Airport Chaos: The hosts detail extreme TSA delays of 4–5 hours at major hubs like Atlanta and Houston, causing widespread missed flights and rebookings.
Government Monopoly: They argue TSA is a federally monopolized service funded by fees that are misallocated through Washington, preventing private alternatives and creating systemic failure.
Policy Missteps: Discussion criticizes the reactive nature of security rules (shoes, liquids) and labels ICE deployments at airports as a political stunt that doesn’t fix staffing or screening issues.
Joe Kent Resignation: The show covers Kent’s exit over Iran policy, his claim that Israeli briefings are shaping U.S. decisions, and his attempt to persuade Trump to pivot away from escalation.
Iran Narrative: They dispute the “47-year war” framing, emphasizing intelligence assessments of limited Iranian threat and describing Iran’s actions as rational and escalatory in a predictable ladder.
Political Fallout: Rising gas prices are highlighted as a key domestic pressure point; concerns grow over GOP vulnerabilities and neocon influence in shaping policy rhetoric.
Security Effectiveness: The hosts assert TSA has not demonstrably improved safety, noting cockpit door hardening and airline-led measures as more meaningful deterrents.
Overall Stance: Strong skepticism toward federal centralization, calls to abolish or rethink TSA, and warnings that continued Middle East escalation poses economic and political risks.
Transcript
Welcome back to Powered Market podcast. I'm Ryan McMan, editor-inchief 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 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. Uh 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 Misa Circle, right? >> Absolutely. Topic is California's decline, a warning to America, uh, which will feature a great lineup, including uh, Ryan and Connor. We got both of them on the docket. Uh, our good friend Chris Cton from the Independent Institute is going to be there. Bill Anderson, always a fun time there. Uh, Peter Klene. Um, so that's always a good time. And I'm personally, you know, no 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 uh uh Keynesianism and um you some of its peculiar biography there. We also of course still in the year of Rothbarts, we've got Rothbart University May 14th through the and the California event. It should be noted California event is April 25th in San Diego of course. Um, but also Rothbart University is coming up on May 14th through the 16th. If uh if you never got to experience the Mises U best week of the year uh you know event, um you know, this is your opportunity to to kind of live that as uh you know, now you're a professional, you're an adult, you can't go hang out with the kids. Rothbart University gives you the opportunity to have a taste of that experience. We've got a great great lineup of speakers for that. Again, that's May 14th or 16th in Auburn, Alabama. And have you guys heard about uh the uh the Rothbard book being published this on the during the year of Rothbard? We've got uh the making of an Austrian economist, Marian Rothbard by Joe Solerno 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 can find out more about that at the mises.org homepage is at the bottom there. Uh all the events that I mentioned and many many more can be found of course at mises.org/events. I think that's everything I've got to plug. >> Yeah, this is a serious academic intellectual biography that's been in the work for years. >> I'm excited for this. >> Yeah, it's going to be a much needed edition. And most of us have read Enemy of the State by Justin Reando, I think, an early biography >> of Rothbard. Um, 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 and their development. >> Yeah. And it's it's more complicated than he read Human Action and boom, he's an Austrian communist. There's I mean 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 I'm really excited for this one. >> Yeah, >> for sure. >> All right. Well, something that Rothbart probably would have really enjoyed talking about is how TSA is screwing everybody at the airport, at least at some airports. Uh so if if you've been flying lately, especially if you've been flying out of say Houston or Atlanta or a couple of other >> flying back from AERC this past weekend, >> right? And I I lived the horror because yes, I was I was at the Austrian Economics Research Conference and the Libertarian Studies Conference uh last >> You have the most controversial talk of the weekend, >> the your defense of classical liberalism >> on the greatness of the Italian and the French uh radical liberals, the secessionist liberals, the realist liberals. Yes, that's a good talk. Check it out. You should go over it's on the front page right now under the power and market tab. Uh but yeah, so after all that happened, I had to fly back to Denver and I decided I was going to wake up at 3:00 a.m. 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 uh 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. So, I was essentially like waking up at 4:00 a.m. And so, I get up, drive to the airport, I'm there, I get into the security line at 6:50 a.m. and it's already wound all around the baggage claim into the main area of the airport. And uh so I just get in line and I wait in line for about 4 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 11ish and they started boarding at 11:30 uh for my flight, which was, you know, 12:15 or something like that. So, that was a long time. Fortunately, I did not have to go to the bathroom uh while I was in line 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 uh before getting into line. So, I'm >> the the airport line at in Atlanta, not necessarily the highest trust society. >> Yeah. Just here, watch my bags. >> Yes. And there were plenty of miserable people. There actually a lot of NCAA athletes in line uh trying to get home from various schools. So, I don't know. >> March madness is going on, Ryan. a night off. >> Oh, right. Yeah. Something to do with sports. And so I I get in I get in line and I finally make it to my 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 6 days or so because now the headline on NPR is uh this is from yesterday. Yeah. Uh travelers are facing the longest TA weight TSA wait 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. Uh but there are some other less bad cases as well. There are some airports like Denver doesn't seem to be a problem going out. Well, yeah, it's longer than usual, but it's like 30 minutes instead of 15 or 10 as is 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 feebased service. So 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 uh 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 they don't the fee doesn't automatically go to the service it supposedly pays for. So you're 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 setup in the world, right? You would think, oh, you pay a fee, it 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 I 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, I was talking to you can go, Connor. >> Uh my so there's kind of an interesting angle to all of this. This is basically exactly what Josh Maher, one of our editors who's been on the show a number of times and I we we co-wrote a paper and presented it um at LSE about what we called interventionist 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. Um but then what we were kind of adding in is that they will also and this and 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. We called it paid non-dely. Um, 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 um a specific reason why this is happening right now. Interestingly, I was just chatting with Josh and I guess um Elon Musk offered to pay the wages and the government said no. They said you're you're not allowed to do that. So kind of the similar to the concept we were talking about. But then of course ironically um 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. He found Jeff Dgner, 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 7:50 and they did not get through security until 1:12 p.m., which is over 5 hours of waiting. So, it's good you showed up a little bit earlier cuz just waiting an hour added a lot of time, which just sounds completely miserable uh waiting that long. And of course I I believe he's going to be um writing an article uh about his experience and and kind of bringing in our uh concept because I 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 5 hours like that and yeah and both of them completely missed their flights. They had to rebook. Of course everybody's trying to rebook so the app was down. Um and then like it's kind of 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 you just like multiply that by how many I 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 um and total mess and you know reason 10,000 why we should just abolish the TSA. Yeah, someone else I was talking to from uh ARC, I think they compared it to uh they got in a little early and got out and they compared it to getting the last the chopper out of Saigon uh back in the day. >> It did have like a refugee camp like feel. Fortunately, I've never actually been a refugee. Yeah, but that 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. Uh it really focused the mind in a in a way, but yeah. Yeah. Though, right, go on. It's so Yeah. Saigon 1975. >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I do think it's remarkable though, like this explicit I'm trying to think of of this obvious explicit breakdown of, you know, what has come to be seen as, you know, as as unfortunate as it is as government function like you know, this level of just complete breakdown of norms like this with such a visual impact. And what what I think is fascinating is the fact again this is a byproduct of as you mentioned Connor a lack of spending 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 this level of explicit breakdown is not changing anything in in DC is is fascinating. Uh the fact that Republicans can't leverage like the the Democrats being effectively kind of kind of at fault for this. This goes into all the distractions of Iran and and everything else has gone in there and complete breakdown of the bully pulpit of the White House um and in its traditional form here, but it's it's really just an incredible dynamic. Um 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 you don't have to take off your shoes anymore. Um I I do have to, you know, shout out to my my boy Ron. Um Dantis talked about like why do we have TSA at all? So at least it's you know it's not just Thomas Massie out there talking about no just Rand Paul making out that unfortunately governor of Florida. I don't know what how much he can he can do to push that anytime soon. Um but hopefully that this if you maybe there's a silver lining here reevaluation of this entire process. Um but um yeah just it's yeah again still 4 hour wait times going to Atlanta airport. Um pretty I'm I'm glad I'm not doing any I guess we will be flying to to Las Vegas and San Diego and other places sometime soon. So hopefully we'll get this resolved in the next couple weeks. Yeah, that's what we're flying through Montgomery or something. >> End up driving to San Diego. >> I know. We're like, we'll get an institute camper, take a big road trip, save some time, >> cover sleep in the back while I drive. Yeah. I mean, pretty grim. Uh like uh Madden uh John Madden, the uh 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 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 this whole thing >> and believe me, if 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 911 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. And that's what Ron Paul always said. He's like, there have been no takeovers of planes because now we have these reinforced doors on the cockpits. And 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 it's not going to happen. And why can't airports have the usual screenings is they've they did it successfully for for a long long time. You say, "Oh, well, there used to be hijackings 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 um an article, the video version went pretty viral last year about Real ID. Um 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 the like with the weapons they used, 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. Um, like all the things that the TSA now does, none of it like like they can kind of feed this narrative that uh none of that happened existed and so 911 happened and they came in and like filled this void. But no, like they didn't actually violate any of the rules until they actually took the the plane over. The rules were just so poorly written. Um, as you point out there, Ryan, I just think that's an important point. And then also uh it's been true since then. the the national government, the federal government's policy on this front has always been reactive. It's all about after something happens, they then change the rules. So like the taking the shoes off, which I guess is is no longer a rule. I'm in I was I'm TSA pre-check, so I I was unaware what what the the general go through, >> but that was because somebody tried to sneak something in their shoe. And so after the fact, they then changed the world for everybody else. Same with I guess it was in Europe uh 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 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 then I a theory I have as to why especially like Atlanta, the busiest airport um in the world by uh by passenger volume is especially bad is I think it's just the Washington Monument syndrome. The TSA, the worse 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 um they're not they're not motivated to actually move fast and really handle the issue. It the longer the lines are, the better it is for them probably in the long run. It's also there's the whole absurd you guys see that Trump sent ICE to the airports. It's like like what are they doing? 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 because they're not getting paid. It's not like you can just send people in that are not like like I guess they can try to say like 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 but 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 takeover we talked about last summer. Um, I think is when that was. It's hard to remember exactly where it's like you just have it's 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. >> Yeah. Like that that's the craziest thing though is like okay when I heard like they're sending it in ice like okay that's kind of an interesting fix in the short term but like they can't like for for some reason heaven forbid like how complicated it is to like you 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 handlers like >> the screenings which they really fail during tests, >> right? >> I'm I'm sure that such a such a skill like you know I'm not trying to take shots of 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 with an ICE guy like I just bureaucracy in it finest. >> Yeah. It's crazy. >> Well and it just always rem 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 re revocation makes your life worse for the common people that they always gee that's always what the government shutdown affects first. Do you you think the Pentagon is suffering? You think like Rathon 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 uh trial uh 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, etc., etc. 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 that at 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 uh it wasn't nearly as bad at the state level, but we had issues where there were regulations as you had to pay a fee in order for the inspectors to come and inspect the property and 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 uh 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 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 anytime too. Americans have been very well trained by public schools to regard uh the federal government as as better and more competent than state and local. Well, that's that's kind of the nefarious nature of what Josh and I wrote about is there is 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 that 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 to happen. and the police will step back. And 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 um and offering. So, yeah. And but we it I bet uh Josh's article tomorrow will probably explain the concept a lot better than I can here um on the fly, but we think it's a very common thing if you just look at what the it's a common way that the government basically screws us over and uh so people should definitely check that out. I guess it'll go up in the morning. >> Many such cases. >> Well, th 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 as a staffer, you just flash your badge kind of. >> So, yeah, you 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 uh let's move a little bit closer to the war issue. Let's talk about Joe Kint uh who resigned recently, federal law enforcement guy. So, I'll let you just really kind of introduce some of the uh the details on the Kent case. >> Yeah. Well, uh, um, Kent was kind of seen, I think, as in his appointment in his position as, you know, one of the senior intelligence officials. Um, you obviously he'd ran for Congress twice, was unsuccessful in those times. Um, but, you know, decorated war veteran. His wife was tragically lost in the Syrian conflict. Um, you know, and and you he publishes a letter last week now. um you stated that he you know Iran's attack was was either there was no threat of an imminent attack uh that he can can't be a part of this effort that all of the internal mechanisms to try to address this or you are not functioning um and then directly accuses Donald Trump of in very explicit terms in his letter um being influenced by Israeli intelligence in the Israeli lobby um you know in this conflict. And I thought was really interesting was his immediate uh uh interview with Tucker Carlson which was about two hours long. I thought it was extremely well done from uh Ken's perspective, not only with the level of detail in the um um 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 will. You try to not make it easy to attack in certain different ways. Um, but it was also very clear to me that the entire structure was to uh 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 says has a a good ability to consider, you know, complicated issues. Um, that he uniquely is qualified to kind of put the Israelis in their place and and and to to bring about an endless war. Um 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. Um, you know, he had talked about how Iran historically had been very rational actors in the way that they escalated conflicts through a clear uh, predictable, you know, escalatory ladder, right? So, you know, we we, you know, bombed 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. um you know he was being accused of hypocrisy because he had made previous statements about Iran's nuclear program whatever but none of that and you know tweets from 3 years ago obviously are not an indicator of a imminent threat right now um but his his narrative is basically that Trump is being that that that traditional intelligence services not that we're their biggest fans but that their reports saying that there was no threat here were being undermined by Trump getting briefings directly ly from Israeli intelligence, from Israeli politicians. Thus, the emphasis on that angle. Um, he he also I I I will admit I did not listen to his interview on Mark Levven. I'm not going to subject myself to that much Mark Levven voice. Um, but but I I I think it's, you know, in this in the immediate aftermath, you know, he's being accused of leaking classified intel, right? And it wouldn't surprise me at all. Like I I I fully expect that, you know, within the next six months that that you there might be criminal charges on Joe Kent. Like that that that is that is my forward speculation here is that it would not surprise me at all there some attempt to punish him for this particular act. Um and he might even like like there's plenty of leaking that goes on, right? People are you know 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 I'm not even trying to go that far, but I 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 Kent was out there, there's a lot of people that are kind of giving Trump the benefit of the doubt within online MAGA Orbit that are Kent fans for a variety of reasons. Um and so I thought that that both that action, 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 during the the Afghan withdrawal that the the only person that criticized the the way that withdrawal happened, not withdrawal itself, but you end up in jail time. Um, and that, you know, there's this long legacy of dissent being punished even criminally 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 MAGA 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. Again, I thought his his particular presentation with his desired audience and whatever um was made that a very effective a very interesting thing listen to as a as a particular piece of commentary outside of what you could just gather alone by the letter itself. And so I 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. Like I can't believe that was just last week. >> Um and that's what also happens when you have a conference. But u 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 911. Iraq had nothing to do with 911." And George W. Bush was just kept saying, "No, we'll we'll figure out some way to to 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 9 911. There were constant hints that Iraq was involved 911. And then you ended up with something like 40% of Americans believing that Iraq had something to do with 911. there are still people out there who believe it even though it's completely based on no reality whatsoever. Uh and of course there then there was weapons of mass destruction which the intelligence agency said there's not really any evidence of that and George W. Bush demanded that Coen Powell go out before the UN and claim oh no actually there here's our case for weapons of mass just a bunch 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 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 bases, that this was clo entirely 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, what they've been cla what Trump now claims as well is a 47y old war. They they have 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 Iranian 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 47year 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 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 fair, you know, Iran has been behind, you know, the 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 is completely different from, >> you know, the mushroom cloud over New York sort of narrative >> 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. And I might note, by the way, that Herbert Spencer in 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. >> No, you don't think that. >> Oh, no. No. I was just saying, you know, that there there are, you know, this this I think from the perspective, you know, which I like, you know, I I get, you know, but but again, I think it's particularly a generational component. I mean, like I I think Kent in particular was talking from his experience, you know, being directly within that that hot conflict, but I think it's definitely like the hostage situation, right? Yeah, I was like, you know, it's as much as it's there's the aspects I think unique to the Iranian revolution >> that has that 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 if you if you have that assumption that Iran is an irrational actor, then that allows you to justify any sort of hypothetical, right? 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 Ken outlines there, 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 plays a major major factor in how you're perceiving this thing. >> Yeah, I definitely view it as the hostage crisis. I think like especially because that, you know, I was not around. I have to study history, but the way that that seemed to capture um 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, then the good guys should punish them for that. And that hasn't really happened to the Iranian regime, at least directly for that. Um from this kind of simplistic boomer narrative. So, I can see there being that kind of bias um that you know they they did that and they deserve something baked in there. But what's so absurd 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 new like they would have been bringing that up constantly beforehand that 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. Um, that's kind of been the 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, um, 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. Uh, to his credit, >> they start a new war every time. >> Yeah. >> They overnight they resurrected their nuclear programs. We got to bomb it again. You know, what are you gonna do? Yeah, this the whole mowing the grass thing. There's a radio Rothbart episode about that uh coming up tomorrow. But but with the Kent thing, I think what's interesting with him having watched a number of his interviews, he Yeah, he did I well I didn't finish the Tucker one. He did one with Scott Horton right after. Um he did a a good one with uh Sager from uh Breaking Points too and he's done a number of them. But he is clearly taking the approach that um if it's essentially he's not going to blame Trump directly. He's going to he's trying to give uh paint this narrative that Trump was misled by the Israelis and that Trump can he he said it directly. Trump can completely shift uh on a dime and you know the people will his supporters will be behind him. He's trying to essentially give um 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 sliver of I think what we would consider the best um parts of MAGA, best parts of the administration that are trying to essentially turn Trump against the Israelis. Yes. Uh through flattery, which would be I would not hate that. Well, and I think that's 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 re a reorganization of America's relationship with Israel. >> Is that possible? It's a different question, right? But I think that that is that that's the common drum beat of what Kent is trying to to push is that the only way to have a a 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 um to to bring this to rest and hope you know hope he has success in in that that you marketing that that notion there. But I think but I I think there has been it's it's interesting seeing so vividly within this political theater that aspect of it being a 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 you blame Trump a lot for this. Like he he could have stopped it. Um, but I I can understand how you if you're really like if he 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. And 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 his cabinet. It's because that's a strategy. That's deliberate. The 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 the Israel lobby and the Mark Leven and the Ben Shapiro calling him the most courageous commander-in-chief in military history for doing this. Levvin saying we're that people are going to be talking about Trump for thousands of years because of this. There are these people in his ears just gooseing him up and I just don't see um Kent competing with that. So I'm not very hopeful. I so I understand the merit of it. But that said, like if you think back to an interesting dynamic with this is like Levvin 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 what MAGA are, 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 Rubio, like all these people that were very much against him and now he's turned them into, you know, his biggest public fans. Uh but I I guess like from my perspective and this is something we've talked about on the show before the 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 seating all of the noise over to the the neocons and the people that are cheering for this. And so I understand Kent specifically um maybe taking this approach as he comes out of the government and you know he's definitely connected with people that are still in the room, but I just think it it's just um I think that the the people that don't want Trump to continue down the road he's on need to stop this whole trust the plan, stay silent thing. I think Trump needs to get a tremendous amount of pressure uh from the populace. It's clear that the the population in total is against this. I would hope that people would get louder. The you know 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. Uh so like I I do understand the merits of of Pence's approach individually, but I don't think people should try to emulate him from from the outside. >> Well, that being said, the the biggest source of pressure right now is gas prices. >> Yeah. And that's what I mean is like >> Yeah. Yeah. I mean that's Yeah. Is is like you know those those aspects of it like you know I think you know Trump's loves you gas prices were what was the more talking points and it's completely gone down. I mean Republicans are losing seats. I mean you know his own state house seat down there riding by Mara Lago got flipped uh within Florida elections. Uh but one silver lining I mean you want to talk about trusting the plan. Uh Lindsey Graham is now apparently underwater in favorability in South Carolina. um you know so you know >> finally >> see how that goes. Um but but the the political fallout of this particularly with again like the no end in sight to the domestic economic consequences the the costs to people um you know it's a lot of things are going to start breaking. >> Yeah. >> What is what's with South Carolina? They always keep reelecting these guys. >> I always have a history of quirky politicians. I mean, at this point, like, if if you admit to voting for Lindsey Graham, you should be treated by like as a pedophile basically, like just some radioactive creep who shouldn't even be allowed to circulate in civilized society. And yet, he gets like a million votes every time he runs for office. It's amazing. >> Him him him making references. >> Yeah. >> To to Car Island. I mean, like, you know, how many Americans died? Yeah. Saying we can do this. We as if he's going to be leading. >> Yeah. The the first boat. We have boats that can land there. It's disgusting. >> That would be impossible today. It is sort of like a a beach head landing like that would not work with 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. Uh >> that has some relevance for Taiwan later. >> The stay tuned. Well, that's the reason Taiwan hasn't been invaded yet is it's so incredibly difficult to pull off that sort of thing. Even when you're even when you're right next to it, right? China's right next to Taiwan. The US has this multi,000mi supply chain that to get it to Iran because of course all US bases have been basically destroyed in the Gulf >> evacuated, >> right? And we're supposed to believe they're going to be able to pull that off. But it's >> 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, Samore Hirs 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 uh 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'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 in focus about how it's completely impossible they're going to do an amphibious landing on Car Island because they have to get through the straight of Hormuz and it 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 uh you know they have to be thinking about those dynamics, but he definitely does not seem interested in those um incredibly important details here. >> No. And so and in 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. Uh 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 in back then was is now very old or dead >> and now what's the answer to that? Oh, to bomb toddlers. Yeah. In downtown Tyrron. And and to him that makes sense on some twisted, of course, to a lot of Americans, it 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 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 that's how the the uh the American foreign policy elite knows that they can uh manipulate, you know, 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 thinking for anyone who has any capability of like actual moral logic and thinking, but most people don't have that. So, uh, it's it seems like, yeah, the the out of balance, uh, 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 80year-old, now 80-year-old did to Americans back uh 40some years ago. So, um, it seems that it's working. All right. Well, 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.
America’s TSA Meltdown
Summary
Transcript
Welcome back to Powered Market podcast. I'm Ryan McMan, editor-inchief 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 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. Uh 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 Misa Circle, right? >> Absolutely. Topic is California's decline, a warning to America, uh, which will feature a great lineup, including uh, Ryan and Connor. We got both of them on the docket. Uh, our good friend Chris Cton from the Independent Institute is going to be there. Bill Anderson, always a fun time there. Uh, Peter Klene. Um, so that's always a good time. And I'm personally, you know, no 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 uh uh Keynesianism and um you some of its peculiar biography there. We also of course still in the year of Rothbarts, we've got Rothbart University May 14th through the and the California event. It should be noted California event is April 25th in San Diego of course. Um, but also Rothbart University is coming up on May 14th through the 16th. If uh if you never got to experience the Mises U best week of the year uh you know event, um you know, this is your opportunity to to kind of live that as uh you know, now you're a professional, you're an adult, you can't go hang out with the kids. Rothbart University gives you the opportunity to have a taste of that experience. We've got a great great lineup of speakers for that. Again, that's May 14th or 16th in Auburn, Alabama. And have you guys heard about uh the uh the Rothbard book being published this on the during the year of Rothbard? We've got uh the making of an Austrian economist, Marian Rothbard by Joe Solerno 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 can find out more about that at the mises.org homepage is at the bottom there. Uh all the events that I mentioned and many many more can be found of course at mises.org/events. I think that's everything I've got to plug. >> Yeah, this is a serious academic intellectual biography that's been in the work for years. >> I'm excited for this. >> Yeah, it's going to be a much needed edition. And most of us have read Enemy of the State by Justin Reando, I think, an early biography >> of Rothbard. Um, 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 and their development. >> Yeah. And it's it's more complicated than he read Human Action and boom, he's an Austrian communist. There's I mean 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 I'm really excited for this one. >> Yeah, >> for sure. >> All right. Well, something that Rothbart probably would have really enjoyed talking about is how TSA is screwing everybody at the airport, at least at some airports. Uh so if if you've been flying lately, especially if you've been flying out of say Houston or Atlanta or a couple of other >> flying back from AERC this past weekend, >> right? And I I lived the horror because yes, I was I was at the Austrian Economics Research Conference and the Libertarian Studies Conference uh last >> You have the most controversial talk of the weekend, >> the your defense of classical liberalism >> on the greatness of the Italian and the French uh radical liberals, the secessionist liberals, the realist liberals. Yes, that's a good talk. Check it out. You should go over it's on the front page right now under the power and market tab. Uh but yeah, so after all that happened, I had to fly back to Denver and I decided I was going to wake up at 3:00 a.m. 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 uh 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. So, I was essentially like waking up at 4:00 a.m. And so, I get up, drive to the airport, I'm there, I get into the security line at 6:50 a.m. and it's already wound all around the baggage claim into the main area of the airport. And uh so I just get in line and I wait in line for about 4 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 11ish and they started boarding at 11:30 uh for my flight, which was, you know, 12:15 or something like that. So, that was a long time. Fortunately, I did not have to go to the bathroom uh while I was in line 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 uh before getting into line. So, I'm >> the the airport line at in Atlanta, not necessarily the highest trust society. >> Yeah. Just here, watch my bags. >> Yes. And there were plenty of miserable people. There actually a lot of NCAA athletes in line uh trying to get home from various schools. So, I don't know. >> March madness is going on, Ryan. a night off. >> Oh, right. Yeah. Something to do with sports. And so I I get in I get in line and I finally make it to my 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 6 days or so because now the headline on NPR is uh this is from yesterday. Yeah. Uh travelers are facing the longest TA weight TSA wait 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. Uh but there are some other less bad cases as well. There are some airports like Denver doesn't seem to be a problem going out. Well, yeah, it's longer than usual, but it's like 30 minutes instead of 15 or 10 as is 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 feebased service. So 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 uh 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 they don't the fee doesn't automatically go to the service it supposedly pays for. So you're 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 setup in the world, right? You would think, oh, you pay a fee, it 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 I 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, I was talking to you can go, Connor. >> Uh my so there's kind of an interesting angle to all of this. This is basically exactly what Josh Maher, one of our editors who's been on the show a number of times and I we we co-wrote a paper and presented it um at LSE about what we called interventionist 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. Um but then what we were kind of adding in is that they will also and this and 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. We called it paid non-dely. Um, 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 um a specific reason why this is happening right now. Interestingly, I was just chatting with Josh and I guess um Elon Musk offered to pay the wages and the government said no. They said you're you're not allowed to do that. So kind of the similar to the concept we were talking about. But then of course ironically um 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. He found Jeff Dgner, 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 7:50 and they did not get through security until 1:12 p.m., which is over 5 hours of waiting. So, it's good you showed up a little bit earlier cuz just waiting an hour added a lot of time, which just sounds completely miserable uh waiting that long. And of course I I believe he's going to be um writing an article uh about his experience and and kind of bringing in our uh concept because I 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 5 hours like that and yeah and both of them completely missed their flights. They had to rebook. Of course everybody's trying to rebook so the app was down. Um and then like it's kind of 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 you just like multiply that by how many I 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 um and total mess and you know reason 10,000 why we should just abolish the TSA. Yeah, someone else I was talking to from uh ARC, I think they compared it to uh they got in a little early and got out and they compared it to getting the last the chopper out of Saigon uh back in the day. >> It did have like a refugee camp like feel. Fortunately, I've never actually been a refugee. Yeah, but that 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. Uh it really focused the mind in a in a way, but yeah. Yeah. Though, right, go on. It's so Yeah. Saigon 1975. >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I do think it's remarkable though, like this explicit I'm trying to think of of this obvious explicit breakdown of, you know, what has come to be seen as, you know, as as unfortunate as it is as government function like you know, this level of just complete breakdown of norms like this with such a visual impact. And what what I think is fascinating is the fact again this is a byproduct of as you mentioned Connor a lack of spending 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 this level of explicit breakdown is not changing anything in in DC is is fascinating. Uh the fact that Republicans can't leverage like the the Democrats being effectively kind of kind of at fault for this. This goes into all the distractions of Iran and and everything else has gone in there and complete breakdown of the bully pulpit of the White House um and in its traditional form here, but it's it's really just an incredible dynamic. Um 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 you don't have to take off your shoes anymore. Um I I do have to, you know, shout out to my my boy Ron. Um Dantis talked about like why do we have TSA at all? So at least it's you know it's not just Thomas Massie out there talking about no just Rand Paul making out that unfortunately governor of Florida. I don't know what how much he can he can do to push that anytime soon. Um but hopefully that this if you maybe there's a silver lining here reevaluation of this entire process. Um but um yeah just it's yeah again still 4 hour wait times going to Atlanta airport. Um pretty I'm I'm glad I'm not doing any I guess we will be flying to to Las Vegas and San Diego and other places sometime soon. So hopefully we'll get this resolved in the next couple weeks. Yeah, that's what we're flying through Montgomery or something. >> End up driving to San Diego. >> I know. We're like, we'll get an institute camper, take a big road trip, save some time, >> cover sleep in the back while I drive. Yeah. I mean, pretty grim. Uh like uh Madden uh John Madden, the uh 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 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 this whole thing >> and believe me, if 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 911 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. And that's what Ron Paul always said. He's like, there have been no takeovers of planes because now we have these reinforced doors on the cockpits. And 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 it's not going to happen. And why can't airports have the usual screenings is they've they did it successfully for for a long long time. You say, "Oh, well, there used to be hijackings 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 um an article, the video version went pretty viral last year about Real ID. Um 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 the like with the weapons they used, 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. Um, like all the things that the TSA now does, none of it like like they can kind of feed this narrative that uh none of that happened existed and so 911 happened and they came in and like filled this void. But no, like they didn't actually violate any of the rules until they actually took the the plane over. The rules were just so poorly written. Um, as you point out there, Ryan, I just think that's an important point. And then also uh it's been true since then. the the national government, the federal government's policy on this front has always been reactive. It's all about after something happens, they then change the rules. So like the taking the shoes off, which I guess is is no longer a rule. I'm in I was I'm TSA pre-check, so I I was unaware what what the the general go through, >> but that was because somebody tried to sneak something in their shoe. And so after the fact, they then changed the world for everybody else. Same with I guess it was in Europe uh 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 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 then I a theory I have as to why especially like Atlanta, the busiest airport um in the world by uh by passenger volume is especially bad is I think it's just the Washington Monument syndrome. The TSA, the worse 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 um they're not they're not motivated to actually move fast and really handle the issue. It the longer the lines are, the better it is for them probably in the long run. It's also there's the whole absurd you guys see that Trump sent ICE to the airports. It's like like what are they doing? 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 because they're not getting paid. It's not like you can just send people in that are not like like I guess they can try to say like 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 but 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 takeover we talked about last summer. Um, I think is when that was. It's hard to remember exactly where it's like you just have it's 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. >> Yeah. Like that that's the craziest thing though is like okay when I heard like they're sending it in ice like okay that's kind of an interesting fix in the short term but like they can't like for for some reason heaven forbid like how complicated it is to like you 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 handlers like >> the screenings which they really fail during tests, >> right? >> I'm I'm sure that such a such a skill like you know I'm not trying to take shots of 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 with an ICE guy like I just bureaucracy in it finest. >> Yeah. It's crazy. >> Well and it just always rem 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 re revocation makes your life worse for the common people that they always gee that's always what the government shutdown affects first. Do you you think the Pentagon is suffering? You think like Rathon 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 uh trial uh 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, etc., etc. 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 that at 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 uh it wasn't nearly as bad at the state level, but we had issues where there were regulations as you had to pay a fee in order for the inspectors to come and inspect the property and 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 uh 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 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 anytime too. Americans have been very well trained by public schools to regard uh the federal government as as better and more competent than state and local. Well, that's that's kind of the nefarious nature of what Josh and I wrote about is there is 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 that 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 to happen. and the police will step back. And 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 um and offering. So, yeah. And but we it I bet uh Josh's article tomorrow will probably explain the concept a lot better than I can here um on the fly, but we think it's a very common thing if you just look at what the it's a common way that the government basically screws us over and uh so people should definitely check that out. I guess it'll go up in the morning. >> Many such cases. >> Well, th 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 as a staffer, you just flash your badge kind of. >> So, yeah, you 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 uh let's move a little bit closer to the war issue. Let's talk about Joe Kint uh who resigned recently, federal law enforcement guy. So, I'll let you just really kind of introduce some of the uh the details on the Kent case. >> Yeah. Well, uh, um, Kent was kind of seen, I think, as in his appointment in his position as, you know, one of the senior intelligence officials. Um, you obviously he'd ran for Congress twice, was unsuccessful in those times. Um, but, you know, decorated war veteran. His wife was tragically lost in the Syrian conflict. Um, you know, and and you he publishes a letter last week now. um you stated that he you know Iran's attack was was either there was no threat of an imminent attack uh that he can can't be a part of this effort that all of the internal mechanisms to try to address this or you are not functioning um and then directly accuses Donald Trump of in very explicit terms in his letter um being influenced by Israeli intelligence in the Israeli lobby um you know in this conflict. And I thought was really interesting was his immediate uh uh interview with Tucker Carlson which was about two hours long. I thought it was extremely well done from uh Ken's perspective, not only with the level of detail in the um um 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 will. You try to not make it easy to attack in certain different ways. Um, but it was also very clear to me that the entire structure was to uh 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 says has a a good ability to consider, you know, complicated issues. Um, that he uniquely is qualified to kind of put the Israelis in their place and and and to to bring about an endless war. Um 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. Um, you know, he had talked about how Iran historically had been very rational actors in the way that they escalated conflicts through a clear uh, predictable, you know, escalatory ladder, right? So, you know, we we, you know, bombed 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. um you know he was being accused of hypocrisy because he had made previous statements about Iran's nuclear program whatever but none of that and you know tweets from 3 years ago obviously are not an indicator of a imminent threat right now um but his his narrative is basically that Trump is being that that that traditional intelligence services not that we're their biggest fans but that their reports saying that there was no threat here were being undermined by Trump getting briefings directly ly from Israeli intelligence, from Israeli politicians. Thus, the emphasis on that angle. Um, he he also I I I will admit I did not listen to his interview on Mark Levven. I'm not going to subject myself to that much Mark Levven voice. Um, but but I I I think it's, you know, in this in the immediate aftermath, you know, he's being accused of leaking classified intel, right? And it wouldn't surprise me at all. Like I I I fully expect that, you know, within the next six months that that you there might be criminal charges on Joe Kent. Like that that that is that is my forward speculation here is that it would not surprise me at all there some attempt to punish him for this particular act. Um and he might even like like there's plenty of leaking that goes on, right? People are you know 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 I'm not even trying to go that far, but I 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 Kent was out there, there's a lot of people that are kind of giving Trump the benefit of the doubt within online MAGA Orbit that are Kent fans for a variety of reasons. Um and so I thought that that both that action, 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 during the the Afghan withdrawal that the the only person that criticized the the way that withdrawal happened, not withdrawal itself, but you end up in jail time. Um, and that, you know, there's this long legacy of dissent being punished even criminally 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 MAGA 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. Again, I thought his his particular presentation with his desired audience and whatever um was made that a very effective a very interesting thing listen to as a as a particular piece of commentary outside of what you could just gather alone by the letter itself. And so I 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. Like I can't believe that was just last week. >> Um and that's what also happens when you have a conference. But u 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 911. Iraq had nothing to do with 911." And George W. Bush was just kept saying, "No, we'll we'll figure out some way to to 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 9 911. There were constant hints that Iraq was involved 911. And then you ended up with something like 40% of Americans believing that Iraq had something to do with 911. there are still people out there who believe it even though it's completely based on no reality whatsoever. Uh and of course there then there was weapons of mass destruction which the intelligence agency said there's not really any evidence of that and George W. Bush demanded that Coen Powell go out before the UN and claim oh no actually there here's our case for weapons of mass just a bunch 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 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 bases, that this was clo entirely 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, what they've been cla what Trump now claims as well is a 47y old war. They they have 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 Iranian 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 47year 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 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 fair, you know, Iran has been behind, you know, the 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 is completely different from, >> you know, the mushroom cloud over New York sort of narrative >> 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. And I might note, by the way, that Herbert Spencer in 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. >> No, you don't think that. >> Oh, no. No. I was just saying, you know, that there there are, you know, this this I think from the perspective, you know, which I like, you know, I I get, you know, but but again, I think it's particularly a generational component. I mean, like I I think Kent in particular was talking from his experience, you know, being directly within that that hot conflict, but I think it's definitely like the hostage situation, right? Yeah, I was like, you know, it's as much as it's there's the aspects I think unique to the Iranian revolution >> that has that 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 if you if you have that assumption that Iran is an irrational actor, then that allows you to justify any sort of hypothetical, right? 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 Ken outlines there, 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 plays a major major factor in how you're perceiving this thing. >> Yeah, I definitely view it as the hostage crisis. I think like especially because that, you know, I was not around. I have to study history, but the way that that seemed to capture um 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, then the good guys should punish them for that. And that hasn't really happened to the Iranian regime, at least directly for that. Um from this kind of simplistic boomer narrative. So, I can see there being that kind of bias um that you know they they did that and they deserve something baked in there. But what's so absurd 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 new like they would have been bringing that up constantly beforehand that 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. Um, that's kind of been the 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, um, 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. Uh, to his credit, >> they start a new war every time. >> Yeah. >> They overnight they resurrected their nuclear programs. We got to bomb it again. You know, what are you gonna do? Yeah, this the whole mowing the grass thing. There's a radio Rothbart episode about that uh coming up tomorrow. But but with the Kent thing, I think what's interesting with him having watched a number of his interviews, he Yeah, he did I well I didn't finish the Tucker one. He did one with Scott Horton right after. Um he did a a good one with uh Sager from uh Breaking Points too and he's done a number of them. But he is clearly taking the approach that um if it's essentially he's not going to blame Trump directly. He's going to he's trying to give uh paint this narrative that Trump was misled by the Israelis and that Trump can he he said it directly. Trump can completely shift uh on a dime and you know the people will his supporters will be behind him. He's trying to essentially give um 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 sliver of I think what we would consider the best um parts of MAGA, best parts of the administration that are trying to essentially turn Trump against the Israelis. Yes. Uh through flattery, which would be I would not hate that. Well, and I think that's 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 re a reorganization of America's relationship with Israel. >> Is that possible? It's a different question, right? But I think that that is that that's the common drum beat of what Kent is trying to to push is that the only way to have a a 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 um to to bring this to rest and hope you know hope he has success in in that that you marketing that that notion there. But I think but I I think there has been it's it's interesting seeing so vividly within this political theater that aspect of it being a 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 you blame Trump a lot for this. Like he he could have stopped it. Um, but I I can understand how you if you're really like if he 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. And 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 his cabinet. It's because that's a strategy. That's deliberate. The 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 the Israel lobby and the Mark Leven and the Ben Shapiro calling him the most courageous commander-in-chief in military history for doing this. Levvin saying we're that people are going to be talking about Trump for thousands of years because of this. There are these people in his ears just gooseing him up and I just don't see um Kent competing with that. So I'm not very hopeful. I so I understand the merit of it. But that said, like if you think back to an interesting dynamic with this is like Levvin 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 what MAGA are, 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 Rubio, like all these people that were very much against him and now he's turned them into, you know, his biggest public fans. Uh but I I guess like from my perspective and this is something we've talked about on the show before the 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 seating all of the noise over to the the neocons and the people that are cheering for this. And so I understand Kent specifically um maybe taking this approach as he comes out of the government and you know he's definitely connected with people that are still in the room, but I just think it it's just um I think that the the people that don't want Trump to continue down the road he's on need to stop this whole trust the plan, stay silent thing. I think Trump needs to get a tremendous amount of pressure uh from the populace. It's clear that the the population in total is against this. I would hope that people would get louder. The you know 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. Uh so like I I do understand the merits of of Pence's approach individually, but I don't think people should try to emulate him from from the outside. >> Well, that being said, the the biggest source of pressure right now is gas prices. >> Yeah. And that's what I mean is like >> Yeah. Yeah. I mean that's Yeah. Is is like you know those those aspects of it like you know I think you know Trump's loves you gas prices were what was the more talking points and it's completely gone down. I mean Republicans are losing seats. I mean you know his own state house seat down there riding by Mara Lago got flipped uh within Florida elections. Uh but one silver lining I mean you want to talk about trusting the plan. Uh Lindsey Graham is now apparently underwater in favorability in South Carolina. um you know so you know >> finally >> see how that goes. Um but but the the political fallout of this particularly with again like the no end in sight to the domestic economic consequences the the costs to people um you know it's a lot of things are going to start breaking. >> Yeah. >> What is what's with South Carolina? They always keep reelecting these guys. >> I always have a history of quirky politicians. I mean, at this point, like, if if you admit to voting for Lindsey Graham, you should be treated by like as a pedophile basically, like just some radioactive creep who shouldn't even be allowed to circulate in civilized society. And yet, he gets like a million votes every time he runs for office. It's amazing. >> Him him him making references. >> Yeah. >> To to Car Island. I mean, like, you know, how many Americans died? Yeah. Saying we can do this. We as if he's going to be leading. >> Yeah. The the first boat. We have boats that can land there. It's disgusting. >> That would be impossible today. It is sort of like a a beach head landing like that would not work with 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. Uh >> that has some relevance for Taiwan later. >> The stay tuned. Well, that's the reason Taiwan hasn't been invaded yet is it's so incredibly difficult to pull off that sort of thing. Even when you're even when you're right next to it, right? China's right next to Taiwan. The US has this multi,000mi supply chain that to get it to Iran because of course all US bases have been basically destroyed in the Gulf >> evacuated, >> right? And we're supposed to believe they're going to be able to pull that off. But it's >> 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, Samore Hirs 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 uh 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'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 in focus about how it's completely impossible they're going to do an amphibious landing on Car Island because they have to get through the straight of Hormuz and it 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 uh you know they have to be thinking about those dynamics, but he definitely does not seem interested in those um incredibly important details here. >> No. And so and in 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. Uh 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 in back then was is now very old or dead >> and now what's the answer to that? Oh, to bomb toddlers. Yeah. In downtown Tyrron. And and to him that makes sense on some twisted, of course, to a lot of Americans, it 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 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 that's how the the uh the American foreign policy elite knows that they can uh manipulate, you know, 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 thinking for anyone who has any capability of like actual moral logic and thinking, but most people don't have that. So, uh, it's it seems like, yeah, the the out of balance, uh, 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 80year-old, now 80-year-old did to Americans back uh 40some years ago. So, um, it seems that it's working. All right. Well, 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.