If
people want to reach us, they can email us at
radio at the Federalist dot com. We always love to
hear from you. Then we'll be back next week. Until then,
be lovers of freedom and anxious for the fray.

Speaker 2 (01:10:22):
I want no more, no more, no more.