🚨Trump CALLING US Ground Troops to WAR?!!!

As Donald Trump's war against Iran is spiraling out of control, we are getting this information and we need to, of course, verify it. But information that the US Army has abruptly canceled a major training exercise for the headquarters element of the 82nd Airborne Division at Fort Bragg in North Carolina, fueling speculation within the Defense Department that soldiers specializing in ground combat and a range of other missions may be sent to the Middle East to join the war against Iran. Sources are telling this to the Washington Post. As you may know, the 82nd Airborne operates a brigade combat team

consisting of several thousand soldiers, which alongside elements of the U.S. Air Force are kept on high alert, allowing them to undertake an airborne deployment on 18 hours notice with no prior warning permissions as varied as seizing airfields and other critical infrastructure to evacuation known more commonly as the immediate response force. And this follows, I think the Trump regime falsely leaking to members of the press that the Kurds were doing a ground invasion of Iran to which the Kurdish leaders said that's

absolutely false. Now, we have a lot of military reporters just trying to get information about what the hell is going on. Thomas Noveli explains two days ago, I asked CENTCOM detailed questions about space operations and forces in the region. I just got one response back today. See attached our Operation Epic Fury fact sheet. It's the 72 hour fact sheet. The war has been going on for six days.

And as the war continues to go on, seems like Russia and China have already been drawn into this thing, providing details about where American military assets are located. According to three US officials who spoke to the Washington Post, Russia has provided Iran with intelligence on locations of US ships, aircraft,

personnel and assets in the Middle East in what has been described as a pretty comprehensive effort. When asked earlier this week about the influence of China or Russia in the conflict with Iran, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth responded, they're not really a factor here. In addition to intelligence support and targeting data

provided to Iran by Russia, the United States has also received intelligence suggesting that China may be preparing to join the ongoing conflict in the Middle East, providing Iran with financial assistance, spare parts and missile components.

Three people familiar with the matter told CNN, China relies heavily on Iranian oil and has reportedly been pressuring Tehran to allow a safe passage for vessels through the Strait of Hormuz. And Donald Trump called into CNN

and many other reporters today to say on a scale from one to 10, he believes the war in Iran is a 12 or a 15. Then he called Jonathan Karl at ABC and said, "'Don't you love my," quote, "'performance?' "'Did you love my performance?' Direct quote.

"'In Venezuela?' "'My performance in Iran is better, isn't it?' Then Donald Trump's been posting images of Bill Maher all morning. He keeps posting these weird images of Bill Maher, oil prices through the roof.

Um, in the last nine hours, the price increased $12 per barrel. We're now at $92 and 50 cents. This could hit $100 a barrel today. And while the United States is also saying that our air force bases, the United Arab Emirates really are in hit and our facilities are fine. We start to see photos like this, and it seems pretty clear

that we're just getting lied to. So we got to see photos like this. And it seems pretty clear that we're just getting lied to. So we got to make sense of this. We're not getting intelligence. This is the least intelligence, intelligent regime imaginable. So here to help us sort through it,

let's bring in Democratic Congress member, Jim Hines, the ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee. Congress member Hines, it's great to see it. This war already is, seems like it's spiraling out of control. It is spiraling out of control, but also we don't even know what the hell is going on at any level and it's lie after lie. What can you tell us, Congressman?

Yeah, yeah.

And, you know, as the ranking member of the Intelligence Committee, maybe I know slightly, slightly better than most what's going on because I get to see the intelligence, not something I can talk about. But Ben, let's back this up a little bit. You're right. We don't really know what's going on. None of what we're seeing is good. None. You were talking about the price of a barrel of oil. You know what that's translated into? 33 cents on a gallon of gas for the American people just in the last week or so. So what's the one thing you need to know when you decide, foolishly almost always, to go to war in the Middle East?

The one thing you need to know is how you get out. How does this end? Now, the one thing I know for sure, we've had a whole bunch of different explanations from the president of how this ends. None of them have made any sense. But he settled on this. You could put up his true social. His answer to that question is it's the total and unconditional surrender of the Iranian regime. And Ben, the one thing we know for sure is that it's not going to end that way. It is absolutely not going to end that way. This is not Venezuela, this is not snatching Maduro. This is a vicious, evil, heavily armed, extremely capable regime

that had been in the business of killing Americans for a very long time. evil, heavily armed, extremely capable regime that have been in the business of killing Americans for a very long time. And so the one way this does not end is through unconditional surrender. And sadly, all of the other alternatives are pretty ugly. Anyway, yeah, the one thing we know for sure

is that this president really has gotten himself into something that he doesn't begin to understand.

Yeah, I mean, that was his post this morning. Unconditional surrender and what does he think that he's going to get tweeted back by the Iranian extremist Islamic Republic? Oh, hey Donald in all caps. Oh yeah, we're going to do that. What can we do for you?

I don't even know. I don't even know. I don't even know what he's thinking. And then he's damaged so many relationships over the past year plus, that it's like, hey, can you help us? Yeah, we're not really going to do that. Can you help us? Yeah, we really we really can't

help you. Now he sees how isolated and alone he is. He's desperate to do this meeting with China, this state visit. And Xi Jinping knows that for Donald Trump, he just wants to go to Beijing, stand in front of the Chinese soldiers who stand at attention for Donald Trump. And so Trump's willing to take away all of the commitments to Taiwan simply to just show up in China. Xi Jinping knows that. Xi Jinping's out there likely working with Russia to help Iran target American assets.

And Donald Trump's out there rating this a 12 of 15.

Ben, you know what we've done to our European allies over the course of the last year by threatening to invade Greenland and all the other crazy stuff that has happened. Here's the fact that a Hollywood screenwriter would never conceive of. J.D. Vance and the President of the United States has spent a year literally beating up on President Zelensky of Ukraine. The one man on the planet who is making an unequivocal

and extremely expensive defense of all that we hold dear against a mass murderer in Russia. And of course our president has cozied up and voted within the United Nations. That mass murderer humiliated Zelensky. Vice President J.D. Vance saying,

you should say thank you. President saying you have no cards to play. And what happened this week? Hat in hand, they go to Zelensky and say, we don't know how to defend against the Iranian drones and you know a little something about that.

Can you please help us? Again, a screenwriter in Hollywood would not dream of that script, but that is how low this president has reduced our country to that sort of depravity.

Yeah, but Congressman, as we are now begging Zelensky help us with how to figure out how to shoot down the Shahid drones, how to shoot down the ballistic missiles. Donald Trump then gives another interview to Politico and Caroline Leavitt holds a press conference where he again calls Zelensky P.T. Barnum and says that Putin's the one who wants to make a deal

and Zelensky's the person who's holding this up. I mean, even 24 hours ago, while we need Ukraine's assistance, while we asked for it, Donald Trump's still out there yesterday saying positive things about Putin and Xi Jinping. It's crazy.

And, you know, two interesting things, right? This is what happens when a leader succeeds in surrounding themselves with people who won't tell them the truth. People whose sole objective morning, noon, and night is to praise the dear leader. This is what happens. Nobody says, Mr. President, a war in the Middle East is going to lead to an increase in oil

prices, which is very rapidly going to lead to an increase in gasoline prices.

Mr.

President, you ran a race saying you would bring costs down and not get involved in wars. And you're about to get involved in a war that will dramatically raise costs. No one can say that to him. And I see that in the Congress of the United States. Just 24 hours ago, Ben, the House Republican majority said no to the House of Representatives considering this war, not because we want want to but because the constitution demands it is the constitution that we swear allegiance to the most serious thing that the United States can do. We've already lost six precious lives of our servicemen.

Gasoline prices are spiraling. The economy is headed downhill. And there is a reason why the framers said, when you take that decision, it's not one dyspeptic person in an Oval Office. It's not a king. It is the representatives of the people.

And half of the representatives of the people said, no thank you yesterday.

Yeah.

So you have Donald Trump betraying the Kurds in Syria, betraying the Kurds, I think during his first term as well. You have Donald Trump betraying the pro-democracy protesters in Iran last month or two months ago when they were out protesting. And Trump said, get out there. I got your back.

If one of you gets killed, we will protect you. By some estimates, it's more than 30,000 Iranian protesters who were massacred. And now Donald Trump's like, all right, do it again. Okay, do it again while Marco Rubio and Donald Trump are saying, we wanted regime change, now we don't want regime change. And so literally Axios over the wire while we've been doing this interview. Rubio tells Arab foreign ministers

that Washington's goal is not regime change, and that it just wants some different people to run the country, a different crew. So yeah, before it was, you know, Ayatollah Khomeini, now his son, Mojabba, who's more extreme than the Ayatollah. Let's bring, let's mission accomplish.

And by the way, if you're listening to, of course you are, and you're listening to more stuff than I get to hear. I wish I got to hear the stuff that you got to hear, but what the Iranian foreign minister is saying, what their national security Council head is saying, they know that they actually

have Trump and the other countries in the Middle East kind of cornered and scared. Now, and yes, we are, and if anything I'm saying wrong, check me on it, but yes, we're bombing the shit out of Tehran. We're hitting it, we're bombing it. By the way, we're also hitting targets that we need to really reflect upon as a nation because it does seem we also hit an elementary school for little girls.

And I don't know if that's also caused by AI picking out these targets because there was an Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps building nearby. But by all accounts, this elementary school was hit and tragically 165 little girls and their teachers got killed in this thing. But yeah, we are bombing Iran,

but what actually seems to be happening, there's more radicalization there and it's not achieving any fundamental military. I don't know, talk to us and make sense of this for me.

Well, back to your point about betraying the Iranian people, I have a theory on how this ends and I'm willing to make a small bet on it. The next couple of weeks, you're gonna see oil go across a hundred, in fact, it may happen today, a hundred dollars a barrel,

that is going to translate into very high prices at the pump for the American consumer. God forbid, but there's some chance we're going to see additional loss of life in our service members in the region. You know, projections for the economic growth are going to go down because that happens when you can't get oil. And at some point in three, four, five weeks, the president is going to realize and he's going to look at the numbers and he's going to say, this is really not tenable. And he's going to declare victory and walk away. And what he's

going to say is, look, we had a couple of objectives. We said, we're going to get rid of the Navy. The Navy's at the bottom of the Persian Gulf. We're gonna get rid of the missile launchers. That's a little harder. They got rid of a lot of them, but we did that. Oh, and by the way, we set back the nuclear program that six months ago I told you was obliterated, but now it's set back. Anyway, and he's gonna say, you know,

our great patriotic, now we're gonna make Iran great again, and he's gonna declare victory and walk away. the American public will fade, but what will have been achieved is that you will have replaced a very bad Supreme Leader, killed him, replaced him with his son who is more radical than he is, and by the way, committed, committed to the creation of a nuclear weapon. You will have a wounded animal of a vicious regime, and if there's one thing more dangerous than an animal, it's a wounded animal, and you will have stirred that, if I can continue to use too many metaphors, you will have kicked that hornet's nest literally adjacent to the arteries that allow for 25% of the world's energy consumption to move.

So that's the scenario I see. And at the end of the day, one of the most tragic elements of that will be that the people who suffer most will be the Iranian people who briefly, because of the expectations that this president set, briefly, briefly, briefly saw freedom, only to have it snatched away and to find themselves now under the rule of somebody who was much more vicious

than his father ever was. Yeah, you know, and as this continues to spiral out of control, we got to have you back. We gotta chat more about everything that's going on here. So we appreciate your time. And I was also gonna just say though, if you look at the region too, it's also,

I mean, if you're Doha, Qatar, if you're Abu Dhabi, if you're Dubai and you built this, you tried to build this facade of safety and business and tourism.

Gone.

You know, and then when Trump says, everybody knows that at any point in time now, Iran has the capability to do that. That region in a second can be like that. And that's, that creates systemic issues, right? You know, within the country.

We don't have time to make the list. You know, we haven't talked about Bahrain where the American Fifth Naval Fleet is based, right? Bahrain, the Sunni king of Bahrain may get overthrown by the Shiites who are now acting on behalf of Iran. I mean, again, we just don't have enough time to go through the entire list of horribles,

which at this point in time are more likely than not. Well, let me just quickly ask you there, because I can't leave the people hanging about Bahrain being toppled by the Shiites. I got to just quickly drill down before. What do you think the status of that is? Because we've seen Bahrain be attacked. We know about the sectarian issues.

What's the big concern there? But it's a big concern, not just in Bahrain, though, right? right, in Iraq and all these areas with these sectarian issues that have been, this is why other presidents, when pressured by Netanyahu, didn't do this, but we're seeing some of these sectarian issues, Bahrain elsewhere, just before we go, if you can.

Yeah, yeah, so I mean, in the particular case of Bahrain, Bahrain is governed by a Sunni king, the Khalifa family, who let's just not say are not, they're not exactly Jeffersonian in their liberalism, and they have been pretty brutal to the Shiite majority in that country. And well before this, there's always been riots

and that sort of thing. And now, of course, the Shiite majority, egged on by Iran are, you know, rioting, and, you know, that could go south quickly. And again, maybe you don't care a ton about Bahrain, but the United States' fifth fleet is based there. And you made a good point, you know, whatever you think of Mohammed, of, sorry, of the rulers of the UAE and Qatar and Saudi Arabia, you know, all of those rulers were trying to bring their region into the 21st century,

build luxury apartments, build luxury hotels, come buy a condo on our beach, establish an outpost of Georgetown University in Qatar. All of that has at least temporarily been utterly wiped off the map by what has now created a war zone in these areas that these leaders, whatever you think of them, were hoping to sort of liberalize and modernize and turn into a place where people would want to do business and vacation.

Congressman Himes, appreciate you. We could probably do this for hours, but I wanted to, I want to make sure everyone's left with as much as we know right now.

Thank you.

Thank you, Ben. Everybody hit subscribe. Let's get to 7 million subscribers. Want to stay plugged in? Become a subscriber to our sub stack at MidasPlus.com. You'll get daily recaps from Ron Filipkowski, ad-free episodes of our podcast,

ad-free episodes of our podcast,

and more exclusive content only available at MidasPlus.com.