Expert Audits the True Cost of the Iran War and What the Pentagon Is Hiding From You

0:00Hi everybody, Jay Leno here. You know when Yamaha asked me what car to feature for the 500th car giveaway? There's only one car, the Rolls Royce. And not any Rolls Royce, the Rolls Royce Spectre. The most powerful Rolls Royce ever built. And here's the special part. The one they're giving away was built exactly like mine. It's a car I chose in my own garage, and now one lucky guest will drive home in the very same car that I have. So play at Yamaha for your chance to win on November 30th. Because somebody has gone home in Yamaha's 500th car. You win? Details at yamaha.com. Must be tournament to enter. Please gamble responsibly. Stephen Semler, thank you very much for coming on. The reason I'm so excited to

0:38talk to you is because it's hard to find anyone who pays attention to the numbers. It's easy to find people with opinions and sweeping theories about this side or the other, the rise and fall of nations. But to find someone who actually keeps track of what we're spending on this or that, or what people think about this or that as recorded in public opinion polling, pretty hard, actually. And you are probably the most famous person who keeps track. So thank you very much for doing this. So let me just ask you, let's start with the Iran war and its popularity. So like democracy kind of demands, if you're going to do big things, that you've got public buy-in because you're doing it on behalf of the public,

1:14purportedly. How is this war viewed by the public in the United States? It's the most unpopular war since polling began. Really? most unpopular war since polling began really yeah yeah the first poll according to this joint poll that was that's been conducted on a near weekly basis since the start of the war through the present by the economist and you gov they've pulled americans on whether the iran war has been the right decision or the wrong decision it started at negative net 13% net support, which means that 13% more people, 13 percentage points more people oppose the war than supported it. So most Americans opposed the war the day it started. From the jump, 13 percentage points. Can I ask you to stop there?

1:57That itself is unusual, right? Because if memory serves when wars start with fireworks and flags and all that, most people are kind of all in. Right. It's sort of cathartic at the beginning. Exactly. But then it wears off over time. And all wars, Tucker, get more unpopular over time. Even World War II, which started off with something crazy like 95%, you know, 95% support, something like that. But even the Iraq War in 2003. Yeah, that started off at, I believe, plus 40% or something. Is that true? Yeah. Wow, I like that. But over- But even the Iraq war in 2003. Yeah, that started off at, I believe, plus 40% or something. Is that true? Yeah. Wow, I've heard of that. Okay. And the Afghanistan war even higher.

2:32And of course those have tumbled down over time. Well, yeah. But the point is that all US wars, major wars since World War II, have started with positive net support. The Iran war is the only one that has started at a negative number in terms of net support. And over time is the only one that has started at a negative number in terms of net support. And over time, it's only gotten more unpopular. So at the time of we're having this conversation, according to the latest data, it's at negative 35 net support. Negative 35. Yeah. And for context, that makes it the most unpopular war ever. I bet, I'm not an epidemiologist, but there are diseases with higher ratings than that. Yeah, I would assume so.

3:11I mean, it's a near universally unpopular policy. And even if you look at, there's always additional related or wrong work questions on this poll that you don't get from the summaries. You have to actually dig through the data, looking at the individual questions and the responses. Is that even among the people who still support the war, so it's the right decision, about half of them want it to end as quickly as possible. So they won't really admit that it was the wrong decision, but that yet say, like, should we end it as quickly as possible? Yes, absolutely. I love this. I hope it's over soon. Yes. Yes. Yes. I really think it was a great decision. Can it end? We needed it to end yesterday. Yeah, exactly. Okay. Well, that's really interesting. Um, I sensed that. I mean, I, you know, I, I strongly, uh, felt that myself didn't prime the press. They didn't square the UN in the same way that the Bush administration

4:27did in the run up to Iraq, to my knowledge. It seemed, even though there was this, you know, one or two month long buildup, and then there was, you know, the last June, there was the attack by the US on Iranian nuclear facilities, I believe on June 21st, 2025. That's correct. And then there's, of course, that history that had built up. And then Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli PM, lobbied the White House famously in, I believe, January. Actually, in February, they met in early January, I believe, Trump and Netanyahu. And then in February, after a briefing with Netanyahu, Trump decided to go to war and the U.S. was at war a couple of weeks later. But during this whole time, there was no real concerted effort to get people on board. And

5:16because over time, U.S. presidents have an enormous amount of latitude to just basically go to war outside of congressional opinion, outside of congressional approval, rather, as required by law. And they find legal justifications to kind of work their way around it. And the worst part is Congress really, for the most part, isn't interested in holding, isn't interested in constraining presidential decisions. So why the U.S. went to war with Iran, multiple reasons we can discuss. But I think one of the main reasons was there's nothing stopping it. There's no institutional pushback from Congress, which is... Even from the opposition party, there was... So Chuck Schumer hasn't demanded a congressional resolution declaring war on Iran, even though he've been in war with Iran since February 28th.

6:09They've introduced a lot of war powers resolutions. The problem I have with Democrats, among many, is they refuse to take on the budgets that enable wars in the first place. Well, exactly. So we have all these symbolic votes of non-binding resolutions that would ostensibly order Trump to withdraw all troops from the Middle East who are engaged in hostilities with Iran. But Democrats are very excited for a very select number of Democrats. And on the opposite side, a very small, even smaller number of Republicans who were actually willing to take on the military budget. So I think Democrats realize there's a lot of currency and there's a lot of political capital to be gained by coming across as anti-war.

6:57So they'll speak out about it and they'll say they're anti-war, but they'll vote for the budgets that enable war in the first place so let's talk about that budget um the the defense budget or i guess now it's called the war budget because it's the war department um has grown you know at higher than the rate of inflation which is saying a lot so where are we now on the on the defense budget we're at 1.1 trillion that's the defense budget? We're at 1.1 trillion. That's the enacted budget for fiscal year 2026, which actually ended on September 30th. So we're still at that level through this. It's called a continuing resolution, which continues the levels. 1.1 trillion. Yes, that includes, that's the base budget

7:39that's enacted every year. Plus it's the amount of money that came from the Big Beautiful Bill. There's about 150 billion in military funding in the big beautiful bill the first reconciliation bill passed in i believe july 2025 under the trump the second trump administration so i two little attention is paid to this so 1.1 trillion so that's by far the largest piece of the discretionary budget i mean nothing even comes close that's the majority of the discretionary budget as far as I know. Oh, yeah, yeah. Yeah, it's, I mean, every year, the budget that Congress votes on, military spending occupies more than half of it. Yeah. Yeah. Right. So the rest being the, what we call entitlements are things that just keep going

8:18until the government goes bankrupt. The discretionary budget is the one that the Congress votes on every year and then entitlement spending, the mandatory spending as it were. Right, it's just automatic. Yeah, the stuff that operates basically as trust funds that keeps going regardless of whether the government is operating or whether we're experiencing a shutdown is a separate amount that goes on automatically as you said. But then there's 12 funding bills that congress approves every year to fund yeah the federal agencies basically keep the government going and of that amount military spending is is over half of it and if you look at all u.s government spending in a given year military spending if you include the mandatory resources included

9:03you're getting to about a third. And if you include like militarized domestic security, like domestic security apparatuses, and the proportionate responsibility each of those has to the national debt, then you're talking about like the largest component of U.S. spending every year is on war and policing effectively. Yeah, how's that going? Well, so actually, how is it going? So 1.1 trillion, and as far as I know, we can't get our fabled aircraft carriers anywhere near the Iranian coast. We can't secure passage of shipping through the strait. We can't keep the Red Sea open. We can't subdue the Houthis, who are, we're told, this like primitive, got-chewing tribe in the mountains of Yemen. So like, what exactly is this money going

9:57to? If you can't beat the Houthis with $1.1 trillion, try not to use profanity here. What is this for? Well, one way to answer that question is that more than half of the annual military budget goes to for-profit contractors. Most of us have been raised to believe that the only path to success in this country is to go to some college and then spend your life behind a desk. But of course, that's a lie. America needs people who know how to do things, how to build and sustain things. The infrastructure of our country, for example. And that's why our partners at Defend Cellcam are launching a new program to award $150,000 to American workers across the country. The money will help hardworking people

10:36pursue careers in the trades that this nation needs to thrive and survive. Defend's business success makes the Blue Collar Scholar Program possible. When you buy a Defend camera, you're helping support the next generation of tradesmen. Plus you get a Defend camera, which is the best. There are a few better ways to keep your family and your property safe. Visit defendcellcam.com slash workforce to learn more about this, apply or nominate a Blue Collar Scholar yourself. And if you're picking a camera, use the code Tucker to save 20%. But for $1.1 trillion, you could just buy Yemen. No, I'm serious. You could buy the country, which apparently I've never been. Yeah, the military budget is large.

11:13I mean, it's larger than the economies of a lot of countries. Of most countries. Yeah. $1.1 trillion? Yeah. There's no African country with a $1.1 trillion GDP. So, like, why wouldn't you just, why wouldn't you buy Yemen? Like, what is the point here? Is it to enrich Boeing? Is that? To me, it's, if you want to look at it through a lens of, okay, how the military industrial complex operates, it gets an enormous amount of money through the annual military budget. That money flows into, obviously, profits and shareholders and executive pay. The executives are the top weapons manufacturers. You get the majority of their revenue from the U.S. government make $20 million, $30 million a year. And these are basically public firms,

12:03statistically speaking, and most of their money comes from taxpayers. But they're allowed to profit like- They're making $30 million a year? Yeah, top executives are. Yeah. Boeing, Lockheed, General Dynamics, Northrop Grumman, Lockheed Martin. Wow. Might have said that already. But then a portion of that revenue is recycled back into the political system through lobbying, through campaign contributions, and through an underrated method of influence is the funding of think tanks in Washington, D.C. Oh, I've noticed. Which gives them, who produce reports that are not, you know, objectively PR material, but they fall within a certain spectrum that is allowable for the arms industry. So it gives arms industry interests a sort of academic or technocratic gloss that it wouldn't otherwise have through lobbying or campaign contributions.

12:59Makes it easier to justify. So you send money to AEI or Heritage or Brookings. I'll give you an example. So CSIS, Center for Strategic International Studies, is a very establishment-y think tank. I think Henry Kissinger was on the board there at some point or whatever. And it's bipartisan, of course. And it develops Iran war cost estimates in an intelligent way. Their research is actually well-grounded, but they will sound the alarm when it comes to war costs related to U.S. munitions expenditures. So raising that alarm, and again, it's just justifiably so. The U.S. has burned an enormous amount of munitions in Iran. That helps create a demand to buy more weapons, as the war itself has. But they will also...

13:54It's like, you need new toner cartridges. Yes, yes. You've bought the hardware, but the actual profit is on the toner cartridges, the oil changes, the munitions, the stuff that you have to keep buying. And they really, and my main pet peeve in this sort of national security intellectualism that happens in DC is they turn political problems into technocratic or technical problems waiting to be solved. So the US is experiencing a shortfall in missile interceptors. Interceptors are missiles that shoot down other missiles. Yes. Everyone I think is aware of it at this point. But the U.S. has burned such vast quantities of these interceptors during the Iran war that has created a shortfall and subsequently a PR nightmare for the Trump administration and the people in Congress who support the war.

14:52Now, the obvious solution to the interceptor problem is to look at the main cause of why we've run low in the first place, which is the war. Instead, we're getting these very- Wait, so pointless wars are tough on your munition stockpiles, is that what you're saying? Tucker, it turns out that that's the case. I know this is shocking to some people, but we're getting these 12- Do you have a PhD? How'd you know that? Oh yeah, yeah. It's just years of intensive study. But the point is that people who do have PhDs are developing these 20 page reports on how to replenish the stockpiles, but not really calling for an explicit end to the Iran war. So they're just saying, they're really tinkering around with like,

15:23oh uh production schedules and yeah like how can we increase the yearly production capacity from the projected 650 patriot interceptors in fiscal year 2027 to get it to 750 and how do we invest in the solid rocket supplier base and how do we get the critical minerals we need to accelerate production. It's like, what are you talking about? We have a problem that is caused by war. And if your first recommendation isn't to stop that war, I just can't take that seriously. So that's the kind of analysis you get when even when it comes to like a very narrow subject like rebuilding the inventory. So this is part of their lobbying budget. Like Lockheed, for example, it's just to pick one, would spend, you know,

16:10it's the money it gets from the government building the weapons that it has sold to the government, of course, and employing its workforce and all that. But then part of the money would go to lobbying either directly or influence campaigns laundered through so-called think tanks. spend money on advertising too one thing that i've tracked over the years and this is like i run this newsletter called polygraph on on substack and i one of the main things that uh i do is i state the obvious, but in a very, very specific way. So for example, for every military budget that Congress votes on every year, I compare the yes and no votes, and I compare how much each respective vote category took from arms industry donors before

16:59voting. And lo and behold, as you're totally unsurprised to hear, is that the members of Congress who receive more money from arms companies, military contractors, are more likely to vote for the military budget and military budget increases. Oh, wow. Really? Yeah. So there's cause and effect. There's at least a correlation. Oh, but correlation is not causation. When people say, duh, I say, yeah, I'm not surprised either. But, you know, when we talk about money in politics, the first answer, like people say, oh, like everyone knows that it's a problem, but you know, you approach a certain politicians about it and they say, oh, it doesn't affect my vote. You have no proof about it. It's like here, if every year I'm noticing

17:41that members of Congress who vote for a military spending increase take three to five times more arms industry cash than members opposed to military spending increases, then we've moved the conversation away. on the offensive because now members of congress have to say okay this correlation exists now so and you're part of this group who on average takes three to five times more money from the companies that profit from war and you've just voted for a record amount of military spending well yeah especially considering the use of these weapons i mean it's one thing if we're defending the homeland against a ground invasion from paraguay or something or any, you know, defend the homeland. Got it. Fine.

18:28But these are like totally pointless wars disconnected from America's national interest in which unarmed civilians, kids get killed. Because why? There's like no justification for any of it. It's like repulsive. Yeah. Morally, I mean, I'm not going to, I don't claim to be a moral authority. I can tell you how much it costs though. I can tell you as someone who's followed these costs, it's incredibly taxing on the conscience. Well, can I just ask too, unless I'm misunderstanding it, you're saying that some of these, maybe all of these weapons manufacturers derive most of their income and profits from the taxpayer? The major ones, yes. So for example, Lockheed Martin last year, a couple of years ago received,

19:12I think, 73% of its income from DOD contracts and then even more from US government brokered sales to foreign countries. So all in all, when you combine the amount of revenue that Lockheed Martin received from government contracts plus the arms deals that were arranged and executed through the U.S. government, you're talking about a company through which 97% of their revenue is tied to U.S. government policy. So they're not an independent private company. They're just working for U.S. taxpayers who are their customer, their only real customer, right? Yeah. What you're saying is they're taking taxpayer money and using it to lobby taxpayers for more taxpayer money. This is how military speak.

19:59How is that allowed? So they take, if I don't pay my taxes, I go to jail. Yeah. So they're taking money from me at gunpoint, majority of my income, because I'm not in private equity and I pay labor tax just like everyone else does on wages. And so the majority of my money goes to the government by force. And then the government sends that to people who lecture and lobby me and my elected representatives to take more of the money? Like, how is that a fair system? That's a question you can ask, you know, in a lot of sectors as well. The difference is... That's right. Thank you. Because that is true, what you're saying. It's not just this sector. But one thing that's special to this sector is that we're not talking...

20:40This is a state-run economy. Right. Because, I mean, it's... when we talk about the u.s armed industry it's it's primarily it's a socialized system it's top down it's about state planning it's about delegation it's about contracts and members of congress really like it because they can they have with their districts they have their own little fiefdom where they can direct you know government contracts uh how like depending on, you have to usually hire lobbyists for this and they write legislation in a certain way. So that narrows down the list of eligible companies that can bid on a contract. And then you work your legislative magic to alter the text and the bills so that you're given a very high chance that one company is going to be able to carry out a certain project.

21:30And you know that company has links to your district as a member of Congress. So shipbuilding in Maine and Mississippi, munitions in Tennessee, aerospace in California. It's like every state, every congressional district has a piece of this code. Yeah, yeah. And through this process called, it's either called like political engineering or geographic engineering, that these arms companies deliberately spread out their assets to touch, quote unquote, all, as many congressional districts as possible. get together to keep afloat a dying and deeply fraudulent project like the Littoral Combat Ship, which was eventually just killed off in the last couple of years. But in the early teens, it had a huge problematic history and there was this huge lobbying effort in the mid-20-teens to

22:24keep funding going to this very problematic ship. Even though it had tons of technical flaws, there was literally a crack developing in the hulls of the ship because they were made of aluminum and not steel. And this massive amount of technical problems that this ship was just never going to deliver and is obvious. But there's this huge lobbying effort where a group of lobbyists organized this lobbying effort where... I'm going to slip into the first person here because I was a part of this lobbying effort, where we organized all of the suppliers, the contractors, and the subcontractors involved in the production of this, what John McCain called the little crappy ship, the LCS. And we just developed a map and this huge spreadsheet of all the different areas that

23:11projects were related to and how many people had employed. So when we went to congressional offices to lobby for this project, there was eventually like in the white paper that we provided like some sort of national security justification white paper that we provided like a you know a some sort of national security justification usually that we just grabbed from an arms industry funded think tank and then but the real line was like okay and at the bottom was just like and by the way it this this uh this company employs 550 people in your district well anyone who uses cozy earth will tell you the exact same thing. It's been a game changer. It's wild. The night's getting cooler. Creating an extremely comfortable space on your bed and couch is a very good thing.

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24:26That's CozyEarth.com, code Tucker. When prompted to check out, be sure to tell them you've heard about Cozy Earth right here on this show. Wait, so you were a lobbyist for this. So you're like a whistleblower, basically. No, I was a very small part. I was a very small cog in the machine, but I gained enough understanding to, I gained enough knowledge to get an understanding of how the system works. Were, from your exposure to the system from the inside, were people, um, cynical about it? Did they think that what they were producing, these armaments were going to make the world better or was that not part of it? I did get the feeling that they were, that some people I asked about, especially towards

25:10the end, because I mean, towards the end, obviously I developed, I figured out who I was and was basically just morally opposed to this through and through. But when the subject came up, when I tried to bring it up indirectly, I got the sense that a lot of people were talking themselves into a moral high ground that didn't exactly exist. And the stuff that they were saying was less at me and more like reaffirmations. You're talking to yourself. Yeah. I'm good enough. I'm smart enough and doggone it, people like me. Yeah, yeah. There's a sense of entitlement. There's a sense of, but also a moral component, too, that was just, it was odd to see. You know, Stephen, the world needs 2,000-pound bombs.

25:54Yes, yes, it has to. And we're helping delivering savings to the taxpayer by helping the F-35 stay funded, even though it has tons of problems. But yeah, there's a lot of- How interesting. Well, I think it makes you much more credible that you have experience from the inside watching all this. Yeah, it's trained by the best. So this defense budget, 1.1 trillion, that seems way higher than I remember it. Yeah, yeah. billion that seems way higher than I remember it yeah yeah so in 2021 the military budget was 741 billion this is in I'm just going to say in nominal terms because this is how you know Congress remembers these things but a little bit higher if you adjust for inflation much higher

26:38but over time I mean by the time well that was when Biden entered office. And then when he left, it was, I think it was close, it was like 850 or something. So it increased during the course of the Biden administration. Before him, it increased under Trump. It increased under the first term of Obama, then went down. But pretty much since 2015 or 2016, the military budget has gone upward pretty much every year, even after accounting for inflation. So basically everything Eisenhower warned about has come true. The defense industrial establishment has just eaten the country. Yeah, Eisenhower was worried about basically the war machine becoming sentient. Like this collection of interest would sort of not necessarily like execute corruption in kind of like the, you know, backfilled, you know, smoke-filled rooms.

27:30Right, right. Although that happens, but it's more about like creating the conditions where Capitol Hill is just operating in its own world. It's insulated from the interests of everyone else. And when, you know, ideologies are here. We've all got ideologies, you and I have them, of course. But when you start mixing in profit interests to decisions about especially war and peace and people's security, I have a bit of a problem with that. I have a massive problem with that. Of course, especially when it's not even working. It's not even achieving your stated aims. Right. I mean, whether or not I agree with those aims, which I don't, but even if I did, I would say, okay, it's fair to measure your performance by the standards that you articulated.

28:16We have the greatest military in the world that can do this, but you haven't done it. So like, what's your explanation? Right. And it's one of these cases that we're going to hear this more and more from Trump administration officials like Pete Hegseth, for example, that, oh, it's Congress that's not letting us win the war. It's like, no, no, no, no. We haven't even accomplished the military objectives that were laid out. Like Iran is still able to project power across its borders. Like, congrats, you've beat up on a country that has the GDP of, you know, Kentucky or Illinois or something like that. But it's still, it controls the Strait of Hormuz for the most part. It's still able to project power outside of its borders. And whenever

28:55the cost of the Iran war is brought up in any sense, the rebuttal is, okay, well, this war is about preventing Iran from getting the nuclear weapon. So, you know, how much would you pay for Iran to not have the nuclear weapon? Which is a false question. It's patently absurd because one, it requires someone to believe that this war won't actually make Iran's interest in acquiring a nuclear weapon more likely, which I think it would. I mean, if I were them, I mean, it would definitely heighten my interest in acquiring one. Iran's getting a nuke. And by the end of this, there'll be nothing we can do about it. Right. And maybe at that point, we'll find it in ourselves to actually be honest negotiators to

29:38negotiate, you know, an arms control agreement. But... We had a war in June of 2025 that we were told ended their capacity to create nuclear weapons. Right. And of course, those of us who are watching carefully knew it had nothing to do with nuclear weapons and neither did the subsequent regime change effort that followed it. All of it was a lie. Nothing to do with Iran's nuclear weapons. They didn't have a nuclear program that was close to producing a nuclear weapon and they didn't have the means to deliver it they had no icbms the whole thing was a joke there's really a reliance on the trump administration and trump administration officials to it's a performative war in a sense where people

30:18aren't expected to gauge success success or failure based on political outcomes, but just actions that the US takes. Like for Pete Hegseth, he expects people to just be enamored with the use of force and violence and derive some sort of value from it or entertainment when people are, most people are morally opposed to that sort of thing unless it's absolutely absolutely necessary and actively undermining their material interests at home because this war is it's for the average person it's it's it's morally repugnant it's a betrayal of the campaign promises that trump ran on. And it's also just in a material sense, making their lives worse, both as a consumer, because they're paying for higher gas prices and higher prices for everything as a result of the inflationary war spike,

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34:47But it's also the cost in inflation. Summarize and then dig into, if you would, the costs. So I pay attention to the narrow set of costs called direct war costs, which are the immediate budgetary expenses from the war that the U.S. is on the hook for. The broader costs, the indirect war costs, refer to the costs that the U.S. is on the hook for. The broader costs, the indirect war costs refer to the costs of the economy. So there was a Moody's analysis, I think, that found that the average household paid $2,000 more as a result of the war, mostly due to inflation, higher fuel costs, and that sort of thing. I pay attention to the numbers that the Pentagon is supposed to faithfully report and the U.S. government is supposed to faithfully report regarding the war's current costs, especially the Pentagon.

35:32But the Pentagon has refused to provide those numbers. They provide a top line number that's dubious. The most detail they've provided, at least publicly, is a summary table, which left a lot of stuff out. It didn't count the cost of replacing bases, for example. It didn't count the cost of moving money around in the Pentagon budget to pay for war operations that would have gone to something else or would have gone unused. So that has opened up the space for independent analysts to assess the cost of the Iran war. And for the first 60 days of the Iran war, I estimated that it cost 72 billion in direct costs between operations, between replacing the munitions that were expended, damage to US military bases and

36:20military aid to Israel. So taking those costs into account, I arrived at $72 billion for the first 60 days. Then the next month, the Trump administration requested an $87 billion supplemental funding bill, which is literally money supplemental to the main budget that Congress approves every year mostly for Iran war-related expenses. And according to the Cato Institute and others, people who have read the bill, the number I arrived at, it also included $72 billion for war-related costs. And then for the next estimate I had for 120 days, I arrived at $103 billion. And then a week later, there were two reports from NBC and Wired that internal Pentagon estimates had the war at around $100 billion as well.

37:18So by this point, I'm feeling very pleased with myself because I had a number that was then corroborated with the amount that the administration requested for the war. And then that was coming from internal Pentagon assessments through just the rank and file people who do the budget work there. But then last month or in September, the Congressional Budget Office came out with their report on the cost of the Iran war. And they arrived at 38 billion, extremely low number. 38 billion. Shockingly low. So the Congress, and it became the authoritative war cost estimate because the congressional budget office is a technocratic group that's nonpartisan. Its job is to just to, it's to assess the cost of legislation that Congress

38:04passes and various proposals and policies and that sort of thing. And because of that, they have, you know, because of their technocratic remit on just, you know, crunchy numbers and their nonpartisan status, the war cost assessment was treated as genuine. But when I went through this, I mean, Tucker, I mean, the mistakes that were made in their support is, is, is we're just shocking, just basic matters of fact. For example, it put as, uh, under the equipment losses, it put that the U S had lost 24 MQ-9 Reaper drones. Um, as of August one, this is a five-month estimate. That number came from a Congressional Research Service report published in May that had that number, 24 losses. But that report was based on a report from CBS from an unnamed U.S. official

38:57from the first week of April regarding U.S. war losses. So effectively effectively the CBO for their, you know, official war cost estimate or part of it took a number of, for the number of drone losses, took a five week estimate for their five month estimate. So what should the number of, you know, drone losses should be for MQ-9s? If you compare the total aircraft inventory for the Air Force, total aircraft inventory is this list that's published each year as part of the Air Force budget request. They give the amount that was enacted, their enacted inventory, the number of aircraft they have in each fleet for each respective unit, the amount they have enacted for that year, plus the amount that they want to have active for next year. In June 2025, as part of their

39:472026 request, the Pentagon said it would have 189 MQ-9 drones in its inventory at the end of fiscal year 2026. The next year, this past April, they therefore said that the enacted amount was down to 165. So that explains the 24 drone difference. But in May, an Air Force general testified before a Senate subcommittee and said that the MQ-9 fleet due to wartime losses, was down to 135. So, or roughly 135. So either way, we're looking at an estimate for, at least for MQ-9 drones, that is 100% off. It should have been twice as much as it was. Did anybody else? So CBO comes, Congressional Budget Office comes out with this $38 billion estimate for the cost of war. And it's, of course, dutifully repeated by every new organization.

40:50I mean, that's the point of CBO numbers is to get reporters to tell the public that they're real. Did anybody reverse engineer it like you did? To my knowledge, no. Right. So you're just like one guy in Pittsburgh is like, hmm, let's look at how they got to this number. And you find that it's 100% off just in this one category, one kind of drone. And I should say that for the most part, CBO and I were working with the same amount of resources because as CBO notes in its report, the Pentagon didn't cooperate with their estimates. So CBO asked for numbers from the Pentagon, but the Pentagon just refused to provide those numbers. How? Is it its own country? It gets to act independently? I suppose so. And from people I talked to on the Hill, it's that the Pentagon, I got two types of answers. One was that the Pentagon does this all the time. And the second version was the

41:39Pentagon has done this in the past and it's also worse than it's ever been in terms of stonewalling other agencies from accessing the data. So Congress is just like in full cuck mode, like no self-respect whatsoever. The Pentagon has never passed an audit. I mean, federal agencies were required in the mid-90s to pass an audit to be able to produce accurate financial documents. And in the private sector, you go to a CEO of a private sector firm who does not produce accurate financial records goes to prison. Oh, absolutely. So I'm thinking, why not have the same standards for the heads of government agencies? Well, but also the only enforcement mechanism really is the legislative branch, the Congress,

42:16the co-equal branch of government, one of three. And if they don't assert that privilege, if they don't use their power, then it just goes away. So like, what's their problem? Why is it so hard for Congress just to like, I don't use their power then it just goes away so like what's their problem why is it so hard for congress just to like i don't know use the power it was given by the constitution to make the country better i think it has a lot to do with what we were discussing earlier about the influence but so craving but it also i mean you know if you're afraid to edit this out the list of complaints goes on i mean mean, CBO, again, under their list of equipment losses, it didn't include an MH-60 helicopter that crashed in the Arabian Sea as part of the Iran war operations in early July.

42:55Understandable, though, it didn't make headlines. It actually did make headlines. I mean, the crash made headlines. Like one of the crew members died and there's a search for him. Not just independent media. I mean, it was covered by for him. It's, you know, not just, you know, independent media. I mean, it was covered by independent media. It was covered in New York Times as well. You know, major organizations as well. So it got enough press attention. I just detected just a level of effort that I wasn't really happy with. assign a cost to the bases that are now, you know, in some cases beyond repair that the U.S. has basically lost and abandoned in the Middle East. We're told that, you know, not to complain

43:33about war costs for maintaining this, you know, this archipelago of bases across the Middle East. We're told it's in the interest of our security and that not to complain about the cost of maintaining them and conducting operations from them because it provides immeasurable economic benefits. But when we lose one of those bases, we can't even write off the cost, which just strikes me as a bizarre choice. CBO didn't bother asking about the cost to other agencies, even though the State Department spent, I think, around 80 million evacuating personnel across the world and suffered around 100 million in damaged diplomatic facilities as a result of the war. But the main reason why I believe that there was such a huge discrepancy between the internal Pentagon budget estimates

44:26that were around 100 billion through the first, what did I say, 120 days, then my own draws around 100 billion, is that CBO, when it calculates costs for anything, but including war, it does so based in relationship to a certain funding baseline. So it's not measuring how much the U.S. spent on a war per se. It's measuring how much more the U.S. spent in comparison to a pre-existing baseline. So it's how much the Pentagon spent above its normal operating budget. Now, the problem is the normal operating budget. And so let me back up. Whenever you measure war costs, you obviously want to separate the peacetime costs that would have been incurred anyway with the additional costs from the war. Fair enough. I get that. And I do that too in my own estimates. The problem is it matters a lot

45:22which budget and which funding baseline you choose to represent the peacetime budget. So when CBO made its calculation, it was able to write off a huge amount of costs because they were, quote unquote, already included in the DoD budget. And you can see this, this is throughout the report, but the amount of money in the DOD budget is the historical amount. We were just talking about that $1.1 trillion, which is the largest since 1945. Um, it's on average, it exceeds adjusted for inflation. The average amount the U S spent on its military each year from 1942 to 1945 by about $90 billion. So, wait, it's more? On average per year. Than we spent during World War II? Yes. Oh, come on. Yeah. Our current budget adjusted for inflation.

46:21Are you sure? Yes. Now, granted, the spending during World War II occupied a much greater share of the u.s economy because the u.s economy was a lot smaller back then and the u.s had a smaller you know population as well much smaller but in terms of in terms of you know inflation adjusted dollars that's what we're talking about we're spending more now than we spent during world war ii on average from 1942 to 1945, yeah. And the one point- Those are the war years because Pearl Harbor was the very end of 41. Right, right. I just want to specify that wasn't including like the lower costs of- No, I get it, right. Yeah, that's- But in the proposed budget for next year that Trump proposed is 1.5 trillion. Wait, why

46:59have I- I- No, you've blown my mind. It's- It's, it's because it's passed so swiftly with bipartisan appeal. Because the war costs for World War II are very famous. I mean, it had huge effects on the economy at both ends of the war. Of course, those costs like transformed the US economy for generations. Everything about it was just at massive scale. Yeah. And I'm not disputing that at all. Like if you measure it as a percentage of GDP is it was just at massive scale. Yeah, and I'm not disputing that at all. Like, if you measure it as a percentage of GDP, it was much higher in World War II because, you know, the economy was smaller. So Christianity began thousands of years ago in what we call the Holy Land.

47:33But today, some people would like Christianity to die there. We're talking about the Israeli settler movement. Extremist, violent, dangerous, and very anti-Christian. Also supported at the highest levels of the U.S. and Israeli governments. American taxpayers literally pay for Israeli settlers to murder Christians and Americans and attack them. And the Senate, for example, goes out of its way to pretend it's not happening. Senators just voted against disclosure on the killings of nine Americans in the West Bank. Probably the senator represents you. Talking about you, Rick Scott of Florida, and many more like you. Well, the Vulnerable People Project is fighting to end these atrocities. The Vulnerable People Project is a Christian

48:20movement, sincerely a Christian movement, nonviolent, Jesus-focused, that seeks to build a safe home for Christian children in the Holy Land, a place where they will not get attacked and murdered by Israeli terrorists supported by the U.S. Senate. The Catholic pastor in the last all-Christian town in the West Bank has a very simple plan. Create a children's center called Kids Kingdom. It's a place for kids to play, make friends, learn the Bible, Thank you. not. Your support at SaveWestBankChristians.com will help create a place where these children can thrive in the birthplace of our faith. Visit SaveWestBankChristians.com, SaveWestBankChristians.com to help build kids' kingdom. Give Christian children a future in the land where Christianity

49:21began. Hi, everybody. Jay Leno here. You know when Yamaha asked me what car to feature for the 500th car giveaway? There's only one car, the Rolls Royce. And not any Rolls Royce, the Rolls Royce Spectre. The most powerful Rolls Royce ever built. And here's the special part. The one they're giving away was built exactly like mine. It's a car I chose in my own garage and now one lucky guest will drive home in the very same car that I have. So play at Yamaha for your chance to win on November 30th because somebody has gone home in Yamaha's 500th car. You win? Details at Yamaha.com. Must be tournament to enter. Please gamble responsibly. Well, yeah, I get it. But like in absolute inflation-adjusted dollars,

49:57we're spending more now. Even if you take away all the absurd propaganda about World War II, just the cheering for death and all this stuff, but just like, just consider the scale of it, like what those dollars achieved between 45, 42 and 45. It's kind of crazy how little we're achieving, even if you disagree with the goal. Yeah. With 1.1 trillion. Right. And these numbers come from the Office of Management and Budget, which is the White House office where all these historical records are kept. But even if you look, it's like I went back when I was doing my analysis of, you know, polling data that we discussed earlier about, you know, polling since I was looking at, you know, polling from the 1940s on wars, but I also was looking at

50:45budget documents too, and congressional discourse. And there was the difference between then and now, one of the main things that stood out to me, Tucker, is the members of Congress were openly acknowledging that this is an absurd amount that we're spending. This was during World War II, but it's necessary. And this is going to be wasteful. And after this war is done, we're going to rescind all the money that was approved, that was made allowable for agencies to spend, that wasn't spent, we're going to take it back. And there was, there's a rescissions bill is how you do this, to rescind money, you introduce a bill that does this. And there was, you know, I think at least one massive one after World War II that took this money back.

51:29But the difference now is that this is just normal now. And it was reflected in the CBO's estimate by adopting this baseline and you know maybe they were locked into maybe they're that's a constraint by cbo that they have to abide by the most recent fiscal year uh you know funding projections and if happens to be the largest military budget since world war ii then okay so be it but i'm just saying that when because of that choice i just feel like their estimate is detached from reality because they're more concerned about abiding to their budget model, which I think was disconnected from reality. So if you're spending that much money in an agency that has never passed an audit, as you said,

52:20and there's no obvious sign of what you're getting at all. Like it's not like you're paying a World War II sized military, because we're not, the military, like in number of personnel is, lower yeah and the quality is obviously lower in some ways you could be paying for a lot of stuff that people would have no idea even existed like that would be the pentagon budget's a great place to hide all kinds of projects that yeah nothing to do with national defense oh yeah yeah the pentagon is a great place to hide money intentionally or unintentionally as well. And I think the way we get this back under control, so the Pentagon has never passed an audit. It's been actually forced to conduct audits over the

53:06last seven or eight years. And each year it claims, oh, we've made progress. And they claim that, oh, we're able to account for a slightly higher percentage of our assets and our budgetary resources than the year before. But the number, the value of the assets they're unable to account for increases every year because their budget goes up. So even though, even if they make progress in terms of the percentage of their budget, they're able to account for the objective resources that they're just cannot provide proper documentation for keeps going up. You're the last time an American general officer went to jail for corruption. Have you ever heard of that happening? No. I haven't either. Have you ever heard of the head of a weapons manufacturer going to jail for corruption?

53:52I haven't heard that either. Ever? Yeah. I haven't either. It's kind of weird. That's one of those stories I've never seen. Yeah. And I was thinking like. I'm sure there is, Nanny, with $1.1 trillion a year flowing through the system that's producing results that are so embarrassing. The failure is so obvious that they're literally just like, we're going to use nukes because there's no other way out. That's where they are. And there's no push. And it's like the decision to go to the war. It's like there's just nothing stopping it. I think if Congress was really interested, to get the Pentagon to pass an audit, you threaten its budget in a serious way. You cut its budget so there's less stuff to track. my preference as a first step is to introduce legislation that's like the Sarbanes-Oxley Act

54:38for the private sector where CEOs who produced inaccurate financial records would go to prison. Why not a Sarbanes-Oxley Act for the Pentagon or other federal agencies? Or just apply the federal anti-corruption statutes evenly across the board. And reform begins with ending corruption. That's like widely understood, universally understood. And when the new president of Venezuela, Rother El Salvador, took the country from a state of war for 40 years and tried to make it a peaceful, modern country, the first thing he did was send his own employees, including his own cabinet ministers, to jail for corruption. Like when they committed corruption, sorry, we're busting you. And that goes a long way, but that's never happened that

55:20you know of. Wouldn't that be something if the next administration decided to prosecute, you know, Trump and Biden administration officials? Well, just if you commit a crime, I don't know, why do you get a special pass? I don't really get it. If I commit a crime, I fully expect to go to jail for it. I try not to for that reason. But interesting. Okay. Well, that's, that's a, you've shocked me. Huh. So now to the, and I'm sorry, I forgot the category that you had for it. The costs of the war that are not directly related to the congressional appropriation. Yeah, non-budget. So that includes even stuff that is budget related, but is longer term, like veterans care, for example. So each person that is, each U.S. troop that has

56:07killed or disabled, it just creates a ripple effect of money, which I think is, you know, obvious. I think it's the U.S. should properly compensate, you know, veterans. Yeah, it's the us should properly compensate you know veterans yeah it's the deal but it's a cost that's not talked about immediately i mean the best person uh the best resource for this is uh this hard professor called linda bilmes who will probably have a report on this coming out soon but um her and an economist called joseph stiglitz wrote a very influential book on the cost of the ira called The Three Trillion Dollar War. Yeah, famous book. That greatly influenced my thinking and my methodological chops. But that book does a great job in understanding of explaining of how these costs of just, you know, just one injury just sets off, you know, decades of costs.

56:54How many veterans do you know on disability? All of them. I don't think I you know on disability? All of them. I don't think I've ever met one who was on disability. I'm not begrudging them disability. I'm just saying it's a fact that almost every single person I know who served in the U.S. military is continuing to receive money from the VA. Yeah. And so that's a huge cost. I'm not saying they don't deserve it. I'm not saying it's fraud. I'm just saying it's real. That's all I'm saying. Yeah, and it's a huge cost. I'm not saying they don't deserve it. I'm not saying it's fraud. I'm just saying it's real. That's all I'm saying. Yeah, and it's not talked about. So, and it's hard to project too,

57:24but it's a rule of thumb that I think has been apparent over time is that the cost of war, current and future costs of war are always underestimated. Pretty much everybody's heard of Timothy McVeigh. According to the official story from the FBI, McVeigh was the sole terrorist responsible for delivering and setting off the bomb that murdered 168 people in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, in April of 95. But that clearly isn't true. Eyewitness accounts overwhelmingly differ from the government's story and have for 30 years. So we decided to investigate because no one else was. Our producers were on the road and talked to more than 100 people directly connected to this case. We talked to McVeigh's top attorney.

58:08He shared that McVeigh himself changed his story repeatedly to match the government's story. Huh? He even failed a polygraph test about whether he had co-conspirators. That co-conspirator might have been a man called John Doe number two. Dozens of people saw this man. He was real and has been for 30 years. Where is he and what was his role in this terror attack? And we unpack all of it with firsthand sources in our new series, The OKC Bomb Files files it's now available at TuckerCarlson.com so what do you think those costs are likely to look like if the Iraq war is any guide I mean in terms of the all encompassing costs the Iraq war we're saying is 3 trillion it's more by this point that was like the estimate as of 2008

58:59um and then it's it's grown since since now we're in like cost of war project to brown which does you know fabulous work they i mean the cost of the you know post 9 11 wars is in several trillion dollars uh more above three trillion well above three. I think it's like 6 to 7 trillion. So it's like the cost of these just, it's, it spirals so quickly and these are, you know, budgetary costs as well. We're again, we're not measuring, I mean, some people are measuring and rightfully so the cost to consumers. So it's like the cost I was just discussing was, was the cost to us as taxpayers, but not the cost of consumers. So, you know, it's kind of a double whammy as far as- What could you do for the country with that much money?

59:41Like maybe it wouldn't be falling apart like it is? Yeah, you could pretty much- Could we have nice airports? Yeah, I mean, the possibilities are pretty much endless. Like to end, you know, extreme poverty for a year or for a year, it's like a fraction of that. It's just, it's very, very shocking. Whenever a project is proposed that, regardless of what it does, if it promises to make the world better, you have to have an enormous amount of research and cost analysis and all this stuff backing it up. And you have to, you know, survive. You have to get it through Congress. There's tons of, you know, political effort. That sort of thing rarely does, you know, happen. But if you're in the, you know, arms industry, what you're promising is the absence of catastrophe. You're basically saying

1:00:38this has to happen for the sake of national security. And as a result, there's just not enough, there's just not that much interest or inquiry of whether this stuff actually, these purchases, this money and the stuff that it buys actually does what it says because it's preventing a catastrophe instead of promising the future. Because you don't know how bad it could have been. Yeah. There could have been jihadis in bed with you. Like, they could be beheading you right now. Yeah, if we didn't. If we hadn't done what we did. Yeah. So please say thank you. Exactly, exactly. And if that weapon system that we said is protecting you gets destroyed in the Iran war, you can't say it costs anything because it's already in our budget. Exactly like mine. It's a car I chose in my own garage, and now one lucky guest will drive home in the very same car that I have.

1:01:37So play at Yamaha for your chance to win on November 30th. Because somebody has gone home and Yamaha has 500th car. You win? Details at Yamaha.com. Must be tournament to enter. Please gamble responsibly. So, so if you're the Pentagon or a member of Congress taking money from the weapons manufacturers, you're the weapons manufacturers themselves, and you're paying various think tanks to do intellectual research on issues, you've got a massive incentive to scare the crap out of the entire population at all times, to engender fear in order to receive compliance and money. Right. And I think the defining feature, last election and this one too, is about security. But it's not the security that they're selling,

1:02:25the brand of national security, quote unquote national security that they're selling, that is believed to be advanced to the use of military force. The security that people feel about is like an uneven terrain that they're on, that they are one financial slip up or one accent away from, you know, they're tight, they're tightrope walking over the abyss in terms of their financial security and their food. Yeah. So that's the security that they're, that I think is the most at the forefront of people's minds. So when people say they're concerned about the cost of living and the cost of living has been the top issue among U.S. voters since referring again to the Economist and YouGov, this polling that they've done for the issue that Americans identify as the number one issue, they started asking about inflation and prices. In other words, cost of living in

1:03:17July, 2022 for the, like on a near weekly basis in 116 of the 117 weeks prior to the 2024 election, that was the top issue, inflation and prices. And if you take the monthly aggregate inflation in prices cost of living has been Americans top issue since July 2022 it still is so that's a bad sign for the Trump administration because the bad sign well for sure and they're about to get punished I think but who knows what will happen but it doesn't look good no I mean I mean, I think, I think Republicans will lose in the 2020, they'll get punished in the same way Democrats did in 2024. Because, you know, the two main issues that I think have the most political power and most salience among the public are cost of living,

1:04:09economic security, if you will, which is one of the dimensions of human security. So that's not national security, but it's like the actual everyday security that people experience, like from the main threats that are non-military that happen to them, that they're reliable to happen to them. So cost of living and then cost of war as well, because people view the Biden administration as more interested in aiding Israel, arming Israel, fighting wars on Israel's behalf, and sending money to Ukraine for that war than the Biden administration was concerned about addressing the cost of living crisis at home. And that's going to be a major factor in the 2026 elections. Sadly, they were correct in both cases.

1:04:57Yep. Yep. There's no daylight between the administrations on those two issues. What is the... How much do you think the U.S. has sent to Israel in recent years? Do you have a sense of that? There's so much lying on this topic, it's hard to know. Yeah, I'm just going to just stall for a bit so people don't think I'm a nerd, but not like I didn't just calculate this. But through 2025, the U.S. has provided $352 billion in aid to Israel since its founding, since the 1950s. $352 billion? Yeah, yeah. Isn't it the size of New Jersey? It has about 9 million people, so I don't know how big New Jersey is. It's physically the size of New Jersey, smaller population than New Jersey. That's crazy. So when we talk about the military aid that's provided each year,

1:05:46the number, there's 3.3 billion provided through the State Department budget called Foreign Military Financing. That's the program. It's basically a gift card for Israel and other countries as well to spend on U.S. weapons. Israel is uniquely allowed to spend some money on buying weapons for its own agency using U.S. taxpayer dollars. The U.S. government gives money to Israel and Israel uses that money to buy weapons from American or Israeli manufacturers. And we say that's good for the U.S. economy. That's basically. Yeah, which I have a bit of a problem with. Why? If you're interested in... It sounds like an electric windmill, kind of. We're paying to run it. If you're interested in creating jobs

1:06:30through public funds, through taxpayer dollars, if you want to get the most bang for your buck, you do pretty much anything besides military spending. It's the absolute worst way to create jobs. Also run it through another country. Why would we just send the money to Lockheed then? Like, right? What? Pretty much are. One stat, you brought up the, you know, the economic benefits, I think, or maybe I did, I don't't know but the jobs argument often comes up with yeah with military spending we saw the saw this a lot with uh the biden administration with sending their massive amounts of military aid to ukraine oh the money's being spent here this is creating u.s jobs the link between more military spending and more jobs is hazy at best.

1:07:17So, for example, 1985, the U.S. arms industry employed 3.1 million people. Okay. That was in 1985. In 2021, the arms industry employed 1.1 million people. So a reduction of 2 million people in the arms industry, arms industry, private sector, arms industry employed 1.1 million people. So a reduction of 2 million people in the arms industry, private sector arms industry employees. So despite that, so there's a 2 million drop in jobs, but the military budget went up by 290 billion in real terms from 1985 to 2021. So despite a nearly $300 billion increase in the annual military budget from 1985 to 2021, there was a 2 million drop in arms industry employment. Did weapons get that much more expensive or how does that work?

1:08:11Yes, that's part of it. And then another part is just factors that affected every industry that led to the decline of manufacturing in the U.S., but also profit-driven interests as well. They want arms. Arms companies' main concern is profit so that when that's their main concern, they're interested in cutting down the workforce as much as possible while still maintaining enough of a presence in congressional districts where they're able to say they create jobs. But it's just through these cost-saving measures to boost profit and technological advances that affected every sector, in terms of employment, in arms industry employment, the relationship between military spending and economic benefit is very, very shaky. It sounds inverse.

1:09:03Well, yeah. And it's also a sign when you hear that, oh, this creates jobs. Okay. That's a tacit admission that their main justification, which is national security, which is, you know, security is, you know, it's the one thing that people can't do without it's the most important thing so if they're making something a jobs argument that means their national security argument is not right it's such a smart point you know i'm a little confused by your your israel aid number so 300 and what billion 350 that's inflation adjusted terms over the course since uh 19 constant terms yeah now as of 2025 so that that excludes the four billion uh that was passed uh this year for 2026 and that includes the 3.3 billion that i mentioned for the gift card

1:09:46and then here's the so we're like 360 ish uh they're about yeah because you have to adjust all passes so i'm confused but 360 billion so I was reliably informed more than once by Nikki Haley, who was literally a governor of a Southern state called South Carolina, that we get a lot more from Israel than Israel gets from us. She's probably referring to like a private sector investment, but even that is way lopsided. The U.S. invests way more in Israel than Israel invests in the U.S. So has really Treasury sent us over 360 billion? Like what is she talking about? It's, or is it a hard to quantify moral victory that's just worth a lot? It's just best not to think about, Tucker. I think you're right. It's in that category.

1:10:32Just ignore it until it goes away. Just do your show, Tucker. God. But here's the mess. Here's the mess. It's best not to think about it. Here's one thing, though. So when you count military aid, and military aid is most of that $35 a narrow set of goods and services provided to another country, training equipment for the most part, actually for the exclusive part October 2023, fired an estimated 609 missile interceptors for the sole purpose of defending Israeli territory from incoming Iranian ballistic missiles and Houthi missiles. Is that the number? Yeah, I just calculated them yesterday for this show. You did? Yeah, it took forever. Why are you doing? Why is no one else doing? I'm sorry.

1:11:36I know I'm sidebarring you again and again, but like, why is it up to you to do this? Yeah, I wonder that myself. It's like just some like. No, but like where's everybody else? Some guy in Pittsburgh with an internet connection alone. No, but it's like. By myself. You have a background worthy of your job, but I do think that maybe we can have a think tank doing this or the New York Times doing this, or how about the Congress of the United States doing this? Why is it up to you? I'm good at it. I'll admit that. I also think there's a skillset that's required, but also, I mean, I think the main thing is just the effort that's required. No one wants to know. Yeah, there's that too. That explains, explains i mean a lot of the disinterest from you know whatever number officials give that's the number but it's

1:12:22calculated disinterest it's nikki haley up there israel gets a you know give us a lot more than we give them and it's like okay i guess and it's it's it's like um actually one of the funny one of the most useful bits of information that we got was from this Washington Post report back in May that said the U.S. had fired over 200 of these THAAD interceptors. Yes. Terminal High Altitude something. But these really expensive missiles. The most expensive, yeah. Close. No, not the most. That was the next number that was mentioned, actually. So it said more than 200 THAADs and then more than 100 of these standard missiles, which include the standard missile three and then the standard missile six, which operate at lower altitudes. the US has employed four types since October 23 to defend Israel. And they are the SM3,

1:13:20which are $31 million each for fiscal year 2027. For any fact checkers at home, that refers to FY27 discretionary cost, unit flyaway recurring cost, just for any fact checkers out there. Basically, anyone who's pedantic about the numbers like I am. So you have this about $30 million interceptor called the SM-3, which is the only one that the US has to make space-based interceptions. So ballistic missiles launch, they go through like a one to five minute boost phase, they leave the Earth's atmosphere, they travel in space for a bit, like 20 minutes or so. And then they come crashing down in like a minute or two window called the terminal phase. And then the middle part is called the mid-course phase. You have the most opportunities in the

1:14:08mid-course phase because it's about 20 minutes long. It's the longest of the three phases. The problem is you need an interceptor that's capable, that's technologically advanced to reach outer space and intercept a missile in it. And also, if you're able in outer space, the ballistic missile is able to release decoys, chaff, and balloons, because without resistance from the Earth's atmosphere, they just travel along at the same, they basically travel in this cloud of debris and it's at the same trajectory as the missile itself, which makes it extremely difficult to separate the wheat from the chaff, as it were. So the US has fired, during the June 2025 war, it fired 80 of these things at around $30 million a pop.

1:14:55That was just during the June 2025 war. And then the post didn't give a breakdown between that and the other standard missile, but it's been over 100 combined. How many of those 30 in the first war, the last summer war, were fired in defense of Israel? So there's 80 SM3s launched in defense of Israel during the June 2025 war. And then more than 150 THAADs also launched in defense of Israel during that war. So if you include that number, all the intercepts, recorded intercepts, documented use of these interceptors that the U.S. has used for just not in defense of its own bases, but for the sole purpose of defense of Israel since October 2023 through September 2026. So three years, you get 609.

1:15:53I've never received a thank you note or really any expression of gratitude from anyone in that government enough really that's what we're told so for you know it's it's really quite shocking and actually um jd vance actually had a slip up where he like he was kind of shook from whatever brainwashing happened to him but he jumped he kind of had an outburst where a reporter asked him about u.s support for israel and he corroborated the the washington post report where the numbers i just mentioned the more than 200 that and the more than 100 standard missiles were about two thirds of all interceptors fired for defense of israel so that includes Israeli interceptors as well. So the U.S. shouldered around two-thirds of the missile defense burden for Israel during the 2026 war

1:16:42and close to 70% during the 2025 war. And I'm not factoring in the $500 million in missile defense aid the U.S. has provided every year for Israel to buy those interceptorsors its own interceptors i haven't crunched those numbers yet i was hoping to have it ready for the show it just takes for god it takes forever man um that is just absolutely remarkable yeah and i um wait so 350 billion since its founding for a tiny country. I mean, that's the largest. I mean, is there any, it's unfair to ask you this, having not asked you to prepare for it. But like, I mean, that's got to be the biggest source of income to the economy, right? Over time? There's no oil and gas there. As far as, it's the largest cumulative amount the U.S. has provided any other country.

1:17:37Ever? Out of all countries, yeah, yeah. And as far as waging war on another country's behalf, I mean, there's really three costs that I've only really done two. I'm still calculating, so there's army in Israel, the aid that we just talked about, and then there's, you know, directly defending Israel through the missile interceptors I just talked about. I'm realizing now that I didn't include interceptions of Iranian drones and Houthi missiles too. I have to calculate that shit. So I have to calculate those costs as well. And then there's the cost of just waging war on Israel's behalf. Cause this really is, I mean, you can, I don't think there's any one thing, any one reason the U S went to war,

1:18:23but strategically speaking, like this war doesn't happen without Israel and without Israel's influence over the U S government. And Marco Rubio said it out loud. Yeah. Yeah. We followed Israel into this. And by the way, the speaker of the house, Mike Johnson also said that. And it's also true because I saw it. So maybe you support it. Maybe you think that's great. Maybe you don't, but that's just a fact that it cannot be erased. Yeah. It's for this. It's, it's not for us interests. It's not America first, which I, which I still think it hasn't been implemented, obviously, as we've painfully found out. But I still think that idea has a good amount of currency. America first? Yeah. Of course. If implemented properly,

1:19:06you're talking about, you know. It's called democracy. That's what democracy is. No, it's democracy. You serve on behalf of the citizens of your country. They own the country. I just caught myself over intellectualizing that. for no but you're right it's like it's the only legitimate basis of government in any system including a monarchy if a king rules on behalf of another kingdom he's betraying his subjects lots of kings no american wants to hear it lots of kings are super popular actually yeah yeah some are not but some do a good job and they're really popular and people who live there don't want to replace the king. Why is he popular? Because they think he's serving their interests. He's Kuwait first or, you know, Emirates first or whatever, but

1:19:47that's the only legitimate way to run a country or a family or a military or a business, right? And it's painful being told the opposite. The leaders serve the people they lead. Right. It's the difference between ruling and governing, really. Yeah. And it's just a hell of a lot easier to rule. Yeah, but you can even rule that. You can rule with the people's interests in mind. You know, you can. Yeah, but you still have to, you know, answer to people and, you know, pay attention to what people think. But with ruling, yeah, you could just, you know, wage wars on the country's behalf. You can direct funding to the exact companies you want for all intents and purposes you can. Well, then you have to ask, like, who's actually being oppressed here?

1:20:28You know, is it the, are we doing this to liberate the long-suffering people of Iran or Russia or Vietnam or name your country, Somalia, all these countries we've gone to war against or within their borders. And it's like, you know, I hope for liberation for everyone, but I see the American public is being oppressed by everything that you mentioned. I think workers across the world are being oppressed. I really think one of this the main political conflicts going on now is the workers versus the war profiteers and the warmongers i really think it's i mean you can define working class how you like but i mean regardless of your definition if you're even just you know vaguely within the bounds of reality. You recognize that working class well-being is acutely compromised

1:21:18when governments prioritize waging warfare over promoting the general welfare as it were. And if you're not putting workers' interests first to make your economy go, then you're going to run into some real problems electorally if there's any semblance of democracy in your country it's the oldest story there is the king bankrupted his country through wars and got overthrown i mean like only in an ahistorical moment like this one are people like rediscovering something that every empire has learned serially for millennia which is what i just said king bankrupts his country through hubris in war and gets overthrown or his kids get overthrown whatever it's like that's how you wreck your empire right do you think do you think more

1:22:03people are starting to realize that especially these last couple years in the general public i think that i have not had a shallow conversation with anybody including convenience store clerks since covid i think america for all of its many faults, many of which are like on display and problems that are accelerating, I think people are way deeper than they were just a few years ago. I mean, you'd be at the airport and you're people talking about like celebrity news or something called People Magazine. Do you remember that? Like chronicle the diet habits of actors or something. It was like the whole thing was like so absurd and frivolous and embarrassing, really. And now I feel like people have been forced to

1:22:43confront real topics. So yeah, no, I think people are starting to figure stuff out. Of course they are. I was thinking about, I've been thinking about like for months, like what the proper, like how the public is perceiving, you know, the political elite broadly, like the establishment, how they perceive like your average politician or the head of state. And an analogy occurred to me yesterday when I was boarding the plane here and the pilot was greeting people at the door of the airplane, just saying, hi, hello. And I thought of it then, which is what if that pilot was visibly wearing a parachute as he was greeting passengers to his airplane, I was about to fly. That is so good. And it's like, do I get one? No, no, no, no. Your seat's down there. Don't worry about it, but have a good flight.

1:23:39Okay. And I think that's kind of, it harkens back to this actual, it harkens back to this quote I had or I heard during the 2024 election where it's like, young people don't see real hope. They just see a dying empire led by bad people. Hi, everybody. Jay Leno here. You know, when Yamabai asked me what car to feature for the 500th car giveaway, there's only one car. dying empire led by bad people. garage and now one lucky guest will drive home in the very same car that i have so play yamaha for your chance to win on november 30th because somebody has gone home and yamaha's 500th car you win details at yamaha.com must be tournament to enter please gamble responsibly oh i have a stat for you you want to hear about the so okay so this is this is a poll taken May 2026, New York Times, Ipsos. This asked whether people support, somewhat support,

1:24:41somewhat oppose or strongly oppose additional aid to Israel. Okay.% strongly support it. Now, it divides that into a bunch of different categories, like age, political affiliation, that sort of thing. Among the survey respondents who did not vote in 2024, the most popular response was strongly oppose additional aid to israel and 50 50 half of the people who did not vote in 2024 answered that they strongly oppose additional aid to military to israel and i think it's it's not about it's it's part of military aid or just aid the question asked about additional military and economic aid. So yeah, that's both kinds of aid. So aid. Right. So I think that's twofold. I think one is the atrocities in Gaza,

1:25:45the genocide have become matters of fact at this point, as much as people really try to talk themselves out of that reality. It's a matter of fact at this point. And also there's, Gaza is like, it's like the Schrodinger's cat of political issues. I don't know if you've noticed it, but it's like, if you are on, this is something I've noticed on Twitter, particularly from I bring up polling on Gaza in the 2024 election and how big of an effect it had on Kamala Harris' loss, I will be told by someone who will say, oh, Gaza didn't matter at all. Or in the next breath, sometimes from the same person, it says, oh, well, the people who didn't vote in 2024 because of Gaza got what they deserved. You know, a president they didn't want, I guess.

1:26:42So it kind of occupies these two spaces where critics of people, people who criticize other people who have made Gaza, have decided that Gaza matters to them on electoral level, that it will affect their judgment and their vote and their voting behavior, that it oscillates between this is the most important issue or this is the issue that doesn't, it was a non-factor completely. So people just really can't decide. But I think it did matter. I think this and the polling I just mentioned and a bunch of other polls suggest that it didn't matter too but i think it's also the interaction between putting another country especially one committing war crimes on a near daily basis ahead of the interests of of people and i think this is

1:27:30where this intersection between the cost of war and the cost of living crisis they meet because it's not just the financial resources being dumped in, it's the political capital too. Like if you think about the one- It's the attention. Right. So this, think about the one legislative priority that Joe Biden took out an Oval Office address to sell. It was the foreign aid bill that provided the record amount of aid to Israel, a bunch of money for the war in Ukraine as well, and a bunch of money for Pacific aid, for Taiwan aid as well. It wasn't his infrastructure bill. It wasn't his massive Build Back Better plan that he devoted the most political capital to. I didn't remember that. That's what he's saying. fought he devoted the most political capital to i didn't remember that that's yeah that was the one

1:28:17bit of legislation that he decided was worthy of an oval office address addressed the nation to sell well they've just they've given up on our population on our country on us they're looting it now and their parachute is you know crypto and then another passport and they're they're out you know and you sort of know that like they're not lashing themselves to the mast of the ss america now they've got their parachute on for real and i think we have every reason to be offended by that right right do you feel since you look at polling so much obviously you know the republicans are going to get hurt. No party's ever earned it more, in my opinion. And I think it's exactly what you said hurt Kamala Harris, but it's even now the connection

1:29:06between this foreign misadventure and their declining quality of life and standard of living. It's just so, it's one-to-one to block this trade reform moves. Like even I can understand that. Yeah, it's got no energy flows. Like you did this to me. I'm not voting for you. But I wonder how many people see this problem not simply as a Trump problem or a Republican problem or a Kamala Harris problem or a Biden problem, but as like a system problem, like both parties. I hope a lot of people, that's my read on it. It is? Does polling suggest that? I'm still working through the data because, I mean the this was just a bit of the research that i have going on i think i have too many projects going on tucker but uh you're doing a lot of math

1:29:46yeah yeah and it's not my nature to be this fastidious and this you know committed to you know really making sure everything's right like i I never follow recipes to the T, so I just don't make that good food, I guess. But for this, like I'm just all about getting it right. And also just being, as you know, being independent means you got a lot of freedom, but it also means that you don't really have any institutional protection. Oh, for sure, yeah. So if I make a mistake, heaven forbid, like one that's, it turns out to be like a cost estimate that turns out to be catastrophically wrong or I misplace a decimal or something on like, if I mess up there, then, like, I will be punished immediately for it in a very, very harsh way.

1:30:44I forget what I was going on about. Well, also, it's like being a sports writer. We always used to say when I worked in a newspaper, the sports writers did the hardest job because their readers knew a lot about the topic. Yeah. So, they made any mistakes. So your readers, anybody who writes about something specific like this, your readers were a self-selected group who are coming at it with prior knowledge. Yeah, yeah. And it's, I have some paid subscribers who are actually mentors of mine. Oh, sure. Yeah. And it's also just like people I don't know. It's like, there's some, I get notes from people who like, usually positive, who really, really know their stuff. Learn a lot from my readers.

1:31:24You were asking about whether the people view the Iran war as a system problem or as a partisan problem. Right. I think the Iran war happens if Kamala Harris gets elected. I think Trump is, I think it happens either way. I don't know if the war takes the same 2024, where she was asked, what's the biggest threat to America? Now, if you look at polling, the most popular answer is always America. People always say that America is the biggest threat to America. And then the next ones are, you know, Russia and China for obvious reasons. That has gotten the most attention as rival powers to the US, I guess, over the last few years in terms of like building up threat and animosity towards each of those countries.

1:32:22Harris answered Iran as the most, as the biggest threat to the U.S. And that was only, she wouldn't have answered the same way had October 7th and the resulting genocide not happened. I can't believe that. So I feel like- Iranon and when was this interview october of 24 yeah this was when people were asking like i mean the answer the answer like the number of the percentage of americans who would call ron the top threat is still probably somewhat low but it was like in like four to 5% of Americans calling Iran the top threat. But here was Kamala Harris. Have you ever been mugged by a Persian? No. I haven't either. No, they've only just been extremely nice to me. I agree. I had breakfast with one this morning, actually.

1:33:12Yeah, he went to Harvard more literate than I am. Yeah, no, it's not a low IQ group. It's a very impressive group. Oh, it's always so embarrassing when a non-native English speaker speaks English better than you. Oh, for sure. That happens to me a lot. Oh, for sure. As Kant said. Yeah, but, you know, it's just amazing that she could say that. It was Iran. So she's being paid to say that, of course. Yeah, and I really viewed her as, and I think she viewed herself too, as a continuation of the Biden administration. It was the direction the Biden administration, you know, the effect of the national security establishment, it's like an interaction between, you know, the White House and the underlying establishment.

1:33:52But that's just the direction I got the sense that the U.S. was going. It was just the march toward war. It was just escalating. Because the U.S. decided. I felt that strongly. The U.S. just decided. Like, you know, U.S. foreign policy had always been deferential to Israel for the most part. But it wasn't really until October 2023 where I felt, you know felt confident calling it Israel first. Because there was just no conditions on it. Not just the vast amount of the historic amount of resources invested, but arming Israel, but going back to the numbers with interceptors fired, like directly defending Israel. The US did that a bit during the initial stages of the Gulf War with Scud missiles from Iraq. directly defending Israel. The U.S. did that a bit during the initial stages of the Gulf War with

1:34:37Scud missiles from Iraq. But this is just an entirely different level. But just overtly waging war on Israel's behalf, too, is just an obscene escalation. I've been on TV for 30 years when October 7th happened, and I don't think I criticized Israel a single time on camera not one time and not just because i was hiding my true views because i was like ah you know i had complicated views on it but i wasn't mad about it i didn't think it was a top priority issue i just it was like there's a lot of things going on why am i going after israel i kind of like the country and there was just a massacre that took place on october well of course and there was that i was i was highly offended by the murder of innocents in israel and i still am when i think about it we

1:35:21just the anniversary was two weeks ago and i was thinking about it it's awful killing girls at a concert come on but um there was that but i mean the relationship between israel united states i always thought was poisonous but i didn't think it was fatal. And I could just kind of ignore it, which is what I did. But it changed after that. It changed after the Hamas attacks in Southern Israel that day. Our relationship with Israel changed. Our politicians changed. That's what I noticed. Like, it was like kind of crazy all of a sudden. It really was. And it was, and you can see the historical foundation there, like a buildup over time where it's like this longstanding support for Israel, this, you know,

1:36:02repeating these axioms, my support for Israel is ironclad. I just kind of ignored it. Yeah. Because it was just, you know, it's kind of like, it became white noise to a point. They had, I spoke at the Republican convention 2024 for Trump the night he was inaugurated. And I was, of course, I've had a lot of time to think about that in the last six months since Trump has done things that I like so offensive to me, I can't even control myself. I'm so upset about it. So I went and watched that speech. I was like, what did I say? I don't remember saying it. I didn't write it down. I don't remember what I said so much. There was really flags flying in the convention center at that convention, 2024.

1:36:42Israeli flags in an American presidential party domination. And I honestly, I guess I noticed, I don't know. I don't remember noticing. You're right. It was white noise. I just kind of tuned it out. Like, you know, you've got your Israel thing. You're pretty obsessed about Israel, whatever. Have fun with your little Israel thing. And, you know, you're into the World Cup and soccer and you're, you know what I mean? It was like that. At least that's how I thought of it. I was totally wrong. I didn't realize it was $350 billion. Like I had no idea. It became impossible to ignore. Well, that's it. Yeah. Exactly. $150 billion. Like I had no idea. It became impossible to ignore. Well, that's it. Yeah,

1:37:21exactly. And then, you know, I really think like the main driver for like the change in public opinion in Israel has been morally based. And I think opposition to U.S. policy toward Israel even be higher if people actually knew these, the true costs. If like the government actually bothered to investigate, you know, the atrocities being carried out with US weapons. Well, can I say, I never recommend Wikipedia for anything it's controlled by the intel agencies, foreign and domestic, it's everything about it offends me, but the Wikipedia entry on Gaza, which is probably the most contested entry on the entire site, get all those warnings at the top. A hundred percent. But because it's so contested, I think

1:37:54you can look at it with some confidence, at least for an overview, maybe not in every detail. Read the Wikipedia entry on Gaza on what's happened since October 7th. And it's like, it's bracing. You can't dismiss it as Israeli propaganda. You can't dismiss it as like third world leftist propaganda. Like you can't Nazi propaganda. It's like, it's hard to. Like you can't, Nazi propaganda. It's like, it's hard to dismiss. Yeah. I think this is a reckoning that's coming from the political establishment as well, where it's like initially opposition to the genocide in Gaza was just like, oh, this is just, you know, people on the left. You know, totally, totally. Third worlders. Yeah. And, you know, rich kids, you know,

1:38:33yelling at us from the, on TikTok from their dad's company car. But no, it's like, no, the call was coming from inside the house very much. So these are the base. These are, you know, your voters. Can I tell you, I kind of ignored it. I'm so embarrassed to say that, but I did. I was like, I don't get involved in that stuff. It's not my business. I'm sure Israel's mistreating the Palestiniansestinians they certainly have before but like i'm not getting involved i thought that when the gaza stuff first started i'm embarrassed but i did one of the is really like they're like the defining moment where you felt two churches and i was like i remember that i was like and i you know it was nothing compared with the rest of

1:39:14gaza and i'm not making the case that only Christians are worth defending. But I, whatever, it's a long, not very interesting story. But I mentioned it to some evangelicals, not on camera, of course, but just in private. And I'm not an evangelical, but I've always liked them. And I said something about it. They're like, shut up. I said, no, no, no, Christian churches, your, you know, your faith, their churches are blown up. It's christian churches your you know your faith their churches are blown up it's like how do you not feel connected shut up shut up yeah like this is the sickest this is the weirdest thing i didn't know what it was this is the weirdest thing i've ever heard did they also have their fingers plugged into their ears and go no

1:39:50they hated me they hated me for saying it i was actually on stage giving a speech about something else and i i got a question from an audience member and i said what's that you know and they they shuffled me off stage true story so it was that actually changed my view i was like whenever someone's like we don't want to hear it and it's true i wasn't speculating and i wasn't even getting that you know assertive or strident about it i was like well you know you're Christians, you should care about the bombing of a church. Shut up! It's like Catholic Relief Services, a humanitarian group, and a couple of other faith-based organizations as well that were in the Christian denomination reported on it and were like...

1:40:28Oh, well, now, then I went right down the rabbit hole and started talking to people. I spent a lot of time in the Middle East, so I called people I knew, and then I realized, wow, this is like the worst thing ever. But I had almost fully ignored it for about a year and uh i'm not i'm not proud of that at all but i did so anyway not ignoring it now because it's impossible to ignore yeah and the attacks on christian centers in southern lebanon and attacks on all people in lebanon that is one of the most upsetting thing and using the war that israel pushed trump its proxy into starting using that war as cover to just like grab southern lebanon south of the river is like one of the worst and then bombay route where you used to live

1:41:10that's you know you feel that in your soul. Oh, I couldn't agree more. You really do. One of the things I'm going to look at for a project is I'm going to, you mentioned like grabbing land. I think ultimately that this is, it's about land. It's about grabbing land. Of course. And I'm going to compare, diligently teach myself how to use satellite imagery or maybe just something rudimentary like Google Maps or something and outline a pre October 23 and compare it to like 1967 borders as well, but just compare the shift in the amount of territory that Israel occupies, not only just Gaza, more in the West Bank, more in southern Syria, southern Lebanon as well. I just want to number, just to quantify

1:41:58how much of a land grab is happening uh and i haven't i'm unaware of anyone else has done it you know anyone who's done reliable you would consider factually accurate analyses of what's happening gaza oh uh on what level how many killed? Let's just start there. You know, honestly, like the most, you know, the best numbers come from the Gaza ministry of health. And obviously the, the U S media decided early on, this is going to be Hamas run. And it's like, it's the Hamas government. These are just civil people. They're not in the, not in the army, you know? But the most reliable figures that, you know, the verified figures are coming from the gaza ministry of health ultimately and you know you can do your like international

1:42:43organizations can do their best to you know cross reference and verify but you know everyone's ultimately leaning even like israeli intelligence agencies have admitted that they use gaza ministry numbers so i think that's where it's coming from in terms of people I listen to. Kareem McDeecy and his brothers who have the podcast called McDeecy Street. Kareem McDeecy was a professor at AUB. I think he still is. American University of Beirut. Right, where I was. Excellent resource. UN Special Rapporteur, Francesca Albanese. Nice woman. Have you met her? Yeah. Oh, cool. Cool. That's probably actually one person. I was just extremely excited to meet her. Nora Erekat as well, who's a law professor at Rutgers, I believe.

1:43:34Those are just a couple off the top of my head, but I mean, there's a lot of, there's a really a hell of a lot of people doinggers, I believe. Those are just a couple off the top of my head. But I mean, there's a lot of, there's a really a hell of a lot of people doing good work on this. It's just, I've just, I've thought about Gaza pretty much every day for the last three years. You know, it wears on you a bit. So I didn't, you know, it's not out of interest of like some weird obsession or anything. It's just like the feeling of ignoring it though would be far worse than, you know, having it, you know, at the forefront. You can't unsee it. Yeah, yeah. Stephen Semer, I really appreciate all the time you spent

1:44:07and particularly the numbers. And will you restate one last time where people can follow you in case they didn't catch it? Best place is to follow my newsletter on Substack. That's where you hear about everything I'm up to, and that's the main vehicle for publication. It's called Polygraph, and you can find it on Substack at stephensemler.com. I love it. Thank you. Thank you, Tucker. Hi, everybody. Jay Leonard here. You know, when Yamabai asked me what car to feature for the 500th car giveaway, there's only one car, the Rolls Royce. And not any Rolls Royce, the Rolls Royce Spectre, the most powerful Rolls Royce ever built. And here's the special part. The one they're giving away was built exactly like mine.

1:44:49It's a car I chose in my own garage, and now one lucky guest will drive home in the very same car that I have. So play at Yamaha for your chance to win on November 30th, because somebody has gone home in Yamaha's 500th car. You win? Details at yamaha.com. Must be tournament to enter. Please gamble responsibly.