Iran Launches Fresh Missile Attacks On Israel (6-7-26)

Good day mate 40 here talking to a longtime friend of mine Eric Longabati investigative journalist and he is a major player behind a new feature film documentary that is called Autumn Autumn Gold. It's a great title. Eric, talk to me. What is this feature film documentary, Autumn Gold? What's it all about? >> Uh, Autumn Gold is about a secret biological and chemical warfare program uh that was conducted by the Pentagon uh back in the 1960s for about 10 years that was kept secret, was denied. Uh the existence of it wasn't even acknowledged. And uh I broke the story some 25 years ago at the CBS Evening News, but the film is about the entire not just the backstory, but actually there's new news in it, which I'll elaborate on in a minute, but the entire inside story of why a story like this that uh seemingly was broken 25 years ago and was in terms of what happened, how it happened, the proof, the absolute proof that it happened and it had been covered. up. Why even though that happened and it became a big deal for many many years and basically the bottom line is the vets that were uh used as human guinea pigs without their informed consent or knowledge and were harmed by various dangerous substances were just left to twist in the wind and basically die off, go away and never be given VA medical care or helped in any way. just sort of the government staying quiet and just outlasting them till they're all dead and gone. So that's basically the the short version of the film, but it it it it's not an expose. The expose was done a long time ago, but it is a furtherance of the story and it does actually break news, which is I won't want to ruin the film for you, but um it let's just say it proves that people were harmed and people were killed. And how did you first uh come upon the story and when? >> Uh literally when I was starting my career as an investigative producer and investigative journalist back in 1993. I got a tip, the straightup tip. Um, that came not from the guy involved, but from his brother-in-law who told me uh his brother-in-law saw some really strange stuff when he was in the Navy uh back in 1963 and was uh doing some duty off of Hawaii on his ship called the USS Namaro and he said I should give his brother-in-law a call. And uh sounded interesting to me. So I did and he proceeded to tell me not of some vast conspiracy but proceeded to tell me just the basic facts of what he saw with his own eyes when he was on his ship back then. And what he saw always got his attention and concerned him because it was pretty basic, pretty uh, you know, stuff that just said, "Wow, I never, you know, there were guys with gas masks coming on the ship installing various uh, machines that he had never seen before and never seen guys walking around the ship with gas mask on." And the short and sweet of it was when he asked them, "What are you guys doing?" He said, "Shut up and go back to work." Uh, and that always stuck with him in his head. He saw what he saw and that's really all he knew. He didn't know anything else other than he had heard during the course of this testing that went on for 3 months. He had heard this name. It was called something Autumn Gold. That's what it was called. They didn't know what they were doing. They didn't know what these guys were doing. They asked any questions. They said, "Don't worry about it. Go back to work. Do your job." And that's what they were doing as they always did in training. But they didn't know what these other guys were doing on the ship. And so it always stuck with him. It just it seemed to him to be a lot out of the ordinary. and he didn't know what was going on. So, he uh long after that point uh he had some issues with uh his kids and some health issues and he wondered what this thing was all about. And when he asked, they told him it didn't exist. >> Now, where were you professionally? Like who who were you working for when you first got this story? >> I was in New York. Um I was working for a new news magazine show called American Journal. And uh I was with the investigative unit and I was I you know I'd broken there a little bit but the show had just I don't even think it had gone on the air yet. It may have just gone on the air and I got this tip. I started looking into it and uh took a long time took six years to break the story but piece by piece crumb by crumb the facts led me to um getting some classified documents declassified and released to me. And lo and behold, they proved, not entirely, but they proved it happened. They proved when it happened, where it happened, who was involved, what the basic outlines of the testing was, and the real real thing that made it a big story was the document themselves. One particular just one document, one test report that never been seen before and was classified um said they used human test subjects. It was literally, you know, I I I don't make any great claim to fame that investigative reporting requires uh exceptional intelligence. It just requires a lot of perseverance and fortitude. That in the document, it showed they use human test subjects. Um, and what Mr. Bates and everybody else told me was nobody told them that. They nobody told them they were test subjects. They just were on a ship doing their duty and guys came on and did what they did and they didn't know what they were doing. >> Another guy, >> sorry, go ahead. Uh what year did these incidents take place? >> Uh Autumn Gold took place in May of 1963 for about 3 months. There was one test before that. But the reason why the film's called Autumn Gold is because this particular test, Autumn Gold, was the smoking gun proof that in fact it had happened that they used human test subjects in this bigger testing program called Project Shad as not by inadvertently like if you're familiar with Agent Orange or a lot of the other toxic exposures to veterans and to servicemen. Um what made this unique and made it uh the first time ever that it was proven that they by design and by protocol meaning for the purposes of the test they did this on purpose. It wasn't an accident. It wasn't inadvertently exposing someone just because they happen to be under the cloud like in Agent Orange they're you know defoliating uh the jungle and anybody down in the jungle get exposed. They actually did this test on purpose to expose uh men uh to the substances and then the real smoking gun part was another guy named George Arnold who uh you know once they sprayed the ship and they did this over months or three months multiple times. Um, when they were done with that spraying, when a airplane flew over and sprayed the ship, he happened to have a job that was on the outside of the ship and he saw the plane and he literally felt the mist hit his face. Um, he said it was like a fog and he felt it like little droplets and and shortly thereafter someone ordered him to blow in a tube and give a gargo sample and take a throat swab. And when he said, "What's that for?" They said blankly, you know, shut up and go back to work. So, it's really a kind of a simple deal in the in the end, but very secret, very uh never acknowledged. And, you know, they did a human guinea pig test and didn't tell the guys they were using them. >> And why would they do these tests? What was the purpose? >> Uh the purpose of Project Shad was twofold. It was at the time during the Cold War when it started in the 1960s, it started with Kennedy um and ended with Nixon uh 10 11 years later. The purpose was it was a hot and heavy uh cold war race just like with nuclear weapons to utilize these new weapons of chemical and biological warfare as an effective weapon. So the the purpose was twofold both offensive and defensive. Um the the program still today is is mostly classified. The only revealing of it has been basically the story and the purpose was both offensive and defensive. And the offensive part was nothing wrong with testing a weapon. I don't have any uh adverse thing just like with nuclear weapons, but it was so dangerous that it was all top secret and the utilization of it as a weapon was offensive. Then also there's a fine line between offensive and defensive. Um, the reason why you want to, you know, if you want to do a human test to see how much anthrax or uh, VX nerve gas or anything else gets into a human's lungs and their respiratory system, best way to do it is spray a human. A machine can tell you a lot. Uh, mechanical sampling device or as the head of this program ultimately says, you'll see in this film, human samplers. I mean, if you want to test things on human beings, the best way to do it is use human beings. You can't really argue with that scientifically. You can on a lot of other grounds like ethics and uh you know that kind of stuff, but that's that's what they did. >> And what's the relationship between project shad and project 112? >> Uh project 112 was the overreaching uh program that did a lot of things. uh most especially and most the majority of it was uh previous to project shed they had sprayed American cities where they sprayed they dropped light bulbs full of bacteria in the New York uh subway system they sprayed cities like Minneapolis where they didn't tell anybody they were spraying it just like with every other test they just did a variety of testing with a variety of uh things and they just didn't tell anybody in the public or anywhere else that what they were doing. So, Project Shad was a subset where they went a lot more directly into it. Spraying a city or dropping light bulbs in the New York subway system or spraying other places was sort of the generic over spray something and test and try to understand how it works scientifically. So, if you're using it, I mean that was the purpose of it as a weapon. It was a weapons test um to see how effective it would be in getting to the target and you know doing what it's designed to do which is kill people. Um project shading uh Autumn Gold and Project Shad was much more specific. It was mostly attacking ships at sea and trying to learn how to attack a ship at sea with chemical or biological weapons. Because when you use a weapon, you know, you don't just, especially with biological, you don't just use it and spray it and just hope it works, you know, the cl the cloud may be blown off and, you know, only hit the bow of the ship or how do you get down deep into the ship and get everybody inside and make sure they're exposed to enough of whatever compound you're using to kill them. And that's why they did these specific tests called project shed which was attacking ships at sea. So you could get the you know learn and understand in testing how best to do that and how best to protect them. It's a twofold thing. It's it's both. >> And what does the evidence suggest about the number and severity of people harmed by the experiments in Autumn Gold? >> Um well this is one thing I'd like to say about this film. Um, I'm not the kind of journalist that does allegations. There are no allegations in this film. Um, the al the the actual factual proof comes from the Pentagon with declassified documents. And more importantly, when you're making a film, uh, declassified films, two of them, the only two ever seen about Project Shad. There's 44 more that have never been seen. I have two. I use two of them to help break this story and prove this is what happened. Just watch the film. I always say a three-year-old could break this story if they had these films. They're classified briefing films that were made at the time. There was a film made of every test. The documents showed me there there was fil there was film filming done. So, it took a long time to get those films, these two films for Autumn Gold and another test that was his sister's test called Copperhead. But what it shows is that this is what in fact happened. The reason why they were doing this was not, this is what will blow your mind. It was not to see if anybody got medically sick. It was a weapons test. U they didn't care if anybody got sick. They just needed human test subjects to derive the data from the penetration and you know how well it got into your lungs and into your respiratory system. So that's what they did. They didn't bother to check if anybody got sick. The compounds they used, which is a variety, but the primarily the three, and I'll tell you which one turned out to be the worst, which is kind of ironic. They used the bacteria, which is a standin for anthrax. The only difference is anthrax is lethal. Um, the bacteria they use is not immediately lethal, but it is dangerous. They knew it was dangerous. They used it anyways because it was the best standin. They couldn't spray uh people with anthrax and just see how many died and how effective it was. That would have been the best uh way to do it scientifically. Uh they did do that with Reese's monkeys. They killed a lot of monkeys um doing that. But they didn't use anthrax on the humans. They used a standin bacterium which is for all intents and purposes the same thing other than its lethality. Um it wasn't immediately lethal but it can harm you and the army knew it could harm you in various circumstances. The other thing they used was cadmium thing called zinc cadmium sulfide. Cadmium is a carcinogen and and they basically said it's safe enough. Uh so we're going to use it. Um the third thing that turned out with all the evidence to be the most dangerous was a decontaminant and I'll pret I'll attempt to say the name correctly which is beta protolactate. It's called BP. It was a known carcinogen causes cancer and a lot of other bad things. you're not supposed to be exposed to it even then when they used it. And it turns out according to the guy that ran the program in a uh pardon the film, I don't want to blow the film, but you'll see he actually admits that's what killed him. He was exposed to it even though he had a gas mask and took part in test and in the testing. Um it was dangerous stuff. So even he got enough of it to uh give him a liver disease and all kinds of things. and he admits that that's what killed him and it was dangerous at the time and the simple question was you know why were you wearing a gas mask and nobody else was that was the reason the >> so what does what does the evidence suggest about the number of people who were killed by the >> the medical harm right you know varied from whatever it could be depending on what the exposure to whatever compound was um the number of servicemen involved in project shed is in the ballpark of 6,000 um in the variety of tests. There was some 45 46 tests of uh that took place in project shed and um the ballpark figure which has never been completely enumerated by any stretch of the imagination is about 6,000 servicemen exposed in a variety of tests over that 10 years. And you know they they started the first and this is what's unique about the story in the film. The first knowledge literally that anybody had including the participants other than the people that did the test which was the army um was they didn't know they were in the test. If you maybe you saw something most people saw nothing. Most people on these ships, if you ask them what happened in May of 1963 when you're on board the USS Navaro off of Hawaii doing training, they said nothing different than any other day we were doing training. We just wondered why we were out there tooling around all the time doing nothing for 3 months. But turned out they were doing something. But most most guys, if you talk to a guy in a ship, you'd say, "I didn't see anything. I was just doing my job in the, you know, whatever his job was." He didn't happen to see a guy in a gas mask and he didn't happen to see him putting these machines on. So the ballpark figure is about 6,000 guys from all branches, but the majority of them are Navy sailors who were on board Navy ships that were targeted in these tests, >> about 6,000 exposed. And and what about premature deaths? >> Uh premature deaths or or harm, medical harm. Um the number of claims made for uh VA uh service connected disability is unknown. It's in the hundreds at least, maybe the thousands. Um not one single veteran has ever been granted service connected disability because until the story broke, no one even knew they were in a test. So when they started saying, "Well, what what the hell was that all about? I didn't even know I was exposed to these things and I have all these maladies and things. what's what's the you know what's the bottom line? I want to make a claim to say maybe my cancer is involved with this. And literally the data the actual scientific data that would enable a serviceman to say I Robert Bates is the best example. He's one of the primary guys in the in the movie and the initial source of my investigation. Um he got to the point finally where they sent him a letter and said you were exposed to X Y and Z during this time on this ship. He was actually in two tests. Um and his ship was and they said this stuff can do you harm. And the way it works in service connected disability um it's on you to prove it. So prove it has to be more likely than not that you got he had cancer, he died of brain cancer, you got cancer or you got whatever. He has a long list of maladies and say it's on you to prove that you got sick because of your exposure at this time at that place blah blah blah and okay so give me the data about how much I was exposed to for how long and what and quantities and all that and the bottom line with that was the Pentagon said go pound sand we're not guarantee it's classified so it's impossible and nobody could pro but there there are pl there you know hundreds if not over thousands of claims where they just said you can't prove it so you're denied. They just denied every claim. There's not a single guy to date that's been granted service connected disability. >> So, how did you establish build this story and where did it first either go to air or go to print? >> Well, in that initial starting to look into it, uh I was at the particular show I told you about American Journal. I just basically continued on in my day job. No one was really interested in it. They thought, well, it's kind of interesting, but you know, you know, maybe they sprayed them with seawater. That was what the first correspondent I worked with told me. You know, I said, I don't think they did from everything I've seen. I think it's a little more than seawater. So, in that process of investigating and getting the classified documents and then the classified films, I said, "You need to do is watch this film." And three-year-old, like I said, it says exactly what they did, exactly what they sprayed, and exactly how they did it. Um so that process took six years. It finally ended up uh in the film you'll see a narrative which I I don't sherk from because I was uh in the mainstream media uh network news business for a very long time. You'll see a narrative sort of a subnarrative of why does a story like this take this long to get on the air? And the reason for that is my opinion you know journalism is not what it used to be. It's more of a it's much more of a business than it is about journalism. So, in in the story, you'll see what happened. I was a producer at CNN working there on various stories, not all investigated, but mostly investigative. And I had this story and I pitched it to them and they said, "Wow, hell of a story." You know, blah blah blah. I thought they were going to pull the trigger. I'd say we were at third base. And uh you'll see in the film uh you know an interview of me because I'm the producer. I can't interview myself. Another person interviewing me about the story. And lo and behold, what happened literally a week or so after that interview, CNN put on a different story about a similar, not testing on your own people, but uh claiming that the uh Pentagon used nerve gas in the Vietnam War and something called Operation Tailwind to kill American defectors in Laos. Longer the story run the film for you again, but that story was BS. They had no evidence. It was all allegations and long and the short of it was it blew back in their face. The story was retracted. It everyone involved in it was fired and the story was uh one of the worst miaopas for bad investigative journalism in my in my view and it was just baloney. I mean they didn't have the evidence to back it up to make that like I said my film doesn't make any allegations. you can watch the the evidence from the Pentagon itself. It's not making allegations that something happened or something occurred or somebody got sick. They're all proven facts. What really comes out in the film is the um director of Project Shad, who is now deceased because he died of a disease that he himself claimed killed him. Uh that was directly related to his exposure to a carcinogen, which was the decontaminated in this test that they just, you know, it was just uh what they did and what they had to do at the time and they did it. It's really >> Okay. Wait, but but tell me again, where did the story break? It was on CBS News, I believe. Yeah, the story it finally ultimately got to uh the short version. CNN ultimately, you know, didn't do the story because of what happened with Tailwind. They were said, "Not in a million years." And then 60 Minutes as well. Um turned the story down. Um and ultimately, even though I was working at CBS Evening News, I'd done some other work for and done a lot of work there. even want a Dupont which is a cooler the pullet surprise for another piece I did with a correspondent there finally on my own separate from see I no one was you don't have a story I always tell people until you have an outlet and on my own I continued to report the story ultimately uh confronted the secretary of defense inside a Navy ship in San Diego unbeknouncsted to him and that finally forced the Pentagon to acknowledge it so I finally got the story on the uh Bottom line was the story finally got the green light on the CBS Evening News and me and a correspondent named Vince Gonzalez uh did the story and it went on the air. It caused a big >> air that was May of 2000. >> Okay. So it went on the CBS Evening News, the the flagship news program. >> Yeah. With Dan Rather at the time before he lost his job. >> Okay. And then what happened after that with regard to reactions from the Pentagon, from reactions with Congress and with other journalism outlets. >> Okay. What happened, what was unique was the reason that what got it on the air was my independent um because CBS hadn't pulled the trigger was like basically saying what more do you need? You have the pro films of that they made themselves that say what happened here and show and prove what happened. Um, what happened was the story finally got on the air after I did some other things and the Pentagon acknowledged the Project Shad's existence for the first time ever before it went on the air. So I said, "Okay." They finally admitted that it happened and the details, the generic details of who, what, where, and why, but nothing else, just that it had happened. So we put it on the air and this is what's really kind of the good yarn. And um this this program was so secret that when it went on the air, no one knew about it. No one no one had any idea about it other than the Pentagon and and other maybe a few people that were there that you know never talked about it because they were under oaths and other reasons. You can't talk about classified top secret stuff. You get in trouble. So when it went on the air, it honestly it had a big resounding thud of there was no reaction because everybody had to absorb what was in the story. And that took about six months. And so from government officials to most especially the sailors, they basically said, "What is this? What the hell is all this stuff? I just saw this story that said I was using a human guinea pig and there's the films of it and there's all the documents to prove it." And they went to the VA and said, "Well, are we going to get medical care for our exposure in this test that exposed us to toxic substances?" And the VA, to the VA's credit, cuz they're not the bad guy in this story. Um, they sort of are now, but the bottom line still falls with pens. The VA said, "Okay, well, we'll ask the Department of Defense what is this all about?" So they finally did about 6 months later and the Department of Defense finally told them, "Well, we're going to have to open an investigation and then we'll be able to tell you something about what the facts are." And they took another 2 years to do that. And then when they finally did, they basically acknowledged everything that was in the report that, you know, they didn't shoot it down in any way, shape, or form. They just basically said, "Don't worry, nobody got harmed." there. And that was the part where they just laid it off like, you know, these are old men, they're getting older by the minute, that if we just outlast them, we won't have to admit that aspect. But the most important part, obviously, is that they harmed people and they killed people. And uh that that aspect of it was just, well, we don't have any evidence that shows anybody got harmed. That was a flatout lie. And in this film, you'll see that the head of the program himself puts that lie to bed. Now, were there congressional hearings? >> Yeah. That what happened immediately after the fallout was, you know, after the VA got involved and said, "Well, we don't know anything about this. Why don't you tell us about this Pentagon?" and Pentagon said uh uh okay because of the fallout there were congressional hearings, Senate hearings, a uh two uh National Institute of Health and Institute of Medicine studies that went on for years, 10 years total and and then ultimately a class action federal lawsuit which went on for a few years and all of it amounted to a big goose egg of nothing. live and he said, "Well, we really can't say if anybody got sick or not." And the uh the Institute of Health said, "We asked the Pentagon for all that specific exposure data so we could do correlation to see if anybody got sick from these compounds, which like I said, almost all of them are dangerous, some very severely." Um, and they just said, "We're not giving you the information." So it's like someone, you know, it's just literally a sailor couldn't prove through medical means a doctor saying, "I need all the scientific data to give you my analysis of harm." You can just say generically that the decontaminant for example was a known carcinogen uh back then. So even though it's harmful, they were still left to say, "Well, you got to prove it harmed you because you were exposed to it." And so congressional hearings, class federal class action lawsuit, uh government studies paid millions of dollars and went on. It all came to a big goose egg. These guys were just left hanging in the wind. >> And what about other journalists and outlets and media organizations? Did they follow up on this story? >> Yeah, there I mean domestically and internationally. Um it it it finally did have a big wall up. Everybody covered it. It ended up on the front page of the New York Times a couple of times and everything else under the sun. But the bottom line was the level of uh the the interest was there, but the level of investigative reporting as followup by anybody else was pretty much non-existent. It was sort of like, well, it happened a long time ago. And you I mean, honestly, my personal opinion is that the says, well, you know, everybody knows the government does bad stuff. This isn't the worst of biological and chemical weapons. Uh things that have been crazy that you would never believe. I mean, you've probably heard of MK Ultra where they injected LSD into people and just to see what happens when you do that. Um in terms of mind control and guys jumped out of windows and killed themselves and there was a lot there's a few other examples of really crazy stuff you wouldn't believe actually happened or my uh at some point with this film have some merch going along with it. And my favorite saying is I don't believe in conspiracy theories unless they're proven true. And there are a few things that you wouldn't imagine a Hollywood writer could come up with that are proven true. They're they're factual history. And so yeah, there was a huge fallout eventually. It became a big deal. Um all kinds of stuff media pickup of one of the other aspects was uh in this related to autumn gold. The the other test called Copperhead was conducted off of Canada, not even in the United States waters, off of Newf Finland. So they got very interested in it. They they picked it up and covered the CBC covered it a lot. They had me on their national news cast and everything else. But the bottom line with it is there was a lot of media pickup afterwards, but the depth of it was pretty limited. Just wow, that's a pretty amazing story. They used human guinea pigs uh in America without their consent and just basically said don't worry, nobody got harmed. >> And and how does this feature film further the story? Does it break news? >> Yeah, it breaks news. Um, without ruining the film, it actually provides um the head of project Shad admits that it killed him and others were exposed to the same thing that killed him, which was a decontaminant that turned out to be much more dangerous and deadly than any of the other compounds which were dangerous. And but this turned out to be the most dangerous and it's the reason why the very limited cadre of people conducting the test were the army and the project 112 shad were wearing gas masks. they do it at the time and I'll give you one little nugget from the film when asked okay I mean it's not rocket science asked why were you wearing a gas mask and this film you're looking at uh you'll see a part that's very you know it really gets people which was that a lawyer asked him what you are looking at here is the decontaminant being dispensed throughout the ship in this one particular test and happened on all the tests and he says yeah that's what it looks like cuz it's a film of it. It's actually a narrator is telling you the decontaminance is being dispersed in the ship and you see it happening and he and his answer to that was before it was why are you wearing a gas mask? That was why. Um and then well what about that? He says I forgot we did that. >> Now >> literally that was his he wasn't telling the truth. He knew what they did in the testing. He designed and executed it for 10 years. But his answer was, "Well, you know, I needed a gas mask because I thought it was dangerous." And his quintessential sort of just, you'd be amazed when you hear it when he says, "They were just boat drivers." Like, they were collateral damage. We didn't really care. >> Now, the business of investigative journalism has changed and the reporting that you did on this story requires resources. And so you've been in in the middle of this transition of a news business that used to fund more of these type of stories to a news business that now funds far few of them. So walk me through the changes in the business model of investigative journalism particularly as you saw it firsthand. >> Yeah. And this story is a great uh uh story about that. the the story each and every aspect until a certain point I was in a day job as an investigative producer a producer and specialized in investigative journalism. So I did a little the initial one was on a show. I started to look into it and a certain point they weren't interested. Um and I have a background in my uh college degree in TV and film uh becoming a broadcast journalist business management and I agree with the being counters investigative journalism is not a profit center. It's not going to make you a lot of money. Um and that's where business 101 and journalism 101 diverse. I mean, I've never sat with a boss or for a company and say, "This is a this is going to make you a lot of money. It's going to bring in a lot of viewers. It's going to sell a lot of advertising." And and even if it does that, uh you still it's still a cost uh return analysis. Well, it cost you a ton of money to do it. How much you going to make uh how much are you going to pull back in in uh in revenue when when it's done? Well, even if it does get you a lot of eyeballs and a lot of attention, it's expensive to do. So the profit is usually non-existent and even if there is some because it's such a huge story it gets a lot of attention it's very minimal. Um we you learn in uh uh TV school that a lower rated higher profit um program whatever it is is more profitable even than a higher rated expensive department. It's like making a product you know I mean it's your profit margin that matters not how much you make. It cost you a million dollars to make something, you make 1.1, that means you made $100,000. If it cost you half that and you make what, you know, it's just you make more profit. I mean, it Hollywood knows that very well because, you know, the highest profited, the most profitable movie ever made was the Blair Witch Project. And people go, "What's that? I've probably never heard of some people have, but it was so minimal in its cost and its profit when it was made was so high that its actual profit was the highest grossing profit film ever. Cost you $200 million to make a Spielberg and you make 210, you only made $10 million. If you cost 50,000 to make it on an iPhone and you make 10 million, you made a lot more profit. So investigative journalism on its whole in the last I'd say 15 years because I've been in it in depth. um you know the funding and the financial resources to do it because of the implosion of the media model from newspapers to broadcast and everything else. It just doesn't allow for it's not a profitable endeavor and I I don't disagree with that. It is not a profitable endeavor. But when you're talking about journalism versus business, they're two different things. I mean journalism is no longer broadcast journalism in particular. my my my career is no longer a loss leader. It used to be a loss leader. They made all their money elsewhere. Entertainment and other things. And you could go out and do actual journalism, which the bottom line was just don't lose too much money. At least break even. You know, try not to just burn the money in the fireplace, but things cost money and there's no guarantee of an outcome when you do investigative journalism. I don't do that kind of journalism. like say we're got a story from the beginning and now we'll make everything fit fit where it goes to make us have a story. No, I mean it leads you where it leads you and if you're after the truth, it could be a big fat dud. You could spend a year or two or three and turn out well doesn't really pan out, you know, and you just spend all this money, time, and effort and what'd you get for it? Nothing. So if if if a journalism outlet, say the New York Times or CNN or 60 Minutes, let's say a specific journalism outlet wanted to get to the bottom of this story, and how much would it have uh would it have cost them in retrospect? You'd have to pay an investigative journalist, reporters, researchers. >> Yeah, you have to there's a there's a there's a cost to creating the product. So this would have taken less time if you had a team of 10 people digging into it. But the nature of it in and of itself, just getting something declassified or through mandatory declassification review can take years. Okay, in this case it did. And and and finding something and then even trying to get it released, it can take long or longer. So it's like you cannot I mean from a business standpoint there's no uh business reason to say yeah just keep funding this fund it and you got a blank check and you can keep going until you figure out what the bottom line is in terms of the story. Like I said you could end up 5 years later well well it's not not what we thought it might be and then you just burned all that money. It's like producing a product and having no product to show to go to market, you know, to go to go to uh go to the public. It's just not a um profit producing endeavor. But journalism is not supposed to be. It's supposed to be informing the public so they can make uh informed decisions about uh a lot of things and providing them the factual uh truth to let them make their own decision about what they think and what they plan on doing about it. So that it it would have taken it would have taken a good amount of time probably years but it took six years with one guy me basically I I wasn't working the the corporate media outlets I I worked for wouldn't pay me to pursue it. Okay. I I had a day job to do and producing whatever stories they wanted and and people always get this wrong when they talk about the vast uh you know, for example, left-wing media conspiracy. Um you know that most people in the media are liberal, but it's not a it's not a this is the story you're going to do, so do it. This is the story we're you're not going to do. Don't uh you know, we're not going to allow that story. That that happens. But the bottom line is it's just do the stories that we want to get on the air for the purposes of creating an audience and making money. They didn't have to do that before. Now past 15 years, they're a business just like every other business. The motive is profit and you do what like with any business will make you money and get you customers. >> So if there had been a clear bad guy who's doing this this bad thing, it would have made the story more sexy, I expect. So let's say it was a KKK group that did this or Chinese spies or Soviet spies that uh did this or >> or a narrative. Yeah. Pushing a narrative is a thing. In this particular story, I can tell you um that because the CNN Tailwind story, you know, blew up in their face. They just said, "We're not touching the story. We don't care what you have." You know, and I'm not joking that it's just basically I had the goods. I had the goods and they just said, "We're not touching this story. We don't care." But at CBS News, it wasn't much different there, but they to their credit, they just basically when I had everything and anything you could have, and it was indisputably to say you could prove it in a court of law, um they said, "Okay, we'll do it." But I I say this with uh not having any future um designs on the mainstream media as a career. Um they really either way uh whether it went good or went bad in the end either way the bosses that wasn't their main concern. Their main concern was generating an audience. So if it turned out to blow up in their face, oh well we didn't want that to happen. If it turned out to be absolutely true and like this story and you know wins awards and whatever and and is true, that's better. That's better than getting it blowing up in your face. You don't want that to happen. You don't want to have to fire your own journalist for for incompetence or or negligence. But either way, they didn't care. What they really care about is getting a story on the air that's going to draw an audience and make money. I mean, when I produced stories as a producer in news magazines, the first thing they would ask you once the business start to go down was, "What's the story going to cost?" You know, if it it was two blocks away uh and it didn't cost much money, well, that's a better story. If it requires going halfway around the world and spending all kinds of money just to get the story or do interviews or just the production aspect, then that story is a lot less likely to ever get done because it's just not profitable and or the the way the business went. For example, I I worked for Brian Ross at ABC News. He lost his job too for making a big mistake. Um, investigative journalism in the networks. This is sort of the dirty little secret that I tell readily now that investigative journalism became so expens you know it's so expensive with a lack of a profit um incentive that they outsourced it. Um just like most people go to the movies uh most almost every movie you see from Warner Brothers or Universal is not made by Warner Brothers or Universal. It's made by independent producers. They license it. They they distribute it. They do all the other stuff but it's not owned by them. It's owned by the independent because it's too costly to have, you know, 10 producers and 20 cameramen and writers and editors and everything else need to to produce something and and it's too expensive. So, it's outsourced. Investigative journalism starting in about when I was doing it, all my regular all my career was done at regular corporate media jobs. I was an employee of the a corporate media outlet and I did my job. If they liked me, I kept my job. They didn't like me. I've never been fired, but if they didn't like if I wasn't happy with their journalistic integrity, uh, as opposed to Scott P, I left. I got >> So, walk walk me through your employers and then tell me when your employment situation changed from employee to contract. So, with regard to investigative journalism, walk me through your employers when you're an employee. >> A good example of it is at CBS News, where I worked for about two and a half years. I was what's called most people in their regular day job whatever that happens to be they understand the difference between employee and and a independent contractor um although I was an employee of CBS News I got a check uh W2 meaning the law says I'm an employee I didn't get benefits I didn't get the thing of which you had if you were a full-time staff employee most people in broadcast journalists have a contract even producers do contracts for whatever it is one two three years and you know you have a contract Um, I was in-house working at my desk at CBS Evening News Bureau in Los Angeles. I got paid every week just like everybody else, but I didn't get benefits. So, technically, uh, legally I was an employee, but technically I wasn't the same as a corporate employee under the opaces of of a corporation. So, when I did my work as an investigative journalist, you most people won't believe this, but it's absolutely true. it came to be there wasn't a lot of guys doing what I did but the kind of work I do was expensive and so I own the story this particular story about project shad now the film called autumn gold I own the only thing you saw when you watch the evening news with Dan rather this two-part investigative report the only thing CBS the corporation owned was the stuff that they shot themselves with the correspondent where a cameraman for CBS shot him standing up and talking to the camera. They stand up, we call it, in the business. That's the only thing they own. That's their their product. They own the uh the video that was shot by their cameraman and the reporter standing in front of the camera doing a voiceover. Everything else that went into the story, the reporter product, the government films, the uh the uh documents that were in my possession and my reporters notebooks and all my work product we call it. It's all owned by me. The story was basically owned by me. I didn't own what went on the air, but I did own what was contained within it. And when we did those stories and multiple follow-ups, um, you know, they had to pay me for that. I had a contract just like they pay you to show up for work every day when you work for a corporation. If they don't pay you, you don't show up. And if if they say show up and you're not going to get paid, we all know what everybody says. I'm not showing up. >> Okay. Wait, let me let me try again, Eric, because you didn't answer my question. I asked you to walk me through your your corporate career. So, you started out as this independent uh news magazine. So, walk me through your employer during those. >> Yeah. No. Okay. I'll walk you through it. It's not independent. They're all corporate media mainstream media outlets. Um I started at American Journal in New York, which is a was a show produced by King World. Uh and that was a new show, an offshoot of Inside Edition. I only worked with their investigative unit. didn't work with any other aspect of uh their show. Then I went to a CBS uh show here in Los Angeles when I came back from there which was a nationally syndicated show called Day and Date um which was owned and produced by CBS syndication CBS the corporation. Then I went to my one and only time in local television news KCAL TV here in Los Angeles as their investigative producer and then uh after that I started working. So there there were some other smaller things in between which were all just regular 9-to-f5 or more with journalism but you know corporate uh owners and you're an employee you know it's a standard employee job for a corporation media corporation um at a certain point I got to the level with my work that um I was a independent in-house contract producer first for CBS News and the CNN and also ABC News. Brian Ross for six years. So there's about nine ten years there of being that. Um and that's where it's it's kind of a gray area. Um you know, yeah, I worked for CBS News, I worked for ABC News, I worked for um uh CNN. I also was able to do my work independently elsewhere if I so chose. If I had a story, for example, um just use this story and CBS didn't want it. It wasn't their story. It's my story. I'm an independent production company. Basically, an independent producer. I said, "Well, I'll try it with NBC or ABC or PBS or whoever. Doesn't really matter to me. I'm just looking to be uh paid and get a paycheck just like any other employee, but I'm working for my own company, not for the corporation." Um, and if they didn't adhere to the contract, I would hold them to it. if they said they didn't want to do whatever story the, you know, they have the editorial control over their own company and their own broadcast and their own programs, I'd say, well, okay, for whatever reason, either editorially or financially or business-wise, I'd say, I'll take it somewhere else and see what I can do there. Um, and that's how it worked. Um, I've did I've done many stories at other networks, NBC and and other places where I did standalone investigative pieces that the other networks didn't want for whatever reason. And you know, and that's how it worked. I I didn't sell stories. I they they hired me and I did my story. I did. Okay. I >> that's how it worked. It was basically, you know, all those places media outlets and then as an in-house network news investigator, producer at the various networks. >> Now, how did Autumn Gold come together? Were you the driving force behind it looking for funding for a feature film or how did it come together? >> Yeah, absolutely. Even from the beginning, I just had a personal notion that this should be a documentary. It's that amazing of a story. I mean, proving that human guinea pigs were on purpose used by the US government, never been done before. The story was such a yarn. I mean, it's it's a it's a it's a real page turner or, you know, plot turner as you call in films. Um it was just like this needs to be more than in network news you get, you know, six minutes if you're lucky, you know, and to tell a story like this in a couple of three minute uh news segments or even in a news magazine where maybe you get eight minutes. It just wasn't really possible to fully tell the story and all the amazing twists and turns and the the aspects of the story itself and and what happened and all kind I just knew it had to be a documentary. So, a certain point while I was in my day job seeking to get this story on the air in the network news as an investigative expose just, you know, prove it happened and blow people out of the water with you won't believe this. Um, I got some funding from a thing called the fund for investigative journalism where they gave me $10,000 and that's where I was able to initiate the production um of the actual story itself. whether it turned out to what you saw in the CBS evening news were interviews owned by me. Okay, that what you saw what you see in the film is you'll see some of those same interviews and additional stuff. Uh but that it's it's just the the material itself the the product per se uh is the same. It just matters how it's packaged or we say smoke and mirrors. Um, how it became a documentary was it was initi it was I always thought if it would be a documentary but you know I have a day job and have to earn a living just like everybody else. So I tried to do it there and sure if I had the money and ultimately it was uh not funded by anybody else. It was funded by me. Uh I paid for the thing in full. Um, and the reason I did that was because I think it's an amazing story proven true that these guys got royally screwed over and been left to die by the US government. I just don't think that's something that should be allowed to occur. And I think the mainstream media should jump all over the story, but they won't. Um, they just it's not the primary motivating factor why they do stories anymore. I mean, uh, it I've had other experiences of that being a network investigative producer. I'll give you a good example that has I interviewed I'm the only guy to ever interview a convicted Islamic terrorist in the custody of US government right here in our backyard, Islamic terrorist who had a plot to kill a lot of people in Los Angeles. And I'm the only person that's ever interviewed somebody convicted of a crime. He went to Super Max in Colorado alongside the shoe bomber and and the a lot of other people that were there. Um the uni bomber and a lot of other people, but the media they they didn't care. >> What was the name of that terrorist? >> Uh his name was Kevin James. Um he spent uh 15 10 years or 12 years in in Superm Max and then they had to let him out because his sentence was done and then he got out and he quickly went back to prison again. um cuz he's not a nice guy. But I investigated that story for ABC News and when I got the goods and got the interview with him and had him on tape, they literally just per layman's version said, "Nah, we don't think it's going to generate enough, you know, audience, so we're not going to do it." And that that that in was in relationship to a costbenefit analysis of how much they'd have to pay me to produce the story and to pay for the story to get on the air. They didn't own it. They didn't they didn't do the journalism to produce it. So they said, "Nah, we don't think, you know, nobody knows who he is. He didn't actually pull off the pull off the terrorist plot." So you know, you know, if you would have, then yeah, they would have paid a lot. I I tell this and I don't mean this flippantly uh but it is true. If Osama bin Laden was still alive and you come back with an interview with him because you're an independent journalist, the first question they're going to ask you and it's happened many times. Colleague I know of in the past did the only exclusive interview with Paul Pot when he came back they literally it's how much is it going to cost us? There's no dispute about whether it's credible journalism, right? There's no dispute about whether it's important and should be, you know, seen by the public as a piece of journalism. That's a that's a given. The only question is a business question. What's it going to cost and what's it going to do for us business-wise? So, if it, you know, the the network news business got to the point uh where they basically said, "We can't afford to do this anymore." uh what what our in-house employees which used to be I mean you say they had just pick a number five producers now they had two they had experienced producers with 40 years under their belt now they have a 25year-old making uh 30% of what the experienced guy used to make and news is what is produced by the corporation and the media outlet not just journalistically what is news it was our product is what we produce that's the only way we can make any money with it you can't just sell Well, this story must go on the air and it's we have to pay X amount of dollars uh to produce it. It's not I mean I agree with them. It's not a not a smart business model. Yeah. >> And uh what what's your reaction to all the hubbub over CBS News? Uh Barry Y 60 minutes. >> Well, like I said, I've had experiences in network news where one of two things happens. you have some and it's normal to have editorial differences with your editors or whoever else to say, "Well, I don't think that's enough or whatever." And you differ. And then there's the ones where they just say, "Yeah, it's enough. It's a great story." Um, and and so what the bottom line with us is what's the bottom line? You know, are we going to be able to generate a news story that's going to do good for the bottom line? Those are two different things. I've had experiences where they just say, "Yeah, you're correct. You're telling the truth. You could prove it in court of law. We'll win any lawsuit that comes our way, but guess what?" Now, I'll tell you very specifically when you'll like them. It's kind of funny. I I like to use humor, but this is a true story where I did an investigation of Deepo Chopra. Wasn't even my story. I was assigned to it. It was a very wellto-do uh new age guru and a very rich guy, but he's not as rich as Oprah. And Oprah was his good friend. is how he got his start in terms of being a media um uh mogul of sorts. And uh King World, the company I worked for, uh made 98% of all their money for syndicating Oprah Oprah's show, which you know, as everybody knows, is so a billionaire. Um so they made a ton of money. It was their number one source of revenue. They called us in and said, "Okay, what are you guys doing?" Because we we would say, you know, we're journalists. We're doing what we do and when we come to put our story on, you know, you own the company. you. Here it is. Put it on. Do whatever you want to do with it. It's your company. They said, "What are you guys doing?" And we explained to them what we were doing and what our evidence was and what the story we were going to put on the air was. And they literally said, "Okay, you're doing your job. You journalists go, here's what you can say. You can put that in the story. You can't put that in the story. You can put this in the story. You can't put that in the story." And we as journalists say, "Why the hell not?" Right? It's true. I can prove it. And you put it on the air. And I got the best. no argument with it at all because my background in in business long before as a journalist and with my media thing was the lawyer explained to me here's what will happen. You you put this story on the air with the facts and the everything else that you can back up. We will get sued and we will win the case because truth is an ultimate defense in any uh slander defamation case and we'll win the case because you guys have the goods and you can prove it. But guess what will happen, Eric? And I said, 'What? And he said, "We will be out of business because Oprah has so much money that we will be bankrupt uh when she's done with us and she'll just keep on going." Even though technically it's like winning, you know, a civil case, you win a dollar. You know, you got the moral victory, but you know, what good is that when you're out of business and you're you're broke, you're bankrupt, right? you technically won the case legally, but you know, money talks and you know what walks. So, I I looked at him and said, I can't argue with that. I've been a businessman before. I can understand the the bottom line business perspective of a corporation that but I'm a journalist, so I disagree. I I object. But I couldn't object with the business uh perspective. It's true. I mean it, you know, it is a business. And these days, in the past 15 years, I believe it's become so much of a business that I've said this in the past, I think I got quoted once in quot journalism is but an afterthought. So with Scott P and 60 Minutes and all that, uh, I'm sort of I'm pretty much a heretic saying, I believe Scott Py's a very good journalist. He may have his biases that lean one way or whatever, but he attempts to be a a journalist. I believe in as much as you can, as much as anybody can in a in an objective, fair way. But the bottom line is he's not the first. When you mess with the corporate bottom line, I don't care if it's for journalistic integrity. I don't care if it's for Tucker Carlson costing them uh tens of millions of dollars because of what he said on the air. He got fired. Dan Rather got fired. Brian Ross got fired. And there's a long list of people that got fired, but the overriding reason they got terminated or let go or were in conflict with the media corporation was the bottom line, not so my my opinion of Scott Py was if he really had wanted to keep his journalistic integrity intact, he would have just said, "I disagree with what's going on here for whatever reason, it doesn't really matter." And say, "I disagree and I I resigned." You know, go work somewhere else. See, he's not entitled to a job at CBS News or anywhere else. Go do your own thing. Go get a job somewhere else. Whatever. You just say that's further than I can go. Just that's it applies to everybody for a variety of reasons. And and anybody that messes with the corporate bottom line, everybody in everyday jobs knows if you go to the boss and say, "You're unqualified. I think you suck and you shouldn't be in your job and and this place sucks and everything you're doing is wrong." What's going to happen to you? you're gonna get fired. It's it's their company. Even if it does suck, even if it's true, even if they hired a, you know, a journalism student from uh USC to run the place, it's the owner's company. And I I find it kind of laughable that a journalist who tend to be the least qualified business people in the world um to tell, you know, the owner of CBS, a billionaire, that he doesn't know how to run a business. Um, you you may hearken back to this uh Luke. You may remember the when the LA Times was owned by I forgot his name now from the Chicago >> Danzel. He there was a columnist there who did a great column and he went out to the guy the owner's house and was trying to kind of do a column about how how messed up the newspaper business is and how these guys are destroying journalism blah blah blah. >> Yes. because he and he wrote in his column that he got a quote from him that said, you know, I've won four Pulit surprises. Like, okay, great. And he said, quote unquote, I'm think I'm getting pretty close, which a Pulit surprise never made me a blanking dollar. >> Yeah. >> Can you argue with that? I mean, >> yeah, >> awards for journalism are, you know, PR and marketing. I I learned a long time ago that's good for a career to have good PR and marketing for your skills and experience as a journalist, but that's all they are. They're not some, it's not a licensed profession where you say, I have uh three DuPonts or three Pulitzers, you know, you can't fire me. Yeah, you can. You don't own the company. You're just an employee. Even if he said to his faces, this is what we're doing. We're firing everybody and we're putting in 23 year olds to run this show. He'd say, "Oh my god, you know, you guys don't give a crap about journalism or anything else." But could say, "It's your company. You can do whatever you want. I guess I'll have to go somewhere else." >> You know, that's that's journalism. the the corporate media business is a business 100% now in my opinion. So, how can you argue with business 101 and make your argument journalism 101? They're two entirely different things. >> Yep. Okay. Um Eric, uh any any final words before I move on? Uh yeah, like the the film uh won a uh what's what's unique about the film, it hasn't premiered, it's having its world premiere on June 26th uh in the biggest film festival in Los Angeles and one of the biggest ones in the United States called Dances with Films. It's premiering June 26 at 6:45 p.m. at the world famous u uh Chinese Theater on Hollywood Boulevard. That's where the festival takes place. It's been around 30 years. It's like I said, one of the biggest film festivals in the country. Its world premiere is the 26th at 6:45 PM and people can buy tickets to come see it. Um, it hasn't been seen yet, but it already won an award from something called the Military Veterans Entertainment Association, which had its awards a couple weeks ago and it was awarded best feature documentary and it hasn't even been seen yet. So, that's a good sign people that have seen it. Um, it's a it's a very good film. the director I want to say some Karn Conweiser is a very um award-winning guy from Golden Globe on the Emmy prime time Emmy awardw winning both fiction and non-fiction but he he specializes most not all but mostly in like sort of in the fiction side it's based on a true story he did a film called Miss Ever Boys that was the prime time Emmy winner and all kinds of other awards that was based on the Tuskegee experiment so he had a lot of experience in these sort of like crazy true stories and then on the documentary side um I got to know him 12 years ago when I saw one of his films called Baker Boys, Inside the Surge, which was about the surge in Iraq when they finally turned the tide and subdued the insurgency. And the the storyline was amazing. And being a network television newspaper, I said, I never saw any of this stuff on the network, this footage he had and that was amazing. and it was just the true story of what really happened and how they were able to turn the tide with short tweet with money and uh and he he is a really compelling storyteller and I'm a storyteller as well but when you're a network news guy you literally even a news magazine or even I've done a few documentaries before for television you know if you go past 30 minutes you got to have a lot of creative storytelling abilities to keep somebody from falling asleep you know I mean everybody goes to the movies, even great movie makers, at some point you're kind of getting a little dozy, right? You know, I mean, it's really hard to keep people's attention for an hour and a half or two hours and with a compelling narrative and twist and plot to. And this story has an amazing amount of true ones where you Hollywood script writers couldn't couldn't dream them up. And I always say, you know, life is tour than fiction. So, I'd say go see the movie. And and we're just getting started. This is our world premiere and it it'll be throughout the film festivals throughout the country for the next year and then hopefully much wider distribution and direct to the point of the film and the point the reason why I made it was to uh fully disclose the truth about this and get these guys the uh VA medical care they earned when they joined the military. So, it's just it's literally that that these guys have been left to die off in secret and just say, "Oh, well, you know, it's it's old history. Who cares?" And, you know, I don't think that's the case. One of the guys in the film died in the process of making the film the past 6 months of brain cancer. Uh, the other guy that's the other main character in the film is barely hanging on at this moment. He's still alive. He got to know that the film was done and he'll see a premiere hopefully or he'll know that it happened, but he's barely hanging on himself with all kinds of cancers and stuff and I just don't think that's right. And it shouldn't happen in this country that, you know, those kind of things happen are just swept under the rug and left to fade away. >> Thank you, Eric. Appreciate uh your time. Thanks for talking to me. >> All right. Thanks, Luke. >> Okay, man. >> Well, I got something to tell you off camera, but >> yeah. Yeah. Well, I'll uh I'll talk to you later. >> Love talking. It was great. Thanks. >> Yeah. Take care, man. Bye-bye. Okay, that was Eric Longabati talking about the new feature film documentary Autumn Gold. And uh let me catch my breath and talk about what's going on in Lebanon. And I hope this particular perspective here presented is accurate. Operation in Lebanon now is very very successful in an strategic way and a tactical way. The IDF took over southern Lebanon with almost zero resistance byah. This was unimaginable on October 6, 2023. Today we were inside. We're destroying infrastructure just a couple of hours ago. They announced to the population of Nabatia, a city of 100,000 people north of the Litani River to evacuate another city. It's a Shiat central city near the Buff Castle. It's a strategic place that IDF said goodbye. Leave the place. We're going to take over and destroy allah infrastructure in the city. This is strategic and it would never be an option even if this was such a successful operation. The focus on the drones is is so misleading in the lack. It's like looking through a straw in the situation and missing the bigger picture. Saying that again, the IDF took over close to 50% of southern Lebanon, south of Leitani and moving forward. The IDF troop troops are still maneuvering slowly, systematically. There's no population south of the Litani River. It's working. The drones are a tactical issue that is hard to address. The Russians and Ukraines are still trying to solve that problem. It's no strategic problem. the fact that an IDF soldier with all the challenges and and and the heart with that and I lost a neighbor last week too. Um that's war. You lose soldiers and the amount of soldier the IDF lost in the past couple of months gets to 11 whenah lost 3,000. That is no equation. The IDF strategically are moving in now in in southern Lebanon and for once and for all solving the deep cancer that the state of Lebanon has akaizah which is a subsidiary of Iran but now the head of the snake is addressed by America and Israel and the snake the I say the body of the snake part of it is addressed by Israel. So this uh show is not a voice from nowhere, right? I have a coalition, right? I'm part of an alliance. I'm a convert to Orthodox Judaism. I'm an ardent Zionist. I want Israel to prosper, to live and be well. And a lot of very difficult news for the United States and for Israel with regard to the Middle East. So I hope that that particular perspective is right. But uh I just wanted to be open that argument, right, that opinion, that analysis, it feels good to me because I I want to believe that Israel and the United States are triumphing over their enemies and overall the news is is pretty grim these days. So we usually I hope we are all in an alliance in a tribe because we evolved to live within a tribe. We evolved to be connected to the people close to us and our evolved mechanisms for morality for detecting who to trust and who to distrust, who to love and to hate, to whom do we deploy empathy. These are adaptations that are developed to serve us with particular people who are close to us, people within our tribe or or coalition. We there is no evolutionary advantage in standing up for abstract truths, for standing up for abstract principles, for standing up for abstract groups on the other side of the world who can't help you or hurt you. There's no evolutionary advantage. So one of the fastest ways to cut clean to the truth is to ask, does a particular story make evolutionary sense? As a convert to Orthodox Judaism, right, I have joined a tribe. I have joined a coalition. as a convert to the United States of America. I am an American citizen who who grew up in Australia, right? I have joined a nation of people and an extended family. And so I sit within a particular coalition that sit within a particular alliance. And with that alliance come all sorts of convenient beliefs. And any belief that undercuts my alliance position, my tribal position is inconvenient and unprofitable. So when you hear someone giving opinions and commentary on what's going on in the world, ask what alliance protects them? What alliance are they a part of? Who provides them income and status and protection? And then what what plain truths would cost them their position? And so you'll find that people rarely believe anything that is not convenient for them. And I I find this in particular with regard to the Iran war. I am completely unaware of any major figure having any perspective on the Iran war that is outside of their particular coalition. Right? Everyone is only saying what their alliance, their coalition, their tribe predisposes them to say, right? People who are primarily MAGA support Donald Trump. People who are anti-interventionist see this war as terrible. People opposed to Donald Trump, whether or not they previously called for war with the Iran, that they're opposed to this war. I cannot find one prominent personality whose view on this Iran war was not 100% predictable prior to the war. There are no facts. There are no developments. There's nothing going on in reality that has changed one famous opinion. I I find that stunning. Everyone simply lines up with what is convenient. Everyone lines up with their tribe and and I can't even find one exception to that. Now, my own position is that I am agnostic on whether or not uh this attack on Israel by the United States and this attack on Iran by the United States and Israel is a good idea. That is my rational cognitive perspective. I am agnostic. My emotional perspective is quite different. Right? Emotionally, I am 100% on the side of these actions against Iran to destroy its nuclear program and to set back its missile program and to reduce its ability to be a source of trouble in the Middle East and for America and for Jews. So, it's similar to my position on the Ukraine war. Cognitively, rationally, intellectually, I don't support or oppose aid to Ukraine. Emotionally, I am 100% on the side of Ukraine versus Russia. But when when I think about it poorly, collectively, I I see many problems in addition to many benefits to actively siding with Ukraine against Russia. I see many benefits and many dangers for the United States to go to war with Iran. So my heart pulls me one way and and my mind says, "Ah, I I I'm I'm not so sure." But does it does it not stun you that that uh there are no opinions on the Iran war by anyone prominent that uh cut against their alliance position? It just shows once again that while alliance theory may not be 100% true 100% of the time, obviously it cannot be. But it's pretty darn close, at least with regard to the Iran war, as far as I can tell. And notice too, when you think about it, the more famous someone gets, the more they do coalition work because they more they get pulled towards it. So, I've I've had little bits of fame and I notice that the the more prominent you get, the more cord you are to sign off on on this and that and to work for a coalition. And if you're a truth optimizer, if you primarily seek what is true without regard to doing propaganda work for your coalition, there are very few people with with that predisposition. And the first thing to recognize in this wider discussion is that uh doing work for your team, doing alliance work, doing coalition work, doing propaganda work, that is not the essence of anyone. It is a particular behavior. It it's not the essential essence or property of a man. So that the same writer can do almost no alliance work on one subject and then a great deal of propaganda work on another. So look at John Mcuarter. He's a columnist for the New York Times and on matters of race on matters of language he says many things that are not wellreceived by his left of center academic coalition. But when it comes to Donald Trump when it comes to most questions of foreign policy he does standard alliance work for the left. So the honest question here is not who is alliance free, not who is just intrinsically a truth optimizer, but but who is willing to break with his team and pay the price? And the brutal truth is that fame and low alliance work pull against each other. More famous you are, the more likely you are to do coalition work. Right? Coalitions amplify personalities who say what the coalitions want. You serve your particular coalition whether it's right or left, MAGA, anti-MAGA, isolationist, interventionist. If you are a good servant of your coalition, then your servant will protect you. Your coalition will protect you and provide for you if you are useful. So if you do coalition work, right, if you do propaganda work, you can build your audience, you can fill rooms, you'll have people who buy your books, you'll have people who will share your clips on social media, and they'll have people who will protect you and pick you up when you stumble. So think about Tar Nhi Coats or Jordan Peterson or your Amazon or Sam Harris or Ezra Klein, right? They all developed fame and reach by telling a coalition who its friends are, who its enemies are, and what story it should believe about itself. Now, they may very well believe every word, right? Sincerity and alliance work not just coexist with these. They work much better when you believe what you're saying that this is just a disinterested pursuit of truth. So the standard heteroc heterodox roster of uh persons who supposedly most prioritize truth over tribe people like Barry Weiss, Glenn Greenwald, Matt Taibbe, Steven Pinker, Jonathan height, I am quite skeptical, right? I I see the more changing coalitions than abandoning doing coalition work. So, heterodoxy or what was it the the uh what what were the Joe Rogan and uh the those other figures that that dark alliance the heterodox uh they they kind of harden into a particular tribe about 2020 and now they have a major economy on Substack and on podcast and on on Rumble they've got a donor class they've got a set of en enemies such as legacy newsrooms most of academia the universities, right? They have a cannon of grievances and they have loyalty tests of their own. So try praising the New York Times to this crowd, right? Try defending a campus speech code and uh you won't get a very pleasant reception. So when an ally misbehaves, does this particular uh public intellectual speak out? Does does he criticize his allies at cost to himself when his rivals say something truth true? Does he concede it without hedging? Right. So, Tyler Cohen, he does about as little alliance work as you could possibly expect from a public figure while remaining public. Uh Megan Mardle, columnist for the Washington Post, philosopher Michael Huer, develops arguments into combinations that no alliance will claim. Paul Graham, columnist. I think he writes a lot for the Atlantic. He is a computer programmer. He treats coalition questions as engineering problems and uh he doesn't seem to do a lot of alliance work. Uh Glenn Lowry doesn't seem to do a lot of alliance work. The most prominent intellectuals who do the least alliance work are not part of any movement. talking about people like UCLA evolutionary psychologist David Pinsoff, philosopher Dan Williams, neuroscientist Hugo Mercier, sociologist uh no not soc philosopher John Doris, sociologist Randall Collins, sociologist Steven Turner, right? They spend their hours, their work, their publications describing how coalitions work, how they form their beliefs, how they police defection, how they launder their group interests into abstract moral principles. So they don't have audiences that become armies. So they there's a structural reason that they stay clean of alliance work. So a scholar of ritual who has no ritual to lead, no flock to discipline, little occasion to defend an ally or bury a rival, right? The cost of him pursuing truth and being honest is obscurity. And if you're willing to pay the cost of obscurity, then you can do that that that work that stays far away from propaganda. So here's an example of what I want to believe. And I believe the next couple of months, maybe more than that, we will not have a significant military power in Lebanon. Maybe we'll turn against Lebanon. That's a difficult conversation. And Iran is strategically weakened in the geopolitical perspective. We're in a much much better place today than ever. >> So I appreciate very much what you're saying and uh I agree there's this has been incredible success. What I I do want to do and I do want to understand because there are a lot of headlines. So this is a Jewish news service putting out a point of view that is friendly to the Jewish state of Israel >> that have gone out that this is a new old type of warfare. Meaning these are quad drones the kind literally your ch your your kid buys in the store in America DJI quad drone. There's one grenade on it and it's attached by fiber optic cable that can go 9 km. Before we get into the technicalities of the drone and and various things, do you think an order came from Iran to Hezbollah right now, step up your efforts against Israel? We need to distract the world to your region so that their eyes are not looking at us. Um, in the beginning of the operation of epic fury, the answer is yes. Israel did not want to join. The second they joined Israel, took full throttle to destroy them. It doesn't matter anymore. Is fighting for its existence. Messages from Iran are irrelevant. They have no other alternative because the IDF is not giving up now. We will finishah till the end. Now you cannot surrender 50,000 Shiat soldiers or no less. They have maybe 40,000 in the Baka Valley. We're destroying all their infrastructure. We just last night hit a 100 strikes air. >> So after six years, my computer monitor started getting a little shaky. I bought a new monitor and the way it sits on my desk now kind of forces my webcam to be closer than I had it before. So let's go to the chat. Does Europe play any role in my world view? I'm not sure. So I have European heritage. My ancestors are primarily English and Irish with some French and I'm 116th Chinese. I'm an Anglo file. I I love England. I grew up in Australia. Then I moved to the United States at age 11. So the Australian culture and American culture is largely shaped by its Anglo-Saxon European inheritance. So the person in the chat says, "We are pretty aggressively in support of Ukraine, but don't want trouble in the Middle East." So I I don't see that Russia has the ability to even conquer Ukraine, let alone go further in Europe. So if you choose to do an unnecessary battle in Ukraine, I don't see how that serves European interests. If your actions cause danger to your group, your wolf pack, you'll be forced to go alone for a little bit or forever. Correct. Why do metsphere types brag about being a lone wolf? That's a bad sign. Yes, the individualist strategy usually is not as effective as the group strategy. Think about animals. Animals seem to do best when they live in the center of the pack as opposed to going out on their own. Do I I plan to visit Europe? Don't have any plans right now. I always dreamed that I'd become such a famous writer that I'd get trips paid for me around the world. Happened a little bit. National Film Board of Canada flew me to Montreal for a week. I had uh one reader fly me to London for two weeks and and put me out near Parliament House. That was pretty cool. But uh haven't become as as famous and influential and flown around the world as I would like. So I I notice in the dissident rights sphere the death of Henry Noak has become a major story and I have deliberately not looked into this story because from what I learned about it it just sounded infuriating and depressing and angering and I don't like feeling furious and angry and depressed so I stayed away from the story. Then I figured just before the show I should uh use a little bit of time and just look into it a tad. So apparently on December 3 of 2025 this 18-year-old uh university student from Poland was uh murdered by Vikram Singh Digua. Digua stabbed him five times, including a fatal wound to the chest with a 8 in dagger. When police officers arrive, they were responding to an emergency call made by Digua's brother, who accused Noah of assault and racism. And one reason that conservatives in America are particularly loathed to speak up in any public setting is that they are much more likely to be accused of racism. And there is no effective defense against a racism charge. So Noak is the one who's stabbed. The police handcuff him. Noak tells the officers, "Look, I'm the one who's been stabbed." The one police officer says, "I don't think you have, mate." No pleads that he can't breathe. So he's he's arrested. No, the victim, he is put in handcuffs. He's he's pleading that he can't breathe. He loses consciousness and he dies at the scene. and uh the person who killed him, who stabbed him to death, was convicted, given a life sentence that carries a minimum term of 21 years. So you have a story of this Polish immigrant to London who is stabbed five times and the police ignore his plea and ignore the fact that he can't breathe. And it it leads into this narrative of two-tier care. Kirmer is the prime minister of Great Britain and it seems to be the facts on the ground that different groups get treated differently by elites in England and perhaps because uh this Henry Noah guy was accused of racism then that led to a whole different uh more callous level of treatment by the responding uh police officers. Now we have medical experts say that the wounds would have killed Noah regardless of how he was treated. And so there is one reading that what happened here is just the ordinary kind of bad judgment that kills people when seconds count and no one was thinking clearly. Then you can also make the charge look this is two-tier policing because of the fear instilled in police of of being perceived in the slightest of being racist. Uh, police officers fear a racism accusation charge more than they fear getting the facts wrong and so they enforce the law differently. Now, the footage proves a catastrophe, but it doesn't prove a particular narrative. The footage proves that a man bled out and the police did not respond appropriately. It the footage proves that the police officers believed the wrong account. Now, did their training predispose them to this? Did incentives predispose them to this? Was it just plain incompetence? Right? One night's video can't settle that. So, for the distant right, this is proof of a systemic failure. The left has its own blind spots here. So officials anger answer public anger with the word misinformation. When Met Commissioner knocks a reporter's microphone to the ground rather than answer questions when you have the police drafting a statement calling the murdered boy, right, the victim an aggressor and then tries mid trial to pull back against online disinformation, right? They claim that all of this is just incompetence and a far-right invention gets harder to credit. And no was Polish British. All right. He was the son of immigrants. So in the conversation online about thisa case, he gets coded in British racial talk as white because that is what the two-tier frame needs. The frame works less neatly when he is classified as coming from a migrant family. So the people fighting over his death sorted him into a particular category that tends to flatten who he is. So, it's a good question to ask. Why did this dying white teenager handcuffed disbelieved by police? Why did he not draw the same coverage that George Floyd drew? So, you have a country watching one piece of footage, drawing opposite conclusions from it, and neither conclusion automatically follows from the footage alone. So, if you want to build a trauma narrative, the facts on the ground do not build the trauma narrative. You have to have carrier groups building a narrative that makes a broader community feel a part of the Wii, as a part of the victimized group and is therefore incentivized to identify and develop an emotional attachment and outrage to a particular narrative. And so the the narrative is developing as a major social trauma narrative quite effectively on the right now because it it provides a very concrete example of what does appear to be uh two-tier policing and two-tier operations with regard to elites and which groups in the broader English population are favored and which groups are disfavored. Right. Here is Mark Halpran talking with I think Buck Ston about what's going on with AR >> and enjoy taxfree retirement income, guaranteed growth. They have unlimited money. They have huge aspirations. They know having a PR problem is a big problem. What should they be doing to change the perception that a lot of people in the country have that I know you don't share that they're they're going to doom the United States? What what should they be spending their money on? What should their message be? So just how can the AI industry change the feeling that it's going to turn into Skynet and create like nuclear holocaust for the whole world? >> Destroy every job eventually kill all people not be not be good for the environment like what what can they do because they have unlimited money. >> Very few things uh worry me in the long-term sense. So I I tend to come at this uh even though on the Clay and Buck show I tend to be a little bit more of the of the the pessimistic voice on some policy things. Uh I would say this about AI. >> If you look at history, technology is always adopted and uh o over time it becomes more of a net benefit than a drawback. I think uh across the board there's always the oh my gosh what's going to happen now? I mean, people remember when we were all supposed to think that with Y2K, the computers were all going to, you know, shut down, be unusable. The world a total a total zero. Nothing really happened there. >> Uh, obviously, we've been told that climate change for decades is going to put Florida underwater. And meanwhile, Florida real estate prices in the south here have never been higher than they are. Um, and and so I I think on AI, uh, there's there's a couple things. There's, you know, who Naval Ravocant is? >> Really interesting guy. You know, Naval, I think Megan's had him on the show. super super smart guy. >> I like to give him credit for this because I think it's such an important >> uh paradigm. It's just such an important way to think about it. There's status and there's wealth and those are different things. And if you look at historically, um, anyone alive today living a basic, you know, standard American lifestyle is wealthier than any American really would have been on a whole range of factors. Call it a 100 years ago, maybe even 50 years ago. You know, you you you pick your timeline, right? Yeah. You have better food, better health care, better longevity, press prospects, you drive a better car than, you know, a millionaire in the 1950s. your cheapest Hyundai you can think of is like a spaceship and in terms of safety and speed and comfort that's wealth meaning that humanity and and capitalism is I think the best example of this overall that the world the the number of people who have been brought out of poverty because of capitalist systems in the last 150 years is greater than all the people in all of history before that who were pulled out of poverty. Okay. So the world can get a lot wealthier and is getting a lot wealthier and I'm a big believer in that. Humanity by that I mean you know we just have more stuff better. A perfect example is food. Food is now a problem of overabundance overwhelmingly. Even if you were to look at people that say are on supplemental nutritional assistance formerly food stamps Mark their biggest problem is obesity. Too many calories. Obesity is fundamentally an issue of too many calories. If you look at the thermodynamics, we don't have mass starvation anymore unless it is man-made and in a certain place, right? People can use starvation as a weapon of war, but we don't have famine where just, oh, oh well, there's no, you know, my people are Irish. Oh, there's no potatoes. What are we what are we going to eat now? Doesn't exist anymore. Humanity can get wealthier. Status is a different thing. How am I relative to my neighbors? How am I relative to the other people in my village or my city or whatever it may be? And people fight often over status. You know, I'm actually reading a um right now I'm I'm I'm pretty ear I'm pretty early in it about a 100 pages into this book that's about in the 1960s a researcher an anthropologist if I'm weaving too much. By the way, Mark, you can pull me back in. But I think >> No, no. I'm I'm I'm right I'm right on your lap. I'm treating you like fur eyes. I'm enjoying it. >> So Oh, no. Okay, great. Because this guy, he was an anthropologist and he went to the border of Brazil and Venezuela where there was this uncontacted tribe called the Yanomamo. Yanomamo, the Yanamamo. And he spent 17 months living with them. And these are this is a tribe had no contact whatsoever with the outside world. Spoke no language other than their own. Obviously, no written language, no electricity, all that sort of stuff. And he came back with some pretty interesting observations that of course the anthropology community which is about as left-wing as any academic discipline. It's like sociology. I mean it's just like left-wing Marxists who uh who want to pretend that they're being scientific. He said you know you know what they fight a lot meaning war. They have a lot of warfare between these different little uh tribes, different factions of the tribe and they fight over women a lot. And that was it wasn't that they were starving to death. is that they were actually they would, you know, get the spears and they would go stab each other and fight and kill each other in the jungle over women. So my point here is that that's a status issue, right? That's a I want this thing or a person in this case, pardon me, but I want this person uh because I want more wives or I want, you know, access to the the most desirable female partner. It's not I'm starving to death. wealth and status are, by the way, this scandal, that's scandalized the anthropology community because they're always led to believe that the only reason that anyone goes to war is because of like outside influences, you know, capitalism, white Europeans arriving, all that stuff. So, the problem we're going to have with AI to bring this all full circle is that there's going to be extreme winners. Extreme winners. And you're you're already starting to see this. I mean, I I think the whole Sam Alman thing, switching a nonprofit to a for-profit company, it's absurd. This is absurd. Like, on its I'm totally with Elon on this. This on its face is preposterous. This guy's now a multi-billionaire. I'm also going to say this. He says he doesn't care about money. Mark, a guy who drives a $3 million cares about money. >> And he drives a $3 million sports car, which is just a bizarre, which I'm sure he never goes above 60 miles an hour in. So, Sam Alman, I have no faith in whatsoever. I do not trust this guy. I'm I think I'm very sketched out by his whole thing. So, there's going to be some people that become incredibly rich and have a lot of influence. And that is again on the status side of things going to create I think problems. They're going to have so much influence in society, so much money, they're going to make the robber barons uh you know look very second tier. Uh the on the upside though the amount of prosperity that I think is coming from AI and the time that you will get back to do more of what you want and the overall increases in wealth and this was this is a naval point we can get wealthy enough as a society where all material needs are met for everybody and that's actually not crazy I think that's actually a mathematical reality now certainly in I mean it already kind of is in America but I think globally that could be a reality because of the productivity gains of AI. So that's what my I I view it in that way like people like everyone humanity is going to get richer. There will be some job losses. There will be some jobs created. It's a tool but it um net net is going to make everybody a lot there's going to create so much it will create so much more abundance that people are going to have to find something to worry about other than not having enough stuff. That's my >> So I I agree with the that analysis. Now, do you find yourself getting into unproductive and unprofitable conversations where you just both go down the same paths and don't listen to each other? So, when when the internet came out, all sorts of public personalities said it was a fad and a scam. And then on the other hand, there were enthusiastic personalities like myself who claimed, "Oh, this is transformative. This is going to change the world." And the internet was obviously not a fad and not a scam. On the other hand, those who are arguing it would profoundly transform productivity, well, there's not much evidence that uh the internet has profoundly transformed productivity. But the the lack of evidence as I understand it does not mean it's not true. There's just it's hard to put your finger on it. COVID hit and tens of millions of Americans were able to work from home in a way that they could not have done prior to the internet. So I I don't know why there is such a dramatic der of evidence apparently with regard to the productivity. So if you were earning $50 an hour or more, you did pretty well during CO because you were likely able to work from home. And if you're earning under $40 an hour, you were massively hurt by COVID because you you likely could not just uh work from a laptop from home. So I think that the AI revolution will be more transformative more rapidly than the internet revolution. But I know most people don't like AI. And I I keep getting into this uh repetitive conversation with a good friend who says to me, "Look, I know you love AI, but every day I see more evidence that it's a scam and these AI companies are just going to go bankrupt and Elon Musk is a scammer and it's all BS." And I say, do you do you remember April May 2000 where all these internet companies just went bust? It it wouldn't change my view of the profound transformation that AI will wreak if uh all the leading AI companies go bust, right? They they may go broke and then someone else will buy them and reassemble them and the AI revolution may hit later than expected. and uh the the initial companies right they they may not work out but I do think it's significant that both open AI and anthropic are tenatively valued at about a trillion dollars I do think that that accords to something real so even if a particular execution of AI doesn't work out even if various AI companies go broke I still think that uh technology with artificial intelligence will change our lives change our economies is and I I think it's quite interesting. I'm not opposed to these major AI companies handing over a portion of the proceeds to the American people because no man walks alone, right? We all depend on each other. the AI companies are uh building something in America with the advantages that America provides and uh maybe be a good thing for them to to give back some of that wealth to the American people to help ameliate this dramatic difference between winners and losers. >> I'd be Yeah. Would it be better for our society if people agreed with you now or it doesn't matter and eventually they'll experience the upsides and and it won't matter because I feel like the AI industry is is is pushing a boulder up a hill more than they have to because most of the public doesn't agree with your optimism on this. >> Um yeah well people fear change and people are also attracted to narratives of catastrophe. Michael Kiteon was my favorite Michael Kiteon and Tom Clansancy. I joined the CIA because of Tom Clansancy. So that's you know give you want to talk about having >> I have not read Michael Kryton but I've I've read probably a dozen Tom Clansancy books. I enjoy Tom Clansancy and I don't listen to the Clay and Buck show. I don't listen to this guy Buck Saxton but uh I find myself agreeing with everything he's saying here. >> Influence on a young man's life but Michael Kiteon was the first author I ever really read who made me love just reading books for fun. But he had this uh it was actually a sit down with Charlie Rose if I remember correctly maybe you know 20 something years ago. >> Yeah. He talked about how when you're an author, when you're talking about things, you know, if you tell people that things are terrible or that things are going to be terrible, everybody listens to you. >> I grew up a 7th Day Adventist and the whole narrative of 7th Day Adventism was that the world was about to come to an end. And I noticed this general trend, this general theme, this general principle in life. The better your life, the less you need a narrative of catastrophe. The more you resonate with the narrative of catastrophe, the worse the quality of your life. So when people tell me that the American economy is going to hell, when people tell me that AI is all a scam, I don't think they're really talking to me about me. They're talking to me about their own lives. And they're essentially admitting my life sucks. I need other people to match my own depression, my own sadness, my own catastrophe. And so I want everyone else to suffer like I'm suffering. I think as I look back to some of my terrible behavior with matches when I was about seven years of age, I was unhappy and I wanted to make everyone around me unhappy. And so when you hear people talking about the economy or AI, usually I think they are primarily talking about themselves. I am a happy optimistic person and so I look for a happy optimistic perspective on reality. If you are sad and depressed you are going to resonate and thrilled to and be excited about and prefer narratives of catastrophe. If you have a narrative of catastrophe about America or AI, I would propose to you that this is primarily about the lack of anything good in your own life and your own need for other people to be as miserable as you. And that doesn't have any necessary accord with broader reality. >> And nobody holds you accountable when it's not terrible because hey, it all worked out. >> Catastrophism sells is really the point, right? Catastrophism whether you're but in fact if you tell people >> he's absolutely right there. So let me engage with the chat. Did Mark Halprren weigh in on the sex warfare status? He did not. that I want to talk about the Mark Halprin trajectory with regard to those 2017 meto allegations. Bob says the conventional Jordan Peterson wisdom here. Material needs being met solve one problem but will create new problems such as lack of meaning. Bro, you're buying into the lack of meaning narrative. And that's sad. If you have normal human relations, you don't suffer from a lack of meaning. The only people who suffer from a lack of meaning are marginalized losers. I you start talking about lack of meaning and the people who profit from lack of meaning they are selling a narrative to marginalized losers. If you have an average or better family life, if you have an average or better communal life, job life, professional life, career life, education life, community life, right? If you have people who care about you, if you love a few people, right? If you love five people, you do not lack for meaning in your life. You only lack for meaning in your life if you don't love people. If you you don't have any friendships or family relations that are of consequence. So the search for meaning is a flashing blaring red light. And I can speak from firsthand experience because I had this particularly when I was bedridden for six years in my 20s with the chronic fatigue syndrome. My whole life fell apart. I couldn't do anything. I couldn't achieve anything. I had zero status. People my old age wanted nothing to do with me. Well, people over 40, almost all of them treated me with with empathy. But when I was at my lowest, when I could produce nothing, when I had no reason to feel pride, right, that's when I was most desperate for meaning. When I recovered some of my health and then reintegrated myself into other people's lives and then started contributing to the lives of other people, I felt an accompanying amount of pride. Because when we feel pride, that's usually highly correlated to the reality of our contributions to other people's lives. And when you feel pride, one, it's amazing. Two, it's almost always highly correlated with reality. You you really can't, contrary to popular misconceptions about narcissism, you really can't manufacture authentic feelings of pride just on your own. It comes highly correlated with reality, correlated to the degree that you contribute to other people's lives. And if you contribute to other people's lives, you do not lack meaning. If you're worried about meaning and purpose in life, it's because you don't matter to other people. And once you start mattering to other people, you will no longer be concerned about the meaning crisis. The meaning crisis is an opportunity for gurus to develop a following. And when you're losing at life, the only people who are going to reach out to you generally will be gurus because normal healthy people will for their own self-p protection need to keep significant distance from you because having self-destructive marginalized losers in your life is very dangerous to your well-being and it will pull down on your own capacity to lead an upright upstanding pro-social life. It is just it's introducing a tremendous amount of chaos in your life. If you're a chronic underowner, if you're a marginalized loser, no normal healthy person will want you in his life. And until you turn that around, the only people who are really going to want you are gurus and and they certainly come with uh some downsides. But they will hand you meaning that you can then embrace which which can give you the strength to do good things developing skills and taking actions that contribute to the lives of other people which should then shore up your emotional base because now you have legitimate reasons to feel pride and that can then unshackle you from the need for for guru. So that in essence is what happened with my relationship to talk show host Dennis Prager meaning a one-way relationship. He was the talk show host. I listened. He gave me meaning and purpose on a platter. I seized it. Seizing it gave me a burst of energy, uh, enthusiasm, uh, strength and it connected me to real life people. And then as I recovered my health and was able to start making concrete contributions to the lives of others. Then I no longer needed that guru and I no longer needed to concern myself with the meaning of life because that is an abstract concern. We did not evolve to devote resources to abstract concerns except as a status play. I do this show as a status play. I come on here and I propound to you that I have something valuable to say about abstract issues and if I then get resources such as your attention, maybe you send me a thoughtful email that makes me feel like I said something profound, right? that then pays me in some sort of emotional resource that uh makes this effort and use of my time a good return. A lot of the British underclass were violent because they were bored and their material needs were met by the British welfare state. I would propound to you that the underclass were violent, not primarily because their material needs were met and they were born, but because they lacked normal, healthy human relations. Those members of the British underclass who love their families by and large do not go out and put everything at risk by committing uh violence. Also, the more intelligent you are, the more clearly you see the future and the less inclined you are to act in a criminal criminal manner, particularly violently because of the high likelihood of violent and negative repercussions. Google, Amazon, etc. founded during the 2K internet boom. Their stock went through a collapse, but they displayed staying power. Edward Lutvak described the British people as the most aggressive people on the continent evidenced by the football hooliganism and fighters in Ukraine. Just got name recognition on my iPhone that the because I said my name. I I have a setting on so that if there's ever any mention of my name then I get a notification. There is still not one profitable AI company, right? And guess what? at the same time of the equivalent of uh Google and Facebook and uh other social media and internet platforms. They they were not profitable for years either. It is uh not unusual to have a company worth billions or even tens of billions or hundreds of billions of dollars that has not yet turned a profit. Right? People don't invest private equity in a company because it is turning a profit right now. They invest on future trajectory. We invest in in other people based on future trajectory. Right? If you saw that it was highly unlikely that somebody would be able to contribute to your life in the future, right? You would be quite unlikely to invest anything in them. So, men in combat. I'm reading Mark Baldin's book on the Battle Way, a a town, a revered historical site city in Vietnam that was the site of the most intense bloody fighting during the Tet offensive in 1968. And when when soldiers are fighting for their lives and when members of their brigade are dying all around them, guess what? People are not heavily investing each other. said people withdraw because it just feels terrible to invest in someone who then dies and and the pain is so intense that uh people do not invest when the long-term prospects of others are quite low. We bet we invest in people and we invest our money on the basis of what we think will happen in the future not on whether or not they are turning a profit for us right now. things are going to be good. It's not that they won't listen. They get mad at you. And I've experienced this even on radio when I tell people I said this the first year of the Trump administration, you know, 2.0. So, guys, this is about as good as it gets. Our team has kicked the other team's ass. The economy is great. We're not at war. You know, the the the border is secure. Like, enjoy this because things are actually really good. There are still problems, but things are really good. People get mad at me. People get mad at me. I can go on the air and say, "We're all going to die. We're all going to die." Which, by the way, is obviously a true statement. We are all going to die. I just don't think we're all going to die tomorrow. Um, and people will say, "Really? Tell me more. Tell me why." And this goes to uh maybe is it the amydala, like the the lizard brain, right? The fear center where people automatically, I think, are uh bio-engineered to tune in to messages that are scary sounding. So on AI, if you want people to listen to you, you talk about how bad and scary it is. Now, to be fair, I know people like Elon who Elon's way smarter than I am and way more important to the world than I am. >> Right? If you want to get uh support for your political party, talk about how scary the enemy is. Right? If you're a Democrat, the quickest, most effective way to gain resources and support is to talk about how horrible Donald Trump is. If you're a Republican or a MAGA supporter, right, talk about how horrible the Democrats are. That's the most effective way to get people's attention. and give them a narrative of catastrophe. People who are losers love narratives of catastrophe. People who are winners don't have any emotional need for a narrative of catastrophe. >> So when he says that he's worried about where AI is going, I listen. But I think that's more of a caution and less of a less of a catastrophism. >> Yeah. >> Because you want it's coming no matter what. So, >> so question from the chat and I am honored that you asked me and I want to then add the provisor almost all advice is just BS because I don't know you. I don't know your situation. Virtually no advice is uh generalizable but it makes me feel good that you asked me and so I'm going to speak to it as though I have something to contribute because if I didn't feel like I have something valuable to contribute I wouldn't be here. any advice for someone who has a serious criminal record and wants to rebuild a decent life in some way. So first face the the brutal reality that most sane healthy people will not want you in their life. So the really the alternative is uh guru/ religion right if you contribute to a religion. So Islam, for example, is very successful at recruiting in prisons, but uh plenty of Christian churches will embrace a a sinner. So normal people are going to shy away from someone with a serious criminal record. Basically, the only people who will embrace someone with a serious criminal record, meaning individual or group that is pro-social, will be a group that is altruistic. And usually that requires religion. So the easiest way to recover your life in in that circumstance is to embrace religion. Meaning you just have to show up and not be an idiot. >> So you want to manage this properly and have the public's expectations in line with what the reality will be. Um you know that that so that's I don't I'm not worried. I think AI is going to be fantastic. Think about the disease. I I wrote a fabulous book by the >> So this is Clay Travis here on the left, Buck Ston on the right. It's Buck speaking >> called Manufacturing Delusion, which I highly recommend to all of your glad it's within easy reach. >> Uh oh, I' I've learned I keep it right there for all it's like don't leave home without at the old MX. I I always have a copy of my book around, but no, really the book deals with uh essentially well obviously mass delusions and delusion formation, but I also get into cults and the psychology of attachment to falsehood or the attachment to ideas that are uh that should be self-refuting or obviously incorrect. And the deeper into it you can get somebody, the harder it is to get them out a lot of the time. You have to remember that, right? It's it makes sense when you think about it. But if some >> so the big misconception of intellectuals is that uh if only people understood correctly, we wouldn't have these problems. But the reason that people are attracted to cults is because they serve a vital need. If you're a marginalized loser, right, healthy, successful people will not want you around. The only people that will want you around consistently are cults. So people join cults to meet very real needs that they can't meet elsewhere. Uh people join extreme movements, marginalized movements because nobody else will have them. Uh heroin addicts talk about heroin addicts being a family because if you're a healthy person, you don't want anyone addicted to heroin or addicted to anything too close to you because those persons are dangerous. So Klay Travis and Buck Ston, they took on Rush Li's old slot in June of 2021 and they run their show as a conversation. So Klay Travis comes from a legal background. He's an attorney and then he moved into sports radio. So he talks fast. He talks loud. He's very bold. He will will make his opinions very clear in about 30 seconds. He loves to make big bold predictions. He loves to score them, right? He has all the the traits that you'd expect from a winner in the sports opinion game. He'll tell you what he called, when he called it, and how right he was. He will frame politics in sporting terms. There are winners, there are losers, there are point spreads, there are box scores. Went to Vanderbilt Law School, which is an elite law school in the South. You'll hear his trial lawyer reflexes in how he forms his arguments. He's brash. He's frat house. He provokes on purpose. He picks fights. He loves to pound on the legacy media. He loves outrage porn. It's his fuel. His diction is plain punchy, heavy on superlatives, round numbers, light on qualifiers. He sells confidence. Buck Ston plays cool because he trained in the CIA. He trained in NYPD counterterrorism. And you hear that background sitting under his speech. So he talks slower. He clips his sentences. His sentences are shorter. He let pauses do more work. He reaches for the analyst vocabulary. He talks in terms of threat assessment, intelligence, sourcing. He likes to walk a reasoner through a chain of reasoning step by step. Clay Travis swings for the big emotional reaction. Buck Sexon comes in. He lowers the temperature. He sounds like a man briefing a room. His humor runs dry. It arrives late. It's an aside. And he is the more serious part of the show. So Travis pushes Ston settles. >> Somebody has been believing for months and months that the huge reveal is going to come, that all truth will be uh all truth will um emerge finally after the months of promises. They don't want to be told actually you've just been taken on a ride. So you just can keep pushing it out. >> Do you think that the the preponderance of the listeners to the snake oil salespersons are are out of touch with reality or they just do it for kicks? >> They haven't read David Pinsoff, right? They haven't read the evolutionary psychology, right? Real needs being met by conspiracy theories. It provides a community. It provides a way to feel superior, right? Right? If you're a marginalized loser, how are you going to feel superior to everyone else? Well, you can face up, yeah, I'm a marginalized loser, but at least I see through the [ __ ] Right? Conspiracy theories meet real needs. The popularity and influence of a narrative has absolutely nothing to do with whether it's true. >> Like, do you think that audience is is is gone forever as sane people or no? >> We talk a lot about this on our show. I think that so many conspiracies have been proven true during co that there is a conspiratorial mindset that a certain segment of the population not insubstantial a quarter of news consumers let's say want to believe that there is uh somebody with grand designs who was pulling the strings at all points and that they're trying to tie it all together. Um, and by the way, I think this is true on >> So this is Clay Travis. So you don't reach this level of success by failing to tell an audience what it wants to hear, right? To succeed in political talk radio, you need to be on the right, you need to be populist. You need to tell people a message that the elites, the institutions are screwing you over, but I'm here fighting for you. It's such a a simple, dumb message, but it's the only one that seems to work in political talk radio. and Klay Travis and Buck Ston, right? They both propound this stupid message >> uh on the left and on the right. And I think this is I think this has always existed. >> So everything they're saying here about conspiracy theories would apply to their listeners. >> But I think CO has accelerated it. The other part of this is whatever you believe, there's a video that makes it look like it should be true. And um I think that's a little bit dangerous. I think what we're seeing So almost all of modern western thought is based on a 40y understanding of human nature. And few people have described the problem as accurately as John Mirshimer in his 2018 book, The Great Delusion: Liberal Dreams and International Realities. And he just nails it here. and he simultaneously discredits or every leading liberal, activist, uh, intellectual, pundit, writer, right? He he discredits the whole class and everything that the elite class holds sacred is based on this faulty anthropology. So, Misha says, "My view is that we are profoundly social beings from the start to the finish of our lives." He's absolutely right. The best way to thrive, let alone survive, is to be in the center of the pack. Individualism is of secondary importance. Correct. Liberalism, right, coming from John Lock on down, downplays the social nature of human beings to the point of ignoring it. It treats people largely as atomistic actors. We're not individuals primarily. We are not atomistic actors. We believe what is convenient for us to believe. What is convenient for us to believe is decided by our upbringing and our social circle. If you get out of touch with the convenient beliefs of your particular circle, that will be very unprofitable to you. There's not one major personality that I can think of who has an opinion on the Iran war contrary to their coalition position. Everybody is just speaking the convenient belief with regard to that war. Nobody of which I'm aware is willing to stand out. So political liberalism is an ideology that is individualist at its core. It assigns great importance to the concept, the claim, the fiction of inalienable rights for individuals. Right? There are no inalienable rights. These are a development, a construct, a a fiction which is quite useful. Many fictional stories are useful. So political liberalism is all about the individual and this concern for individual rights is the whole basis of the universalist nature of globalism, universalism, liberalism, right? Everyone on the planet has the same inherent set of rights to gay marriage and transgender crossing and everything else that uh motivates people obsessed with individual rights. Conservatism in America buys into this, right? Conservatism presents itself. Conservatism on talk radio and in national review. It's all about individual rights and and freedom. Freedom has no objective meaning outside of a particular social setting. What liberals mean by freedom and conservatives mean by freedom means completely different things in 2026 as compared to 1986 uh compared to what freedom means in Germany under different historical conditions. The public and scholarly discourse about liberalism since World War II is obsessed with human rights which are the rights of individuals. But we don't live, we don't operate, we don't work as individuals, as learned wolves. We are born into families and groups and communities and these shape our identities well before we can assert our individualism. We develop strong attachments to our family, to our group, to our tribe, and we will often make great sacrifices for our ingroup. We are tribal to our core. The best way to survive is to be embedded in the middle of the pack, in the middle of your community, extended family, your your tribe, your coalition, and to cooperate with other members of your coalition. Of all the things that drive us, reason is the least important when compared to the power of social incentives, the power of upbringing and the power of genetics. So given that John Mshimemer is absolutely right here, virtually every leading liberal thinker has a faulty anthropology. Right? The Declaration of Independence from 1776, it rests on a flawed picture of man. His most famous sentences claim more than it can deliver. Start with self-evident. Right? Thomas Jefferson calls the equality of men and their unalienable rights truths that any mind can see. Not true. Right? Reason is the least important of what drives us behind innate sentiment and socialization. Right? The truths feel self-evident when you share this lock in Protestant Anglo inheritance. But reason has nothing to do with it. A Confucian scholar, a bedin chief would not find them obvious. Right? Self-evident shrinks to self-evident to men raised as we were raised. Right? The idea that all men are created equal, each carrying the same inherent rights. Absolutely no empirical evidence for that. We are tribal from birth. We are formed by our tribe before we can even start to think for ourselves. We will be much more likely to sacrifice for our ingroup and to draw hard lines against outsiders. Right? The declaration's universal claim is a fiction. It describes an aspiration. It does not describe reality. Right? The men who wrote all men are equal held slaves and counted most of mankind as not fully human. Right? The Declaration of Independence treats the individual as primary. The bearer of rights before and against the state. That is not how the world works. Right? Your rights are whatever your group or your institutions can afford to give to you. The way the world works is that the group comes first. The individual arrives into a society, into a community, right, into institutions that already exist and whatever rights they can bestow or depend on a particular circumstance. There's nothing unalienable about them. A society grants rights. A society protects rights. A society recognizes rights. A society enforces rights. Right? strip away the society and the inalienable right has nobody to honor it. Reason does not find these rights. Thomas Jefferson says God gives them. Right? If you believe in the God of the Hebrew Bible and Protestant individualist interpretations, these sacred texts, then you can start to reason your way based on that towards this uh liberal perspective. The consent of the governed, right? The Declaration of Independence pictures free men constituting a government by agreement. That's not how people work. Societies do not begin with atomistic individuals making contracts. Right? People come into settings already formed by one particular people and they have a thick shared past. Right? Consent was already given before you enter the realm. Now the Declaration of Independence was a political act. It was not a report on human nature. So it doesn't really matter that it was based on false anthropology. The document did its job. Just like a winning narrative for Democrats or for Republicans or for a particular culture war, right, has absolutely nothing to do with whether it is true or not. Right? This is what I want to believe about the Lebanon war and the Iran war. I don't know strikes inside the Baka Valley which is the headquarters that was for the past decades a secure area safe zone forbal to build their forces. >> Explain where it is on first. >> So if you take the Lebanese map it's like uh uh um Malbin. >> It's a it's a rectangle. >> It's a rectangle. The northern eastern part is the Baka Valley which is defended by mountains the the the Shu mountains and Lebanese mountains and from the south. It's a isolated place with no real front from Israel. >> Border Syria to some degree. >> Syria to the east and to the north. Yes. Um irrelated to Israel geographically. The IDF air force is attacking systematically there and destroying the infrastructure. There are 800,000 refugees inside Lebanon today. Shiat refugees that are inside Lebanon pushing a lot of pressure on the Shiat uh uh uh population to adjust because they see their houses are destroyed in southern Lebanon. They see the buildings in the DHA being destroyed last night. IDF destroyed, hit the D a little bit. They're terrified of the IDF attacking as they did in the beginning. Israel, for the first time in decades, has the upper hand inside Lebanon. If we strategically decide to finish the game, finish the war and with destroying Lebanon, sorry, destroying, not Lebanon, enabling the Lebanese country, and this is why we're negotiating with Lebanon today to have peace deals with them, which they >> Lebanon is opposed to. So we have we're killing the cancer, the body is Lebanon is Lebanon. We are trying to negotiate with them to for a peace deal with helping them to destroy this cancer that they have. In the meantime, I don't see strategically a real peace deal between Israel and Lebanon because eventually when we will hit hard enough, they will start having a civil war inside Lebanon. It's a failed state with no money, nothing. The people are leaving the country as much as possible. >> He has just asked, I mean, I saw that they announced 3 days ago for the civil war to begin. They they said they were calling all the Shiites to take over the country. What what's the why are they pushing for that right now? So the question is the alternative and alternative is destruction. If the Sunnis and the Marinites control the country, the Shiites will be like they will revenge against the Shi for destroying the country in the past couple of years. So it's a comp they're in a complicated position only thanks to Israel and our willingness to fight Lebanese war. Now it's a good it's a there's a potential here to bring peace to Lebanon. I'm skeptical. >> Why? I mean, it's it would seem that if we're removing Hezbollah from the picture, at least the way it's presented and I would say normalized Western establishments and even in Israel, is it the problem with Lebanon is Hezbollah. If Israel removes Hezbollah from the picture, is that does that leave a Lebanon that that likes Israel wants to negotiate? >> So, the problem is notahbah is the military force of the Shiat population and 35% of Lebanon are Shiats and they're Muslim jihadists. It's it's like it's a cultural issue. You know, the Gaza population, the problem is not Hamas. The problem is the Gaza population. 80% support murdering and and and and rape. >> So that's a a Jewish uh YouTube channel telling me what I want to hear. So there you go. When when you hear someone giving an opinion about the world, about life, ask four questions, right? What coalition do they depend on for status and income? Right? I am living within Orthodox Judaism. I am right-wing. I would vote for a Republican even if the Republican nominee was a red dock. Who do they risk angering if they speak plainly? So, if I say anything that's uh anti-Israel or could come across as anti-Jewish or anti-Republican or anti-conservative, anti-rightwing, anti-Trump, anti-MAGA, right? That endangers me. Who benefits if my frame wins? Right? people from my coalition, people who are right-wing, people who are MAGA, people who are nationalist, people who love Israel or or the Jews. All right? If if my narrative, if my frame wins, then my coalitions win. What truths would cost me my position? So, I don't really have a position. So, I'm not a high status person. So, uh to to the extent I I said anything that goes against the interests of my coalition, right? MAGA nationalist, pro-American, pro pro-Israel. Anything that goes against that coalition would hurt me. So, you can't expect me to say things that are going to hurt my life. Now, think about uh what happens when you become a pariah, right? Think about what goes on with animals. When an animals when animals see say a predator in their midst, right? They will often respond by mobbing. When when animals recognize that just one animal taking on a predator will not succeed on his own, you'll often get a group strategy of a whole bunch of animals mobbing a a predator. And this mobbing will usually only occur when the the animals that they are protecting are fertile, right? This has to do with protecting reproduction. Uh human beings also mob. about a dozen women came out during 2017 and said that uh Mark Halpran had behaved badly towards hit them that uh he engaged in unwanted sexual advances. Uh there were no criminal cases launched but when you hear their stories you would think oh that's not good. Now, many of the people who attacked Mark Halprin in 2017, such as Megan Kelly and uh Megan McCain, right, they have now come around to extending Mark the presumption of grace and forgiveness, right? They are no longer attacking Mark Halpran. Now they're working with Mark Halprren. So, the tide has shifted. Halpern tried to get back into major network news. He was refused. So instead, he developed his own company, Two-way, and he has about 70,000 YouTube subscribers. He's raised millions of dollars in seed money. And he can now contribute. He can now provide value to you. And so he has provided incentives for people to overlook or to move past or to forgive and forget whatever sexual misbehavior he engaged in. and he has acknowledged that he uh made inappropriate advances, but he has denied the more shocking accounts of uh terrible behavior. And so one way to get clarity about what's going on with people is to look at the equivalents in the animal kingdom. So if you look up mobbing, right, you'll find species ganging up on a predator that they can't face alone. The group will be much more effective than the individual, right? An individual bird stands little chance against a hawk. But a flock of birds does and the risk to each member gets diluted. So people mob because mobbing works. And mobbing worked against Mark Halpran in 2017. 12 women came forward. Not a single one of them on her own could have ended his career. But coming forward in numbers essentially ended his career. And what had been an open secret, right, was no longer secret. and his his career in the major news organizations was over. So then he built his own thing. He joined in with the Megan Kelly conservative network. He builds two-way. He finds new coalition allies such as Megan Kelly, Megan McCain. And so now he provides benefits to to those who welcome him into their coalition. raping babies. So like it Jewish babies obviously. So the pro the problem it's we we tend to look at the military force, the political force as the enemy. It's a false western premise. The problem is culture. The problem is specific religions who by definition want to destroy their enemies. And we are kufa. We're heric heretics in heretics. >> Heretics, >> right? In the in the in the in the eyes of >> of uh Islam. Kufa, by the way, is related to >> kufur is kofer. It's like it's >> kofair. >> And the >> So what's the uh primary reason that uh so many people have turned against Israel? Did they suddenly become bad people? Are they victims of misinformation? No. There are structural reasons. For example, if you are skeptical of America's institutions, that will make you more skeptical of Jews because Jews have enjoyed disproportionate success in American institutions and have come to disproportionately to their relative numbers in the population represent the major power players in American institutions. So if you are institution skeptical, you're very likely to be skeptical of Jews because Jews have come to represent American institutions. There are many benefits to Jews succeeding in American institutions, but those benefits like all benefits come with a price. If you are anti-globalist and pro-ist, then the long rhetoric about uh international global humanism and we must support Israel because it is a democracy. This kind of internationalist globalist liberal rhetoric will be unappealing to you. And so when those arguments are mustered on Israel's behalf, you will be predisposed to be skeptical towards Israel. Also, there's been a significant reduction in Islamic terror in the West. If there was a significant uptick in Islamic terror in the West, then there would be an increase in negative feelings towards Islam. And when you have an enemy, you will look to side with other people who share your distaste for your enemy. So if there's an increase in Islamic terror, then you will find less hatred of Israel. So people don't shift their allegiances on the basis of universal globalist truths or philosophical principles. People shift their allegiances on the basis of what is convenient for them in their coalition. So people don't become bad and and because they become bad then they they hate Israel. People do what's convenient. When structural situations change, then attitudes towards Israel and towards Jews will change. But right now, nationalists, populists, uh all sorts of different groups have found it convenient within their tribe to be more anti-Israel. When the structure changes, the facts on the ground change, right, incentives change, then people move back. Overwhelmingly, people primarily care about their own. There is no evolutionary benefit to caring about what happens on the other side of the world unless it signals to your particular coalition that you're a good person. Then to go against what your group, your alliance, your coalition wants you to say, right? That would not be profitable and people really do something that is unprofitable. >> Internal battle between the Sunni and the Shiats. It's a power battle between them. So it will eventually get there. They have an history of uh uh uh civil wars inside Lebanon. Now the real story in the background is because the French mandate from 1917 not mandate but the like >> Pico agree >> after Sykespico agreements they took control in the constitution they they so I am a convert to orthodox Judaism and conversion to orthodox Judaism is not easy it's not terrifically hard either overall I would say it is less challenging than getting a BA degree it is primarily about integrating into a community. So when you ask, was it hard for me to integrate into the Orthodox Jewish community? Yes, there were challenges, but here's my primary challenge. It's integrating into community in general. I am predisposed to just doing my own thing, arriving at my own beliefs, uh believing myself, a strong independent thinker, and that makes it difficult for me to join coalitions and alliances. So my primary challenge was not joining in particular the Orthodox Jewish community. My my primary challenge is adapting myself to fit in with any community. Right? Living in community requires that you hold back on many opinions and that you keep your your community in mind before you say or do anything. It requires a certain discipline. Some people aren't cut out for it. It has been a challenge for me. It is still a challenge. The more successfully I do it, right, the higher the quality of my life forced like forced on Lebanon was based on the tribal demographic structure since then, but it's irrelevant today. The Shi have a disproportional representation. >> The initial wave tonight, John was ballistic missiles. Israeli officials telling Fox News all of those missiles were shot down. But then moments later, early alerts went out on phones across this country telling people that there were more incoming missiles toward the northern part of Israel. I do want to just read a quick update here that we are getting from our producing team in Tel Aviv. John, a source to Fox News has indicated that schools across the country of Israel will be cancelled tomorrow. And the IDF currently is telling civilians here to listen closely to updates that are expected to come in the minutes and hours ahead about the ongoing missile attack that is currently taking place. But again, John, Fox News can report at this hour there is an ongoing Iranian missile attack against Israel that is currently targeting the northern part of this country. Iranian officials, including a top parliament member earlier today, threatened to target Israel in response to the strikes against Beirut earlier today. There was also a statement from Iran's top negotiator, Muhammad Khalibuff, the parliament speaker, who tied the situation in Lebanon to the ongoing efforts to reach a broader agreement between the United States and Iran. Again, sources telling Fox News they do believe there will be a response to this ongoing missile attack. And again, as we speak right now, there are more and more alerts uh coming in to Hideera. This is much closer to Tel Aviv. And so these alerts, I'm confirming with my team here, are starting to make their way south to the outskirts of Tel Aviv. An indication that there is a widespread ongoing Iranian ballistic missile attack against this country. John, >> that suggests that the US and Israeli efforts to take out the ballistic missile systems and launchers has not yet been entirely successful. Trey, uh, exactly. The Iranians still have a ballistic missile supply despite the fact that they were hit hard during Operation Epic Fury. And our team here, just as we are reporting off in the distance, could see four incoming Iranian ballistic missiles. We're going to stay here for the moment, John. Again, there are no alerts in Tel Aviv right now. But before we started, we could see one of those missiles soaring through the sky headed toward the city of Hifa, but those alerts that are coming in right now are even near to the city of Hideera, which is south of Hifa, north of Tel Aviv. I I'm told by my producer, Yat Freeline, right now that there is a third round of missiles expected to trigger sirens here in Israel in a matter of minutes. Again, this is taking place according to the Iranians in response. And we are getting a statement right now, John, from Iran's IRGC that says the Israeli army must stop its attacks on Lebanon. And if it expands its attacks or responds to Iran's actions, quote, it will face more crushing and regretful blows. Again, that statement coming from Iran's IRGC. Iranian state media, John, right now says the initial reports of a second wave of missiles uh towards Israel have been announced. And again, this is Iranian state media and it gives you a sense of the real-time updates that those who are watching in Iran are getting about the situation right now. And the alerts are non-stop, John, across again in Hifa, that northern Israeli city, a population of hundreds of thousands of people and the surrounding area, more than a million. This is a significant attack against the state of Israel. And again, sources telling Fox News they do believe there will be a response to the ongoing missile fire that is taking place. Uh, we are getting another update from a regional intelligence source speaking to Fox News. And I keep looking down here, John, we are getting this information in real time. A regional intelligence official tells Fox News the Iranians believe that Trump does not have the will to fight. This intelligence official says they are quote gambling on him, wanting to end this war at all costs. And again, the official goes on to say this is why they are doing it. And so again, they believe that the Iranians are making a calculation here by launching this ballistic missile attack against Israel in response to the strikes that took place against the Dakia neighborhood of southern Beirut earlier today, a Hezbollah stronghold. But remember what we have seen throughout the weekend. We're just going to go back a couple days here in the timeline, John, of what's taken place. The Iranians have been very bold in their actions. They have been targeting America's Gulf allies, including Bahrain and Kuwait. Remember over the weekend, it was Friday evening when, according to US Central Command, four Iranian one-way attack drones were launched toward the Straight of Hormuz. The United States responded with strikes and we brought you that video earlier against Gorok, Iran that sits along the coast and also Iran's Keshum Island. And the US forces, according to Sentcom, were going after radar systems there. In response to those strikes, the Iranians fired again toward US forces in Kuwait. And according to Sentcom, six of those missiles were shot down. But we saw last week when the Iranians used missiles and drones toward Kuwait's international airport, the massive amount of damage and destruction that can be caused as a result of these Iranian projectiles. And again, we're getting just new information because this is a developing story. Uh we are told according to regional reports that President Trump has been updated on the ongoing events that are taking place. Remember, President Trump has been trying to give the Iranians an offramp in this conflict. There is still a massive force buildup across the Middle East that includes more than 50,000 US forces along with destroyers and US aircraft carriers. And we know the refuelers and cargo planes that remain here in Israel. Uh just a few days ago, I was on the train from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem and we went past Israel's Bengorian airport and there were dozens of US refuelers there in preparation for in case President Trump decides to order additional strikes against the Iranian regime. But again, John, what we can confirm at this moment, there is an ongoing Iranian ballistic missile attack against Israel, and the region waits to see how the United States and Israel will respond. John, >> it'll be fascinating to see if the Iranians have underestimated the president's resolve on this. Trey Yinst doing a fantastic job. Trey, thank you. We will continue to check in with Trey as the situation develops there. So, President Trump is in Bedminster, New Jersey, spending the day and keeping a close eye on the Middle East. Alex Hogan is in Bridgewater, New Jersey, near the president. She has the latest for us. Alex, so I I feel these attacks in my body. I I converted to a tribe. My tribe has a particular homeland and right that that that changes me, right? I I experience life differently. I am not buffered, right? These things go on outside of me. The these things happen in Israel thousands of miles away. And yet I I feel it because the nature of reality is that we are all porous. We all develop attachments to people that we love and to our tribe, our religion, our ingroup. And what happens to the group affects us. When October 7, 2023 happened when Hamas put off this uh successful attack on southern Israel, I I was distraught. I I I have not been able to uh follow particularly anti-Israel posters anymore because the more intense the the threat to the Jewish people, to the Jewish state, right, the more painful and emotionally upsetting it is for for me to hear contradictory points of view. So there I stand. I hope that this JNS commentary here by a reserve IDF spokesman Doran Spielman, he's the IDF spokesman here, sitting down on May 27, right? Is current attack. I I hope he's correct here. >> Problem inside Lebanon. Unfortunately, I don't see a solution on the short term. Um, so where does that where does that leave us? meaning we're we're fighting Hezbollah and you make a very strong point that Hezbollah is the ideological outgrowth of many of the Shiites. >> So Hezbollah fires rockets, fires drones into Israel and Israel had promised Donald Trump that it would not respond by attacking Hezbollah strongholds in Beirut unless Israel proper was attacked. So there was a covert war where Hezbollah would attack Israeli soldiers in southern Lebanon but would largely hold back from attacking Israel proper. Then Hezbollah attacked Israel proper. Israel responded by attacking Hezbollah strongholds in Beirut. And now Iran has attacked Israel with missiles, banking that Donald Trump badly does not want an escalation of war. And so if the United States responds or if Israel restarts the war directly with Iran, then this will cost Israel global support and American support >> to live in Lebanon. So even if Hezbollah is gone, you're left with a large Shiite population. It will result in most likely civil war between the Sunnis and the Marinites and the Shiites. Where does that leave Israel long term? Like give me a picture here in 5, 10, 15 years. So, first of all, um, Israel has to have a real border defending itself. I argued from the beginning of the war and even beforehand with our students, um, the Lethani River is the Israeli northern border. It's a barrier from other cries or other whatever military force north of Israel. >> Explain why and how far in it is. >> It's 20 kilometers north of Israeli border today. The IDF is now on the eastern part of it. Um, it's uh, let's say 1,000 ft tall in the in the eastern parts of it. So, I've never bought into the narrative that Iran is insane, that uh they just want to do crazy things, right? I think Iran is pursuing its hero system. Iran is pursuing its objectives and that their objectives sound strange to you and to me doesn't mean that they're insane. I think uh they are following a savvy strategy and I am incredibly emotionally caught up in this war. Even while I keep saying well rationally, cognitively, intellectually I'm not taking a a side here on whether this particular policy is good or bad. I am emotionally caught up in it. And so it's painful for me to admit that the elite consensus is that America and Israel are losing this war with Iran. Claude, the anthropic chatbot says that the evidence is very strong that America is losing this war with Iran. And here we have Iran launching fresh missiles at Israel. And there are very strong incentives for Donald Trump not to restart the war. And there are now abundant reasons to blame Israel for this Iran attack because Israel provoked by attacking Beirut after they said they wouldn't attack Beirut. This is not a good situation for Israel. So in these difficult trying times, right? I want to hear a comforting message that feels good to me. And this is the comforting message that feels good to me. >> Like valley that is a barrier. It's a geographical barrier for troops to invade. The border today is undefendable geographically. Um it's a clear border between Israel and Lebanon. Now >> the chat notes that stocks crashed on Friday because insiders may have had a sense that there was a massive escalation in this war that was coming. >> Long range missiles. The I think Israel learned the lesson that we cannot uh have a military force having any military threat on Israel. definitely not with long range missiles um which will not be built I hope in the next couple of years. The real threat by the way this is something where people are ignoring is Syria Syria and Turkey. So when Iran collapses and which is happening already financially their their dominance in the Middle East is weakening um it opens to for alternative forces to rise. Turkey is rising now as a strong anti-semitic uh um uh um country again religion Muslim Brotherhood which is the number one enemy and if you think about it for a second the Russian Ukraine war will eventually end in some ways but what happened is Russia and Ukraine have a gigantic military industry will will need to sell its goods to some people and imagine a Syrian army built with Russian military industry So you can get hundreds of opinions from people far smarter, far more knowledgeable than myself. Here's the key thing to understand about those opinions. When they stop reflecting an alliance position, when they stop doing coalition work, they're much more likely to be true. So even if there's an elite consensus that this war is a disaster, opinions on this war pretty much line up with opinions on Trump and opinions on foreign intervention. So people who support Trump largely support the war and people who oppose Trump look for every reason to trash the war. When you start seeing people move out of their coalition, that is because the evidence is so overwhelming. So, as I cannot find one prominent personality who has shifted outside their coalition position on this war, I don't think we yet have a significant empirical reason to have a strong opinion one way or another on if America is winning or losing this war on Iran. Watch for people moving outside and opposed to the coalitions that give them status, protection, and income >> bought by Turkey and controlled by Turkey on the northern border of Israel. So you'll find very weird stuff happening in Israeli northern border long-term in Israel. We need to have a strong big army capable of defending and uh uh um maneuvering in ground forces with obviously high sophisticated intelligence and air force. Um but we need geography to defend us. That's why we have the Kmon Mountain. That's why the river that's why we have a buffer zone inside Syria. We cannot tolerate a border that is not geog. So there are a lot of famous pundits like Peter Zion who seem to be primarily uh geography and demographics. This is a point of view that is unpopular in the academy. They don't like to think about demographics, genetics and geography being dominant. So they prefer other explanations >> graphically superior to our enemies. >> I want to now talk boots on the ground. I you have spent more time in Lebanon uh also with your strategic understanding we've had your lectures about Lebanon which I attended from the 7th of October and and even before uh really were predictive I think in many ways you were the first person that I did hear say that Israel should move a northern border to the Leani and now it seems like that's an accepted at least de facto even if it's not the jury and we're not going to announce it that that's really where the border needs to be. You've been on the ground. You know the terrain. I've been up there with you to the hermone. Israel has destroyed 90% of Hisba's long range weapons. And thank God the scenarios didn't happen of buildings falling down all over Tel Aviv. It's it seems shocking that now they have reverted. And I understand that the numbers are not colossal, but they have now reverted to a small device with a fiber optic cable that seems to be unstoppable. Can you explain how this works? why it's effective in Lebanon and then I want to understand what's being done to stop it because the stories are that Israeli soldiers are asking Lebanese fishermen for fishing nets to try to stop them. >> Yeah. So imagine moving from uh um swords and arrows to rifles. So an arrow you can shoot from 10, 15, 30 mters if you long range. So you get to 150 mters. Great. A rifle today can get 500 900 meters of snipers to last 72 hours. So we have some more video that's come out generally showing some of the missiles being intercepted. I do want to say that the IDF is currently saying that all missiles have been intercepted so far and it appears to be that could be the case. But take that with a grain of salt though. That's what the IDF is currently claiming. >> So this is the enforcer. They became my favorite live source for news about war. But I I've just increasingly grown annoyed with them over the past few months because they would use sensationalist headlines. They'd make all sorts of uh statements and claims that would not backed up by by fact. They would treat proclamations about the war on the primary basis of truth rather than asking right what institution what coalition is being served by this language. We did not evolve to optimize for truth. We opt we evolved to optimize for our tribe. So I've grown increasingly annoyed with them over the past uh four months. But let's see if they're bringing value. >> And we don't know if that's actually the case or not. So, they're saying that all the Iranian missiles have allegedly been shot down. So, we'll have to see. But, let's take a look at our footage. We see here an air defense interceptor being launched from northern Israel to try and intercept and shoot down an incoming Iranian SRBM. We also see another one of those incoming SRBMs right there overhead making its way further into Israel. You also see another clip of one right here. Moving on from that clip, we also were able to hear that apparently three of these were launched from Khalle Kasim uh in the Andamesh Kushan province area. The Kustan province is around the city of a >> I have an Orthodox Jewish friend and his favorite two favorite uh video sources for news are the enforcer during time of war and Nick Fuentes because he just finds him so entertaining and obviously my Orthodox Jewish friend is not anti-Semitic but uh he he just finds Nick hilarious >> and uh generally within this area down here. These were actually fired directly along the western Iranian border near to the Iraqi city of Bazra from what we're understanding. Meaning that they're trying to get the shortest flight path possible from the launch sites to the state of Israel and their points of impacts that we might be hearing about here in the near future. We also got to see another clip here of more incoming Iranian missiles over Israel. Oh. Oh. Oh, we got something not so great right here. Uh, let's see. I'm currently getting some im images here apparently from northern Israel. It looks like something has exploded on the ground. Like not not that first one, but the second one here. It looks like something has exploded on the ground in northern Israel. Uh, it appears to be a possible missile impact from the looks of it. I'm seeing smoke around it. We're seeing, of course, a very bright white flash from the ground. So, it looks like Israel might have just taken a direct hit as of right this second. Also, by the way, apparently the fourth wave is underway of ballistic missile strikes on Israel. It looks like it's currently underway as we speak. Uh so that's not good obviously either. Uh we're also hearing that there could be a possible explosion over uh Isvahan, Iran from the looks of it. They're saying there's an explosion there and we're also getting a video apparently showing an explosion in Isvahan which is of course near an Iranian uh nuclear missile site as well. So we're also seeing we're getting a lot of stuff happening right now. It looks like we're seeing anti-aircraft activity being reported over several areas of Iran right now. So, it could be possible that maybe Iran is being engaged by Western forces. Uh, that could be what we're seeing right now. But, Enforcer, what do you make of that? >> Uh, pretty interesting developments to say the least. It does appear that there is a fourth wave fired to try and get us through all of this. This appears to be an explosion near to the area of the port of Hifa. Uh, it it's not incredibly >> Hey, let's uh check in here with Fox News to get get the latest from Fox >> hit. They are not successfully intercepted. So again, we'll continue to monitor what will come out of this in terms of a White House response. We did get a lid from the White House earlier this morning, meaning we don't expect to see or hear from the president in terms of making any public addresses. That being said, we do often see the president come on social media to to address, you know, really concerns across the board, weighing in on a wide array of topics. So right now as we're continuing to follow that, it's also worth noting just the ongoing diplomatic effort that we have been watching now for months. Today marks the 100th day since this conflict began. And there are hosts of of team members, these unnamed people who are working tirelessly to try to secure some kind of ceasefire, some kind of initial deal. The latest reaction we've heard from the president as it pertains to the deal is that he has said that one, Iran should not be able to have a nuclear weapon as a part of this initial agreement. But he wanted to take that a step further, saying he not only wants the specific language that Iran cannot build a nuclear weapon, but he also wants to ensure that Iran will not be able to purchase a nuclear weapon in the future. We've heard the president say that at this point in time, Iran only has about 21 to 22% of their missile capabilities. We did hear some Democrats push back on those numbers, arguing that that number is actually closer to 70%. But again, disagreements as it comes to what that capacity still is. And analysts weigh in giving their different outlook as well. When we hear about the president saying the enriched uranium that needs to uh to be withdrawn, that's of course a conversation that's going to continue. But right now, as we continue to watch these latest alerts coming out of Israel, we'll watch here uh in New Jersey to see if the White House has any reaction at this hour. John, >> if the Iranians want peace, as they claim they do, it would seem that launching missiles at Israel and other neighbors is a poor way to achieve that. All right. Thanks very much, Alex. >> Exactly. And this is >> Go ahead. >> Thanks, John. >> All right. >> No, well, this to mention what you just your point there is that this isn't the latest escalation we've seen. Just the last two days as well. Iran has launched these drones and ballistic missiles toward Gulf allies of the US in the region and also those two drones just yesterday that US forces were able to intercept over the straight of Hormuse. So one reading of this is that it's desperation that Iran's economy was crashing due to the US naval blockade and and uh apparently would would Iran have acted this way if they were just so confident that they were sitting pretty which is the conventional wisdom. The conventional wisdom is that Iran sitting pretty. It's America that's desperate. You you could read these Iranian attacks as a deflation of that claim. All right, Alex Hogan traveling with the president. She's in Bedminster, New Jersey. Alex, thanks. And we'll be back with >> Okay, let's get uh back to the enforcer here. They have live. >> So, there might have been an explosion in the Ismahan area that we're still trying to track and get more information on. Um but it does appear that the resumption of the war is happening in real time right now because the United States is now expecting attacks against US forces in Jordan, Kuwait, and also Qatar. uh Qatar has not come under a significant amount of Iranian attacks during the raging ceasefire quote unquote over the past few months. And we've also been able to see as well the Israelis are coming under continuous attacks in the northern region of their country by multiple ballistic missile volleys. So it's becoming incredibly clear at this point without a doubt that the conflict has resumed. I would say that it's a pretty clear and obvious thing to say that this is a resumption of the conflict if anything would be and this doesn't really allow for the skirting around of the situation like many have made in the US government to where they can claim that the ceasefire is still intact. This appears to be a complete collapse of the ceasefire. Also, by the way, some of y'all may be wondering what led to this today because it seems to have kind of come out of the blue, and this is something that we really haven't been able to cover yet at this point, is that earlier in the morning, the Israelis crossed an Iranian red line that the Iranians had announced weeks ago that if the Israelis bombed Beirut or the Dakia suburb, that was going to force an Iranian response directly on the state of Israel. Uh the Israelis ended up bombing Dakia just this morning, just a few hours before this attack started with some footage here showing the strikes and the aftermath of the actions. The Dakia suburb to just make sure that everybody knows is a hotbed of Hezbollah terrorist activities and it's generally where most Hezbollah headquarters are found for the group uh that operates within southern Lebanon. So it's not exactly like the Israelis are attacking absolutely nothing. They are attacking the headquarters of Hezbollah. But at the same time, however, this was an Iranian red line that Iran had stated that if the Israelis bombed Daha, the Iranians were going to respond with a significant ballistic missile barrage directed at Israel. And the Iranians responded with a direct missile barrage at Israel after Israel bombed the Dakia suburb. So that's generally the reason why we're actually watching what's happening right now is because the Israelis crossed an Iranian red line and it appears that the Iranian red lines are actually real. um which is a little bit interesting considering that they have been letting the US do a pretty decent amount of things to them and they hadn't done much of anything back. But we actually have more breaking news coming out at this moment. Okay, so this is very big breaking news right here. The IRGC has just made this statement that they said waves of missiles and drones will continue to be launched around the clock for the next 7 days until the enemy, meaning Israel, is deterred and ceases its crimes. They said for the next seven days around the clock they're going to be firing missiles at Israel. So that's a serious >> So have you heard the phrase money talks BS walks? So perhaps the strongest argument that Israel is winning its various wars since October 7 is that the Israeli stock market keeps going up. Right? It's very easy to say things, but it's much more challenging to invest. And if if uh billions of dollars are investing that Israel is going to emerge stronger and safer after these wars, that is, I think, a more compelling argument than the opinion of pundits. >> As it gets right there, so that will force a response. It looks like I would not be surprised to see Tran and also other major cities inside of Iran getting hit extremely hard. I would not be surprised to see that earlier today. He told me they were not coordinated with the United States. And I asked him for reaction to the Israeli strikes against Hezbollah in Beirut. And President Trump said, "I'm not happy about it." Now, more broadly, he said that the ongoing Iranian missile fire toward Israel at this moment certainly is not going to help the negotiations. But again, he is calling on the Iranians to stop firing these missiles and get back to the negotiating table to ultimately reach a settlement. The president talked about the power of the US military and also the power of the ongoing US naval blockade of Iranian ports. This blockade, John, is currently crippling the Iranian economy. They are losing hundreds of millions of dollars each and every day. And that's part of the reason that President Trump has been able to maintain this strategic patience across the Middle East, understanding that while the United States remains on alert in the region, they simply have to keep this blockade in place and it will push the Iranians to the negotiating table because they are running out of options with their economy under so much pressure. We know that Iranian exports are down 90%. They're currently extracting crude oil at a 50% rate as a result of this US naval blockade. and officials in the region tell Fox News it is only going to get worse. As for the current situation across the region, we know that people in the northern part of Israel remain in bomb shelters at this hour. There is concern that the Iranians may continue this ballistic missile attack against Israel. We don't know the exact number of missiles that were used in the first wave. There were four Iranian ballistic missiles and then there were three additional waves again in response to the IDF strikes that took place earlier today against Hezbollah in Beirut. Again, President Trump telling Fox News he was not happy about those Israeli strikes and indicated that a deal with Iran was just days away. At this moment, he is likely being briefed on the situation. But again, the president suggesting to Iran, quote, "You've shot your missiles. That's enough. Get back to the table and make a deal." Again, President Trump looking for a negotiated settlement, but he did indicate to Fox News that the US military is the most powerful in the world and remains on alert, suggesting that the Iranians make a deal so he doesn't have to use the military again. John, >> yeah, it would seem uh that the Iranians think they can wait the president out, they can stall, they can negotiate or, you know, pretend to negotiate and hope that the November elections result in some easing of the sanctions against them. Uh, tough to know what the president I imagine he wouldn't tell you exactly what his thinking is on that score, but tough to know what the president is going to decide there, Trey. Yeah, absolutely. And look, this is a president who has been able to stop numerous wars around the world and according to foreign officials, save millions of lives. And he's trying to do the same thing in the Middle East, but he is up against a challenging counterpart in terms of negotiation because the president, according to the call that we just had, really understands the situation. and he understands the partnership between the United States and Israel, but he also understands that p for the past 47 years, the Iranians have been conducting the same behavior over and over again. They've not only been attacking US forces, but they've been supporting these regional proxies like Hamas, the Houthis, and Hezbollah to launch attacks against US allies. And so, the president is trying to reach an agreement here that's going to do a few things. One, it's going to open the Straight of Hormuz to international shipping. Two, it's going to ensure that Iran never has a path to a nuclear weapon and that all of the highlyenriched uranium and allen enriched uranium is either exported from Iranian territory or destroyed on site. And then finally, creating a stable situation across the Middle East that would allow for some of these broader ideas that the president has. Remember, President Trump has called on regional countries like Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and others to join the Abraham Accords because he sees this as an opportunity in the aftermath of Operation Epic Fury, a 40-day military operation, he believes. And uh again, right now, there's a lot of activity happening in Israel. And I'm just turning around. There are still alerts coming out from Israel's homeront command at this moment. Um but we are getting a new statement, John, right now. I just want to read it to you from Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps that said their attacks on Israel this evening were a quote warning of broader response that would encompass all US and Israeli targets in the region if aggressions are repeated. And a senior Iranian official speaking to Reuters says all US bases in the region will be considered legitimate targets for Tehran if Israel attacks. So again, following four waves of Iranian ballistic missiles that targeted Israel's third largest city of Hifa and nearly the entirety of this country, the region is bracing to see if Israel will respond. This was a significant attack against the civilian population of Israel. John. >> Yeah. And you know, it would seem that if if Iran is saying these attacks were a warning uh that maybe they are done for now, but uh we'll get back to you in just a few minutes and and see if there is first of all any response from the Israelis or the United States and see if the missiles continue to rain down on Israel. Trey Yinst doing a great job covering the situation there from Tel Aviv. Trey, thank you. So, breaking news here on the Fox Report. Missiles flying from Iran toward Israel. More coverage in a moment. >> Okay, we'll keep an eye on all the different news sources. Let's get uh back to the >> operation against Israel was merely a warning and if the aggressions are repeated, the responses will be broader and will encompass all American Zionist targets in the region. So that's conflicting with the other statement that we just heard that the IRGC was saying that they would launch non-stop attacks for the next 7 days straight around the clock. That's sort of conflicting with that. Also, by the way, this is not going to hold off the Israeli response. Israel is already saying that Tran's going to burn and we are expecting in the next hour or two hours or maybe even three that we'll likely see some sort of very strong Israeli response to this situation. I doubt the US is going to be able to restrain Israel on this because of course Israel usually doesn't just sit back when they get attacked. They usually do something in response. So I doubt the US will be able to rein Israel in if they wanted to even do that. And also it'd be a little bit absurd to ask Israel not to respond considering that they literally just got attacked and this could have killed their civilians. Uh so that's what the RGC is saying right now. But enforcer, what do you make of that statement? Uh it looks to me like they're trying to stop a retaliatory attack from happening. I think that's what these statements are being made for of don't hit us or it's going to get worse. But they already made the statement earlier that it's going to be seven days of endless soup and salad in the form of missile attacks. So I'd have a feeling that this might just be a statement to try and see that the Israelis don't strike back and the Iranians can get in a couple of more licks before any response is actually conducted. But at this point, the wheels are turning in Israel. They're going to be conducting retaliatory strikes. It sounds like they already are into Breeze and Isvahan from what we've been able to hear. So, I think that this statement is coming a little too late for the Iranians considering that it already looks like retaliatory strikes are being conducted by the Israelis. But we have even further breaking news coming out right now. So, what do we got? Okay, so it's being reported right now that the US president has weighed into the situation. And take this for what you will, it's allegedly, I'm not sure if he just made a statement just now in response to the attack on Israel. It sounds like it was, but take this for what you will. Uh, allegedly, the president just said to Iran, "You shot your missiles. That's enough. Now get back to the table and make a deal. Uh, so that's not going to stop Israel, by the way. I doubt Israel is going to like listen to that mumbo jumbo right there. They literally just got attacked with ballistic missiles. So Israel is going to respond. I'm pretty confident about that. But the United States is taking this position that apparently it's okay if Israel gets attacked and they're just going to have to accept it and somehow this means that a deal is closed. So I don't know what the hell is going on with the United States, but they're they're out of their mind as of right now. So I I doubt it's going to stop Israel. Do you think it will or not? >> No, that's that's definitely not going to stop Israel. I don't even know. >> All right. That's why I got uh annoyed listening to the enforcer using the analysis. Oh, the United States is out of its mind. If Donald Trump said what he said, he didn't say it on the basis of truth, right? It was a tactic. It was a coalition tactic. What exactly it means is an interesting question. But, uh, Trump didn't just say something crazy. He said it to further certain coalitional goals and the analysis that says, "Oh, he's just lost his mind. America's just lost its mind." I that that uh doesn't add value, guys. >> You know what the hell kind of a stupid comment this is? Like this is like saying, "Okay, well the Japanese >> Yeah, this is where I got annoyed because hearing all this now, oh that was stupid. That was crazy. That was insane." That doesn't add any value. They're they're analyzing the rhetoric on the basis of global truth uh claims. They're analyzing the rhetoric on the basis of onlogical certitude. But uh Trump and other politicians don't say things primarily on the basis of what's true. They say things to get things done within their ruling coalition so that their side can maintain its hands on as many of the coercive powers of government as possible. And people lie in the pursuit of their interests. >> Just attacked Pearl Harbor. Let's talk to him. You know, it's like who the hell would ever work off of that kind of a mindset. And apparently, according to a Intel, this was a quote from Fox. So, I don't know if e >> so the commercial wisdom is that Iran's winning this war. Iran sustained about a trillion dollars in loss. H how is that winning the war? Right. Israel's lost about 50 people in this war. The United States has lost about 13 and Iran has sustained losses to thousands of its key persons. How how is that winning? >> He spoke directly on Fox on air. We don't know at the moment, but um it appears pretty clear that the president of the United States is taking what I would say is probably the weakest approach that can be seen. The Iranians have now fired >> directly. He had a message for the Iranian regime. He said, "What I would suggest to Iran, you've shot your missiles. That's enough. Get back to the table and make a deal." President Trump indicated in our conversation that negotiations with Iran were progressing toward a possible agreement as early as Monday, Tuesday, or Wednesday of this coming week. He told me and he said, "Now this takes place." And so the president will likely be briefed in the hours ahead about what is happening right now, this exchange of fire that again started earlier today with the Israelis striking the Lebanese capital of Beirut in response to Hezbollah attacks against their country. And so there's been this back and forth taking place. And I asked President Trump if there was coordination with the Israelis regarding the strikes in the Dhaka neighborhood of southern Beirut earlier today. He told me there was not coordination with Israel and added that he was not happy about it. And so the president taking in a lot of information right now as it relates to what is happening in the Middle East. But the latest information, John, that we have four waves of Iranian ballistic missiles targeting civilian populations of Israel and new threats at this hour from Iran's IRGC that they will target US bases across the Middle East if the Israelis respond to these strikes on their territory. This is a significant ballistic missile attack against Israel, the largest that we have seen since the ceasefire went into effect in the aftermath of Operation Epic Fury. And again, it's an indication that the Iranians still have some of their ballistic missiles left despite the military defeats that they suffered during the operation. And again, President Trump indicated that he has sympathy for those in the region who are uninvolved. He talked about the situation in Lebanon. He said he didn't want to see it as a a firing range. And ultimately, we have seen a lot of success on the diplomatic front administration to try to reach a normalization deal between Israel and Lebanon. But it's this X factor of Hezbollah, Iran's largest proxy in the Middle East that is throwing a wrench in this ongoing process. Remember, the president has been able to normalize ties with regional countries and Israel through the Abraham Accords. He has called on other regional countries to join this agreement, and he is trying to deescalate the tension between Israel and Lebanon amid this ongoing regional conflict. There is a broader effort here by President Trump to reach a negotiated settlement with the Iranian regime that would a open the Straight of Hormuz, B ensure that Iran never has a path to a nuclear weapon, and C export or destroy all of their enriched material that currently exists inside of Iranian territory. But of course, when something like this happens, this exchange of fire that is currently taking place, it complicates the efforts by President Trump to reach such an agreement. And I'm just looking right now at the latest updates that we have. John, our team in Tel Aviv reporting that Iraq, that neighbors Iran has temporarily closed its airspace and has suspended air navigation due to safety concerns of air traffic in the region. The western part of Iran's airspace is currently closed until further notice. That is according to Iranian state media. There are a lot of threats going around right now from the IRGC and from Iranian state media to target US bases across the region. But again, the latest information that we have, John, four waves of Iranian ballistic missiles have targeted civilian areas of Israel. The Iranians say this is in response to the IDF strikes that targeted the Hezbollah stronghold of southern Beirut earlier today. President Trump reacting exclusively to Fox News to this ongoing Iranian attack, saying it is certainly not going to help negotiations. And again, President Trump telling Fox, >> one piece of analysis about war that I I really enjoyed recently was that you never have war when people agree on the facts, right? You only have war when people from different sides have different interpretations of the facts. people would not go to war, choose to go to war deliberately if there was a significant chance that they were going to lose. So, United States, Iran and Israel are at war because these different parties disagree on the facts. Then you get a war and the facts become clarified. It's like litigation, right? One party sues another and then they do discovery and they conduct depositions and then as the shared fact pattern becomes more and more clear, 98% of the time there is a settlement. And so too with the war, until there is a shared fact pattern agreed to by the major parties, right, you're probably not going to get a settlement. So Iran is launching these missiles because it thinks it's in its self-interest that this will act as a deterrent to Israel that Donald Trump is too concerned about losing the elections, losing popularity, higher gas prices, that he's not going to respond and and uh escalate the war. So we have a disagreement over facts leading to this battle. And then when there is a shared understanding of the facts, then and only then will we get a settlement >> targeting the entirety of northern Israel was under a missile alert earlier amid those four waves of Iranian ballistic missiles. And again, this speaks to just how dangerous these missiles can be. We know that one of the Iranian attack drones last week killed someone in Kuwait. And when these attacks take place, there is just a very short amount of time that the Israelis have to respond and work to shoot down the incoming fire. And just very briefly, I want to talk about the Israeli air defense systems. Something that President Trump did that was very important before Operation Epic Fury began is that with Secretary of War Pete Hegath and their counterparts here in Israel, they planned not just on an offensive level, but also on a defensive level for the possibility of incoming Iranian fire. And so the Israelis have a tiered missile defense system with the Iron Dome at the lowest level and then they have David Sling in the middle and then the Aero 2 and three system. But more broadly, they have US THAAD and Patriot systems that have worked previously to shoot down incoming Iranian missile fire. And again, this speaks to the coordination that the Israelis and the Americans have on a military level. There may be disagreements politically about when and where to strike. And again, President Trump telling Fox News on the phone he was not happy about the Israeli strikes against Beirut earlier today. But the bottom line here is that the coordination on a military level continues. There are US refuelers and cargo planes at Israel's Bengorian airport about 20 minutes to my east right now and they are prepared if orders are given by President Trump to strike Iranian territory and again there is a posture across the Middle East. President Trump has extended an olive branch to the Iranian regime. He is giving them two options here. John, >> okay, he keeps uh repeating himself. So try the enforcers if >> result in any sort of a successful diplomatic resolution because it's being shown at every level at this point that the United States is not going to get into a war. Iran could basically come into the Middle East's regions and beat around the US military and wipe out entire flight squadrons of aircraft if they wanted to and the US is just going to completely shrug that off and act like it's not happening. So, I'm generally believing this is going to remain entirely between Israel and Iran for a while, unless if a US base is attacked and a US service member is killed and then we might see that the US does something. Um, but at this point, I'm I'm assuming that the United States is taking the weakest approach possible to the situation in every scenario and that largely would uh facilitate that the United States does not get involved at all at this point, no matter what happens. >> Maybe. So, I can only imagine the discussions that are about to be had because remember folks that just about I think it was like four or five days ago there was a phone call between the US president and Netanyahu and the apparently the US president confirmed that this is what happened. Apparently, there was a bit of a cussing match that took place on the phone. It sound like uh I think maybe the US president might have called Netanyahu a crazy bastard or something something similar to that. I can't remember the exact wordage of it, but there was some cra there's some pretty strong wordage uh exchange between Netanyahu and the US president. So, there's some tensions already there. So, I can only imagine what's going to be said over the phone at this time. It's probably going to be, you know, telling Israel, you better not attack Iran or otherwise X, Y, and Z. Uh, so I just don't know. It seems to me like the escalation chain is already in motion. Uh, Israel's already vowed to respond to it, and I would be surprised if they didn't. Uh, at this point, uh, so Iran's vowing that if Israel even retaliates in the slightest, they're going to launch a larger attack even after that. So I think at this point it's pretty much out of the US's control. It's going to go the way it's going to go with or without the United States weighing into it. U I think at this point it's it's pretty much set. >> Yeah, I would say that I think at this point the the course is set in place. An attack on the Israelis is generally going to be starting an entire broader conflict over again because the Israelis are going to attack the Iranians. And a lot of people for some reason have this idea um that the Islamic Republic of Iran is going it only hates Israel. that doesn't hate the United States, but they are going to attack US bases and they're probably going to try and pull out the fine China to make sure that they can get >> so think about yourself and what happens to you when you come under pressure and then apply that analogy to Iran and Hezbollah and Lebanon and Israel, right? The more pressure you're under, the more desperate your situation, the more intense in-group solidarity you will feel, and the less you will care about the out groupoup, and the more you will become willing to escalate. So these Iranian attacks give Israel the excuse to bomb everything that they want to bomb in Beirut. Anything related to Hezbollah, they can go after Iranian oil infrastructure, right? The the gloves may well come off. And then in turn, Iran says, "We got nothing to lose. We're going to take out Saudi Arabia's desalination plants. We're going to take out all the the key infrastructure in the Gulf States." So, we appear to be going up and up the escalation ladder right now. >> Get some um some some US casualties generally in the mix, which will largely force us back into the conflict to some extent. Um, there's really no way at this point that a regional war or the resumption of the regional war can be avoided because most of the essential ingredients for the continuation of a full-blown regional war have just happened right now. The Israelis have been attacked. The Israelis have already counterattacked in some limited form and the Iranians are making it clear that they're not going to be stopping anytime soon. So, Maddie, what else do we have for breaking news coming out right now? So, Iran has just closed its western airspace to civil traffic. That also comes right after Iraq just closed their airspace as well. So it seems like the the path is being cleared in the sky for Iranian missiles to make their way toward uh toward Iran for the attacks. It appears to be that is the case. Uh we are hearing as well that Israeli officials are confirming that they are vowing to deliver a what they call powerful response to Iran's ballistic missile fire. That's according to two Israeli officials. We're also hearing as well that apparently there will be a greater attack than than Israel just saw that Iran's talking about right now if this attack follows through that Israel's talking about. So they're definitely setting up the stage for a big showdown between the two. Uh like I said, I think it's set in stone at this point that something's about to break out uh that Israel is about to conduct. So I don't think there's any talking. I think Israel might actually jump and respond before the US even has a chance to reign them in. That sounds like what they're about to do. Sounds to me like they're definitely working on that one right now. And also on top of that, I mean, you know, I got to say folks, it's a little bit stupid to uh try and corral the Israelis at this point because regardless of the of the actions they took this morning, which were directly against US interests of bombing DACA, which was an absolutely stupid idea because that would clearly restart the entire conflict. Outside of that though, with the Iranians attacking Israel directly, the Israelis are largely forced into making a response because not making a response is giving out a very weak image and could be opening up to further attacks and harassment in the future, either by Iranian terrorist groups within the surrounding area or by Iran itself because now they're seeing at that point that they could attack Israel without Israel even responding at all. So, I would have to say that in my honest opinion, I think that the Israelis are going to be responding here incredibly soon, probably within the next 30 to 40 minutes. Okay. Uh, let's leave it there for now. I'll talk to you later. Bye-bye.