Yeah

...

it was done in the Ministry of Truth, and the protagonist in that book's job was to, to take the old accounts of history and send them into an incinerator called the memory hole and replace them with new history.

So our press has, has failed us very, very badly for a very, very long time.

It's been, it's been co-opted by, uh, you know, by...

In fact, I, I have worked in your state, in Florida.

I was there during the perpetual, uh, election recount, uh, in the Bush versus Gore election, and I watched the national press corps, people you know from TV, people you know from their bylines in the major newspapers, stand around day after day after day, waiting for a handout from some government bureau or office so they could write their lead stories, when there were huge stories about what was going on in the background.

Right

deficit

just the deficit You could go to the U.S. Treasury website today and look at September 30th, 2025 and September 30th, 2026 and compare it because this is debt to the penny.

The national debt's computed to the penny every single day.

In 2025, it was here.

In 2026, one year later, 365 days later, it was 2.4%.

Five trillion dollars higher.

So the Congressional Budget Office says that the national deficit for the year gone by was two trillion.

And kind of map that out for us so that we understand.

[laughs]

... because I ...

There's nothing more important than these supply chains, and as you said, they're fragile, they're very delicate, and you got a blunderbuss in the White House that doesn't know what he's doing.

And I, you know ...

I'm trying to think of a good example in the tariffs, and the only one I followed in the first administration was, was, um, soybeans.

I don't know why I picked it, but I thought, "Well, I'll just track, you know, soybeans," 'cause, you know, uh, China has a lot of pork.

People like to eat pork in China.

Where is that line between realistic and optimistic? [laughs]

How's

economics doing lately? Oh, we're in deep trouble here.

We're very deep trouble.

I asked, you know, I asked Ron Paul years ago, I said, how will you know? Is there an indicator you have in mind for when the whole house of cards starts to tumble? And he says, he said, yeah, the best one I can think of is when, you know, foreigners begin to refuse to fund our debt.

That, he said, now things are getting into serious territory.

And of course, he was right, as he generally is.

So...

But maybe we're just further on that

How's

economics doing lately? Oh, we're in deep trouble here.

We're very deep trouble.

I asked, you know, I asked Ron Paul years ago, I said, how will you know? Is there an indicator you have in mind for when the whole house of cards starts to tumble? And he says, he said, yeah, the best one I can think of is when, you know, foreigners begin to refuse to fund our debt.

That, he said, now things are getting into serious territory.

And of course, he was right, as he generally is.

So...

But maybe we're just further on that

what made Iraq different for you? And did opposing that war change your relationship with broadcasting or with your audience?

Well, it was clearly an elective war, a war of choice.

It was sold to us on the basis of lies, flagrant, bald-faced lies.

virtually everything we were told about that war was a lie.

I mean, we were told, for example, that Saddam Hussein was, you know, thick in the process of weapons of mass destruction.

He had none.

We knew he had none.

How much of geopolitics do you think is ultimately psychology wearing a suit?

Okay.

And, um, you know, I actually, I didn't want to do it.

My wife didn't want me to do it.

None of my friends wanted me to do it.

My great libertarian friends said, don't do this.

But I thought, you know, I've been in the media all my life and there was a great opportunity that year that may not still persist, but all of the, uh, the TV talk shows at night, uh, they had big, huge panels of guests.

I remember sometimes on, on CNN at night, they'd have like six or eight people hashing out the issues and they had people from every perspective.

But basically

Do you think this is something that could end up driving Trump to escalate the war against Iran?

Well, anything, anything could unhinge him.

Virtually anything could unhinge him.

But this is the oldest thing in the book.

I mean, I remember George W. Bush saying, well, Iran tried to kill my daddy or something like that.

And of course the truth was, at least Seymour Hersh, who's got a pretty good reputation of uncovering these things, it wasn't – none of it was true.

Whoever it was supposedly was egging Bush on for a bigger, better war because his daddy had been threatened.

And so practically, you know, there's a question, could we even do this? But do you think Donald Trump would give the order to actually try to annihilate the Iranian society?

Do you think this is something that could end up driving Trump to escalate the war against Iran?

Well, anything, anything could unhinge him.

Virtually anything could unhinge him.

But this is the oldest thing in the book.

I mean, I remember George W. Bush saying, well, Iran tried to kill my daddy or something like that.

And, of course, the truth was, at least Seymour Hersh, who's got a pretty good reputation of uncovering these things, it wasn't – none of it was true.

Whoever it was supposedly was egging Bush on for a bigger, better war because his daddy had been threatened.

And so practically, you know, there's a question, could we even do this? But Do you think Donald Trump would give the order to actually try to annihilate the Iranian society?

And you identified it and were addressing it back then.

There were so many, and Empire of Lies isn't a history book, Caleb, but I sure recount some of the most important ones.

In fact, let me share one or two examples with you.

In fact, even going back to the first Gulf War, this one was really choice.

This is how clever these deep state operators are.

I mean, you know, they're nobody's fools.

They know how to push their agenda.

Well,

Yes.

And, uh, it took a, a few years for me to really understand.

You know, I have been on a book tour talking about my book, Empire of Lies: Fragments from the Memory Hole, and one of the surprising things that I hear...

I mean, you would think, [laughs] you would think out of all the, all the, uh, sloganisms and the reasons to actually go to war, it'd be something more substantial than this.

But I hear, I have heard m- many times from different people, "Well, you know, they, they call, they, they call us, uh, the great Satan, and they...

These are the people that have been chanting 'Death to America' for 47 years" And I go-

Sure

... is the role that the lapdog press plays in this thing, and there is a...

Mm-hmm

... that these empires in extremis, as they see their global hegemony or their control of, uh, places far and beyond their own borders, as they see their hold beginning to slip, they react to it, and they react to it typically violently.

But, you know, their hegemony that, such that they had, their dominance and stuff was the result of their economic might.

It was a result of their productive capacity.

It was through those of the work of the people and, uh, the wealth and the riches that they had produced.

That's what enabled the creation of the empire in the first place.

But when it starts to crack, as we're seeing now of the United States, the geniuses in Washington, the status, the deep state, the establishment, they react to it as though it is a threat to their military dominance.

Sure

... um, you know, they, they held 'em hostage that, but, uh, that, that was extended because of the, um, the Iran-Contra affair.

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Sure

Unbelievable admission.

admission.And I don't want the pe-- I have so many cases of this in the book.

I don't want people to think that the deep state is limited to these major actors like Allen Dulles, that was the head of the CIA and on the Warren Commission, oddly enough, even though he seems very evident to me that he had a hand in the assassination of Kennedy.

But you get guys like Clapper and Brennan that lied to Congress and stuff.

But people like to think, well, those are-- that's the deep state, and the deep state is limited to that.

Not so.

The deep state works all the way up and down the bureaucracy and all kinds of petty minor bureaucrats.

Right