6/8/26: Iran & Israel Exchange Fire, Trump Rage Quits Interview, Pentagon Warns Of Israeli Spying

This is an I Heart podcast. Guaranteed human. Hey guys, Sagar and Crystal here. Independent media just played a truly massive role in this election and we are so excited about what that means for the future of this show. This is the only place where you can find honest perspectives from the left and the right that simply does not exist anywhere else. So if that is something that's important to you, please go to breakingpoints.com, become a member today and you'll get access to our full shows, unedited, ad free, and all put together for you every morning in your inbox. We need your help to build the future of independent news media and we hope to see you at breakingpoints.com. Good morning everybody, happy Monday. Having an amazing show for everybody today. What do we have Crystal? Indeed, we do a whole lot of breaking news this morning in the Middle East, Iran struck Israel. Israel retaliated even though Trump told them not to. We will let you know what we can figure out about where things stand this morning. Trump also with an explosive interview with Kristen Walker, almost literally massive rain and thunderstorms in the background. He raged quit at one point. There were a lot of interesting comments about Iran so we'll break that down for you as well. The Intel community is raising the red flag about Israeli unhinged, that's their word, spying efforts against the United States. Sagar has some exclusive information on that one. We're gonna take a look at the stock market. The Asian markets actually were in free fall. US markets also down significantly on Friday. We'll see what's going on there. And Jess Stein is gonna join us and it's been a while since we've had him on the show. He's been actually out writing a book. He comes back with a very significant scoop about what open AI is asking the White House to do and we also wanna talk to him about that imminent SpaceX IPO which is going to make Elon Musk a trillionaire and seems to be designed to rob retail investors across the country. So, lots to get into there as well. It is genuinely shocking stuff. Thank you to everybody's subscribing, supporting the show, breakingpoints.com to become a premium subscriber. We've got big stuff that's launching later on this week and you do support our journalism. I spent hours on the phone about this Israeli spy story. I have some exclusive details that I'll be able to report to all of you later. If you're watching this on YouTube, please hit subscribe and if you're listening to this podcast, share an episode with a friend. But let's go ahead and start with all of these breaking developments, missiles flying all over the Middle East. Yes, so if you will rewind, if you will, to last week, you'll recall that Sagar and I brought to you the news that supposedly Israel and Lebanon had a ceasefire. This was very significant because Iran has always said, Lebanon needs to be included in the ceasefire and there is no ceasefire if Lebanon is not included. However, almost immediately Hezbollah came out and said, we don't agree to this because this includes the IDF remaining in Lebanon and forces are withdrawal. So they continue to fire on Northern Israel. Israel continued to fire at Lebanon and Beirut in particular. And Iran, rather than standing back and watching this and effectively looking like they're not good to their word and that this is an important red line, did something quite extraordinary here and they decided to go ahead and strike inside of Israel for the first time in quite a while. Let's go ahead and take a listen to Trey Yenksd, Fox News correspondent who was on the ground there as this was unfolding. This is breaking news. Iran is launching a missile attack against Israel as we speak. Sirens are currently sounding across the Northern city of Haifa, Israel's third largest city. We will be live on Fox News with this update. We do expect more information shortly. But again, these launches are coming from Iranian territory and are in response to the Israeli strikes against the Lebanese capital of Beirut earlier today. So Israel, of course, looking for any excuse to get back to war making. They do not want any sort of a deal to resolve this war between the US and Israel versus Iran. However, Trump came in and told a number of reporters immediately that he did not want Netanyahu and Israel to retaliate. Let's go and put A4 up on the screen here. This is from Barack Reveed, of course, one of Trump's favorite reporters on these matters. He spoke with Trump on the phone. He said the, Trump said the Iranian strikes did not hurt anybody. Hopefully Israel is not going to retaliate. If BB strikes them back, it's just gonna keep going like the last 47 years or the last 3,000 years. I don't know what he's talking about there. Trump added, we are very close to a final deal with Iran. It is going to be a good deal. I don't want it to blow up because of what is happening now and stressed. I am going to call BB right now, which reporting says he did, and tell him not to retaliate. Each of them had their fun. Israel had its strike and Iran had its strike. We don't need another one. He also spoke with the Financial Times. Let's put the next element up on the screen here as well. Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu will have no choice but to accept whatever the deal the US negotiates with Iran, Donald Trump said, because the US president quote, calls the shots. He won't have any choice, Trump told the FT in a telephone interview. I call the shots, I call all the shots. He does not call the shots. So, Iran strikes Israel. The president comes out and says to numerous reporters, I do not want Israel to retaliate. And I call the shots and I'm in charge. Lo and behold, what happened next? Israel went ahead and retaliated. We can put this next element, A2B, up on the screen here. You can see the VO there on the side, the video of some of the strikes inside of Iran. Drop site says Israel strikes targets across Iran. The Israeli Air Force has struck sites in Western and Central Iran with explosions reported across multiple cities. The IDF said in an initial statement, it has struck quote, military targets belong to the Iranian terror regime in Western and Central Iran, adding details would follow. Iranian state broadcasting confirming multiple explosions in Tehran, Tabriz and Isfahan, the scale and impact of the strikes remain unclear. Next element here, A2D, we get confirmation here from the IDF. Several infrastructure sites, this is from the IDF at the Petrochemical Complex in Mashar in Southwestern Iran. These facilities were used by the armed forces of the Iranian terror regime to produce and export raw materials for weapons production. The targeted infrastructure produced unique materials that serve as critical components for the development of ballistic missiles. So confirmation from both the IDF and from the Iranians that Israel did in fact retaliate within Iran against this petrochemical facility and Iran in response sent several more missiles into Israel. We can put these images up on the screen here. You hear the sirens and this is very significant because you see the missile coming in. You see the attempted interception which fails and then this is what appears to be a strike to the ground inside of Haifa which also Sagar belies Israel is claiming that they were able to intercept all of these. It does not look that that was the case. So the very latest after all of this unfolded this morning is Trump had this to say on true social. Both sides, Israel and Iran are looking to do an immediate ceasefire. Final negotiations on peace, in quotes are proceeding subject to ignorance or stupidity getting in its way. The blockade will remain in place and in full force and effect until a final deal is reached. Things should move quickly. Thank you for your attention to this matter. President Donald J. Trump of course just in time for the markets. However, so the Iranians seem to be accepting this from Trump at least for now. Let's go ahead and then put the latest A9B please up here on the screen breaking now from the Iranians. A response from the Iranian government. The accordingly the armed forces operations are declared to be halted. However, it is emphasized that if aggressions and atrocities continue including in southern Lebanon much harsher and more crushing actions than before will be on the way. The reason why this is so significant note here the Iranian statement makes clear it is not just applicable future strikes if they strike the Dahia district in Beirut. It explicitly includes all of southern Lebanon which is all currently occupied by the state of Israel and where ongoing war operations have continued now for over a month. This demonstrates explicitly that they have actually moved the red line from strikes on Beirut to southern Lebanon effectively saying that the precondition for a ceasefire means that Israel must leave southern Lebanon because that's the only time that quote aggressions and atrocities will continue. A8 please let's also put that up here on the screen. This is from Jeremy. He released this late yet last night. Iranian official says at this point reaching an agreement with Trump is not feasible. The primary person responsible for the current situation is Donald Trump himself. The Iranian official told Jeremy Scahill referring to Israel's massive escalation and its attacks against Lebanon and Iran's retaliatory strikes. Should Israel carry out another attack in Beirut in the coming days missiles will immediately target areas within the occupied territories in retaliation. For nearly 20 days the draft of a potential agreement has been on Trump's desk saying that Trump is driven by his fear of the Israeli lobby and is hoped that the naval blockade plan will prove effective. Iran will no longer accept or tolerate his current position. There also is a majorly important footnote to this entire thing. One of the preconditions for a memorandum of understanding was a genuine belief from the Iranian side that the United States could actually restrain Israel if it wanted to. Now we have just had explicit proof of either two things. One, Trump used the cover of going forward and saying and telling all these reporters immediately in the moment, I don't want them to strike, I call the shots, they need to stop firing. Three separate truth social posts all throughout the night all saying they need to stop quote shooting. I don't know why that wasn't quotes, but that's what he said, they need to stop quote shooting. What this proves definitively is that the US does not have the current capability under the Trump policy to actually restrain Israeli action. If he's going to explicitly say they can't strike and they do strike anyways, this proves two things. He's either feckless and useless and or he greenlit the strike otherwise. By the way, just to make very, very clear from the Iranian side, which they're actually correct about, it's not like US sent com data wasn't used in all of these targeting. It's not like ISR and refueling tankers, US refueling tankers are all up in the air and were scrambled from Ben-Gurion Airport. Did they refuel Israeli tankers? No confirmation currently from sent com. Second to that, as the Israelis themselves have acknowledged this morning, many of the intercepted Iranian missiles were shot down by US systems and or with US targeting data, which demonstrates that we are actively involved in a lot of the defense of the state of Israel. So even though we may not necessarily be explicitly bombing them, we are supporting Israel, we're giving them targeting data and we backed them up whenever it came time because they were shot at. Remember that in many cases, this reporting from the Washington Post over a month ago now at this point, it proved explicitly in many times that the United States spent its precious stockpile at the behest of conserving Israeli ammunition. So this is only furthering that, remember, we have a very, very limited amount, an over five year time period now in order to replace what was already used just in the 39 day conflict. And this comes on the heels now of renewed firing. But I think what this demonstrates more than anything is that despite what Trump keeps saying is that we're gonna closer and closer and closer to a deal, it proves the opposite. Cause this was a critical test from the Iranian side. Number one, they have to prove deterrence. They said explicitly, if you strike Beirut, we're going to bomb you. They struck Beirut, they went ahead and bombed them. Israel also, by the way, struck the Iranian foreign ministry. So I'm just waiting for the news, inevitable news, some negotiator somewhere has been killed. Don't just, you know, just wait 24 hours. I'm sure we'll get some confirmation. But the bottom line, bottom line, Trump was not able to restrain Israel or he decided or he actually supported it. Again, either way, it moves you further away from an agreement. You cannot have an agreement with a bilateral agreement when you have this tertiary party, which is rampaging through Lebanon and also is continuing to break many of the terms of the ceasefire. Literally the United States currently is engaged in a potential further war with Iran all because Israel wants to occupy Southern Lebanon and bomb Beirut at will and basically keep this country subjugated so that they can control it and probably even occupy it for all of eternity. That's what this entire thing is about. Is that worth paying $4.50 a gallon whenever it comes to gasoline? You're absolutely right that it almost doesn't matter whether Trump was just doing this whole Israel stop for show or whether he, you know, actually meant it and they were defied. Either way, the Iranians are gonna be looking at this and saying you're either unable or unwilling to restrain Israel. And they have, especially with this latest round of attacks directly at Israel, have made it clear that they will enforce this red line on no hostilities against Lebanon, that Lebanon has to be included in any ceasefire and certainly in any more extended peace. I wanted to put up a treat to Parsis analysis here. This is A11 because with regard to Lebanon in particular, he made a really important point here. He said, the magnitude of what just happened may take some time to sink in. This is the first time Iran has struck Israel after Israel struck another country's territory that is not Iran. That means the battle lines have been moved. Iran's deterrents had already been restored in the sense Israel knew any strike and it would be responded to. But now Iran has proven it will also respond to Israeli strikes on Lebanon. This is the first time in decades that a regional power has the means, capacity and willingness to put hard power against Israeli military maneuvers or aggression against a third party. And one wonders whether that may also ultimately be extended to Gaza, to Palestine, to the occupied territories as well. And just think of what we've experienced over the past several years, where not only has Israel been committing genocide in Gaza, but has bombed seven different countries over the past several years. And no one really did anything about it. The Houthis in Yemen, they're the only ones that really did anything about it. And obviously they're not strong enough or in a position to fully stop or check Israel's ambitions. The fact that Iran now has the capacity and the willingness to do this at all is a sea change. And that is exactly why the fact that Iran has that capability is exactly why Israel is absolutely committed to their destruction. The Israeli view of security is that they have to have absolute security, meaning that no one around it, whether it's Iran or whether it's in the future, Turkey, can have even the ability or the possible capacity to check their ambitions for the greater Israel project. And that's what Trisha is pointing to here, Dr. Parsey is pointing to here, is the fact that this really is a new dawn of an era in the Middle East in terms of Iranian ability and willingness to check some of Israel's most insane, you know, rogue state behavior that we've experienced for however many years at this point. Moving forward, just to recap where we are. So we had the strikes back and forth between Lebanon and Israel. We have Iran responding with strikes inside Israel. We have Israel responding to Iran. Then we have Trump coming in and saying, you know, we've got to, we're gonna have this, these are Iran accepting it at this point. But Sagar, I think if we look at Jeremy's reporting here, no one should be under any illusion that Iran like takes Trump's word for anything. They have consistently had their red lines. They've had a consistent position on what a deal would look like. It has been on Trump's desk for weeks, but Trump is unable, unwilling to be able to actually conclude this thing because of the level of humiliation. It would require him to accept that the whole world would see very clearly what a massive strategic loss this was for the United States. And also he has been unable or unwilling to restrain Israel, which it's very clear at this point. Iran is not going to allow that to stand. Yeah, exactly. And I think this is so important, you know, coming back to the previous post that we had from Trump where he keeps saying things like, don't worry, everything is on track for a ceasefire. You cannot be Trump's words. Trump has proven time and time again that words actually don't matter. So the Iranians, look, in a lot of ways, this was a test not only of their ability to enforce their own red lines, it was a test of Trump bringing it back to my earlier point. I also want to note this one. The blockade will remain in place and in full force and effect until a final deal is reached. By the way, that contradicts every single thing we know about the memorandum of understanding, which was supposed to see a lifting of the blockade from the Iranians on the Strait of Hormuz and the blockade of the United States. He says here, the blockade will remain in place in full force and effect until a final deal is reached. Considering what happened yesterday, the level of Zionist freakout that we saw after Trump had said, I'm gonna tell BB not to strike was unbelievable. First of all, disproving that their panic is plenty whenever they want to be. Whenever Trump doesn't lap at the feet of BB, they freak out and are criticizing the White House. They're not exactly real friends, they're fair weather friends on behalf of Israel, people like Mark Levin and all of these other folks. But I think it also showed their power because immediately, BB, for his own reasons, because inside of Israel, you had Neftali Bennett, I think we have that, don't we? A-12, can we put that up there on the screen? This is the moderate in Israel, remember that one. Who says there's a moment of truth. Is Israel a sovereign state capable of defending itself? A weak or symbolic response will signal to our enemies. The blood of our citizens has been spilled with impunity. Therefore, Israel must act with strength and effectiveness. In this matter, we all, every citizen of Israel, stand together calling for a retaliatory strike. You also, that was from Neftali Bennett, you also had Ben Gavir say, Tehran will burn to the ground tonight. So from both sides of the Israeli spectrum, BB was in a place that he has created, a blood thirst really within the Israeli government and for a lot of his own domestic political reasons. He couldn't not respond, but he also took a calculated risk. He knew if he did this, we're not actually gonna back away from that. And that's what backstops this entire thing, is that cost benefit analysis is predicated on cost. Israel has no cost. And so we should create a scenario where they have cost. All Trump has to do is say, I'm not defending you anymore. And let's see what the skies of Israel look like when US, that and Patriot missiles are no longer shooting down the vast majority. Let's see how long they can actually last on their own. Good luck to the Israeli Air Force and to the Israeli people if they have to live under what a real bombardment actually would look like. You'll recall Drop Size reporting that they were down to double digit interceptors. Yeah, they were. Double digit. And yeah, every single significant attack that they have weathered, they have weathered it with our assistance. We have been vital. It's the one country that we have really consistently defended whereas our Gulf Arab allies, we have relatively hung out to dry here. I think the other thing we see really clearly, and this is why the US is sort of like stuck in this terrible limbo where gas prices just continue to be high. And every week we get market moving tweets about a deal is really close and Barack Reveed reports it and then the whole thing falls apart on the weekend. Trump is terrified to go back to full hostility. I think you see that really clearly in this exchange, whether or not it was an act with Israel and he was gonna allow them to strike or not. He clearly put out this message because he wanted to establish some separation from Israel, at least create the impression that oh, they're just acting on their own, but it's not us. Let's not blow up these whole negotiations. He does not want to go back to full hostilities. He's very fearful of that because Iran has successfully demonstrated to him that anything beyond what we've already done, we could go in with more airstrikes, although they've become more sophisticated about being able to take down even our air assets. But yes, we could go back in with more airstrikes. They're gonna blow up our bases again. If we went in with some sort of ground invasion, which would be the next step that you would take, we all saw how much of a disaster that could be with that alleged pilot rescue situation that occurred. Where so much of our equipment had to be destroyed on the ground and the questions surrounding whether we're really getting the full story on that all remain, but it was immediately after that messy situation, whatever it was, that Trump ends up pulling back. He does all of these insane threats, but ultimately it results in him going to the negotiating table and trying to come up with some sort of deal. I mean, the other piece here, soccer, I don't know, we continue to have this negotiating team that it's hard to take seriously, right? It's actually gotten worse because now it's Kushner, it's Wittkoff and it's this guy from the foundation to the defense of democracies, which is like a totally hawkish pro-Israel outfit that has done some of the worst misinformation about, oh, if we just blockade their blockade, Iran is going to collapse in a mere amount of days. Oh, we'll take them out and their regime will crumble immediately. That's who the negotiating team is. There are no direct negotiations, so it continues to be very hard to see how you can believe these reports we get every single week, oh, they're so close to a deal, oh, they have a deal, oh, they have a memo of understanding. And any day now, we're going to get an announcement and this whole thing is going to be over. How? How? And this latest round between Iran and Israel only puts that even further because one of the things Iran has to believe if they're going to move forward is that we are able and willing to restrain Israel and there is zero sign of that. Sorry, breaking news just five minutes ago. Remember, recall, I specifically said, Iran said Southern Lebanon, Israel is now striking the Southern Lebanese village of Kirbat al-Dalwaiir, I apologize to all the Lebanese, if I said that incorrectly, and there are now rocket sirens sounding all over northern Israel amid incoming Hezbollah rocket fire. So just to show everybody that despite the fact Iran explicitly said, things are off as long as you don't strike Southern Lebanon, they immediately start lighting up Southern Lebanon, which immediately bras Hezbollah fire, which we know will bring more Israeli strikes, which means now Iran, the ball is in their court, are they going to actually fire missile? This is the sheer unsustainability of it all. Hey, Israel, please just don't invade Southern Lebanon. Why can't we, why can we not say it? Please retreat to your own internationally recognized borders. I mean, we're going through an entire proxy war with Russia right now over invading a sovereign nation, over a summer, you know, oh, Russia claimed an immediate threat in Ukraine too. That doesn't mean that we think it's real, it was bullshit. So same with here, nobody says one word about violations of norms. You have this country was bombed multiple different ones, basically annexed parts of Syria, now annexing Lebanon, rampaging through the West Bank. Didn't they just do something in Gaza yesterday that just shut down the humanitarian border? I mean, this is madness. And we're just not, the Lebanon one is where there's not, it's not even a dispute, like it's Lebanon, it's a country. They can't, there's no, you know, oh, 1948, 1960, no, we just invaded the entire country, we're occupying home. And we sit here and we just take it. And it just shows you the sheer madness of the entire thing. Why can Trump not say every single Israeli boot is getting off out of Lebanon right now? The United States and Israel, well, the United States and Lebanon will come to some agreement, whatever, and then in the future, you will not be struck. It's not difficult, why? Yeah, well, previously Iran's position had been tit for tat. Yes. You strike us, we are going to respond in kind effectively, like a horizontal escalation. So we're not going to go above and beyond, we're going to respond in a way that is consistent with what you did to us. Their new model, and that's, I think, in evidence with the retaliation on Israel here, is that if you hit us, we are going to hit back harder. So what does Israel want here? Obviously they want to blow up the peace negotiations. They also want, they would love to see some, look, American service members dead, just to be honest with you, because what would that require then? We would be fully back in it. They want our bases to be struck. They want us to have some sort of justification. That means we have to get back fully into this war. That is what they're pushing for. That's what they're looking for. And so, with this latest round, we are dangerously close to going back to full scale war. And look, there's a reason we've been having Professor Robert Pape on the show every week, because the escalation trap, when you have that frame, we can see how we end up in this position. And why even though Trump is desperately afraid of going back into full scale war, why that does not mean that that is off the table. It is not off the table. And you can see very easily the logic of this. I wanted to put one more thing here up on the screen. This is A2C. I thought this was significant as well. We've talked over the course of this war repeatedly about, okay, what are the Houthis going to do? Are they going to get more directly involved? And so in the midst of this exchange of fire, these attacks between Iran and Israel, the Houthis jumped into the fray here. Yemen struck in the Tel Aviv area, declared a total ban on Israeli shipping in the Red Sea as well the Yemeni Armed Forces Launch and Missile Barrage, targeting what it described as sensitive Israeli targets in the Yafa area of Tel Aviv, claiming the strikes achieved their objectives with precision according to a statement from the Sana'a-based Sabah news agency. They also declared a complete and total ban on Israeli maritime navigation in the Red Sea, stating that all Israeli movements would be considered legitimate military targets. And of course, this should be assumed to have been done in conjunction and in coordination with the Iranians. So again, it just shows you that they are willing to up the ante here. And this was all again in response, not to attacks on Iranian soil, but to attacks in Lebanon. And now we see this morning, as Sagar was just saying, those attacks have restarted in southern Lebanon, jeopardizing any sort of detente that Trump was announcing this morning. It was just gonna keep on going this way. By the way, the price, I don't know what's going on with the oil markets. They're just kind of delusional, I guess. Brent is still only at $94 a barrel. So I mean, look, I'll take it. Means everybody gets to pay less in terms of gasoline, but I don't know, maybe the doomers in all of these warnings were incorrect or maybe that they were just way too early. They are just hell bent on anytime Trump is like, we're gonna have a deal. They really do seem to believe it. I think the stock market is even up this morning, literally only because, it's up by almost a full percent. Which is what, especially after, because the Asian markets, we're gonna talk more about this later, but they got crushed yesterday, again on chip worries and also overall tech worries. So you would think that would have some impact on our markets, but apparently not. I don't know. I'll take it in the interim. Ryan's theory is that it's not necessarily that the traders are stupid. It's that they assume that the other traders are stupid and that they are predicting that everybody will take Trump's word for it. I'm sure the ceasefire and the memo of the understanding is coming any moment now. And so they trade based on that, I don't know. What was it, I'm forgetting Econ. It was like rational market hypothesis or something. I think we can put that one to bed from Econ 101. I hope all the producers, all the teachers are going to update that. Okay, let's get to the Trump interview. Turning now to Donald Trump who sat for an extraordinary interview, explosive as Crystal said, in many ways, including the weather, which is genuinely insane when you listen to this. For some reason there was a massive rainstorm that was happening around the place that the interview was being conducted presumably outside. But the one that stuck out more than anything was Trump saying, I never guaranteed no new wars. Let's take a listen. What changed because you insisted no new wars? First of all, I didn't guarantee no war. Why would I have built the strongest military in the world? I built our military. I inherited a terrible military. We had no equipment. We had nothing. I built a tremendous military. Biden gave a lot of it away, but it's still a relatively small portion compared to what I built. But you said it over and over again, Mr. President. Why would I build a military? Now, I didn't want to use this, but I'm doing you and everybody else a big favor in the midst of the greatest stock market in history, in the midst of the most successful country, because as you know, in the last time we were a dead country, Kristen. I know you, you're a big liberal, a big progressive. No, I'm just a journal. So he says, I never guaranteed no new war. Why would I build the strongest military in the world? Well, just a little trip down memory lane. Here's Trump saying there will be no new war. Let's take a listen. Look at him, he's gonna start a war. I said, no, no, I'm gonna stop wars. I'm gonna stop them. Stop the chaos in the Middle East and prevent World War III, which is going to happen World War III. We're closer to World War III than we have ever been. Wait out, need the wars far and lands, countries you've never heard of, countries that don't even want us there. This election is a choice between strength and weakness, competence and incompetence, peace and prosperity, or war or no war. They like a war, they love wars. You know, they love killing people. It's so wonderful. We will restore peace through strength and we will prevent World War III. We will prevent World War III. We are going to stop wars. There's all this chaos in the Middle East. In fact, do you remember when JD endorsed Trump in 2023? He literally wrote a Wall Street Journal op-ed saying, the best thing about Trump was no new wars. And now, all of them say no new wars. They were all on that. That was part of the reason that a lot of people supported him. It's at least the more libertarian faction of a lot of these people, the anti-woke libertarians. And now he comes out, humiliates them and said, what did he say? He says, I never guaranteed any new war. And this is, I think demonstrates a couple of things. Number one, how testy he gets on the subject. But two, how committed he is now currently to this vision of the war, not just with Iran, but you have to put it together with Venezuela and also what's happening right now in Cuba. Cuba is on the verge of collapse. I know we've covered it quite a bit, but I mean, it's seriously, things are getting very bad over there. The Visa Mastercard just pulled out, very imminent potential US action, all kinds of crazy Bay of Pigs shit being planned by Marco Rubio and the rest of the team. So this definitively, it makes it clear. He's like, no, I never said that, even though we literally have it on camera a million times. I mean, this is him being like a sleazy car salesman. Like, well, I never technically said, I will guarantee that there will never be no new wars. You know, things change. And why would I have this incredible military if I was starting new wars? Like, obviously I'm gonna use it. And I mean, in a way, there is a kind of truth to that because if you did not listen to what he said, but looked at his previous actions and also looked at some of the people who had long been in a circle, look at the fact that he had John Bolton in the first administration. He would say, yeah, I can't really take his word for these assurances. And the other thing that he does is he would say, no, I won't go to war with Iran, you know, on one day. And then the next day we would posture in a very hawkish manner towards Iran. So it really was a sort of like, here what you wanted to hear, choose your own adventure type of situation. And here we are, we have, I guess, I don't know that we chose this adventure, but this is the adventure that we ultimately got. He was very agitated throughout this entire interview. And, you know, Kristen Welker has done Trump interviews before. And it's not that he likes her, but he has tolerated her. They seem to have like, I don't wanna say a rapport, but she has been able to, you know, push him and have some exchanges back and forth in a way that he has at least been able to sort of accept and tolerate. I covered the White House with Kristen. He's always kind of had a thing for her. Like, I don't mean, you know, she's a very likable person. Yeah, she's a very sweet person. Yeah, John person level, she's super nice. I remember he would always gravitate to her. My theory is cause she's on Meet the Press and she's on NBC News. And that's what he loves. And he's the boomer. He's a boomer. Like for him, he was like, oh, Tim Russert. And you know, Tim Russert died when I was like 12, but you know, in Trump's brain, that's, you know, like, so great, yeah, that was yesterday. So for him, he loves like Fox News Sunday and George Stephanopoulos and Meet the Press. And the set. New York Times, as much as he had. Yeah, why is he obsessed with the New York Times? Anyway, that's just setting the stage. Well, and so I actually think, cause several times during this interview, he commented on the storm and his hearing is going. You know, he struggles to understand questions that are asked, you know, of him in normal circumstances. So I think his like old man agitation was coming out here. They get into this exchange about, you know, whether the election was stolen previously, about whether the election is being stolen from Spencer Pratt currently in California. And he gets so frustrated and like just completely spazes out and rage quits this entire interview. Let's go ahead and watch a little bit of this exchange so you can see what happened. What they did to the lives of people, they destroyed people, they sent people to jail who did nothing wrong. Just to be very clear, there's no evidence of what you're saying, but let me ask you about Todd Lynch. Man, he's got Todd Lynch. Listen to me, listen to me. Let's talk about Todd Lynch. This tremendous evidence. There's nothing but evidence. The election was rigged. It was a dirty election. And it's happening again right now in California. You never presented evidence. You know that I won an election in a landslide and I got 94% bad press. But Mr. President, you never presented evidence. Because you have no credibility. But you've never presented evidence that it was rigged. Let's keep talking about, I want to talk about Todd Lynch. You have more evidence, there's more evidence than ever presented. Let's talk about. Your elections in this country were like a third world country. Your elections are crooked and you're crooked and Mr. Press is crooked. And so is ABC and CBS and CNN. But Mr. President. You're one sided crooked network. So let's call it quits because I've had enough. Thank you, darling. Have a good time. Mr. President, let's please, I traveled all the way to Wisconsin. I've traveled all, I know. I've traveled all the way to Wisconsin. I've traveled all the way to the rain with you for an hour. On and off in the rain. And I've given you enough time. You ought to straighten out your press because you know what? Mr. President. A country can never be graced. You traveled all the way to Wisconsin for the same reason. Woo, rage quit. There you go. In fairness, that storm was out of control. I'm genuine, I could not have done anything. That would have driven me completely insane. It was pretty wild. Why did they not call it? I think they were in like a barn. It's like a metal roof is what it sounds like anyway. But yeah, I mean, the other thing is as you age, not that Trump has ever had real impulse control, but as you age, you lose your impulse control. So he just like, she kept trying to change the subject because she could tell how agitated he was getting. She was like, oh, let's talk about Todd Blanche. Let's move on. But he just wants to go in and in and in. And the other thing, this California thing has driving me fricking crazy. Like people acting so shocked that a Trump backed Republican in LA is not gonna win. Like this is any kind of shocker. And people can go back and watch Sauer and Ryan interviewing David Dayin before the election even happened. And he laid out the first ballots that are gonna be counted are going to be very strongly Steve Hilden and Spencer Pratt. And then as more ballots come in, they're going to be more democratic and the numbers are going to shift. This was all predicted in advance. It was no shock. It was no surprise for people that actually knew what was going on. But in any case, yeah, I take it as a sign of, I think the rain agitated him, but also his old man fragility where he just cannot even keep it together with someone that he, afterwards, he's still like trying to be a little bit nice to her on his way out. So this isn't someone that he has like a deep hatred for. And the other thing that was funny to me is that CBS caught a strain there, given what we know about how they've gone over and above and beyond to try to keep him happy. What I think has really happened here is he cannot face criticism whatsoever. And this is a very different Donald Trump. I'll tell you, I interviewed him many, many times. You can go read the transcripts of any of those if you want to. We did exactly what Chris did. When he gets mad, you kind of worm your way around. You don't want to get kicked out. And so you'll push here a little bit there, push something like this. But from when I understand the Israel-Iran situation, the Iran thing has become such an obvious disaster that he is very fragile on the subject. He cannot hear one word of criticism. This translates to everything. This is why he's so edgy. This also explains why in the middle of bombings, he's sitting there picking up his cell phone from all of these different reporters, being like, oh, I'm gonna tell them not to do this. I'm gonna, like he's sitting there. Basically, he's like all of us. He's like monitoring the situation on the news, except he's the most powerful person in the world. He's probably getting all of these different military briefings and all these other people coming in. And he's trying to shape the narrative from his phone and with words. But that's not something he's ever been able to do before. It is very LBJ-esque, like in terms of sitting, incostated in the White House. You have all of this criticism outside, everywhere you go. Every time you turn on the news, you just see this nightmare. You know they have this thing hanging over your head. And so what do you do? You surround yourself with yes, man, and people who tell you that you're doing such a phenomenal job. And so this is what happens, combination with aging. It's created this exact situation. It's more of a bubble really than ever before. Cause I can tell you, I mean, he would do some of that in the first term. And there was also a lot more novelty to it, to attacking the press, CNN, fake news. It's been 10 years. Come on, we've heard it all before. CNN is fake news, going after the lying press and all this stuff. It's just, it's kind of an old act, literally at this point. Well, also he's, you know, the bloom is off the rose in terms of feeling like, oh, he's fighting them cause he's fighting for us. No, he's, he's venal, he's corrupt. He's in it for himself, for his old man, you know, delusions of what his legacy is gonna be for his own personal enrichment. Everyone, not everyone, most of the country, overwhelming majority of the country sees that very clearly now. So yeah, now when he throws a temper tantrum, it just looks like a temper tantrum. It doesn't look like, oh, you're standing up to the big bad Kristen Welker and NBC News. And the other thing is, you know, to that point, this over some January 6th election stealing stuff, I mean, he's gotten asked these questions many times before and he says his nonsense about how it's rigged. All she tried to say is, look, there's no evidence of that. And then she tried to pivot the subject and he just completely lost it over that, which I think does show you how vulnerable he's feeling right and how much he recognizes that his political position is deteriorated and how sensitive he is to literally everything. There was another moment here that we wanted to show for you and I think this actually does get to the core of some of the reason why he is so on edge right now is because even key Trump supporting constituencies at this point are struggling really heavily because of the economic decisions that he's made. We're gonna talk a little bit more about this, but his polling on economics, on inflation in particular, is just catastrophic. You even have a lot of Republicans down at this point saying he hasn't done a good job on this. So Kristen asked him specifically about farmers and the way that they are struggling because of fertilizer costs going up due to the closure of the Shredded Farmers thanks to his disastrous war. Let's go ahead and take a listen to the way he spends a complete and total delusion around this. Gas is up, diesel is up. It's all coming down as soon as the war's over. 70% of farmers say they can't afford fertilizer. What's your message to... The farmers are doing very well. Let me ask you, what is your message to farmers? Many who support you, but who say they're struggling. Who say they're struggling. Because there's nobody but better to farm. You know I gave farmers last term $28 billion because China took advantage and other people. And you know, paid for it, China, last term. You know, I had a great first term. I had the greatest economy ever. And you know what? This one's blowing it away. What's your message to farmers though, Mr. President, who say they are struggling, they're struggling to make ends meet? Are you ready? Am I allowed to talk? You keep asking questions and you don't listen to the answers. I love the farmers and the farmers love me. And the farmers trust me. In the first term I had something very similar. China and others were. And Canada, which was brutal. They were taking advantage of our farmers. They don't take advantage of it anymore. I gave them $28 billion split up. They never had a payday like that. And the farmers loved me and they came back and they voted for me in record numbers. You know that nobody's ever even come close. Now, because of the fact that we had a choice, I had a choice to make. I could keep it going. The farmers were doing great. Fertilizer was very cheap. Everything was cheap. Gasoline was very low. Everything was very low. I could have kept it that way, but I said I have to take a little bit of a turn. The farmers are gonna understand it better than anybody. We're gonna have higher gasoline. We're gonna have a little higher fertilizer, et cetera, et cetera. But I'm gonna get rid of a nuclear weapon in the hands of very dangerous people. Excuse me, wait. It should have been done for 47 years. No president had the guts to do it. I did it and I've done it. It's almost complete. As soon as that's complete, gasoline prices are gonna drop like a rock. So you've got actually two contradictory messages there. First, he says farmers are doing great. And then he has to acknowledge, well, you know, yeah, things are up a bit, but it's for a great cause and it's only gonna be for a short term period of time. So even he had to acknowledge like, yeah, there is some consequences. Fertilizer is near the all-time high. It's already edging close to the 2022 level. By the way, in the rest of the world, it is continuing to like destroy a lot of the local farmers. I was just reading a story in Brazil. I have some of the data here in front of me. Brazil has now soared about 50% which made it an agricultural powerhouse, but the country's edge is now being tested because of fertilizer prices. So even in a lot of these third world countries where they had had an edge in terms of like increasing their amount of arable land, what they also had is the new fertilizer increases, increasing the cost of any even cheaper goods that you would try to get into the U.S. I'm not saying I support this. I'm just saying from an economic perspective, same with coffee. If everybody has noticed, coffee prices are just so unbelievably high compared to where they were even a year ago. Beef prices also remain very, very high all throughout the summer. And with this whole screw worm thing, they may continue. But this is the new Trump posture is basically just, I mean, he's always been this way, attack, attack, attack. And it has worked for him to great advantage when it comes to domestic politics, but you cannot bullshit your way out of the gory and not of the war that you created. And a lot of people can just take notice of that every single time they go to buy a gallon of gasoline. It's just, that's the one, it's like the one thing you shouldn't have done. If you took one lesson away from the Bidenist presidency, don't fuck with gas prices and with inflation. And this time he actually chose it. Okay, let's see how that works in the midterm elections. Let's get to spying. Turning now to this discussion of Israeli spying in the US. I'm gonna give credit to NBC News. They broke this story first. Let's put C1 up here on the screen. The Pentagon has raised the threat of Israeli spying on US to the highest level. Let me explain some of what they have and then I will give you some of what I have. They say the Pentagon is increasingly concerned about Israel ramping up its spying on the US, recently raising the counterintelligence threat level from America's top ally in the Middle East to the highest level. Pentagon's DIA, so this specifically is like the internal intelligence agency for the Pentagon, the Defense Intelligence Agency. In recent weeks has issued a new counterintelligence threat assessment amid rising tensions between Israel and the US over the way forward in the war with Iran. They said the DIA posted an internal message viewed by a current official that raised the level for Israel to quote, critical. The designation stems from concerns within the Pentagon that Israel is making fun of making a particular effort to surveil top US officials. I'm gonna give you some of the names of those officials a little bit later on. The DIA assessment includes a seven page document and features a chart. The document says the assessment of Israel is its ability to conduct human espionage and technical collection is at a critical level. It also identifies a series of specific incidents that heightened US concerns. So the spokesperson for the Israeli embassy said this quote completely false, that Israel spies on the US, that Israel spies on the US. Israel does not gather intelligence on American entities, let alone US government officials. LOL. Israeli intelligence collection efforts are aimed at its enemies, not its allies. Any claims to the contrary are either misinformed or politically motivated. We should ask Mr. Pollard about that one. Yes, the Pentagon has declined a comment and a White House official said in the statement, the story is entirely false and sources someone who doesn't have any knowledge. The ODNI, the office of the director of national intelligence was overseas, did not respond to a request for comment. So let's focus in on a few things. Number one is the statement from the White House that says this is completely false. Can we put C2 up there on the screen? The entire story is false and sources someone who doesn't have any knowledge of what's going on. I wanna point everybody to a very interesting line. The office of the director of national intelligence did not respond to a request for comment. And I also want to point to some very specific examples, including a seven page document that features a chart. That document I can confirm to all of you exists. Now let me tell you about some of the things that are in there. I'm real careful here in terms of protecting some of the many people who I spoke to about this story. Basically what they have seen in terms of their raising too critical is they have raised it to a similar level that they treat general US adversaries. This is based on a few specific incidents. Some of these incidents, again, I cannot go into deep detail, include the explicit surveillance of top officials inside of the Pentagon who they deem to be a threat to their agenda inside of the Pentagon. The New York Times, by the way, can confirm some of this as well. Let's put seat three up here on the screen so it's not just me who is telling you all of this. I'm gonna read from you a very specific line. The report includes that Israel has stepped up its efforts to eavesdrop on senior American officials, including Steve Whitcoff, President Trump's top negotiator, Elber J. Colby, the Pentagon's top official, and one of his main deputies, Michael Domeno. Now Colby, Domeno, and Whitcoff, I guess could technically be seen as some sort of the restrained part of the Pentagon. Colby in particular, we've had him here on the show, you can go back and watch some of those past interviews. Whitcoff, obviously, look, I don't really know what Whitcoff believes, but Israel seems to believe he's a problem because he was one of the people who initially started that, who initially pressed them for the ceasefire, they've never forgiven him for it, and even for his involvement, despite him still being very, very pro Israel. I also wanna point to a very specific line that they use, which I can also tell you, eavesdrop. What do you think that means? Trying to bug people's phones. Here are some of the other things that I have learned, is that the Israeli government has been increasingly, while US military officials are in Israel, that they have found themselves basically subject to the same quote threat analysis that they would whenever they're traveling abroad. Now it is standard operating procedure for US officials when they leave the country to actually turn in their government device and to get a traveling phone, and it's explicitly for this reason, because of potential being able to break into their various devices, and there was at least some belief that attempts at that had been made. And now the Times and the NBC News have gone further, and they're basically saying they explicitly tried to eavesdrop on these three officials that we know about, also military officials inside of Israel, SENTCOM and others, but the main target of Israeli intelligence right now, from based on everything I've been able to see, is to get as much visibility into the Pentagon's internal decision-making as possible, including to the White House, to make sure that they can try and influence things from their side. Now, nothing I'm saying is explosive in such a way that like, if you watch this show, you probably believe it. But I think what's explosive is the fact that the DIA concluded this in a memo. And again, I think the number one thing I can offer you is the memo exists, that they definitely have been, they have specific instances in some of these cases where they have tried to eavesdrop on these US officials, APAC, the US, and others are APAC, and the White House are all denying this. But I can tell you for 100%, this memo exists, it includes multiple specific instances of Israeli officials who are either caught or where the DIA believes that they were trying to surveil US officials. I also should note that this memo does not just include evidence from after the outbreak of the Iran War. This critical threat memo was issued based on years now of counterintelligence activity that they have been able to conclude. And it was done specifically to try and protect the integrity of the US war decision-making process. There are still people in the Pentagon who care about that. I can report for all of you. This is based on some of my conversations with multiple different sources who are around this. But the most noteworthy and depressing part to me is the White House saying that this story is completely false. The people in charge of actually making sure that we're not getting spied on are the ones who are denying that the story doesn't exist. It exists, I can tell you explicitly it exists. The memo is real. The actual things in various contacts that are made inside the memo, again, I wish I could go into even some more just because it's really crazy, but that would give away a little bit too much. It includes multiple instances where military officers and others found themselves or believed themselves to be under either electronic surveillance, human surveillance, or other type of surveillance, either in Israel and in some cases electronically here in the United States. Well, they say in the New York Times report that some officials discovered that the Israelis had either attempted or succeeded in installing software on their phone, could be Pegasus, something like that. Want me to go in the details on that one? Sure. So this appears to have been an effort where, you know, sometimes one of you go to a secure area. If you've ever been to a skiff, you often have to turn in your phone for a briefing. Well, they would come back and then they would discover, oh, actually there might be something that's been installed on my phone. So there you go. Now, it's actually a little bit unclear as to where the software was installed. Either it could have been in Israel, potentially there have been some speculation that occurred in the US. Best I've been able to tell it occurred while they were on travel. While they were in Israel. And they're actually particularly worried about their own personal devices. Remember that Steve Wittkopf and others used, have used their personal devices and signal devices whenever they were conducting diplomacy, which just made them very vulnerable. And also fly around on private jets, not official, secure government aircraft. And so that makes them more vulnerable. And what the New York Times points to is that, look, Israel has been spying on the US, and we spy on them too, by the way, but they aggressively spy on the US and this has been always known. Right, that's not new. But they say that the efforts have been ramped up significantly actually during the Biden administration after October 7th, as they were trying to get a window into, okay, what is the decision making that's going on inside? Are they going to try to constrain us in any way? The answer turned out to be no. But in any case, that's when they really escalated these efforts. And one person that the New York Times quoted here said that what they're doing now is quote unquote, unhinged. So again, these are not people who are a Pollyanna who would expect that Israel would not spy on us whatsoever, which to me seems like a reasonable expectation of an ally, but in any case, that is not the expectation that our government apparently has. But even given that baseline of expectation that they will spy on us, they consider the actions to have been taken here to be unhinged. I want to pair this too with another story, which is the efforts to effectively link the US and the Israeli militaries and make them so intertwined that this is something we talked about last week with Brandon Weichert, to make them so intertwined as to make it almost impossible to extricate ourselves from this relationship. This is the country that we're talking about, a country that spies on us as aggressively, if not more aggressively, according to these reports, as our adversaries, as our like biggest adversaries in the world. There is no other ally that is conducting this level of operations against us. It is not a thing, it is only Israel. And so it really does call into, I mean, look, to me the relationship of Israel as an ally is already called into question. This further calls into question the idea that this country should be an ally, that we should have this type of relationship with them when they're committing acts against us that are adversarial all the time. And I said earlier in the show, they would be delighted if US service members got killed right now in the Middle East so that we would get drawn back in. That's our ally, that's who we send billions of dollars a year to without a second thought. That's who we're trying to directly intertwine our military and intelligence services with. This is insanity. And I can tell you, you know, and the other times I've confirmed some of these instances, the ones that really shocked these officials the most and why they elevated it to a critical threat was when the Shin Bet, the Israeli domestic intelligence service, the FBI, tried to plant a bug in a secret service vehicle here in the United States. They literally tried to do that. The Times has it in there too, that's in the memo. So that demonstrates the level of concern that they have. Remember, these are general bureaucrats. They're looking at China, Russia, all of these others. And they're like, hey, you have a country which literally tried to bug a secret service vehicle. We should probably do something about that or alert someone over at the White House. They tried to put this into a memo and issued it to the Pentagon. And then the White House comes out and says it's entirely false. So that's the concerning part to me is not just what they got away with, but if this were China, if this were Russia, if this were literally any other country, they would freak out. There would be calls from Congress to come in and to investigate. And instead, you have what Ted Cruz, who defended basically Israeli spying on the US in his interview with Tucker Carlson. And then let's also remember, there's basically been a years-long PSYOP by a lot of these pro-Israel people in the US who are saying that Israel doesn't even spy on us in the first place. Let's throw back to Ben Shapiro making this case several years ago. Let's take a listen. This has become the hot speculation on the internet is without evidence. You say that Mossad was running Jeffrey Epstein. When I say without evidence, I mean without evidence. Naftali Bennett, the former Israeli prime minister, said, quote, And in fact, I followed up with the former prime minister, Naftali Bennett. And what he told me is that Mossad has not been active in the United States since the, or against the United States, since the Jonathan Pollard scandal of 1987, when a US army contractor is actually working for the Navy, revealed classified information to the Israeli government who's prosecuted by the United States government and ended up in prison for almost 30 years. And so Israel since then has not spied on the United States. So Ben called up the Israeli prime minister, former Israeli prime minister, he says, hey, you don't spy on us, right? He said, oh yeah, no, we don't. And Ben said, yeah, okay, all right, let me go ahead and report that to my audience. The Israelis never lied. Why would they lie? Let's go to the next one. I love this one in particular. This is a very pro-Zionist poster. I believe he's done some stuff over there, the Middle Eastern analysts for the free press. He says, the deeper story of the NYT article about Israeli spying, citing an alleged report, isn't the spying itself. There's no direct spying on America because the costs of discovery would be enormous. But there's obviously a great deal of analysis and open source work on America, just like there is in the US intelligence on Israel, neither side is stupid. But as he claims, quote, there is no direct spying on America so the cost of discovery would be enormous. I just told you that the cost of discovery was actually nothing, is that they are literally trying to spy on top US and Pentagon officials who in some cases either oppose the war or expel views that were oppositional to their conquest of the entire Middle East. And they are getting no cost from the White House. The White House is denying that their own government's conclusion of spying is not correct. Just to be very clear, there's no cost. And there's never been a cost. When Johnston Pollard was discovered shipping secrets to the Israelis, there was a cost. Which they then sold to the Soviet Union. There was a cost to him. But then what happens? Years later, he's, you know, he's pardoned, he's let go, he goes back to Israel where he now serves in the Knesset and is getting invited to meetings with Ambassador Huckabee. Serves in the Knesset, or either serves or he's running for the Knesset, I forget which one. He's doing one of those, basically a prominent Israeli citizen. He has advocated publicly that Israel nuke the United States. Not joking, you can go and look up that clip. This is a former US citizen, you know, a US citizen, who is now an Israeli citizen, who said Israel should nuke the United States, it forces them to pursue a ceasefire in Gaza. Not joking, he actually did say that. And who, you know, is very proud of spying on behalf of Israel and has included calls to other Jewish Americans telling him that they should spy for Israel. Let's put CSEX up there on the screen. Mark Levin, he says, the Israeli spying on us story is bullshit. Which links to alleged debunking, all predicated on just the White House line, denying that the report exists. Again, if the report is false, then why did the Pentagon and the ODNI deny a request for comment? You know why? Because even they did not want to lie on the record to the press to say that the memo didn't exist because it would mean that someone would immediately come out and they would leak the memo. So there you go, the details, some of which I've been able to gather, the Shin Bet placing a bug in a secret service vehicle, but the top one is about the software installed on other officials. But the top, top, top one is them explicitly targeting officials and others here in Washington who they believe are opposed to their agenda. An immense counterintelligence network that has been put up against them to monitor either their communications or their beliefs and others to make sure that they can try to influence the decision-making from the outside. There's a lot of other explosive stuff in there that, you know, if I'm gonna press to see if I can continue to report. But look, I just wanna make very clear to our audience, this memo exists and the White House is straight up lying. 100% lying about this. And the details of this, I mean, it's crazy. It is absolutely crazy. It places Israel in the same category, or at least in terms of the Zestme, I was just trying to end Russia. That's literally the level of threat that they're having, except in this case, they won't even acknowledge that the threat is real. It's insanity. And so much of our policy vis-a-vis Israel, if you really press lawmakers and supporters of it, just comes back to like, well, they're an ally. So that's why we do this. They're an ally, period, and a story. And so this really calls into question, well, why? What are, look, you know, for me, I view it from a moral lens, but if you're viewing this through a realist, you know, US-first, America-first lens, what are we getting out of this relationship that justifies this? I mean, it has been utterly disastrous for the United States and our strategic interests to go along with what the Israelis want us to do. And then you see, you know, these actions being taken against us. It is so, I mean, there is no one, literally no one who actually believes that Israel does not spy on us at all. Like, that is just utterly preposterous. And just an update, I looked it up, Jonathan Pollard ran for the Knesset bus, but withdrew recently. So, there you go. Best of luck, Jonathan, in your private citizenry there in Israel. This is an I Heart podcast. Guaranteed human.