Why Dave Smith holds Trump responsible alongside war advocates

Transcript

Transcribed by machine (Whisper) from the episode’s audio, so a word may be off here and there.

1. 57:41

   are mostly okay so let me so let me be so clear to this uh let me try to say this if i if i hire you to kill a person i hold you 100 responsible for doing it for killing the person i'm also 100 responsible like for hiring so i don't know what that means you have no less agency i have no less agency we're all responsible for the things but it's a whole different situation here because president trump is somebody who spent his entire life having stuff pitched to him right one of the things that happens when i don't know if you i'm sure you've discovered this as well when you have money or people think you have money suddenly all these people emerge out of the woodwork amazing ideas for how to convert your money into their money uh-huh yes so he's been dealing with this his entire life people coming to him and saying you know mr trump this is a great deal

2. 58:31

   this is a great idea we should do this we should do that and a lot of them are going to be well intentioned but wrong about the reality of what it's going to cause now if you are someone who takes a deal of that kind or takes information that those people genuinely believe let's say and you act on it and you get a wrong outcome that's 100 on you yet what i see particularly in the new media spaces literally no one wants to say except you donald trump is responsible for this war it's all israel tricked america no so i'm saying that's but listen dude and it's it makes no sense to even be more israel more angry at israel like even if that's your perspective it's like so you should be angry at your own leaders for going along with that also So, as you said, why would Israel even have to trick America, right? Because America's the superpower, because this is where we got the weapons. This is where we make that stuff. I mean, that's right. So like that's I would be more angry at Donald Trump either way. But like to your example, to use your example, if I pitch a capitalist on investing 10 million dollars in some idea I have and I just lose all of the money because it's a terrible investment. Yes, that's on him. He chose to invest the money. It's also on me that my pitch was

3. 59:41

   that bad that i like i don't know it's on both of us we both failed together in that venture so look i'm just saying if you're if you're a uh uh just a pundit on on cable news or something like that and you've been advocating for war and around all these years i'm not saying you're responsible for for the president going but it's like hey look you got your policy that you've been advocating for all these years now i'm gonna look at you as it's a disaster it's just i was right the tricking thing seems to me like excusing the real decision maker. Everyone's always trying to trick everyone though. You know, like if you get tricked, that's on you. Like, I don't even know, you know, I mean like, yes, it was like from my perspective and I think probably yours too, right? Like I've heard you say this before. Israel's goal in this was always regime collapse or regime replacement,

4. 1:00:26

   right? Or degrading Iran's military. Right, let's say they have their own angles and they have their own, like, so if they come to you and go, no, this nuclear threat is really a problem. It's like, okay well if you believe that rather than believing that they're also somewhat motivated by their other goals here which have nothing to do with their nuclear program i do actually think they they reasonably believe that iran develop iran wants to develop a nuke because that's what iran would want to do and i absolutely believe so number one yeah and number two that they rightly believe that would be massively destabilizing to the middle east so i believe they're right to be concerned about that. The issue here is, and I think one of the reasons people say Israel tricked America into the war is the assertion is there's a divergence in foreign policy interests between

5. 1:01:10

   Israel and America, which there is because they're two different countries, right? Therefore, Israel actually knew that this war would go badly, but they were quite happy with that because it's not going bad for Israel. This is the argument people make. I'm not saying it's my opinion. the reason people say Israel tricked America is what they mean is Israel knew this Benjamin Netanyahu let's say it's not Israel Benjamin Netanyahu and Mossad knew this war would go like this but they're quite happy with that outcome because they've used American power to flatten Iran that's what people would say that to me is a very bold claim it may be true it may not be true but you'd have to have a tremendous amount of evidence to say the Israelis knew this war would go like this it's very possible just like elements of the american military and intelligence of a

6. 1:01:59

   time said you know if we do this this is what will happen and it's not turned out that it's just i guess it's it's hard yeah look i mean i'm not even arguing what you said it's possible people believe i like i said i've read enough about it that i i genuinely believe people believed iraq would be a cakewalk i'm convinced of that like i don't think they were lying about that's probably what's happening this i find a little bit tougher because it's like i don't know dude after the examples of Iraq and Afghanistan and Libya and Syria and Somalia and Yemen, that you'd still come back to this and not even be a little bit concerned with the, like, okay, I think there's going to be a cakewalk, but there is at least this, you know, like, okay, I understand that initially, right, this is the thing that, which I'll be happy to get horned to with Coleman Hughes

7. 1:02:40

   next week, but the thing that we were arguing over the last time, right, when General Wesley Clark said that he saw the memo that the plan was in the next five years, just in five years, we're going to take out seven countries and then John Kiriakou has an interesting footnote that was similar that goes along with it that he said I think it was in late 2002 early 2003 that he was in the room where one of the CIA director his assistant said next year we'll be in Tehran you know like the mentality really was we're going to wrap this up quick and we're going to move on to the next one um okay but after that turn into an eight-year civil war where a million people died you'd think at least you know like on the next one you'd have a little bit of like and everybody i know like on all sides of this

8. 1:03:22

   you know i've been into in this world for like 20 years now and i'm in the anti-war.com guys are all my friends and i like these uh this has been the war on the table for 25 years that everyone's been writing about everyone predicted this everyone said around three times bigger it's a much more mountainous region. It's much more difficult than Iraq or Afghanistan. This is what they will do if you attack them. They can choke off the Strait of Hormuz. They can hit American targets in the region. I guess it's just, look, man, I've read my Thomas Sowell. I'm a good libertarian. I never want to think that government cannot be way more incompetent than you even give them credit for.

9. 1:03:59

   But like you said before, with all the smart guys in government, it is a little hard to believe that like this wasn't envisioned and particularly for the israelis look i'm i'm speculating here i do tend to think yeah they probably knew there was a chance it would go this way benjamin netanyahu is a little too savvy of a guy he at least knew like it's possible the immediate decapitation won't work but if we get that we've at least drawn the americans in the conflict is at least going to degrade around a little bit and maybe it'll degrade them so much that the regime collapses and we really get what we want so i agree with you that probably there are real concerns. Definitely there are real concerns in the Israeli security apparatus about