Trump Throws GASOLINE On The Economy While The War RAGES

[00:00:00] Speaker 1: We'll be right back. [00:00:30] Speaker ?: We'll be right back. We'll be right back. [00:01:30] Speaker 2: Welcome to TYT, I'm your host, Anna Kasparian, and we have a gigantic show ahead for you all today. In fact, we have not one, but two separate interviews, which I'm really excited about. Joe Kent will be joining us in the first hour to basically discuss the trick that a few congressional Republicans are trying to play when it comes to ending our military support for Israel. We're gonna tell you what the reality is. We're gonna debunk it, decode it, and make sure that you guys are in the know about the games that are being played. Because unfortunately, members of Congress think that you're stupid, but we're gonna prove that that's not the case. Later in the show, in our bonus episode for our members, we're gonna have Trita Parsi on to help us kind of sift through the news cycle as it pertains to the ongoing war against Iran. The situation escalated last night, as many of you already know. But what does the future hold for this ongoing conflict? It's clear that Trump realizes he's made a mistake, but is he gonna find a way to exit this war without Israel essentially dragging us back in? So that will be for our members only, tyt.com slash join to become a member and listen to that conversation. Members get that content first, along with all sorts of other perks of being members. First of all, you get to keep us independent from corporate influence or influence from sponsors, which I really, really appreciate. But on top of that, you get members only content exclusive to you. And you also will get to see the interview first before anyone else does. So thank you to our members, tyt.com slash join to become one. All right, without further ado, why don't we give you the updates that we know of when it comes to the war against Iran. Later, we'll get into some other topics as well. Let's get [00:03:25] Speaker 3: to it. If it was up to the people that actually go to elections and wear the suits and you see on TV, they'd probably make a deal tomorrow. I don't know where you're getting this perception that Iran is stronger. Iran has no navy left. They've lost a substantial percentage of their defense industrial base, that Iran has lost a substantial percentage of their missile launchers. And their economy is far worse today. And I mean, far worse today than it was six to nine months ago. And they are looking at hundreds of billions of dollars of reconstruction costs just to get to where they were six months. [00:03:53] Speaker 4: Mr. Rubio, you keep telling us how we're winning this war. The president keeps saying- Well, the war is over now. Completely annihilated. The war is not over. [00:04:01] Speaker 2: As much as it pains me to admit this, Senator Cory Booker is 100% correct. The war is not over. And what you heard from Secretary of State Marco Rubio in essentially declaring that the war against Iran is over was not only a lie. It was a statement that he made on the same day the war against Iran escalated. Because as the United States continues attacking Iran, especially near the Strait of Hormuz, Iran has had enough and they've decided to strike back. And they did so by targeting Gulf countries that currently host US military bases. So I'm going to kind of go through what we know in regard to Iran strikes. Laughably, both the United States and Iran still maintain that there is a ceasefire, however fragile it might be. But before I give you the details on what happened last night, let me just be very clear that the meaning of words mean nothing at this point. Because a ceasefire, pretty self-explanatory in the word itself, you ceasefire. But the Israelification of US foreign policy has made it so we don't abide by ceasefires just like Israel doesn't abide by ceasefire. So ceasefire doesn't have any real meaning at this point. But with that in mind, why don't we take some B-roll of the footage of the aftermath of one of the Iranian strikes. You're actually looking at the aftermath of an Iranian strike on the Kuwait International Airport. Kuwait's military said that the strikes hit a terminal and killed at least one person. I mean, the death toll is low for now, considering the fact that this looks pretty bad. 63 others were reportedly wounded. And this does mark the first Iranian attack against a Gulf country since the IRGC and Washington agreed to a ceasefire on April 8th. Now, since then, we have read about strikes that the US has carried out against Iran near the Strait of Hormuz or at Keshem Island. But it appears that the strikes that the US had carried out recently is what gave Iran the motivation to attack its Gulf neighbors. So this doesn't mean that Iran broke the ceasefire. I wanna be clear about that as well. Because if you read legacy media or corporate media right now, the way that they frame this makes it appear as though Iran is the one that broke the ceasefire. And so they're in the wrong and we should go back to an all out war. But remember, one of the terms of the ceasefire actually happened to be the ongoing offensive that Israel is carrying out in Lebanon. Now, in announcing the ceasefire deal, President Donald Trump initially said, yes, Lebanon is part of the ceasefire deal. So Israel must stop attacking Lebanon in order for us to move forward. Israel never stopped attacking Lebanon. And so Iran has had enough. Okay, enough, we're not gonna allow this to stand. Now, the US blockade, by the way, of the Strait of Hormuz, which was the US response to Iran blocking the Strait of Hormuz, is also an act of war. And that was implemented and carried out through this so-called ceasefire. So that in and of itself was a violation of the ceasefire carried out by the United States. The United States also, again, struck Iran near the Strait of Hormuz and bombed Keshem Island. So Iran decided to respond and said, no more hit and runs, essentially. No more tit without a tat. Okay, so they're striking back. Things seem relatively calm today, although obviously, the situation is fragile and can change at any moment. And according to The Guardian, the latest exchange of fire began when CENTCOM said it targeted a tanker. The Botswana flagged MT Lexi on Tuesday. CENTCOM said, an aircraft fired a missile to disable the tanker's engine as it passed through international waters toward Iran's Karg Island near Kuwait. Now, I don't know if Trump has any idea what he's doing. And to be quite frank, I'm not sure when the US military decides to strike on a vessel leaving the Iranian ports. Because make no mistake about it, I mean, over the weekend, there was a 24-hour period in which 28 vessels transited freely through the Strait of Hormuz. And each one of them paid the $2 million toll that Iran is now charging. So I believe that in some instances, this is just my speculation. I don't have evidence to back this up, so I wanna be clear. But my speculation is Trump understands the absolute devastation the closure of the Strait of Hormuz is going to lead to or already has led to when it comes to the global economy. Remember, 20% of the world's oil and gas supply transits through the Strait of Hormuz. A third of the world's fertilizer, which farmers need to grow food transits through the Strait of Hormuz. So not allowing any ships to pass. I mean, we would be in an even worse situation than we are in right now. And the situation we are in right now is bad enough. It's already pretty bad and things are set to get worse. So there's a little more to get to. So you have this Botswana-flagged tanker attacked by the United States. And the IRGC responded to that. And they said in a statement, late last night, the aggressive US military struck an Iranian oil tanker near the Strait of Hormuz with an aerial projectile causing damage to the tanker's engine room. These responses should serve as a lesson. So Iran responded with drone strikes on a passenger terminal at Kuwait's airport. They also struck Bahrain. A statement from Iran's foreign ministry blamed Kuwait and Bahrain for the attacks condemning what it called the colonialist use by the United States of the territory and infrastructure of countries in the region to advance its aggressive plans against Iran. And there is a strategic reason aside from retaliating against the United States that is motivating these Iranian attacks against these Gulf countries. We've talked about it before, but just as a reminder, the whole idea is to discourage these Gulf countries from continuing their hosting of these US military bases. Iran wants the US out of the region. And to be quite frank, I think that we have quite a few incentives to leave the region. But it's incredibly difficult to do when one of our so called allies is Israel is in the region and uses and abuses our military for their own advantage on a regular basis. So we'll see what happens with these Gulf allies, but what they have realized certainly through how this war has been carried out and how the US has responded to Iranians and their attacks against them is that the US is not there for them when they need them for security. And the whole idea of hosting these bases in the first place is because these Gulf allies were under the assumption that the US would provide a security umbrella of some sort, but that hasn't been the case. Now, CENTCOM has denied that any of Iran's strikes have actually been carried out successfully. Video evidence would prove otherwise, but here's more of what we know. In total in Kuwait, Iran struck an aircraft shelter at the Ali Al Shalem Air Base in Kuwait, a drone slash helicopter shelter at the US camp Boring. So that's either destroyed or has been severely damaged. And then several warehouses at the US camp Boring appeared to have been damaged as well. Now Kuwait's defense ministry spokesperson, very upset about this for obvious reasons, they don't like being attacked. He described the attack as criminal Iranian aggression, which resulted in significant material damage to the building and injuries. By the way, how is CENTCOM gonna respond to that? They keep denying that Iran succeeded in their attacks. Clearly, there's a contradiction here with what Kuwait is saying. Kuwait also ordered a reduction in Iranian embassy staff, declared two Iranian diplomats persona non grata and gave them 24 hours to leave the country. So these Iranian diplomats have been expelled from Kuwait in retaliation for the Iranian strikes against these sites in Kuwait, including that airport. So when it comes to Bahrain, another country, Gulf country that was attacked by the IRGC. Well, Iran struck the US Fifth Fleet headquarters in Bahrain and multiple helicopter bases. And that in particular was denied by CENTCOM. But again, there is video evidence proving that that did in fact happen. Iran also struck Jordan, Northern Iraq, the UAE and the Al Udeed Air Base in Qatar, along with, although we don't really know the full extent of damage from those particular strikes. And as soon as we learn, of course, I'll tell you more. But Moshin Razay, who is the Supreme Leader's military advisor, has threatened more strikes. And he did so in an ex post. He says that every shot fired and every attack will be met with a deluge of missiles and drones. The aggressor will swiftly be punished. And guys, one other thing that I wanted to note. I've said this before, but it bears repeating. For all the fear mongering that we hear from our media and our government in regard to Iran. Iran poses such a threat, such a risk to the United States. There's a reason why Iran isn't trying to strike the United States. It's because they don't have the capability to do it. They've never had the capability to do it. Iran has never been a threat to US national security. Maybe you can make an argument that they've launched cyber wars or something like that. But as it pertains to conventional warfare, we're talking missiles, we're talking nukes, things like that. They don't have the capability, they don't have the capacity to do it. The only way they're able to retaliate against the United States is to strike US bases in these Gulf countries or strike the Gulf countries that host these US bases. And that's what they've been doing. And that's the reality of the situation. We should not have gotten caught up in this war, which has provided absolutely no benefit whatsoever to the American people. But we have already spent tens of billions of billions of dollars on this war, which has only made our quality of life worse by driving up gas prices, which in turn will absolutely increase inflation in other sectors of the economy. There are also signs that the war is going to escalate. There were signs that the war is going to escalate over the weekend, okay? So if you're paying attention to news over the weekend, you might have noticed that Tehran responded to US forces hitting an Iranian radar and drone site. So they responded by targeting a military base in Kuwait that it claimed was involved in that US operation. But here's something else that's really important. What about boots on the ground? Because that's something that people paying attention are very concerned about. I, as an American, I'm very concerned about. I do not want our soldiers to risk their lives by invading Iran and engaging in a war on the ground. And luckily, Trump was asked a question about that. Here's what he's thinking. [00:16:05] Speaker 5: We have the strongest military in the world. Everybody knows it. You saw that in Venezuela, you see that with Iran. I mean, their Navy's wiped out, their Air Force is all gone. After three days, their military was virtually wiped out. Now I have to make a determination. Do we sign a deal or we do it the other way? And the other way is not nice. [00:16:26] Speaker 6: What will the other way achieve though? [00:16:28] Speaker 5: Certainty. It would be over. I'd rather do it the nice way from a humanitarian standpoint. Can you do it just with bombing? The other way? Yeah, we don't need boots on the ground now. Well, we did it. We wiped out much of their military with just bombing. We didn't put anybody on the ground. You don't want to do that. You're so far [00:16:50] Speaker 2: away. You don't want to do that if you can avoid it. So I don't know whether you can really trust what Trump said at the tail end of that statement. No boots on the ground. How do you trust him? I mean, he has said so many things that he has then turned around and done the opposite of. At the same time though, I do think that he is realizing maybe that there is no military option in ending this war, in getting the Strait of Hormuz open. There just isn't. And that's not based on me. I'm not a military expert, guys. I'm just a talk show host. But what I do is rely on the actual military experts. And I go out of my way to listen to military experts of all political stripes, including conservative military experts. Colonel Douglas McGregor is not a lefty. Colonel Daniel Davis, not a lefty. But what I find very fascinating is that they both, along with a whole host of other military experts I listen to, all agree, Joe Kent agrees, there is no military option to accomplish the objectives that Trump laid out in the beginning of this war. So the idea of putting boots on the ground would be stupid. Only the Israelis would want that because A, they're not risking IDF soldiers, it would be American soldiers. And B, if that operation fails to get them what they want, who cares? Who cares? They didn't lose their soldiers, but at least they tried something to see if they can get what they really want, which again, is the toppling of the IRGC. Whether the IRGC is replaced with a different regime that's more favorable to Israel, or if Iran becomes a failed state, they don't care. So that's what's going on here, and I'm hoping that Trump's better angels, if they exist, are kind of dominating the narrative in his head so he doesn't make the mistake of putting boots on the ground. However, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel said that Iran was playing with fire after the Kuwait attacks. And Trump could order a full scale return to military action, he claims, if these negotiations fail. Now, Jeffrey Sachs, personal hero of mine, I absolutely love him. He does incredible work in the area of diplomacy. He's appeared at the UN many, many times throughout so many different conflicts. He is saying, we don't even really need a peace deal per se. I mean, Trump could just end it. Yeah, the Strait of Hormuz is now under the control of Iran, but you don't need to sign a peace deal in order to end what's happening right now, just walk away. And then maybe later, the US and Iran can engage in diplomatic talks without Netanyahu or the Israelis breathing down our necks to secure some sort of agreement, diplomatic deal when it comes to the Strait of Hormuz. Now, do I think that's gonna happen? Of course not. So we're stuck in this weird war purgatory where we have no idea where we're going. It doesn't seem like the administration knows what they're doing. And the ultimate decider appears to be Benjamin Netanyahu. The Israelis know that the main sticking point, for instance, that's preventing the peace deal is their continued occupation and aerial bombardment of Southern Lebanon. And Netanyahu insists on continuing that offensive campaign. On Tuesday, Lebanon's state-run national news agency reported 30 Israeli strikes across the south. Near the city of Sidon, rescuers recovered the bodies of six members of the same family. This is not Hezbollah, folks. This ain't Hezbollah. That included two children and a woman. Lebanon also said an Israeli strike hit a location near Beirut on Wednesday. Remember, Trump was patting himself on the back for discouraging the Israelis from attacking Beirut. Well, today, Israel attacked Beirut. So you know where this is going. And then people will turn around and say, no, no, no, no, no. Israel doesn't control US foreign policy. No way, no way. I mean, do those people have any credibility right now? Seriously. But anyway, that brings us to Axios's claims that Trump had this tense phone call with Benjamin Netanyahu in which he told the prime minister that he was effing crazy and that everyone hates him. Now, both parties have been asked about that phone call on the record. Both parties have responded to whether or not that conversation took place. Let's take a look. [00:21:49] Speaker 6: Axios reported that you had a phone call with Bibi Netanyahu, the prime minister of Israel, in which you were angry with him. You said, are you effing crazy? What are you effing doing? I helped you stay out of jail. Is that true? Did you speak to him in those terms? [00:22:05] Speaker 5: I did. I would say angry. I was a little bit perturbed at his constantly fighting with Lebanon. At some point I said, maybe we gotta stop this. We gotta stop it. [00:22:20] Speaker 7: President confirmed that he said, you're effing crazy. How did you react to that? [00:22:25] Speaker 8: What really happened in that call? Well, I'm not gonna get into details of our conversations. We've had thousands, well, a lot of them. And if you think this is a crisis, you should be in some other conversations. But we've always found a way. We have so many agreements. We agree on the main things. We wanna get Iran, the nuclear program in Iran finished. We want to make sure that Iran doesn't pose a threat to Israel, to the Middle East, to America. [00:22:49] Speaker 7: Did he say that you'd be in jail if not for me? [00:22:52] Speaker 8: Look, I'm not gonna get into the details, but he's been very vocal about the absurdity of this fake trial that I'm going through. [00:23:00] Speaker 2: Benjamin Netanyahu continues to face prosecution for corruption, and that's not a fake trial. There are substantive and substantial allegations against him because he's a corrupt monster, along with a war criminal who should be in prison. But nonetheless, despite the fact that Israel has shown itself to be a genocidal rogue state, I find it rich that they would fear monger about the nuclear capabilities of any country, much less a country that doesn't even have nuclear capabilities. But with that in mind, I don't really care about this, in my opinion, fake reporting about how Trump really told Netanyahu what's what. Because at the end of the day, what matters is who is driving, which country is driving US foreign policy? And it's very obviously Israel. We provide cover for their bad behavior left and right, and I wanna show you the latest example of that. Secretary of State Marco Rubio was testifying before the House today, I believe, if I'm not mistaken, before Congress. And he was asked point blank, hey, what about Israel's clandestine nuclear [00:24:10] Speaker 9: weapons? Let's see what his response was. Will you tell us, the Congress and the American people, whether Israel, in fact, possesses nuclear weapons? [00:24:19] Speaker 3: You know that that's a question that we don't, they've never acknowledged to have a nuclear program. People can have, as you know, an open source and other reporting suspicions about what they possess. If we're speaking frankly, I think most of the world assesses that they do. But they've never acknowledged that publicly, and as a feature of our foreign policy, for a variety of reasons, we don't discuss it in that way either. [00:24:40] Speaker 2: Israel not only stole our nuclear secrets, Robert Maxwell did that. Candace Owens aired an allegation against Ben Shapiro's uncle, his father's brother, indicating that he had stolen nuclear material and sent it over to Israel. I don't know how true that is. I looked into it a little bit, but there appears to be some reporting on it. What are we doing? Why are we providing cover for a clandestine nuclear program that exists? Because the country that has that nuclear program stole our nuclear secrets and potentially nuclear material. And that is the country that's dragging us into a war with a different country that doesn't have nuclear weapons, but we're supposed to be afraid of Iran's nuclear weapons. Okay, right, right. Anyway, that's where we are right now with this war. So the situation isn't great. In the members only bonus episode today, we're gonna have Trita Parsi on. He is a bit of an expert on this issue. So he's gonna help us parse through the latest updates and help us kind of predict what we can look forward to in the near future. So if you're a member, you can look forward to that today. If you're not, you can become a member by going to tyt.com/join. All right, we're gonna take a quick break. Joe Kent joins us for the next segment. [00:26:20] Speaker 10: Our audience has given us everything so we couldn't be more connected. When we first started, people would start giving us directions and say, okay, the mics are too large, move them, turn them into loud mics. I mean, they were incredible. And then one guy walked in and gave us a really expensive switcher and said, you guys need this and walked out. Okay, it's amazing. They helped us build a studio. They did a $2 million funding campaign for us. And so they really are us. We do this show together to the point where some of our hosts are even former listeners. So when we say that the audience is part of TYT, we really mean it. [00:27:02] Speaker 2: I think what the audience also appreciates is if they're, especially if they're members, they really get an inside look into who we are, our personal lives, what drives and motivates us. It goes beyond just storytelling. I think that what we do is allow our viewers and our listeners into our daily lives. And we give them kind of like this inside look into everything that we're passionate about and why it is that we're doing what we're doing, right? Like the motivation behind what we're doing, I think is important for our audience to know. And we're not shy about sharing that with them. And it's different from what people typically see in legacy media outlets, where everything is kind of dry and robotic and there's really no personality or authenticity that comes along with it. Oftentimes when we're doing the show, I don't really think of it as me telling them stories. I think of it as us having a mutual respect and conversation with one another. And as I said earlier, I mean, not only do I feel that through the work I do, I'm informing our audience, but they inform me oftentimes as well. They'll pitch stories to us, they'll tell us a certain perspective or angle to a story that we might have missed. And I love it. [00:28:42] Speaker ?: Welcome back to TYT. I'm your host, Anna Kasparian. Before we get to our interview with [00:28:47] Speaker 2: Joe Kent, I think it's important to kind of give you some context for the discussion. [00:29:16] Speaker 8: So without further ado, let's get into it. One of the senators in the American Senate said, if we had in Israel, instead of in Afghanistan, we wouldn't have had to spend a trillion dollars. We would spend a fraction of a fraction of that, which is a few billion dollars a year. But I said, we don't need that either. I mean, we appreciate it. I appreciate every amount of help that America has given us over the years. But I think just as we moved away from financial aid, economic aid, we can move away now from military aid and move to a partnership. And that's gonna happen. [00:29:54] Speaker 2: Israel, along with its supporters in the United States Congress are basically trying to pull a fast one on the American people. Because while Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel says he no longer wants military aid from the American taxpayers, the truth is actually a lot more complicated than that. So today we learned that Republican Congressman Marlon Stutzman from Indiana introduced a non-binding resolution. I think the non-binding resolution part is also important to this story, so keep that in mind. But it's essentially to replace the $3.8 billion in annual military aid that we give to Israel as part of our memorandum of understanding. Just basically replace that with direct weapons purchases. Now, let me just note that I'm against allowing a country that's carrying out atrocities and genocide to purchase our weapons in the first place. So that doesn't really make the situation better for me as it is. However, that's not even the whole story. So here's what we know. In an expo, Stutzman said the following, the alliance is entering a new era. My new resolution affirms that the United States stands with Israel not out of obligation, but out of shared strength and shared strategic interest. Israel has come of age where our nation should contribute equally and share results equally. But Stutzman made sure to preview the proposal to Netanyahu first when he recently visited Jerusalem. And apparently Netanyahu said, I like it, the Prime Minister replied after skimming through the draft House resolution. This is the direction I've been wanting to go for a long time. We wanna stand on our own feet, Netanyahu added, during the nearly 45 minute meeting on May 27th, which was also attended by Representative Adam Hamaday. Now Stutzman, who's a hardcore Zionist and Israel supporter, came back to the United States and introduced this resolution, which calls for the US to develop a new memorandum of understanding between the two nations that would end the $3.8 billion in annual aid Israel receives from the US, and instead have the nation fund its own purchases of American weapons. But what happens in a situation in which our military is intertwined with the IDF? What happens when they basically get to be part of our military? And that appears to be the game that's being played right now. Rather than provide billions of dollars every year, what if the IDF is basically integrated into the US military? And luckily, Joe Kent, who resigned from the Trump administration over the war against Iran, wrote an incredible piece that I highly recommend you all read. It's published in Responsible Statecraft that really tells you what's going on here. And Joe Kent joins us today to tell us a little more about his piece and what he believes is going on. I totally agree with you, by the way, Joe. Your piece is titled US-Israel integration is far from America first. We cannot outsource components of our national security to nations that do not share our interest. And that is exactly what this proposed scheme would do. Thank you for joining us today. [00:33:17] Speaker 1: Great to be with you. Thanks for having me. [00:33:19] Speaker 2: No problem. Thank you for doing it. I know you were on the show just last week. And so I really, really appreciate you taking the time. And I thank you for writing this piece. Because as soon as I saw this non-binding resolution being proposed, I knew exactly what was going on because just days earlier, this story broke about how there is a provision in the 2027 National Defense Authorization Act that would integrate Israel's military into our own. Now, help our audience understand what that would entail. [00:33:53] Speaker 1: Yes, this is, I think, pretty clever of the pro-Israel lobby and the Israelis. Obviously, they know public sentiment against Israel is turning. And so now they're transitioning to kind of formalize this integration. And this is different than any other relationship that we have, even with really close partners like the Five Eyes, like the British, for example. We do some integrated training, some development with them as well. But fully integrating our technology and especially our research and development in a lot of really key areas too. We're not just talking about missile systems and traditional hardware. We're talking about quantum computing. We're talking about cyber technology, counter drone, the place where really the future of warfare is going. And so we're going to integrate the Israelis into this process. And this is going to give them basically hooks, if you will, into pretty much everything that we're doing in the cutting edge of defense and technology. And so obviously, there's a wide variety of just blatantly obvious issues here. The counterintelligence aspect, I think, is the most clear cut for most people to understand. This is going to give the Israelis really full access to everything that we're doing. And as we've seen with this war in Iran, us and the Israelis, sometimes we will start off on a path together, but we will greatly diverge to our detriment. And I think the war in Iran, the fact the War Powers Resolution just passed in the House, that shows that public sentiment is moving away from the Israeli agenda. And so here come the Israelis baking this essentially into the National Defense Authorization Act, giving them the access they were about ready to probably lose in the traditional aid that we gave them. And I'm against us giving them the traditional aid, obviously, for all the reasons you outlined, what they're doing in Gaza, just how that relationship doesn't benefit us. However, in a traditional aid relationship, there still at least is the presumption that we giving aid to a country, we are the ones that have the dominance in the relationship. And that's a big reason why we do give aid, regardless of what anyone says, we give aid so that we can have some degree of control over what happens in most countries. We're going to lose that with this new relationship that we have with the Israelis. We're basically going to call them a partner, we're going to call them really a part of our defense apparatus. And I think that is a major threat to our sovereignty. I think one of the things that really stands out to [00:36:09] Speaker 2: me, historically speaking with our relationship with Israel, is that a lot of Americans were not informed about all the various times Israel actually worked against us. You keep hearing that Israel's a special ally. But whether you're talking about USS Liberty, whether you're talking about, I mean, look, I know that Jake Tapper attacked you for what you said about us arming terrorists in Syria at the behest of the Israelis, but that is what happened. We literally armed Al Qaeda and ISIS terrorists in Syria. And ISIS has actually had a bit of a relationship with Israel. I mean, there were ISIS fighters who were receiving treatment after getting wounded in Syria. They were getting treatment in Israel. In fact, Israeli media was reporting about that at the time. And so that works against us. Al Qaeda attacked us on 9/11. So how does it make sense to integrate a foreign country's military into our own, given the fact that they put their interests front and center, even if that means doing wrong by their own allies? [00:37:16] Speaker 1: This is exactly the problem. We just have to realize that us and Israel, regardless of what we say or how comfortable we are with them, that we just have divergent agendas in many cases. Not to mention the fact that, as you pointed out, the Israelis have and will work against us. And this shouldn't surprise us. Israel is a very small country. They are literally at war with the vast majority of their neighbors. If you just look at the history of their intelligence services, again, the Israelis are pretty upfront when they actually tell you who they are. The Israeli intelligence services basically say, we will stop at no ends. We will use any deceptions. We will use any means necessary to further our nation's goals. So to let these people have full access into our country is absolutely insane. And I would feel the same way basically about any country. But this is something that's much different. And again, even with our most, I'd say close partnerships we have, like with the Five Eyes, with the Brits, et cetera, we don't do this. We already have rules on the books for how we share information, how we go and purchase new technology. A lot of the people who are in support of this new part of the NDAA are going to say, well, the Israelis do a great job with tech and research and development. And to a certain extent, there's some validity to that case. But look, there's no reason why we can't go over there and simply purchase or come up with an agreement on a case by case issue. If there's a specific piece of technology that we want. We do that all the time all over the world. There's no reason to let them into our most secretive compartments where we're developing our [00:38:45] Speaker 2: own technology. So talk to me a little bit about the give and take when it would come to integrating their military with our own. Because there's quite a bit that they would benefit from certainly and they would have, by the way, they would have the ability to spy on Americans even more than they already do. I don't understand how that would benefit us in any way, shape or form. But aside from that, what would they contribute really to our military that we can't either develop on our own or we already have? There's nothing. And I think anyone who's [00:39:22] Speaker 1: going to come and say, well, the Israelis can do this one thing, you know, much better than we can. I just think that's absurd. I've heard that for years. There was an obsession for a very long time within, you know, special operations and other parts of the military that the Israelis were out there applying their trade every single day. That was something of a myth during the peacetime years when I came in the military that the Israelis were in the fight every day. And so, you know, anything that came out of Israel was going to be the greatest tactic, the greatest piece of technology. We have been fighting. Unfortunately, we've been fighting in the Middle East now for well over 20 years. We have plenty of experience. America is where Silicon Valley is. I mean, we are the foundation of a lot of this tech. And so I don't think we should forget that. We should remember who we are. And if there is a development, there's a piece of technology that we need, we can develop it on our own. We have the brain power here to do that. There's no reason why we need to go to the Israelis and say, well, you guys can just come on in. I just think that whole argument is preposterous. We should really just be clear eyed and just see this as yet another entry point that the Israeli intelligence services have found to get themselves deeply embedded with America. Because again, that's in their vital national security interest for the Israelis. If they lose the support of the American government, then they're in a very, very bad way. They know they're probably going to lose the 3.8 billion. They understand that. And so they're actually getting ahead of us by trying to build it into the NDAA now. And that's why we need a lot of public pressure to our representatives to stop this, to get this section cut out of the NDAA. [00:40:48] Speaker 2: Yeah. In fact, I don't typically ask our audience to do this. This is maybe the first time and I genuinely, genuinely mean it. Please call your representatives and demand that they do not vote in favor of this provision in the NDAA. They might be under the assumption that you're ignorant about this. Let them know that you're not. Because the fact that the House just passed the War Powers Resolution, you're absolutely right, Joe. It makes it abundantly clear that they're acutely aware of the fact that 60% of Americans do not have a favorable view of Israel. That's based on the latest Pew Research surveys. And maybe if there's enough pressure applied, they'll kind of back away from this. But I do want to ask you about one specific thing that you pointed out. A few years ago, the governors of Texas and Florida were getting a lot of backlash from the Democratic Party because they had implemented a ban on Chinese nationals buying up farmland or any property or land near military bases. And by the way, I gave them props for that. I thought that was a smart thing to do. If this integration provision passes, you note that Israeli manufacturers would operate production facilities in the US. And basically, they would oversee some of the weaponry that we build or manufacture here in the US. Can you tell us a little more about that and why it would be a problem? [00:42:16] Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a great comparison. This makes the whole China buying a property next to military bases look almost like JV stuff. I mean, this basically gives them the keys to the kingdom. And I think them, this being baked into the NDAA and allowing for the Israelis to come in and do joint manufacturing ventures that become programs of record. Because right now, Israeli companies, they can usually find a dual citizen. They can come to America and they can attempt to get a contract with the US government. And those contracts are hard to get. They're made on a case-by-case basis. However, by actually having it codified into the NDAA, a lot of these different companies could become what we call programs of record. And that would give them basically the ability to get consistent contracts with the DOD. Then they're going to go to different parts of the country and they're going to say, "Hey, we can set up a manufacturing facility here." And suddenly, they're going to be able to get influence with senators and with congressmen who are going to say, "I'm bringing home the bacon for my district, for my state. We're creating jobs here." Again, we have to look at this from an intelligence perspective. This is just another means of leverage and manipulation that the Israelis are going to be able to use on our government. And again, we have to ask, what's the gain? Again, I just say America needs to stand with our shoulders square and say, "Hey, we actually are the home of most this tech. We don't need the Israelis to have a technological advantage on the battlefield." [00:43:35] Speaker 2: Final question for you. Stutzman is pushing for a non-binding resolution. I mean, what's the game being played with that? I mean, is he hoping that they'll pass the resolution, it's non-binding, but they're going to, in the future, provide military aid to Israel, even with the integration of their military with our own? [00:43:58] Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that's just them kind of going one step at a time, incremental. Again, these guys are politically savvy. They're looking at the polling. And so I think by having it be non-binding, it doesn't sound as sticky. But again, if you get them into this defense contracting game, they're really going to codify themselves just into the works and bury themselves even deeper. And again, that access is way more valuable than anything that we could give them in a dollar amount. And then they're also psychologically going to be able to say to us, "No, no, no, we're not little brother getting a handout from you guys anymore. We're your partners. You need us as much as we need you." [00:44:34] Speaker 2: Interesting. Well, thank you so much, Joe. I really appreciate you not only speaking with us, but writing this piece. Keep up the great work. I appreciate it. [00:44:40] Speaker 1: Absolutely. Great to see you. Thank you. [00:44:44] Speaker 2: All right, everyone, we're going to take a brief break and we'll be back to talk about some other news. I want to talk a little more about where we are economically, especially as inflation rises, not just with gas prices, but in other sectors of the economy as well. We'll be right back. [00:45:18] Speaker ?: What's up, everyone? Thank you to DeHole who made a very generous contribution to TYT. PinchDog also purchased a monthly membership. Welcome to new members. Nancy, 92655. Also made a contribution. And thank you to everybody who has become a new member. That includes Anonymous and Maxim 303. [00:45:33] Speaker 2: Little Marco, according to Carinola. [00:45:38] Speaker ?: Little Marco keeps trying to say either this ain't a war or [00:45:38] Speaker 2: it's over. It's over to escape the unconstitutionality of starting slash continuing any of this without congressional approval. [00:45:48] Speaker ?: I think that Marco Rubio is very salty over the fact that all the [00:45:48] Speaker 2: attention is going to be able to be on the other side of the country. And that's what we're going to do. I think that Marco Rubio is very salty over the fact that all the attention isn't focused on topling Cuba's government, which is what his objective has been from day one. I mean, he wants to make his donors in South Florida very happy, so I think he's just like, he's maybe thinking I can like wish the end of this war into reality, but I don't think that's what's going to happen here. The Boris and guy says Iran needs to bomb the hell out of Tel Aviv. Israel won't stop until they live in constant fear. Well, I mean, look, I've made a similar argument actually. I don't want Israeli civilians living in constant fear, okay? Despite how horrible some of them are with what they say about Arabs and their neighbors. Nonetheless, I am a little worried that they'll eventually use a nuclear weapon. [00:47:06] Speaker ?: What's up everyone, welcome back. I just want to remind you all again, [00:47:12] Speaker 2: it's so important to prevent Congress from passing the NDAA with that provision that would allow for the integration of Israel's military into our own military. So please call both the congressperson for your district, but also your senator and demand that they vote down that provision. It's so important. I mean, look, once that's approved, I don't know how you reverse that. I really don't. I mean, things are bad enough with all these unelected government employees who have been there for decades, basically the deep state that they seem to be the ones who really do pull the strings when it comes to foreign policy. These are people we didn't elect. These are people who basically get to determine what the future of US foreign policy is and we need to do something about that. And that is a Herculean task. Now imagine trying to undo the integration of a foreign country's military into our own military. Let's go to Jonathan Boris Johnny who says, I hope Joe Kent runs for president. I don't know if he'd win, but I'd love to see him on the debate stage. I think, look, I watched a debate between Joe Kent and Norm Finkelstein yesterday on Piers Morgan show. I have to say, I like Norman Finkelstein. Okay, I wanna be clear about that. He did say some things lately that I don't think are helpful, basically wanting to purge the right from joining any left wing coalition and fighting back against Israel. I just disagree with that. But that was the debate topic between Finkelstein and Joe Kent. I really like the way Joe Kent handled it. He's just professional and he doesn't comment on things that he doesn't feel he has any expertise in. And that is rare, that is so rare to find. I don't know if I would prefer him as a president to be honest with you, but I'm not against him running. I mean, it would be better to have some people like him run on the right as opposed to some of the other people we've been seeing run for president in the past. Certainly better than someone like Ted Cruz who has no honor at all. YTP renewed says, what's with the sniffling? Is Trump doing cocaine? He sniffles all the time. I don't know. I don't know what it's about. We've got 37 and thriving Pakistani American deepening intelligence and military integration via section 224 of the 2027 NDAA crosses a dangerous line. Fusing US citizen data with foreign networks bypasses the fourth amendment. That's actually a really, really good point. We are supposed to have constitutional protections against unreasonable searches and seizures. This would give the Israelis unprecedented access to our classified information and information on Americans potentially. Dallas and digital production says, I don't understand how Netanyahu is getting in deeper with the US. He's a war criminal wanted by the ICC. Can't they arrest him here? Yeah, of course. But will they? No, they won't. The US will not arrest Netanyahu regardless of what the ICC says about him or regardless of what kind of warrants are out against him. That's just the fact of the matter and it's really depressing. Okay, what's also very depressing is where we currently stand economically and the situation looks like it's gonna get a lot worse with no end in sight with the war against Iran. So without further ado, [00:50:55] Speaker 11: let's talk about how bad things are right now. Every generation before has a tremendous sacrifice, some incredible sacrifice done what needs to be done to ensure that the following generation will be safe and free. That's why when we talk about the price of gasoline, I get very annoyed. I understand the price of gasoline is expensive and it hurts a lot of people, but you wanna see real sacrifice, you look at history, our history and our recent history. [00:51:21] Speaker 2: I fear that we become weak as a society. That statement was amazing. That was Mark Levin, an Israel firster and a war hawk who seems to be very annoyed with the American people who are experiencing quite a bit of frustration over the price of gas. Every time they go to the pump, they notice that the price keeps rising. And that's happening in the environment in which the President they voted for campaigned on tackling affordability first and foremost. But that's really hard to do when the US is fighting a war against Iran at the behest of the Israeli government. And as a result of that, Iran closes the Strait of Hormuz in which 20% of the globe's oil and gas is transited through. That limits oil supply, that increases energy prices and that has a trickle down effect. Well, I should say trickle up effect in causing inflation in other sectors of the economy. People are upset and frustrated about that. Going to war with Iran benefits Americans approximately, let me just check my notes, 0%. So Mark Levin saying that Americans are these pathetic losers who are whining about having to make sacrifices infuriates me to no end. It makes sense to make sacrifices for something that benefits the American people. This doesn't benefit the American people. But it does benefit the only country that Mark Levin seems to care about and of course that's Israel. But anyway, why don't we check in on the economy and talk about where we're at right now. Because as we had shared with you fairly recently, there are oil barons, oil analysts who are really, really worried about where we're headed. Now, even if the war were to end today and the Strait of Hormuz were to be opened, they're going to be opened. This is what the situation would look like because what's kind of keeping things under control is the fact that Trump is tapping into our oil reserves. But those oil reserves are set to run out very soon by the end of summer. And that's when the ish will hit the fan. Okay, so Josh Young had posted this. Exxon is saying that oil oil prices will rise to $150 to $160 a barrel in coming weeks. And then he provides a screenshot for an article in which the Exxon senior vice president, Neil Chapman, is quoted as saying that the situation is pretty dire. He says you can debate whether that's going to hit, meaning the very low levels of our energy reserves. Those really low levels in two weeks or three weeks, once you get to that point, which many suspect will be by the end of the summer, then you'll see prices shoot up. The price of physical Brent oil cargos will spike to $150 to $160 per barrel when inventories hit all time lows in coming weeks, the executive said. That is the senior vice president of Exxon Mobil. So I think he knows a thing or two about where we are right now. That's what he's describing. And we should be worried about where we're headed because the war hasn't ended. This is his analysis if the war ends right now. So with that in mind, higher oil prices, as I said earlier, translate to more than just high gas prices at the pump. It means higher overall inflation and it shows. So according to CNBC's latest reporting on this, the personal savings rate defined as the share of income Americans have after taxes and after they pay for all their expenses hit 2.6% in April. Now, what does that mean? Is that bad? Yeah, it's bad. So that was reported by the Bureau of Labor Statistics last Thursday. That's down from 3.2% in March. And get a load of this, 5.8% a year ago. So our savings rate went from 5.8% to 2.6% in a mere year. So Heather Long, who's the chief economist at Navy Federal Credit Union, spoke to CNBC and told them this. I thought 2.6% for April was a typo at first. It is so low. Outside of revenge spend era of 2022, the personal savings rate has almost never been this low in the past 65 years. So what she's referring to or citing there is after the economy started to open up during the COVID era, this is around 2022, Americans had just been sitting home and a lot of people had been saving because what are you gonna do? You can't go out and spend money like you used to, everything's closed. So in 2022, when things opened up again, there was inflation because people went out into the world and they were spending like crazy, right? They had cabin fever, they're ready to have a good time. So the savings rate during that time was lower because people were spending like crazy, not really saving. They had more expenses due to their spending. Now, the reason for the record low savings rate of Americans today is inflation. So inflation grows 3.8% in April from a year earlier, and that was according to the latest numbers put out by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. And that was the highest level since May of 2023. And then data from BLS, Bureau of Labor Statistics shows that the growth in April was wage growth specifically, this is important. Wage growth in April was 3.6% compared to the previous year. So if you have, think about this. If inflation is 3.8% and wage growth is 3.6%, that means that wages aren't keeping up with inflation. That's bad, right? That's very bad. Not according to Kevin Hassert though, who happens to be Trump's chief economic advisor, take a look. [00:57:36] Speaker 12: A couple of measures of consumer confidence this week show that people are pessimistic about how things are going. University of Michigan is one of them. I know there's another you prefer. They're both showing that there is growing concern there. People feel, our polling shows too, that their personal situation is not going well, and they blame President Trump's policies. [00:57:55] Speaker 13: The literature shows that what people do when they're going to a midterm is they look at their pockets. They feel like, is my income higher? Is my job safe? So think about it. Initial claims for unemployment insurance have been about at the lowest they've been since the 1960s, which means that people aren't losing their jobs. Real incomes are going up. [00:58:15] Speaker 2: No, no, they're not going up. Real incomes are not going up and they're not keeping up with inflation. And by the way, we're at the very beginning of that, thanks to this war. So again, inflation 3.8% in April, but wage growth was just 3.6%. That gap will widen as this war continues. Now, the inflationary environment was exacerbated by Trump's tariffs at first, but the war against Iran made inflation much worse. Americans continue to deal with elevated prices on a range of essentials like groceries and utilities. Gasoline has been a particular pain point since the start of the Iran war. The national average at $4.43 a gallon as of Thursday, according to AAA data. And that's as of Thursday of last week. The number I'm sure has increased since then. Unfortunately, Trump has learned absolutely no lessons though, not just when it comes to the war, but more importantly, when it comes to his tariffs. You're not gonna believe this. It made me pull my hair when I saw this headline. But today, the New York Times reported that Trump aims new tariffs at 59 countries and the European Union because he hates us. He hates us. Do you understand? Trump administration officials say they plan to impose levies of up to 12.5% on countries that failed to crack down on goods made with forced labor. What? Okay, so basically, the Trump administration is using something known as Section 301 to kind of get around the fact that the Supreme Court just struck down his tariffs. They said that his tariffs are unconstitutional, that the Congress has the power of the purse. So if you wanna implement tariffs, you're gonna need to do it through Congress. But there is a loophole. It's known as Section 301. So it's a provision in the US Trade Act of 1974 that authorizes the president or the US Trade Representative to investigate and impose trade sanctions on foreign countries that engage in unfair, discriminatory, or unreasonable acts. So when it comes to those 59 countries, the Trump administration is saying, yeah, yeah, forced labor, yeah, that's the ticket. Now, mind you, here in the United States, we have story after story about child labor laws being violated, but who cares about that? We're gonna pretend like we're worried about forced labor in European countries in order to slap these tariffs onto the imports coming from those countries, which does what? Does that punish those countries or does it punish the American people who are gonna see additional inflation thanks to these tariffs? He hates us. I mean, what more can you say? By the way, the gubernatorial candidate that Trump endorsed in Iowa just lost. Number one, there wasn't an Israel lobby backing him, so I'm sure that hurt him. But more importantly, the reason why he lost is because Iowa farmers not happy with Trump. Okay, first of all, the tariffs have hurt them significantly, but aside from that, they need a fertilizer in order to ensure their crops grow. But fertilizer is a lot harder to come by these days and is far more expensive, because a third of the world's fertilizer travels through the Strait of Hormuz, which has effectively been blocked by Iran after we decided to attack them on behalf of Israel. That is what we're dealing with right now. So the situation with affordability is pretty dire for Americans who are increasingly turning to credit cards to be able to afford the basics. Over a third, 37% of Americans say they will have to use a credit card, buy now, pay later, this breaks my heart beyond words. Or other type of loans to cover at least some of their expenses this month, and that's according to a survey conducted by NerdWallet. That includes 35% of households earning at least $100,000 a year. Your government hates you. And although credit card delinquencies are up, let's go back to our friend Kevin Hassett, Trump's economic advisor, who thinks there's actually a lot to be optimistic about. [01:02:41] Speaker 12: Wall Street Journal says in the first quarter of this year, the percentage of credit card balances that were at least 90 days delinquent rose to 13.12% according to data released in May by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. That's the highest level in 15 years and the most since the period following the 2008 financial crisis. People say they're using those cards to get through necessities because they can't afford what's going on. So your message to them. [01:03:08] Speaker 13: Right, well, we talk to the CEOs of the credit card companies all the time and we do see some increased stress like the numbers that the Wall Street Journal quotes. But for the most part, the delinquency is different from default and there's not any kind of threat, the financial threat to the credit card companies that they don't feel like that they're heading towards default scenarios. It's just that people are taking a little bit longer. One of the reasons is that people are spending more on gas, but they're also spending more on everything else, not just groceries, but restaurants and so on. And I think that that's a sign that you would see when people are optimistic about the future. [01:03:48] Speaker 2: I mean, every single public opinion poll makes it abundantly clear that Americans are not optimistic about the future. Trump is underwater when it comes to his approval on the economy. And that was one of the main reasons why he won the popular vote to begin with, because he purported to care about affordability. He claimed he was gonna do something about inflation. He only made it worse. So Hassett is engaging in quite a bit of cope there by pretending as though the American people are elated with our economic situation. What a joke. And mortgage delinquencies are also starting to trend upward. Not just 30 day delinquencies, but 90 day delinquencies are increasing as well. So in our next segment, I'll actually get into that a little more and talk about the housing market briefly. It's important to know about what's going on. The situation is not good here in the United States. And what's even more concerning is based on everything we're seeing from the Trump administration, it doesn't really appear that Trump gives a damn about domestic policy at the moment. His attention is completely sucked up by what's happening with these foreign wars, especially in the Middle East. Disaster. So we're gonna take a quick break. When we come back, we'll talk about what's going on with the housing market. And we'll move on to investors for Palantir starting to take a stand on human rights abuses. That and more coming up, don't miss it. [01:05:47] Speaker 9: Other news media outlets refused to go when there were human rights abuses happening at the Victorville [01:05:53] Speaker 14: prison. Guards and members of the community contacted us. You, through your investigative reporting, unearthed very troubling allegations about specific forms of abuse and discrimination in the federal [01:06:05] Speaker 9: prison system. It really doesn't take much to be a trusted voice. All it takes is to be fearless, report on matters, be an advocate. I called it the bullpen intentionally because it's a place of preparation. We present individuals who may have an opposing view. So we debate. Sometimes we interview individuals because their stories deserve to be heard. A survivor of significant police misconduct and his attorney. We covered this story earlier and to remind you of the horror of one man being shot at damn near 100 times by the police. We take time on this show to showcase the temper tantrums of Karen's in the wild. We do this now because we want to see people's emotional outbursts in public. But because these incidents are emblematic of a bigger societal issue taking place across the nation. And it has to be checked. My friend, my big homie, attorney at law, Benjamin Kroc. I just want to thank you, man. Educated, articulate brothers like yourself [01:07:00] Speaker 8: speak truth to power. It makes a great difference in changing the landscape in America. So listen, [01:07:06] Speaker 9: no matter what you do, don't allow the politics of ideology to evaporate the soul that still exists inside of you. They don't stop, I don't stop. Racism won't stop, I won't stop. Systemic bias won't stop, I won't stop. People still need health care, so I won't stop. People still need criminal justice systems reform, so I won't stop. You won't stop. [01:07:27] Speaker 15: I'm wearing one of our pieces of merchandise. So the funny thing about the Dragon Squad, that's what our viewers call themselves. That's the name of the group. But every individual chooses their own name. You might have Cincinnati Dragon, you might have Harry Potter Dragon. We have a Grandma Sunshine Dragon is one of those that I remember. These are people that like to have an element of themselves, their lives, what's significant to them, reflected as a part of the community. But the concept of the Dragon Squad is just something I threw away as a joke. I was mocking the Proud Boys, these right wing groups that come up with a name for themselves that they think is cool, but it's actually really lame. And I thought, off the top of my head, I can come up with something that's still kind of lame, but much cooler. And so I threw out Dragon Squad, and I just moved on with my life. But everybody liked it. And so they kept it going. And so we've embraced it. And I think again, this was during the period of the pandemic. I think it was sort of nice to have a renewed sense of community, a feeling that you're a part of something when everything seems so chaotic. And as a result of that, we've got independent artists online streaming, making beautiful digital art of dragons. We've released a number of pieces of merchandise that people love sending us photos of them. And then by the way, for me personally, people send me, you can probably see in the background, a knitted dragon someone sent me. There's a dragon book they sent me, dragon board games they sent me. People have done custom iron works, making dragon bottle openers. The fans are super invested in diamond art and things like that. And so it's great that they send the stuff. Sometime we're gonna have to set up a wall of all of it. But yeah, it's definitely brought the community a lot closer together. The fact that we were no longer in this big studio, I felt a lot more personally attached to people. It felt very immediate. And I know that I personally needed the connection. [01:09:37] Speaker ?: And I know that I'm gonna have to go back to the show. [01:09:57] Speaker 2: Welcome back to the show, everyone. Anna Kasperian with you. Loving the music. Thank you to DJ Bart. And thank you to James Kelly for the super chat. No comment, just a super chat. I always appreciate those who support the show either by sharing the stream, which is free, becoming a member or sending us some comments or super chats. I really, really appreciate it. I debated on whether or not I wanted to do a segment on this, but I don't really care to talk about myself for a segment, but I'll just mention this. So Megyn Kelly was on Sean Ryan's podcast. The episode was published this week. And I love the conversation. I listened to the whole thing. It was very, very long, but I really appreciated it. And they talked about foreign policy. They talked about the Israel lobby. They talked about Epstein files, the kind of stuff that we talk about on this show quite often. And Megan Kelly mentioned that the lines between the right and the left are starting to blur in some instances. And I do think that there's this growing coalition of anti-war people on both the left and the right. It doesn't mean that they agree on everything else. Obviously, they don't. But as she was talking about this, Sean Ryan was like, you mean Anna Kasperian? And then they said lovely things about me and I really, really appreciate that they did that. But the reason why I'm bringing this up is because people like James Lindsay lost their minds about it, totally lost their minds about it. It is interesting how Zionists don't want Americans to come together. It's interesting how much they want us to be divided. Because people power is real. People power can totally destroy the influence of money in politics. People power is unstoppable. You just need people to realize how unstoppable it is. And put their differences aside on other issues to work together on honestly what I believe are the biggest threats to our country today. And yes, that does have to do with foreign influence on our government. I would feel the same way if it were, I don't know. Here, I'll name a country that I love, that I would actually see myself living in. If Italy had that type of influence on the United States, I would have a huge, huge problem with it, huge. So we do need to work together to fight back and push back against Israel's influence, the deep state, corporate control, corporate greed, all of that stuff. There are lots of right wingers who are waking up to the fact that our system is rigged against ordinary people, okay? When you're not able to negotiate drug prices, when it comes to our Medicare system, how are you gonna tell me that's capitalism when you're not gonna allow Medicare to negotiate drug prices with pharmaceutical companies? And you just have to eat whatever price these companies decide to charge for their drugs. That's insane. So these are issues that I see widespread agreement on. But the reason why we've never been able to accomplish anything is because we've been so partisan brained and we've been unwilling to work together. We're so busy fighting each other that those who control these systems of power get away with murder, get away with price gouging the American people. So James Lindsay can go ahead and cry about it. But I do see the trend that Meghan Kelly was alluding to. And I hope it continues because I do think we have the power to make this country a lot better for the American people. And that's what the goal is here. Anyway, I wanna read just one comment before we move on. Let's go to, no, I'm gonna read to. Jonathan Boris Johnny says, Anna makes a good point. USA should leave and condemn as an act of good faith and see where it goes. That's in regard to the US just stopping the war. You don't have to have a peace agreement, just stop the war and walk away. But I don't think that's gonna happen. And let's see, one other person says, here we go. Someone said, we are in unprecedented times right now. And it's really important to do something to prevent some of the provisions that we just talked about on the show and some of the terrible stuff that's going on. And I totally agree. Ronald Fan, hey TYT family and to you solo, Anna, America is in an unprecedented situation now. If we don't learn from our mistakes on the Iraq war, how can we end the war in Iran? Ronald, thank you for that comment. I totally agree with you. And thank you to all our new members. I'll read more comments in a little bit. But right now, I gotta do the Shopify live read. I don't have to, I want to, I love Shopify. So Shopify is incredible. So launching something new can be scary. But having the right tools can make all the difference. If you're launching a new business, you need the right business partner and that partner is Shopify. What if I can't build a good looking website? Shopify has hundreds of templates to build a beautiful online store that actually matches your brand. And the best part is their iconic purple shop pay button. It's why Shopify has the best converting checkout on the planet. I know that converting checkout thing is really important because let me tell you something. I'm a real slut for putting things in my cart and never checking out. I just like to window shop online. But Shopify prevents that from happening if you're running a business online. So sign up for your $1 per month trial today at shopify.com/tyt, that's shopify.com/tyt. Okay, so I promised that I would talk a little bit about where we are in the housing market because the economy is suffering. And usually even when the economy isn't doing so great, you look at the housing market and it's still real hot. But it looks like things are starting to change. So let's get into it. Delinquencies in mortgages are starting to rise here in the United States, which does go along with some of the negative economic indicators that we've been talking about on the show, including rising inflation, record consumer debt, rising credit card debt. Now you take a look at the percentage of Americans who have mortgages who are delinquent either by 30 days or even worse 90 days and we are trending in a bad direction. However, I wanna be clear, we are not experiencing a housing market crash. Although we are seeing houses remain on the market for a far longer period of time, we're starting to see some price cuts. Let's talk a little more about the delinquencies. So the delinquency rate for mortgage loans on one to four unit residential properties increased to a seasonally adjusted rate of 4.44% of all loans outstanding at the end of the first quarter of 2026. And that's according to the Mortgage Bankers Association National Delinquency Survey. So when we talk about all mortgages, all loans, I wanna be clear that we're not just talking about residential real estate, we're also in some cases talking about commercial real estate, right? But in this case, mortgage loans on one to four unit residential properties. Now, a four unit residential property is considered commercial. Usually there is a landlord who is charging tenants for their units. But let's get a little more granular with our research here. The delinquency rate, by the way, includes loans that are at least one payment past due. But that does not include loans in the process of foreclosure, but we're gonna get into foreclosures as well. So the delinquency rate was up 18 basis points from the fourth quarter of 2025 and up 40 basis points from a year. But what about loans that are considered seriously delinquent and that's more than 30 days late. The non-seasonally adjusted seriously delinquent rate, the percentage of loans that are 90 days or more past due or in the process of foreclosure was 2.03%. It increased 18 basis points from last quarter and increased 40 basis points from last year. So I don't know. I mean, Trump wants to know, are you tired of winning? Is this winning? Please point me in the direction of where the economy improved under his leadership because this is not an improvement. And delinquencies were mostly concentrated in two different types of loans. FHA loans and VA loans. So VA loans, of course, are mortgages for our veterans. FHA loans, for those who don't know, those are loans where the person looking for the mortgage or who has been given a mortgage doesn't put 20% down on the property. They put less than 20% down. But as a result of that, they have to pay for insurance. I don't recommend doing that, guys. I know people really want to buy homes. I don't think you should agree to a mortgage unless it is a conventional mortgage where you put 20% down. And I know that's really difficult for most Americans. But don't find yourself in a situation where you're, they call it house poor, where you're literally putting all of your resources and paying your mortgage. And that's gonna happen if you don't have a nice 20% down payment on the home at least. Let's take a look at this graph because it's gonna help you understand what I'm talking about a little bit better. Actually, no, let's go back. I apologize. I wanna talk about the foreclosures. So the good news is that foreclosures are still very low. We don't have a ton of foreclosures happening right now. The problem is though, that when you look at these numbers, there's every indication that we're trending in a bad direction. So the percentage of loans in the foreclosure process at the end of the first quarter of this year was 0.64%. That doesn't sound like that big of a deal. However, it was up 11 basis points from the fourth quarter of last year, 2025, and 15 basis points higher than one year ago, which shows that the rate of foreclosures is not only increasing but also accelerating. And again, delinquencies were mostly concentrated in FHA and VA loans. And I wanna show you this graph, which was put together by the Mortgage Bankers Association. What it does is it shows you the different types of loans and which ones have the most foreclosures. So the total seasonally adjusted delinquency rate for conventional loans, shown in orange, actually decreased 14 basis points to 2.75% over the previous quarter. However, and this is important, delinquencies did rise compared to the previous year. So make of that what you will. But by contrast, the total FHA, seasonally adjusted delinquency rate, increased 36 basis points to 11.88%. And the total VA, seasonally adjusted delinquency rate, increased 39 basis points to almost 5%. That is not good news. And so, again, we are not experiencing a housing market crash. But what we are seeing in every element, every facet of our economy, every indicator shows that we are doing worse. We are seeing rising inflation. We're seeing a rise in unemployment. I mean, it does show in some of the jobs reports. I don't think it shows the full extent of the job losses, to be quite honest with you. And then you're also starting to see increased delinquencies when it comes to mortgages. And even an increase as small as it might be on foreclosures. Then you couple all of that with the fact that you have rising credit card debt, record consumer debt. We are not in a good position. And it's so important, guys, to understand that our current political system is not working for us. Okay, the Democrats aren't helping us. The Republicans, certainly they're in charge, they're not helping us. The entire focus of the Trump administration has been on foreign policy lately. And we are suffering the consequences of that. If it was foreign policy to keep the United States safe, or to benefit the United States, that might be one thing. But that's not what's going on here. We are fighting a war on behalf of a foreign country, and we're getting nothing out of it. In fact, we are bankrolling it, and our federal government is going deeper into federal debt as a result of that. Just some thoughts to keep in mind. All right, let's take a break. When we come back, we'll talk about Palantir and the fact that there seems to be a little bit of an uprising by its own investors. Don't miss it. [01:23:28] Speaker ?: Let's take a break, let's take a break, let's take a break, let's take a break. [01:23:55] Speaker 2: All right, Progressive Entropy in our Twitch community made a funny comment. I don't even know if I can say this, even though I said it in the context of tit for tat. But the first part of that tit for tat statement made progressive entropy laugh. So this person says that they're a child. It's funny because when I said they're responding with a tit to their tat, or tat to their, I don't even know how I worded it. I immediately thought to myself, you know what I mean? Like the beavis and butthead laughing sound. Okay, anyway, 0x6085 says if Marco Rubio's ears are flapping like Dumbo, he's laughing. That's hilarious. You know your ears keep growing as you age, like the rest of you stops growing. But your nose and your ears apparently keep growing, because aging is the worst thing in the world. But anyway, let's go to our super chats. Where James, thank you to James Kelly, as I said earlier. Master Zen 107 says, was watching CNN, was watching a CNN video posted an hour ago at 3:24. Thank you for time coding that for me. CNN claims they have journalists on the ground in Iran. So strange because Gaza wasn't safe, according to Israel and mainstream media, but we can send folks to Iran. Yeah, that's right. And we know the real reason why Israel won't allow journalists in Gaza. We know, we know. James Kelly writes in in our super chat section and thank you to all our super chatters. Your comments are always enlightening and also help to support the show. But James Kelly says, I just thought of something I heard a few months ago about giving the IDF American veteran benefits. As a veteran, I thought it was crazy. But with this NDAA, I worry that it could be true. I have no doubt that members of Congress are mulling that idea for sure. And it would be wrong to do that, 100%. And thank you for your service. You fought for this country, you potentially risked your life for this country and you deserve those benefits. You earned them, our veterans earned them. So seeing soldiers from a foreign military benefit from them. At some point guys, we can't keep responding to things the way we've been responding to things because we're just getting slapped in the face left and right by our own government. They in their own way tell us how much they hate us every single day. And we've just been so complacent for so long. I don't know. I don't know what the solution is and I desperately wanna figure out a way to change what's going on. But simply being asleep at the wheel and then voting, you're not gonna vote your way out of this, I don't think. We need some real change. Sneaky Dog Inc says, can we get a Megan, Candace and Anna show? I think that might have actually been the type of her take casting that would have worked because you're talking about two women who I have deep disagreements with on a whole host of things. But they at least know what's going on in the country. We might have different perspectives, but at least I don't know, whatever. Let's just move on. I don't wanna get myself in trouble. So like Jillian Michaels was the head host of that show. She's a nightmare. She's a nightmare. Okay, like what are you doing? Okay, don't have Sam Cedar on to debate you girl. What are you doing? You're nuts. Like you are crazy. You are crazy, but she did it. She did it and I enjoyed watching it. Anyway, let's move on to our next story. I wanna talk about Palantir. Palantir is under scrutiny from its own shareholders who voted today on a proposal that would force Palantir to address its alleged human rights violations. Now, what human rights violations am I referring to? Well, if you're curious, all you need to do is listen to the head of the company, Alex Karp, who can't really stop himself from bragging about it. Your AI and your technology from [01:28:42] Speaker 16: Palantir to kill Palestinians. Mostly terrorists, that's true. Me as a front man offending half of America. I don't think in win-lose, I think in domination. Almost nothing makes a human happier than taking the lines of cocaine away from these short sellers. I love the idea of getting a drone and having light fentanyl laced urine spraying on analysts who tried to screw us. Yeah, this whole thing online where people laud the Nazis. I spent a lot of time talking to Nazis, like real Nazis, and understanding what made them tick. [01:29:20] Speaker 2: Was he referring to the Israelis in that last statement? Is that what he was talking about? So that's Alex Karp. He makes me wanna vomit every time I hear him speak. But nonetheless, let's get back to the investors who apparently also wanna vomit every time they hear this man speak. So this proposal by the investors was actually filed by the Presbyterian Church of the United States. And the Sisters of Saint Joseph of Peace both happen to be investors in Palantir. And if you're wondering, is that possible? Can religious organizations do that? Yes, they can. So their efforts were actually also backed by Norway's $2 trillion plus sovereign wealth fund. So money talks, we're not talking about small time investors, we're talking about big time investors in Palantir. And so what exactly are these organizations trying to do? What are they trying to uncover? Well, Palantir has racked up a long list, as you can imagine, of alleged human rights abuses over the years. And we'll get into what those human rights abuses are in just a moment. But first, I do wanna just quickly clear up a common misconception that I myself had for the longest time about what Palantir does exactly, okay? Because there's this misconception that they spy on Americans. But that's actually not what's happening. In fact, our government spies on Americans collects data. In fact, so much data that our incompetent government is unable to organize it, sift through it, you get the picture. So they have contracted that process out to Palantir. Palantir is the one who has access to that data collected by the government. And the whole reason Palantir is working or has been contracted by our government is because they're the ones who help sift through that data, that mountain of data on Americans, okay? So it's erasing the friction that the government is experiencing with all that surveillance and data they collect but don't have the capacity to go through themselves. In other words, Palantir is enabling the government to surveillance citizens more efficiently, but Palantir isn't actually doing the surveillance themselves. Okay, now that we got that out of the way, let's get to the human rights abuses. So in its response to the shareholder proposal, Palantir defended its work with the United States government saying that they reject the false dichotomy presented by many tech companies that working with the military opposes human rights. To refuse to work with the US military would be a failure to recognize the military's role in defending democratic institutions and rules based order. Do we want to pause for laughter? What a joke. Okay, that is a myth. Okay, our country doesn't believe in the rules based order. If it did, it wouldn't be enabling genocide. It wouldn't be arming Israel to commit atrocities. We don't actually believe in the rules based order. We only pretend like we do when we want to go after a different foreign country that's doing something we don't like, right? The rules based order means a lot to the Americans when it comes to Russia's invasion of Ukraine. But when it comes to Israel's invasion of Southern Lebanon, what rules based order? What rules based order? No, no, it was Hezbollah. It's Hezbollah's fault. Okay, if you had the military of a foreign country occupying Texas right now, are you gonna tell me that Texans are just gonna stand there and take it? There'd be no resistance at all. All those gun toting Texans would just allow a foreign actor to invade our country and occupy it. I don't think so. I don't think so. But let me continue with more of what Palantir had to say here. This order, while imperfect, has been foundational to the protection of human rights worldwide. Still referring to the so-called rules based order, what a joke. And we assert that by engaging with the defense sector, we are positioned to help promote and support ethically defensible outcomes. You guys wanna profit off of government contracts funded by American taxpayers. That is what Palantir wants to do. Please, you can leave me with all this BS talk about rules based order and democracy and how you guys are doing this because you believe in doing the right thing. You guys are making money. That is what you're doing. We all know it. So don't lie to our faces about it. Now Palantir is making a lot of money off its government contracts. So Palantir's government revenue is expected to grow to $3.8 billion in 2026. And that number increased from just $2.4 billion a year ago. So what are we doing? And in its response to this shareholder proposal, Palantir also defended its work with ICE because of course they did. Which for the record has been a bipartisan collaboration. This is not just something that the Trump administration has done. This is something that both Democrats and Republicans have enabled. Palantir has worked with immigration and customs enforcement since the Obama administration. Notably in supporting investigations into transnational criminal organizations engaged in major criminal activity with a nexus to the border such as human smuggling and drug trafficking. And look, to be honest with you, as long as Palantir isn't committing human rights abuses in doing that. I don't have a problem if their focus is on transnational gangs that cause harm to the American people. I don't have a problem with Palantir working alongside our government to do something about that. But I do have a problem with a lot of what Palantir actually does. They say that our most recent contract with ICE, which began negotiation under the Biden administration reflects a continued commitment by Palantir to support the US government in its most central missions. But here's what I don't support. I don't support a private corporation, a company like Palantir sifting through data on American citizens, which is what our government has basically provided a contract to Palantir to do. Palantir also stood by its partnership with the IDF. That tells me everything I need to know about Palantir. They say our work in Israel predates the October 7th terror attack. How does that make that any better? I don't care. And they say that it's in line with our global support of US allies and liberal democracies. Again, pause for laughter, what a joke. So Palantir's CEO Alex Karp has publicly cheered on the worst excesses of American and Israeli military forces. So I get that they're trying to calm their investors, their shareholders down, because at the end of the day, that's the value of their stock. And they don't want these investors pulling out. But make no mistake about it, the human rights abuses are real and they've been enabled by our government. All right, we gotta take a quick break. We'll be [01:37:07] Speaker 11: So, let's go. [01:37:37] Speaker 2: What's up everyone, welcome to our social break. I'm gonna read a bunch of comments, but before I do, the show doesn't end at 8.30 PM Eastern tonight after our bonus episode. Because after our bonus episode, you can check out Happy Half Hour with Brett Ehrlich over at Twitch, that's twitch.tv/tyt to watch Happy Half Hour. It's a fun show, it's a great way to unwind. He's a great host who can help take your mind off of some of the devastating stuff happening in the country right now. So make sure you check that out twitch.tv.tyt. All right, let's go to our member comments. Actually, let me read some more Twitch comments since I feel like sometimes I neglect you guys and I don't do that on purpose. We just get fewer comments from Twitch. So we've got itchy brother dragon, milk, milk, lemonade around the tat oil is made. I don't know what that's a reference to, but okay. Bradshaw crew of one says 215 to 208, the House for the first time passes a bill to reign in Trump's war powers on Iran. The US House has voted to invoke the War Powers Act and order an end. I'm glad we moved from four minute breaks to two minute breaks because it solved all our problems. But sometimes I miss half of your comments because we run out of time. So Bradshaw, I'm gonna read your comment again. So Bradshaw is making a point about the fact that the House did pass the War Powers Act today, 215 to 208, meaning that they do wanna reign in Trump's war powers as it pertains to the war against Iran. And it was somewhat of a bipartisan rebuke. Look, it's good news. Obviously, we have to wait and see what happens in the Senate. And then, I don't know, I'm so black pilled. Even when something good happens, I'm like, okay, what's the catch? So let's just wait and see what happens. But I agree with you, it is good news. It's a good development, let's put it that way. All right, let's talk about George Santos because he's in the news again. You might be thinking, why? Who cares about that guy? He's not in Congress anymore, luckily. But there's been a lot of news about those betting markets that are regulated differently from plain old gambling, even though they shouldn't be. And there's a lot of insider trading happening, and this is an example of that. Let's get into it. George Santos is in the news again. In fact, he's facing an investigation for being a corrupt and dishonest hack. Again, it's amazing. So back in February, the former Republican lawmaker who merely served a single term and was expelled from Congress, took to X to say this. [01:41:05] Speaker 17: Do we have a- I'm going to be there for the State of the Union in the gallery, guys. Just chill, trolls, chill, okay? [01:41:15] Speaker 2: Okay, so he says he's gonna be at the State of the Union, who cares? Apparently, people were paying attention to that message. Now, Santos actually did not make it to the State of the Union. Bear with me. There's a point to all of this, I promise. So he posted the following the day of the event. Watching State of the Union from an airport TV was not part of the plan. FML, F my life basically, okay. So he thought he could make it, then it turns out he couldn't make it. Right, no big deal, except it is a big deal. Because it turns out, and the problem is that the prediction site Calci was fielding millions of dollars worth of bets on who would and would not attend the State of the Union. Now, that's a little bit of a problem when members of Congress who know whether or not they're gonna attend the State of the Union are also able to make bets on Calci. And Santos had covertly, but not covertly enough thankfully, placed bets that he would not appear after saying that he would appear. So gross. So according to NPR, three people familiar with the trade claimed that Santos misled the public and turned a profit based on that deception in the tens of thousands of dollars. The trades were reported to Calci, who actually, to their credit, decided to freeze Santos's account for insider trading, because that appears that's what happened here, right? So even Calci itself opened up their own investigation into Santos. But when asked by NPR about the investigations, Santos said it was, quote, news to me. I doubt that. I mean, look guys, he is a pathological liar. That is what got him in trouble in Congress in the first place. So why would anyone even ask him anything and trust that what he responds with is the truth? Obviously, it's not the truth. Excuse me, and when he was asked to confirm if he even had a Calci account, here's what George Santos said. I'm not saying yes, I'm not saying no. Okay. Obviously, he did the bet, and he engaged in insider trading on this betting platform. And it's just, we live in hell. So perhaps the most hilarious comment from this exchange with NPR was this. Santos went on to say the co-founder of Calci, Luana Lopez Lara, is a fellow Brazilian whom he personally knows. He said he would call her to get to the bottom of whether an investigation had been launched. But the person familiar with Calci's investigation said Santos, the son of Brazilian immigrants, does not know Lara, is a Brazilian American. This guy has a problem. There's something wrong with him. He cannot tell the truth. I remember when Piers Morgan would book him on his show. Why are you booking this guy on your show? How can you trust anything that comes out of his mouth? But this mistruth is decidedly on brand for Santos who was expelled from Congress when it was determined that his campaign centered around a number of let's be generous and say falsehoods. Because on the campaign trail, he claimed falsely the following. That his mother was working in the Trade Center during 9/11. That he was Jewish and his grandparents had survived the Holocaust. That he graduated in the top 1% of his college, none of which turned out to be true. And that did lead to federal probes into his campaign and resulted in numerous felonies being brought to light. So Santos was also charged with stealing money from his donors, money laundering, and 13 counts of wire fraud. Guy's a mess, total mess. And he was ultimately sentenced to seven years in federal prison, of which he served only four months because Trump loves criminals and commuted his sentence. Of course he did. So Trump justified his decision by saying the following on Truth Social, George Santos was somewhat of a rogue. But there are many rogues throughout our country that aren't forced to serve seven years in prison. Something tells me that Trump considers himself a bit of a rogue himself, right? I mean, he probably looks at a schemer, a scammer, a huckster, like George Santos and feels envy. I mean, he's a huckster himself. But I mean, George Santos' brazenness was pretty incredible. And to be fair, Trump is pretty brazen, certainly in his second term. He's as corrupt as can be and he doesn't care who knows it. The current batch of charges against Santos come as lawmakers grapple with how to properly regulate prediction markets, which I'm sure they'll fail to do for two different reasons. Number one, most of them are too old to even know what's going on. I'm just keeping it. Susan Collins really has no business running for reelection. She just doesn't. The woman is, I'm not trying to be cruel, but she is not doing well. You can see it. She's shaking all the time. She's much, much older than a member of Congress should be, especially when they have these health issues. But anyway, she decided to run for reelection and I just, I don't understand it. And so am I gonna trust someone like her to decide on the right regulations for these betting markets? I don't think so. And she's just one example, by the way. I don't mean to just target one person. Congress is littered with people who have no idea what's going on in tech, don't really care to do their jobs. And the second thing is, of course, these betting markets spend handsomely on political campaigns. So if they're big donors to these lawmakers, are we gonna trust that they're gonna come up with the right regulations? Lawmakers in Washington have been particularly concerned about how people with insider information could manipulate the markets and defraud other bettors. In April, federal prosecutors criminally charged a US Army Special Forces soldier accused of making more than $400,000 betting on the capture of Venezuelan leader, Nicolas Maduro. So Santos's case will be an interesting bellwether as to how that fight is going. I just wouldn't hold my breath. We'll see. Anyway, let's move on to, I'm gonna skip actually this next story because I wanna cover it with Cenk. I wanna talk with Cenk about what's going on with JD Vance and what we can expect in 2028 with the Republican side of the presidential election. For now, let's move on to H Block, if you don't mind, Alyssa. I wanna talk about what's happening with our national parks. So if the Trump administration couldn't get any slimier, or if you thought the Trump administration couldn't get any slimier, well, you're in for a treat. Because it turns out that the administration is apparently attempting to take over $90 million in revenue from our national parks and redirect that money to Trump's 4th of July celebration. Okay, I have no problem with the White House engaging in 4th of July celebrations. I welcome it, 4th of July is lit and people should have a good time. Redirecting money from our national parks, which at this point might be the only thing our government is doing right. For a 4th of July celebration to the tune of $90 million should enrage all of us. Our national parks, our state parks, our parks period, best part of the country, enjoyed by all Americans, right, left, young, old, doesn't matter. Our national parks make me love this country even more. Okay, I just, the idea of denying them $90 million, redirecting $90 million for a single 4th of July celebration is infuriating. But according to internal agency documents reviewed by the Washington Post, the Trump administration is diverting at least, at least $90 million from entry fees to national parks such as Yellowstone and Yosemite to DC. To fund a $1.6 million fireworks display, more than five times as much as what is usually spent on the 4th of July pyrotechnics display. Why is that? What's up with the inflation of costs there? Is someone pocketing some of that money? Really, you're gonna spend $1.6 million on fireworks? On fireworks? Dude, head over to Tijuana. Okay, you can probably get the same amount of fireworks for like $50. Like what are we doing? Anyway, there's more though. So again, more than five times as much as what is usually spent on the 4th of July pyrotechnics display and $76 million to repair fountains, fountains. Trump is such a bitch. And I mean that, I mean that in the actual literal definition of the word. Okay, like I've never met or seen a president who is so obsessed with interior design and freaking fountains, $76 million for fountains. So roughly 100 national parks representing a quarter of all of our national parks do in fact collect entry fees, as they should. Because most of that money is actually used to maintain the national parks and pay for the operations. So yeah, they collect a fee. The fee itself is not that expensive, but when you consider how many people visit our national parks, that money adds up. At least 20% though does go to a general fund that can go to expenses across the park system. So as of last month, at least $105 million in park fee revenue had been approved specifically for the DC area. Why? Because Trump wants fancier fountains. Only 27 million approved for all other purposes nationwide. So they might not even get that by the way. And according to a person familiar with the matter who spoke to the Washington Post on condition of anonymity. They say that agency leadership told park superintendents in one region of the country in April, that fee money would no longer be available to them because DC needed the funding due to budget constraints. Those officials offered no details on how the money would be spent. Okay, a note that senior agency officials sent to staff in April also said that parks should not expect any money from a contingency fund to cover unforeseen costs in order to cover the cost of the the nation's 250th anniversary and DC beautification. So why don't we get granular here? Why don't we take a look at exactly what the Trump administration is spending that money on, right? They're denying our national park system of $90 million, $90 million that they themselves collected in park entrance fees. Okay, what is he gonna use the money for? We already know he's gonna spend close to $2 million on freaking fireworks, but there's more than that. So let's take a look at this graph. So this graph or this map I should say is from the post and it actually outlines the various renovations or beautifications that the Trump administration is carrying out specifically in DC. Mostly for the US is 250th birthday. So this includes $13 million on repairs for Lafayette square fountain in front of the White House. $13 million to repair one or renovate one fountain. $5.7 million for the Simone Boulevard Memorial Fountain in front of the Interior Department. It costs $5.7 million, really? Come on, $47 million on other unnamed fountains on the National Mall? And $9.2 million to resurface the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool. Just leave our national parks alone, please. Is there anything, anything the federal government won't F up? I'm serious. Don't deny them the money they need for their operations and park maintenance. So you can renovate freaking fountains. And by the way, I don't have a problem with them renovating fountains. I don't believe that it costs this much to do it. I don't believe it. I don't believe it at all, at all. Obviously Americans, ouch to this. Frozen, Alyssa? I'm frozen. Okay, why don't we actually, yeah, let's move on. I'm not frozen anymore. So this is what's going on with our money. This is what the Trump administration is up to. This is what they're doing. Why don't we take a break, Alyssa? [01:55:26] Speaker ?: What's going on with our money? What's going on with our money? What's going on with our money? What's going on with our money? What's going on with our money? What's going on with our money? What's going on with our money? What's going on with our money? What's going on with our money? What's going on with our money? What's going on with our money? What's going on with our money? What's going on with our money? What's going on with our money? What's going on with our money? What's going on with our money? What's going on with our money? What's going on with our money? What's going on with our money? What's going on with our money? What's going on with our money? What's going on with our money? What's going on with our money? What's going on with our money? What's going on with our money? What's going on with our money? [01:56:26] Speaker 2: What's up everyone? Welcome back to the show. Apologies for that technical issue. Since we only have a few more minutes left for the main show before we head on over to the bonus episode for our members, let me just read some comments. Let's go to our member comments from YouTube. Thank you to CheesyFingers79 for gifting five TYT memberships. David Ryder says, Rubio said he never saw Trump fall asleep in a meeting. Why do they lie about these things? It's so unnecessary. We've all seen Trump asleep at the wheel, all of us. The guy's about to turn 80, of course, of course. Sometimes I'm watching a movie with my dad who's in his 80s. He falls asleep sitting up straight all the time. Why lie about that? Anyway, Lily's mom says, and I'm old enough to remember politics before Citizens United, back when right and left had to work together to get anything done. It was once and will be again, you are what the future must be. Lily's mom, thank you so much for saying that. It's been a very bumpy road with, I mean, there are people who are very much interested in keeping Americans divided. And I'm not just talking about powerful people. I'm also, which by the way, powerful people want the division more than anything. Of course, they benefit from the division. But people who have just been conditioned to believe that their tribe and defending their tribe is the most important thing in the world, and the other side is the enemy. No, the other side, and I'm just talking about ordinary Americans. They are not your enemy. If you're in the mindset of thinking half the country is your enemy, then we really don't have much hope for the future. We can't get anything done. We can't improve the country. We can't move toward progress. And I just don't think that's the right way to go about things. Let's go to Jonathan Boris Johnny, who says 100% Anna, 100% give us direction, lead the way. I think that was in regard to me calling on you guys to please, please call your lawmakers, your representatives, demand that they vote down that provision in the NDAA that would integrate Israel's military with our own. Shelly Irish says, that's why it's the poor and immigrants that end up having to enlist in the military. They don't get my son, I'll go back to Ireland. Girl, I don't know why you're not in Ireland right now. I'm just kidding, I'm just kidding. I will say the pushback against Israel and Ireland is so inspiring and enviable. I wish we had that here. Simon Moody says, if Scotland ever does separate from the UK, the unpicking of everything, military included, will be such a difficult nitpicky process. Israel now wanting to force that onto America in reverse. You are right about that, absolutely. Justice for all says, Vietnam was never declared a war. It seems like a similar scenario, obviously not as bad or will be, but could get messy. And that's in regard to Iran. I know this new age of special military operation, as Russia likes to call it with Ukraine, or the Trump administration denying that we have launched a war against Iran, when clearly that is what we have done. It's just stupid. And I think people are a lot smarter than our politicians give them credit for. All right, let's go to some more Twitch comments. FascistKilla says, the Palantir owner, Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and Oracle, they all look psychotic. They do, but God forbid you rub your hands in an effort to make one of them look like a villain. Because apparently rubbing hands is automatically an anti-Jewish trope. Was there any heat for Mr. Burns over at the Simpsons, who rubbed his hands together all the time when he was gonna do something shady, conniving, whatever? Anyway, whatever. Let's go to Nostra Skeptic. Sorry, I can't read your comment, because we're out of time. TYT.com/joinmembersonly is next.