Expert Audits the True Cost of the Iran War and What the Pentagon Is Hiding From You

We’re spending more a year on the military in adjusted dollars than we did during World War II. What are we getting for it? And how much is going to Israel? Stephen Semler has the numbers. (00:00) How Is the Iran War Viewed by the Public? (07:34) The Growing "War" Budget (29:50) What Are the Costs of This War? (39:20) Why Hasn't the Pentagon Ever Passed an Audit? (59:10) How Do We Get the Pentagon Under Control? Paid partnerships with: Defend: Enter code "Tucker" for 20% off your purchase at https://defendcellcam.com/workforce Cozy Earth: Luxury shouldn't be out of reach. Get up to 20% off at https://cozyearth.com/TUCKER Cardiff: Get fast business funding without bank delays—apply in minutes with Cardiff and access up to $500,000 in same‑day funding at https://Cardiff.co/TUCKER Vulnerable People Project: Stand with Christians in the land where Christianity began, go to http://SaveWestBankChristians.com TCN: Watch ‘The OKCBOMB Files’ only on TCN: https://watchtcn.co/okcbomb Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:04Tucker Carlson?

  Stephen Salmer, thank you very much for coming on. The reason I'm so excited to talk to you is because it's hard to find anyone who pays attention to the numbers. It's easy to find people with opinions and sweeping theories about this side of the other, the rise and fall of nations. But to find someone who actually keeps track of what we're spending on this or that, or what people think about this or that, as recorded in public opinion polling, pretty hard, actually. And you are probably the most famous person who keeps track. So, thank you very much for doing this. So, let me just ask you, let's start with the Iran war and its popularity. So, like, democracy kind of demands, if you're going to do big things, that you've got public buy-in because you're doing it on behalf of the public, purportedly. How is this war viewed by the public in the United States?

• 0:49Speaker 01

  It's the most unpopular war since polling began.

• 0:53Tucker Carlson?

  Really?

• 0:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. The first poll, according to this joint poll that was, that's been conducted on a near-weekly basis since the start of the war through the present by The Economist and YouGov, they've polled Americans on whether the Iran war has been the right decision or the wrong decision. It started at negative net 13% net support, which means that 13% more people, 13 percentage points more people oppose the war than supported it.

• 1:21Tucker Carlson?

  So, most Americans opposed the war the day it started?

• 1:24Speaker 01

  From the jump, 13 percentage points.

• 1:26Tucker Carlson?

  I was going to stop there. That's, I mean, that itself is unusual, right? Because if memory serves, when wars start with fireworks and flags and all that, most people are kind of all-in.

• 1:36Speaker 01

  Right, it's sort of cathartic at the beginning.

• 1:37Tucker Carlson?

  Exactly.

• 1:38Speaker 01

  But then it wears off over time. And all wars, Tucker, get more unpopular over time, even World War II, which started off with something crazy, like 95%, you know, 95% support, something like that.

• 1:50Tucker Carlson?

  But even the Iraq war in 2003?

• 1:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, that started off at, I believe, plus 40% or something.

• 1:58Tucker Carlson?

  Is that true? Wow, I forgot that, okay.

• 2:00Speaker 01

  And the Afghanistan war, even higher. And of course, those have tumbled down over time.

• 2:04Tucker Carlson?

  Well, yeah.

• 2:05Speaker 01

  But the point is that all US wars, major wars since World War II, have started with positive net support. The Iran war is the only one that has started at a negative number in terms of net support. And over time, it's only gotten more unpopular. So, at the time of, we're having this conversation, according to the latest data, it's at negative 35 net support.

• 2:28Tucker Carlson?

  Negative 35?

• 2:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, and for context, that makes it the most unpopular war ever.

• 2:33Tucker Carlson?

  I bet, I'm not an epidemiologist, but I bet there are diseases with higher ratings than that.

• 2:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, I would assume so. I mean, it's, it's a near-universally unpopular policy. And even if you look at, there's always, you know, additional related Iran war questions on this poll that, you know, you don't get from the summaries. You'd be have to actually dig through the data, looking into individual questions and the responses, is that even if you, even among the people who still support the war, says the right decision, about half of them want it to end as quickly as possible. So, they won't really admit that it was the wrong decision, but that yet, say, like, should we end it as quickly as possible? Yes, absolutely.

• 3:16Tucker Carlson?

  I love this, I hope it's over soon.

• 3:18Speaker 01

  Yes, yes, yes. I really think it was a great decision, can it end? We needed it to end yesterday.

• 3:25Tucker Carlson?

  Yeah, exactly. Okay, well, that's really interesting. I sense that, I mean, I, you know, I strongly felt that myself, but I was also surprised by how little effort the administration meant, went to to sell it ahead of time. Usually, these things are the product of a long run-up, a rollout.

• 3:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, there was a steady buildup of military assets, but they didn't, they didn't prime, the Trump administration didn't prime the press, they didn't square the UN in the same way that the Bush administration did in the run-up to Iraq, to my knowledge. It seemed, even though there was this, you know, one or two-month-long buildup, and then there was, you know, the last June, there was the attack by the US on Iranian nuclear facilities, I believe on June 21st, 2025.

• 4:15Tucker Carlson?

  That's correct.

• 4:16Speaker 01

  And then, there's of course, that, that history that had built up. And then Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli PM, lobbied the White House famously, and I believe January, or actually in February, they met in early January, I believe, Trump and Netanyahu. And then in February, after a briefing with Netanyahu, Trump decided to go to war, and the US was at war a couple of weeks later. But during this, during this whole time, there was no real concerted effort to get people on board. And because, over time, US presidents have an enormous amount of latitude to just basically go to war, outside of congressional opinion, outside of a congressional approval, rather, as required by law.

• 5:00Speaker 01

  And they find legal justifications to kind of work their way around it. And the worst part is Congress really, for the most part, isn't interested in holding, isn't interested in constraining presidential decisions. So, why the US went to war with Iran? Multiple reasons we can discuss. But I think one of the main reasons was that there's nothing stopping it.

• 5:22Tucker Carlson?

  Right.

• 5:23Speaker 01

  There's no institutional pushback from Congress, which is...

• 5:26Tucker Carlson?

  Even from the opposition party?

• 5:28Speaker 01

  There was...

• 5:29Tucker Carlson?

  So, Chuck Schumer hasn't demanded a congressional resolution declaring war on Iran, even though we've been in war with Iran since February 28th?

• 5:39Speaker 01

  They've, they've introduced a lot of war powers resolutions. What, the problem I have with Democrats, among the, among many, is they refuse to take on the budgets that enable wars in the first place.

• 5:52Tucker Carlson?

  Well, exactly.

• 5:53Speaker 01

  So, we have all these symbolic votes of non-binding resolutions that would ostensibly order Trump to withdraw all troops from the Middle East who are engaged in hostilities with Iran. But Democrats are very, aside for a very select number of Democrats, and on the opposite side, a very small, even smaller number of Republicans, who are actually willing to take on the military budget. So, I think Democrats realize that there's a lot of currency, and there's a lot of political capital to be gained by coming across as anti-war. So, they'll speak out about it, and they'll say they're anti-war, but they'll vote for the budgets that enable war in the first place.

• 6:34Tucker Carlson?

  So, let's talk about that budget. The, the defense budget, or I guess now it's called the war budget, because it's the War Department, has grown, you know, at higher than the rate of inflation, which is saying a lot. So, where are we now on the, on the defense budget?

• 6:52Speaker 01

  We're at 1.1 trillion. That's the enacted budget for fiscal year 2026, which, which actually ended on September 30th. So, we're still at that level through this, it's called a continuing resolution, just continues the levels.

• 7:04Tucker Carlson?

  1.1 trillion?

• 7:06Speaker 01

  Yes, that, that's, that includes, that's the base budget that's enacted every year, plus it's the amount of money that came from the big, beautiful bill. There's about 150 billion in military funding in the big, beautiful bill, the first reconciliation bill passed in, I believe, July 2025, under the Trump, the second Trump administration.

• 7:24Tucker Carlson?

  So, two little attentions paid to this, so 1.1 trillion. So, that's by far the largest piece of the discretionary budget. I mean, nothing even comes close. That's the majority of the discretionary budget, as far as I know.

• 7:35Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's, I mean, every year, the budget that Congress votes on military spending occupies more than half of it.

• 7:43Tucker Carlson?

  Yeah, yeah, right. So, the rest being the, what we call entitlements, or things that just keep going until the government goes bankrupt.

• 7:49Speaker 01

  The discretionary budget is the, the one that the Congress votes on every year, and then entitlement spending, the mandatory spending, as it were.

• 7:58Tucker Carlson?

  Right, just automatic, yeah.

• 7:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, the stuff that operates basically as trust funds that keeps going, regardless of, you know, whether the government is operating or whether we're experiencing a shutdown, is a separate amount that's, that goes on automatically, as you said. But then, there's 12 funding bills that Congress approves every year to fund the federal agencies, basically keep the government going. And of that amount, military spending is, is over half of it. And if you look at all US government spending in a given year, military spending, if you include the mandatory resources included, you're getting to about a third. And if you include...

• 8:38Speaker 01

  Like militarized domestic security, like domestic security apparatuses. It's and the proportionate responsibility each of those has to the national debt. Then you're talking about like, um, um, the largest component of, of US spending every year is on war and policing. Effectively.

• 9:01Tucker Carlson?

  Yeah. How's that going? Well, so actually, how is it going? So 1.1 trillion. And as far as I know, we can't get our fabled aircraft carriers anywhere near the Iranian coast. We can't secure passage of shipping through the strait. We can't keep the Red Sea open. We can't subdue the Houthis, who are, we told this like primitive got chewing tribe in the mountains of Yemen. So like, what exactly is this money going to? If you can't beat the Houthis with 1.1 trillion dollars, try not to use profanity here. What, what is this for?

• 9:34Speaker 01

  Uh, well, one, one way to answer that question is that more than half of the annual military budget goes to for-profit contractors.

• 9:43Tucker Carlson?

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• 10:25Tucker Carlson?

  Visit defendcellcam.com/workforce to learn more about this. Apply or nominate a Blue Collar Scholar yourself. And if you're picking a camera, use the code Tucker to save 20%. But for 1.1 trillion, you could just buy Yemen. You could, no, I'm sure you could buy the country, which apparently I've never been.

• 10:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, the military budget is large. I mean, it's larger than the economies of a lot of countries.

• 10:45Tucker Carlson?

  Of most countries.

• 10:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 10:47Tucker Carlson?

  1.1 trillion dollars? Yeah, it's all, there's no African country with a 1.1 trillion dollar GDP. So like,

• 10:54Tucker Carlson?

  why wouldn't you just, why wouldn't you buy Yemen? Like, what is the point here? Is it to enrich Boeing? Is that?

• 11:03Speaker 01

  To me, it's, it's, if you want to look at it through a lens of, okay, how the military industrial complex operates. It gets an enormous amount of money through the annual military budget. That money flows into obviously profits and shareholders and executive pay, the executives at the top weapons manufacturers. You get the majority of their revenue from the US government make 20 million, 30 million dollars a year. And these are basically public firms, statistically speaking, and most of their money comes from taxpayers.

• 11:37Speaker 01

  But they're allowed to profit like, like.

• 11:38Tucker Carlson?

  They're making 30 million dollars a year?

• 11:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, the top executives are. Yeah. Boeing, Lockheed, General Dynamics, North Grumman, Lockheed Martin.

• 11:48Tucker Carlson?

  Wow.

• 11:48Speaker 01

  Might have said that already. But then a portion of that revenue is recycled back into the political system through lobbying, through campaign contributions and through an underrated method of influence is the funding of think tanks in Washington DC.

• 12:05Tucker Carlson?

  I've noticed.

• 12:05Speaker 01

  Which gives them, who produce reports that are not, you know, objectively PR material, but they, they fall within a certain spectrum that is allowable for the arms industry. So it gives arms industry interests a sort of, a sort of academic or technocratic gloss that it wouldn't otherwise have through lobbying or campaign contributions. Makes it easier to justify.

• 12:30Tucker Carlson?

  So you send money to AEI or Heritage or Brookings?

• 12:35Speaker 01

  I'll give you an example. So CSIS, Center for Strategic International Studies, is a very establishment-y think tank. I think Kiss, like Henry Kissinger was on the board there at some point or whatever. And it's bipartisan, of course. And it develops Iran war cost estimates in

• 12:53Speaker 01

  an intelligent way. Their, their research is actually well-grounded, but

• 12:59Speaker 01

  they will sound the alarm when it comes to war costs related to US munitions expenditures. So raising that alarm, and again, it's just justifiably so. The US has burned an enormous amount of munitions in Iran.

• 13:15Speaker 01

  That helps create a demand to buy more weapons as the war itself has, but they will also.

• 13:24Tucker Carlson?

  It's like, you need new toner cartridges.

• 13:27Speaker 01

  Yes, yes.

• 13:28Tucker Carlson?

  You've bought the hardware, but the actual profit is on the toner cartridges, the oil changes, the munitions, the stuff that you have to keep buying.

• 13:36Speaker 01

  And they really, uh, and my main pet peeve in this sort of national security intellectualism that happens in the, in the, in DC is they turn political problems into technocratic or technical problems waiting to be solved. So the US is experiencing a shortfall in missile interceptors. Interceptors are missiles that shoot down other missiles.

• 13:57Tucker Carlson?

  Yes.

• 13:57Speaker 01

  Everyone, I think, is aware of it at this point. But the US has burned such, burned such vast quantities of these interceptors during the Iran war that has created a shortfall. And subsequently, a PR nightmare for the, for the Trump administration and, and the people in Congress who support the war. Now, um, the obvious solution to the interceptor problem is to look at the main cause of why we were run low in the first place, which is the war. Instead, we're getting these very.

• 14:28Tucker Carlson?

  So pointless wars are tough on your munitions stockpiles? Is that what you're saying?

• 14:31Speaker 01

  Tucker, it turns out that that to be the case. I know this is shocking to some people, but we're getting these 12.

• 14:36Tucker Carlson?

  Do you have a PhD? How'd you know that?

• 14:37Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, yeah. I, I just, yeah, it's just years of intensive study. But the point is like, people who do have PhDs are, are developing these, you know, 20-page reports on how to replenish the stockpiles, but not really calling for an explicit end to the Iran war. So they're just saying, really tinkering around with like, oh, mute, uh, production schedules and.

• 14:56Tucker Carlson?

  Yeah.

• 14:57Speaker 01

  Like, can, how, how can we increase the yearly production capacity from the projected 650 Patriot interceptors in fiscal year 2027 to get it to 750? And how do we invest in the solid rocket supplier base? And how do we get the critical minerals we need to accelerate production? It's like, what are you talking about? We have a problem that is caused by war. And if your first recommendation isn't to stop that war, I just, I just can't take that seriously. So that's the kind of, that's the kind of analysis you get when, even when it comes to like a very narrow subject like missile, like, like rebuilding the inventory.

• 15:33Tucker Carlson?

  This is part of their lobbying budget, like Lockheed, for example, is just to pick one would spend, you know, it's the money it gets from the government, building the weapons that it has sold to the government, of course, and employing its workforce and all that. But then part of the money would go to lobbying either directly or influence campaigns laundered through so-called think tanks.

• 15:57Speaker 01

  Yep. Spend money on advertising too. One thing that I've tracked over the years, and this is like, I run this newsletter called Polygraph on, on Substack and I, one of the main things that, uh, I do is I state the obvious, but in a very, very specific way. So for example, for every military budget that Congress votes on every year, I compare, um, the yes and no votes, and I compare how much each respective vote category took from arms industry donors before voting.

• 16:31Speaker 01

  And low and behold, as you're totally unsurprised to hear, is that the members of Congress who receive more money from arms companies, military contractors are more likely to vote for the military budget and military budget increases.

• 16:45Tucker Carlson?

  Oh, wow. Really?

• 16:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 16:46Tucker Carlson?

  So there's cause and effect. There's at least a correlation and I, I.

• 16:51Speaker 01

  Oh, but correlation is not causation. People say, duh, I said, yeah, I'm not surprised either. But you know, when we talk about money in politics, the first answer, like, people say, oh, like, everyone knows that it's a problem, but you know, you approach a certain politician about it and they say, oh, it doesn't affect my vote. You have no proof about it. It's like here, if every year I'm noticing that members of Congress who vote for a military spending increase take three to five times more arms industry cash than members opposed to military spending increases, then we've moved the conversation away, where suddenly for people who care about the effect of money in politics, we're suddenly now on the offensive. Because now members of Congress have to say, okay, this correlation exists now.

• 17:35Speaker 01

  So, and you're a part of this group who on average takes three to five times more money from the companies that profit from war and you've just voted for a record amount of military spending.

• 17:46Tucker Carlson?

  Well, yeah, especially considering the use of these weapons. I mean, it's one thing if we're defending the homeland against a ground invasion from Paraguay or something, or any, you know, defend the homeland, got it, fine. But these are like totally pointless wars disconnected from America's national interest in which unarmed civilians, kids get killed. Cause why? It, there's like no justification for any of it. It's like repulsive.

• 18:12Speaker 01

  Yeah. Morally, I, I mean, I'm not gonna, I don't claim to be a moral authority. I can tell you how much it costs though. I can tell you as someone who's followed these costs, it's incredibly taxing on the conscience.

• 18:24Tucker Carlson?

  Well, can I just ask too, unless I'm misunderstanding, you're saying that some of these, maybe all of these weapons manufacturers derive most of their income and profits from the taxpayer?

• 18:36Speaker 01

  The major ones, yes. For example, Lockheed Martin, uh, last year or a couple of years ago, received, I think, uh, 73% of its income from DOD contracts. And then even more from US government brokered sales to foreign countries. So all in all, when you combine the amount of, um, revenue that Lockheed Martin received from government contracts, plus the arms deals that were executed through the, arranged and executed through the US government, you're talking about a company through which, you know, 97% of their revenue is tied to US government policy.

• 19:11Tucker Carlson?

  An independent private company. They're just working for US taxpayers who are their customer, their only real customer, right?

• 19:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 19:18Tucker Carlson?

  What you're saying is they're taking taxpayer money and using it to lobby taxpayers for more taxpayer money.

• 19:27Speaker 01

  This is how militaries begin.

• 19:29Tucker Carlson?

  How is that allowed?

• 19:32Tucker Carlson?

  So they take, if I don't pay my taxes, I go to jail. They're taking money from me at gunpoint, majority of my income, because I'm not in private equity and I pay labor tax, just like everyone else does, on wages. And so the majority of my money goes to the government by force. And then the government sends that to people who lecture and lobby me and my elected representatives to take more of the money. Like, how is that a fair system?

• 19:57Speaker 01

  That's a question you can ask, you know, in a lot of sectors as well. The difference is-

• 20:00Tucker Carlson?

  That's right. Thank you. Because that is true, what you're saying. It's not just the sector.

• 20:05Speaker 01

  But the, one thing that's, that's special to this sector is that we're not talking, this is a state-run economy.

• 20:13Tucker Carlson?

  Right.

• 20:14Speaker 01

  Because, I mean, it's, when we talk about the US armed industry, it's primarily, it's a socialized system. It's top-down. It's about state planning. It's about delegation. It's about contracts. And members of Congress really like it because they can, they have, with their districts, they have their own little fiefdom where they can direct, you know, government contracts, how they like, depending on, you have to usually hire lobbyists for this and they, they write legislation in a certain way. So that narrows down the, the list of eligible companies that can bid on a contract. And then you kind of, you, you work, you work your legislative magic to alter the text in the bills so that you're giving a very high chance that one company is be able to,

• 20:58Speaker 01

  is going to be able to carry out a certain project and you know that company has links to your district as a member of Congress.

• 21:03Tucker Carlson?

  So shipbuilding in Maine and Mississippi, munitions in Tennessee, aerospace in California. It's like every state, every congressional district has a piece of this.

• 21:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. And through this process called, it's either called like political engineering or geographic engineering, that these arms companies deliberately spread out their assets to touch, quote unquote, all, as many congressional districts as possible. So when lobbyists, say, get together to, um, uh, keep afloat a dying and deeply fraudulent project like, um, the Littoral Combat Ship, which was, uh, eventually just killed off in the last couple of years. But in the early teens, it had a huge problematic history and there was this huge lobbying effort in the, in the mid 20 teens to, you know, keep funding going to this very problematic

• 21:57Speaker 01

  ship, even though it had tons of technical flaws. There was literally a crack developing in the hulls of the ship because they were made of aluminum and not steel.

• 22:06Speaker 01

  And this massive amount of technical problems that this ship was just never going to deliver and is obvious, but there's this huge lobbying effort where a group of lobbyists organized this lobbying effort where, um, I'm going to slip into the first person here because I was a part of this lobbying effort, where we organized all of the suppliers, the contractors and the subcontractors involved in the production of this, um, what John McCain called the little crappy ship, the LCS. And we just developed a map and this huge spreadsheet of all the different areas that, projects were related to and how many people it employed.

• 22:45Speaker 01

  So when we went to congressional offices to lobby for this project, there was eventually like in the white paper that we provided like a, you know, a, some sort of national security justification, usually that we just grabbed from an arms industry-funded think tank. And then, but the real line was like, okay, and at the bottom it was just like, and by the way, it, this, this, uh, this company employs 550 people in your district.

• 23:10Tucker Carlson?

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• 23:56Tucker Carlson?

  That's cozyearth.com, code Tucker. When prompted to check out, be sure to tell them that you've heard about Cozy Earth right here on this show. Wait, so you were a lobbyist for this? So you're like a whistleblower, basically.

• 24:07Speaker 01

  Uh, no, I was a very small part. I, um, it's a very small cog in the machine, but I gained enough understanding to, I gained enough knowledge to get an understanding of how the system works.

• 24:18Tucker Carlson?

  Were, from your exposure to the system from the inside, were people cynical about it? Did they think that what they were producing, these armaments were going to make the world better or was that not part of it?

• 24:34Speaker 01

  I did get the feeling that they were, that some people I asked about, especially towards the end, because I mean, uh, towards, towards the end, obviously I developed, I figured out who I was and was basically just morally opposed to this through and through. But when the subject came up, when I tried to bring it up indirectly, there's, I got the sense that a lot of people were talking themselves into a moral high ground that didn't exactly exist. And the stuff that they were saying was less at me and more like, like reaffirmations for them.

• 25:08Tucker Carlson?

  You're talking themselves.

• 25:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, that they were-

• 25:09Tucker Carlson?

  I'm good enough, I'm smart enough and doggone it, people like me.

• 25:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. There's that, there's a sense of entitlement, there's a sense of, um, but also a moral component too, that was just, it was odd to see them to-

• 25:21Tucker Carlson?

  You know, Steve, and the world needs 2,000-pound bombs.

• 25:24Speaker 01

  Yes, yes, has to. And we're, we're helping, you know, we're helping delivering savings to the taxpayer by, you know, helping the F-35 stay funded, even though it has tons of problems. But yeah, there's, there's a lot of-

• 25:37Tucker Carlson?

  How interesting. Well, I think it makes you much more credible that you have experience from the inside watching all this.

• 25:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's trained by the best.

• 25:47Tucker Carlson?

  So this defense budget, 1.1 trillion, that seems way higher than I remember it.

• 25:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. So in 2021, the military budget was 741 billion. This is in, I'm just going to say in nominal terms because this is how, you know, Congress remembers these things, but a little bit higher if you adjust for inflation, much higher. But over time, I mean, by the time, well, that was when Biden entered office and then when he left, it was, I think it was close, it was like 850 or something. So it increased during the course of the Biden administration, before him, it increased under Trump.

• 26:24Speaker 01

  It increased under the first term of Obama, then it went down. But pretty much since 2015 or 2016, the military budget has gone upward pretty much every year, even after accounting for inflation.

• 26:35Tucker Carlson?

  So basically, everything Eisenhower warned about has come true. The defense industrial-

• 26:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 26:41Tucker Carlson?

  Establishment has just eaten the country.

• 26:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, Eisenhower was worried about basically the war machine becoming sentient, like this collection of, this collection of interests would sort of, not necessarily like, execute corruption in kind of like the, you know, backfilled, you know, smoke-filled rooms-

• 26:59Tucker Carlson?

  Right, right.

• 27:00Speaker 01

  Table, although that, that happens. But it's, it's more about like creating the conditions where Capitol Hill is just operating in its own world. It's insulated from the interests of everyone else. And when, you know, we, ideologies are here, we, we've all got ideologies, you and I have them, of course. But when you start mixing in profit interests to decisions about especially war and peace and people's security, I have a bit of a problem with that. I have a massive problem with that.

• 27:30Tucker Carlson?

  Of course. Especially when it's not even working. It's not even achieving your stated aims.

• 27:37Speaker 01

  Right.

• 27:37Tucker Carlson?

  Whether, I mean, whether or not I agree with those, which I don't, but even if I did, I would say, okay, it's fair to measure your performance by the standards that you articulated. We have the greatest military in the world that can do this, but you haven't done it. So like, what's your explanation?

• 27:52Speaker 01

  Right. It's one of these cases that we're going to hear this more and more from Trump administration officials like, like Pete Hegseth, for example, that, oh, it's Congress that's not letting us win the war. It's like, no, no, no, no. We haven't even accomplished the military objectives that, that were laid out. Like Iran is still able to project power across its borders. Like, congrats, you've beat up on a country that has the GDP of, you know, Kentucky or Illinois or something like that. But it's silly, it controls the Strait of Hormuz for the most part.

• 28:21Speaker 01

  It's still able to project power outside of its borders. And whenever the cost of the Iran war is, is brought up in any sense, the rebuttal is, okay, well, this war is about preventing Iran from getting the nuclear weapon. So, you know, how much would you pay to, for Iran to not have the nuclear weapon? Which is a false, which is a false question. It's, it's patently absurd because one, it requires someone to believe that this war won't actually make Iran's interest in acquiring a nuclear weapon more likely, which I think it would. I mean, if I were them, I mean, it would definitely heighten my interest in acquiring-

• 28:57Tucker Carlson?

  Iran's getting a nuke. And by the end of this, there'll be nothing we can do about it.

• 29:02Speaker 01

  Right. And maybe at that point, we'll find in ourselves to actually be honest negotiators to negotiate, you know, an arms control agreement, but-

• 29:12Tucker Carlson?

  We had a war in June of 2025 that we were told ended their capacity to create nuclear weapons.

• 29:19Speaker 01

  Right.

• 29:19Tucker Carlson?

  And of course, those of us who are watching carefully knew it had nothing to do with nuclear weapons and neither did the subsequent regime change effort that followed it. All of it was a lie, nothing to do with Iran's nuclear weapons. They didn't have a nuclear program that was close to producing a nuclear weapon and they didn't have the means to deliver it. They had no ICBMs. The whole thing was a joke.

• 29:37Speaker 01

  There's really a reliance on the Trump administration and Trump administration officials to-

• 29:46Speaker 01

  It's a performative war in a sense where people aren't expected to gauge success or failure based on on political outcomes, but just actions that the US takes. Like for Pete Hegseth, he expects people to just be enamored with the use of force and violence and derive some sort of, you know, value from it or entertainment when people are, most people are morally opposed to that sort of thing unless it's absolutely, absolutely necessary and actively undermining their material interests at home. Because this war is, it's, for the average person, it's,

• 30:27Speaker 01

  it's, it's morally repugnant. It's a betrayal of the campaign promises that Trump ran on. And it's also just in a material sense, making their lives worse, both as a consumer, because they're paying for higher gas prices and higher prices for everything as a result of the inflationary war spike, but also as taxpayers as well, because they're on the hook for the bill that the Trump administration is about to send to taxpayers for the war.

• 30:53Tucker Carlson?

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• 32:58Tucker Carlson?

  Griff, borrow better. So let's discuss that. Let's discuss the totality of the costs. And I think you just named the big drivers of the costs. It's not simply the defense budget or whatever additional funding they're going to require to backfill all the munitions that they blew doing what? I'm not sure. But it's also the cost in inflation. What? Summarize and then dig into, if you would, the costs.

• 33:23Speaker 01

  So I pay attention to the narrow set of costs called direct war costs, which are the immediate budgetary expenses from the war that the US is on the hook for. The broader costs, the indirect war costs refer to the costs of the economy. So there was a Moody's analysis, I think, that that found that the average household paid $2,000 more as a result of the war due to, mostly due to inflation, higher fuel costs and that sort of thing. I pay attention to the numbers that the Pentagon is supposed to faithfully report and the US government is supposed to faithfully report regarding the war's current costs, especially the Pentagon. But the Pentagon has refused to provide those

• 34:02Speaker 01

  numbers. So that's, they provide a top line number that's dubious. The most detail they've provided, at least publicly, is a summary table, which left a lot of stuff out. It didn't count the costs of replacing bases, for example. It didn't count the costs of moving money around in the Pentagon budget to pay for war operations that would have gone to something else or had, would have gone unused. So that has opened up the space for independent analysts to assess the cost of the Iran war. And for the first 60 days of the Iran war, I estimated that it cost 72 billion in direct costs between operations,

• 34:43Speaker 01

  between replacing the munitions that were expended, damage to US military bases and military aid to Israel. So taking those costs into account, I arrived at 72 billion for the first 60 days. Then the next month, the Trump administration requested an $87 billion supplemental funding bill, which is literally money supplemental to the main budget that Congress approves every year for Iran, mostly for Iran war-related expenses. And according to the Cato Institute and others, people who have, who have, you know, read the bills, the number I arrived at, it also included 72 billion for war-related

• 35:25Speaker 01

  costs. And then for the next estimate I had over the, for 120 days, I arrived at 103 billion. And then a week later, there were two reports from NBC and Wired that internal Pentagon estimates had the war at around 100 billion as well. So by this point, I'm feeling very pleased with myself because I had, you know, you know, had a number that was then corroborated with, you know, the amount that the administration requested for the war. And then that was coming from, you know, internal Pentagon assessments through just, you know, the rank and file people who do the budget work there. But then last month or in September, the Congressional Budget Office came out with their report

• 36:11Speaker 01

  on the cost of the Iran war, and they arrived at 38 billion, extremely low number.

• 36:16Tucker Carlson?

  38 billion?

• 36:19Speaker 01

  Shockingly low. So the Congress, and it became the authoritative war cost estimate because the Congressional Budget Office is a technocratic group that's nonpartisan. Its job is to just to, it's to assess the cost of legislation that Congress passes and various proposals and policies and that sort of thing. And because of that, they have, you know, because of their technocratic remit on just, you know, crunchy numbers and their nonpartisan status, the war cost assessment was, was treated as genuine. But when I went through this, I mean, Tucker, I mean, the mistakes that were made in their support is, is, were just shocking, just basic matters of fact. For example, it put

• 37:01Speaker 01

  as, under the equipment losses, it put that the US had lost 24 MQ-9 Reaper drones as of August 1. This is a five month estimate. That number came from a Congressional Research Service report published in May that, that had that number, 24 losses. But that report was based on a report from CBS, from an unnamed US official, from the first week of April regarding US war losses. So effectively, the CBO, for their, you know, official war cost estimate, or part of it, took a number of, for the number of drone losses, took a five week estimate for their five month estimate. So what, what should the number,

• 37:46Speaker 01

  what should the number of, you know, drone losses should be for MQ-9s? If you compare the total aircraft inventory for the Air Force, total aircraft inventory is this list that's published each year as part of the Air Force budget request. They give the amount that was enacted, their enacted inventory, the number of aircraft they have in each fleet for each respective unit, the amount they have enacted for that year, plus the amount that they want to have, you know, active for next year. In June 2025, as part of their 2026 request, the Pentagon said it had, it would have 189 MQ-9 drones in

• 38:24Speaker 01

  its inventory at the end of fiscal year 2026. The next year, this past April, they said, therefore said that the enacted amount was down to 165. So that explains the 24 drone difference. But in May, an Air Force general testified before a Senate Subcommittee and said the MQ-9 fleet, due to wartime losses, was down to 135. So, or roughly 135. So either way, we're looking at an estimate for, at least for MQ-9 drones, that is 100% off. It should have been twice as much as was.

• 39:06Tucker Carlson?

  Did anybody else? So CBO comes, Congressional Budget Office comes out with this $38 billion estimate for the cost of war. And it's of course dutifully repeated by every new organization. I mean, that's the point of CBO numbers is to get reporters to tell the public that they're real. Did anybody reverse engineer it like you did?

• 39:27Speaker 01

  To my knowledge, no.

• 39:28Tucker Carlson?

  Right. So you're just like, one guy in Pittsburgh is like, hmm, let's look at how they got to this number. And you find out it's 100% off just on, in this one category, one kind of drone.

• 39:37Speaker 01

  And I should say that's that, for the most part, CBO and I were working with the same amount of resources because as CBO notes in its report, the Pentagon didn't cooperate with their, you know, estimate. So CBO asked for numbers from the Pentagon, but the Pentagon just refused to provide those numbers.

• 39:53Tucker Carlson?

  How? Is it its own country? It gets to act independently?

• 39:56Speaker 01

  I suppose so. And from people I talked to on the Hill, it's that the Pentagon, I got two, two types of answers. One was that the Pentagon does this all the time. And the second version was the Pentagon has done this in the past and it's also worse than it's ever been in terms of stonewalling other agencies from accessing data.

• 40:13Tucker Carlson?

  Congress is just like in full cuck mode, like no self-respect whatsoever.

• 40:17Speaker 01

  The Pentagon has never passed an audit. I mean, federal agencies were required in the mid 90s to pass an audit to be able to produce accurate financial documents. And in the private sector, you go to a CEO of a private sector firm who does not produce accurate financial records goes to prison.

• 40:33Tucker Carlson?

  Oh, absolutely.

• 40:34Speaker 01

  So I'm thinking, why not have the same standards for the heads of government agencies?

• 40:40Tucker Carlson?

  But also, the only enforcement mechanism really is the legislative branch, the Congress, the co-equal branch of government, one of three. And if they don't assert that privilege, if they don't use their power, then it just goes away. So like, what's their problem? Why is it so hard for Congress just to like, I don't know, use the power it was given by the Constitution to make the country better?

• 41:00Speaker 01

  I think it has a lot to do with what we were discussing earlier about the inflation.

• 41:05Tucker Carlson?

  They're so craven.

• 41:06Speaker 01

  But it also, I mean, you know, for it to edit this out, the list of complaint goes on. I mean, CBO, again, under their lists of equipment losses, it didn't include an MH60 helicopter that crashed in the Arabian Sea as part of the Iran war operations in early July. Understandable, though, it didn't make headlines. It actually did make headlines. I mean, the crash, I mean, made headlines, like, one of the crew members died, and there's a search for him, and it's, you know, not just, you know, independent media, I mean, it was covered by independent media, it was covered in New York Times as well, you know, major organizations as well. So it got enough press attention. I just detected a just a level of effort that I wasn't really happy with.

• 41:46Speaker 01

  It also refused to assign a cost to the bases that are now, you know, in some cases beyond repair, that the US has basically lost and abandoned in the Middle East. We're told that, you know, not to complain about war costs for maintaining this, you know, this archipelago of bases across the Middle East, not, we're told it's in the interests of our security, and that not to complain about the cost of maintaining them and conducting operations from them because it's, you know, provides, you know, immeasurable economic benefits. But when we lose one of those bases, we can't even write off the cost, which just strikes me as a bizarre choice.

• 42:25Speaker 01

  It also didn't, CBO didn't bother asking about the cost to other agencies, even though, you know, the State Department spent, I think, around 80 million evacuating personnel across the world and suffered around 100 million in damaged diplomatic facilities as a result of the war. But the main reason why I believe that there was such a huge discrepancy between the internal Pentagon budget estimates that were around 100 billion through the first, what did I say, 120 days, then my own draws around 100 billion, is that CBO, when it calculates

• 43:05Speaker 01

  costs for, for anything, but including war, it does so based in relationship to a certain funding baseline. So it's not measuring how much the US spent on a war per se, it's measuring how much more the US spent in comparison to a pre-existing baseline. So it's how much the Pentagon spent above its normal operating budget. Now, the problem is, the normal operating budget, and so, let me back up, whenever you measure war costs, you, you obviously want to separate the peacetime costs that would have been incurred anyway with the additional costs from the war. Fair enough, I get that, and I do that, too, in my own estimates.

• 43:49Speaker 01

  The problem is, it matters a lot which budget and which funding baseline you choose to represent, you know, the peacetime budget. So when CBO made his calculation, it was able to write off huge amount of costs because they were, quote unquote, already included in the DoD budget, and you can see this, this is throughout the report. But the amount of money in the DoD budget is the historical amount, we were just talking about, that 1.1 trillion dollars.

• 44:19Tucker Carlson?

  Yes.

• 44:19Speaker 01

  Which is the largest since 1945. It's, on average, it exceeds, adjusted for inflation, the average amount the US spent on its military each year from 1942 to 1945, by about 90 billion. So what-

• 44:35Tucker Carlson?

  Wait, it's more?

• 44:37Speaker 01

  On average, per year.

• 44:38Tucker Carlson?

  Than we spent during World War II?

• 44:41Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 44:42Tucker Carlson?

  Oh, come on.

• 44:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 44:44Tucker Carlson?

  Our current budget, adjusted for inflation.

• 44:46Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 44:49Tucker Carlson?

  Be sure.

• 44:50Speaker 01

  Yes. Now, granted, the spending during World War II occupied a much greater share of the US economy, because the US economy was a lot smaller back then, and the US had a smaller, you know, population as well.

• 45:01Tucker Carlson?

  Much smaller.

• 45:02Speaker 01

  But in terms of, in terms of, you know, inflation-adjusted dollars, that's what we're talking about?

• 45:08Tucker Carlson?

  We're spending more now than we spent during World War II.

• 45:12Speaker 01

  On average, from 1942 to 1945, yeah. And the 1.1-

• 45:16Tucker Carlson?

  Those are the war years, because Pearl Harbor is the very end of 41.

• 45:19Speaker 01

  Right, I just want to specify that wasn't including, like, the lower costs of 1941.

• 45:23Tucker Carlson?

  No, I get it, right.

• 45:24Speaker 01

  But in the proposed budget for next year that Trump proposed is 1.5 trillion.

• 45:27Tucker Carlson?

  Wait, why have I, I, you've blown my mind.

• 45:31Speaker 01

  It's, it's, it's because it's passed so swiftly with bipartisan appeal.

• 45:37Tucker Carlson?

  Because the war costs from World War II are very famous. I mean, it had huge effects on the economy at both ends of the war, of course, those costs, like, transformed the US economy for generations, everything about it was just at massive scale.

• 45:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, and I'm not disputing that at all, like, if you measure it as a percentage of GDP, it was much higher in World War II, because, you know, the economy was smaller.

• 45:58Tucker Carlson?

  So Christianity began thousands of years ago in what we call the Holy Land, but today, some people would like Christianity to die there. We're talking about the Israeli settler movement, extremist, violent, dangerous, and very anti-Christian, also supported at the highest levels of the US and Israeli governments. American taxpayers literally pay for Israeli settlers to murder Christians and Americans and attack them. And the Senate, for example, goes out of its way to pretend it's not happening. Senators just voted against disclosure on the killings of nine Americans in the West Bank. Probably the Senate represents you. Talking about you, Rick Scott of Florida, and many more like you.

• 46:42Tucker Carlson?

  Well, the Vulnerable People Project is fighting to end these atrocities. The Vulnerable People Project is a Christian movement, sincerely a Christian movement, nonviolent, Jesus-focused, that seeks to build a safe home for Christian children in the Holy Land, a place where they will not get attacked and murdered by Israeli terrorists supported by the US Senate. The Catholic pastor in the last all-Christian town in the West Bank has a very simple plan: create a children's center called Kids Kingdom. It's a place for kids to play, make friends, learn the Bible, and grow in their Christian faith. This shows listeners can make all of that happen. So many appeals you see based on the Holy Land are, in fact, scams that support anti-Christian

• 47:27Tucker Carlson?

  violence, but this is not. Your support at savewestbankchristians.com will help create a place where these children can thrive in the birthplace of our faith. Visit savewestbankchristians.com, savewestbankchristians.com, to help build Kids Kingdom. Give Christian children a future in the land where Christianity began. Well, yeah, I get it, but like, in absolute inflation-adjusted dollars, we're spending more now. Even if you take away all the absurd propaganda about World War II, just the cheering for death and all this stuff, but just like, just consider the scale of it, like, what

• 48:09Tucker Carlson?

  those dollars achieved between 45, 42 and 45. It's kind of crazy how little we're achieving, even if you disagree with the goal.

• 48:21Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 48:21Tucker Carlson?

  With 1.1 trillion.

• 48:23Speaker 01

  Right, and these numbers come from the Office of Management and Budget, which is the White House office where all these historical records are kept. But even if you look, it's like, I went back when I was doing the, my analysis of, you know, polling data that we discussed earlier about, you know, polling since, I was looking at, you know, polling from the 1940s on wars, but I also was looking at budget documents, too, and congressional discourse, and there was, the difference between then and now, one of the main things that stood out to me, Tucker, is they, the members of Congress, like, were openly acknowledging that this is an absurd amount that we're spending, this was during World War II, but it's, it's necessary, and this is going to be wasteful, and after

• 49:06Speaker 01

  this war is done, we're going to rescind all the money that was approved, that was able, that was made allowable for agencies to spend, that wasn't spent, we're going to take it back. And there was, there's, Rescissions Bill is how you do this, to rescind a money, you know, just bill that does this. And there was, you know, I think, at least one, massive one after World War II, that took this money back. But the difference now is that this is just, this is just normal now, and this, it was reflected in the CBO's estimate by adopting this, by adopting this baseline, and, you know, maybe they were locked into, maybe they're, that's a constraint by CBO that they have to abide by the most recent fiscal year, you know, funding projections, and if it happens

• 49:50Speaker 01

  to be the largest military budget since World War II, then, okay, so be it. But I'm, I'm just saying that when, because of that choice, I just feel like their estimate is detached from reality, because they're more concerned about abiding to their budget model, which I think was disconnected from reality.

• 50:11Tucker Carlson?

  So if you're spending that much money in an agency that has never passed an audit, as you said-

• 50:19Tucker Carlson?

  And there's no obvious sign of what you're getting at all. Like, it's not like you're paying a World War II sized military, because we're not. Military, like, in number of personnel is lower.

• 50:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 50:32Tucker Carlson?

  And the quality is obviously lower in some ways. You could be paying for a lot of stuff that people would have no idea even existed. Like, that would be, the Pentagon budget's a great place to hide all kinds of projects that nothing to do with national defense.

• 50:47Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, yeah, the Pentagon budget's a great place to hide money intentionally or unintentionally as well. And I think the way, the way we get this back under control. So, the Pentagon has never passed an audit. It's been actually forced to conduct audits over the last seven or eight years. And each year it claims, oh, we've made progress. And they claim that, oh, we're able to account for a slightly higher percentage of our assets and our budgetary resources than the year before. But the number, the value of the assets they're unable to account for increases every year because their budget goes up. So even though, even if they make progress in terms of the percentage of their budget

• 51:27Speaker 01

  they're able to account for, the objective resources that they're just, cannot provide proper documentation for, keeps going up.

• 51:36Tucker Carlson?

  Do you remember the last time an American general officer went to jail for corruption? Have you ever heard of that happening?

• 51:44Speaker 01

  No.

• 51:45Tucker Carlson?

  I haven't either. Have you ever heard of the head of a weapons manufacturer going to jail for corruption?

• 51:50Speaker 01

  I haven't heard that either.

• 51:51Tucker Carlson?

  Ever?

• 51:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 51:52Tucker Carlson?

  I haven't either. It's kind of weird. That's one of those stories I've never seen.

• 51:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, and I was thinking like-

• 51:56Tucker Carlson?

  I'm sure there isn't any with $1.1 trillion a year flowing through the system that's producing results that are so embarrassing. The failure is so obvious that they're literally just like, we're going to use nukes because there's no other way out. That's where they are.

• 52:11Speaker 01

  And there's no push, and it's like, it's like the decision to go to the war. It's like, there's just nothing stopping it. I think if Congress was really interested, if, to get the Pentagon to pass an audit, you threaten its budget in a serious way. You cut its budget so there's less stuff to track. Or, my preference as a first step is to introduce legislation that's like the Sarbanes-Oxley Act for the private sector, where CEOs who produced inaccurate financial records would go to prison. Why not a Sarbanes-Oxley Act for the Pentagon or other-

• 52:46Tucker Carlson?

  Sure, I mean, just, or just apply the, you know, federal anti-corruption statutes evenly across the board.

• 52:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 52:51Tucker Carlson?

  And, you know, reform begins with ending corruption. That's like widely understood, universally understood. And when the new president of Venezuela, Rother El Salvador, took the country from a state of war for 40 years and tried to make it a peaceful, modern country, the first thing he did was send his own employees, including his own cabinet ministers, to jail for corruption. Like, when they committed corruption, sorry, we're busting you. And that goes a long way. But that's never happened, that you know of.

• 53:19Speaker 01

  Wouldn't that be something if the next administration decided to prosecute, you know, Trump and Biden's administration officials?

• 53:26Tucker Carlson?

  Well, just, if you commit a crime, I don't know, why do you get a special pass? I don't really get it. If I commit a crime, I fully expect to go to jail for it. I try not to for that reason.

• 53:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 53:36Tucker Carlson?

  But, um, hmm, interesting. Okay, well, that's, that's, you shocked me. Huh. So now to the, and I'm, I'm sorry, I forgot the category that you had for it. The costs of the war that are not directly related to the congressional appropriation.

• 53:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, non-budget. So that includes even stuff that is budget related, but is longer term, like veterans' care, for example.

• 54:00Tucker Carlson?

  Okay.

• 54:01Speaker 01

  So each person that is, each US troop that has killed or disabled, it just creates a ripple effect of, of money, which I think is, you know, obvious, I think it's, the US should properly compensate, you know, veterans.

• 54:14Tucker Carlson?

  Yeah, it's the deal.

• 54:15Speaker 01

  But it's a cost that's not talked about immediately. I mean, the best person, the best resource for this is this Harvard professor called Linda Bilmes, who will probably have a report on this coming out soon. But her and an economist called Joseph Stiglitz wrote a very influential book on the cost of the Iraq War, called The $3 Trillion War.

• 54:37Tucker Carlson?

  Yeah, famous book.

• 54:38Speaker 01

  That greatly influenced my thinking and my methodological chops. But that, that book does a great job in understanding of, of explaining of how these costs of just, you know, just one injury just sets off, you know, decades of costs. So-

• 54:53Tucker Carlson?

  How many veterans do you know on disability? All of them. I don't think I've ever met one who was on disability. I'm not, I'm not begrudging them disability. I'm just saying, it's a fact that almost every single person I know who served in the US military is continuing to receive money from the VA.

• 55:10Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 55:12Tucker Carlson?

  And so that's a huge cost. I'm not saying they don't deserve it. I'm not saying it's fraud. I'm just saying it's real. That's all I'm saying.

• 55:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, and it's not talked about. So, and it's, it's hard to project, too. But it's a rule of thumb that, um, I think has been, you know, apparent over time, is that the costs of war, current and future costs of war are always underestimated.

• 55:35Tucker Carlson?

  Pretty much everybody's heard of Timothy McVeigh. According to the official story from the FBI, McVeigh was the sole terrorist responsible for delivering and setting off the bomb that murdered 168 people in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, in April of 95. But that clearly isn't true. Eyewitness accounts overwhelmingly differ from the government's story and have for 30 years. So we decided to investigate because no one else was. Our producers were on the road and talked to more than 100 people directly connected to this case. We talked to McVeigh's top attorney. He shared that McVeigh himself changed his story repeatedly to match the government's story. Huh? He even failed a polygraph test about whether he had co-conspirators. That co-conspirator might have been a man called John Doe Number Two.

• 56:18Tucker Carlson?

  Dozens of people saw this man. He was real and has been for 30 years. Where is he and what was his role in this terror attack? And we unpack all of it with firsthand sources in our new series, The OKC Bomb Files. It's now available at TuckerCarlson.com. So what do you think, uh, those costs are likely to look like if the Iraq War is any guide?

• 56:44Speaker 01

  I mean, in terms of the all encompassing costs-

• 56:49Tucker Carlson?

  So the Iraq War, we can, we're saying is $3 trillion?

• 56:52Speaker 01

  Uh, no, it's more by this point. That was like the estimate as of 2008. And then it's, it's grown since, and now we're in like, Cost of War Project at Brown, which does, you know, fabulous work. They, I mean, the cost of the, you know, post 9/11 war is in several trillion dollars more, above $3 trillion, well above $3 trillion. I think it's like 6 to 7 trillion. So it's like, the cost of these, just, it's, it spirals so quickly. And these are, you know, budgetary costs as well. Again, we're not measuring, I mean, some people are measuring, and rightfully so, the cost to consumers. So it's like, the cost I was just discussing was, was the cost to us as taxpayers, but not the cost of consumers. So, you know, it's kind of a double whammy as far as-

• 57:37Tucker Carlson?

  What could you do for the country with that much money? Like, maybe it wouldn't be falling apart like it is?

• 57:42Speaker 01

  Uh, yeah, you could pretty much-

• 57:47Tucker Carlson?

  Could we have nice airports?

• 57:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, you, I mean, the possibilities are pretty much endless. Like, to, like, to end, you know, extreme poverty for a year or, you know, it's, it's like a fraction of that. It's just, it's very, very shocking. Whenever a project is proposed that, regardless of what it does, if it promises to make the world better, you have to have an enormous amount of research and cost analysis and all this stuff backing it up. And you have to, you know, survive, you have to get it through Congress. There's tons of, you know, political effort, that sort of thing rarely does, you know, happen.

• 58:27Speaker 01

  But if you're in the, you know, arms industry, what you're promising is the absence of catastrophe. You're basically saying this has to happen for the sake of national security.

• 58:39Tucker Carlson?

  Right.

• 58:39Speaker 01

  And as a result, there's just not enough, there's just not that much interest or inquiry of whether this stuff, actually, these purchases, this money, and the stuff that it buys actually does what it says, because it's preventing a catastrophe instead of-

• 58:54Tucker Carlson?

  Because you don't know how bad it could have been.

• 58:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, and it's just-

• 58:56Tucker Carlson?

  There could have been jihadis in bed with you. Like, they could be beheading you right now.

• 59:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, if, if we didn't-

• 59:02Tucker Carlson?

  If we hadn't done what we did.

• 59:04Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 59:04Tucker Carlson?

  So please say thank you.

• 59:05Speaker 01

  Exactly, exactly. And if that, if that weapon system that we said is protecting you gets destroyed in the Iran War, you can't, you can't say it costs anything because it's already in our budget.

• 59:16Tucker Carlson?

  So, so if you're the Pentagon or a member of Congress taking money from the weapons manufacturers, you're the weapons manufacturers themselves, and you're paying various think tanks to do intellectual research on issues, you've got a massive incentive to scare the crap out of the entire population at all times to engender fear in order to receive compliance and money.

• 59:43Speaker 01

  Right, and I think, I think the defining feature, last election and this one too, is about security, but it's not the security that they're selling, the brand of national security, quote unquote, national security that they're selling, that is believed to be advanced to the use of military force. The security that people feel about is like an uneven terrain that they're on, that they are one financial slip up or one accident away from, you know, they're tight, they're tight rope walking over the abyss in terms of their financial security and their food security. Yeah, so that's the security that they're, that I think is the most at the forefront of people's minds. So when people say they're concerned about the cost of living, and the cost of living

• 1:00:28Speaker 01

  has been the top issue among US voters since, referring again to The Economist and YouGo, this polling that they've done for the issue that Americans identify as the number one issue, they started asking about inflation and prices, in other words, cost of living, in July 2022, for the, like, on a near weekly basis, in 116 of the 117 weeks prior to the 2024 election, that was the top issue, inflation and prices. And if you take the monthly aggregate, inflation and prices, cost of living, has been Americans' top issue since July 2022. It still is.

• 1:01:12Speaker 01

  So that's a bad sign for the Trump administration.

• 1:01:15Tucker Carlson?

  Because it's a bad sign, well, for sure, and they're about to get punished, I think, but who knows what, what'll happen, but it doesn't look good.

• 1:01:22Speaker 01

  No, I mean, I think, I think Republicans will lose in the 2020, they'll get punished in the same way Democrats did in 2024, because, you know, the two main issues that I think have the most political power and most salience among the public are cost of living, economic security, if you will, which is one of the dimensions of human security. So that's not national security, but it's like the actual everyday security that people experience, like, from the main threats that are non-military that, that happen to them, that, that they're, or are liable to happen to them. So, cost of living and then cost of war as well, because people view, they view the Biden

• 1:02:01Speaker 01

  administration as more interested in aiding Israel, arming Israel, fighting wars on Israel's behalf, and sending money to Ukraine for that war, than they, than the Biden administration was concerned about addressing the cost of living crisis at home. And that's gonna be a major factor in the 2026 elections.

• 1:02:24Tucker Carlson?

  Sadly, they were correct in both cases.

• 1:02:25Speaker 01

  Yep, yep.

• 1:02:26Tucker Carlson?

  There's no, no daylight between the administrations on those two issues. What is the, how much do you think the US has sent to Israel in recent years? Do you have a sense of that? There's so much lying on this topic, it's hard to know.

• 1:02:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'm just gonna just stall for a bit so people don't think I'm a nerd, but not like I didn't just calculate this, but through 2025, the US has provided $352 billion in aid to Israel since its founding, since the 1950s.

• 1:02:54Tucker Carlson?

  352 billion?

• 1:02:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:02:57Tucker Carlson?

  Isn't it the size of New Jersey?

• 1:02:59Speaker 01

  It has about 9 million people, so I don't know how big New Jersey is.

• 1:03:03Tucker Carlson?

  It's, it's physically the size of New Jersey, smaller population than New Jersey.

• 1:03:06Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm. And that, so-

• 1:03:09Tucker Carlson?

  That's crazy.

• 1:03:10Speaker 01

  So when we talk about the military aid that's provided each year, the number, there's 3.3 billion provided through the State Department budget for, called foreign military financing, that's the program. It's basically a gift card for Israel and other countries as well to spend on US weapons. Israel is uniquely allowed to spend some money on its own, buying weapons for its own agency using US taxpayer dollars.

• 1:03:33Tucker Carlson?

  The US government gives money to Israel, and Israel uses that money to buy weapons from American or Israeli manufacturers, and we say that's good for the US economy. That's basically-

• 1:03:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, which I have a bit of a problem with.

• 1:03:48Tucker Carlson?

  Why?

• 1:03:49Speaker 01

  If you're interested in-

• 1:03:51Tucker Carlson?

  It sounds like an electric windmill, kind of. We're, we're paying to run it.

• 1:03:56Speaker 01

  If you're interested in creating jobs through public funds, through taxpayer dollars, if you want to get the most bang for your buck, you do pretty much anything besides military spending. It's the absolute worst way to create jobs.

• 1:04:09Tucker Carlson?

  Also, run it through another country. Why would we just send the money to Lockheed then? Like, right? What?

• 1:04:15Speaker 01

  Pretty much are. One stat, you brought up the, you know, the economic benefits, I think, or maybe I did, I don't know, but the jobs argument often comes up with, with military spending. We saw the, saw this a lot with the Biden administration with sending their massive amounts of military aid to Ukraine. Oh, the money's being spent here, this is creating US jobs. The link between more military spending and more jobs is hazy at best. So, for example, 1985, the US arms industry employed 3.1 million people, okay? That was in 1985.

• 1:04:58Speaker 01

  In 2021, the arms industry employed 1.1 million people, so a reduction of 2 million people in the arms industry, arms industry, private sector arms industry employees. So despite that, so there's a 2 million drop in jobs, but the military budget went up by 290 billion in real terms from 1985 to 2021. So despite a nearly $300 billion increase in the annual military budget from 1985 to 2021, there's a 2 million drop in arms industry employment.

• 1:05:35Tucker Carlson?

  Did weapons get that much more expensive, or how does that work?

• 1:05:39Speaker 01

  Yes, that's part of it. And then another part is just factors that affected every industry that led to the decline of manufacturing in the US, but also profit, interest as well. They want, arms, arms companies' main concern is profit. So that, when that's their main concern, they're interested in cutting down the workforce as much as possible, while still maintaining enough of a presence in congressional districts where they're able to say they create jobs. But it's just through these cost-saving measures to boost profit and technological advances that affected every sector, in terms of employment, in arms industry employment, the relationship

• 1:06:22Speaker 01

  between military spending and, and economic benefit is very, very shaky.

• 1:06:28Tucker Carlson?

  It sounds inverse.

• 1:06:29Speaker 01

  It sounds inverse. So-

• 1:06:31Tucker Carlson?

  Well, yeah.

• 1:06:32Speaker 01

  And it's also a sign, when you hear that, oh, this creates jobs, okay, that's a tacit admission that their main justification, which is national security, which is, you know, security is, you know, it's the one thing that people can't do without, it's the most important thing. So if they're making something a jobs argument, that means their national security argument is not the right thing.

• 1:06:52Tucker Carlson?

  Such a smart point. I'm a little confused by your, your Israel aid numbers, so 300 and what, billion?

• 1:06:57Speaker 01

  350, that's inflation-adjusted terms over the course since 1951.

• 1:07:01Tucker Carlson?

  Constant terms.

• 1:07:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, now, as of 2025, so that, that excludes the 4 billion that was passed this year for 2026, and then includes the 3.3 billion that I mentioned for the gift card, and then here's the-

• 1:07:16Tucker Carlson?

  So we're at like 360-ish.

• 1:07:18Speaker 01

  Uh, yeah, thereabouts, yeah, because you have to adjust all past.

• 1:07:22Tucker Carlson?

  So I'm confused, but 360 billion, so I was reliably informed more than once by Nikki Haley, who was literally a governor of a southern state called South Carolina, that we get a lot more from Israel than Israel gets from us.

• 1:07:36Speaker 01

  She's probably referring to like, in, like, private sector investment, but even that is way lopsided. The US invests way more in Israel than Israel invests in the US.

• 1:07:44Tucker Carlson?

  So has the, is really Treasury sent us over 360 billion? Like, what is she talking about?

• 1:07:50Speaker 01

  It's a-

• 1:07:51Tucker Carlson?

  Or is it a hard-to-quantify moral victory that's just worth a lot?

• 1:07:55Speaker 01

  It's, it's just best not to think about, Tucker.

• 1:07:57Tucker Carlson?

  I think you're right. It's in that category.

• 1:08:00Speaker 01

  Just ignore it, just ignore it till it goes away. Just do your show, Tucker, God. But here's, here's the mess, here, here's the mess.

• 1:08:08Tucker Carlson?

  It's best not to think about.

• 1:08:10Speaker 01

  Here's one, here's one thing, though. So, when you count military aid, and military aid is most of that 352 billion, 360 billion I just talked about- It does military is a category that refers to a narrow set of, you know, goods and services provided to another country, training, equipment, for the most part, actually for the exclusive part, pretty much. It doesn't include literally assisting a country militarily. So I just crunched the numbers on the, how many?

• 1:08:38Tucker Carlson?

  Wait, can you, what does that mean?

• 1:08:39Speaker 01

  So if the US, for example, since October 2023, fired an estimated 609 missile interceptors for the sole purpose of defending Israeli territory from Iranian ballistic, incoming Iranian ballistic missiles and Houthi missiles.

• 1:08:55Tucker Carlson?

  Is that the number?

• 1:08:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, I just calculated them yesterday for this show.

• 1:08:59Tucker Carlson?

  You did?

• 1:09:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, it took forever.

• 1:09:01Tucker Carlson?

  Why are you do, why is no one else doing? I'm sorry, I know I'm sidebaring you again and again, but like, why is it up to you to do this?

• 1:09:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, I wonder that myself, it's like just some like.

• 1:09:11Tucker Carlson?

  No, but like, where's everybody else?

• 1:09:13Speaker 01

  Some guy in Pittsburgh with an internet connection alone.

• 1:09:15Tucker Carlson?

  No, but it's like.

• 1:09:16Speaker 01

  By myself.

• 1:09:17Tucker Carlson?

  No, you, I, you have a, a background worthy of your job, but I, I do think that maybe we could have a think tank doing this, or the New York Times doing this, or how about the Congress of the United States doing this? Why is it up to you?

• 1:09:29Speaker 01

  Uh, I, I'm good at it, I'll admit that. Um, I also think it, there's a skill set that's required, but also, I mean, I think the main thing is just the effort that's required.

• 1:09:41Tucker Carlson?

  No one wants to know.

• 1:09:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, there's that too, that's, that explains, I mean, a lot of the disinterest from, you know, whatever number officials give, that's the number.

• 1:09:50Tucker Carlson?

  But it's calculated disinterest, it's Nikki Haley up there, Israel gets a, you know, give us a lot more than we give them, and it's like, okay, I guess.

• 1:09:58Speaker 01

  It's, it's, it's like, um, actually, one of the funny, one of the most useful bits of information that we got, um, was from this Washington Post report, uh, back in May, that said the US had fired over 200 of these FAD interceptors.

• 1:10:14Tucker Carlson?

  Yes.

• 1:10:14Speaker 01

  Terminal high altitude, something. But these really expensive missiles and.

• 1:10:19Tucker Carlson?

  The most expensive, yeah.

• 1:10:21Speaker 01

  Close.

• 1:10:22Tucker Carlson?

  No, not the most.

• 1:10:23Speaker 01

  That was the next number, that was actually, so it said more than 200 FADs, and then more than 100 of these standard missiles, which include the, um, standard missile three, uh, and then the standard missile six, which operate at lower altitudes. The interceptors, actually, they actually, um, the US has employed four types since October 23 to defend Israel, and they are the SM3, um, which are $31 million each for fiscal year 2027. For any fact checkers at homes, that first two, FY27 discretionary cost, unit flyaway recurring cost, just, you know, just for any fact checkers out there. Um, and basically, anyone who's pathetic about the numbers like I am.

• 1:11:07Speaker 01

  So you have this about $30 million interceptor called the SM3, which is the only one that the US has to, uh, make space-based interceptions. Cause so ballistic missiles launch, they go through like a one to five minute boost phase, they leave the Earth's atmosphere, they travel in space for a bit, like 20 minutes or so, and then they come crashing down in like a minute or two window called the terminal phase. And then the middle part is called the mid-course phase. It's tech, you have the most opportunities in the mid-course phase, because it's about 20 minutes long, it's the longest of the three phases. The problem is, you need an interceptor that's capable, that's technologically advanced, to reach outer space and intercept a missile in it.

• 1:11:49Speaker 01

  And also, it's, if you're able, in outer space, the ballistic missile is able to release decoys, chaff, balloons, because without resistance from the, the Earth's atmosphere, they just travel along at the same, they basically travel in this cloud of debris, and it's at the same trajectory as the missile itself, which makes it, you know, extremely difficult to, you know, separate the wheat from the chaff, as it were. So the US has fired, um, during the June 2025 war, fired 80 of these things, at around $30 million a pop. That was just during the June 2025 war. And then they didn't, the, the Post didn't give a breakdown between that and the other standard missile,

• 1:12:33Speaker 01

  but it's been over 100 combined.

• 1:12:35Tucker Carlson?

  How many of those 30 in the first war, the last summer war, uh, were fired in defense of Israel?

• 1:12:43Speaker 01

  So there is, uh, there's 80 launched, 80 SM3s launched in defense of Israel, uh, during the June 2025 war. And then, uh, more than 150 FADs also launched in defense of Israel during that war. So if you include that number, all the, all the intercepts, uh, recorded intercepts, uh, documented use of these interceptors that the US has used for just, not in defense of its own bases, but for the sole purpose of defense of Israel, since October 2023 through September 2026, so three years, you get 609.

• 1:13:21Tucker Carlson?

  I've never received a thank you note, or really any expression of gratitude from anyone in that government.

• 1:13:26Speaker 01

  Doing enough, really, that's what we're told, so for, you know, it's, it's really quite shocking. And actually, um, JD Vance actually had a slip up where he, like he was kind of shook from whatever brainwashing happened to him, but he jumped, he kind of had an outburst where a reporter asked him about US support for Israel, and he corroborated the, the Washington Post report where the numbers I just mentioned, the more than 200 that and the more than 100 standard missiles, were about two-thirds of all interceptors fired for defense of Israel. So that includes Israeli interceptors as well. So the US shouldered around two-thirds of the missile defense burden

• 1:14:09Speaker 01

  for Israel during the 2026 war, and close to 70% during the 2025 war. And that, that, I'm not factoring in the $500 million in missile defense aid the US has provided every year for Israel to buy those interceptors, its own interceptors. I haven't crunched those numbers yet, I was hoping to have it ready for the show, it just takes, I swear to God, it takes forever, man.

• 1:14:32Tucker Carlson?

  Um, that is just absolutely remarkable.

• 1:14:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, and I, um.

• 1:14:38Tucker Carlson?

  Wait, so 350 billion since its founding for a tiny country? I mean, that's the largest, I mean, is there any, it's unfair to ask you this, uh, having not asked you to prepare for it, but like, is, I mean, that's gotta be the biggest source of income to the economy, right? Over time? There's no oil and gas there.

• 1:15:00Speaker 01

  As far as, it's, it's the largest cumulative amount the US has provided any other country. I'm.

• 1:15:05Tucker Carlson?

  Ever?

• 1:15:06Speaker 01

  Out of all countries, yeah, yeah, yeah. And as far as waging war on another country's behalf, and there's really three costs that I've, I've only, I've only really done two, I'm still calculating, you know, the, the, so there's arming Israel, the, the aid that we just talked about, and then there's, you know, directly defending Israel through the middle missile interceptors I just talked about. I'm realizing now that I didn't include, um, interceptions of Iranian drones and Houthi missiles too. I have to calculate that shit. So I have to calculate those costs as well. And then there's the cost of just waging war on Israel's behalf. Cause this really is, I mean,

• 1:15:47Speaker 01

  you, I don't think there's any one thing, any one reason the US went to war, but strategically speaking, like, this war doesn't happen without Israel and without Israel's influence over the US government.

• 1:15:58Tucker Carlson?

  Marco Rubio said it out loud.

• 1:16:00Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:16:01Tucker Carlson?

  Yeah, we followed Israel into this. And by the way, the Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, also said that, and it's also true, because I saw it. So maybe you support it, maybe you think that's great, maybe you don't, but that's just a fact that cannot be erased.

• 1:16:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's for this, it's, it's not for US interests, it's not America first.

• 1:16:18Tucker Carlson?

  No.

• 1:16:19Speaker 01

  Which I, which I still think, it hasn't been implemented, obviously, as we've, as we've painfully found out. Um, but I still think that idea has a good amount of currency.

• 1:16:32Tucker Carlson?

  America first?

• 1:16:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:16:33Tucker Carlson?

  Of course.

• 1:16:34Speaker 01

  If implemented properly, you're talking about, you know.

• 1:16:36Tucker Carlson?

  It's called democracy, that's what democracy is, no, it's democracy. You serve on behalf of the citizens of your country, they own the country.

• 1:16:44Speaker 01

  I just caught myself over intellectualizing that, thanks for.

• 1:16:46Tucker Carlson?

  No, but, no, but it's like, it's the only legitimate basis of government in any system, including a monarchy. If a king rules on behalf of another kingdom, he's betraying his subjects. Lots of kings, no American wants to hear it, lots of kings are super popular, actually.

• 1:17:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:17:02Tucker Carlson?

  Some are not, but some do a good job, and they're really popular, and people who live there don't want to replace the king. Why is he popular? Cause they think he's serving their interests, that he's Kuwait first, or, you know, Emirates first, or whatever, but it's, that's the only legitimate way to run a country, or a family, or a military, or a business, right?

• 1:17:24Speaker 01

  And it's painful being told the opposite.

• 1:17:26Tucker Carlson?

  The leaders serve the people they lead.

• 1:17:29Speaker 01

  Right, it's the difference between ruling and governing, really.

• 1:17:32Tucker Carlson?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:32Speaker 01

  And it's just a hell of a lot easier to rule.

• 1:17:35Tucker Carlson?

  Yeah, but you can even rule that, you can rule with the people's interests in mind, you know, you can.

• 1:17:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, but you still have to, you know, you, you answer to people, and you'll pay attention to what people think, but with ruling, yeah, you could just, you know, wage wars on countries' behalf, you can direct funding to the exact companies you want, pretty, for all intents and purposes, you can.

• 1:17:53Tucker Carlson?

  Well, then you have to ask, like, who's actually being oppressed here? You know, is it the, are we doing this to liberate the long-suffering people of Iran, or Russia, or Vietnam, or name your country, Somalia? All these countries we've gone to war against or within their borders. And it's like, you know, I hope for liberation for everyone, but I see the American public as being oppressed by everything that you mentioned.

• 1:18:18Speaker 01

  I think, I think workers across the world are being oppressed. I, I really think one of this, the main political conflicts going on now is the workers versus the war profiteers and the war mongers. I really think it's, I mean.

• 1:18:34Speaker 01

  You can define working class how you like, but I mean, regardless of your definition, if you're even vaguely within the bounds of reality, you recognize that working class well being is acutely compromised when governments prioritize waging warfare over promoting the general welfare, as it were. And if you're not putting workers' interests first, who make your economy go, then you're going to run into some real problems electorally if there's any semblance of democracy in your country.

• 1:19:05Tucker Carlson?

  It's the oldest story there is. The king bankrupted his country through wars and got overthrown. I mean, like, only in an ahistorical moment like this one are people rediscovering something that every empire has learned serially for millennia, which is what I just said. King bankrupts his country through hubris in war and gets overthrown, or his kids get overthrown, or whatever. It's like, that's how you wreck your empire.

• 1:19:29Speaker 01

  Right. Do you think, do you think more people are starting to realize that? Especially over these last couple of years in the general public?

• 1:19:36Tucker Carlson?

  I think that I have not had a shallow conversation with anybody, including convenience store clerks, since COVID. I think America, for all of its many faults, many of which are on display and problems that are accelerating, I think people are way deeper than they were just a few years ago. I mean, you'd be at the airport, you're people talking about like celebrity news or something called People Magazine. Do you remember that? Like, chronicled the diet habits of actors or something. It was like, the whole thing was like so absurd and frivolous and embarrassing, really. And now I feel like people have been forced to confront real topics. So, yeah, no, I think people are starting to figure stuff out. Of course, they are.

• 1:20:19Speaker 01

  I was thinking about, I've been thinking about like for months, like what the proper, like how the public is perceiving, you know, the political elite broadly, like the establishment, how they perceive like your average politician or the head of state. And an analogy occurred to me yesterday when I was boarding the plane here, and the pilot was greeting people at the door of the airplane, just saying hi, hello. And I thought of it then, which is, what if that pilot was visibly wearing a parachute? As he was greeting passengers to his airplane, as he was about to fly.

• 1:20:56Tucker Carlson?

  That is so good.

• 1:20:58Speaker 01

  And it's like, do I get one? No, no, no, your seat's down there. Don't worry about it. But have a good flight.

• 1:21:06Speaker 01

  Okay. And I think that's kind of, it harkens back to this actual, it harkens back to this quote I had, or I heard during the 2024 election, where it's like, young people don't see real hope. They just see a dying empire led by bad people.

• 1:21:23Speaker 01

  Oh, I have a stat for you. You want to hear about the, so, okay. So, this is, this is a poll taken May 2026, New York Times Ipsos. This asked whether people support, somewhat support, somewhat oppose, or strongly oppose additional aid to Israel. Okay?

• 1:21:46Speaker 01

  Most people oppose it.

• 1:21:49Speaker 01

  All right, so 19%, somewhat 38% strongly support it. Now, it divides that into like a bunch of different categories, like, you know, age, political affiliation, that sort of thing. Among the survey respondents who did not vote in 2024,

• 1:22:12Speaker 01

  the most popular response was strongly oppose additional aid to Israel, and 50%, 50, half of the people who did not vote in 2024, answered that they strongly oppose additional aid to Israel. And I think it's not about, it's part of-

• 1:22:30Tucker Carlson?

  Military aid or just aid?

• 1:22:32Speaker 01

  The question asked about additional military and economic aid.

• 1:22:35Tucker Carlson?

  So, yeah, well, that's both kinds of aid, so.

• 1:22:38Speaker 01

  Right, right. So, I think that's twofold. I think one is the atrocities in Gaza, the genocide have become matters of fact at this point. As much as people really try to talk themselves out of that reality, it's a matter of fact at this point. And also, there's, Gaza is like, it's like the Schrodinger's cat of political issues. I don't know if you've noticed it, but it's like, if you are on, this is something I've noticed on Twitter, particularly from this group I call ALOTS, which are, which is short for acrimonious liberal on Twitter, is that I will get yelled at for, if I bring up, you know, polling on Gaza in the 2024 election and how big of effect it had on Kamala Harris's loss,

• 1:23:22Speaker 01

  I will be told in like, in, by someone will say, oh, Gaza didn't matter at all. Or, and in like the next breath, sometimes from the same person, it says, oh, well, the people who didn't vote in 2024 because of Gaza got what they deserved. So, you know, a president they didn't want, I guess. So, it kind of occupies these two spaces where critics of people, people who criticize other people who have made Gaza, decided that Gaza matters to them on electoral level, that it'll affect their judgment and their vote and their voting behavior, that it oscillates between this is the most important issue, or this is the issue that doesn't, it was a non-factor completely. So, people just really can't decide.

• 1:24:06Speaker 01

  But I think, I think it did matter. I think the, this and the polling I just mentioned and a bunch of other polls suggested it didn't matter too. But I think it's also the interaction between putting another country, especially one committing war crimes on a near daily basis, ahead of the interests of people. And I think this is where this intersection between the cost of war and the cost of living crisis, they meet. Because it's not just the financial resources being dumped in, it's the political capital too. Like, if you think about the one-

• 1:24:41Tucker Carlson?

  It's the attention.

• 1:24:42Speaker 01

  Right. So, this, think about the one legislative priority that Joe Biden took out an Oval Office address to sell. It was the foreign aid bill for, that provided the record on aid to Israel, a bunch of money for the war in Ukraine as well, and a bunch of money for Pacific aid, for Taiwan aid as well. That, it wasn't his infrastructure bill, it wasn't his massive Build Back Better plan, that, you know, he fought, he devoted the most political capital to.

• 1:25:12Tucker Carlson?

  I didn't remember that. That's amazing.

• 1:25:14Speaker 01

  That was the one bit of legislation that he decided was worthy of an Oval Office address, addressed the nation to sell.

• 1:25:21Tucker Carlson?

  Well, they've just, they've given up on our population, on our country, on us. They're looting it now. And their parachute is, you know, crypto and then another passport. And they're, they're out, you know, and you sort of know that. Like, they're not lashing themselves to the mast of the SS America.

• 1:25:37Speaker 01

  Now they've got their parachute on.

• 1:25:40Tucker Carlson?

  For real? And I think we have every reason to be offended by that.

• 1:25:44Speaker 01

  Right, right.

• 1:25:46Tucker Carlson?

  Do you feel, since you look at polling so much, obviously, you know, the Republicans are gonna get hurt. No party's ever earned it more, in my opinion.

• 1:25:58Tucker Carlson?

  And I think it's exactly what you said hurt Kamala Harris, but it's even, now the connection between this foreign misadventure and their declining quality of life and standard of living, it's just so, it's one to one. To block this trade reform moves, like even I can understand that. Like, no energy flows. Like, you did this to me. I'm not voting for you. But I wonder how many people see this problem, not simply as a Trump problem, a Republican problem, or a Kamala Harris problem, or a Biden problem, but as like a system problem, like both parties.

• 1:26:30Speaker 01

  I hope a lot of people, that's my read on it.

• 1:26:32Tucker Carlson?

  It is? Does polling suggest that?

• 1:26:35Speaker 01

  I'm still working through the data, because I mean, this was just a bit of the research that I have going on. I think I have too many projects going on, Tucker, but.

• 1:26:42Tucker Carlson?

  You're doing a lot of math.

• 1:26:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. And it's not my nature to be this fastidious and this, you know, committed to, you know, really making sure everything's right. Like, I never follow recipes, the teas. I just don't make that good food, I guess.

• 1:26:58Speaker 01

  But for this, like, I'm just, you know, all about getting it right. And also, just being,

• 1:27:04Speaker 01

  as you know, being independent means you got a lot of freedom, but it also means that you don't really have any institutional protection.

• 1:27:09Tucker Carlson?

  Oh, for sure, yeah.

• 1:27:10Speaker 01

  So, if I make a mistake, heaven forbid, like, one that's,

• 1:27:16Speaker 01

  that turns out to be like a cost estimate that turns out to be catastrophically wrong, or I misplace a decimal or something on some sort of bill I'm summarizing the cost of,

• 1:27:26Speaker 01

  I have nothing really to protect me. And it's like, so, like, as I operate this newsletter on stuff that called Polygraph, it's like, if I mess up there, then like, I will be punished immediately for it in a very, very harsh way. I forget what I was going on about.

• 1:27:43Tucker Carlson?

  Well, also, it's like being a sports writer. We always used to say when I worked at a newspaper, that the sports writers did the hardest job because their readers knew a lot about the topic.

• 1:27:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:27:52Tucker Carlson?

  So, if they made any mistakes, so your readers, anybody who writes about something specific like this, your readers were a self-selected group who are coming at it with prior knowledge.

• 1:28:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. And it's, I have some paid subscribers who are actually mentors of mine.

• 1:28:05Tucker Carlson?

  Oh, sure.

• 1:28:06Speaker 01

  Yeah. And it's also just like, people I don't know. It's like, there's some, I get notes from people who like,

• 1:28:15Speaker 01

  usually positive, who really, really know their stuff. Learned a lot from my readers. You were asking about whether the people view the Iran war as a system problem?

• 1:28:28Tucker Carlson?

  Yes.

• 1:28:28Speaker 01

  Or as-

• 1:28:29Tucker Carlson?

  A partisan problem.

• 1:28:30Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:28:32Speaker 01

  I think the Iran war happens if Kamala Harris gets elected. I think Trump is, I think it happens either way. I don't know if the war takes the same shape, but the political establishment, the national security establishment was just headed that way. And if you think like, I think back to this interview that Harris gave in October, maybe of 2024, where she was asked, what's the biggest threat to America? Now, if you look at polling, the most popular answer is always America. People always say that America is the biggest threat to America. And then the next ones are, you know, Russia and China for obvious reasons. That is, that has gotten the most attention as rival powers to the US, I guess,

• 1:29:14Speaker 01

  over the last few years in terms of like building up the threat and animosity towards each of those countries. Harris answered Iran as the most, as the biggest threat to the US. And that was only, she wouldn't have answered the same way had the, had October 7th and the resulting genocide not happened. I can't believe that. So I feel like-

• 1:29:37Tucker Carlson?

  Iran, and when was this interview? October of 24?

• 1:29:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, this was when people answering like, I mean, the answer, the answer, like the number, the percentage of Americans who would call Iran the top threat is still probably somewhat low, but it was like in like four to 5% of Americans calling Iran the top threat, but here was Kamala-

• 1:29:58Tucker Carlson?

  Have you ever been mugged by a Persian?

• 1:30:01Speaker 01

  No.

• 1:30:01Tucker Carlson?

  I haven't either.

• 1:30:02Speaker 01

  No, I've only just, they've only just been extremely nice to me.

• 1:30:06Tucker Carlson?

  I agree. I had breakfast with one this morning, actually. Yeah, went to Harvard more literate than I am. Yeah, no, it's not a low IQ group. It's a very impressive group.

• 1:30:15Speaker 01

  It's always so embarrassing when a non-native English speaker speaks English better than you. That happens to me a lot.

• 1:30:20Tucker Carlson?

  For sure. As Kant said, yeah, but, you know, it's just amazing that she could say that. It was Iran. So she's, she's being paid to say that, of course.

• 1:30:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, I really viewed her as, and I think she viewed herself too, as a continuation of the Biden administration. It was the direction the Biden administration, you know, the effect of the national security establishment is like an inner, it's a, like an interaction between, you know, the White House and the underlying establishment. But that's just, that's just the direction I got the sense that the US was going. It was, it was just the march toward war. It was just escalating because the US decided-

• 1:31:00Tucker Carlson?

  I felt that strongly.

• 1:31:01Speaker 01

  The US just decided, like, you know, US foreign policy had always been deferential to Israel for, for the most part, but it wasn't really until October 2023 where I felt,

• 1:31:14Speaker 01

  you know, confident calling it Israel first. Cause there was just, there was just no conditions on it, not just the, the vast amount of, the historic amount of resources invested, but arming Israel, but, you know, going back to the numbers with interceptors fired, like directly defending Israel. The US did that a bit during the initial stages of the Gulf War with, with SCUD missiles from Iraq, but this is just an entirely different level. But just overtly waging war on Israel's behalf too, is just an obscene escalation.

• 1:31:47Tucker Carlson?

  I've been on TV for 30 years when October 7th happened, and I don't think I criticized Israel a single time on camera, not one time. And not just because I was hiding my true views, because I was like, ah, you know, I had complicated views on it, but I wasn't mad about it. I didn't think it was a top priority issue. I just, it was like, there's a lot of things going on. Why am I going after Israel? Kind of like the country-

• 1:32:09Speaker 01

  And there was just a massacre that took place on October 7th.

• 1:32:12Tucker Carlson?

  Well, of course, and there was that. I was, I was highly offended by the murder of innocents in Israel, and I still am when I think about it. We just, the anniversary was two weeks ago, and I was thinking about it. It's awful, killing girls at a concert, come on. But, um, there was that, but I mean, the relationship between Israel and the United States, I always thought was poisonous, but I didn't think it was fatal and I could just kind of ignore it, which is what I did.

• 1:32:38Speaker 01

  When-

• 1:32:39Tucker Carlson?

  But it changed after that. It changed after the Hamas attacks in southern Israel that day. Our relationship with Israel changed. Our politicians changed. That's what I noticed. Like, it was like, kind of crazy all of a sudden.

• 1:32:52Speaker 01

  It really was. And it was, and you can see the historical foundation there, like a buildup over time, where it's like this longstanding support for Israel, this, you know, repeating these acts and my support for Israel is iron-

• 1:33:03Tucker Carlson?

  I just kind of ignored it, you know?

• 1:33:05Speaker 01

  Cause it was just, you know, it's kind of like, it became white noise to a point.

• 1:33:08Tucker Carlson?

  They had, I spoke at the Republican Convention 2024 for Trump, the night he was inaugurated. And I was, of course, I've had a lot of time to think about that in the last six months since Trump has done things that I, like, so offensive to me, I can't even control myself, I'm so upset about it. So I went and watched that speech. I was like, what did I say? I don't remember saying it. I didn't write it down. I don't remember what I said, so I watched it. There was rally flags flying in the convention center at that convention, 2024. Israeli flags in an American presidential party domination.

• 1:33:46Tucker Carlson?

  And I honestly, I did, I guess I noticed, I don't know, I don't remember noticing. You're right, it was white noise. I just kind of turned it out, like, you know, you've got your Israel thing, you're pretty obsessed about Israel, whatever, have fun with your little Israel thing. And, you know, you're into the World Cup and soccer and you're, you know what I mean? It was like that. At least that's how I thought of it. I was totally wrong. I didn't realize it was $350 billion, like I had no idea.

• 1:34:12Speaker 01

  It became impossible to ignore.

• 1:34:14Tucker Carlson?

  Well, that's it.

• 1:34:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:34:15Tucker Carlson?

  Exactly.

• 1:34:15Speaker 01

  And then, you know, I really think like the main driver for like the change in public opinion to Israel has been morally based. And I think opposition to US policy towards Israel would even be higher if people actually knew these, the true costs. If like the government actually bothered to investigate, you know, the atrocities being carried out with US weapons.

• 1:34:35Tucker Carlson?

  Well, can I say, I never recommend Wikipedia for anything. It's controlled by the intel agencies, foreign and domestic, it's everything about it offends me, but the Wikipedia entry on Gaza, which is probably the most contested entry on the entire site, of course.

• 1:34:48Speaker 01

  Get all those warnings at the top.

• 1:34:49Tucker Carlson?

  A hundred percent, but because it's so contested, I think you can look at it with some confidence, at least for an overview, maybe not in every detail.

• 1:34:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:34:58Tucker Carlson?

  Read the Wikipedia entry on Gaza on what's happened since October 7th, and it's like, it's bracing. You can't dismiss it as Israeli propaganda. You can't dismiss it as like third world leftist propaganda, like you can't, Nazi propaganda. It's like, it's, it's hard to dismiss.

• 1:35:17Speaker 01

  Yeah. I think this is a reckoning that's coming from the political establishment as well, where it's like, initially opposition to the genocide in Gaza was just like, oh, this is just, you know, people on the left, you know?

• 1:35:27Tucker Carlson?

  Totally, totally. Third worlders.

• 1:35:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, and you know, rich kids, you know, yelling at us from the-

• 1:35:32Tucker Carlson?

  Totally.

• 1:35:32Speaker 01

  On TikTok from their dad's company car, but no, it's like, no, the call was coming from inside the house very much. So these are the base, these are, you know, your voters.

• 1:35:42Tucker Carlson?

  I kind of ignored it. I, I'm so embarrassed to say that, but I did. I was like, I don't, I don't get involved in that stuff. It's not my business. I'm sure Israel's mistreating the Palestinians. They certainly have before, but like, I'm not getting involved. I thought that when the Gaza stuff first started, I'm embarrassed, but I did.

• 1:36:02Speaker 01

  One of the, is there like, was there like the defining moment where you felt a switch-

• 1:36:06Tucker Carlson?

  They blew up two churches and I was like-

• 1:36:08Speaker 01

  I remember that.

• 1:36:09Tucker Carlson?

  I was like, and I, you know, it was nothing compared with the, to the rest of Gaza. And I'm not making the case that only Christians are worth defending, but I, I, whatever. It's a long, not very interesting story, but I mentioned it to some evangelicals, not on camera, of course, but just in private. And I'm not evangelical, but I've always liked them. And, and I said something about it and they're like, shut up. So no, no, Christian churches, your, you know, your faith, their churches are blown up.

• 1:36:36Speaker 01

  It's like, how do you not feel connection to that person?

• 1:36:38Tucker Carlson?

  Shut up, shut up.

• 1:36:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:36:40Tucker Carlson?

  Like this is the sickest, this is the weirdest thing. I didn't know what it was. This is the weirdest thing I've ever heard.

• 1:36:44Speaker 01

  Did they also have their fingers plugged into their ears and go da, da, da, da?

• 1:36:48Tucker Carlson?

  No, no, they hated me. They hated me for saying it. I was actually on stage giving a speech about something else and I, I got a question from an audience member and I said, what's that? You know, and they, they shuffled me offstage. True story. So it was that actually changed my view. I was like, whenever someone's like, we don't want to hear it, and it's true, I wasn't speculating and I wasn't even getting that, you know, assertive or strident about it. I was like, well, you know, you're Christians, you should care about the bombing of a church. Shut up!

• 1:37:18Speaker 01

  It's like Catholic Relief Services, humanitarian group, and a couple of their faith-based organizations as well, they're in the Christian denomination, reported on it and were like-

• 1:37:26Tucker Carlson?

  Oh, well now, then I went right down the rabbit hole and started talking to people and I spent time in the Middle East, so I called people I knew and, and then I realized, wow, this is like the worst thing ever. But I had almost fully ignored it for about a year and I'm not, I'm not proud of that at all, but I did. So anyway, not ignoring it now, because it's impossible to ignore.

• 1:37:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, and the attacks on Christian centers in southern Lebanon and attacks on all people in Lebanon.

• 1:37:51Tucker Carlson?

  That is one of the most upsetting things. And using the war that Israel pushed Trump, its proxy into starting, using that war as cover to just like grab southern Lebanon, south of the river is like one of the worst. And then bomb Beirut, where you used to live.

• 1:38:09Speaker 01

  That's, you know, you feel that in your soul. You really do.

• 1:38:13Tucker Carlson?

  Oh, I couldn't agree more.

• 1:38:14Speaker 01

  You really do.

• 1:38:16Speaker 01

  One of the things I'm going to look at for a project is I'm going to, you mentioned like grabbing land. I, I think ultimately that this is, it's, it's about land, it's about grabbing land.

• 1:38:28Tucker Carlson?

  Of course.

• 1:38:28Speaker 01

  And I'm going to compare diligently, teach myself how to use satellite imagery or maybe just something rudimentary like Google Maps or something and outline, you know, a pre, you know, October 23, and compare it to like 1967 borders as well, but just compare the shift in the amount of territory that Israel occupies, not only just Gaza, more in the West Bank, more in southern Syria, southern Lebanon as well. And I want, I just want to, I, I just want a number, but just, just to quantify how much of a land grab is happening. And I haven't, I'm unaware of anyone else's done it. I hope someone else-

• 1:39:02Tucker Carlson?

  Do you know anyone who's done reliable, you would consider factually accurate analyses of what's happened in Gaza?

• 1:39:11Speaker 01

  Oh, uh, on what level?

• 1:39:13Tucker Carlson?

  How many people killed? Let's just start there.

• 1:39:16Speaker 01

  You know, honestly, like, the most, you know, the best numbers come from the Gaza Ministry of Health and obviously the, the US media decided early on this is going to be Hamas run, but it's like, it's the Hamas government, these are just civil people. They're not in the-

• 1:39:29Tucker Carlson?

  Right.

• 1:39:29Speaker 01

  They're not in the army, you know?

• 1:39:32Speaker 01

  But the most reliable figures that, you know, the verified figures are coming from the Gaza Ministry of Health ultimately. And, you know, you can do your, like international organizations can do their best, you know, cross-reference and verify, but you know, everyone's ultimately leaning, even like Israeli intelligence agencies have admitted that they use Gaza ministry numbers. So I think that's where it's coming from in terms of, in terms of people I listen to. Kareem McDyce and his brothers who, the podcast called McDyce Street, Kareem McDyce was a professor at AUB, I think he still is.

• 1:40:08Tucker Carlson?

  American University of Beirut.

• 1:40:09Speaker 01

  Right, where I was, excellent resource.

• 1:40:14Speaker 01

  UN Special Repitor, Francesca Albanese.

• 1:40:18Tucker Carlson?

  Nice woman.

• 1:40:19Speaker 01

  Have you met her?

• 1:40:20Tucker Carlson?

  Yeah.

• 1:40:21Speaker 01

  Oh, cool. Cool. That's probably actually one person. I was just extremely excited to meet her. Nora Aricott as well, is a law professor at Rutgers, I believe. Those are just a couple off, off the top of my head, but I mean, there's a lot of, there's a really hell of a lot of people doing good work on this. It's just, I've, I've just, I've thought about Gaza pretty much every day for the last three years, you know, it wears on you a bit. So I didn't, you know, it's not out of interest of like some weird obsession or anything. It's just like, the feeling of ignoring it though would be far worse than, you know, having it, you know, at the forefront of your-

• 1:41:01Tucker Carlson?

  You can't, you can't unsee it.

• 1:41:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:41:03Tucker Carlson?

  Stephen Semler, I really appreciate all the time you spent and particularly the numbers, and we restate one last time where people can follow you in case they didn't catch it.

• 1:41:12Speaker 01

  Best place is to follow my newsletter on Substack. That's where you hear about everything I'm, I'm up to, and that's the main vehicle for publication. It's called Polygraph and you can find it on Substack at stevensemler.com.

• 1:41:24Tucker Carlson?

  I love it. Thank you.

• 1:41:25Speaker 01

  Thank you, Tucker.