Is Trump a neo-con now? Or conned by neo-cons? (06-18-2025--Hour2)

What's going on? Thank you so much for listening to this podcast. It is heard live every day from noon to three on WBT Radio in Charlotte. And if you want exclusive content like invitations to events, the weekly live stream, my daily show prep with all the links, become a patron, go to dpeakclendershow dot com, make sure you hit the subscribe button, get every episode for free, write to your smartphone or tablet, and again, thank you so much for your support. I will start with the question that I asked at the end of the last hour. Is Trump now suddenly a neocon? Is he being duped or deceived or conned by the neocons the neoconservatives? Is that what's going on here? Or is he making good on a goal that he has expressed for over a decade that Iran should not have nuclear weapons, cannot have nuclear weapons? So who is the leader of MAGA? Is it Trump? I would say yes, it's Trump, But apparently there are a lot of other people that think they are the leaders of MAGA now Marjorie Taylor Green, Tucker Carlson, I'm not really sure, like how they think they became the leaders of MAGA, but like the stuff that they're saying now about Trump and he's leading us into a forever war, which again I've not seen any evidence of that. I went over this the other day. David Hersani wrote the piece. You know, this conflict between Israel and Iran is not the Iraq War. It's not the same. You can't, you know, you can't keep looking at every single war that we just fought and say that's what the next war is going to look like. It's not. I mean, look at what's happening in Ukraine, like that war shifted. Now it's primarily drones. I mean they're using both sides or using drones. Like the. Tactics and the type of warfare has advanced beyond the Iraq War. The IDF says the Israeli defense for us to say, it's struck several weapons manufacturing facilities, including one used to produce raw materials and components for the assembly of surface to surface missiles, which the Iranian regime has fired and continues to fire towards the state of Israel. So they're blowing up the factories. I talked about this yesterday. We know the Israelis know where these factories are. They've been pumping out this ordinance and these delivery systems. For quite a while, they've been arming their proxies in the region, and Israel's had enough, and by the way, a lot of the other countries in the region have had enough. So they're why is Syria allowing Israel able to fly over their country. IDF spokesperson fi Defriend said on Wednesday, the IDF attack five Iranian combat helicopters that tried to harm their aircraft. They have complete air control air dominance the Israelis do. That's what like the mission of controlling the airspace that is complete, that's done. They have complete air superiority. Most of the projectiles fired from Iran towards northern and central Israel overnight were intercepted. No injuries or fatalities were reported. In addition, Iran launched over ten drones at the Galilee and the Golan on Wednesday morning, all of which the IDF intercepted. The Wall Street Journal reports, however, that Israel is running low on their arrow interceptors, which are used to shoot down long range ballistic missiles from Iran. Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatola Ali Kamenie wrote on Twitter, formerly known as that Iran, quote must give a strong response to the terrorist Zionist regime. We will show the Zionists no mercy, and then he evoked Kaibar, the site of a massacre of Jews by Muslims in the seventh century, along with an image of a man with a sword entering a burning castle. Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps claimed that it shot fatah I hypersonic missiles at Israel, which move faster than the speed of sound and cannot be detected by missile defense systems. However, there's no evidence on the ground in Israel of that actually being the case, which might indicate that the Iranians lie about this kind of stuff, in which case, then maybe you should bring that knowledge to the question of whether or not the Iranians are working on a nuclear bomb. The Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar wrote a letter updating the UN Security Council on their operation Rising Lion against Iran, and noted the Islamic republics public threats to eliminate the State of Israel in stark violation of the UN Charter and its continued attempts to achieve the means to accomplish this by rapidly developing military nuclear capabilities as well as its ballistic missile program. He pointed out that the International Atomic Energy Agency censured Iran in a recent Board of Governor's decision for its non compliance with the Non Proliferation Treaty? Did you know about that? Iran Supreme leader rejected US calls for surrender in the face of blistering Israeli strikes and warned that any military involvement by the Americans would cause irreparable damage to them. This is from the Washington Times, and apparently Donald Trump responded to the IATOLA companee's defiance by saying, quote, good luck. The remarks from the IATOLA has only who has only been seen once since the strikes began came after Trump demanded unconditional surrender in a social media post and warned company that the US knows where he is, but it has no plans to kill him, at least not for now. Trump initially distanced himself from israel surprise attack on Friday, but in recent days has hinted at greater American involvement, saying he wants something much bigger than a ceasefire. Right. He wants the nuclear program dismantled. That would be bigger than a ceasefire. That's what he has been arguing for and demanding for over a decade. And Iran, like, you don't have to think in terms on this with Donald Trump. You don't have to think in terms of do I take him literally, not seriously whatever, No, it's all the same. He has been consistently clear, which I am as shocked as you are that I am saying these very words about Donald Trump. But he has been consistently clear. Iran cannot have a nuclear bomb. An Iranian official has warned the US intervention would risk all out war. Again, we're not really sure what that means. Iran doesn't have any allies that it's that they are rallying to their cause here except the Hooties. Foreign Ministry spokesman Smo Bagi did not elaborate, but thousands of American troops are based in nearby countries within range of Iran's weapons. The US has threatened a massive response to any attack. Another Iranian official said the country would keep enriching uranium for peaceful purposes, apparently ruling out Trump's demands that Iran give up its disputed nuclear program. So they're not going to stop, even under the barrage of the Israeli air strikes and the targeted assassinations of their entire military leadership, and like every nuclear scientist in every zip code, Like whether do they use zip codes over there, I don't know. But despite all of that, they're like, we're still going to enrich for peaceful purposes. Guys, you already hit the three percent enrichment level. You don't need ninety percent enrichment unless you're trying to build the bomb. The Israeli military says it's also carried out strikes in western Iran, hitting missile storage sites and a loaded missile launcher. This is one of the issues for the Iranians is that every time they launch missiles, now Israel knows where they're launching from, and then they blow up those sites. Iran has fired some four hundred missiles and hundreds of drones in retaliatory strikes that have killed at least twenty four people in Israel and wounded hundreds more. Iran has fired fewer missiles as the conflict has worn on, though it has not explained the decline, But then again, there isn't really anybody to speak on behalf of the military at this point, so Israel's targeted launchers and other infrastructure related to the missiles. Iran has insisted its nuclear program was peaceful, though it is the only the only nuclear armed, sorry, the only non nuclear armed state to enrich uranium up to sixty percent, and that is a short technical step away from the weapons grade levels of ninety percent. US intelligence agencies have said they did not believe Iran was actively pursuing the bomb, which I would submit is patently absurd. And for all the magaworld people who recognize the bureaucratic state, the deep state, right, these people, this fifth column inside the government that hates Trump. Is it any wonder why the intelligence community that was weaponized against Trump before? Do you do you have any doubts that maybe they may be saying this in order to hamstring Trump. I don't trust it. I don't trust it because again, to me, the smoking gun is the fact that you've enriched to sixty percent, and you've built far dough, you know, ninety meters deep in a mountain, and you're spinning centrifuges like crazy in order to get up to the ninety percent level. Oh and the IAEA just called you out, all right. If you're listening to this show, you know I try to keep up with all sorts of current events, and I know you do too. And you've probably heard me say get your news from multiple sources. Why Well, because it's how you detect media bias, which is why I've been so impressed with ground News. It's an app and it's a website and it combines news from around the world in one place so you can compare coverage and verify information. You can check it out at check dot ground, dot news, slash pete. I put the link in the podcast description too. I started using ground News a few months ago and more recently Chows to work with them as an affiliate because it lets me see clearly how stories get covered and by whom. The blind spot feature shows you which stories get ignored by the left and the right. See for yourself. Check dot ground, dot news, slash pete. Subscribe through that link and you'll get fifteen percent off any subscription. I use the Vantage plan to get unlimited access to every feature. Your subscription then not only helps my podcast, but it also supports ground News as they make the media landscape more transparent. On the maga right, the woke right. They are all in a frenzy over this because Trump is doing what he has said he would do. He's backing Israel as they attempt to achieve a goal that he has expressed for over a decade, which is that Iran cannot be allowed to have a nuke. So here's one such example by John Daniel Davidson at the Federalist dot com. Remember all the infamous one liners from the Global War on Terror or the GWOT, or as I call it, the GUAT in the years after nine to eleven, when the Neocon establishment in Washington was pushing ahead with its disastrous wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. They were everywhere, it's a slam dunk case. We have to fight them over there, so we don't have to fight them over here. We'll be greeted as liberators. Islam is a religion of peace. Either you're with us or you're with the terrorists. God has planted in the heart, in every heart, the desire to live in freedom. You'd think that after Iraq and Afghanistan this kind of rhetoric would be totally discredited, but you'd be wrong. Over the past few days. Almost since the moment Israel began bombing Iran, we've seen the reappearance of almost all the old GWAT rhetoric then as now. The purpose is to justify a US military adventure abroad and gaslight the American people into supporting regime change in Iran. That's not what Trump is doing. Maybe he does, maybe he does, but that's not what he has been doing. All he's been doing right now is telling Iran, we offered you a deal, we gave you sixty days to negotiate, you should have taken the deal, and we stand with Israel. So far, that's been about it. For those keeping track. We have been hearing about Iran's impending nuclear weapon for at least twenty years. Tehran, we're told, is always just months or weeks away from having deployable nukes. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Nintanyawho warned that Iran was getting extremely close to a nuclear weapon in nineteen ninety six, and that is true. That's absolutely true. Yah who's been warning about this for decades, and he's been correct. See, Israel has been carrying out covert campaigns for decades to cripple Iran's nuclear ambitions. In twenty ten, for example, a nuclear physicist Masud Ali Mohammadi, stepped out of his Tehran home, a parked motorcycle exploded via remote detonation, killing him instantly. Masad did that. Majid Shahari Rari rere something same year, Masad agents on motorcycles attached to a magnet bomb to Majid Sharai Arari's car door in Tehran. It detonated seconds later, killing him. The head of the uranium Enrichment Division, Abbasi Devani, narrowly survived a similar attack same year twenty ten. Over the course of like two years, remember Operation Olympic Games, Israel, along with US cooperation, deployed the stuxnet virus into the Natan's nuclear facility. Over one thousand centrifuges were destroyed when they began spinning out of control and it was set back. Their enrichment program was set back years. Supply chain sabotage this has been going on for decades, Okay. Massad agents systematically sabotage Iran's nuclear supply chains in Europe, Asia and the Middle East, covertly insulting, inserting faulty components into critical nuclear equipment. Machines break unpredictably that delays progress. They assassinated Imad Mugininia something in two thousand and eight. He was Hesbala's military commander. A Kei Iranian ally carbomb in Damascus. Hassan Tehrani. Muggadam Iran's father of missiles, they called him. He was a general massive explosion at a missile base near Tehran, an operation widely attributed to Massad, and it destroyed vital Iranian missile infrastructure. Way back in nineteen fifty six, Mustafa Hafez he was the intel chief of Egypt. He was assassinated in Gaza by an Israeli made explosive hidden inside a hollowed out book. Twenty twelve, Mustafa Amadi Rashan, deputy director of the Natan's nuclear facility, killed by another magnet bomb attached to his car. Twenty eighteen, Iran's nuclear archive heist. In a daring mission, Massade stole over fifty five thousand pages of Iran's secret nuclear archives from a heavily guarded Tehran warehouse, exposing the regime's nuclear ambitions and humiliating Iran's security apparatus on the world stage. It's only for peaceful purposes, you see. That's why we have fifty five thousand pages of how to build the bomb, right. Israel has been doing this for decades, and so they keep warning, hey, guys, Iran is trying to make a bomb. They're getting close to being able to do it. The world does nothing, and so then Masag goes in and takes out some people, sabotages some stuff, and delays the Iranian progress, and Israel has finally just said, you know what, enough's enough. We're taking this crap out right Now, here's a great idea. How about making an escape to a really special and secluded getaway in western North Carolina. Just a quick drive up the mountain and Cabins of Ashville is your connection. 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Call or text eight two eight three six seven seventy sixty eight or check out all there is to offer at Cabins Offashville dot com and make memories that'll last a lifetime. Let's get to the phones here and get done on. Hello, Don, Welcome to the shoe. Hey Pete, appreciate you, and you're on a commentary real quick? And I might be mistaken. Didn't we send four hundred and thirty million in cash money to Iran to squelch their nuclear program? Or am I mistaken? I think we've sent them. I think we sent them more. We gave them a payout and then we unfroze their assets and delivered them to them. That was part of the Obama agreement. Yeah, it was over like a billion. I wonder how much money. How much of that Obama got back. I don't trust any of them up there anymore. Almost well, I think I think they probably just plowed that money into their nuclear program. That's what I would suspect. Yeah, real simple. I appreciate your response. You kind of saw my riddle for me, and I'll I'll continue to listen. Hi, you two, don I appreciate the call. Good to hear from you. Let me go over and chat with Richard. Hello, Richard, welcome to the show. Hey, hey, good, Yeah, this. Is the same I ran that killed our guys in Iraq. Did a number one state sponsor of terror? They fun hamas Hezbolah. The jutis uh, they're gonna get a nuclear bomb. It's like, should we take all his law in nineteen thirty eight before he starts, what is the debate? We're the only ones that could drop that bomb to get underneath the ground to put this to bed. So I mean, yeah, so if you're asking what the debate is about it. Well, Number one, you've got you know, Democrats, and when while they used to be anti Iran getting the nuke, now that Donald Trump is doing it, and layer into that the rise of anti Semitism in their ranks, So Israel is bad. So I think you've got those two things that are animating the Democrats side of the aisle, except for John Fetterman. John Fetterman's like take them out right. He's the only one that I have seen that's been like, yes, let us take the take the chains off Israel. Let him do whatever they're gonna do. Right. What brings us, what brings us to another problem is that we are so sick in this in our own country that we can even agree upon We can't agree with throwing people out who are criminals, and we can't even agree about this threat that is nuclear and we have this is probably the best opportunity I don't know that we've had in twenty five years to get rid of the Ayatola and take care of their nuclear threat and end this once and for all. So well, I don't know if we end it once and for all, because you never know what comes after right if if the if the regime collapses. We don't know what comes next, but I would be opposed to us trying to force anything on them. If whatever happens is happens, that's like, that's on Iran and you know, keep it like, I don't care if the call. I would prefer the Komeni and the regime collapse, absolutely because they're awful people and their regime is tyrannical and murderous. So yes, I would prefer that they be gone. But that's not on that, that's not on me to force some other form of government into Iran, right all. I don't want boots on the ground, right, a thing like that. No, I want the Iranian people to have the opportunity to overthrow these cycles. But I think we can soften it up a little bit where the right Iranian people can take care of business or even Israel. Yeah maybe, yeah, maybe. So the Persians have a long history and they were very technologically advanced and cultured people before the revolution in seventy nine, So yeah, that may that may happen. Remember, during Obama's term, the people rose up against the Ayatola and the regime, and Obama just let them twist in the wind, gave them no support and they got crushed. So now maybe there's a better opportunity for those people to rise up again, and maybe they're successful. But again, that's to me a second thing. It's not even the primary objective. The primary objective is to destroy their nuclear capabilities so they don't threaten US or Israel or any other country for that matter. That's the key. The icing on the cake is that these guys get taken out and they stop their terrorist campaign against US in Israel. That would be the icing on the cake. I guess yeah, we shall say, Richard, I appreciate the call. Man. Let me read some tweets here. I've got their peak tweets. As I say, Eric says, there's a lot of people allegedly on the right who seem very upset that Donald Trump is not intervening to stop Israel from raising Iran's nuclear facilities and deleting their terrorist leaders from this timeline. Yeah, that's the thing, Like Trump isn't even really doing anything except letting Israel do what it is doing. But there's this that somehow or another, we need to restrain Israel. We have to keep going and saying Oh, Israel don't do this. Oh we're afraid of wider conflict. Oh, we're afraid of this, afraid of that. And I don't know. I mean, I kind of feel like at this point Israel seems to be pretty capable of taking out a whole bunch of threats, right so, and that's in their national interest. They make that determination. There is real first, we're America first, and right now the goals are aligned. I have no problem with it. Karen says, I don't understand why people can't believe. Oh wait, I already read that one. Sorry, this is from ec who says, I think the Arab trip sealed the deal. They are all done with it. In other words, the Trump administration A seven forty six was donated to stop it. This was from the Qataris, which I haven't even gotten into, like cutter and like their influence operation and stuff like those guys are bad news and people keep taking money from them and they're yeah, I'm I don't understand it. I don't understand why people on the right especially have this blind spot for the Katari's and their influence operations, but they try to donate the plane. Right, people need to think a little harder. This is the opportunity to stop them for good. Look I heard the clip also in the bottom of the hour newscast, Lindsey Graham is like, you know, rare in to go And I am not in the Lindsey Graham camp. Okay. I don't like the fact that Lindsey Graham has never seen a war. He doesn't want to send other people to die in. I don't like that. Okay, I'm not on board with that. Whatever he's advocating for, escalation, more involvement, whatever I oppose. All I'm saying is let Israel do it what it's doing. Let them do it, and if they ask us for a bunker buster, I think we should give it to them because it achieves our goal. All right, So spring is here a time of renewal and celebrations. You've got graduations, weddings, anniversaries and the special days for mom and dad. Your family's making memories that are going to last a lifetime. But let me ask you, are all of those treasured moments from days gone by? Are they hidden away on old VCR tapes, eight millimeter films, photos slides? Are they preserved because over time, these precious memories can fade and deteriorate, losing the magic of yesterday. At Creative Video, they help you protect what matters most. Their expert team digitizes your cherished family moments and transfers them onto a USB drive, freezing them in time so they can be enjoyed for generations to come. 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Welcome to the program. Hello Margaret, I hello, Hi. Can you hear me? I can? Yeah, Okay. I called because I saw an article from one of the descendants of the Old Shaw of the Iran and he's willing to go back in as ruler, and he asks his people to be ready to move. Yes. Now, the problem with this guy is that he hasn't been in the country for like forty something years. He like, and that's the monarchy. It's a return to a monarchy or whatever. So and we mentioned this a little bit yesterday. But like, if that's what the Iranian people want, if they're going to rally around this guy and bring him back and restore the monarchy or whatever, if that's what they want to do, more power to him. Like I don't, it doesn't matter to me. What do you think? Well, given what the Shaw himself did, because I was around at the time when he was kicked out, I'm that old. He was a good ruler. The women had freedom, they were educated, they could dress western if they wanted to, the country was not a bad country, but apparently the CIA thought it was because they're the ones that costed them out. Well that I'd read something about that, like that's the what was the guy's name, uh Mozadique. I think he had turned like they had told him to leave and he refused, and that's what and that's what led to the collapse and that's what the CIA helped with or something. I remember seeing a report about that the other day, and I did not read it through because again, like that's you know, that's seventy years ago, sixty years ago, whatever it was. And uh yeah, like I and I don't support us deposing people like that. It's not like it's not that's it's not my country, right, And if the people want this guy to come back in and to try to be a unifying figure, I think a caller yesterday suggested that he could come in and then be just a transitional figure and then you know, do something else afterwards or not whatever. Like I'm I'm not like I think we should all be, you know, of the mind here that we are not. We are not very good at at setting up you know, society, altering government forms of government for these Middle Eastern countries. Let them decide for themselves. I agree with that. I think it'd be better if we stayed out of all of that stuff. But from what we can see now, that was a really big mistake to get rid of the Shaws or yeah, way back when says look what we got? Well and uh yeah, and I remember reading a story years ago about Carter the opportunity to stop the plane with the Ayahtola that was headed for Iran, and and he didn't, And this is what we got, you know. So look, I mean, people make mistakes in foreign policy and these types of geopolitical events all the time, right, and we shall see, So, Margaret, I appreciate the call. Thank you, all right, take care. One last piece here from this Federalist write up by John Daniel Davidson, and he said, after Israel quote internationalizes the problem of a decapitated Iran, American troops will be the ones expected to impose order and rebuild the country. And everyone knows it. And I actually don't know that. I don't know that to be true. That's just speculation on his part. Now that being said, it's good to have these voices and to have this debate. I'm not trying to shut down. He talks about all the neo cons accuse us of being unpatriotic or paid off by a foreign government. I don't accuse anybody of doing that. I'm not accusing anybody of not being a patriot or whatever. We just had different ideas and different opinions about the matter. So it is important to have the debate now, and it's important for people to express opinions and to warn what they fear could happen, because it sends a message about what the public will support and won't support. And the American public is not going to support boots on the ground in Iran. And here's the thing, I believe Trump knows that. All Right, that'll do it for this episode. Thank you so much for listening. I could not do the show without your support and the support of the businesses that advertise on the podcast, So if you'd like, please support them too and tell them you heard it here. You can also become a patron at my Patreon page or go to thepetekaalanershow dot com. Again, thank you so much for listening, and don't break anything while I'm gone,