How much of a hyperbole is that or

I don't think it's hyperbolic at all.

I think the evidence is already out there with the number of operations we've run.

I think we're running into very concrete strategic limitations that have nothing to do with the people who are running the show, where if you take a look at the Gulf right now, I would rule out to just go like point for point for the things you brought up.

The prospect of tactical nuke or a low yield nuke, Very much worries me because it doesn't require the exposure of personnel.

They could pull that off with very limited exposure.

Mother of all bombs will never drop that.

But I just wonder, you talked a lot about Trump in your podcast, and I I just wonder how much you feel like he is this, you know, hard aberration that we're stuck with, or is he more the consequence of the political system that's failed to meet the needs the people for so long

Israel, Turkey, who knows?

Yeah.

No, those are all interesting points.

I mean, I'll go back to the first thing you said.

Is he an NPC? I mean, there's a great saying that no matter who you vote for, you get John McCain.

And ain't that the truth? Where...

If you run this all the way back to George Bush, the second George Bush, we have elected people continuously on a platform of non-intervention.

I mean,

Uh, this is the 250-foot tall Triumphal March, what? To guard a cemetery?

Yeah.

Well, oh, so this is, this is two pieces here.

Um, you know, it's, uh, kinda comically, um, I played a lot of Command & Conquer back in the day when I was a kid, um, and this appears to be some sort of, like, would've been a fantastic weapon for a video game.

Um, but, and that's kinda where the president's head's at.

It's like a kid.

Uh, veterans particular, we don't want this monument.

Why ban reporters from the White House? Why make a government decision based on the content of someone else's speech when the First Amendment has been interpreted for 100 years to prohibit that?

really did not prepare and have a coherent strategy for this conflict?

No, you're not wrong at all.

And also, it's kind of a trip to see two people I know up there, one including myself and my dad.

But no, you're you're right on the money, Kyle.

And this is a this was I don't agree with the war, but.

When you go to war, you should go to war covering all of your contingencies and be prepared to win.

And what the good senator slash my dad was talking about was two things.

So, Jim, I'm wondering, from your information, what is the condition aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln?

Has the US achieved any of them?

No, not at all.

Um, and it's hard to quantify exactly what the objective is here.

I mean, you can peel back the onion a little bit and kind of see what it is.

Uh, based off the initial strike in Iran when we took out the Ayatollah and any number of key leaders in the regime, it was to collapse the regime on itself and change it and effectively balkanize Iran itself, much like we balkanized Iraq to a large degree because it benefits Israel.

And when you have Marco Rubio and Speaker of the House Johnson echoing the exact same thing, uh, in terms of objectives, it becomes very, very clear and a- as to what that is.

And I don't know if you saw, I'm sure you did, the, uh, Wall Street Journal article yesterday, which laid out the concerns of any number of people in the administration to include JD Vance.

What, what, what are these, um, tactical or low yield nuclear weapons? Is this something you shoot from your shoulder?

No, you're not wrong at all.

And also, it's kind of a trip to see two people I know up there, one including myself, one my dad.

But no, you're you're right on the money, Kyle.

And this is a this was I don't agree with the war, but.

When you go to war, you should go to war covering all of your contingencies and be prepared to win.

And what the good senator slash my dad was talking about was two things.

One is any military operation you run, and I was in the Marine Corps as an infantryman, the first thing you establish is the end state.

So, Jim, I'm wondering, from your information, what is the condition aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln?

Mm-hmm

... just to wa- watch what he said.

Um, and I mean, yeah, let me...

When, uh, when, when you did the, the intro on, you know, the tactics and whatever, w- we, we have missed something in this Iran, Iran war, s- such as it is, uh, that people, uh, totally missed.

Uh, and at, at, at least at the outset, you know? And that is you, you don't start with tactics, you know, you start with strategy.

And you, when you have a strategy, you, you're, you're, you have to have an endpoint that you're working toward.

And then you look at your people, and you can say...

Yes.

But before, uh, we get there to your general views o- on Iran, why do you suppose President Trump, after threatening, uh, in the middle of last week to visit the gates of hell on the Iranian people, uh, decided not only not to ramp up the attacks, but to dial them back completely over the weekend?

I think it's pretty simple, Judge.

There's, uh, there's two f- well, I would say there's three factors to this.

One is this consistent loop we have now established where whenever the markets get set to open, he brings the pressure off in order to appease them, and there's a through line in there where a tremendous amount of people in and around this administration are making a ton of money off it.

That's, uh, that's point number one.

It's kinda cynical.

But point number two is, you know, you can point to that New York Times piece over the weekend, which, uh, illustrated a lot of the goings on inside the White House, which was backed up by Tim Walz, uh, o- on the, uh, or Ambassador Walz, uh, over the weekend on Meet the Press, where we're running low on the munitions to prosecute this war, and that is something that has been kinda readily apparent to those of us in and around the military.

Should the Pen- in Venegont- the Pentagon be trusted to investigate itself? How does it do the investigations, and what happened here?

Sure.

Uh, we have probably the most highly trained and capable, uh, Marines and soldiers on the planet.

Um, but the problem when it comes to invading a place like Iran is mostly it's, it's very much on the logistics side.

It's like, okay, I, I f- I keep hearing that we're gonna put guys in Khasham or Kharg or seize limited objectives on the coast, and I have no doubt that if we inserted them, they would be able to achieve their initial objective, which is to hold terrain.

But the problem comes when you ask them to sit there and hold it, and this is a, uh, this is an issue as, as old as warfare itself because once you stop moving, you become a static target.

And in this particular environment, you're looking at, uh, logistical lines that are incredibly long.

Um, all of our bases, which usually support these types of operations in the region, in Kuwait and Qatar, um, I mean, probably going all the way back as far to Jordan, have been either evacuated or effectively blown up by the Iranians, which means the guys you put on the ground there, not only are you relying on, uh, probably primarily some sort of helicopter air-based resupply, which is very predictable.

Yeah.

Do you see communists being a real threat in the United States of America? Yeah.

No, flat out no.

I mean, we don't have enough communists in the U.S. to have it be a threat.

I think I mean, there's there's a lot to unpack there from his his comments starting off with.

I mean, he doesn't appear to know how communism even works.

And I mean, as you said, I am not a fan of communism, generally speaking at all, or socialism or any of any of that stuff.

I'm a free market guy, but we don't live in a country that has a real free market.

And what do you make of Senate races like Susan Collins versus Graham Plantary?

Do you see communists being a real threat in the United States of America?

No, flat out no.

I mean, we don't have enough communists in the US to have it be a threat.

I think, I mean, there's a lot to unpack there from his comments.

Starting off with, I mean, he doesn't appear to know how communism even works.

And I mean, as you said, I am not a fan of communism, generally speaking at all, or socialism or any of that stuff.

I'm a free market guy, but we don't live in a country that has a real free market.

And what do you make of, you know, Senate races like Sudas and Collins versus Graham Planter, I think?

What, I guess, political implications do you see for the president and Republicans in the upcoming midterm? If, you know, by that point in time, the war against Iran has cost all Americans like twenty two hundred bucks.

It's going to be a blowout, Kyle.

Absolute blowout.

There is no indicator out there right now that suggests the Republicans are going to do well in the midterms.

There's a little bit of smoke and mirrors with the primary processes, the gloating about taking out Massey and various Trump-backed primary contenders like Ken Paxton in Texas, who who won, and congratulations.

If you make this in what Trump is doing, he's making it a personality contest in the general.

That does not match what gets people through the primary process.

Maybe one of a handful of people in the entire Congress that actually represent their consensus viewpoints on key issues like the Epstein files and the war in Iran.

What, I guess, political implications do you see for the president and Republicans in the upcoming midterm if, you know, by that point in time, the war against Iran has cost all Americans like $2,200? Mm-hmm.

It's going to be a blowout, Kyle.

Absolute blowout.

There is no indicator out there right now that suggests the Republicans are going to do well in the midterms.

There's a little bit of smoke and mirrors with the primary processes, the gloating about taking out Massey and various Trump-backed primary contenders like Ken Paxton in Texas.

who won, and congratulations.

If you make this in what Trump is doing, he's making it a personality contest in the general.

Maybe one of a handful of people in the entire Congress that actually represent their consensus viewpoints on key issues like the Epstein files and the war in Iran.

Um, fir- first of all, there, there's a, a lot to be remembered

rememberedUh, when you were growing up and the things that we were able to do, and a lot of them really were, uh, sort of appended to, to this culture because it was sort of natural.

Uh, but all, but not natural for very many of your, uh, friends probably.

You know, all the, the, uh, you know, we hunt, we fish, uh, we shoot, uh, from the time you were six years old and there's nothing wrong with that.

I think it, it's a cultural tradition.

I got my first, uh, rifle when I turned eight years old.

It was a rite of passage.

So you want me to unpack that a little bit, Dad?

How do you wrangle that? How do, how do you make sure that as you're advocating, you're advocating not for what is happening today, but being able to accurately project what will happen six or 10 years out?

[laughs] Yeah.

[clears throat] Uh, unfortunately, we don't have a crystal ball, but we do live in a world where transportation funding is pretty much set by formula, and that funding can be flexible in terms it's how it's allocated between multimodal activities, bicycle, pedestrian, public transportation, and general mobility.

From a TAG perspective, we wanna be, and always are, multimodal, and make sure that we're advocating for all the different modes.

We understand that everything is needed.

You know, we need trails, we need sidewalks, we need, we need general mobility and highways, right? So making sure that we're advocating for everything, I think equivalently across the board is, is what we try to do.

The other thing is with emerging technologies, autonomous vehicles, you know, Uber, Lyft, all these, all these new things, um, w- we're always trying to work with the business community, uh, thought leaders to make sure that as technology advances, and there's new transportation modes out there to consider, that those are on our radar screen as well.

We're, we're seeing it, uh, when, when I talk about people, you know, commuting great distances, we are talking 30, 40, even 50 miles a day.

Can you take us through this and explain to us what you see as the position?

Sure.

Um, where do we start with that? Man, that is, uh, that is a lot to unpack.

Um, so I'll start with, uh...

We'll go to the general with the specific.

Um, I think you hit the nail on the head with the, uh, with the negotiations in Islamabad.

They were 20 or 21 hours, however you wanna, you know, carve that up.

Your thoughts about this?

Do you agree?

I agree completely, Judge.

Um, I think we might have a, an interesting nickname for him coming out of the, uh, events of last night with his two rather interesting tweets.

Call him the, the Anti-Pope president.

Um, you know, and that, that raises another interesting question, uh, about, uh, Vance and Rubio.

Both are supposed to be, uh, staunch Catholics, uh, I myself a Catholic.

Uh, and his ridiculing of the Pope, um, an unhinged rant, uh, about the office and how he doesn't want the guy, and then following up with the, uh, the image of him later is, uh, is quite disturbing.

Can you put your finger on any rational basis to his behavior other than his scrambling for an off-ramp from this disastrous war?

We, we pulled the guy out, and Iran couldn't stop us." What do you make of that part of it, the story?

You know, so first of all, um, like my hat's off to the CSAR guys and everybody from the SOF community who went in and grabbed that pilot.

It's, uh, that was a heck of a job.

Um, you know, regardless of all the different, uh, tentacles that are coming off this, it was, uh, it took a lot of guts to go in there and grab him.

I'm glad our guy is back.

But, um, right out of the gate, the, the main issue I have with this is that it is, uh, it is more obfuscation in a conflict or war that, uh, was not started really with the consultation of the American people.

Um, and it is...

You're a Marine, so that's why I give you the hard one.

So again, I, I find this very difficult to understand how something like this could have happened.

Ultimately, Alex, I, I'm in the same boat with that.

I, uh...

It, it's really disheartening to see my peers and, uh, the US military in general committed to something which they were clearly not fully prepared to do.

Um, and that pivots back to, you know, this was at the behest of another nation.

Uh, another nation, I mean, and that's Israel, and I, I, I shouldn't be shy about that.

I've said it a number of times.

Uh, uh, uh, is there anything the United States can do that you can see, obviously because we only know what we know, but is there anything they could do that you could see as somebody with a military and experience with the m- US, within the US military that can change this situation round fast within the next few weeks? Not months, not years, but weeks.

Yeah

...

they have survived for two millennia.

Uh, you know, and a lot of that was by having to fight.

Um, you know, they're not pushovers.

I'm not a fan of their policies.

I don't wanna live in Iran.

Um, realizing that's unlikely, but how would, were you the commander-in-chief, you get out of this right now?