U.S.-Iran Conflict and the Religious Dimensions of War
A detailed analysis of the ongoing military conflict in the Gulf region, examining geopolitical power struggles, religious motivations, and military capabilities.
Summary
Tucker Carlson explores the U.S.-Iran conflict through both geopolitical and religious lenses, arguing that the war represents a struggle over world leadership between declining U.S. hegemony and rising multipolar powers. He examines the religious dimension involving the potential destruction of Al-Aqsa Mosque and rebuilding of a Third Temple in Jerusalem, citing IDF soldier patches depicting the temple and statements from religious figures. Carlson interviews military analyst Brandon Weichert, who warns that U.S. munitions stockpiles are depleting dangerously fast and that American forces may be at risk of strategic defeat in a war that could trigger broader global conflict.
Key Takeaways
Declining U.S. hegemony drives the conflict: Carlson argues the war fundamentally concerns who controls global order as China emerges as a peer competitor to the United States, with Iran serving as a proxy battleground where this power transition will be tested rather than negotiated.
Religious motivations are explicit and consequential: IDF soldiers are wearing patches depicting a Third Temple, American evangelical leaders are calling for destruction of Islamic holy sites, and military commanders allegedly told troops they were fighting "for Jesus" — suggesting religious objectives that could trigger a civilizational conflict between 2 billion Muslims and 2.5 billion Christians globally.
U.S. munitions are critically depleted: According to Weichert, the U.S. has expended 400 Tomahawk missiles in four days (100 per day) from a total stockpile of approximately 4,000, while 2026 budget requests only 59 replacements, forcing a dangerous shift from standoff weapons to gravity bombs that put pilots at greater risk.
The assassination strategy may backfire catastrophically: Killing 86-year-old Ayatollah Khamenei during Ramadan, allegedly using diplomatic talks as cover, has destroyed U.S. credibility for negotiations and risks making him a martyr while failing to degrade Iranian command and control since leadership was immediately replaced.
Iran possesses hypersonic weapons with Chinese support: Weichert reports that Iranian hypersonic missiles, potentially developed with Chinese technical assistance, have no active U.S. defense and have already devastated multiple American bases including the Fifth Fleet headquarters in Bahrain, which "looks like Gaza."
False flag scenarios pose existential threats: An Israeli rabbi was caught on video in 2024 suggesting Israel should destroy the Dome of the Rock and Al-Aqsa Mosque during Iranian missile strikes and blame Iran, which would ignite religious war across Western nations with large Muslim populations including the U.S., Europe, Canada, and Australia.
Ground troops deployment appears inevitable: Despite promises of an air-only campaign, Weichert predicts the administration will replicate the 2001 Afghanistan strategy by inserting Special Forces and CIA paramilitaries to work with local groups like the MEK, though Iran's size, geography, and 96 million population make this far more difficult than Afghanistan.
Political consequences threaten Republican control: Both Carlson and Weichert suggest that if oil reaches $200 per barrel due to refinery destruction and the war continues through midterms, economic damage combined with military setbacks could hand Democrats victory in 2026 and potentially put California Governor Gavin Newsom in the White House.
FULL TRANSCRIPT
The Unlikelihood of a Quick Resolution
Tucker Carlson: It's a safe bet that almost no one involved in the war now ongoing in Iran in the Gulf would like to see it continue much longer. If you were to poll the Iranians or the Americans, basically anybody, how long do you want this to go, very few people would say I want it to go a long time. But that doesn't mean it won't go a long time. Unfortunately, it is likely to. It's unlikely to be resolved anytime soon. Of course, that could prove to be untrue. You never know. It's an utterly dynamic situation. But big picture, there are still a couple of unresolved questions that this war may resolve. This war may be the only thing that resolves them. And so until there's a consensus on the answers to those questions, it probably is going to continue.
What are those questions? Well, the first is geopolitical. And it's the biggest question of all, which is who runs the world? Who gets to make the decisions? Not simply who's richest, but who makes the rules, who sets the terms? And for most of our lifetimes, there has been no question about that. The answer has been the United States. The United States sets the rules. The United States runs the world. That's been true in the western half of the world since 1945, when the U.S. emerged stronger and richer than any other nation after the end of World War II. And it's been true since August of 1991, 35 years ago, after the collapse of the Soviet Union. The United States has reigned in a unipolar world. That's what they call it. There's just one pole. There's one center of gravity. There's one power center, and that's been the United States.
The Rise of China and Multipolar Reality
But that has changed over the past several years, maybe decades, certainly since China was admitted into the WTO in 2001. Now it is a multipolar world. You've heard that phrase, no doubt, and that means there are a couple, at least a couple, centers of gravity. Really, there are two. There's the U.S. and the constellation of states with which it's allied, and then there is on the eastern hemisphere of the globe, China, and China is now a peer with the United States, at least, almost no matter how you measure it. Population, of course, much bigger. Military power, well, we're not quite sure, but certainly from a technological and industrial output standpoint, at least a peer. And then on a pure economic level, well, China has a bigger economy, a bigger real economy than the United States. So yes, China is a peer.
And so the question is, since you now have two countries that are roughly evenly matched, we think, we never do know until they come into conflict, but they seem roughly evenly matched, who gets to set the terms for commerce and diplomacy and everything else that happens on the globe? Well, if you were to reach a diplomatic solution, there would be, in effect, a power-sharing agreement between these two countries. You take the East, I take the West, here are the terms. But unfortunately, no such agreement, formal or informal, has been reached for a bunch of reasons. It's everybody's fault, but one of the reasons is almost nobody in Washington can get his head around the current, present, obvious reality, which is, no, we don't run everything anymore. We are in competition, not necessarily in conflict, but in competition with this other country that's at least as powerful as we are, called China, different system, language, culture, et cetera, but at least every bit as powerful. And so you can't make unilateral decisions anymore.
Washington's Refusal to Accept Reality
It's sort of that moment that many parents face when used to barking orders at their kids, they realize the kid is taller than them and like it's a new relationship in some ways. You're always the parent, but you can't just bark orders anymore. That's pretty much where we are with China or maybe a little past that actually. And what we've noticed over the past several years is the total unwillingness, the inflexibility of Washington policymakers to just acknowledge the reality. And instead, even as we speak, there's probably some symposium underway in Washington about what will we do if China invades Taiwan? Well, of course, from China's perspective, Taiwan is part of China. It's just sort of run off for the past 75 years, but it's still part of China, that's their view. And the United States, of course, isn't in a position to stop the reclamation of Taiwan, let's stop lying. And yet only in D.C. is that not obvious.
Which is to say people in Washington are still acting like they're running everything unopposed, but they're not. And the rest of the world is looking on and thinking at some point, you gotta knock it off and face reality. Now there are a lot of people in the United States, me included, who would like to live in a unipolar world. It's way less fun to be constrained, to have to come to terms with another country before you make a decision. No one wants to do that. No one wants to be challenged. But again, it's sort of not up to us or anyone the moment that you live in. You're not in charge of reality, actually. And so this is the reality we live in. And the question is, are we going to come to terms with it in a reasonable way, or are we going to be forced through use of arms to face that reality? And it looks increasingly like the latter. Unfortunately, that is not the way to settle matters like this because you can emerge greatly diminished from those contests and find yourself in a much weaker negotiating position. Better negotiate while you're strong than when you're weak, but our leaders weren't wise or farsighted enough to do that. Seized by hubris, they were dictating terms. It was like Baghdad Bob. It's sad actually, no reason to laugh about it.
Iran as Proxy Battleground
That's one of the questions now being decided in Iran. Why Iran? Well, because these questions are always decided by proxy. No two great powers want to go to war with each other, of course, especially in the nuclear age, because that could mean simultaneous elimination and no one wants that, at least consciously. And so typically these things play out in third countries like Vietnam famously or Afghanistan for both the Soviets and the United States or Korea and now Iran. Iran, which is part of an alliance that includes the other big powers, Russia and China. So they may not be explicitly weighing in, which is to say they're not fighting alongside the Iranians yet, but they're certainly on Iran's side and they're certainly helping in a multitude of ways, one expects, and a lot for them rides on the outcome. And because it does, makes it harder to settle this thing. So that's the geopolitical, very obvious overlay here. That's why this is not just a debate about whether the Ayatollah has nuclear weapons. Stop. It's much bigger than that and much more serious than that. And the consequences are much more profound than that. So that's the first.
The Religious Dimension
But there is another layer that most Americans are not aware of, but much of the rest of the world is highly aware of. And that is a religious war. Now, Lindsey Graham is on tape saying to a gaggle of reporters, his bloodshot eyes, his puffy face, God knows what he's been doing, saying explicitly, this is a religious war. This is a religious war. Now, his motives in saying that, you know, he's not here to answer the question. We can only guess. Is he trying to foment a religious war? Probably. He's an end times kind of guy. But it almost doesn't matter. He's telling the truth for once. This is a religious war. Fundamentally. And that is not obvious to most Americans because this is the most secular society, not just the United States, but the West, the English speaking world, Europe and the U.S., Canada, Australia, New Zealand, in history. There's never been a more godless, to be blunt about it, a more secular society at scale, never, nothing approaching this has ever happened, ever. Every society is fundamentally religious. Ours is explicitly not religious. So we lack the terms to describe what we're seeing and we lack the imagination to think about it and well, to quote Jesus, we have the eyes but we cannot see. We don't see what's happening around us but the rest of the world very much does see.
Jerusalem and the Foundation Stone
So you often hear people talk about the Middle East crisis and they usually mean energy, you know, people want the oil, the gas. But traditionally when people have talked about the Middle East, they're talking about Jerusalem. We're talking about the holiest spot on earth. Let's be a lot more specific when we say the holiest spot on earth. The holiest spot on earth is something called the foundation stone. The foundation stone is literally a rock in Jerusalem, on what used to be called Mount Moriah, which was the highest point in the oldest part of Jerusalem. And it's on that spot, on that rock, on that stone, that Jews believed the world began, that the Old Testament or the Jewish Torah tells us that Abraham brought Isaac bound to be sacrificed to God. It's on that spot that Muslims believe that the prophet Muhammad ascended into heaven. And of course it's right nearby that Christians believe Jesus was crucified and then rose to heaven.
So on that spot or right nearby, a lot has happened, but critically on that spot, because it was the place where Abraham brought Isaac, and again, to American ears, this sounds weird, but to the rest of the world, it's like, yeah, everyone knows this, because it's the center of their lives. On that spot, Solomon built his famous temple. Now, in the Torah, it says pretty clearly, and correct me if I'm misreading it, that Jews, followers of God, can only publicly worship God and sacrifice on that spot, in that city Jerusalem on that spot. And on that spot was built a temple, the first temple. And that was destroyed by Babylonians famously. And then it was rebuilt and later improved by Herod. And it was at its completion, I think the largest building, certainly the largest religious building in the ancient world. And it was in that building that Jesus preached in what we call the second temple. Jesus preached, the very center of Judaism, a building without which you can't really have Torah Judaism. The religion just didn't work without it by its own terms. In its own book, it said that.
Jesus and the Destruction of the Temple
And during one of his sermons, in that sermon, Jesus, who Christians believe is God sent to earth, says, this will be torn down. Not one stone will be left standing. And it was shortly after that that he was put on trial in the middle of the night and tortured to death, crucified. As it happened, so that's the religion. Here's the history. About 35 years later, 37 years later in that range, in 70 AD, Titus, the emperor of the Roman Empire, got into quite a conflict with the Jews of Judea and Jerusalem. And it's complex and incredibly brutal, but the bottom line was in AD 70, the Romans besieged Jerusalem, finally broke through the walls, and tore that temple stone from stone, not a single stone left upon another. Really a kind of dedication to destruction that's hard for the modern mind to imagine. We talk about genocide, the Romans tried to genocide the Jews for real. And they succeeded in destroying the temple. And with it, temple Judaism, Torah Judaism. You don't have the religion that existed before AD 70, after AD 70, because there's no temple.
And so this has been an open wound for 2000 years. And certainly understandably, people have wanted to rebuild the temple to build what they call the third temple to reestablish this religion at its birthplace. There are a couple of problems with this. One is, exactly 500 years after Titus destroyed the temple in AD 70, in AD 570, a man called Muhammad was born in Mecca and built one of the world's great religions, the world's second largest religion as it stands today, in a very short period. His name was Muhammad. He was born in Mecca. He died in nearby Medina. But in the meantime, he built or inspired the building of within 50 years of his death, one of the great religious buildings in the world, certainly one of the prettiest, called the Dome of the Rock, and it's in Jerusalem on Moriah, in fact, built over the foundation stone.
The Dome of the Rock and Al-Aqsa Complex
And if you've ever been to Jerusalem, or if you've ever seen photographs of it, you will remember vividly a gold dome. It's called the Dome of the Rock. Why is it called that? Because there's a rock underneath it, the foundation stone. That is built on the site of the Second Temple. And that's within what's known as the Al-Aqsa Complex. There's a mosque next door, called the Al-Aqsa Mosque. And that spot is one of three holy places, apparently co-equal holy places, in Islam. Mecca, Medina, Dome of the Rock, Al-Aqsa. So that is at the very center of Judaism, I mean physically the center of Judaism, that spot, that exact spot over the foundation stone, and Islam. And it has been occupied by a mosque. A mosque has been sitting there since the seventh century, since the late 600s. Amazing.
You may be dimly aware of this. Now why go on at length about this? Because now is the moment, right now, like this week, is the moment that some people, not a huge number, most people, Christians, Jews, Muslims, are not fully aware of all this, but some people are highly aware of it and would like to begin the process of tearing down the Dome of the Rock, tearing down Al-Aqsa Mosque, and rebuilding the Third Temple. Now there are a lot of things to say about this, about its likelihood, the potential of it, but first just a quick side note on the theology of this from a Christian point of view.
Christian Theology and the Third Temple
Now it was Jesus who said this temple will be torn down, shocking everyone around him, if it's in the Gospels, it's in at least a couple of the Gospels. And the people who heard it just couldn't believe it, and of course the people running the temple, the Pharisees and Sadducees, were gravely offended by it. Why wouldn't they be? But then it happened. Less than 40 years later, it actually happened. He was right. He called it. And so from a Christian perspective, he did that. God called for the destruction of the temple, and as Jesus says plainly in the Gospels, I'm the temple. I'm the temple now. The temple will be rebuilt after three days. When I'm resurrected, I am the new temple. Jesus says that.
But there has been at least one attempt in the last 2,000 years to rebuild a physical third temple, and it happened in the fourth century. And it happened, without getting too far afield, shortly after the death of Constantine. Now, Constantine was the fourth century Roman emperor who converted to Christianity and very famously turned the Roman Empire Christian, thereby spreading Christianity basically instantly across the West where it's remained more or less ever since. That was in the 300s, the fourth century. Now his nephew became emperor not long after he died and his name was Julian, referred to very often by Christian historians as Julian the Apostate and he was an apostate. He was the last non-Christian emperor of Rome, of the Roman Empire. He had been born a Christian apparently, but he was a fairly enthusiastic pagan polytheist and very aggressively opposed to Christianity. And for that reason, he decided, Julian the Apostate decided in 363 to rebuild the Third Temple.
Julian the Apostate's Attempt
So it has been tried for those who are thinking, could this ever happen? Oh, it happened. They tried to rebuild. He spent a ton of money doing it in 363. What happened next? Well, let's read the account of the only attempt ever made at rebuilding the Third Temple. And this comes from a personal friend of Julian the Apostate's who wrote it contemporaneously. And we still have it, amazingly, all these years later. I'm quoting:
"Julian thought to rebuild at an extravagant expense, the proud temple once at Jerusalem and committed this task to Olympias of Antioch. Olympias set vigorously to work and was seconded by a governor of the province. When fearful balls of fire breaking out near the foundations of the building, continued their attacks till the workmen after repeated scorchings could approach no more. And he gave up the attempt."
By the way, just a few months later, Julian, Emperor Julian the Apostate, was killed. You know what he was killed doing? Invading Iran. Literally invading Iran in 363. Yeah, he was killed doing that. So it was during his invasion of Iran that he decided to rebuild the temple. You can't make this up. And we're not making it up either. And by the way, there was an earthquake at the same time. There are many accounts of what happened when they tried to rebuild it. And all of them describe the earth rending and flames coming out, and it all sounds kind of spooky and supernatural, like it's just too perfect, right?
Historical Parallel to Present Day
Jesus tears down the temple and begins this new relationship with God directly through him, no need for a building anymore in Jerusalem, a city he went out of his way not to spend the night in, walk over to the Mount of Olives even after the Last Supper, but whatever. And there's this one attempt by a guy who hates Christianity to rebuild the Third Temple. And by the way, the workmen get burned by fire from the ground and an earthquake. And you can sort of laugh at that if you're a rationalist, a materialist, a modern man, until archaeologists discovered that actually there was a big earthquake in the region, Galilee to Jerusalem in 363. So that actually happened.
In any case, why the long history lesson? Because it's not history anymore. It's happening right now. Now, there are key players involved in this war, the one happening tonight, who believe that what we're seeing on our television screens and on Twitter will usher in a series of events that begin with the destruction of the Dome of the Rock, Al-Aqsa Mosque, and then the rebuilding of the Third Temple, after which the world will end. God will come back. And they mean it. And by they, we mean literally some of the guys fighting the war.
U.S. Commanders and Religious Motivation
So you may have read reports today that commanders in the field of American troops, a lot of them, and who knows if this is true, but it's out there, told their troops on the eve of the outbreak of this war that we're doing this for Jesus because it is Jesus's will that we do this and that by doing it, we will usher in a series of events that bring about the end of history, the end of time, Armageddon, the last days. It's hard to believe that's true, especially since, by the way, there are a million Christians in Iran. So if you were doing this for Jesus, presumably you would go out of your way not to hurt his followers in the country you're attacking. Did the U.S. government or any government make any attempt to spare the Christians? Are we making an attempt tonight? Of course we're not. And of course, when the smoke clears, ultimately we will find out, just a guess, that Christians suffered disproportionately in this as they do all wars, from the Iraq War to the bombing of Nagasaki, the seat of the Christian church in Japan, et cetera, et cetera. Christians have a way of dying disproportionately in these wars, which tells you something about their real motives.
But in any case, there was a spate of stories suggesting that U.S. commanders told their troops they were doing this for some weird anti-Christian reason posing as Christianity. But it's not just the U.S. side. Here's an IDF soldier, apparently an American by his accent, describing why he's at war.
IDF Soldier on Temple Rebuilding
IDF Soldier (quoted): "They call this operation the swords of iron. But what are we really fighting for? We're fighting for the right of the Jewish people to exist, be Jewish, practice their religion, and be free. And one day our true messiah will come and we'll be united as a whole Jewish nation so we can rebuild the Beth HaMikdash."
Tucker Carlson: Beth HaMikdash, probably mispronouncing it. That's the Hebrew term for the temple, the third temple. We are doing this so we can rebuild the temple. Now you'll notice he's pulling off patches on Velcro on his IDF uniform. These are not civilian clothes. This is the uniform of the government of Israel, of its military. And he has patches on that uniform, one of which is a symbol of the temple, the third temple. So it just couldn't be clearer. Why are we doing this? To rebuild the third temple.
Now, if you think we're just cherry picking this off the internet, one guy wearing an unauthorized temple patch paid for, by the way, a uniform paid by us, armaments paid for by us, the U.S. taxpayer pays for all this stuff one way or another. The U.S. taxpayer pays for the military of Israel. Boy, does it. If you think we're being unfair and just like found one guy, well here's a bunch of guys. There is a selection of IDF soldiers. And all of them have the same patch. Look carefully at that. What is that? That's the temple. That is the third temple. And we'll get to in a minute about how this might actually happen and what it would mean for the rest of the world.
The Sensitive Nature of Religious Discussion
And just to be clear, these are conversations that most Americans, certainly me included, never wanted to have. Everybody's religious beliefs, sincere religious beliefs when held up to the light of the rational world, to the man-made world, seem a little spooky and crazy, which is one of the reasons that in the culture some of us grew up in, we don't talk about them in public because they're personal. They're the most personal part of a person. So it is without judgment, by the way, that we're airing this, okay? Just describing it because it is significant to the future of the world, to the future of this war, and to our future as Americans.
Chabad and Third Temple Movement
So how exactly did the IDF, the Israel Defense Forces, a military that the U.S. taxpayer pays for, that lots of wealthy Americans send troops to, to friends of the IDF, how did all these guys wind up wearing patches suggesting the point of this war was the destruction of one of the holiest places in Islam and the rebuilding of a temple that is totally anathema to Christianity? Like, how did this happen? Well, there are a lot of ways it happened. The main way it happened is because no one in the United States noticed because it's such a secular place and as noted we have eyes but can't see and ears and can't hear, but this has been going on a long time in public through in part the efforts of a group called Chabad, C-H-A-B-A-D.
And you may know people who give money to Chabad or run to Chabad, super nice people, engaged in all kinds of charitable activities, drug rehab, you know there's a lot about Chabad that's really good. But what is Chabad exactly? Well, Chabad, you can look it up, is a very old organization, about 250 years old, and it's a branch of Hasidic Judaism. It's an organization that was overseen for many years by a guy called Rabbi Menachem Schneerson, who was famously in Brooklyn, considered the Messiah by some of his followers, who was a friend of presidents, or certainly someone presidents visited, a very powerful man in the Orthodox and the Hasidic community. And he was the overseer of Chabad, which predated him and outlasted him, but he was its most visible ambassador. And Chabad has been pushing in a pretty subtle way, unless you look carefully, for the reconstruction of the Third Temple. And it seems like, from the reading we did recently, that those patches actually came from Chabad. In any case, Chabad is pushing for the building of the Third Temple.
American Evangelical Christian Zionists
But it's not just Hasidic groups from Brooklyn, and it's not just IDF soldiers. There are amazingly a lot of American evangelical leaders, Christian Zionists, whose main point is rebuilding the Third Temple. Now, how could an American Christian or any Christian call for the building of a temple whose presence, whose inherent presence denies Christ? Who said clearly, and Christians believe this, it's a core point of faith, I am the temple. You want to speak to God, you speak through me. That's Christianity. That's the whole religion right there. So if you're a Christian preacher calling for the rebuilding of the third temple, you kind of missed the whole point. That's more than apostasy. That's like not even knowing what the religion's about.
So it's hard to believe there could be any ordained Christian leaders pushing for the rebuilding of the third temple. Oh, but there are a lot. There are a lot. And here's just one. This is Pastor Greg Locke.
Pastor Greg Locke's Statement
Pastor Greg Locke: "The Gaza Strip, which has now been cut off by Israel, and rightly so, they should have cut them off a long time ago. I don't care how insensitive you think I am to that, there's six doors in this church, you can leave anytime you want to. They've cut them off, electricity, they've cut off the water, they should have. Now listen, I'm not for hurting anyone that's innocent, but anybody that supports terrorism is not innocent. You understand that? Israel should make the Gaza Strip a parking lot by this time next week. Destroy the whole thing. What they ought to do is evacuate up there on the hill and get a great big missile and blow that wicked dome of the rock plumb off of the spot where it's standing right now so we can get that third temple rebuilt and usher in the coming of Jesus."
The Theological Contradiction
Tucker Carlson: It is embarrassing and shameful as an American Christian to hear that and to know that video is from a few years ago. It's been on the internet. No one bothered to highlight it. Most people weren't even aware this was going on. Oh, it's definitely going on. These are very common views. Seems obvious that Mike Huckabee has them, that a lot of the Christian Zionists, John Hagee, do you think they just like Israel? They just like Israel a lot. No. These are clerics. So their lives were informed by their religious beliefs. What are their religious beliefs? Well, you just heard it right there from Pastor Locke, who's quite a prominent Christian Zionist. He's not some lone wacko. And there he is with an Israeli flag waving behind him, casual calls for genocidal violence. Just blow it up, make it a parking lot.
Well, two million people live there. What happens to them? They're terrorist sympathizers. That right there is the tell. This is not Christianity. Imagine Jesus saying, just kill them all. They're terrorists. Is there anything in the gospel that suggests Jesus believed that? No, there's a lot to suggest, in fact, to tell us in very clear terms, he thought the opposite, of course. But the last part, let's build the third temple and bring about the return of Jesus is a direct contradiction of core Christian theology. And even people without theology degrees who didn't go to some eminent Bible college can tell you, what? Jesus says, I am the temple. That is not Christianity. It's not even a close facsimile of Christianity. It's clearly evil. And it is in some sense the driving force behind the efforts to rebuild the Third Temple. Julian the Apostate, who was the last guy to try it, who died invading Iran, he's not Jewish. He was a pagan, just like Pastor Locke. But for some reason, he was the instrument trying to do this.
Global Political Leaders and Third Temple
There are many of these people, and not just in the theological realm, in the political realm, and that's relevant to you whether you believe in God or not, or are interested in the history of the Abrahamic faiths or not. Global leaders believe this. People you wouldn't expect, and you wonder what is going on here? It's enough to make the hair on your arms go up. Did everyone know there was an effort to rebuild the third temple on the foundation stone, except me? I can't believe I was left out of this conversation. No, all of this took place in public. And if we'd been paying attention or been tuned into that frequency, the spiritual frequency, we've been spiritually sensitive enough to pay attention, we would have known this. But of course, when you grew up in a materialist culture, when the only things you believe are real are the things that can be measured or purchased on Amazon, you tend to miss a lot, and we miss this.
Here's the president of Argentina, Javier Milei, who we know personally, at the Western Wall, which is believed by some to be a remnant of the Second Temple, the last stone from the Second Temple, that's the claim. Here he is there, the famous Wailing Wall, saying this:
Javier Milei's Statement
Javier Milei (through translator): "There is also another prophecy that relates that this same place will be rebuilt. Now that I see with my own eyes the first prophecy come true, I laugh in joy and full of hope as the second prophecy will surely come true."
Tucker Carlson: So a correction, that doesn't appear to be the Western Wall and there were no subtitles. You heard him say it through his translator. I laugh and quiver with joy when I think about the third temple being rebuilt. Now this is the supposedly, maybe, who knows, Catholic president of an overwhelmingly Catholic country, South American country, wonderful country, Argentina, who got elected and was presented to American news consumers as a libertarian economist who was gonna fix their debt problem and get rid of inflation and just make life better for Argentines. And there he is in Jerusalem, saying that he's weeping with joy, thinking about the return, the rebuilding of the Third Temple.
What the hell is that? You would think that would not even be on his to-do list. If you're running a country as complex and damaged as Argentina and as promising and great as Argentina, but like there's a lot of things you gotta do in Argentina if you're running it, but you take time to fly to Israel and say the thing you really want in life is the rebuilding of the Third Temple? What is going on here? And why haven't we talked about this before? I would say before we invaded Iran with troops who say out loud we're doing this to bring about the creation of the third temple, why weren't the rest of us informed?
Pete Hegseth on the Third Temple
Now here's a piece of tape you may have seen and that I personally don't want to play since I know the guy and I like him but it does make you wonder. So this is the current Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth, former Fox News employee, nice man, very nice man, in 2018 in Jerusalem, and as someone who knew him well, I can tell you I had no idea that he had such evolved and specific and apparently very informed opinions on rebuilding the Third Temple of all questions. This is not something they teach you in Sunday school in the Presbyterian Church. This is not something that people talk about at dinner in the United States. This is not something our Congress ever mentions that the president ever talks about. This is considered so esoteric and weird and crypto historical and religious and kind of culty and what's Chabad and that no one ever mentions it. But here's Pete Hegseth, football player from Princeton, going on about it in a way that suggests he's thought a lot about it. This is 2018.
Pete Hegseth: "Today, Jennifer and I and others had a chance to go see the Western Wall of the Temple Mount, the Western Wall tunnels, so much of the old city. And as you stand there, you can't help but behold the miracle before you. And it got me thinking about another miracle that I hope all of you don't see too far away. Because 1917 was a miracle. 1948 was a miracle. 1967 was a miracle. 2017, the declaration of Jerusalem as the capital was a miracle. And there's no reason why the miracle of the reestablishment of the temple on the Temple Mount is not possible. I don't know how it would happen. You don't know how it would happen, but I know that it could happen."
Tucker Carlson: What is that? That's the Secretary of Defense right now overseeing the war with Iran that people fighting it are starting to say actually is about rebuilding this third temple. It's the same man. Okay, this is the point where you begin to think, maybe we should have talked about this and its implications. And what are its implications? Religious war, global religious war.
Potential Consequences
So the first heavily publicized move by the United States military and the Israeli military in this conflict was to kill the head of state of Iran, the 86-year-old Ayatollah Khamenei, who was replaced today by his son, who's apparently more anti-Western than he was, so I guess, strictly speaking, that wasn't very effective. But if you take three steps back, and no one did, because everyone's busy denouncing him as Hitler and the most evil man in the world, and we're so grateful he's dead, when was the last time the United States military, or Israel working in conjunction with the Israeli military, killed the head of a world religion?
Is that wise? It's not because we agree with the world's religions, it's not an endorsement of Shia Islam, to say maybe we should pause before killing its 86 year old leader. It is instead an acknowledgement that that might have consequences that affect the United States and Europe and the world, but particularly the United States since we are the United States and we have children and hope to have grandchildren and what will be the downstream effects for them when you kill a religious leader?
Strategic Questions About the Killing
Did killing the religious leader cripple their command and control structure? Were they unable to launch missiles and drones when we killed the 86-year-old Ayatollah? No. Because he knew he was going to be killed. That's why he stayed above ground, apparently. He wanted to be martyred. Now, why would he want to be martyred? Maybe because he wanted a religious war. Why did we kill him? Maybe because we wanted a religious war.
Now, why would we want that? Why would Israel, who got us into this war, everyone admits that now, sorry, why would they want that? I don't know. Think about what would happen if this war led to the destruction of the Dome of the Rock and the Al-Aqsa complex on Mount Moriah in Jerusalem, and we'll explain in a second how that could happen, a war that began with the killing of the head of Shia Islam. What would happen?
The Numbers
Well, here are the numbers. There are about 15 and a half million Jews in the world. There are about 2.5 billion Christians, and there are about 2 billion Muslims. So whatever happens next is not gonna be a fight between the Muslims and the Jews, because 2 billion versus 15 million, not much of a fight. This is likely to be, if not brought under control immediately, or maybe it's too late, a war, a religious war, the one that Lindsey Graham just described, between Muslims and Christians.
And it's not gonna play out in the Middle East because this is a regional conflict, but as noted at the beginning, it's a global conflict where every big power has a stake in what happens. This will play out globally. And it'll play out in our cities. Islam is the fastest growing religion in the United States. There are not that many Muslims in the United States, what, five million or something like that? But it's the fastest growing religion. That's enough to cause problems. For sure in Europe, 65 million Muslims, second biggest religion in every European country, fastest growing in every country. Australia, same thing, second biggest, fastest growing. New Zealand, same thing, second biggest, fastest growing. Canada, same thing.
The Real Target
What happens in all those countries? Those Christian Western white countries, what happens there if there's the religious war that Lindsey Graham and clearly the Israeli government and some in our government are hoping for? What happens? Those countries suffer more than they have suffered. And so it's possible that the real target here, it's just possible, it's throwing this out there, is not the mullahs in Iran. It's us, as it always has been.
But don't take our word for it. Here's a particularly candid and honestly kind of articulate argument, clip from a couple of years ago. This is from August of 2024 from an Israeli rabbi, Joseph Mizrachi, describing how Israel should take advantage of a then ongoing conflict with Iran, much less intense than the current conflict we're seeing with Iran, to destroy the Dome of the Rock and Al-Aqsa.
Rabbi Mizrachi's Plan
Rabbi Joseph Mizrachi: "If it was up to me, the last time when they shot hundreds of missiles, I would pretend that one missile came from Iran and shoot it down. You know, then all the Arabs will go against Iran. It will be the end of the problems. You make them fight with each other, this bunch of lunatics. Never too late. You deal with a bunch of cowards. Shoot it down into the Dome of the Rock and Al-Aqsa. Destroy what's on..."
Tucker Carlson: What the Israelis call the Temple Mount on the foundation stone, destroy it, and blame the Iranians. And that has the effect, as you just heard him say, of turning our enemies against each other. Turning our enemies against each other. Well, they've refused to recognize it for quite some time. The Europeans are the enemies, the mortal enemies of Israel. That's the Israeli perspective, obviously, look at the effects.
And so if that were to happen in this conflict, it's not the Israelis who would bear the brunt of it. It's the Europeans, it's the Canadians, it's the Australians, and it's us, and it's the Russians. 20% of Russia is Muslim. All of those countries would be in for serious turmoil and bloodshed, and maybe already this shortly into the war. Turn them against each other, you heard the rabbi say.
How It Could Happen
Now, how could this play out? Very simple. Iran is sending drones and missiles into Israel right now, mostly into Tel Aviv. Is it beyond imagination that in the fog of war, maybe one of those missiles hits the Dome of the Rock or we're told that it did? And of course, during war, the first thing you see is censorship. So it's very hard to know what's going on. You're already seeing it today. Is there less or more video available on the internet today than there was yesterday from this war? Well, there's much less, of course, that's called censorship. They're censoring video of what's actually happening. It happens in every conflict. Every war kicks off the same cycle at home, far from the fighting. Censorship and persecution. Censorship and persecution. Persecution of the enemies, real or perceived, of the people prosecuting the war. And censorship of their views.
So in that environment, when you can't really know what's going on, it's thousands of miles from here. All of a sudden, the Al-Aqsa complex is just vaporized. Oops, the Iranians did it. Then we have this debate. It's like a hospital bombing in Gaza. Who did it? Well, it was a booster from a Hamas rocket. Well, how do I know? I wasn't there. All we know is it's gone. Oh, so sorry. Could that happen? Oh, yeah, it could happen. The army is fighting with patches of the Third Temple on their arms, on their official uniforms. And what happens then? Global religious war. Talk about high stakes. You thought nukes were high stakes. At least nukes are over quickly, there are survivors. A generational religious war? That's worse than any virus and more deadly. That could happen. Do the people in charge know what could happen? Some of them do. They don't seem worried about it. They should be. We should all be worried about it. We should all be noisy about it. No, you can't do that to the world. You can't do that to give to our grandchildren.
Interview with Brandon Weichert
Tucker Carlson: So what is going on in this war? It's, again, hard to know because of the censorship, but there is a man, an independent analyst, Brandon Weichert, who we think, after spending a lot of time looking at analysis from a bunch of different people, is one of the most informed people in the United States who can speak freely and publicly about what is actually happening, and not just in a conceptual, big picture way, but in a detailed way, and coming at this with an understanding of the technology in use, the tactics, and the strategies. We've been super impressed, and we think you will be too. With that, Brandon Weichert joins us now. Brandon, thank you so much for coming on.
Brandon Weichert: Thank you for having me. And thank you for those kind words. I'm very honored.
Tucker Carlson: Well, it's true. We've never met, but I've just been watching your stuff recently. And, you know, wars tend to bring out phonies and people like, oh, I was on SEAL Team 27 and I know what's going on. They don't know anything. But your analysis has been...
Brandon Weichert: I'm just a nerd. I'm just a nerd.
Tucker Carlson: Well, I have been very impressed by your grasp of what's happening. So can you just give us really quickly the overview of where we are today? What are the big developments?
Shift to Gravity Bombs
Brandon Weichert: Well, the big developments, as you saw with Secretary of Defense, I guess he's calling himself now, Hegseth, is they're transitioning the munitions. So now the claim is that it's been so successful, this air war, they don't need to use what's known as standoff weapons. So think the Tomahawk cruise missile. And they're gonna now shift, the Air Force and the Israeli Air Force are gonna shift now to flying large sorties of warplanes into Iran and bombing targets with what are known as gravity bombs. And these are things like the Joint Directed Attack Munitions, JDAMs. They require you to be close to the target. So the risk factor to our pilots is now increasing exponentially.
But I would just like to posit a theory, and it's just a theory. I actually think the real reason we are doing this shift is not because of realities or facts on the ground that are amenable to the U.S. and Israeli strategic position. I think we are being dictated to by the depletion of our stockpiles. And what I mean by that, I have some numbers for your audience.
Stockpile Depletion
We all know the Tomahawk cruise missile going back to the Clinton era where he would just pop those things off, you know, as soon as the Lewinsky impeachment got underway. 4,000 Tomahawk land attack cruise missiles are believed to be in the arsenal. We have been draining those since 2022, 2023 in Ukraine at a disproportionate rate. In the last four days of this conflict, we have expended 400 of those systems, which means that's 100 per day with the operational tempo not ceasing. In 2026, the budget request was only for 59 new missiles. We need several hundreds every year. The reason we're getting such low numbers, Tucker, is because our defense industrial base is broken and we have no business starting a world war or a major regional war as we are in the process of doing.
So I believe the real reason the U.S. and Israeli militaries are starting to get more daring and dangerous with their airstrikes is because they cannot afford to blow through the munitions that are already depleting. And it is, in fact, a race to depletion between us and Iran. And right now, I think the Iranians still have a very sizable, unused, increasingly sophisticated missile arsenal.
Debate Over Iranian Capabilities
Colonel Rob Maness is a friend of mine. He's a former Air Force Colonel. He disagrees with me. He says look, these missiles that are being popped off by Iran are basically a bunch of dead-enders. It's gonna fizzle out. And Hegseth made a similar argument about that today that there was a decrease. But I actually think that those dead-enders, if that's what you want to call them, actually are probably still combat effective. And that is why we are now having to still continue the war even though we have blown through these standoff munitions, which really were protecting our people.
In fact, I got word from a source of mine who's monitoring this on open source, which it looks like the USS Abraham Lincoln is going to be repositioned to within anti-ship ballistic missile range of Iran. So either the US really believes we've degraded the Iranian capabilities sufficiently or we're just throwing caution to the wind because we got to get this thing over before we run out of materials and that'll probably start happening this weekend.
Pre-War Warnings
Tucker Carlson: This is not a surprise to people who watched carefully the few days in the run-up to this conflict where there were uniformed service men, I mean there were officers who apparently, that's right, this was by Sam Kotcher...
Brandon Weichert: Yes, exactly.
Tucker Carlson: ...that we just don't have the munitions to sustain any kind of real conflict. They said that right?
Brandon Weichert: Yeah, in fact, it is my understanding and this is again take from this what you will. It is my understanding that last Friday the order went out at 3:38 p.m. Eastern. Before that there was a quote particularly contentious meeting between General Dan Raizen Cain who is Trump's hand-picked chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. He was pulled out of retirement by Trump. So this is Trump's guy. And Cain tried to get the word to the president that this thing is not going to go like you think it is. This is not Venezuela. This is a very different operation.
And the president, for whatever reason, still decided to ignore the best military advice he got and went forward with this. In turn, Vice Admiral Fred Kotcher, who was an adjutant, basically, to Cain, leaked parts of that meeting to, I think it was Reuters. Now, the question that I've been hearing from people is, was that Kotcher acting on his own volition? Or was that, in fact, Kotcher executing some kind of informal order from Dan Cain because Cain and the rest of the military, the high level, is very worried about the blowback from this operation? And it is my contention that they, the permanent bureaucracy, is desperately trying to push blame away from itself to the politicians and even, as we're seeing with Marco Rubio now, to Israel itself, which is not how a winning war would look like. There'd be no blame shifting.
The Killing of Khamenei
Tucker Carlson: So do you have any insight into how the decision was made to kill Iran's head of state slash chief cleric? And this has not been a conversation anyone's been willing to have because, of course, the proponents of it have been screaming about how he's Hitler, he's the worst person. If there's any question about whether it's a good idea to kill him, you're an Ayatollah Khamenei lover, you know, just the normal low IQ crap that you see on Fox News. But it's a real question. Like, what was the thinking there? Do you know?
Brandon Weichert: So, again, this is all background and sort of piecing the puzzle together with what I know about how it works up in that horrible city we call D.C. But basically what it sounds like is the administration used the idea of diplomatic talks to lull Khamenei into a false sense of security. We were going into a holy week at that time and the Iranians wanted, or Khamenei wanted to basically come out of his hole and he thought, okay, we're gonna get a reprieve. We'll kick this down the road until Monday, which I think was March 2nd. They got the word on Friday that, hey, we're open to negotiating. So Khamenei and his people let their guard down. And at the moment they did, Israeli missiles were fired.
Technical Details of the Strike
Actually, if I can nerd out here for a second, the Israelis did a very interesting performance with their missile where they fired it into space from I believe F-16s or F-35s. It went into the space above Iran and came down at hypersonic velocities and it came within millimeters of the known position of Khamenei. So from a tactical standpoint, yes, it was very technically impressive.
But the key thing here was that the U.S. used its honor to lull the counterparty into a false sense of security using our diplomatic word that, hey, we're gonna hold off and try to talk to you. And I actually think, and I say this as somebody who's a fan of Steve Witkoff, I actually think Witkoff and probably Kushner were probably in on the whole thing to basically lull the Iranian leader into a false sense of security so we could clip him.
The Miscalculation
And I think, Tucker, I think the assumption was that if we lopped off the head of the regime, Khamenei, that the whole thing would implode like a house of cards in about 72 hours, which is why I think Trump didn't really care when Dan Cain was warning him last Friday that, hey, we've got eight days of munitions in CENTCOM before we have to start cannibalizing Indo-PACOM, and then we have a real crisis on our hands. I think Trump was thinking, we can probably do this in about 24 to 72 hours. We'll get Khamenei, the Israelis will, and then it'll all work out. It's all going to work out.
And obviously nobody took the time to brief the president on, and I could have done it, I wrote a whole book about it, on basically what the Iranians have been doing for pretty much 47 years to harden their regime and to make it relatively survivable. And that is why now we find ourselves, what is it, day four or day five now? And they're already having to panic and change the munition structure because we're depleting them too fast. This is why, by the way, the heads of those defense companies are now being summoned to the White House because Trump is going to try to read those leaders the riot act saying you got to boost production. And they're going to say to him, sorry, we can't do it because the defense industrial base is both broken and corrupt.
Competing Narratives
Tucker Carlson: I don't know the truth about what you said about the diplomacy as a cover for action, lulling Khamenei into vulnerability. I have heard just the opposite, that the Israelis are telling everybody that the U.S. knew the strike was going to happen and they're doing that to shake the faith of any of our partners in the region in our diplomacy and make us sound dishonored.
Brandon Weichert: That would, well, obviously, like I said, take from this because this is all, you know, I don't have evidence of this to present to you.
Tucker Carlson: I don't either.
Brandon Weichert: But I find it, just if I can speculate here for a moment, I find it impossible or improbable to think, given the level of fusion between the U.S. and Israeli command and control, I mean, for goodness sakes, there are Israeli officers permanently stationed in the Pentagon. And I was just told by a former CIA case officer at Langley. So basically I find it really hard to believe that the administration did not have any involvement in this. Now they want to say that they didn't and I think they are saying this because they're worried that there's going to be significant political and possibly legal blowback over time because this war is...
Anyway, but so I don't believe that particular story when they say, oh, we had nothing to do with it. I think we probably did not have an active role in the sense of bombardment, but I do believe that we were aware of what was going to happen, and I think we probably nudged it along.
Impact on U.S. Credibility
Tucker Carlson: If that's true, that's one of the craziest things that's ever happened. I mean, we're trying to negotiate an end to the war we've been waging against Russia, which is right...
Brandon Weichert: Are we?
Tucker Carlson: Yeah, well, exactly. And the Russians aren't stupid, the Iranians aren't stupid. Not everyone other than us is stupid. And which is our assumption, they're all a bunch of savages, they're all Pashtuns, you know, living in the Hindu Kush, but they're not actually, they're really smart. And they look at this like, why would we enter into negotiations with the same negotiating team that just did this?
So, okay, but here's my macro question, which is, what about the safety of the United States? Like when you kill an 86 year old leader of a global religion, which Shia Islam is, it's the smaller but still enormous branch of Islam. You're going to expect to create religious fanatics. You kill the religious leader during Ramadan? Like, was there no one in the room? And I know you're not supposed to say this because it makes you like a Muslim lover or something. I just want to say this as a Jesus person, but as an American who wants peace in my own country. Nobody stood up and said like, hey, what are we doing here? Like, we're going to create a generational war that our grandkids are going to have to deal with at the shopping mall. Did anyone say that?
Lack of Protest from Military Leadership
Brandon Weichert: No. No, I think General Cain was the closest, and he was making sort of a tactical, technical argument. And I have to say, as much as I do like the general, and I do like him, I think he's a decent guy, I think he's gone down in my book a little bit because he didn't resign in protest, because whatever they're saying in public, the logistics, it's like math. It doesn't lie. It's gravity. It doesn't lie. And the logistics are not in our favor if this becomes... Trump said it was a forever war. Now he's putting it in sneer quotes, but you know, this could become at least a five to eight week war. Hegseth said eight weeks today.
And so I'm starting to remember COVID and two weeks to flatten the curve became years of dealing with fallout. So I am very concerned that the president has really bad advisors. These are not people that I think have the best interests of MAGA or America First, the coalition that got him elected, in their hearts. I think these are deep staters masquerading as MAGA lovers. And I think that this is why we're here. This is one of the most strategically irresponsible moves I've ever seen. The fact that the president, I don't believe, was informed the truth about what was going to happen and the way it was going to happen, I think now that's why you're seeing the administration expanding the war, talking about giving Kurds weapons and money, and we're going to now expand it into Iraq and destabilize Iraq as if that's another thing we need on our plate.
This to me is a country that has made a very serious mistake with triggering this war, and now they're just making the mess bigger and bigger and bigger, hoping that they can clean it up once it's totally out of hand. Or maybe they don't even want to clean it up. I don't know. That's speculation. But I do believe that we were involved on some level with what was going on behind the scenes the day that... And by the way, I just want to make something clear. I am very much anti-Islamic Republic of Iran. That regime, all that. I'm on the record. People know this about me. So I'm not saying this because I'm mourning the loss of Khamenei. But it is very dangerous what we're doing and I think that we really damaged America's credibility for a long time when it comes to diplomacy.
Possibility of De-escalation
Tucker Carlson: Yeah, I mean, I'm not going to put up with that for one second, that whole, like, question your patriotism. Some guy working for Israel is calling me unpatriotic in a country my ancestors founded. I don't think I'm not going to play along with that at all. And it's shocking that they would even be throwing that out there to the most patriotic people in the world. I've gotten it. I bet you have.
So let me ask you a broader question, which is, and I know the answer but I want to hear you say it, was there from the very beginning of this second Trump term an effort to exclude anybody who might conceivably stand in the way of an Iran war?
Brandon Weichert: Yes. Yes. Even though, again, I hate the regime. I'm not like I'm some lover of them. But I wasn't, I was... a friend of mine joked I wasn't sufficiently on board with this program, with this Iran war program or on war videos. Because I think this is the stuff of lunacy and this is literally, this is like the mad king. This doesn't make any sense.
Tucker Carlson: Yeah, it doesn't unless what you were saying in your monologue, which I think you're probably right. I think that's definitely at play here.
Brandon Weichert: Yeah, I mean, I just want to be clear. I don't think that most U.S. policymakers have any idea what the foundation stone is or Al-Aqsa or Dome of the Rock or the Third Temple. This is just so far from the concerns of average people in this country, even their policymakers.
Tucker Carlson: Their minders are not paying them to know.
Brandon Weichert: Their minders are not paying them to know. Well, that's it. But there are people who do know, and certainly in the region, in the Middle East and the rest of the world, people are religious. They're not Americans. Like, they care. So these are big questions to people around the world.
Tucker Carlson: Well, I care. I'm a Christian.
Brandon Weichert: Well, I care, too, actually.
Censorship and Information Warfare
Tucker Carlson: So let me ask you, since you said that you're constructing most of your analyses through open source materials, you're reading publicly available things on the internet. Have you noticed an effort to clamp down on videos? Okay, tell us what you've noticed.
Brandon Weichert: There's also an interesting effort, Tucker, to, and I think this is coming from our guys, to spread war videos of what look like war videos, and then you share it, and then they say, ah, that's AI. We gotta get him dinged now. We gotta get him, this is all... We have, it is a sad day in this country when we have official, and I have a feeling I know the group that's doing it, we have official US intelligence being paid with our tax dollars to sit around a basement in Langley or Arlington, Virginia and harass American citizens online for sharing their opinion. But that is where we are at in this country. That is where we are at.
And I can tell you right now, I have been the victim of bot attacks. I've been the victim of cyber attacks in the last 24 hours on my personal email, which I didn't know people had, but apparently they do. I had to file a police report, in fact, yesterday with my local police ever since coming out in the last week and sharing my opinion. And this is not an organic phenomenon. This is either ours or Israel's or the British, you know, because they're always in there somehow.
Tucker Carlson: Or the French, that's right.
Brandon Weichert: Or the French, that's right, that's right. So this is where we are. This isn't really America anymore. This is some censorious state. And I thought that we were gonna be cleaning that up, but we're instead giving the keys to these guys and telling them to go start World War III.
Potential Domestic Persecution
Tucker Carlson: I wonder if we're gonna see, this is purely speculative, but wars tend to create an environment where there's actual persecution of critics of the war.
Brandon Weichert: Well, I was told, and again, take from this what you will, because I have no way of proving it. I was told two years ago that the Biden regime had concocted a list of high profile MAGA supporters that they were gonna basically go to and say, if Kamala had won, say that, hey, you gotta leave the country, you gotta get out or we're gonna basically prosecute you until you're broke via lawfare. And thank God that never happened, but those lists are still around. And in 35 months, we have an election coming up. And if this keeps going the way it is, Tucker, I don't think the Republicans stand a chance to win the next election if things keep going the way they are. I don't care if it's J.D. or if it's Marco.
Tucker Carlson: Yeah, well, I unfortunately agree with you. Last question, and I hope you'll come back because I think this has been so smart and knowledgeable.
Brandon Weichert: Anytime you need me. I live near you, apparently.
Gavin Newsom's Statement
Tucker Carlson: Thank you. So here's my question. I saw maybe AI of the governor of California today, Gavin Newsom, saying point blank, Israel led us into this war, Israel leads us around by the nose, Israel's committing genocide in Gaza, and we're not getting anything out of this and we need to reassess our military support for Israel.
Brandon Weichert: Yeah, that's probably your next president right there.
Tucker Carlson: Well, and I know him and I wouldn't credit a single word he says with sincerity. He doesn't believe anything. But he's smart, and I know that Donald Trump thinks he's formidable. He has said that in public a lot. I mean, if that's real, then, I mean, that guy has a shot, do you think?
Brandon Weichert: Yeah. Yeah, I think I wouldn't be surprised. Look, this can all be, I just want to make it clear. This can be reversed in the next 48 hours if Trump declares victory and just gets out and says, look, I got everybody we needed to get. If the people of Iran can't do it, then they're never going to do it. You know, this is, it's an easy out. It's a golden off-ramp, Mr. President. It's a golden off-ramp with your name on it. Take it and you'll be a hero.
Tucker Carlson: Will Israel allow that?
Brandon Weichert: You know, I probably, they will probably try something. But yeah, I can't dictate what Israel's going to do. All I can say is the president has got to make it clear he's getting out now. We've achieved our objectives. We're done. That's what he needs to do.
In terms of Newsom, you know, he will probably be the nominee because he is wily enough. He kind of reminds me of Bill Clinton a little bit in a weird way.
Tucker Carlson: Oh, yeah.
Brandon Weichert: But I wouldn't be surprised if his Veep is, in my old state where I used to live, Virginia, is Abigail Spanberger because the CIA wants to have one of their own sitting in the White House.
Tucker Carlson: Man, that's not democracy. That's really, really dark. I hope you're wrong.
Brandon Weichert: No, it's a deep state, man, and we're supposed to dismantle it.
Tucker Carlson: Brandon Weichert, that was great, and thank you so much for doing this.
Brandon Weichert: Thank you so much for having me. Great to meet you.
Tucker Carlson: Thanks. And thank you for joining us. We'll be back next Wednesday. Thank you.