u look at the history, the history suggests it usually doesn't go well.

If not every single time, it doesn't go well.

That part we all understand.

But Trump asked the totally reasonable question, are you okay with the alternative?

That's the other half of the decision.

Are you okay with the alternative that Iran has a nuclear weapon?

And it doesn't sound like Trump got an answer from Tucker.

And that's why I call it a half opinion because it seems to just leave out half of the risk-reward analysis.

Um and uh then Trump says whether you have to fight or not, you can't allow Iran a weapon or the entire world will blow up.

All right.

What is the most predictable thing that could happen in the Israel um Iran war?

If you had to guess what is the most likely thing that will be reported in the news, what would it be?

Well, uh, my vote for the most likely thing that would be in the news is that one of the sides would um hit a hospital with a missile.

Sure enough, you could always depend on that story.

Now, I don't know why I'm a little bit puzzled because it's hard for me to imagine um any side in a conflict who thinks it's a good idea to bomb the hospital on the other side because obviously that's not going to help your own team love you more.

You know there it's not like Hamas or Iran you know it's not like the citizens were saying yes we bombed that hospital so why would anybody do it but there's always a hospital that gets bombed now in the case of uh Hamas and Gaza the explanation was that the hospital you know was a cover for some tunnels beneath that there were Hamas strongholds.

But there's always a reason there.

There's always a reason.

So, the one thing you can always count on is that there will be a headline story, as there is today, um that uh Iran um presumably intentionally shot a missile into a hospital.

Now, the good news is the hospital was largely empty.

um and they had already gone to uh you know a lower floor or something to to be safer.

So it didn't uh have a big death toll but right on schedule there there's the weird hospital missile attack.

Now, I think Iran said they weren't aiming at the hospital, but uh I saw Trey Yingst say that if it was a missile, and they think it was a missile, that missiles are not dumb instruments that you aim them at a specific place.

But does that mean that every missile hits where you aim?

I don't know.

So, I'm sure the story is real.

But I'm just puzzled why it's so predictable that early in any conflict and it happened in Ukraine too, right?

Didn't Ukraine have stories of uh you know Russia bombed our hospital?

And again, why would they do it intentionally?

It doesn't really make the other side want to give up.

It would be a weird thing to do intentionally, but the news always says it's intentional.

So maybe there's something I don't know about military strategy in hospitals.

According to uh the X account Breaking911, there's a a bit of a run on the banks in Iran.

Maybe not all of them, but at least one bank uh Melli Bank.

Uh allegedly there's a run and people are requesting their money and they can't get it out.

It might have something to do with uh Israeli cyber attacks because Israel's gone after the money centers and uh who knows what else.

So, watch out for the banking situation in Iran.

And um we also have to assume that Iran is looking to um pay back both Israel and America for any cyber attacks.

So, we're going to find out, I think, very soon, how much capability Iran has for cyber attacks because if they don't unleash one on either Israel or the United States that doesn't take down a power grid or a bank or something, I would feel like they don't have much capability because surely they would try, right?

Could there be any situation where Iran said, "Oh, we have this cyber attack capability and we're being cyber attacked, but we're not going to do it back." That doesn't seem likely, right?

So if uh a few weeks go by and there's no obvious Iranian cyber attack, um I would conclude that maybe they didn't have that much capability in the first place, but we'll find out.

If the lights go out during the show, well then I guess they had that capability.

Uh Trump was talking about um the situation over there and he said, and I quote, "They're totally defenseless.

They have no air defense whatsoever.

Totally captured.

We've totally captured the air." Why is he saying we?

Um did American aircraft do something in the air?

What exactly did America do that he's saying we?

And isn't that opposite of his strategy?

His strategy is to try to stay somewhat uninvolved while obviously being supportive in some support kind of ways.

Is that a mistake?

When he said, "We've totally captured the air," he's talking like the American military and the Israeli military are basically the same thing.

Is that just a mistake?

Because it sounds like one.

Sounds like maybe he misspoke.

Um but that's not ideal.

All right.

According to Axios, um Trump is said to have doubts about whether the uh those bunker busters that US has would actually be able to do the job.

Who does that sound like?

Who is the one other person who told you, "I'm not so sure these bunker busters can get it done." Me.

I told you that yesterday, right?

I said if they're talking about maybe using as many as six bunker busters per site, which they were, that that's a pretty strong signal that they don't know if they'll work.

So Trump is asking exactly the right questions according to Axios.

He was asking the experts, are you sure?

Are you sure this would work?

So allegedly he has already green lit a battle plan but he has not green lit doing it.

So he's approved that if there's a battle plan that the US is involved in what it would look like but he has not given the go-ahead to do it as far as we know.

And then furthermore, um, the Israeli officials believe that the US will eventually join the war.

Uh, I guess that's Axios as well.

And uh Israel also claims that if the US doesn't use the bunker bombs or they don't work that Israel could get the job done on the ground, which I assume means special forces put on the ground and then they try to take out the entryway and try to get in.

I don't know.

But um if we don't know for sure or let's say Trump cannot be convinced that the bunker busters would work for sure, what it would do is make us part of the war for sure.

So do you think Trump would trade being definitely part of the offensive war without knowing it would work when he's got the option?

At least according to the Israelis of letting them take a little bit more risk because it would be people on the ground probably lives lost and they say they could get it done on the ground.

Why would Trump ever ever say yes to the bunker busters while there's somebody smart in Israel saying, "Oh, we could get this done without them." Doesn't that kind of tell you where it's heading?

To me, it looks like Trump is putting the maximum amount of psychological pressure on Iran, acting like, you know, we'll be in this war any minute and there's nothing they can do about it.

At the same time, he really doesn't want to be in this war.

So, as long as our participation is not 100% likely to work, I don't know what the percentage would be, but you know, nobody can say it's 100%.

And Israel is saying we can do it on the ground.

Why in the world would he ever authorize the bunker busters?

Wouldn't you let Israel try to do it on the ground?

And if it doesn't work, well, you still have, you know, you can make the decision later.

So, from a decision-making, risk-reward um perspective, uh it seems to me that Trump has a plan.

Now, he might not think of it that way, but would it ever make sense for him to greenlight a maybe and bring us into the war?

But it would make sense if Israel couldn't get it done on the ground.

Well, then it would start making sense like you got to do something because you can't let it remain.

So, we'll see.

Um, uh, Matt Gaetz had a former CIA hacker guy say that America will, he had him out as a guest, and he says that America will face a cyber attack in the next 30 days.

Why would it take 30 days?

It seems to me that the minute those bunker busters go off that they would cyber attack us right away.

Why would they wait?

I don't know.

Um, Israel is saying that uh the trick they used to get all those generals in one place to blow them up.

Um, I guess that was mostly the air force generals in Iran.

Uh they said they used a quote fake phone call and got 20 members of the the senior military staff for the air force in Iran to go to the same bunker and then they blew up the bunker.

Now yesterday I asked the question did they use a deep fake AI voice?

Because the way I would have done it is I would have taken out whatever their secure lines of communication are so that they had to use unsecure lines and then I would have used a AI fake voice for somebody that they would all recognize and I would leave them all voicemails to say, you know, come to this bunker at a certain time and they would be too afraid not to come because they think if I don't show up.

You know, my own boss is going to be pretty mad.

So, Israel is not giving us details.

They only call it a fake phone call, but I sure wonder if that fake phone call used AI.

I don't think they would necessarily mention that if it did.

So, that's an open question.

Um there's a CNN poll on uh US opinion about uh whether Iran should be allowed to have nuclear weapons.

And according to the CNN's poll, 83% of Republicans and 79% of Democrats oppose Iran obtaining nuclear weapons.

And nearly seven in 10 Americans support US air strikes to stop Iran's nuclear ambitions.

So there it is again in 80-20.

So apparently if Trump decided to do air strikes and have the Americans involved with their bunker busters, it would be popular with eight out of 10 Americans.

Once again, the Republicans would be on the 80 side of the 80-20.

But uh that doesn't mean it will go right.

I mean, it doesn't mean it's a good idea, but at least America would be somewhat unified.

Victor Davis Hanson um is talking about how um how it was unthinkable even a few years ago that Israel could have so dominated Iran militarily and that Iran would be on the brink of you know losing all of their proxies uh all of their nuclear program all of their missiles and um he he's also talking about uh he says uh we're going to see things that we haven't seen in our lifetime in the Middle East and it could turn out very bad.

Yes, it could.

It could turn out very very bad.

Um but it could also be revolutionary, he points out, and remake the map of the entire region.

But um I wouldn't bet on it.

Looks like it'd be a bad bet to assume things are going to go great.

Um, according to uh uh I think this was on MSNBC, US intelligence on Monday told the US Senate that it still sees no evidence that Iran is trying to create nuclear weapons.

Now, is that the same intelligence people who told us that Iraq definitely had uh nuclear weapons and weapons of mass destruction?

Why would we trust them?

Because they're not saying that Iran's not doing it.

They're saying that u they see no evidence.

Well, I see no evidence either.

So, does that mean it's not happening?

I don't know.

Do you trust our intelligence people to be so accurate that if they say there's no evidence that we found that that means it's not happening?

Um Trump says that Iran was very close to creating nuclear weapons.

Um so I asked Grok about it and Grok says that u if you look at Iran's uh uranium enrichment plans they seem to be enriching the uranium way beyond the point where they would need it for domestic reasons uh you know like medical reasons or other reasons that you use that material and that uh probably they were pursuing what would be called a threshold capability.

Meaning that it might be true that Iran had no intention of making a nuclear weapon, but it might also be true that they want you to think that they could at any minute.

So the way to, you know, split that baby is to say we've uh enriched our uranium to such a point that if we wanted to, we can make a weapon any minute.

Now, would that give them more leverage in international negotiations and affairs?

It would.

Yeah, it would.

But um it has the Iraq problem.

Do you remember why we were so confused about whether Iraq had nuclear weapons or weapons of mass destruction?

Apparently, according to Grok, I had to check it to make sure I was remembering correctly.

Apparently, Saddam Hussein wanted his local rivals and maybe other people to believe he had nuclear weapons.

Because then they would not attack and try to overthrow his regime.

So, it could be that in the Iraqi case, um, pretending to have nuclear weapons is what destroyed Iraq because we acted like, well, if they're not denying it and they're not letting us look for ourselves and we've got these reports that they're doing it and Saddam is not denying it very hard, well, maybe we have to treat it like it's real.

And it looks to me like Iran might be making the same problem.

It's entirely possible that they had zero intention of ever making a nuclear weapon, but 100% intention of making people think that they could at any minute.

If that's what they were doing, that was a bad miscalculation because you would have to treat it like it's real.

Even if you thought, I think they're bluffing.

I think they just have this threshold strategy where they want us to think they can do it at any minute.

Well, what is Israel going to do with that?

The only reasonable way to treat that is like it's real.

And so they are.

So, it's entirely possible that both Iraq and Iran will be totally destroyed because they pretended to either have or be close to nuclear weapons.

That might actually be what's happening here.

Don't know.

We will never know probably.

Um I was reading a post from uh Joel Pollak who's watching carefully the situation in Israel and he points out that u uh Israel's army radio says that Israeli air force is still attacking targets in Iran at dawn and doing it freely.

So in other words, they're not even waiting for cover or darkness.

Uh, and that's how much control they have over there.

Uh, and they're even going after the Arak nuclear facility because I think that is part of what makes them, you know, file material or something.

There there's some connection between that facility and making bombs.

I think uh meanwhile um Iran managed to fire some missiles but uh not that many maybe a few dozen.

Um now the uh the news is telling us that Trump has approved a battle plan but has not green lit it.

Does that sound real to you?

That sounds real to me because it seems to me that by now um the military would have given Trump their best options and said if we do it we would do it this way and then Trump would have to approve that if we do it that is the way we would do it.

But the question of do we do it would still be open.

And like I said, it seems to me that um Trump would be waiting to see if Israel could get the job done on the ground uh before we commit to major, you know, offensive um contribution to the war.

Um here are some tips that tell you where Trump's mind is.

I don't think he would use the phrase unconditional surrender if he even wanted to negotiate with Iran.

Would you agree?

You would never say we want unconditional surrender.

If you also believe that you would someday be at a table negotiating which way it goes, you just wouldn't use that phrase.

So to me that's a a big red flag that says that Trump has decided that this will end militarily but may not have decided whether the US is going to be part of that military action or not.

So that's where I think he is just you know I can't read his mind.

Um, and of course we're putting all of our military assets in place and we've got lots of refueling planes in case we need to get a bomber all the way over there from where it is.

So that's all part of the the psychological pressure that may also be real.

I mean, we would do those things if we were planning to attack, but we would do those things if we wanted them to think we're planning to attack.

So Trump has what I call a Kobayashi Maru situation.

Those of you who are Star Trek fans recognize that reference.

Kobayashi Maru.

If you're not familiar, um it comes from the original Star Trek where Captain Kirk was a cadet and he was doing a simulation where he was pretending to be the uh captain of a starship and uh he would run into this impossible situation which had no way to win.

So the cadets didn't know there was no way to win.

They just knew that nobody had won.

Um, apparently Captain Kirk figured out that it was designed so that nobody could ever win and he um somehow reprogrammed it so that there was a way to win.

So, in other words, he cheated.

He found a solution that wasn't even on the list of solutions.

Now, it seems to me that that's where Trump is.

He's got a Kobayashi Maru which is if he gets involved it's bad and if he doesn't get involved it's bad.

But here is his options.

If uh if Israel and Trump do not eliminate the Iranian missile and nuclear capacities, then almost everybody will think that's a giant mistake.

Would you agree?

If we got this far, and I'm saying we, um, if Israel got this far and somehow had to give up and say, "All right, we can't get your nuclear stuff.

It's too hard." Everybody would say that's a giant mistake.

Because they would just reconstitute their threat and be more angry than they were before.

So, you can't really do that.

Can't really walk away.

Um, if Israel were to take out the top leadership in Iran, uh, we think that would lead to chaos, sort of like the Iraq or Libya model, and would just be chaos.

So, that's not really a good option, and that's probably the reason that the supreme leader is still alive, as far as we know.

Um, so if the and if they allow the Iranian leadership to survive, then even if we destroy we, again, it's so hard not to use that word.

So even if the Iranian nuclear facilities and missile production are completely destroyed, if the original and existing leadership survives, what are they going to do as soon as the the shooting stops?

They're just going to reconstitute those things as fast as they can.

And they would have the knowhow and probably get some help from, I don't know, China.

Um, so that wouldn't work.

So you can't take out the leadership, but you also can't let them survive.

Those are both losing plays.

If uh if Israel finishes the job without us, um, then do you think Iran is going to say, "Oh, the USA was not really part of this action, so we won't be mad at them." No.

I think even if Trump um plays it perfectly and allows the Israelis to go in on the ground and do everything without without any bunker busters, Iran is still going to, you know, treat the United States like we were a co-combatant.

So, it's not like they're going to be um fooled by that.

So, that's not ideal.

And if Iran were to make an unexpected offer tomorrow or today, in which they'd say, "All right, all right, we give up.

Uh, we will get rid of all of our missiles and all of our nuclear stuff, you know, just let us negotiate this." Well, neither Israel nor the United States would believe them.

So, that would be sort of a non-starter.

So, those are all the um the obvious paths and they're all bad.

Every path is bad.

That's the Kobayashi Maru.

There's no way to win.

So, if Trump finds a way to make this work, it will be a Captain Kirk situation where when it's done, we say to ourselves, "Oh, I didn't even realize that was an option.

But if he goes down one of the obvious paths, they all look bad.

They all look like losing paths in the long run.

So, we'll see what he does.

Um, I do have some hope that if anybody could Captain Kirk this situation, it would be Trump.

Yeah, he's probably the only politician I could even imagine who could come up with a way to solve this that was not on the list and we'd say, "Oh, well, I didn't even imagine that solution." So, that would be the best case scenario.

We'll see.

I saw a post from General Flynn um in which he said uh uh if Israel achieves total victory and the Iranian regime collapses and a new pro-western Iranian leader emerges which he says are all very achievable under the current conditions to which I say is that really an option is it really an option to replace the current regime team with a pro-Western leader.

I don't think that's an option because it's not like the population of Iran is on Israel's side or even America's side.

They like America apparently or they like the West, but they're under attack.

Their stuff is blown up.

You know that they know people were being killed.

So, no, I don't think Iran is in the mood to install a pro-western puppet.

Um, I feel like that's just a little bit too much optimism.

How many of you think that would work?

I think a pro-western Iranian leader going into that position, I feel like they would be assassinated in 10 minutes.

Because there would just be so many people left in the government who would say you can't put a puppet in here.

You know, that's the same as total surrender.

So, I really don't see the option of a pro-western leader being installed.

It just feels like that wouldn't last.

It'd be like a 10-minute solution.

I don't know.

Well, in other news, um you remember when Pakistan and India were looking like they were going to war and then uh they stood down and Trump took the credit for helping them uh you know essentially mediating the situation.

Well, India is now saying that Trump did not mediate the situation and that it was India and Pakistan's military who worked down to a ceasefire and then Pakistan is disagreeing with India and saying that Trump was uh helpful in mediating and even went so far as to suggest that he should be nominated for a uh a Nobel Peace Prize.

So you've got India saying that India did it.

You've got Pakistan saying that Trump was helpful in making it happen.

And you've got Trump who I think has uh according to the news he moderated his narrative to credit Modi you know so crediting uh India.

So, I don't know how much involvement Trump had, but I like the fact that he tried to take credit because he might have gotten away with it.

Um, it's also possible because Pakistan is backing Trump in this.

It's also possible that he was very important to the outcome, but he doesn't want to embarrass India.

So Trump might be putting his ego on the back burner.

Um because our relationship with India is too important.

So maybe we don't know what's happening there.

I was listening to uh Jon Stewart in his podcast and he was uh complaining about Trump and he this is what he said.

Um here are his top complaints off the top of his head about Trump.

Uh there's the grifting, the memecoin, the corruption, the authoritarian tendencies, the military fetishism, the overuse of executive orders, and the general moral decay.

How many of those things are even real?

Doesn't that sound like every Democrat talking about Trump?

Let me read them again.

None of them seem to have any like evidence.

It just seems like somebody's fever dream of some monster under the bed.

So, is he grifting?

And there's a memecoin problem and corruption and authoritarian tendencies and military fetishism, overuse of executive orders, and general moral decay.

Is any of that real?

I mean all of that seems like it should be allocated to the department of imaginary affairs.

It all looks imaginary.

But now his point was that uh we talk too much about all those things meaning Democrats talk too much about all the things he mentioned and they don't talk enough about Trump's uh massive incompetence.

To which I say, what?

Massive incompetence according to to who?

If if you were to ask uh the Trump supporters, are you getting what you thought you voted for?

What do you think they would say?

Do you think they would say, no, we were totally surprised when he closed the border?

No.

Republicans think the economy is looking pretty good, that the border is closed, that Trump is resisting about as hard as you could resist getting into foreign wars, although we don't know what's going to happen yet.

But so far, he hasn't put us into the foreign war, or at least too much into it.

So, what exactly is all this massive incompetence we're talking about?

Now, when uh Jon Stewart mentions it, he talks about the, you know, the uncertainty of tariffs and stuff like that, but none of that is going to matter in a year.

Will it?

Do you think a year from now we're going to look back and say, "Oh, all that tariff uncertainty that sure took down the economy." I don't think so.

I think we're going to look back and say, "Oh, we got better tariff deals or we got better trade deals with eight out of 10 of the countries we were dealing with." I feel like it's going to take care of itself.

So, watching the u one of the smartest guys on the left, Jon Stewart, be totally lost in Trump derangement syndrome is kind of interesting.

Meanwhile, Chicago mayor, is his first name Brandon?

Brandon Johnson.

Um, he's got some uh he was asked on CNN about uh the massive spending on illegal migrants.

And he didn't answer the question, but he said this about Trump.

Um he accused Trump of wanting to quote eliminate black existence from this country.

Now, has anybody noticed that Trump wants to eliminate black existence from the country?

Even the CNN um CNN host uh cracked a smile and said, "Well, he's not really trying to eliminate black existence from the country." So, even CNN couldn't let that go.

Like no no that's not happening.

But it did come after uh Brandon Mayor Johnson had said that Trump wants to get rid of Black History Month.

Is that real?

Has Trump ever said he wanted to get rid of Black History Month?

Because that doesn't ring a bell