America's TSA Meltdown

Welcome back to Powered Market Podcast.

I'm Rhime McMacon, Editor-in-Chief at the Mises Institute and with me today are two

of our contributing editors.

We have Tho Bishop and we have Connor O'Keefe and today we're going to take a break,

at least for the first part of the episode, even though the war is still very much in

the headlines.

We're going to talk about another topic that's probably making a lot of people annoyed

and angry and that's going to be airports and airport wait times and who could not

be shocked that the whole TSA thing didn't turn out to be just a boon for convenience and

happiness for America across the land.

So we'll talk about that a little bit just for starters and then we may need to get into

some war related issues after that.

But first though we've still got next month is coming up our San Diego Mises Circle, right?

Absolutely.

As California is decline, a warning to America, which will feature a great lineup, including

Ryan and Connor, we got both of them on the docket, our good friend Chris Coulton from the

Independent Institute is going to be there, Bill Anderson, always a fun time there.

Peter Klein, so that's always a good time and I'm personally, you know, no offense to

you guys.

I'm excited to see what Ed Fuller has cooked up his talk at AERC last year was a real

treat on Keynesianism and some of its peculiar biography there.

We also, of course, still in the year of Rothbard's, we've got Rothbard University May 14th,

who's in the California event, it should be noted, California event is April 25th in San

Diego, of course.

But also a Rothbard University is coming up on May 14th through the 16th.

You never got to experience the Mises you best week of the year event.

This is your opportunity to kind of live that as, you know, now you're a professional,

you're an adult.

You can't go hang out with the kids.

Rothbard University gives you the opportunity to have a taste of that experience.

We've got a great, great lineup of speakers for that, and that's May 14th through 16th

in Auburn, Alabama.

Have you guys heard about the Rothbard book being published during the year of Rothbard?

We've got the making of an Austrian economist, Marie and Rothbard, by Joe Solano and Patrick

Newman.

Very excited to have that be published later this year.

If you want to get your name in the book and be a patron, you could find out more about

that at the Mises.org homepage is at the bottom there, all the events that I mentioned

and many, many more.

We found, of course, at Mises.org slash events, that's everything I've got to plug.

Yeah.

This is a serious academic intellectual biography that's been in the work for years.

Yeah.

I'm excited for this.

Yeah.

It's going to be a much needed addition.

And most of us have read Enemy of the State by Justin Remondo, I think, an early biography

of Rothbard.

And that's, that's an easier read.

That's more about his life.

This is going to delve a lot more into his ideas in their development.

And it's, it's more complicated than he read human action and boom, he's an astronaut

economist.

There's a, there's been papers presented.

I've seen some, some previews of it about like some of the advances that he made.

It's, it's, I'm really sorry for this one.

Yeah.

For sure.

All right.

Well, something that Rothbard probably would have really enjoyed talking about is how

TSA is screwing everybody at the airport, at least at some airports.

So if you've been flying lately, especially you've been flying out of say Houston or Atlanta

or a couple of other, AERC this past week, right?

And I, I lived the horror because yes, I was, I was at the Austrian economic research

conference and the libertarian studies conference last year, the most controversial talk of

the weekend, the, your defensive classical liberalism on the greatness of the Italian and

the French radical liberals, the secessionist liberals, the realist liberals, yes, that's

a good talk.

Check it out.

It's a different page right now under the power and market tab.

But yes, so after all that happened, I had to fly back to Denver and I decided I was

going to wake up at 3am, Auburn time to get to the airport very, very early.

So I did that and you have to do that when you're in Auburn because you have to go over

a, you have to move into the eastern time from central time.

So I was going to lose an hour on the drive.

That's right.

It's essentially like waking up at 4am.

And so I get up, drive to the airport, I'm there.

I get into the security line at 6.50am and it's already wound all around the baggage

claim into the main area of the airport.

And so I just get in line and I wait in line for about four hours in order to make my

flight.

Fortunately, and part of the reason I just wasn't going to leave anything to chance.

I'm like, well, maybe I'll just sail right through because it'll be early in the morning.

Nope.

I got there and I finally made it to my gate at about, I don't know, 11-ish and they started

boarding at 11.30 for my flight, which was 12.15 or something like that.

So that was a long time.

Fortunately, I did not have to go to the bathroom while I was in, because I was by myself.

I didn't have anyone to hold my place in line.

And I deliberately did not eat or drink anything before getting into line.

So I'm the airport line at Atlanta, not necessarily the highest trust society here.

Watch my bags.

Yes.

And there were plenty of miserable people.

There are actually a lot of NCAA athletes in line trying to get home from various schools.

So I don't know.

There's much madness is going on right now, you know, you don't fall.

Oh, right.

Sometimes you do with sports and so I get it, I get in line and I finally make it.

And so I didn't have to change my flight or anything, but I knew tons of people who were

in line with me because they were, I overheard their conversations.

They're all changing their flights and then I talked to some other people coming back from

our conference who had to change their flights while they were in line realizing I'm never

going to make my flight.

And this apparently hasn't even changed in six days or so because now the headline on

NPR is, this is from yesterday, yeah, travelers are facing the longest TA weight, TSA weight

times in history and looking at oh, four, four hours or more at a lot of these airports.

The worst I've heard about is specifically Atlanta as well as Houston.

But there are some other less bad cases as well.

There are some airports like Denver, it doesn't seem to be a problem going on.

Well, yeah, it's longer than usual, but it's like 30 minutes instead of 15 or 10, as

it's usually the case.

So there's something very, very wrong at these particular airports.

In addition to how bad TSA is as an organization.

And so this is what you're stuck with American people.

And what most people don't realize is that this is supposed to be a fee based service.

Now the way a fee is supposed to work, you pay a fee, you get a service in return, right?

The government loves to sell things as fees.

Pay this fee so that, and this fee will go to something very specific.

That's usually how fees are sold.

You know where this is going.

This is a specific fee for a specific service that you will get in return.

But what the feds do is, the fee does not automatically go to the service that supposedly

pays for.

Paying this extra TSA fee that the Republicans gave us back in the wake of 9-11.

Remember, this is a George W. Bush Republicans creation.

Only 10 Republicans voted against it.

It was overwhelming support among Republicans to federalize airport security, hand it over

to the federal government and give the federal government control of all security rather

than letting the airports and the airlines do it.

So they did that.

But now rather than letting the fee just go straight to the service, no, no, it has to go

through the federal machine so that the only way you get your actual service that you

pay for no matter what is, if the, if the federal government then budgets it through their

usual budget making process, it's just the dumbest set up in the world, right?

You would think, oh, you pay a fee, pays for TSA, it's all right there.

Just, just do it.

Just direct the money to the people who do security.

No, no, it's got to go through Washington.

And so this is what you get.

Thank you, George W. Bush.

Thank you, federal government.

Thank you, people who said you have to centralize everything important because now this is

what you have.

And just imagine, at least I'm a relatively fit guy who I can stand for four hours.

Imagine being one of these older people, being a sick person.

Just it would be untenable.

You couldn't even do it at all.

And so thanks a lot.

That's, that's what's going on.

I don't know if you guys have heard any sorts of similar problems with it.

Well, it was talking to, you can go, Connor.

So that is kind of an interesting angle to all of this.

This is basically exactly what Josh Mahorter, one of our editors who's been on the show a number

of times.

And we co-wrote a paper and presented it at, I will see about what we called intervention

is non interventionism.

I talked a little bit about it on the last show, but it's sort of like what you're talking

about there.

Essentially, the government, it taxes everybody to pay for a service.

And then it's the government likes to, like decouple that as you were just talking about.

But then what we were kind of adding in is that they will also, in this, in TSA is a perfect

example of that, monopolize the service and prevent anybody else from, you know, coming

in and offering the service.

And then we were focusing on cases where then they deny the service that we called it paid

non delivery.

And this is, and an important note with all this, this is specifically happening because

of a partial shutdown.

The TSA agents aren't being paid, so they stop showing up to work.

I think like a third of agents are not showing up to work.

So there is a specific reason why this is happening.

Right now, interestingly, I was just chatting with Josh, and I guess Elon Musk offered to

pay the wages and the government said, no, they said, you're not allowed to do that.

So kind of the similar to the concept we were talking about.

But then, of course, ironically, after Josh and I present this paper, he had to fly back

to California where he is.

So they, I guess, got to the airport a little bit later than you will.

He found Jeff Degner, one of our fellows.

They happened to get in line around the same time.

So they at least had a bit of company, but they got in line at 750 and they did not get

through security until 1, 12 p.m., which is over five hours of waiting.

So it's good.

You showed up a little bit earlier because just waiting an hour added a lot of time, which

just sounds completely miserable waiting that long.

And of course, I believe he's going to be writing an article about his experience and

bring it kind of bringing in our concept because he was not ready to face the terrible

concept we were talking about so soon.

But I mean, I just can't imagine standing for five hours like that in line.

Both of them completely missed their flights.

They had to read book.

Of course, everybody's trying to read books.

So the app was down and then like it's getting to the point where they're like, can

I get through security if I have a boarding pass for a plane that already departed?

Like it was a very stressful thing and he's just like multiply that by how many I have

no idea how many people were trying to go through just on Sunday.

And that's one airport.

It's it's a complete and total mess and you know, reason 10,000 why we should just abolish

the TSA.

Yeah.

Someone else I was talking to from a A or C. I think they compared it to they got in

a little early and got out and they compared it to getting less the chopper out of Saigon.

It did have like a refugee camp like feel.

Of course, I've never actually been a refugee.

Yeah, but that was the vibe you get through like the TV when you see just people standing

in line not knowing what their fate is, right?

It actually did make me kind of thankful in a way that I wasn't an actual refugee.

Like just how unpleasant the situation was sort of highlighted how much worse life could

be, I suppose, in an odd way.

It really focused the mind in a way, but yeah, yeah, though, right.

Go on.

So yeah, Saigon.

1975.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Well, I do think it's remarkable though.

Like this explicit, I mean, I'm trying to think of this obvious explicit breakdown of,

you know, what has come to be seen as, you know, as unfortunate as it is as a government

function.

You know, this level of just complete breakdown of norms like this with such a visual impact.

And what I think is fascinating is the fact that this is a byproduct of, as you mentioned,

Connor, a lack of spinning for for DHA, DHS funds.

This is connected to battles over ice and, you know, the raids in Minnesota and all that

sort of stuff.

And the fact that like this level of discomfort, this is level of explicit breakdown is not

changing anything in DC is fascinating.

The fact that Republicans can't leverage like the Democrats being effectively kind of

that fault for this.

This goes into all the distractions of Iran and everything else is gone in there and

complete breakdown of the bully pulpit of the White House and its traditional form

here.

But it's, it's really just an incredible dynamic.

I hope, hopefully this will serve to help normalize rethinking about this entire process.

I mean, you know, it was cheered last year when you have to take her off your shoes anymore.

I do have to, you know, shout out to my boy, Ron DeSantis talked about like, why do we

have TSA at all?

So at least it's, you know, it's not just Thomas Massey out there talking about not just

Rand Paul making out that, unfortunately, governor's Florida.

I don't know how much he can do to push that anytime soon.

But hopefully this is, if, you know, maybe there's a silver lining here, a re-evaluation

of this entire process.

But, yeah, I'm just, it's, yeah, it's against still four hour wait times going that

in a airport.

Pretty, I'm glad I'm not doing any, I guess, we will be flying to Las Vegas and San Diego

in other places sometime soon, so hopefully we'll get this resolved in the next couple of

weeks.

Yeah, that's where we're going to fly through Montgomery or something and then driving

to San Diego.

I know we're like, we're going to an institute camper, take a big road trip, save some time,

cover the way.

So, sleep in the back.

Will I drive?

Yeah.

I mean, pretty grim, like Madden, John Madden, the NFL commentator guy who famously

wouldn't fly anywhere, he had this custom RV that he would fly or that he would drive

to all the games.

Yeah.

You need something like that.

Now, I just want to emphasize, right, the TSA has not improved airport safety.

There is no known case.

Right.

Yeah.

This is the soul.

Right.

And believe me, if the TSA had succeeded in thwarting terrorists, they would have publicized

it to the rafters, but it's never happened.

And the failure on 9-11 wasn't a TSA thing.

The big part of that was FAA policy was to submit to hijackers and to do what you're told.

That was FAA policy at the time.

And also there weren't the reinforced doors on the cockpits, which are now there.

That's what Ron Pollo, he said, he's like, there have been no takeovers of planes because

now we have these reinforced doors on the cockpits.

So the pilots aren't subjected to that, even if it did happen, but there hasn't even been

attempted since then, like box cutters, like they're going to take over a plane of hundreds

of people.

They were only able to do that because of FAA policy and flying planes into buildings.

And of course, everybody knows that's a possibility and that's so that's not going to happen.

And why can't airports have the usual screenings?

They did it successfully for a long time.

They say, oh, well, there used to be hijackers in the 70s and 80s.

Yeah.

And their new strategies were developed and you can use those now.

But again, TSA hasn't been shown to have prevented anything.

And so clearly it's not just how great they are at it.

It's like, and it was striking to me.

Like I kind of already knew this, but I wrote an article, the video version went pretty

viral last year about real ID and just going in and actually reading the 9-11 commission

report.

And it was just so explicitly not an airport screening issue that they, the hijackers

did not violate any of the rules.

They got that like with the weapons they use, the box cutters, they were allowed to have

blades under a certain measurement.

They all presented their IDs.

They didn't pretend to be anybody that they weren't like all the things that the TSA now

does.

None of it, like they can kind of feed this narrative that none of that happen existed.

And so 9-11 happened and they came in and like filled this void.

But no, they didn't actually violate any of the rules until they actually took the plane

over.

The rules were just so poorly written as you point out there.

Ryan, I just think that's an important point.

And then also, but I guess it kind of, it's been true since then, the national government,

the federal government's policy on this front has always been reactive.

It's all about after something happens, they then changed the rules.

So like taking the shoes off, which I guess is no longer a rule, I mean, I'm TSA pre-checked.

So I was unaware what the general plan was going through.

But that was because somebody tried to sneak something in their shoe.

And so after the fact, they then changed the rule for everybody else.

Same with, I guess it was in Europe where they tried to bring some liquid chemicals in

to make essentially a liquid bomb.

And so after that, the liquid rule comes in.

So it's never like preemptive.

It's so different than like if it was actually just like the system we advocate for where

the airlines, no, airline wants their plane to be hijacked or crashed or whatever.

So they would probably handle this.

It would probably be at the gate when you're actually like getting on the plane and it

would probably be way less intrusive and way more effective.

But we have the opposite right now and it's completely terrible.

And then of course, because it's all federally funded, it gets caught up in these funding

fights.

And a theory I have as to why, especially like Atlanta, the business airport in the world

by passenger volume, is especially bad is probably I think it's just the Washington

monument syndrome.

The TSA, the worst they can make this, the more pain it is, the more pressure there's

going to be to get their paychecks rolling again.

So yeah, I imagine they're not motivated to actually move fast and really handle the

issue.

The longer the lines are, the better it is for them probably in the long run.

That's also, there's the whole absurd, you guys see that Trump sent ICE to the airports.

It's like, what do they do?

Like I, I've seen some footage of them just walking around the airport.

There's some where they're like standing behind the TSA agents.

Like, what are they whispering?

Good job in their ear.

It doesn't make any sense like what because the whole issue is that the people that are

specifically like designated to do this process are not showing up to work as they're not

getting paid.

It's not like you can just send people in that are not like, I guess they can try to say

like, I don't know, like the ICE can like help with the, the bins or something, but I

mean, unless they're just going to say, hey, you know, you're effectively a TSA agent.

Now, I'm not seeing any indication that they're actually running like these X-ray machines

or anything like that.

So it's just a political stunt.

It does feel a lot like the DC National Guard take over.

We talked about last summer.

I think is when that was, it's hard to remember exactly where it's like, you just have,

like what Josh and I talked about, the government not providing the service that they monopolized.

And that's like the actual issue is that it's a government monopoly at the end of the

day.

Like that's the craziest thing that was like, okay, when I heard like I was listening in

ICE, like, okay, that's kind of an interesting fix in the short term, but like they can't

like for some reason to have it for bid, like how complicated it is to like, you know,

look at the monitors, like, oh, this thing isn't going off, like they can't actually do

that.

Like they prevent them from doing the screenings.

So they really are just therapy, yeah, ICE, ICE amplers, like the screenings which they

do.

Because I'm sure it's a fail during tests, right?

I'm sure that such a skill, I can, you know, I'm not trying to take shots at TSA agents

or whatever, like, you know, I'm sure many of them very fine people, but like, like,

you know, the idea that you can't quickly train a TSA agent like, but an ICE guy, like

I just, if you're actually in the finest, yeah, it's crazy.

Well, it just always remind you, it's a mixture of a couple of things, right?

It absolutely is the Washington Monument Syndrome, it's got to be, right?

Because of course, it's always those services that make your life slightly better or their

revocation makes your life worse for the common people that they always, gee, that's always

what the government shut down affects first.

Do you think the Pentagon is suffering?

You think like Raytheon has any dent to its overall earnings and revenues here?

No, of course not.

The people who are specifically supposed to get screwed here are ordinary people because,

you know, they don't matter.

And that's abundantly clear in American politics.

So there's that.

And then it's like you say the, the monopoly aspect, which extends far beyond just this,

right?

You have to pay fees for this thing and then they don't, they don't provide you the service

that you pay for.

We could point to so many other things like the federal courts, for example, where you

pay your whole life to fund the federal courts.

And then when you actually get in legal trouble, you can't get a timely trial.

And all that stuff about guaranteeing a timely trial and all that stuff in law, well, you

can forget about that because you'll wait forever for your federal court date because we all

hear about all the time about how the courts are overwhelmed, et cetera, et cetera.

And then they say, oh, well, you know, you just, you should pay more tax.

No, forget that you paid all this tax all these years.

You don't have a right to actually now taking advantage of these services that you paid

for.

And so that's just typical.

We have the state level to some extent.

I remember I used to work in the division of housing and I was just a research, but we

had, of course, it wasn't nearly as bad at the state level, but we had issues where there

were regulations that you had to pay a fee in order for the inspectors to come and inspect

the property and such.

And there were threats being made sometimes that, well, we can't provide the service because

of XYZ, but everybody already paid the fee for it.

Everybody was already paying for these inspections, which they were forced to submit to.

And then you would turn around and say, oh, well, we don't have the manpower, we don't

have the time to do that.

So this is just part for the course for government agencies.

And I mean, I don't expect anyone to remember.

They're just going to as soon as it ends, they'll just forget about it.

And yeah, we should federalize everything important.

That seems to be continually today, the American way of thinking is federalize everything

that's important.

And the conservatives clearly believe that that's why they want to federalize law enforcement

all the time.

And they want Trump to bring in troops to solve local problems.

Everything that's important should be federal.

So I don't, I don't see a solution to that any time to Americans have been very well trained

by public schools to regard the federal government as better and more competent than staying

local.

Well, that's that's kind of the nefarious nature of what Josh and I wrote about it.

There's kind of a Washington monument syndrome baked into any of this kind of service denial,

where like we talked about the police, like these blue cities where they will crack down

hard if you try to defend your own property or defend yourself.

But they'll, you know, decriminalize shoplifting up to $500 or something like that and basically

allow low level crime to happen.

The police will step back in the rational, I think, response from the public is we need

more police basically.

We need to, the government to spend even more money, but it's just the government denying

a service that they're preventing anybody else from coming in and offering.

So yeah.

And we, I bet Josh's article tomorrow probably explained the concept a lot better than

I can here on the fly, but we think it's a very common thing if you just look at what

it's a common way that the government basically screws us over.

And so people should definitely check that out.

I guess it will go up in the morning.

Many such cases.

Well, Tho probably has more direct knowledge of this.

Right.

Members of Congress have some sort of like special expedited deal through airport security.

Oh, yeah.

Well, it's great because I mean, you can even like as a staffer, you just flash your

badge.

Yeah.

So yeah, so that's who's running things, folks.

You don't matter if you don't work for the federal government.

All right.

Well, let's, let's move a little bit closer to the war issue.

Let's talk about Joe Kent, who resigned recently, federal law enforcement guy.

So I'll let you just really kind of introduce some of the details on the Kent case.

Yeah.

Well, Kent was kind of seen, I think, as his appointment in his position as, you know,

in the senior intelligence officials, you know, I've said rent for Congress twice was

unsuccessful, but those times, but he had decorated more veteran.

His wife was treacherily lost in the Syrian conflict, you know, and he publishes a letter

last week now, you know, he, you know, Iran's attack was, you know, there was no threat

of an imminent attack that he can, can't be a part of this effort that all of the internal

mechanisms to try to address this are, you know, are not functioning, and then directly

accuses Donald Trump of, in very explicit terms, his letter being influenced by Israeli

intelligence in the Israeli lobby, you know, in this conflict.

And I thought it was really interesting was his immediate interview with Tucker Carlson,

which was about two hours long.

I thought it was extremely well done from Kent's perspective, not only with the level of

detail in the, how considerate he was in trying to avoid speculating on things that he

could not, you know, personally vouch for to try to keep it, you know, aligned, if you

well, he doesn't try to not make it easy to attack in certain different ways, but it

was also very clear to me that the entire structure was to appeal to Trump in his own

way and supporters of Trump, where he wasn't saying, ah, Trump's a, Trump's crazy, whatever

he's like, you know, Trump has a good ability to consider, you know, complicated issues that

he uniquely is qualified to kind of put the Israelis in their place and, and, and to bring

about it in this war.

But in particular, his critique was that all of the internal intelligence from the White

House on this issue was that Iran was not a threat.

You know, he had talked about how Iran historically had been very rational actors in the way

that they escalated conflicts through a clear predictable, you know, escalatory ladder,

right?

So, you know, we, you know, bomb them with seven, you know, big bombs last time around,

they shoot seven missiles, right?

You know, there's a very clear calculated approach from their point of view.

You know, he was being accused of hypocrisy because he had made previous statements about

Iran's nuclear program, whatever, but none of that, you know, tweets from three years

ago, obviously, are not an indicator of a imminent threat right now.

Um, but his narrative is basically Trump is being that, that, that traditional intelligence

services, not that we're, they're biggest fans, but that their reports say that there

was no threat here.

We're being undermined by Trump getting briefings directly from Israeli intelligence from

Israeli politicians, thus the emphasis on that angle.

Um, he also, I, I, I, I want to admit, I did not listen to his interview on Mark Levin.

I'm not going to subject myself to that much Mark Levin voice, um, but I, I, I think

it's, you know, in this, in the immediate aftermath, aftermath, you know, he's being accused

of leaking classified intel, right, and wouldn't surprise me at all.

Like I, I fully expect that, you know, within the next six months, that, that, you know,

there might be criminal charges on joking, like that, that, that is, that is my forward

speculation here is that it would not surprise me at all.

There's some attempt to punish him for this particular act.

Um, and he might be like, you know, there's plenty of leaking that goes on, right?

People are, you know, there, there's not a clear standard on enforcement there.

So I'm not even trying to say that they're going to plant him for something he didn't

do, right?

Like I'm not even trying to go that far.

But I, I, it would not surprise me at all if there's some attempt to criminally charge

him.

And I think that's going to be a very interesting breaking point because when Kim was out,

there, there's a lot of people that are kind of giving Trump the benefit of that doubt

with an online mega orbit that are Kent fans for a variety of reasons.

Um, and so I thought that, that, that both that actually, I mean, I think it's the highest

ranking official to resign as a byproduct of a foreign conflict.

Um, and I mean, Tucker Carlson noted how like, you know, when, you know, during the,

they have gained withdrawal that they're the only person that criticized the way that

withdrawal happened, not withdrawal itself, but you know, it ended up in jail time.

Um, and that, you know, there's this long legacy of dissent being punished, even crennally,

um, by the regime.

Um, but so like it's, it's a historically important dynamic there, but I think that Ken

himself is a particularly sympathetic figure for a lot of the mega base, um, that are

trying to give Trump every minute of the doubt here.

And so I think this, this, this dynamic was very interesting.

And I thought his, his particular presentation with his desired audience and whatever, um,

was made that a very effective, a very interesting, listen to as a, as a particular piece of commentary

outside of what you could just gather alone by the letter itself.

And so like, that's why I wanted to bring that, that up because I think it was a very

interesting dynamic.

Um, and the way how, how fast news circles a week ago sounds feels like a month ago.

Now I can't believe those just last week.

Um, that's what also happens when you have a conference.

But, um, but I think it's a very interesting news item.

Yeah, I always feel kind of, I don't know, gross, when I end up, uh, relying on, I, on

the intelligence services to make the more reasonable argument and observations.

This was true during the Iraq war, right?

The, the intelligence agencies during the Iraq war kept coming back and saying, no, Saddam

had nothing to do with 9-11.

Iraq had nothing to do with 9-11.

And George W. Bush was just kept saying, nah, well, we'll figure out some way to do

it.

You know, make a connection there, right?

And, and it worked in the sense of he just straight up lied about, uh, not like in

so many words, it was just constantly the implication was that Saddam was somehow involved

in 9-11.

There were constant hints that Iraq was involved in 9-11 and then you ended up with something

like 40% of Americans believing that Iraq had something to do with 9-11.

There's still people out there who believe it, even though it's completely based on

no reality whatsoever.

Uh, and of course there were, then there was weapons of mass destruction, which the intelligence

agency said, and there's not really an evidence of that.

And George W. Bush demanded that Colin Powell go out before the UN and claim, oh, no, actually

there, here's our case for weapons of mass destruction.

Just as much of lies, uh, really bending the truth and sometimes just straight up lying,

uh, in terms of what intelligence information there was.

And so it, it makes me sad that sometimes I have to quote intelligence agencies, uh,

in order, uh, to, uh, to show that sometimes reasonable people do actually make the correct

observations in these cases.

And that seems to be here, uh, the case as well.

Again, I mean, it's so far from the truth, this idea that, uh, Iran presented any threat

to, of course, the territory of the United States, but wasn't even planning an attack

on US basis that this was a quote entirely, uh, a byproduct of US initiating attack at

the behest of the state of Israel, almost certainly, uh, against Iran.

And then they, they attacked in return.

And intelligence agencies, they've generally admitted that that was the reality that there

was no real threat.

Now of course it would, they've been cl, what Trump now claims as well as a 47 year old

war.

They, they've been threatening us because I think you made, I don't know if you brought

this up on like online or if you did it offline before, though, talking about how there

are still some people in a certain age group who are absolutely obsessed with the fact

that back in 1979, some Iranians said death to America or whatever.

So what you got are these like 80 year olds whose fee wings were hurt, uh, 50 years

ago.

And they, they can't believe that anybody would insult America so they concoct this complete

messed up nonsense about there being a 47 year war going on.

And that Iran poses some sort of threat to the United States.

Why?

Because they said they called America the great Satan in 1981 or something.

And this is apparently, it just addles the minds of some people.

And it's, and so that's, that seems to be working convincing some people that this was an

ongoing war.

Well, to be heard that, you know, Iran has been behind, you know, death of American soldiers

in Iraq, right?

You know, there's, there's, you know, there has been things that, that feed that narrative.

But like, but that, that, that's completely different from, you know, the, the mushroom

cloud over New York sort of narrative, I mean, let's, let's just be clear on the Iraq

case, right?

The United States invaded, let's say, Indonesia, um, some Malaysians shot some Americans

who were invading Malaysia and then we're supposed to act like Malaysia is a great threat

to the United States.

I mean, hey, here's a great way to not get shot.

Don't invade those foreign countries that I might note, by the way, that Herbert Spencer

and one of his essays called patriotism said, uh, if, hey, if our soldiers go across the

world to invade somebody else's country, I couldn't care less if they get shot.

So basically they were asking for it.

Um, and I mean, stay away.

And Iran isn't any threat to the United States, but that's not how we work.

Yeah.

Are you having anything?

Well, I was like, you know, there are, you know, just this, I think from the perspective,

you know, which I'll, you know, I get, you know, but, but again, I think it's particularly

a generational component.

I mean, I think Kent, in particular, was talking from his experience, you know, being

directly within that, that conflict, but I think it's definitely like the hostage situation,

right?

Yeah.

It's as much as, it's, there's the aspects, I think, unique to the Iranian revolution

that have, that it feeds this underlying view of the Iranian regime as a theocratic

and therefore irrational actor in the grand sense of things.

And I think if you, if you have that assumption that Iran is an irrational actor, then that

allows you to justify any sort of hypothetical, right?

And I think that is particularly true within a generation that saw the rise of the Iranian,

of the Iranian revolution.

But, you know, again, if you're, if you're looking at more contemporary history, again,

like you, you, there's all these examples of very rational, strategic behavior that,

that can outline their, like that's, that's where this generational aspect of this conflict,

I think, you know, goes into, as many such cases in American politics as a major fault,

as a factor in how you're perceiving this thing.

Yeah.

I definitely view it as the hostage crisis, I think, especially because that, you know,

I think that was not around that I have to study history, but the way that that seems

to capture the attention of the nation, like every night on the news following that.

And I just think there's sort of this American sense that if somebody does something bad,

and the, the good guys should punish them for that, and that hasn't really happened to

the Iranian regime, at least directly for that, from this kind of simplistic boomer narrative.

So I can see there being that kind of bias, you know, they, they did that and they deserved

something baked in there.

But what's so sort about this is that, this whole line that they've had a 47 year, they've

been at war with us for 47 years, the first time anybody started saying that was after

this operation kicked off, it's a brand like they would have been bringing that up constantly

beforehand.

It was so obviously a rationalization for a move that was already made.

And so it's just crazy that that's, I mean, I guess there, as we talked about, there

are a number of different ways they're trying to sell this.

That's kind of been the big aggressive one here.

It's not a war, but it is a war we're finishing a war that they started a long time ago, but

we didn't mention until we started bombing them.

It's, it's very absurd, but getting back to ending an endless war, ending an endless war,

yeah, like 17 times he's declared victory.

So he's ending it a lot.

They started a new war every time.

Yeah, over at night, they resurrected their nuclear progress, we got a bomb out again,

you know, what are you going to do?

Yeah.

There's the whole mowing the grass.

I think there's a radio Rothbard episode about that coming up tomorrow, but with the

Kent thing, I think what's interesting with him having watched a number of his interviews,

he did.

I didn't finish the Tucker one.

He did one with Scott Horton right after I did a good one with Saga from Breaking Points

to when he's done a number of them, but he is clearly taking the approach that if it's

essentially, he's not going to blame Trump directly.

He's going to, he's trying to give paint this narrative that Trump was misled by the

Israelis and that Trump can, he said it directly, Trump can completely shift on a dime and,

you know, the people his supporters will be behind them.

He's trying to essentially give Trump this, this bridge, this way out.

And I think that's kind of interesting.

There's speculation that there are other people involved that there's kind of this liver

of, I think what we would consider the best parts of MAGA, best parts of the administration

that are trying to essentially turn Trump against the Israelis through flattery, which

would be, I would not hate that.

Well, I think that's the important aspect of it is that any conclusion to this conflict

must have as a part of it from this perspective, a concrete reorganization of America's relationship

with Israel.

There's a possible different question, right?

But I think that is, that's the common drum beat of what Kent is trying to push is that

the only way to have a meaningful exit out of this particular conflict given that we

are now, it's not just an Iran issue, it's not just a Gulf States issue, but there has

to be something meaningful on that front as well to, to bring this to rest and help the

hope, yes, success and marketing that, that notion there, but I think, I think there

has been, it's interesting seeing so vividly within this political theater, that aspect

of it, being a consistent and deliberate aspect of that message and part of the larger

PR tour.

Yeah, so I understand why he's doing it.

I think it has merit, I obviously blame Trump a lot for this, he could have stopped it,

but I can understand how you, if you're really, like if you're in Kent's position and you're

really trying to get Trump to pivot, that would probably be the right way to do it.

I mean, if you look at, like he had another cabinet meeting today, the way to get Trump

to do what you want to do is to flatter him, like cartoonishly, that's what they just

sit around talking about how amazing is, it's not because they actually believe it, like

his cabinet, it's because that's a strategy, that's deliberate.

The problem, I think for Kent is that just looking at the field right now, I don't think

he can outflatter the Neocons and the Israel lobby and the Mark Levin's and the Ben Shapiro

calling him the most courageous commander in chief in military history for doing this.

Levin's saying that people are going to be talking about Trump for thousands of years

because of this.

There are these people in his ears just goosing him up and I just don't see Kent competing

with that.

So I'm not very hopeful.

So I understand the merit of it, but that said, like if you think back to an interesting

dynamic with this is like Levin and Shapiro and a lot of these people that are now his

biggest fans, the people we're supposed to think are Maga and have always been Maga

and get to define with Maga, they started out as like deliberate anti-Trumpers and

were very, very critical of all the comments Trump was making about foreign policy.

And Trump just seems to have this interest in turning his critics eventually into people

that adore him.

That's the only kind of interpretation I have for why he took like all of these figures,

even like Ruby, like all these people that were very much against him and now he's turned

them into his biggest public fans, but I guess from my perspective, and this is something

we've talked about on the show before, I think it is such a mistake for the people that

are kind of in kind of fans of Trump, but aren't really sure what he's doing to stay silent

when he's doing something that they don't like because essentially that's just seeding

all of the noise over to the Neocons and the people that are cheering for this.

And so I understand Kent specifically maybe taking this approach as he comes out of the

government and he's definitely connected with people that are still in the room, but

I just think it's just, I think that the people that don't want Trump to continue down

the road, he's on, need to stop this whole trust of plans, stay silent.

I think Trump needs to get a tremendous amount of pressure from the populace.

It's clear that the population in total is against this.

I would hope that people would get louder.

Trump base, of course, is just going to go along with whatever he does.

I'm not really talking about them.

I'm talking about people kind of on the edge of that world.

So I do understand the merits of Kent's approach individually, but I don't think people

should try to emulate him from the outside.

Well, that being said, the biggest source of pressure right now is gas prices.

Yeah.

And that's what I mean is like, yeah, I mean, those aspects of it, I think Trump's

loves gas prices or whatever it's the more I'm talking for it.

It's completely gone down.

I mean, Republicans are losing seats.

I mean, you know, it's home state house seat and down and down there right in my

Mar-a-Lago got flipped with in Florida elections.

Well, one silver lining.

I mean, let's talk about trusting the plan.

Lindsey Graham is now apparently underwater in favorability in South Carolina, you know.

So, yeah, see how that goes.

But the political fallout of this, particularly with, again, like no indensite to the domestic

economic consequences, the costs to people, you know, it's a lot of things are going

to start breaking.

Yeah.

What is with South Carolina?

They always keep re-electing these guys.

I always have a history of quirky politicians.

I mean, at this point, like if you admit to voting for Lindsey Graham, you should be

treated by like as a pedophile, basically, like it's just some radioactive creep who

shouldn't even be allowed to circulate and civilize society.

He had yet, he gets like a million votes every time he runs for office.

It's amazing.

Well, I'm, him, him, him making Ewa Gimo references to, to, to, yeah, to Carlisle and I mean,

like, you know, how many Americans died?

Yeah.

It's just saying we can do this.

We.

Yeah.

As if he's going to be leading, yeah, the, the first vote and there we have votes that

can land there.

It's disgusting.

The, that would be impossible today.

It is sort of like a beachhead landing like that would not work with a month of modern

technology, which is why it's so insane to try and invade Iran, imagining it like it's

1944 France or something like that.

Um, but I have some relevance for Taiwan later.

The, well, that's the reason Taiwan hasn't been invaded yet is so incredibly difficult to

pull off that sort of thing, even when you're, even when you're right next to it, right?

He tried his right next to Taiwan.

The US has this multi thousand mile supply chain that to get it to Iran because of course,

all US bases have been basically destroyed in the Gulf and evacuated, right?

And we're supposed to believe that they're going to be able to pull that off.

But it's, it's like I got to wait four hours just to fly out of the country.

But I mean, Trump doesn't know any of this, right?

It's back to, it's easy to flatter a person too when he's like a deeply, deeply ignorant

and emotional person.

And, and that's a big part of it too, right?

He's so ignorant about the larger world beyond the United States.

You could tell him basically anything.

Did you see the report?

Well, same or Hirsch came out and said that he's not reading his intelligence report.

But then there was, there was other, which doesn't surprise me.

I don't think he's read that most of the time he's been president.

But another report came out that he essentially just has the military compile like a two minute

video of the biggest strikes they, they did the day before and he just watches those.

And so his like, I mean, I, I'm sure he's getting a little bit more information.

But in terms of what he's seeking out, he's just like starting every day watching these

videos of these big strikes.

And then according to reports showing some confusion as to why the media is asking questions

about other things.

It's like, look, we're destroying so much.

We're totally winning this.

And yeah, like all these dynamics that we talk about and focus about how it's completely

impossible.

They're going to do an amphibious landing on car guidelines because they have to get

to the straight of hormones.

I can't imagine that that's a huge talking point in the, in the situation room with Trump.

I'm sure with people around him, they're kind of, you know, they have to be thinking about

those dynamics.

But he definitely does not seem interested in those incredibly important details here.

No, I didn't say and in addition to that, in addition to having no idea how the larger

world works or what it looks like, he also, it's easy to tap into his emotional side.

The fact that all he wants is these dopamine hits from these videos, assuming that the

story is true.

But it's certainly a plausible story, right?

It's easy to believe.

Then he falls for this stuff like, oh, the Iranians did this bad thing to us almost 50 years

ago and they have to be punished.

Even though virtually everyone involved with that and I, back then, what is now very old

or dead and what's the answer to that?

Oh, to bomb toddlers in downtown Tehran and to him that makes sense on some twisted

course.

A lot of America makes sense to kill civilians, to punish an entire country for something

the ruling regime did, but in his mind, it's, it's like that crazy stuff you hear about

usually from Eastern Europeans, where it's like, well, I will never be friends with you

because your ancestors are from a village that burned down my ancestors village in the

year 700 and there will never be peace between us ever.

And you're like crazy insane people think like this, but that's how the American foreign

policy elite knows that they can manipulate your average voter and certainly someone like

Trump as well.

Look, they wronged us generations ago.

And now we need to set things right.

It's crazy thing if for anyone who has any capability of like actual moral logic and thinking,

but most people don't have that.

So it's, it seems like, yeah, the, the out of balance universe has been set right by

killing women, a 20 year old woman on, on the street in some Iranian city because of

something some 80 year old, now 80 year old did to Americans back 40 something years ago.

So it seems that it's working.

All right.

We'll go ahead and wrap up then this episode of Powered Market podcast.

Thank you, everyone out there for listening.

Thank you, Connor.

Thank you, Phil.

We'll be back next time.

So we'll see you then.