PART 3 ANTI-ANTI-NAZI BARBARIAN HORDES ARE KNOCKING DOWN THE

[admin]

Trump under scrutiny; released peace deal MoU text shows Iran as new superpower | Janta Ka Reporter
Janta Ka Reporter
Jun 17, 2026

In a setback to US President Donald Trump, the official contents of the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) signed between the US and Iran have been made public—revealing that the Islamic Republic has secured the ultimate upper hand.

The historic diplomatic shift has triggered absolute outrage across Washington. Trump's former National Security Advisor John Bolton has fiercely condemned the deal, publicly branding it as a total "political surrender" by the United States to Iran. How did Washington lose its leverage so completely? In this video, Rifat Jawaid delivers his sharp, hard-hitting commentary on the day's fast-moving geopolitical developments and breaks down what this means for the global balance of power.



Transcript

It's official. The text of theou on Iran US peace deal is out and this has finally confirmed Donald Trump's
surrender to Iran. Trump has taken the responsibility. The word being used is undertake. The US undertakes to pay Iran
$300 billion worth of reparations. Trump has also pledged to end all kinds of sanctions against Iran, including UN Security Council resolutions.
It doesn't get any worse than this for the US. Nothing will change as far as Iran's nuclear program is concerned. At
least for now. The US Treasury, which was trying to manipulate currency to cause economic turmoil in Iran, will now
remove all sanctions on the Islamic Republic's ability to export oil. Iran will also be allowed to charge service
fees to allow the safe passage to ships through the state of Hormuz. I mean, what a tight slap. This is going to be the broad focus of my video tonight.
Also, in this video, a Zionist has a meltdown when security officials in the World Cup football allegedly confiscate
his flag but allow Palestinian flags to be raised during a match. So, please stay tuned.
So there was nothing wrong in our reporting on the American surrender to Iran. This is now confirmed after the full text of the MOU was released today.
The Iranian claims on the $300 billion worth reparation and the unfreezing of $24 billion worth assets were absolutely true.
Even the Iranian claim on the future control of the estate of Hormos has turned out to be true.
I will share the full text on my telegram channel in a bit. You can read it in full there.
Since there has been so much of confusion over the Iranian claims on the $300 billion worth reparation, here's
what the actual text says on this. It reads, and I quote, "The United States of America undertakes,
pay attention to the word, undertakes, with the regional partners to develop a definitive mutually agreed plan with at
least $300 billion US for the reconstruction and economic development
of the Islamic Republic of Iran. The mechanism for the implementation of this plan will be finalized as part of a
final deal within 60 days. All required licenses, waiverss, and permissions needed for the relevant financial
transactions will be granted by the United States of America. End quote.
This has prompted even a rabid Iran hater, John Bolton, to admit that his former boss had indeed capitulated to the Islamic Republic.
When it comes to the $300 billion fund that he says we're not going to put any money into, it's been reported that it includes a $300
billion reconstruction fund funded by Gulf Allies. That's false.
It's false. People, you can invest if you want. I mean, what am I going to do?
Say nobody's ever allowed to invest. No, we're not investing. We're not putting up 10 cents and uh people can decide to do that but that's up to them.
The document says very clearly the United States undertakes that's us to create this fund and at the end of a
long sentence it says comma while ensuring financing of at least 300 billion while ensuring we call that a
guarantee and we're the guarantor. So if the Saudis and the Amiradis don't want to pump up $300 billion it's coming from
us. Is this a better deal than President Obama got?
Well, no, it's not. It's not really comparable, but it's a political surrender.
Watch this analyst on CNN explain Trump's capitulation.
I want to start by asking you what stands out to you from this draft memorandum. This memorandum of understanding as it's called.
Yeah. Well, if I've been going through it this morning, I think if I want to make the most charitable case, uh there is an article article nine which says that everything is status quo. So if you
consider the military operation last June kind of knocked out the nuclear program, Iran is not enriching uranium.
You could make the argument this basically freezes that. So Iran therefore cannot enrich uranium. That's not insignificant and that's different from when we were negotiating the JCPA
when they were enriching and had an advanced nuclear program. However, the crux of the deal as you just said is
reopening the straight of form. And it's kind of like a jigsaw puzzle. Certain articles unlock others. I've kind of gone through it carefully. Um, basically
Iran is committing to not fire at ships so that ships can go through the straight of Formuz. They're really making no other commitments in this entire text. I don't see any other
commitments from Iran. The US is committing to actually very significant concessions that Iran has always really wanted and particularly in the immediate
term uh with this exchange to open the straight uh we commit to waving all oil sanctions uh banking sanctions, trade in
the prochemicals. That's basically returns to what was in place under the JCPA under the Obama era deal. That's massive revenue for Iran Wolf up to 60
maybe more billion dollars a year. Up until now, this deranged occupant of the White House claimed that his illegal war
wasn't hurting the Americans as his country had excess oil and there was absolutely no shortage in supply. So
much so that he even offered the rest of the world to buy oil from the US. He had even claimed that ships from around the
world were heading towards the American coastline to buy the US oil. But how long could he fool the world with his
lies today? He sensationally admitted that had he not signed the peace deal with Iran, the world would have run out of the oil supply.
I'm going to get bad press. I know that.
Now, if I did the opposite, if I went out and continued to bomb them for another four, just bomb the hell out of them, I'd get bad press on that. No,
there's nothing I can do. But what this does is it allows the ships to go. If we if we keep bombing, those ships won't be
going. And you're talking about 500, 600, 700 million a day. It's a lot of money. A lot of money. That's why the world is okay. It's liquid. It's fine.
Also, we run out of reserves in about four weeks. You know, there are reserves all over the world, and we would really run out and there'll be a time when you wouldn't be able to get it. And you want
to see bedum. No wonder Israeli terrorists are having an unprecedented meltdown over the prospect of a peace
deal between the US and Iran. What is making the matter worse for the rogue settler colony and its barbarians is
Trump's refusal to slow down on the constant humiliation of his terrorist Israeli boss.
He once again claimed today that the settler colony wasn't nothing without him.
We had this deal done. You had a deal that was going to give them legally a nuclear weapon. And if that happened,
Israel would have been blown away. And in all fairness to BB Netanyahu, who happens to be a good man, gets a little excited sometimes, but he happens to be
a very good man. We've had an amazing partnership. He's been an amazing prime minister. We have a little dispute over Lebanon. And I say, you can do a little
softer touch, BB. You don't have to knock down a building every time somebody walks into it that's from Hezbollah.
But it's been an amazing partnership.
But he will say we're the big partner and he's the very small partner. And that's true.
So he came to the country and he begged Barack Hussein Obama, the president, not to do the JCPOA.
Trump's change of heart on the settler colony is beginning to worry Israeli terrorists as explained by this Middle East correspondent of London Sky News.
Without us, without the United States, there would be no Israel.
Without me, there would be no Israel because no other president was willing to do what I did.
So, has Donald Trump turned against Israel? Well, a lot of people here are beginning to wonder and to worry because
for a while now the US president has been their closest and most loyal ally.
American and Israeli forces attacked Iran together. Trump and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu seemed like a team.
Both agreed that Iran could not have nuclear weapons. But then came a
widening divide. Netanyahu determined to fight Hezbollah in Lebanon. Trump focused on getting a deal with Iran to
reopen the straight of Hormuz and to ease the pressure on the global economy and well, let's be honest, to push down prices for American consumers. The
problem is those two ambitions don't actually fit terribly well together.
Hezbollah, the group pursued by Israel, are backed by Iran, the country that America was negotiating with. And this
time, Trump has picked pragmatism over geopolitical loyalty. His focus is on getting the deal done, and he doesn't
want Israel to derail it. So, he started to criticize both Netanyahu, who he described as effing crazy, and has said
that Israel has gone too far in Lebanon, where it has killed more than three and a half thousand people and displaced
more than a million. I'll tell you what, Israel's fighting Hezblah too long and too many people are being killed and you
don't have to knock down an apartment house every time you're looking for somebody because there are a lot of people in those apartment houses and they're not all Hezbollah. That I can tell you.
Hezbollah and Iran want Israel to withdraw from Lebanon. Netanyahu has said his forces will remain there for as
long as necessary, but now he's facing a horrendous political choice. If he does what Trump wants him to and ends the war
against Hezbollah, then Netanyahu looks weak. That is catastrophic when he's got an election later this year. And many
Israelis do support the campaign in Lebanon. But if he defies the president, then he risks ostracizing Israel's great
ally and infuriating a man who is infamous for holding grudges. Meanwhile, Israelis have continued to bomb southern
Lebanon despite the US and Iran signing an MOU on a potential peace deal.
Israeli terrorists last night slaughtered at least four civilians in southern Lebanon. Watch Brandon Ward
explain why Iran may hurt the global economy once again if Israeli terrorists do not men their way. Few minutes ago,
Al Jazer reporting that Iran through Iranian officials that Iran will hit back against in a big way against these Israeli aggressions in Lebanon.
It's the it's the key and we don't have control over that, which is why I say enjoy the next few days, but I don't think this thing's going to last.
So you heard from a former int former Israeli intelligence officer back in February, Ari Beni, saying Benjamin
Netanyahu would release the full weight of the Epstein files in order to prevent a US Iran peace agreement. But I think that the real issue with the Trump
family in general is they're highly exposed to Israeli business interests.
So irrespective of whether the Epstein thing there's anything there or if it's just bluster, the fact of the matter is the the president and his family are
making a lot of money off of Israeli business ties. Trump cares about one thing alone and that is money over all
else. And would just say also that the Israelis will not go quietly regardless of the Epstein thing. They've got moves
to complicate things. And lastly, I'll just say if they go too hard against Lebanon, these Iranians don't even have to fire missiles. All Iran has to do is
call up Lloyds of London and say, "Guess what? Remember how we said we're going to let all the ships through the straight of Hormuse? We're not doing that now because they're going to figure
out, they've already figured out in Tyrron the pathway to getting America to pressure Israel, cuz that's the problem, pressuring Israel, is to cut off our
economic sources. So, they're going to go after the straight of Hormuz again.
They will put their foot down on the neck of the straight and it will put pressure on Trump in ways previously Trump was able to avoid. Now that those
buffers are we're hitting bottom tank bottom here. That's it. Trump will have to do something very serious against the Israelis if the Iranians decide that the
Israelis have gone too far into southern Lebanon. This is a settler colony's real worry. They are already losing the PR
battle in the US, the land it thought it had occupied for good. However, the changing perception even amongst the
conservative Christians about the settlla colony is leaving Israeli human devils extremely worried. They've tried
everything. They manipulated the acquisition of Tik Tok to censor the publication of videos on the Gaza
genocide. Pro-Israeli billionaires were then unleashed to acquire the entire media landscape in the US. But even that
didn't help as Americans abandoned the compromised media outlets and began to consume news from independent journalists.
Now a campaign has been launched by American lawmakers to take a pledge to end the foreign interference of the
settler colony in US politics. Ro Kana was the first to take the pledge today.
Hi everyone. I'm getting ready to sign the track ape pledge. It's pretty common sense. It means that we shouldn't be sending our tax dollar money for foreign
14 minuteswars overseas. We should be spending it here at home. And it says that we shouldn't be taking money from Apac or
all of its affiliate packs or bundled money from those organizations. And that we have to recognize the genocide that
took place in Gaza. So, I'm going to be signing this pledge and I hope others will follow.
Trump and his Israeli master had set out to destroy Iran and Iranians by launching a carpet bombing campaign on
28th of February. However, today they decided to help the Iranians in a way
that no one would have envisaged. Iran has left Trump in such a desperate situation that he's happy to do anything
that Iranians wants. for example, lifting sanctions on Iran and make other key concessions.
Watch Professor Syad Mandi speak to journalist Ben Swan.
There's a lot of discussion now that part of this deal isn't just a a $300 billion fund that helps to rebuild Iran,
but also the lifting of sanctions. Iran has been so heavily sanctioned for many decades now. We a lot of what this war
started out as one of the lies that was told about it, we'll call it that, uh is that this was to help the Iranian people. In reality, the thing that would
help the Iranian people, it seems, more than anything is the lifting of sanctions. And so, the irony of it is is that the outcome of the war may end up
being something that helps the people of Iran more so than anything that was promised ahead of time. I I'll give you the word there. Do you think that's true or is it accurate at all?
Oh yes, it's first of all, it's enhanced Iran's status globally and global powers are more keen on improving their
relations with Iran. Second of all, Iran now has control over the straight of Hormones and that is going to have financial implications in the months and
years ahead and uh in addition to that uh the United States has been badly weakened and therefore its capability to
enforce hegemony is going to be weakened. And the fact that the United States is constantly looking for
monsters across the world to slay, it is creating a greater and greater incentive for countries to cooperate with one
another to decrease the impact of US sanctions of US threats uh against them.
So the course of action being taken by uh the White House and not just the current White House but successive uh
presidents in the United States has been extraordinarily destructive. Perhaps uh Trump's uh presidency more than the
others. But uh a series of presidents in the United States have pushed the country towards what it is today. Those
who are older would recall the United States of the 1970s and the 1960s and the 1980s
was a country with uh good infrastructure, good bridges, good roads, uh good buildings, good jobs and
um older people are still alive and remember those days and compare it to what we see today.
Yeah. What we see today is because of uh neoliberal policies, endless wars and uh the prioritization
of uh Zionism and uh a people who have nothing to do with the interests of the American people.
I will now leave you with this video from a World Cup football match where a disgusting Zionist unsuccessfully tried
to stop his settler colonies flag being confiscated by the authorities. The pain on this supporter of genocide is worth
watching when he sees fans being allowed to raise the Palestinian flag but not the symbol of Holocaust and unspeakable
atrocities in living memory. Well done to these brave security officials. Glad that they decided to show the middle
finger to this Zionist anti-semitism charge. Baby killers do not get to accuse others of anti-semitism when they
are simply being asked to follow the rules of the game in this competition.
You know that the house which is the facility here is asking to remove this flag.
Robert removing this flag but you guys are removing that flag.
It seems like a little anti when you guys remove that bag. Once you remove that, I'll remove mine.
You guys aren't trying to remove their flag. You remove the flag or what was
if I remove my flag, but these guys can keep their flag. I don't know what I didn't make. Who's making
up?
We're not trying to make this. You are making the flag back.
I don't know. I don't make the flag. What are you doing?
It's an anti-semitic hate crime at that point. It is. You're allowing that. I don't know. Tell her to come down and tell her that. the rules.
Let her tell her to come down and tell me that my face has I'm nothing about what's going on. I'm going
to go when I'm told. So, we're here at the World Cup and they're taking my Israeli flag. We are allowing the Palestinian flag.
They took my Israeli flag and they're allowing the Palestinian flag to fly. That lady right there. Enjoy the day.
Enjoy. Enjoy the rest of the flight.
Allow this flag to fly, but they take my Israeli flag.
So, what happened? I'm standing there with my Israeli flag and these folks are insanity with the Palestinian flag and
the two people this lady from. What's your name? What's your name?
I said the only flags that are allowed to be out are the the teams that are playing.
Okay. Can you tell them? Can you tell them where I did tell someone else? Let me tell you. No, the Palestinian flag.
Yes, we did. Um Well, they they confiscated our flag but not theirs. Oh, I don't know.
They said they're going to bring my flag. No, they didn't. No, they didn't.
That's it from me. Thank you very much for your support of this platform and our journalism. If you haven't subscribed to my channel, please do so because that's one of the many ways you
can support independent journalism. God bless you all.

[admin]

Iran WC Team Ordered To LEAVE US Immediately’: Coach EXPOSES Trump’s Dirty Games; FIFA ‘War’
Times Of India
Jun 16, 2026 #Iran #FIFAWorldCup #WorldCup2026

Iran’s FIFA World Cup campaign has exploded into controversy after head coach Amir Ghalenoei claimed the team was ordered to leave the United States immediately following a dramatic 2-2 draw against New Zealand. The Iranian camp says players were denied crucial recovery time and forced to return to their training base in Tijuana, Mexico, sparking accusations that they are the “most oppressed team” at the tournament.

Captain Mehdi Taremi also slammed the travel arrangements, claiming players endured hours of delays, security checks and logistical hurdles before and after the match. The controversy comes amid heightened geopolitical tensions, visa issues, fan protests and ongoing debate over Iran’s participation in the 2026 FIFA World Cup.

Watch the full report for all the latest developments, reactions and what this could mean for Iran’s World Cup campaign.



Transcript

Actually we are here to answer football a question football. So you have to know my people in they are they are so great
they are so good into everything everyone in the world now know about my people but if if there is any problem
between us this is our business. This is none of your business. So so I just respect you but this is this is
something between us and we going to we're going to solve it. Don't worry.
Iran's secured a crucial draw on field, but off it, a completely different story has panned out. Coach Amir Galaninoi has
exposed FIFA and President Donald Trump's dirty games, saying his team has been asked [music] to leave the US
immediately. The coach further claimed that they were denied recovery [music] time and rushed out of Los Angeles just
hours after a draining 22 draw with New Zealand.
The complaints [music] didn't stop there. Iran's captain, Medi Termy, called the situation a [music] disaster,
saying the squad endured hours of travel and security [music] checks before the match and then was told to fly straight
back to its base [music] in Mexico. The team now says it feels like the most oppressed side at the World Cup.
The controversy comes against the backdrop of soaring political [music] tensions. Iran had already shifted its
training base from Arizona to Tijana, Mexico, amid immigration concerns and visa complications affecting members of
its delegation. Several support staff and officials were unable to travel with the team.
According to the Iranian camp, the original plan was to stay overnight in Los Angeles for recovery before
returning the next day. Instead, players say they were instructed to leave immediately after the match despite
several squad members suffering cramps and fatigue. Head coach Amir Galanoi didn't specify who issued the directive,
but insisted the scheduling had hurt his players physically and mentally. He argued the team had been forced into
repeated travel without adequate preparation or recovery time.
Captain Medi Termy echoed those concerns, saying the journey from Tijana [music] to Los Angeles, which would
normally be relatively short, turned into a lengthy ordeal involving security and immigration [music] procedures. He
questioned why decisions affecting the team's logistics appeared to be made without their input.
The issue has fueled [music] broader criticism of FIFA's handling of Iran's participation to Remy [music] publicly
urged soccer governing body to provide greater support arguing that the current arrangements are placing unnecessary
stress on players and staff during the biggest tournament in the sport.
FIFA President Giani Infantino [music] visited Iran's dressing room after the draw and praised the team for
representing its people under difficult circumstances. He encouraged the players to continue their campaign, [music]
telling them they had united supporters and inspired fans around the world despite the challenges.
The latest dispute [music] follows weeks of controversy surrounding Iran's World Cup participation, including visa
issues, political protests, and debates over flags and symbolism. Demonstrations by Iranianamean activists have added
another layer of tension around the team's matches in the United States.
Despite the off-field turmoil, Iran remains focused on its World Cup mission. But with crucial group games
still to come and complaints over travel, logistics, and treatment continuing to mount, one thing is
becoming clear. For team Melly, the battle isn't confined to the pitch.
The typical pageantry [music] of a FIFA World Cup debut has been entirely overshadowed by unprecedented crossber
security operations, political [music] blockades, and grueling transit schedules as the Iranian national football team lands in Southern [music] California.
Team Melly is scheduled to open its group G campaign against New [music] Zealand at the Los Angeles Stadium in Englewood under conditions that look
less like an international sports tournament and more like a highly controlled military deployment.
Following the heavy geopolitical conflict that erupted between Washington and Thran earlier this year, the Iranian
delegation has been subjected to extreme logistical restrictions that have forced the squad to abandon standard tournament
housing and set up a heavily fortified base camp outside American borders. Iran was originally scheduled to build its
training headquarters inside the United States at a modern multi-field facility in Tucson, Arizona. However, those
[music] plans had to be thrown out and forced the football federation to quickly search for alternative arrangements outside US [music] borders.
FIFA officials ultimately stepped in to approve the urgent move to Mexico, creating an unprecedented situation
where a team must commute across an international border just to participate in its official matches. This crossber
arrangement [music] places a massive physical and logistical burden on the players and athletic staff compared to any other group in the
competition. While Iran is legally based in Mexico, the team is locked into playing all three of its high-profile
Group G matches inside the United States. Local regulations require the [music] players and trainers to fly into
American airspace on match days and immediately [music] return to Mexico after the final whistle blows. For their opening fixture against New Zealand
[music] at the Los Angeles Stadium in Englewood, the squad must travel over 220 kilometers from their Tijana hotel
room through strict international checkpoints [music] to reach the stadium gates. The logistical difficulties have been further amplified by [music] strict
visa rejections that have left the team structure heavily short-handed. Official reports confirm that 15 crucial Iranian
team representatives, including key administrative staff and support personnel, were completely blocked from entering the United States [music] after
their visa requests were denied. At the same time, large groups of political demonstrators have gathered outside the
team's temporary transit points in Southern California. The squad arrived at their Los Angeles Transit Hotel on
Sunday evening to find large groups of political demonstrators already gathering along the perimeter, adding an intense layer of public hostility and
psychological pressure to an already exhausting crossber commute.
How they can go do the choose the team that it comes with the uh flag of Islamic Republic and national anthem for
the Islamic Republic. This regime is occupied Iran for 47 years and destroyed Iran, culture, everything in there.
That's why we are we try to revolution and change the regime in Iran.
Team captain Mhdi TMI and coach Emir Galenoi addressed the compounding crisis during a tense press conference, noting
that the intense administrative pressure and constant security disruptions have stripped away the traditional joy of the
World Cup experience while actively undermining the core message of international sports [music] diplomacy.
Despite the severe administrative friction and the physical toll of their transit schedule, team Melly enters the opening match carrying a clear
historical and tactical [music] advantage over their oceanic opponents.
Across their previous international meetings, Iran remains entirely unbeaten against New Zealand, preserving a
flawless defensive [music] record that has kept the AllWhites completely scoreless over a half century of competitive [music] history. While the
sports world focuses on the tactical matchups on the pitch, the structural reality of Iran's campaign remains tethered to the shifting security
parameters dictated [music] by the White House and regional border enforcement agencies. The requirement to constantly navigate international border [music]
checkpoints, manage heavily reduced coaching staff, and shield players from active public demonstrations establishes
a highly restrictive environment that will test the physical limits of the squad across the group stage. The outcome in Los Angeles will determine
[music] whether team Melly can successfully convert these severe external pressures [music] into a unifying competitive fury or if the
exhausting logistical toll of a crossber World Cup campaign will ultimately [music] break their defensive cohesion.
in.

[admin]

Trump CAVES to Humiliating Iran Deal, USA Just SURRENDERED | Larry Johnson
Danny Haiphong
Streamed live 88 minutes ago #iranwar #iran #trump

Former CIA analyst Larry Johnson joins the show to discuss the bombshell US-Iran MoU deal just signed and why is amounts to a historic humiliation for Trump & the US empire.



Transcript

Welcome everyone. Welcome back to the show. It's Danny Hiong here. As you can see, I am joined by Larry Johnson, a former CIA analyst, now geopolitical
commentator and analyst. Larry, good to see you again, man. Where's Colonel Wilkerson? He's We've sent him away on vacation. Yeah, I feel like I'm only half here.
He's Oh, Larry Squared. Only Only one is here now, but uh we will make do uh with
you, Larry. And so I'm grateful for you to be here as Colonel Wilkerson gets a welldeserved rest. Everyone hit the like button. That helps boost the program.
But let's get started uh right away here, Larry, with the uh humiliation, the defeat, the uh absolute catastrophe
as it is being described all across the western mainstream media, US mainstream media, uh US elites, the political class
and Zionists are all coming together and they have deemed this Iran deal or the US Iran memorandum of understanding as being a complete and utter disaster.
Now, Mossad Praeshkin po published on his uh ex account the terms of the memorandum of understanding
the official terms. And while maybe a little hard to see here, uh there are 14 points between two pages, the six points are only shown on the first page. Um
some very notable things here. Lebanon included in the deal. Iran is now saying, and this is I think a big part of why there's a lot of humiliation talk
going on, is Iran is now saying they will actually strike Israel and begin uh closing the straight of Hormuz again if
Israel does not stop its attacks on Lebanon. And uh there's also this very interesting feature of the deal where it
says the Islamic Republic of Iran will conduct dialogue with Oman to define the future administration and maritime services of the strait of Hormuz. And of
course there's a controversial 300 billion US dollars that the United States will undertake with its regional partners to uh uh you know boost investment in Iran for reconstruction.
So uh Larry, this is a ma this is being seen as a massive deal. I have a lot of videos I want to play on these reactions
and uh posts, but first to you, what exactly happened here? The signing was pushed up. This happened yesterday, June
17th, very late. Uh, what's going on here?
Well, um, let's first note the tremendous irony that this Donald Trump was seated in the Palace of Versailles in France where he signed this document.
Last time they had a signing ceremony there was about 108 years ago. Uh, and Germany was brought in and humiliated
and forced to sign surrender documents for the First World War. So, I don't know if Trump's staff was aware of that,
if they actually had that historical memory or uh they just thought, "Hey, this is a pretty cool looking place.
Let's sign it here." So, there's there is that irony. Um I I'd like you to go
back to that document because I I think the most the most important most consequential part of that document is
the first paragraph, you know, number one. Um because when you read the pin uh
the penultimate sentence where it says and here let me I can let me blow up my uh yeah I can read it also as well.
Okay I got it there. Yeah, the the key is um ensuring so it says that Iran and
the United States uh they are they're going to undertake from now on this is their obligation and
one of those obligations is ensuring the territorial integrity and sovereignty of Lebanon.
Now is is Israeli occupation of southern Lebanon a violation of their territorial
integrity? Bet your ass it is. Um, is it a threat to the sovereignty of Lebanon? Absolutely.
So, what this document, what this does is essentially give the United States is giving Iran tacit approval to do
whatever is necessary to oust Israel from southern Lebanon.
Uh so if uh if Iran was to attack Israel p you know directly
uh that might be a problem but under the terms of this agreement Iran can launch missile after missile at
Israeli units and collaborate with Hezbollah to defeat and push uh the
Israelis out. I you know I'm stunned that that that got in there but there it
is. So um we but we also I guess need to concede that the guy who should win the
5 minutesNobel Peace Prize out of this for making this making this possible BB Netanyahu were it not for BB man this thing
wouldn't have happened if BB had simply kept his hands to himself had not
attacked Beirut or the suburb Dahia uh a week ago more than a week ago um Iran
wouldn't have felt compelled to retaliate and was getting ready to retaliate and Donald Trump intervened and said
don't please don't. They said you know okay what what do you got to offer us if we don't and Donald Trump made him offers you know they just couldn't
refuse. Um so immediate blockade uh lifting uh the return of um some of the
frozen assets. Uh so Iran, you know, Iran had five five red lines. Uh and
those red lines were lifting of sanctions, unfreezing assets, lifting the blockade, recognizing uh Iran's
control of the straight of Hormuz, and fifth uh the end of the end of the war in Lebanon, you know, permanent ceasefire. They got all that, all that.
And then that was several of us were saying from the outset that they would not negotiate. Those were not areas where they would make concessions and lo
and behold, they didn't. So yeah, watching watching the melt and and were it not for BB, if BB hadn't done that,
you know, the Donald Trump might still be arguing with Peskian over over those terms. But because Iran was prepared to
act and to hit Israel hard that that you know made this deal possible. But but the other thing that
happened about the same time o over that weekend, uh Donald Trump was briefed.
Now, Pepe, um, our friend Pepe Escobar, uh, he got it, uh, that it was, we don't
know if it was Chris Wright, the Secretary of Energy, or someone at the CIA, but they briefed Trump on what if that
if this war continues and the Straight of Hormuz is not open immediately
that there is going to be a massive economic crisis. is the the strategic
petroleum reserve will be empty and th this will this could torture off a
global uh depression and Donald Trump would be remembered uh in the same way that Herbert Hoover was for the great crash of the 1930s.
And I tell you what, that scared Donald Trump. That's why all of a sudden you
saw him yesterday and he said it he you know Pepe's source said it was going to be mid August. Trump yesterday said four
weeks. So somewhere between mid July and mid August and we're going to have this crunch. Now the unfortunate thing for
Trump is he's you know they're going to sign this agreement say okay straight's open everybody come use it. But that's not how it's going to work because
number one, you've got a lot of those tankers that have been filled with oil that are sitting out there and you know in in the heat and all and they may not
be in good condition to be able to offload that oil first. Um they've got their their uh holes are encrusted with
barnacles. those need to be clear cleaned off because it's going to impede their ability to travel efficiently and at speed.
Um those that are sitting empty and need to be loaded, it's not clear that all the oil wells are back online and in
some cases it takes weeks for those to get online. But the the most important uh and potentially uh de delaying factor
is any mines that have been laid that are in the Persian Gulf. Uh the the Pentagon, Department of War, aka
Department of Defense, told Congress in April that it would take up to six months to uh clear clear
the clear the straits and the Gulf of the mines. So, you know, when you put all that together, even though Trump has said, "Okay, hey, we're now we're going
to work forward on this piece peace deal with Iran, uh, the straights open and it's it's really only open effectively
for Iranian ships. The other ships that have come out of, say, Iraq, Kuwait, um,
Saudi Arabia, Qatar, uh, UAE, those may be delayed."
A great synopsis, Larry. And I I just want to say first off, it is pretty historic. Look, the US's word. I mean,
Israel is not even involved in this uh other than being what some called a spoiler. I would just say uh being Israel in terms of uh being unable to
admit when to even just take a breather here. But uh uh uh what we see in this document and you outlined some of the
points, you reviewed some of this, but the totality of it is pretty remarkable given that you can probably say all 14 of the points other than maybe a few
touches here and there about this like you know reopening the strait after whatever it is 30 days, 60 days. All everything else is Iran. Everything else
is terms that Iran really wanted to see put into paper and eventually turn into
what will be a more comprehensive deal once I guess these negotiations are through if they get to that point. So we can't trust the US's word. Of course, we
can't, you know, we can expect even Pete Hegth, they're already violating the first part of the clause because Pete Hegth, Trump at times have said that
they are going to bomb Iran again. If this doesn't work out, that kind of signals that the the US is wanting to
continue aggression. But nonetheless, these points, I think, have to be seen as uh uh indicative of the panic. Uh
there's some real truth to the panic here that we're seeing by the Zionists, by uh the media, the neocons. Uh uh it is a pretty damning admission of defeat.
Now uh I want to uh uh play some of these uh clips. So here is one of uh
Donald Trump. He had a disastrous presser, a disastrous that that really I believe uh Larry and actually let me
play a different one here. Um really actually felt, you know, I always call Trump the id. Sometimes what he says means absolutely nothing and he's just
lying through the teeth and other times when he's talking he is talking about a reality situation that just cannot be
changed and regardless of his true intentions. Uh here uh Trump says literally exactly what you just
mentioned about the oil crisis. He admits they probably didn't want him to say this that uh these reserves were about to run out and that's why this deal in large part was made.
I'm going to get bad press. I know that.
Now if I did the opposite. If I went out and continued to bomb them for another four, just bomb the hell out of them. I
get bad press on that. No, there's nothing I can do. What this does is it allows the ships to go. If we if we keep
bombing, those ships won't be going. And you're talking about 500 600700 million dollars a day. It's a lot of money. Lot of money. That's why the world is okay.
It's liquid. It's fine. Also, we run out of reserves in about four weeks. You know, there are reserves all over the world. And we would really run out and
there'll be a time when you wouldn't be able to get it. And you want to see dead beam. So for all those so-called geniuses that want to show me how smart
they are, ask them why didn't they blow up General Salamani.
So that's uh you know that's some partisan shick there at the end. But Larry, I mean the the the gist of that was oil reserves are going to run out.
No activity through the street if not possible to continue. That to me I mean that's that's the definition of
admitting you lost. Well, yeah. Look, um, a few of us were saying from the
outset that this the shutdown of the straight of Hormuz, which meant closing
off about 20% of the world's oil supply, shutting down about 20 to 25% of the
world's liquid natural gas production, which then directly impacts on the production of helium. because uh my
understanding is the helium is drawn the helium is trapped in with the natural gas and it's separated out so or with it when they pull the LG out of the ground.
Um and then the ura and sulfur uh with their connection to fertilizer as well as other critical industrial
applications and and the helium its role with for both medical equipment but also for more importantly the production of
computer chips and and that that's relevant because we're right now people are talking about AI building data
centers. Okay. What why do they call them data centers? because they're filled with computers and those
computers need computer chips. So, at the time when these companies are having to invest money in computers and the
price of the computer chips is going up, that's going to mean the price of their overall uh they're just going to have more more more money flowing out of
their pockets than in. So, really significant economic consequences and everybody pretended even Trump ah we don't care who who cares. We don't use the straight that much.
Boy, that was a lie. Uh so this this critical economic artery uh is was shut has been
shut down and then the United States doubled down on it by trying to impose a blockade on Iran. It was only it was
really only partially effective simply because the United States didn't have enough ships to actually be able to mount a full on blockade.
But now the and one of the ways the United States
and other countries coped with this uh cut off of supply of oil was drawing
up on their strategic reserves. And in the case of the United States, the strategic petroleum reserve which was they started filling it up back in
198384 and the what's being said now is it's at the lowest levels since then. So since
they started filling it up uh you know 43 years ago they're now down to those levels. Um, I saw a news report on
Monday of this week that said it was 360 million barrels left, but then I was uh
with another show, Capital Cosm with D, guy named Danny runs it like you u and
he looked it up immediately online and actually the date the last data from June 5th showed that at 349 million
barrels. Well, that that works out to roughly 16 days of oil. 17 days of oil.
And then if once that's exhausted, if you don't have another source or supply to make that up, you know, the the your
your economy shuts down. So, it's not just the United States that was facing this. And that's, you know, when Donald
Trump was informed of this, I guess he uh I he panicked is probably the only
way to put it. uh because he was uh didn't realize how, you know, they've been lying to the American public, lying
to themselves perhaps all along that it was Iran that was on the verge of collapse. And no, it's our own economy.
Well, uh, we can continue on this, uh, descent of humiliation to humiliation
for, uh, Trump in the United States around this deal because, again, I want to stress that the United States, I don't believe the United States, uh,
word when it comes to, uh, you know, negotiations or anything. I think history shows that we can't. But I think
there's also something to say about the particular circumstances you just outlined and why Donald Trump and the administration are talking the way they
are now. So, uh, let's go into some of the things he said in his presser and reaction to this deal. Uh, a lot of the
the very justifications for war with Iran are beginning to crumble. These are things that I have not heard actually.
Uh, Trump, wait, wait, wait, let me stop you.
Beginning to crumble. Yeah. Yeah. Well, they never they've beened they've beened and they were always lies any I mean they were always based on lies. You know, we've been over this on the show.
The whole nuclear scare of Iran was always just a justification for war. But now even Trump at the heels of this deal
is contradicting all of it. And here is one of uh one example of this.
We've been pretty tough on that. You know, it's also it is a little hard though when you say that somebody wants it, other people have it.
And he's talking about enriching uranium uh in nuclear energy.
Other adjoining states have it and you're not letting them have it for purposes of electricity and things like that. It's always a little tough. You have to use a little common sense, please.
So, that's a far different position than what we've heard Trump uh say basically his entire political career. here is um
what he had to say about Iran's ballistic missile program.
19 minutesSo, we'll be working on a parallel effort with the Gulf nations to address non-nuclear issues such as the
conventional ballistic missiles which we'll be talking about and support. I mean, they have to have some because other people have some. They got to have
some. Somebody said they you shouldn't give them one. And I have guys I like some of these guys, but I don't think they're I don't think they're smart.
Sir, you shouldn't let them have any missile. I said, well, what am I going to do? Am I going to let Saudi Arabia have missiles, but they can't have them?
Yes, sir.
Can't doesn't work that way. You know, it doesn't work that way. And missiles aren't the problem. Missiles are they hurt a little, but they don't blow up the planet.
So, again, this I I mean, this has the Zionists absolutely mad. Not to mention his commentary on Israel, which I'll
play in a second. But Larry, the your reaction to this because in this press, I mean, even just his performance there
is absolutely it's it's kind of humiliating. Uh, you know, I always say that Trump is kind of the anti-American exceptionalist president because he kind
of just goes off and doesn't follow uh protocol or etiquette or any of these things. What's your reaction to these statements?
Who was he imitating? Was that was that Pete Hegth? Right.
Was that Marco Rubio? Um, General Admiral Cooper, you know, so I I don't think he was just making that imitation
up. I think someone actually said that to him and then he pushed back. Um, it
is it's a stunning uh, I'll call it reversal. And you know, as I said earlier, thank you BB Netanyahu. word
not for you buddy this wouldn't be happening now the the the reality is the United States was caught
and this is this is called biting the bullet and uh to get get yourself out it may be painful may be embarrassing but
uh it at least it's going to carterize the cauterize the wound you're going to stop bleeding before the bleed we were
bleeding and the bleeding was going to continue and we didn't have a way to stop it. The uh I I I verified now. So
uh up until a couple of days ago, I think it is all about the time that they decided, okay, we're signing, we're
going all in on this now. Uh the military's crisis action teams, they're called cats. Um the they're, you know,
they had one there at Pentagon, you know, near the National Military Command Center. Uh they had others, you know,
they had scattered bases at Sentcom, uh at uh you know, air operations out at Andrews. Uh those are all shut down now.
They they they used to be running 24/7, on, off. You know, it's brutal, brutal shift work. They're
back to regular 9 to5. uh all of those uh soldiers, sailors, marines, air force officers and per and enlisted personnel.
Um the uh I I think it's called combat uh the combat air command. Let me see. I
had the I had the name specific. Yeah, air combat command. That's it. So they're the only ones who are working
24/7 right now because they're scheduling all this aircraft that we had forward deployed and it's going to be
called a reverse airbridge. It's all flying back in this direction. So that's why you know that this this this is
another sign that this agreement is dead ass real because if this was just a ploy
to lull the Iranians into u a false sense of security. so we could blast them. You wouldn't be turning they
wouldn't be ordering all this combat aircraft out of the area. And that's going to that's going to also send a message to Netanyahu basically. You
know, you want to continue uh poking the Iranians in the chest, go ahead. But we're not going to be there to back you up. So, you know, you want to go you want to get into a bar fight, go ahead.
Uh see, you know, see what you can do out of that.
Yeah. And even if uh at some point in the future, the United States says, "Okay, well, we'll bomb
again, we'll blockade again, all of this, it'll now with what you just said, it'll take significant amount of time.
You have to redeploy. I mean, you can't just say you're going to do that if you've taken those forces away. You have to put them back in place." It'll take it'll take a couple of weeks.
It'll take a more than a week to do it, right? which is not particularly advantageous uh when you have an
opponent that has already shown that uh that's far too much time um to uh stop
anything that Iran would do to uh retaliate. So, let's get in let let me talk let me get into some of the because
there's now with this deal as you said uh the world can thank Netanyahu and
Israel for speeding up this deal we see the Trump administration uh while
I don't take much stock and rhetoric at the same time if there are particular steps being made right now to solidify
this deal and to make it real uh we have to believe that this panic has some basis to it and some of this has to do
with the fact that uh Trump and now JD Vance I'll play two different segments are really going after Israel they are
obviously not happy about the Lebanon situation and I'll and then we can see from the reactions from prominent Zionists that the Zionists are not happy
with the Trump administration first Donald Trump in Vance and then I'll show a bit of the Zionist panel and you'll see that when you see the
agreement, but it's appropriate that we release the agreement and we did send a copy to Israel, by the way. They've been a good partner. Again,
I think they could do better with respect to Hezbollah.
I'm not saying they shouldn't protect themselves. I'm saying when two drones are shot into the desert and dropped
armlessly, you don't have to knock down buildings in Beirut.
They could behave better. And frankly, they could do a better job. Uh I I love them as a partner. They were terrific.
They could do a much better job with Hezbollah.
So there's one. And then here is JD Vance to the New York Times in terms of reacting to Israeli opposition to the deal.
But yeah, you've seen people in their system, Bengavir and Smokrich who've attacked the deal. And I guess my response to them would be what is your
exact proposal? And you know, you're you're a country of of 9 million people.
You can't just kill your way out of solving every single national security problem that you have. Look at what But yeah, you've seen people.
So that's uh JD Vance. And then in terms of Zionist panic, I think there's only one person you need to look at, especially in the media, because I think
he really represents the most vitriolic elements of the Zionist uh uh cabal, so
to speak. And uh here is Mark Leaven literally saying the quiet part out loud. It's time for a change in strategy. We should consider sloww
walking the enemy, building up our munitions, our oil reserves, get the price of gasoline down, get through the midterms, then knock them Iran out
instead of rushing to a deal, building up their oil industry, and transferring billions to them, etc. So, uh, and
that's that's the nice way of saying what a lot of the, uh, pro-Israeli lobby types in the US and of course the Zionists all around the world are saying. Your your reactions, Larry?
Yeah. No, I mean, this the remember Trump was honored as the as being a Jewish president.
Uh, the Zionists who now accuse him of of being a traitor.
He's an American citizen, albeit of German heritage, but an American citizen and president of the United States of
America, and he has not betrayed the United States. It's the the Israelis think he's
betrayed them. Well, guys, he ain't president of Israel, even though he's talked about wanting to go run there.
And in the previous great popularity for Donald Trump, that's evaporated now.
they don't uh I think colonoscopies get a higher rating. Uh so um you know they're they're upset that he's going to
he's he's calling out their murder and their genocide. That's what that was what was again another big surprise as
he noted. You know Hezbollah fires drones that don't they don't kill civilians.
uh you know I I was on with you know another popular uh podcaster on X Mario
and I I said hey Mario look up you know use I think he's he's well connected with uh Elon Musk so I'm assume he used
Grock I said ask Grock this question how many uh Israelis has Hezbollah killed
since 1982 and Grock comes back with less you know
less than 1100 less than 1,100 said okay Grock how many Palestinians
has Israel killed since 1982 Grock comes back well over 80,000 it's
actually the the numbers 90,000 and that doesn't include the bodies that are buried under the rubble in Gaza
so what you're saying is that here we have a nation Israel that has killed 90 Palestinians minimum, men, women, and
children, civilians, for every dead Israeli that has died at the hands of an of what they call a Hezbollah terrorist attack.
Just in sheer weight of numbers, we can tell who the terrorist is, who the perpetrator of the greatest violence is.
Um, despite the attempts to blame that on Hezbollah, it is it's certainly not Hezbollah and nobody wants to hear it.
But don't believe me. Just check it out everybody. You know, type it in, see what the answer comes up. It's not going to come up and said Hezbollah has killed
thousands and Israel's only killed a few. No, it's just the exact opposite.
So, you know, we're we're at a potential um watershed moment for the entire
Middle East conflict. Because again the part of the other backstory is that a lot of this initiative what brought this
to pass was Russia and China working through Pakistan with China in the lead and then Pakistan taking over the the
process of shephering this uh negotiations through to get to this get
to this document. And um it is the as
part of that effort the discussions are underway with Egypt, Turkey, Saudi Arabia,
Iran and Pakistan to create let's call it an Islamic defense force for the Middle East that will be there to
protect ensure the security of the countries of you know West Asia, the Middle East
And that means that Israel is going to finally they will face a united uh Muslim front, Arab and Persian.
And so um you know that that's going to keep Israel up at night as well. Now they've got a choice. uh stop their
racist genocide, stop their, you know, dismantle their aparthide state and behave like a normal state and protect
the human rights of citizens regardless of whether they're Jewish or not. And then, you know, then Israel might have a
chance to survive. If they don't do that, uh, I think the very survival of Israel will will come into question at
some point because as advanced correctly noted, 9 million people, you can't kill your way to victory or peace.
Yeah. Well, we can confirm. I'll just quickly uh for the audience confirm these Grock numbers. So, I asked the
question uh is how many Israelis have Hezbollah killed since 1982? How many Lebanese and Palestinians has Israel
killed? So that's the number gets bigger. So here we have the,500 Israelis as you correctly noted there. For
32 minutesLebanese it's 10 to 25,000 plus potentially since 1982. And then for
Palestinians 85 to 100,000 plus. So we're looking at nearly 200,000 peopleish, you know, depending on
estimates side and one to 200. One to 200.
One to 200. It's a gruesome. Yeah. Genocidal.
Enough. Enough of this stupid crap that oh, Iran's the number one sponsor of terrorism. If terrorism is defined as
the use of violence against civilians for political purposes, the number one terrorist in the Middle East is Israel by the numbers. It's not it's not anti-semitic saying. It's not hyperbole.
It's just if your definition is this and the numbers are that then the answer is Israel.
Larry I want to get to and great point I want to get to. So you know I completely agree across the political spectrum
there's a lot of talks of know the United States defeated in this war theou this agreement being a manifestation of
that. where I'm taking a lot of umbrage actually though is now it's so interesting and you know uh this is how
Trump burnishes his brand too is he he frames himself as persecuted and one of the ways he can do that is when you have
now the uh Iran hawk wararmongering Zionist elite across the political spectrum um now including and of course
always including the Democratic party speaking like this because uh when now a deal and Even the prospect, look, the
prospect may be slim, thin, it may be zero for actual peace to occur. But the fact that Iran through its efforts has
gotten to this point and uh you know has uh been able to force this kind of deal is saying something. But now you have
the Democrats, you have neocons now talking about how humiliating this is.
It's seemingly in the service of well actually the US should be more firm and more aggressive toward Iran. Here is
Chris Murphy who has been a longtime critic Democrat uh of Donald Trump and here's how he framed the deal. Let me see if I have this on the playback speed
because he talks a little slow. Here we go. The deal between Trump and Iran cements the fact that this war was the
biggest foreign policy disaster in the last 20 years. I want this war to be over. And I knew the terms were going to be humiliating, but I didn't think they were going to be this humiliating.
Here's what this deal basically is. Iran makes zero concessions, and the United States lets Iran trade oil for free and
commits to give them $300 billion in reparations. This deal is essentially
Iran's terms and it is going to make any future nuclear negotiations practically impossible because by releasing the oil
35 minutessanctions now you have very little leverage to get Iran to commit to do anything later on their nuclear program.
This is the price of incompetence. This is the price of people cosplaying diplomats. You've got the president's son-in-law and a real estate developer
in charge of these negotiations. And this is what you get. A deal in which Iran commits to nothing. And the United States effectively just pays Iran
hundreds of billions of dollars to end the war. 13 Americans dead. 60 billion dollars of your taxpayer money wasted
for nothing. America gets nothing out of this agreement.
Larry, why the hell should the US get a disagreement when they're the ones who lost and they're the ones who um you
know effectively imposed these sanctions which we talked about so for so long as being unilateral, illegal, deadly, all
kinds of things. But this is the framing right now. It seems like those who are opposed to Trump on this side of the political aisle are opposed to the fact
that the United States isn't extracting concessions from Iran to the point where essentially what they want it seems like is a status quo where the US can
continue starving Iran or attempting to starve Iran, attempting to isolate Iran, but just in a more effective way than what Trump did. But to me that's just
to me it's BS. But it's also it doesn't reflect reality. And it's just so interesting that now that we are coming
into this point where it seems like Iran is cementing its uh real status as a a sovereign global power. Uh these types
who say they oppose Trump on the basis of this war are really not opposed to war. But what's your thoughts? uh people
like Chris Murphy devoid of logic and a liar or I don't know if he's
deliberately lying or just terribly ignorant. So let's start with the 300 billion dollars. Um that money is
supposed to be pledged by other countries to as an investment fund and none of it is US taxpayer dollars. So you know why the hell does he care?
And I would simply note that we do have a parallel with Trump's board of peace in Gaza. You know, there literally
billions of dollars were pledged to that. How many how many have actually been put into the bank?
Zero. So, let's start with that. Um, oh, we got to keep these sanctions on otherwise we don't have any leverage
over Iran. Okay, we've had sanctions on for 47 years and that has caused Iran to do what?
No, it hasn't it hasn't changed Iran's policy. In fact, because the we refused the United States refused to live up to
the terms of the JCPOA, refused to ease the sanctions, Iran had an incentive to go out and enrich uranium up to 60% and threatened to go to 90%.
So now they're actually with the end of this uh blockade and with the end of sanctions on Iranian oil, but you know,
we're not doing that. We're not doing that. Oh, we want to have a deal. Man, this is pure self-interest. We want that Iranian oil out there ASAP because we're running out as I talked about earlier.
This is this is a five alarm fire. It's an emergency. We can't wait. Um and and so yeah, we'll let we'll let Iran sell oil. We're going to let Russia sell oil.
We're not going to try to interfere with any of that. Get the more out there on the market as possible.
Uh and even if even by doing that now, it's probably too late. Uh it is, you
know, it's like you you've you've jumped out of an airplane with a and your parachute fells to open and then you got
a reserve chute and say 20 feet above the ground you finally pull the chute.
39 minutesuh you might survive, but you're going to be pretty messed up. And that's where we are economically right now. We might
survive, but there's still going to be significant economic damage done, not just to the United States, around the
world because of these shortages. So, uh, what what I do find odd is that, you know, instead of the traditional where
the Democrats, you know, were for for at least one period were defined as the anti-war party, right?
God, man, they they are as they're as venomous as many of the Republicans.
It's like tough to tell them apart, you know. Yeah. That's been a prevailing trend for a long time, which I find it's funny. Some people say, "Dan, you have Trump derangement syndrome on this show.
He just happens to be the president." I mean, if you watch this show during the Biden administration, not much difference when it comes to uh
criticizing the uh the absolute horrors and uh you know absurdity of of US wars.
40 minutesBut um let's do one more example. Here is Roana who has been a more his voice has been more I would say prominent and
more vocal and more critical more consistent on these issues to some degree. But even he he goes on Fox News and just watch the narrative. It's very similar.
You and your colleagues just want to upend this president's agenda. Is that what's happening right now with thisou with Iran?
No. Uh I actually support the agreement and bringing the war to an end. I have always supported bringing the war to an end. I will say though that uh this
agreement is not as good as what the JCPOA was. And let me just give you three factual reasons. First, under the
JCPOA, 97% of the enriched uranium was removed from Iran. Under this agreement, it simply dilutes it. Second, the JCPOA
had the Security Council resolution as a force of law with intrusive IE inspections. That still has not been achieved. And most problematically,
we're going to be on the hook to raise $300 billion for Iran's economic development and reconstruction. Not US taxpayer money, but raising that money.
Why aren't we focused on the economic development and reconstruction of Middleton, Ohio, Johntown, Pennsylvania, for putting $300 billion to be raised for child care, for healthcare for Americans?
Uh, which even though I agree with him on that last point, I will say it's still a straw man argument because who's
to say both can't be done in terms of the US should probably honestly the US should probably pay up literally in
terms of because they destroyed Iranian infrastructure, etc. But nonetheless, the same argument, Larry. It's this idea
that yeah, we should get it's like you ra the United States should get way more
from Iran despite the reality being far different than when the JPCOA was signed. But what's your thoughts?
Well, yeah. No, this is uh let's call this JCPOA light.
Look, um, Trump will be able to declare at the end of the process, okay, we've got got an permanent assurance that Iran's not going to build a nuke. I
mean, that supposedly was the issue all along. I maintain it was not. The nukes were just an excuse to try to destroy
the Islamic Republic. We couldn't stand having this uh this uh this religiously based state.
Uh well, again, we got to ask ourselves why why does the Islamic Republic of Iran bother us so much? But the Islamic
Republic of Saudi Arabia, which isn't even a republic, the Islamic monarchy of Saudi Arabia, the Islamic monarchy of
Qatar, the Islamic monarchy of Kuwait, we have no problem with that.
And the reality is the Shia interpretation of Islam
produces much more moderate believers that are not usually engaged with sui the suicide bombers typically
traditionally historically have come out of these Sunni extremist groups known as the Salifist the Dal Bandis
the Wahhabis uh not out of Iran not out of Shia Islam. Uh the uh multiple marriages,
multiple wives. Again, that that's sort of a Gulf Arab a Saudi thing. It's not a
Shia thing in in Iran. Um, so there there's just so much misinformation out there that has been
piled up and trying to you get get Americans past this this propagandized
um narrative that's been created that is just absolutely false. But most Americans believe it and they're they're
unwilling to accept that you know what uh the Iranians are not horrific horrible people and you know the they're
not killing thousands. Uh in fact again let's deal with history. Which country
has invaded more countries in uh the 21st century than any other country in the world? That would be the United States.
Yep.
Not not Iran. Iran hasn't invaded a single country. It was asked invited by the government of Syria to come in and
help fight off USbacked Islamic terrorists which we funded. I mean we
can't we can't even keep our own straight. I mean one minute we're fighting the war on terrorism and next minute man we're enabling we're arming them. We're equipping them. We're
funding them. And then we help make them president of Syria and invite him to the White House.
Yep. Hey, Larry, didn't you hear uh maybe maybe uh Trump is going to call up
Golani to take over the uh Lebanon operation because uh you know, Israel can't get it done. I mean, this is, you
know, this is the kind of logic that stands. This is what Trump has said in in part, but you know, I actually even had this tab pulled up, too. these
things in in some ways in respects uh we see the Zionists panicking as well because a lot of this stuff has failed
you know a lot of this the while Iran has been you know demonized and Trump you know Trump still does it right 47
years of terrorism and killing people in the United States and and you know terrorizing the region biggest sponsor
of terror uh this is literally coming from an Israeli source Isaac uh Chener of channel 14 who is big Netanyahu
uh uh uh ally and he talked about how well no it was it was uh Shimon Rican Ricklin oh Shimon Rican oh yes yeah oh yes yes
yes sorry that's the interviewer was Isaac Shoner interviewing Shimon Richland and what he says is literally
that he's now blaming Trump for why the Kurds in Iraq did not fight or did not take up arms and try to destabilize Iran
during this period uh stating that actually it Trump who stopped it rather than what Trump said which is this coming from Dropside News. Trump had
originally said or at least it was his sources had said the Kurds don't want to fight and you've talked about this too Larry. Uh but now this prominent Zionist
of Channel 14 News Simone Relin is now because of this deal saying nope Trump actually was the one to have stopped
this idea. He didn't want it. So again, this these are I mean these are what
what are Kurdish militants? Uh they're terrorists and and the reasoning for why Trump didn't do it said this Shimon Reland character is because Turkey
didn't want it which you know we know Turkeykey's history with the Kurds and why they might not want such a thing. So your your thoughts on this?
Well again the Kurds have been um they're the redheaded stepchild of of the entire Middle East. The Turks hate
them. The Iranians hate him. The Iraqis hate him. The Syrians hate him. They don't have anybody that really likes him
except maybe Israel. And Israel's is only uh to use them for their own, you know, it's total manipulation.
Israel's only concerned as long as they serve Israeli interests. They're great to help. They're good friends. the uh
you know over the last couple of weeks you know la last uh say the 9th the 10th there were uh Iran was carrying out
strike regularly carrying out strikes up in air bill at these camps where there was CIA camps and there were some Iraqi
uh Kurds uh and others other Kurds being trained to go back into Iran and to try
to engage security forces and try to create enough of a popular uprising that they might have some chance of overthrowing
the government. But, you know, Iran was attuned to that and was blowing them up, weakening them.
This is where, you know, like Galani said once once he heard Trump say, "Hey, you know, Galani can go do it." Galani
said, "Nah, I don't think so. uh this not they're not going to do it uh because they'd get their ass kicked.
Now, that was one of the things, you know, we were furious at General Solommani of Iran because when he went
into he he really led the counter terrorist insurgency in Syria against
ISIS and it's all of its u you know, let's call it descendants like al-Nusra and then Hayat Alam.
uh it was very effective in defeating those Islamic extremists and and let's not forget the the ISIS you know they
they took great glee in attacking and killing Iranian Shia because they viewed them as apostates and so this you know this religious
49 minutesmotivation was genuine it was not u it wasn't just contrived so this is um you know at least right
now I think Al Galani had enough sense recognized uh that he understood
Kissinger's warning that to to be a an enemy of the United States is dangerous,
but to be a friend of the United States is lethal and that they could be very well sending him and his his remaining
terrorists to to their death. And so he smartly opted out said, I'm not going to do that.
Yeah. Uh well, let's get to uh in the last uh six minutes or so we have with Good heavens. Time flies when you're having fun.
Time flies when you're having so much fun. Exactly. Exactly. Okay. Well, here's the uh now as uh right before we
came on, Sentcom published this putting more meat behind what you described, Larry, in terms of the United States
actually making moves to uh show I don't we I guess we can call it good faith around thisou. Uh US Sencom said that US
forces lifted the blockade on all maritime traffic entering and exiting Iranian ports and coastal areas in accordance with the president's direction. American forces are not
impeding the transit of vessels to or from Iranian ports. All US military blockade enforcement efforts have ceased. Our great naval ships will remain in the general area to make sure
that all aspects of the agreement are adhered to obeyed in full for force or effect. And um your last comments,
Larry, uh given you know I thought this headline was a kind of a perfect synopsis of how uh maybe uh if we can
say the lay person should view what has happened here. says, "Iran has learned a valuable lesson as it returns to the negotiating table. It can survive the
worst the US can throw at it." Iran indeed, Larry, has they they took they took the what the United States could
throw at it and now it's through this uhou and the developments, it seems like they've come out stronger for it.
How do you view this? What's your u you know how what's your concluding maybe uh uh points on uh what we're witnessing
here there there needs the CIA needs to change its attitude or its uh its uh
philosophical framework for doing regime change. You want to get regime change in Iran,
the last thing you want to do is attack not only the regime but the people.
because we've seen over and over again whether it's in Iran or whether it's uh uh whether it's in Iran or whether it is
in um say Cuba or Syria or wherever that that kind of outside intervention
actually brings the people together and and and strengthens the existing regime doesn't weaken it so we end up having
the exact opposite effect it's like I had maintained for a while I said, "If you really want to weaken the regime in Iran, I get, you know, FIS back at CIA
running operations, man, I'd make sure I would be delivering Starlink platforms that had a free access to like
pornhub.com or something." And so all the young guys would be out there, man, they'd be obsessed with western pornography instead of, you know, be out
in the streets supporting a religious uh uh government and and people and I'm I'm
saying that somewhat tongue and cheek, but it's to give you the idea of just the opposite. Similarly, like with Cuba,
you know, lift lift all the sanctions, man. make that government provide for the people because as long as you got
sanctions outside, government incompetence can be explained away as those damn gringoes, man. The the reason things don't work here is because of the
outside pressure. If that was only released, you know, we'd be okay. So um what the United States is once again
what they've done in this um they took what was an aging cleric
he was he was coming to the end of his days and you could say it was sort of you know the the older generation was
still in control. Boy you know the the decapitation strategy worked effectively. It created a whole bunch of
openings for young people to move up and you know in some cases perhaps more aggressive or more enthusiastic. But but
it you know what this has done now has united Iran in a way that it has not been united in 47 years. And just look
in the mirror maybe in Don Donald Trump in part and BBnet and Yah Yahoo for the other part can take credit for that.
Yeah. Well, well said. And it seems in the last minute of the heavilary, the estimation tends to be or I don't even think these
wararm mongers really think this far ahead, but you know, you give Cuba, you give Iran the opportunity to develop on their own. There's always the chance
that they actually do just fine. And then you and I think the the mindset is no, you have to make these people
suffer. You have to make uh them feel maximum amount of pain and pressure because the alternative, you know, this
probably is back to old cold war thinking is well they're just lost forever, right? They said the same thing about Vietnam and everything else, right? Lost forever.
Yeah, it seems like that kind of logic of you need full spectrum dominance. You can't live with Cuba being whatever Cubans want. You can't live with Iranians for
whatever Iran wants. That's uh the the ultimately there's a folly to that mindset. But Larry, thanks so much for
coming on. I'll close up here because I know you have another appointment, so I'll be in touch with you and uh thanks so much again.
All right, my friend. Hey, thanks and uh you have a great day and thank it was a pleasure being with you as always. Bye-bye. Yeah, of course. See you again soon.
Bye-bye.
All right, everybody. So, I'm just going to close up here with a few announcements the last five minutes or so. Um, I tomorrow I'll be back on 1 PM
Eastern time with Professor Muhammad Mirandi, good friend of the show, just good friend in general. He is actually a stand-up guy just like, uh, Larry here
uh, is as well. So, uh, what you want to do now is you want to hit the like button before you go. You want to hit the, um, subscribe button if you
haven't. You can check out Larry's work at sonar21.com in the video description below and all the places support this channel. and last five minutes. I just
want to make a clarifying point here on the position of uh your host uh of this
program which is uh this you know I am in no way shape or form ever going to
say that you know the United States is going to uh take its foot fully off the gas when it comes to trying to uh
destroy overthrow governments like Iran's and in this case let's just say Iran because uh the very system the very
makeup of the US political and economic power structure it really does depend on
ensuring that a country like Iran cannot thrive. And you might ask well why is that? Well because if they do then maybe
the rest of the world will see that the US is not the only game in town and that the United States actually may be the
bad game in town. It may not be the game no anyone really wants to play and that those who continue to play along tend to
be vassels tend to be neoc colonies tend to be completely dependent tend to have uh massive emiseration suffering uh lack
of sovereignty uh the complete leadership that's brutal and repressive and the things like this. So uh if Iran
is able to thrive and develop and live in peace, then Iran may serve as Russia, as China, as other countries have and
continue to do uh around the world as possible examples that the United States's power elite, the ruling class,
the wararm mongers, that they just cannot stomach. So I don't believe that the war is necessarily over. But if you
just look at sometimes material reality actually a lot of times if not all the time material reality eventually does
matter. It catches up to the idealists, to those who dream of full spectrum dominance, to those who uh want to see
the world where the United States is indeed uh the only option that there is no alternative as the old postcold war
phrasiology uh Tina there is no alternative uh indicates and spread the message of. So uh uh indeed
uh the reality on the ground is that the United States cannot get what it wants out of Iran. It's never going to squeeze
out of Iran these massive kind of concessions that uh of the United States was maximizing and trying to place
maximum pressure on Iran to uh get out of them. It's just not going to happen.
So if that's not going to happen, well, the consequences of continued war is now Trump himself is saying are are too catastrophic. And lastly, on the points
of Gaza and Palestine, look, a lot of people wanted Palestine, Gaza, West Bank to be directly in this document. And uh
truth be told, I do believe that this document truly only covers the events from February 28th onward, which Lebanon of course uh beginning of March of this
year ended up being. the Israel tried to take advantage of this deal to escalate its siege and its genocidal campaign
against uh Lebanon and I believe that's why we have Lebanon directly in this deal and not to mention the solidarity
all those more important points right solidarity between Iran and Hezbollah etc as being main primary points but I
do think in the the the basic framework of an agreement like this this is why uh you don't see Gaza and Palestine
particular particularly named but a cessation of fighting on all fronts.
Negotiations are about to occur. So we are going to see uh uh how uh this
stopping war on all fronts what it really means to Iran and we have to remember that Iran is the primary
supporter and really the only supporter in the region especially as a state of Palestine Palestinian resistance and all
that it has done and by strengthening Hezbollah and protecting Lebanon and uh beating back Israel there that does help
the Palestinian resistance we have to remember this and we have to remember that Iran continues to support Palestine in the biggest way that no other country
in the region is willing to do or capable of doing given as I said their political, social and economic makeup as a society uh across the Gulf States.
They are indeed indebted to Israel and the United States in large part and have no capacity let alone um let alone the
will. Right? So, uh, just remember this as we go because there's a lot of, of course, understandable feelings about
Palestine and wanting Palestine to be put up front. And I I wouldn't disagree with that. I would say that yes indeed
any uh complete end to the war in Iran should include Palestine explicitly but
uh I don't believe that uh we should count and and denigr count out and
denigrate Iran uh for uh with thisou sticking with a more narrow framework in
order to extract real concessions which are very real and all of this helps Palestine. And I made I've made this
1 minuteargument for a a long time now which is if the axis of resistance strengthens then the Palestinian resistance strengthens because it's all one
resistance. So uh we should not look at it as well Iran is abandoning Palestine.
I that would be a huge mistake and really I believe it's a criticism made on the sidelines uh when of course the intricacies the complexities the
material conditions on the ground are um uh uh you know are what ultimately dictate how in a specific moment these
kind of outcomes are ultimately delineated. So just don't try to withhold uh or even if you have the
criticisms uh don't let it derail you from uh the ultimate uh I think the ultimate objective of what uh a
peaceloving humanity should be which is um doing everything we can to uh ensure
that the United States that Israel uh cannot do what they are doing around the world and Iran is doing I
uh you know its part in that uh goal for its own purposes and for the purposes of
the rest of the world as well. So, hit the like button everyone. I'm going to be out of here now. Hit the like button.
Uh be sure to hit the video description up afterwards as well. That will uh give you all the places you can support this show, Patreon, Subseek, and much more.
Um and without further ado, 1 p.m.
Eastern time tomorrow, June 19th with Professor Mohammed Morandi. I'll see you then. Again, hit the like button. I'll see you on the next show. Bye-bye.

[admin]

Israel crashes out over reality of Iran victory
The Grayzone
Streamed live 111 minutes ago
Max Blumenthal joins Judge Andrew Napolitano's Judging Freedom to discuss the US-Iran MOU



Transcript

Today is Thursday, June 18th, 2026. Max Blumenthal joins us
now. Max, a pleasure as always. Thank you, my dear friend. How did unconditional surrender become a
ceasefire that the Iranians are celebrating?
Well, not everyone in Iran is actually celebrating. There's there's cautiousness about this deal. There's caution about
the deal. But one thing is clear. Iran won. And I I I said this many weeks ago.
Iran won within the first week.
This is a major strategic victory for Iran. It is a a def a defeat of US empire that we have
not seen possibly since uh in the entire uh post
war era possibly a a more severe defeat than Vietnam because the economic damage
of Vietnam was largely contained and this can't be. And I think what this
moment signals regardless of how theou works out and regardless of whether
Israel is able to whittle away at uh Trump's steadfastness and willingness to enforce this deal is sort of a historic
inflection point in which the American establishment is being forced to reckon
with the illogic of Zionist logic which is what compelled Donald Trump to launch this war.
This war was based entirely on the Zionist logic that the US had an
absolute commitment to defending Israel's strategic depth and to and to actually
defending the entire system of ethnosremacism that guarantees the future of the so-called Jewish state. And that meant
that the US found itself in a strategic and political quagmire in which it had
placed itself outside the realm of normal international relations because it was following Zionist logic. Zionist
logic, as I said, it's based on the idea of a so-called Jewish state existing in a region in which the majority of people
aren't Jews. And that demographic advantage of Jewish Israelis has to be guaranteed through violent engineering
and consistent warfare. It also relies entirely on its direct line to the gentile authority in Washington,
which means the Israel lobby has to continue to be able to manipulate, blackmail, and bribe the gentile powers
in Washington and all across America. is has Yeah, go ahead.
Has its ability to blackmail and bribe been diminished by this um um memorandum
of of understanding and what Trump has said about it.
Well, well, that's why we're hearing these comments from JD Vance and and you can play the video where he he uses this term reality, which I think is the most
important term right now because we're at a point where the contradiction between Zionist logic and reality,
reality being a standin or a byword for normal international relations has exploded. And that's why this is a
historic inflection point because an administration that was more under the control of Benjamin Netanyahu and the
reigning Liood party than any other administration in US history. All of which had been bought off by Israel to one degree or another. A is now
addressing the cold hard reality that we've always discussed on this program that Israel can't afford to lose the
gentile authority in Washington with this alienating behavior because it is not a normal state. It is it is an
anacronism and that the US can no longer follow the Zionist logic that guides Israel because it will be itself dragged
into a state of permanent war where it will be in a munitions crisis. It won't be able to maintain its empire and its e
even defend its near abroad possibly because of economic collapse. Donald Trump's presidency is in peril. And to
restore his presidency and stave off catastrophic midterm losses, he has had to defy Zionist logic. And it's Zionist
logic that is guiding Israel into being what JD Vance said today is the most
hated nation in the world that only has one leader which is sympathetic to it, Donald Trump, which it can no longer
afford to alienate. this uh this this uh position of reality will be more pronounced
within a Democratic party where the constituent base is wholly opposed to to
to providing billions of dollars of aid and weapons to Israel. So again, we're at a historic inflection point whether
or not thisou holds. And I think I I would also say reality
the reality is that Iran has prepare had prepared for this assault with wisdom
and with a clear understanding of the limits of US power and US military power has reached its limits in the straight of Hormuz.
Here is uh Vice President Vance while the president is flying back from France. Vice President Vance held a
press conference uh in the press room of the White House. Here's the comments that Max was talking about. When we come
back from these comments, I'm going to ask you, Max, who in the US is attacking
this deal because Vice President Vance is talking about Netanyahu's cabinet.
Chris, go ahead.
Thank you, sir. Jordan Conrad with the Gateway P. I want to talk um back to the Lebanon podium.
Um there's a report in Axios that Netanyahu's fuming over this. Uh he doesn't Israel doesn't feel bound to
theou as it relates to Lebanon. If as you mentioned your frustration with Israel strike Israel striking in Beirut, hitting apartment buildings. If that continues, could it torpedo the deal?
And what would the US's response be to a broader war in Lebanon involving?
Yeah. Well, I don't want to get into hypotheticals that could torpedo the deal because I think the president's expectation is that all of our friends,
the Israelis, the Arabs in the region, we're going to work together and actually see this deal to completion.
Now, I saw the Axios report, uh, you know, that that that Netanyahu is fuming. That's not reflective of the conversations that I've had with him,
but maybe he's saying something to somebody else that he's not saying to me. What I will say, and this does bother me, is that you have seen people within BB's cabinet who have come out
and attacked the deal and in some ways very personally attacked the president of the United States. And I guess my message to them would be twofold. Number
one, Donald J. Trump is the only head of state in the entire world who is sympathetic to the nation of Israel at
this moment in time. And he happens to be the head of state of the world superpower. If I was in the cabinet of the Israeli government, I might not be
attacking the only powerful ally that I have anywhere left in the entire world.
And the second message I would give to some of those cabinet members, BB to his credit has not gone down this path, but to some of these cabinet members in
Israel who are attacking the president of the United States, the other thing that I would say is that over the last 3 months, twothirds of the defensive
weapons that have protected your homeland have been built by American hands and paid for by American tax
dollars. The problem for Israel is not Donald J. Trump. And anybody in Israel who thinks their biggest problem is the
president of the United States needs to wake up and smell the reality of the situation that country is in. Thank you all.
Profound.
Well, he JD Vance is putting forward the reality from Washington's perspective,
which is a perspective that we don't actually hear very often from the Trump administration, which has been putting forward up until this point largely
Zionist logic and concealing the reality of normal international relations. JD
Vance has exposed the absurdity of the US-Issraeli special relationship with those comments.
by uh noting that Israel depends unlike possibly any other state I can think of
in history, maybe like Olter or Ireland or something on a minority on support
um on funding on political manipulation by a minority group in another country.
Actually, the minority of a minority group. It's it's, you know, a small minority of Jewish Americans who have
been ponying up the money to basically bribe Donald Trump and compel him into this war. And Israel can't keep going
down this road of attacking Donald Trump and uh sending its proxies within the Republican party, the Mark Levins, the
uh Mark Dubitzes, the uh Mark Tissson, all of these marks uh against Donald
Trump without alienating Donald Trump, someone who has who's a very mercurial figure who has a temper
and is very vengeful. So JD Vance is threatening with them with that. But the contradiction is Zionist logic doesn't
correspond with that reality. Uh according to Zionist logic, Israel cannot allow Iran to have even ballistic
missiles, let alone nuclear breakout capacity. That could threaten Israel's demographic advantage by leading the uh
causing a brain drain. For example, members of the Ashkanazi elite will uh seek residence in Germany or move to
Cyprus or another country if Iran uh g you know solidifies its power in the
region and potentially forces Israel into some sort of negotiations. If Iran is successfully able to liberate
southern Lebanon, Israel loses this so-called buffer zone or kill zone that it thinks it needs. And then what could happen in the West Bank where Israel
needs its Lebanese realm for its uh settler class? Uh what happens if resistance factions in the West Bank
gain access to the FPV drones that Hezbollah has been using with such great effect? This is the Zionist logic that
has come up against the hard rocks of reality of American power that JD Vance is putting forward because Donald Trump
and Marco Rubio are too afraid actually right now to go out there and and and make those statements. So this is actually a very good moment for JD
Vance. And just one other quick point, notice how he's attacking Idomar Bengir and Bezel Smootrich, the the nutcases of
the Netanyahu coalition. He's a he's he's been instructed, I think, not to attack Netanyahu directly, but all the attacks are being directed by Netanyahu.
Netanyahu is t has released the hounds on Donald Trump. And now the the Marks, the Mark Levven, the Mark Dubites are
all exposed because there's no one else in MAGA who's standing with them because of their loyalty to the president. what
what uh groups are going to in America are going to do their best to uh undermine or sabotage this agreement?
Well, I mentioned the Israel Firsters, like the Foundation for the Defense of Democracy, uh, or the destruction of democracy,
which is actually an Israeli cutout in Washington, led by Mark Dubitz, who's been responsible for all of the false
predictions, all of the bad ideas, all of the catastrophic uh, plays, imposing Zionist logic on the
Trump administration. basically they're the ones who sort of wrote the wrote the plan for this war all the way up until the naval siege which was just lifted on
Iran. um they're now exposed and everyone can see this was a a war based on Zionist logic which caused enormous
14 minuteseconomic harm that will continue to play out for a year or years and that the only figures who want more war are
basically either bought off by Israel or are Israel ideologues and they are willing to see more killing of school
children, more destruction of buildings, destruction of power plants and achieving no military objectives.
They're willing to experience all of this global economic destruction that has caused bread riots in Asia all for this tiny little apartheid state. And so
they're totally isolated right now. To the extent that JD Vance is out there making these basic reality based statements, they're isolated. But then
you have another faction judge which uh has been uh consistently one of the most
odious and insidious political factions in American political life. They're called the Democratic Party and the Democratic Party's uh foreign policy
leadership, Susan Rice, uh Adam Schiff, Shifty Schiff, who was the key uh face and voice of the Russia collusion hoax,
are attacking Donald Trump. So is Chris Murphy from the Senate Foreign Relations Committee for this, you know, what they
call an unconditional document of surrender. And yeah, they are they are right that that this war was a major
setback for US power and that the straight of Hormuz was open before this war was waged and that the US has
actually lost strategic ground against Iran and Iran is stronger now following this war. But what they're wrong about
is number one that Iran is an enemy of the United States. Iran is an enemy of Israel and to the extent that the US and
Israel are joined at the hip, it's an enemy of the United States. But that's that's not the reality that we have to exist in. Iran is a country that would
happily negotiate and exchange economic benefits with the United States if we could just accept the Islamic Republic
and allow it to reform from within instead of imposing regime change riots and chaos agents and sanctions on it.
And the other thing they're that they don't understand is that they have never offered a better idea than the JCPOA.
The Democrats under the Biden administration after Trump shredded the JCPOA
embraced a policy of no negotiations, avoiding any deal with Iran, and intensifying sanctions. Then following
October 7th, which the Biden administration is heavily responsible for because it allowed Gaza to languish
under siege. Following that, the Biden, uh, Blinken, Sullivan, these mediocre
Zionist ideologues shattered every possibility of a Gaza ceasefire in order to escalate in Lebanon and followed
Zionist logic into Lebanon with the fantasy that they would defeat Hezbollah and bring Lebanon into a kind of normalization deal.
Let let me ask you a few questions about uh about Lebanon.
Did Trump know what he was talking about when he suggested that al-Qaeda in Syria would fight Hezbollah in be in behalf of Israel?
I I think he was. But let me just make this one point about the Democrats. The Dem the Biden, Blinken, and Sullivan laid the foundation for Operation
Epstein Fury by breaking Gaza ceasefires, encouraging Israel to
escalate in Lebanon, which paved the way for this war. And Amos Amos Hawkstein,
who was Biden's envoy to Lebanon, explicitly stated in a in an interview, I think a couple months ago with CNN,
that they were planning to attack Iran as well. Their only problem was in the execution. So, the Democrats cannot be trusted as critics of thisou.
And you just brought up Syria. it. There would not have been regime change in Syria were it not for the zealous
support for the Syrian dirty war from the Obama administration and the Biden administrations. And actually there were elements in the Trump administration
that attempted to end US support for these al-Qaeda elements which are now in power in Damascus. Now, now Trump is is
all in with Ahmed al-Sharah, the president formerly known as Muhammad Al Galani, who was Abu Giuliani, who was
jailed in Camp Buukah when he was involved with al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia in Iraq. Trump brought him into the White House and sprayed Trump perfume on him.
It looks like they may meet at the upcoming NATO summit in Ankura, Turkey.
And Trump has even proposed the idea of the former leader of al-Qaeda in Syria and former deputy leader uh founder of
ISIS replacing Israel as the uh key US proxy against Hezbollah. It's an absurd idea. Uh Syria is not prepared for that.
Their military already w would would probably lose. They al al-Qaeda already
lost against Hezbollah in Syria once and they would probably lose again. But it really just shows how fantastical the
Trump administration's ideas are about Lebanon when what's really taking place in Lebanon is an Israeli ethnic
cleansing campaign where the Israeli army has been given explicit orders to not allow Shia who are citizens of
Lebanon to return to their homes in the south are killing dozens of civilians a day and the US is doing nothing about it
while Trump wants to enforce a memorandum of understanding in which Lebanon on is included. And so Lebanon will be the major lever for Israel to
unravel theou and it's time for the Trump administration to start taking this seriously. And it starts with allowing Lebanese citizens to go back to
their homes and not be ethnically cleansed by Israel. Wow.
So Mark Levvin and Ben Shapiro are losing their minds and some neocons
neocon Republicans are uh as well. I want to switch gears a little bit. What
uh became of turning point within days of uh Charlie Kirk's murder?
Well, I just published a piece about a story. I just thought it was a huge story that hadn't really been written about or covered anywhere, even in um
alternative media, although it's it's been discussed on social media a lot, which is that the Charlie Kirk show is now distributed by a foreign agent for
Israel. And this deal went through eight days after he was killed. Now, I'm not pointing to that deal as evidence that Israel killed him. I have no evidence of
that. But it really tells you a lot about the political environment we're in and what has happened to MAGA,
particularly since Charlie Kirk was killed. Uh Salem Media distributed the
Charlie Kirk show since 2020. Salem media was brought in on the biggest one of the biggest lobbying contracts for a
foreign agent in history, probably the biggest with Brad Parcal, who is Donald Trump's former chief of staff and his Clock Tower X company, the Israeli
foreign ministry, contracted them to buy influencers, cater to Gen Z, cater to conservatives,
um, cultivate support for Christian Zionism in the US through geo fencing of churches. an actual registered agent of the government of Israel.
So an actual reg federally registered foreign agent of the government of Israel, Brad Parcow became chief oper uh
chief strategy officer of Salem Media, which is in charge of distributing the Charlie Kirk show. Would Charlie Kirk have have supported that deal?
Oh, absolutely not. based on his public statements in which he was uh agonizing over all the pressure from Israel
lobbyists and saying, "Hey, I support my country, not Israel." He said this on August 8th, 2025, about a month before his death on the Megan Kelly show. He
called Lindsey Graham pathologically insane for wanting to attack Iran.
Probably not. But now Charlie Kirk is dead. And thanks to his untimely death, uh, TPUSA has fallen back in line with
the Israeli agenda, Erica Kirk, in a, you know, the new CEO and replacement for Charlie Kirk, claimed in a
cringe-worthy town hall with self-described Zionist fanatic Barry Weiss on CBS, which had just been purchased by Israel first billionaire
David Ellison, that her and Charlie always supported Israel because they went there and saw the Bible come alive in Technicolor. And how could you how
could you uh not like a state like Israel? That that did not reflect Charlie Kirk's views. She was asked, "What would Charlie Kirk think about the
war in Iran?" And she said, "Well, we don't know what he would think, and you know, I wish you were here." and his uh former Confederates at TPUSA even put
out a video four days after Trump launched Operation Epic Fury, an old video of Charlie Kirk, the old Charlie
Kirk, saying that uh Iran was like a a horrible country which didn't reflect his evolution. So, they're deliberately
burying Charlie Kirk's evolving views, his real legacy, his kind of emerging anti-war persona. And we have to really
wonder what would have happened if Donald Trump tried to launch this war with Charlie Kirk leading the the major
MAGA youth organization and get out the vote organization. He would have been a much more
uh he would have been a bigger obstacle than Tucker Carlson, Megan Kelly comic Dave Smith combined.
And so it was very convenient to have him out of the way. And again, I'm not saying that that explains who killed
him, but it explains what has happened to MAGA since September 10th, 2025 when Charlie Kirk was assassinated.
Well, what explains Netanyahu's denial that MSAD killed him within within hours of the murder.
He two denials. That that was unusual. Correct. Correct.
Well, Max, we've covered a lot and I deeply appreciate it. events seem to be happening very very quickly these days.
So, thank you for your time. Thank you for all your great writing uh on on the gray zone and we'll look forward to seeing you again soon, my friend. Oh, and a happy Father's Day to you.
Thank you so much and uh thanks as always for bringing me in.
Sure. All the best. Thank you. Coming up tomorrow, uh, Friday at 3 in the
afternoon, Professor John Mirshimer at 4 in the afternoon, the end of the day, the end of the week, the intelligence
community roundt with Larry Johnson and Ray McGovern. Judge Npalitano for judging freedom.

[admin]

The Hidden Tunnels Beneath Mar-a-Lago Where 75 Servants Lived Underground
Behind the Gates
May 24, 2026

Mar-a-Lago wasn't just built to impress—it was built to hide. Beneath the gold leaf ceilings and antique Spanish tiles lies a network of tunnels carved into coral, where 75 servants lived and worked in total invisibility. This is the untold story of the hidden kingdom under America's most famous estate.

We trace Mar-a-Lago from Marjorie Merriweather Post's $7 million vision in the 1920s through the architect rivalry that built it, the invisible servant economy that powered it, and the social forces that dismantled it—immigration law, labor reform, WWII, and the civil rights movement. Then we follow the estate through its failed years as a government gift, Trump's aggressive acquisition, and the moment in August 2022 when the tunnels finally made headlines.

This isn't just an architecture story. It's about what extreme wealth really costs—and who pays for it in invisibility.

If this changed how you see luxury, history, or the hidden labor behind it all, hit subscribe and drop your thoughts in the comments: Should the tunnels beneath Mar-a-Lago be opened to the public as a museum?



Most people who hear about Mara Lago picture the gold leaf ceilings, the 15,000 antique Spanish tiles, the 75 ft
tower rising over Palm Beach. But directly beneath those rooms, cut into the coral reef that anchors the estate
to the Florida coastline, there is another world entirely. a network of tunnels, basement corridors, and
underground chambers where 75 servants once lived and worked in shifts moving
food, polishing silver, [music] and assembling breakfast trays for a 100 guests, all without ever being seen. The
most expensive home in 1920s, America was designed from the foundations up around a single principle. The people
who made the magic possible must never be visible. This is the story of what that principal built, what it cost, and
what it left behind. A chapter 1, the girl they took to board meetings. Before
she was 10 years old, Marjorie Merryweather Post sat in on corporate strategy sessions and was quizzed
afterward by her father on every decision made. This was not casual parenting. This was training. Charles
William Post, known to the business world as CW, had built a serial empire from nothing. and he intended his only
surviving child to run it. The fact that she was a girl in an era when women could not yet vote was to him
irrelevant. The fortune would pass to her. She would need to understand how it worked. CW Post's own story begins with
collapse. In 1891, broken by stress and chronic illness, he checked himself into
the Battle Creek Sanitarium in Michigan. The facility was run by John Harvey Kellogg, a man obsessed with dietary
reform and clean living. Post arrived as a patient. He left as a competitor. Watching Kellogg serve grain-based
health foods to wealthy invalids. Post recognized something Kellogg never fully grasped. There was a mass market for
this, not just for the sick, for everyone. He launched pastum, a coffee
substitute in 1895. Grape nuts followed in 1897. Post
Toasties came after that. Within a decade, CW Post had built one of the most profitable food companies in
America. He was a marketing genius in an era when the word barely existed. He
wrote his own advertising copy. He bought newspaper space by the page. He understood that Americans would eat
whatever they were told was good for them, provided the packaging was attractive enough. By 1910, the Pastum
Cereal Company was worth tens of millions. CW Post owned factories,
railroads, and an entire town in Texas that he had built from scratch and named after himself. He was one of the richest
men in the country. But wealth did not protect him from his own mind. CW Post
suffered from depression that deepened as his fortune grew. On May 9th, 1914,
at the age of 59, he shot himself at his home in Santa Barbara, California. He
left behind a company, a fortune estimated at $20 million, and a daughter who was 27 years old. $20 million in
1914 had the purchasing power of roughly 600 million today. Marjorie Merryweather
Post was overnight one of the wealthiest women in the Western Hemisphere. The transition was not smooth. Her
stepmother, Leila Young Post, challenged the will. The legal fight was ugly and public. Marjorie prevailed, but the
experience taught her something that would shape every decision she made for the next 60 years. Fortunes are not
simply inherited. They must be defended. And the best defense is control. She
took control. She sat on the board of Pastum Cereal. She reviewed quarterly reports. She questioned executives. She
was not a figurehead. When the company later acquired General Foods, Bird's Eye Frozen Products, and Maxwell House
Coffee, Marjorie Post was in the room for every major decision. But she was also always building something else. The
board meetings funded a vision. The quarterly profits financed a world. And the world she wanted to build required
more than money. It required a place. She found it in Palm Beach, Florida, on
a narrow barrier island between the Atlantic Ocean and Lake Worth. The land stretched from shore to shore. She
bought it and then she set out to fill every inch of it with something no one had ever seen before. The question was
not whether she could afford it. The question was, what kind of person inherits a fortune and decides to build
a world? The answer would take 4 years, $7 million, 300 European craftsmen, and
a vision so specific that the two architects she hired would spend the entire project arguing about how to
execute it. That argument would produce the most expensive private home in America. It would also produce something
no one talks about, the hidden kingdom beneath it. Chapter 2.
Sea to lake and nothing in between. Post did not want a house in Palm Beach. She
wanted to own the entire width of the island from the Atlantic Ocean to the lake and fill every inch of it with a
vision no architect could talk her out of. She hired two. This was either brilliant or reckless and it turned out
to be both. Marian Sims Wyth was a classically trained architect from Princeton and the AOL de Bozarts in
Paris. He understood structure engineering and the practical demands of building on a coral reef in a
subtropical climate. He was precise. He was careful. He knew how buildings stood
up. Joseph Urban was a vianese theatrical designer who had created sets for the Metropolitan Opera and [music]
the Ziggfeld Follys. He understood spectacle, color, and the emotional impact of a room. He was flamboyant. He
was expensive. He knew how buildings made people feel. Post wanted both. She wanted a house that would not fall down
and that would also take your breath away. The collaboration between Wyth and Urban became one of the most productive
conflicts in American architectural history. Wyth designed the bones. Urban
designed the skin. Wyth calculated loadbearing walls and hurricane resistance. Urban specified gold leaf
ceilings and handpainted tiles from 15th century Polarmo. Wyth worried about
foundations sinking into coral. Urban worried about whether the light in the dining room would flatter women's
complexions at dinner. The construction began in 1923 and lasted 4 years. The
numbers alone tell a story of ambition, operating without any recognizable limit. Three boatloads of Doria stone
arrived from Genoa, Italy, carved into columns and archways by masons who had
trained in the quaries their grandfathers had worked. 20,000 antique roof tiles were salvaged from demolished
houses in Havana, Cuba, each one hand laid by craftsmen who understood that no
two tiles from a 400-year-old building would sit at exactly the same angle. 36,000 antique Spanish tiles, some
dating to the 15th century, were embedded in walls, floors, and ceilings throughout the estate. The total cost
reached $7 million. In 1927, the average American home cost roughly $5,000.
Mara Lago was the equivalent of 1,400 average homes compressed into a single property. It sat on 17 acres that
stretched from the ocean to the intra coastal waterway. It was by any measure the most expensive residential
construction project in the country. But the detail that mattered most to Marjgery Post had nothing to do with
gold leaf or imported stone. It was a decision she made early in the design process, one that Wyth executed with
engineering precision and that most accounts of the estate barely mention. She insisted on separating the service
infrastructure from the living spaces completely. Not just behind doors.
underground. The main house would contain the grand rooms, the guest bedrooms, the family quarters. But the
machinery that made those rooms function, the kitchens, the pantries, the laundry, the staff quarters, the
storage, the workshops would be housed in subsidiary wings and crucially in a
network of basement corridors and tunnels cut directly into the coral foundation. This was not standard
practice, even for mansions of this scale. Most great estates of the 1920s placed servant quarters in attic floors
or rear wings. They were separate but not hidden. Post wanted something different. She wanted the service
infrastructure to be invisible. She wanted guests to wake up in the morning and find fresh flowers in their rooms
without ever seeing the hand that placed them. She wanted dinner for 150 to appear on the table as if conjured from
the air. Wyth understood the engineering challenge. Building underground in South
Florida meant cutting into coral limestone, managing water tables, and ventilating spaces that sat below sea
level in a subtropical climate. He did it. The tunnels were blasted and carved
from the reef. Corridors were lined and drained. Ventilation shafts were routed through walls so that no grate or
opening would be visible from the main floors. The Barwig family, a father and son team of stone carvers, set up a
modeling shop near the tunnel entrance. For 3 years, they carved the ornamental stonework that would decorate the estate
above, working in a space that existed by design below the sight line of anyone
who would eventually admire their work. By January of 1927, the house was
finished. It rose 75 ft at its central tower. It contained 115 rooms. It
covered more than 62,000 square ft. And beneath it, invisible to every guest who
would ever walk through the front door, ran the system that would keep it all alive. The only problem was finding 75
people willing to live inside it. Chapter 3. The kingdom that required a
thousand hands. When the house was finally finished in January 1927, it
contained 58 bedrooms, 33 bathrooms with goldplated fixtures, and a problem that
no amount of money could permanently solve. The problem was people, specifically the staggering number of
them required to make the estate function at the level Marjgery Post demanded. 75 servants during the winter
season, 32-year round. These were not approximate figures. Post ran her
household with the same precision she brought to boardroom meetings. Every position was defined. Every
responsibility was documented. Every hour was scheduled. The hierarchy was modeled on the great English country
houses that Post had studied during her travels abroad. At the top sat the
steward who managed the entire domestic operation and reported directly to Post. Below him the head butler who oversaw
formal service and the four under butlers beneath him. Footmen handled specific duties in individual rooms.
Parlor maids maintained the guest quarters. KitchenAids supported the cook. Lundresses, seamstresses, and
groundskeepers filled out the ranks. Each person had a title, a station, and
a set of duties that interlocked with every other person's duties like the gears of a machine. And like a machine,
the household could not function if any single gear was missing. [music] The scale of daily operations was
extraordinary. Breakfast alone required a coordinated effort that began before dawn. Trays had to be assembled in the
butler's pantry for guests who preferred to eat in their rooms. The dining room had to be set for those who came
downstairs. Fresh flowers had to be cut and arranged. Newspapers had to be ironed, a standard practice in estates
of this caliber to prevent ink from smudging on guest fingers. And all of this had to happen before Post herself
came downstairs. Her personal routine was exact. Her expectations were
specific. The household existed to make her life and the lives of her guests appear effortless. The effort required
to create that appearance was enormous. Thursday nights were the pinnacle. The square and round dinners, as Post called
them, were legendary events that mixed Palm Beach Society with entertainment on a scale that rivaled professional
productions. Guest lists regularly exceeded 100. On special occasions, they
reached 50. 10 extra waiters were hired from local agencies. Gardeners were
pulled from the grounds and reassigned to move furniture. The entertainment matched the excess. Ringling Brothers
circus performers appeared on the south lawn. Full Broadway casts were brought down from New York to stage complete
plays in the estate's private theater. On one occasion, the entire troop of a current Broadway hit performed the show
in its entirety for an audience of Post's dinner guests, then returned to New York on a chartered train. Post
herself choreographed these evenings with the attention to detail of a film director. She approved the seating
charts. She selected the China patterns. She specified which flower arrangements would go on which tables. She tasted the
menu days in advance and made corrections. But the most important element of a Thursday night at Mara Lago
was the one no guest ever noticed. The service was invisible. Dishes appeared,
glasses were refilled, courses changed, plates vanished, and not once did a
guest feel the presence of a servant lingering too long, moving too slowly, or occupying space that belonged to the
evening's carefully curated atmosphere. This was not an accident. It was an engineering achievement. The tunnels
beneath the estate, the service corridors behind the walls, the separate staircases that allowed staff to move
between floors without crossing guest areas. All of it existed for this single purpose. The magic of Mara Lago depended
on the complete concealment of the people who made it possible. At its peak in the late 1920s and into the 30s, the
system worked perfectly. The estate operated like a five-star hotel with a single permanent guest and an unlimited
budget. Post presided over her kingdom with absolute authority and genuine affection for the staff who made it run.
She knew their names. She sent flowers when they were sick. She gave silverframed photographs as gifts, but
she also required their invisibility. That was the bargain. You could be cared for, compensated, even loved, but you
could not be seen. And beneath the floors where guests danced on Thursday nights, 75 people lived the terms of
that bargain every day. The question no one was asking yet because there was no reason to ask it was what would happen
when those 75 people decided they no longer wanted to be invisible.
Chapter 4. The world beneath the floor. There is a version of Mara Lago that no
guest was ever meant to see and it begins 6 ft below the gold room's marble floor. To understand what exists beneath
the estate, you have to forget the building you have seen in photographs. the gold leaf, the Spanish tiles, the
ocean views from the Loia. Set all of it aside. Now imagine standing at the base
of a staircase that descends from the main floor into a corridor of poured concrete and Florida coral limestone.
The ceiling is low. The walls are plain. The air is cool and faintly damp,
filtered through ventilation shafts that were engineered to be silent. There is no gold down here. There is no
decoration of any kind. This is where the work happened. The tunnel system at Mara Lago is not a single passage. It is
a network. Multiple corridors branch beneath the main house connecting service areas to the kitchen wing,
[music] the staff quarters, the storage rooms, and the utility spaces that kept the estate functioning. The design
principle was absolute. A servant moving from the kitchen to the dining room, from the laundry to the guest wing, from
the staff quarters to any point in the house, must be able to complete the journey entirely underground, entirely
out of sight. Mary and Sims Wyth engineered these passages into the coral foundation during the original
construction. The coral reef beneath the property was cut and blasted to create underground chambers that sit below the
water table line. Drainage systems were installed to manage the perpetual moisture of a structure carved into
subtropical limestone. Ventilation had to be routed through the walls of the main building above with intake and
exhaust points concealed behind architectural details that guests would assume were decorative. The Library of
Congress holds the evidence. Under the designation Habsfl
195, the Historic American Building Survey documented Mara Lago with 108
photographs and 37 pages of written architectural description. The floor plans in that collection reveal what no
casual visitor would suspect. Beneath the grand rooms of the main house, a
parallel world of corridors, workrooms, and storage spaces mirrors the layout above. Where the upstairs has a
ballroom, the downstairs has a pantry staging area. Where guests sleep in bedrooms overlooking the ocean, staff
moved through corridors that never see daylight. The tunnel system extended beyond the house itself. A passage ran
beneath South Ocean Boulevard, the public road that separates the estate from the beach. This allowed Post and
her guests to walk from the main house to the private beach pavilion without ever stepping outside, without ever
being seen by passing traffic, and without ever crossing paths with the servants who used the same passage at
different hours. Another tunnel connected the estate to the bath and tennis club across the street. This was
not simply a convenience. It was a statement of intent. Marjorie Post did not believe that the experience of
wealth should include encounters with public space. The transition from private estate to private club should
feel seamless underground invisible. During the Korean War, the basement
system was expanded to include bomb shelters. These reinforced chambers were added to the existing tunnel network
built to withstand aerial attack in an era when Palm Beach with its concentration of strategic wealth and
its proximity to Cuba was considered a potential target. The shelters were stocked with provisions and fitted with
heavy steel doors. They connected to the main tunnel system, adding another layer to the underground labyrinth. The
modeling shop where the Barwig family worked sat near the entrance to the tunnel network. For 3 years during the
estate's construction, father and son carved the ornamental plaster and stone elements that would decorate the rooms
above. Their workshop was underground. They shaped gargoyles, capitals, and
decorative panels in a space that was itself a service area, a place of labor hidden from the spaces that labor would
adorn. Today, pieces of the Barwig's original plaster models still sit in the basement rooms, molds for ceiling
medallions, test carvings for column capitals, fragments of decorative schemes that were approved by Post and
Urban, then executed in the finished rooms upstairs. The drafts remain below, the finished products shine above. The
metaphor is almost too perfect. The dimensions of the underground system are difficult to calculate precisely because
no single published source provides a complete inventory, but the HABS documentation combined with accounts
from estate managers and Secret Service reports from the property's time as a presidential retreat suggests a network
that spans thousands of square feet beneath the main house and connecting wings. The corridors are wide enough for
two people to pass carrying trays or equipment. The ceiling heights vary, but generally allow a person of average
height to walk upright. Some sections narrow at junctions. Some open into rooms that serve specific functions.
Silver storage, china closets, linen staging areas, staff break rooms. There
is no natural light. The underground world of Mara Lago was designed to function independently of the sun.
[music] Staff working below could not tell whether it was morning or midnight. The only clock that mattered was the
household schedule, Mrs. Voit's daily memoranda, which dictated when every task must be completed and when every
servant must be in position. The effect of this architecture on the experience of the house above was total. A guest at
Mara Lago in its golden age might spend an entire week on the property and never see a servant in transit. Food appeared,
rooms were cleaned, flowers were refreshed, beds were turned down, clothes were pressed, and returned to
closets. The human effort behind all of it was routed through tunnels and corridors that might as well have been
on another planet. This was what $7 million bought. Not just beauty, not
just luxury, invisibility. The most expensive element of Mara Lago was never
the gold leaf or the imported tiles. It was the infrastructure of eraser, the tunnels and corridors and hidden
stairways that made 75 people disappear. And for nearly 40 years, it worked
exactly as designed. Chapter 5. Invisible by design. Every
morning, 45 people woke up inside the walls of Mara Lago, and their first task
was to make sure no one knew they were there. The daily rhythm of the estate followed a schedule so precise it could
have been printed on a factory floor. The difference was that no factory in America demanded this level of aesthetic
perfection from its workers. In a factory, a bolt either fits or it does
not. At Mara Lago, a fork placed one/4 in too far from the plate edge was a
failure. The day began in the butler's pantry. This was the nerve center of the household, a staging area where
breakfast trays were assembled with geometric precision. Each tray carried a specific arrangement of china, silver,
linen, and food that corresponded to the known preferences of the guest who would receive it. Mrs. Voit, the head
housekeeper, maintained files on every regular visitor. She knew who preferred coffee to tea, who wanted their toast
dark, who required a particular brand of marmalade. The trays were assembled, inspected, [music] and dispatched
through the service corridors to the guest rooms. A firstirhand account published in the New York Social Diary
described the ritual of the table setting. Staff use measuring tapes, literal measuring tapes, the kind a
carpenter uses, laid across the dining table to ensure that every piece of silverware, every glass, every plate sat
at exact intervals from its neighbor. The distance between a dinner fork and a salad fork [music] was not a matter of
judgment. It was a matter of measurement. The space between a water glass and a wine glass was standardized
to the fraction of an inch. This was not eccentricity. It was philosophy. Post
believed that perfection in domestic service meant the elimination of visible effort. If a table looked perfect, it
was because it was perfect. And perfection required systems, not instinct. Mrs. Voit managed these
systems through daily memoranda that functioned like military orders. Each morning, a document was circulated to
every department head specifying what would happen that day, at what time, and who was responsible. [music] If Post
planned to take lunch on the south terrace, the memorandum specified the time, the menu, the number of guests,
the table setting, the flower arrangement, and the staff assignments. If she planned to dine in the formal
dining room, a different set of instructions applied. The rotation system for staff was itself a feat of
scheduling. Servants worked seven mornings a week. Afternoons were staggered so that each person received
alternating afternoons off. Full staff was required on Thursdays for the weekly dinner parties. During the peak of the
season, from January through March, no one had a full day off. The estate operated at maximum capacity, and every
person in the system was essential. The kitchen deserves its own account. Under Mrs. Livingston, the head cook, the
kitchen operation fed not only Post and her guests, but also the entire staff.
Two separate menus were prepared daily. One for the family dining room, one for the staff dining hall. The family menu
might include do soul flown in from the northeast, seasonal vegetables from the estate's own gardens, and desserts that
required hours of preparation. The staff menu was simpler but substantial. Mrs. Livingston managed both operations
simultaneously, coordinating with the butler's pantry for timing and presentation. The kitchen wing itself
was a study in the architecture of separation. From the outside, the wing was decorated with carved stone figures
depicting vendors of fish, wine, vegetables, and poultry. These carvings
adorned the service entrance. The door through which deliveries arrived and staff came and went. [music] The irony
was embedded in the building itself. The images of labor decorated the one part of the estate dedicated to concealing
labor. Among the staff, certain roles carried a specificity that bordered on the absurd. There was a table linen
keeper named Alma, whose sole responsibility was the maintenance, inventory, and proper storage of every
tablecloth, napkin, and runner in the estate. The collection was vast. Linens
for formal dinners differed from linens for lunchons, which differed from linens for breakfast trays. Each set had to be
laundered, pressed, folded, and stored according to a system that only Elma
fully understood. Thursday dinner parties were the operational summit of the entire system. A dinner for 150
guests required 10 extra waiters hired from agencies in West Palm Beach. These
temporary staff had to be integrated into the household routine within hours, trained on the specific protocols of
Mara Lago service and positioned in the tunnels and corridors so they could move between the kitchen and the dining room
without being seen by guests arriving through the main entrance. The gardening staff, normally assigned to the 17 acres
of grounds, was reassigned on Thursdays. They move furniture. They reposition
potted plants. They cleared the south lawn for entertainment. They carried chairs through the service corridors to
avoid crossing through the rooms where guests were gathering for cocktails. The logistics of a single Thursday dinner
can be quantified. 150 guests required approximately 400 pieces of china, 600 pieces of
silverware, 300 glasses, 75 linen napkins folded into specific shapes, and
table arrangements that had been measured, approved, and set hours before the first guest arrived. The food was
plated in the kitchen, carried through underground corridors to staging areas near the dining room, and then brought
to the table in coordinated waves so that every guest was served within minutes of every other guest. Cold food
could not be allowed to warm. Hot food could not be allowed to cool. The timing
was absolute, and through all of it, the central requirement held. No guest could
see the machinery. No guest could glimpse a servant carrying a tray through a corridor. No guest could hear
the kitchen, smell the laundry, or sense the 60 people moving at full speed beneath the floor. The system worked.
For decades, it worked. But it worked because it was staffed by people who were willing to accept its fundamental
condition, that their labor was valuable precisely to the degree that it was invisible. That condition would not hold
forever. The world outside the walls of Mara Lago was changing in ways that would make 75 invisible people
impossible to find. Chapter 6. The system that could not
survive itself. The same forces that built the American middle class were quietly dismantling the servant economy
that Mara Lago depended on. The collapse did not happen all at once. It happened the way most structural failures happen,
slowly from the bottom, and for reasons that seemed unrelated until it was too late. The first crack appeared in the
1920s during the very decade that Mara Lago was being built. The Immigration
Act of 1924, also known as the Johnson Reed Act, drastically reduced the flow
of European immigrants into the United States. This mattered because the servant class in American great houses
had been disproportionately drawn from immigrant communities, Irish, English,
Scandinavian, and German workers who arrived with domestic service training and few other employment options. When
the pipeline of new arrivals was choked, the labor pool began to shrink. The second crack came with the Great
Depression and the New Deal. Franklin Roosevelt's labor protections of the 1930s did not initially cover domestic
workers who were deliberately excluded from Social Security and the National Labor Relations Act. But the broader
economic reforms shifted expectations across the labor market. Factory jobs,
previously seen as beneath the dignity of many workers, were suddenly protected by law, covered by minimum wage rules,
and eligible for benefits that domestic service could not match. A parlor made at Mara Lago might earn room, board, and
a modest salary. A woman working in a factory earned cash, independence, and the right to go home at the end of the
day. The third crack was the war. World War II pulled millions of women into
industrial employment. Rosie the Riveter was not just propaganda. She was a demographic revolution. Women who had
worked as domestics discovered that they could earn more money, work fewer hours, and retain their autonomy by building
aircraft, assembling munitions, or staffing government offices. When the war ended, many of these women did not
return to domestic service. They had tasted something the servant system could not offer: visibility. After the
war, the American middle class expanded at a rate that no previous generation had experienced. The GI Bill sent
millions to college. Suburban housing developments made home ownership possible for families that had
previously rented. Consumer goods, from washing machines to vacuum cleaners to prepared foods, reduce the domestic
labor that wealthy households had once required armies of servants to perform. A woman in a suburban home in 1955 could
accomplish with a washing machine what had required a full-time laundress in 1925.
The civil rights movement added another dimension. The domestic service workforce in America had always been
racially stratified. In the south, black women had formed the backbone of household service for generations. The
civil rights movement of the 1950s and60s did not simply demand political equality. It challenged the social
arrangement that made certain kinds of labor the expected destiny of certain kinds of people. Young black women in
1965 had options that their mothers had not. They went to college. They entered
professions. They did not iron newspapers for white millionaires in Palm Beach. Each of these forces,
immigration restriction, labor protections, wartime employment, middle class expansion, civil rights, operated
independently. But their cumulative effect on the great estate system was devastating. At Mara Lago, the
consequences were concrete. The annual cost of maintaining the estate rose every year as wages increased and the
labor pool contracted. The 75 person seasonal staff that Post had once
recruited with relative ease became harder and harder to assemble. Trained domestic workers who understood the
protocols of formal service, who knew how to set a table with a measuring tape and carry a tray through a tunnel
without being seen, were a vanishing breed. Post saw it coming. She was 80
years old in the late 1960s and she understood that the system she had built could not outlast the social conditions
that had made it possible. Her response was practical, unscentimental, and decades ahead of its time. She offered
Mara Lago to the town of Palm Beach. They declined. The maintenance costs were prohibitive. She offered it to the
state of Florida. They declined for the same reason. Finally, she turned to the federal government in a red leatherbound
proposal that she had specially prepared. Post offered Mara Lago as a winter White House, a retreat for the
president of the United States. The proposal was detailed, elegant, and entirely serious. She envisioned the
estate as a diplomatic asset, a place where the president could entertain foreign leaders in surroundings that
rivaled any European palace. The government accepted the gift, at least in principle. But acceptance and use are
different things. The annual maintenance cost was estimated at $1 million. The
estate sat directly beneath the flight path of Palm Beach International Airport, making it a security nightmare.
And no sitting president showed any interest in vacationing at a dead Aerys's mansion in Florida. Post was 86
years old. Her fortune, once seemingly infinite, was being consumed by the very estate that had defined it. The 75
person staff was impossible to sustain. The tunnels still functioned. The corridors still connected. But the
people who were supposed to move through them were disappearing, absorbed into a middle class that the American century
had built. The system that made Mara Lago possible was eating itself. And
Marjorie Post, the girl who had been taken to board meetings before she was 10, knew exactly what the numbers meant.
The question was no longer how to maintain the estate. It was what would happen to it after she was gone.
Chapter 7. The government that could not afford a gift. On September 12th, 1973,
Marjorie Merryweather Post died of a heart attack and the most expensive gift ever offered to the United States became
its most expensive burden. She was 86 years old. She had owned Mara Lago for
46 years. She had spent a fortune maintaining it and another fortune trying to give it away. In her will, she
formalized what she had proposed during her lifetime. The estate would pass to the federal government for use as a
winter white house. The National Park Service took custody and immediately the problems that Post had tried to solve
through generosity reasserted themselves with the full force of government bureaucracy. The annual maintenance cost
held at approximately $1 million. This was not an extravagant estimate. The
estate required a permanent staff to manage the grounds, monitor the climate sensitive interior, maintain the antique
tile work, and prevent the subtropical environment from reclaiming a building that sat on a coral reef between a
saltwater ocean and a brackish lake. Humidity alone threatened the gold leaf.
Salt air corroded the iron work. The 17 acres of landscaping grew with tropical
aggression and had to be cut back constantly. The flight path problem was worse than anyone had anticipated. Palm
Beach International Airport had expanded since the 1920s, and commercial jets now
roared over the estate at regular intervals. The noise was disruptive. The security implications were alarming. Any
president who attempted to use Mara Lago as a retreat would have to contend with the fact that every flight in and out of
the airport passed directly overhead at altitudes that made protection against aerial threats functionally impossible.
No president wanted it. Richard Nixon had key biscane. Gerald Ford preferred
veil. Jimmy Carter went home to Plains, Georgia. The idea of a winter White House sounded romantic in a red
leatherbound proposal. In practice, it was a security liability attached to a million dollar annual bill. The estate
sat largely vacant through the late 1970s. The park service maintained it at taxpayer expense. The tunnels were
empty. The guest rooms were closed. The dining room, where Post had hosted 150
people for Thursday dinners, stood silent. Its measuring tape perfect table settings undisturbed by plates or
silverware. Congress grew impatient. A million dollars a year to maintain a building that no one used and no
president wanted was a difficult expenditure to justify, particularly during an era of budget consciousness
and public skepticism toward government spending. In 1981, Congress voted to
return Mara Lago to the Post Foundation. The estate had been in government hands for 8 years. It had cost taxpayers
approximately $8 million in maintenance, and it was back where it started. a
magnificent property that no one could afford to keep. The Post Foundation tried to sell it. The asking price
reflected the property's assessed value and the cost of maintaining its historic fabric. There were no takers. They tried
again. A second listing, a third, three failed sales over 3 years. The problem
was not that Mara Lago was undesirable. It was that the cost of owning it exceeded the capacity of any individual
buyer to sustain. The estate had been designed for the richest woman in America at the peak of American private
wealth. By the early 1980s, even very rich people understood that owning Mara
Lago meant employing dozens of staff, paying property taxes on 17 oceanfront
acres in Palm Beach and maintaining a national historic landmark under the watchful eye of preservation
authorities. On December 23rd, 1980, the estate had been designated a national
historic landmark. This protected the building and its infrastructure, including the tunnels and service
corridors from demolition or significant alteration. It also meant that any
future owner would be legally constrained in what they could change. The landmark designation preserved the
hidden world beneath the floor. The tunnels that Wyth had blasted from Coral in 1923 were now protected by federal
law. The service corridors that had made 75 servants invisible were, by
government decree, permanent. The Post Foundation sat with an unsellable landmark, hemorrhaging maintenance
costs, waiting for a buyer who did not yet exist. Or perhaps the buyer did
exist. He was just waiting for the price to drop. Chapter 8. the man who bought the view
to kill it. Donald Trump did not simply make an offer for Mara Lago. He purchased the land in front of it and
threatened to destroy what made it beautiful. The negotiation, if it can be called that, remains one of the most
aggressive real estate maneuvers in the history of Palm Beach. It began in the early 1980s when Trump expressed
interest in acquiring the estate. The Post Foundation's asking price was in the range of 20 to $25 million, a figure
that reflected the property's replacement cost, its historic significance, and the value of 17 acres
of oceanfront land on one of the most exclusive islands in the world. Trump offered 5 million. The foundation
refused. What happened next was a masterclass in leverage. Trump purchased
the beachfront lot directly in front of Mara Lago, the strip of land between the estate and the Atlantic Ocean. He then
announced plans to develop the lot with a residential project that would block the ocean view from the estate's main
rooms. The loia where Post had watched the sunrise, the guest rooms where visitors woke to the sight of waves, the
terrace where Thursday dinner guests had strolled after dessert. All of it would look at the back of a condo building.
The threat was not subtle. It was not meant to be. Trump understood that Mara Lago's value was inseparable from its
view. Without the ocean, the estate was a very expensive inland property with enormous maintenance costs and a
historic landmark designation that prevented profitable renovation. With the ocean, it was irreplaceable. [music]
In 1985, the Post Foundation accepted $8 million for a property that had cost $7
million to build in 1923. Adjusted for inflation, this was a fraction of the original construction
cost. The $7 million that Post had spent in the 20s would be equivalent to well
over 100 million in 1980s. The foundation sold for 8 million. Trump
got the estate. He also got the tunnels, the service corridors, the basement rooms, the bomb shelters, and the entire
hidden infrastructure that Wyth had engineered into the coral 60 years earlier. He got it all for the price of
patience and a beachfront lot. The conversion from private residence to the private club began in 1995.
Trump applied for and received permission to operate the estate as the Mara Lago Club, a membersonly facility
offering dining, lodging, and social events. The membership fee was initially set at $100,000.
It would later rise to $200,000 then to $1 million. The conversion required
substantial renovation, but the National Historic Landmark designation constrained what could be changed. The
essential character of the estate had to be preserved. The gold leaf ceilings stayed. The 36,000 antique Spanish tiles
stayed. The tunnel system stayed. To restore the gold leaf, the renovation team tracked down the son of the
original gold leafer, who had worked on the estate in the 1920s. The son had learned the technique from his father
and applied it with the same methods, the same materials, and the same patient skill that had created the original
surfaces six decades earlier. This detail, a craft passed from father to son and then applied to the same
building, is one of the quieter marvels of the estate's survival. Tamara Peacock, an interior designer and
preservation specialist, [music] produced measured drawings of the estate's interior spaces that documented
the existing conditions and guided the renovation. Her work ensured that the conversion from residence to club
respected the historic fabric of the building. Guest rooms became hotel suites. The dining room became a club
restaurant. The south lawn became an event space available for weddings and gallas at prices that would have made
even Marjgery Post pause. But beneath the renovated rooms, the original infrastructure remained untouched. The
tunnels still ran from the main house to the beach. The service corridors still connected the kitchen wing to the dining
areas. The basement rooms still stored China and silver. The irony was structural. The servant infrastructure
survived because the building was landmarked. The very system that Post had designed to make labor invisible was
now protected by law. It could not be filled in, walled off, or demolished.
The architecture of Eraser was by federal decree permanent. The tunnels that 75 servants had used to disappear
now served a new function. Club staff used them. Maintenance workers used them. The passages that had been
designed for footmen carrying breakfast trays now carried equipment for events, supplies for the kitchen, and the
operational materials of a commercial enterprise. The system had changed masters, but it had not changed
function. The infrastructure of invisibility still made the visible world above it possible, and it would
continue to do so silently for decades until one day in August when the hidden world beneath Mara Lago made headlines
for the first time in its existence. Chapter 9. When the tunnels made headlines for nearly a century, the
passages beneath Mara Lago served their original purpose perfectly, which was to go entirely unnoticed until August of
2022. On August 8th of that year, the Federal Bureau of Investigation executed a
search warrant at the estate. The search was related to the handling of classified government documents, and it
brought federal agents into every part of the property, including the parts that Marjgery Post had designed to be
invisible. The basement rooms that had once stored table linens and silver polish now stored boxes. The corridors
that Footman had used to carry breakfast trays were walked by agents and tactical gear. The tunnels that had been
engineered to keep servants hidden now had to be secured, searched, and documented by a federal law enforcement
operation that was by any measure one of the most scrutinized searches in American legal history. Bloomberg
journalist Jason Leupold, who had been reporting on the classified documents investigation, noted that the tunnels
were part of the public record. The HABS documentation in the Library of Congress had been there for decades. The floor
plans showing every corridor and passage were available to anyone who requested them. The hidden world beneath Mara Lago
had been hiding in plain sight in a government archive for years. The Secret Service, which had maintained a security
presence at the estate since it became a presidential residence, had long since incorporated the tunnel system into its
protection protocols. The passages that Wyth had designed for domestic servants now functioned as security corridors.
Agents used them to move through the property without being observed. Checkpoints were established at tunnel
junctions. The infrastructure of invisibility had been repurposed into an infrastructure of surveillance. Staff at
the club still used the basement rooms for their original purpose. China that required handwashing was stored in the
same underground chambers where it had been stored for decades. Silver that needed polishing was kept in rooms that
the Barwig family would have recognized from the 1920s. The functional continuity was remarkable. A servant
from 1930 and a club employee from 2022 would have navigated the same corridors
to reach the same storage rooms. The tunnels also served more contemporary purposes. Reports surfaced that Rudy
Giuliani and his then wife had used the underground passage connecting the main house to the bungalow across the street
to avoid media attention during their stays at the club. The tunnel that Marjgery Post had built so that guests
could walk to the beach without being seen by passing traffic was now being used so that political figures could
move between buildings without being photographed by reporters. The symmetry was almost too precise. A passage built
to conceal servants from the gaze of the privileged was now concealing the privileged from the gaze of the public.
The direction of the hiding had reversed, but the architecture performed the same function. It made people
disappear. The August search brought a century of concealment into public view. News cameras filmed the exterior of the
estate. Aerial footage showed the layout of the grounds. Legal documents reference specific rooms and storage
areas within the property. For the first time in Mara Lago's history, the hidden spaces beneath the estate were not just
known to exist. They were the subject of national news coverage, court filings,
and congressional hearings. The coral tunnels that Wyth had blasted from the Florida Reef in 1923, designed to be
forgotten, were suddenly the most discussed architectural feature of one of the most discussed buildings in
America. But the discussion was never about the tunnels themselves. No cable news segment paused to explain why a
1920s estate had underground passages. No legal filing noted that the basement
rooms, where documents were found, had been designed to store silver for dinner parties. The history was irrelevant to
the news. [music] The tunnels were just rooms. The corridors were just hallways.
The infrastructure of a vanished social order was treated as if it were simply a building with a basement. And in a
sense, that treatment was the final act of erasure. The system that Post had designed to hide labor was now so
thoroughly normalized that no one noticed it was a system at all. The tunnels were invisible, not because they
were hidden, but because no one thought to ask why they were there. The climax of Mara Lago's story is not a dramatic
explosion or a tearful farewell. It is something quieter and more unsettling.
The infrastructure of invisibility designed to keep servants hidden now keeps classified documents hidden,
political secrets hidden, security operations hidden. The system changed masters. It changed purposes, but it
never changed function. The architecture of concealment remained as it was always designed to remain, invisible.
Chapter 10. What the floor plans remember. The Library of Congress holds 108
photographs and 37 pages of documentation, proving that beneath one of the most photographed buildings in
America, an entire hidden world was built to be forgotten. The Habs L195
file is a quiet document. It does not editorialize. It does not interpret. It
records. Floor plans drawn to architectural scale. Photographs taken
with the clinical precision of a government survey. Written descriptions that note dimensions, materials, and
conditions with the emotional temperature of an insurance appraisal. But the document tells a story that its
creators may not have intended. The floor plans show every tunnel, every service corridor, every hidden
staircase. They reveal the parallel architecture that runs beneath the estate like a shadow. The main house
floor plans show grand rooms, elegant proportions, and graceful circulation.
The basement floor plans show a warrant of workspaces, narrow corridors, and
utilitarian rooms that exist for no purpose other than to make the floors above them function. What survives
physically in the estate today is remarkable given the building's age, its exposure to a subtropical climate,
[music] and the number of ownership changes it has endured. The beach tunnel beneath South Ocean Boulevard remains
intact. The service corridors beneath the main house are still in use. The basement storage rooms still hold china,
silver, and the operational equipment of a commercial club. The original plaster sculpture models from the Barwig
family's workshop remain in the basement. These are the drafts, the test pieces, the carved prototypes that were
approved before the finished versions were installed in the rooms above. They sit in the same underground rooms where
they were created nearly a century ago. Above them, their polished descendants grace ceilings and doorways that guests
photograph without knowing that the rough originals are directly below their feet. The 36,000 antique Spanish tiles
remain in place throughout the estate. Some date to the 15th century. They were old when Post bought them. They are
ancient now. They have survived hurricanes, renovations, changes of ownership, and the daily foot traffic of
a commercial club because they were built to last and because federal landmark protection makes removing them
illegal. The estate now contains 126 rooms, an expansion from the original
115. It employs seasonal workers, many of whom arrive through the H2B visa
program, a temporary worker visa designed for seasonal non-aggricultural employment. These workers come from
abroad to staff the club during the winter season, filling the same roles that Post's 75 servants once filled. The
echo is unmistakable. The imported labor force that built Mara Lago, 300 European
craftsmen who arrive by boat from Genoa, has its modern counterpart in the H2B
workers who arrive by plane from Central America and Eastern Europe. The system still requires outside labor. The
architecture still conceals it. The floor plans in the Library of Congress are available to anyone. They document
rooms that were built so that no one would ever know they existed. The paradox is the point.
Chapter 11. The price of making labor disappear. The hidden tunnels beneath
Mara Lago were never really about architecture. They were about a bargain between wealth and the people who serve
it. The bargain was simple. You will be employed. You will be housed. You will be fed. You may even be valued, but you
will not be seen. Your work will be visible. You will not. The luxury that your labor creates depends on your
absence from it. This bargain was not unique to Mara Lago. It was the operating principle of every great
estate [music] in the guilded age and its aftermath. The Vanderbilt mansions in Newport, Rhode Island, the Aster
estates on the Hudson, the DuPont properties in Delaware, the Fipps and Stosbury compounds in Palm Beach. All of
them required enormous staffs. All of them designed architectural systems to separate servant space from family
space. But most of those estates are gone. The Breakers survives as a museum.
Builtmore operates as a tourist attraction. The vast majority of America's great houses were demolished,
subdivided, or converted beyond recognition during the midentieth century. The servant infrastructure, the
back stairs, the service corridors, the staff wings was the first thing to go in
every conversion. It had no commercial value. It was not beautiful. It was not photographable. It was by definition
meant to be unseen. And when the estates that contained it were repurposed, it was simply erased. Mara Lago's
underground system survived because of a combination of factors that exists nowhere else. The National Historic
Landmark designation made demolition illegal. The conversion to a private club required the service infrastructure
to remain functional, and the coral foundation in which the tunnels were carved made filling them in
prohibitively expensive. It was cheaper to keep using them than to destroy them. The result is a unique artifact. Mara
Lago is the only great American estate where the full servant infrastructure, the tunnels, the corridors, the basement
workrooms, the staff circulation system survives intact and in active use. It is
a living museum of a social arrangement that has otherwise vanished from the physical landscape. The tension at the
heart of this survival is the tension at the heart of American wealth itself. The country was founded on democratic
ideals, the principle that no person is born to serve another. But the great estates of the guilded age and the 20th
century required exactly that. A class of people whose purpose was to serve and
whose service was most valued when it was least visible. Post herself embodied this tension. [music] She was generous
to her staff. She gave silver framed photographs to long-erving employees. She sent flowers to the spouses of
servants who were ill. She authorized extra checks for workers facing hardship. These gestures were real. They
were also gestures within a system designed to render the recipients invisible. You could receive a silver
frame from the richest woman in America and still be required to walk through a tunnel to avoid being seen in the
hallway. The progressive employer and the architecture of a razor coexisted in the same person and the same building.
This was not hypocrisy. It was the logic of a system. The system said that luxury
required invisibility. It said that the experience of wealth depended on the concealment of the labor that produced
it. It said that the highest compliment you could pay a servant was that no one knew they were there. That system is
gone. The social conditions that produced it, the immigrant labor pools, the limited alternatives for domestic
workers, the cultural acceptance of live and service have all evaporated. What remains is the architecture, the
tunnels, the corridors, the floor plans, and the question of what it cost, not in
dollars, but in human dignity, to build a world where the people who made the magic possible were required to
disappear. Yabi 12, the architecture of Eraser. A century after 75 servants
descended into the tunnels beneath Mara Lago, the most remarkable thing about the hidden world they inhabited is that
it is still by design hidden. The tunnels function. The passages connect.
The basement rooms store silver. The service corridors carry staff from the kitchen to the dining room without
crossing through the club's public spaces. The system that Marjgery Merryweather Post commissioned in 1923
that Mary and Sims Wyth engineered into the coral that 75 people inhabited every
winter season for nearly half a century continues to operate. But the world that
created it is gone. The servant class that staffed the great American estates
no longer exists. The social contract that said a footman's highest achievement was his own invisibility has
been dissolved by a century of labor reform, civil rights progress, and democratic aspiration. The Thursday
night dinners for 150 are gone. The measuring tapes for silverware placement
are gone. Mrs. Voit's daily memoranda are gone. Alma, the table linen keeper
is gone. What remains is the infrastructure. And the infrastructure tells a story that the people who built
it never intended to tell. It tells us that the most expensive element of extreme wealth was never the gold leaf,
the imported stone or the antique tiles. It was the labor force and specifically
the cost of making that labor force invisible. $7 million built Mara Lago.
But the tunnels, the corridors, the hidden staircases, the separate entrances, the underground world that
made the visible world possible. Those were the most expensive rooms in the house. Not because of what they cost to
build, but because of what they represented, a permanent commitment to the principle that luxury must conceal
its own production. That principle has outlived the civilization that designed it. The guilded age is over. [music] The
great estates are mostly demolished. The servant economy is a historical curiosity, but the architecture of
concealment remains. It remains at Mara Lago, where H2B visa workers walk the
same corridors that Irish footmen walked in, [music] 1927. It remains in the design principles of luxury hotels,
where staff elevators and service corridors still route employees away from guest sightelines. It remains in
the gig economy where the people who deliver food, clean houses, and drive cars are engineered out of visibility by
apps that ensure the customer never has to look labor in the eye. The tunnels beneath Mara Lago are 100 years old. The
idea they embody is older than the Republic. Post understood this, even if she never articulated it in these terms.
She sat in boardrooms before she was 10. She knew that every system has a cost
and that the cost is always paid by someone. She chose to pay it in coral and concrete, in tunnels and corridors,
in an underground world designed to make 75 people vanish. The Library of
Congress holds the evidence, 108 photographs, 37 pages of documentation,
floor plans showing every passage, every corridor, every hidden room. The
documents are available to anyone who asks for them. They record With the clinical precision of a government
survey, a world that was built to be forgotten. And that is the final architecture of Eraser. The rooms exist.
The records exist. The evidence is public, but no one looks. The tunnels are hidden not because they are sealed
or secret, but because the habit of not seeing them is so deeply embedded that it functions without effort. The
invisibility that Post designed into the foundation of her estate has become self- sustaining. It no longer requires
servants or schedules or measuring tapes. It requires only the assumption shared by everyone who walks through the
gilded rooms above that the beauty is all there is. Beneath the floor, the
tunnels wait. They have waited for a century. They are patient. They were built to be forgotten. And they have
succeeded at the one thing they were designed to do. The most durable thing about Mara Lago was never the gold leaf
or the Spanish tiles. It was the agreement that some things should not be seen. That agreement is carved into
coral. It is documented in the Library of Congress. It is maintained by federal law. And it is even

[admin]

Trump backs Iran over missile programme, Vance warns Netanyahu over peace deal | Janta Ka Reporter
Janta Ka Reporter
Jun 18, 2026

US President Donald Trump has caused a political earthquake of sorts by defending Iran's missile programme, much to the discomfort of his allies, including Benjamin Netanyahu. This has prompted US Vice President JD Vance to warn his Israeli counterparts to be careful when launching personal attacks against Trump over the Iran peace deal. In this video, Rifat Jawaid analyses the seismic shift in the US position on Iran.



Transcript

three major developments that could easily redefine the geopolitical situation in West Asia for a very long
time. First, US President Donald Trump has defended, yes, he has defended Iran's right to continue with its
ballistic missile program. Trump's deputy JD Vance has warned the leeches from the illegal settler colony to be
careful before attacking Trump over the Iran peace deal. And as I speak, the US military has announced the end of its blockade over the Persian Gulf.
Meanwhile, two top figures from the Iranian government have hardened their stance against the US and the illegal
settler colony, making it abundantly clear as to who has the upper hand in the current situation. This would be the
broad focus of my video tonight. Also in this video, an Iranian Lego Phil mocking Trump as he conceds defeat against the Islamic Republic. So please stay tuned.
What happened today can easily reshape the political complexities of West Asia.
First, Trump sensationally defended his decision to justify Iran's ballistic missile program. Now, who would have
thought this? Who would have predicted this scenario only 100 days ago?
You said in the press conference, you said you don't mind Iran having ballistic missiles. Can you elaborate on that? I I want to make sure we understand your position.
No, I want to I'm saying that if other countries have them, it's a little bit unfair for them not to have some. A ballistic missile is not the same thing
as what we're talking about when we talk nuclear. But if Saudi Arabia and Qatar and they all have some, I would say in relative proportion, I think it's okay.
That's what I mean. Remember when America and the settler colony launched an illegal attack on Iran on
28th of February, one of their objectives was to end Iran's ballistic missile program. Donald Trump himself
and his minions time and again made their intentions clear to the wider world.
And now he is the biggest defender of Iran's right to continue its ballistic missile program. Clearly Trump's desperation has reached a new height.
Then his deputy JD Vance launched a blistering attack on the barbarians from the settler colony while warning the
members of the rogue regime of war criminal Benjamin Netanyahu. Vance made a couple of stunning admissions. He told
members of the Israeli government to be careful while attacking Donald Trump over the Iran peace deal. He also reminded the Israeli terrorist how
twothirds yes twothirds of the deadly weapons according to him that the Israelis used in the recent conflict
were provided by the US using American taxpayers money. This was some confession of complicity.
Go ahead.
Thank you sir. Jordan Conrad with the Gateway P. I want to talk um back to the Lebanon.
Um there's a report in Axios that Netanyahu's fuming over this. Uh he doesn't Israel doesn't feel uh bound to
theou as it relates to Lebanon. If as you mentioned your frustration with Israel strike Israel striking in Beirut hitting apartment buildings. If that continues, could it torpedo the deal?
And what would the US's response be to a broader war in Lebanon involving?
Yeah. Well, I I don't want to get into hypotheticals that could torpedo the deal because I think the president's expectation is that all of our friends,
the Israelis, the Arabs in the region, we're going to work together and actually see this deal to completion.
Now, I saw the Axios report, uh, you know, that that that Netanyahu is fuming. That's not reflective of the conversations that I've had with him,
but maybe he's saying something to somebody else that he's not saying to me. What I will say, and this does bother me, is that you have seen people within BB's cabinet who have come out
and attacked the deal and in some ways very personally attacked the president of the United States. And I guess my message to them would be twofold. Number
one, Donald J. Trump is the only head of state in the entire world who is sympathetic to the nation of Israel at
this moment in time. And he happens to be the head of state of the world's superpower. If I was in the cabinet of the Israeli government, I might not be
attacking the only powerful ally that I have anywhere left in the entire world.
And the second message I would give to some of those cabinet members, BB to his credit has not gone down this path, but to some of these cabinet members in
Israel who are attacking the president, United States, the other thing that I would say is that over the last three months, twothirds of the defensive
weapons that have protected your homeland have been built by American hands and paid for by American tax
dollars. The problem for Israel is not Donald J. Trump. And anybody in Israel who thinks their biggest problem is the
president of the United States needs to wake up and smell the reality of the situation that country is in. Thank you all.
Before I come to the political earthquakes that Trump and Vance have caused amongst American Zionists, let's compare their tone with that of two
prominent figures from the Iranian government. Iranian parliament speaker Muhammad Bakar Khalibah said that 100
Netanyahus were not worthy of tying the shoelaces of the martyred Iranian supreme leader. His words not mine.
Listen to his reaction here. Voiceover done by Kibria.
We also know that we are up against the killer of a marted leader.
The killer of Shahid Sulmani. The killer of the children here. Now the other day we were discussing with a friend that
well we should revenge seek retribution and so on. For example, if in the month of Muharam Shimra killed Imam Hussein
peace be upon him and everyone knows it would they for example carry out his execution as a form of retribution. So
is the vengeance of Imam Hussein. The vengeance of Imam Hussein, the Imam of the time and the government of justice is what must be established.
This vengeance continues until then. If we are to avenge, and by God we will be, this entire nation must avenge the Imam.
We must want the vengeance for the liberation of Huds and 100 Netanyahus can't tie the leader shoelaces. We must
stand with this courage, stand with this vision, stand with this ideal and get this done. The vengeance
for our beloved leader is that they oppressing our Muslims, our Shia in southern Lebanon have been there since
the early days of Islam. They were driven from all their lands.
7 minutesThe revenge for our martyed Imam is to return them to their rightful place.
Those who fought for Iran. I don't want to say certain things in this language, this language. Now look at those who said no to Gaza, no to Lebanon. know
that Lebanon gave 4,000 martyrs for Islamic Iran. More than the total number of martyrs we had in our entire war
here. They fought for 104 days. We fought for 38 days. Iranian Kutz force
commander General Ismile Khani was even more scathing when he said that the future Iranian response would be even
more catastrophic for the West and the wider world if the US and the settler colony didn't stop their atrocities against Muslims. Listen to him here.
Voiceover done by Ruei.
Husbah comprises of the entire Shiite population of Lebanon and even a considerable section of the non-Shiites who could possibly uproot.
I have said in the past that I advise the criminal US and the Zionist regime to refrain from confronting the resistance. You are no match for them.
The experience of recent years has proven this. You were humiliated wherever you confronted them. We still
have a long way to go in our fight against the US and global arrogance. Bab al-Mandde is just one of our tools.
But we have other places we can use should the need arise.
This time if the Americans decide to transgress against Muslims around the world, they must fear not only the
streets of Hus but Bab al-Mandde but many other locations as well.
Therefore, they need to know their place and refrain from confronting the Muslims and the resistance. This is our advice.
Take it or leave it. It is clear from their tweets that Americans are desperate. The US president's posts
clearly reflect a sense of panic. He is definitely trembling when he says that attacks on Beirut should not have
happened. No one should have carried them out. Israel is this or that. Now, this is huge. And I'll tell you why.
This is the first time Iran has projected itself as the defender of the Muslim world. What it means that Iran
will not just wait for the Israelis or Americans to commit atrocities against the Arabs or the Muslims in the region,
but anywhere in the world. That's how emboldened Iran feels after this conflict.
As expected, Trump's seismic shift in policy on Iran has sent shock waves, particularly amongst Israel firsters in
the US. Watch the meltdown of this Israeli first Ben Chaperon. JD Vance appears on Megan Kelly's podcast.
Remember, as we'll get to, Megan Kelly is a person who has said that the Israelis manipulated the administration into war, who has laughed along to the
proposition that the Republican party is a bunch of Israel loving pedophiles.
This is where the vice president chose to retail the argument. So the vice president says that actually the only reason that people would oppose the deal is because they want endless conflict.
Well, let's hear what he has to say.
I think that fundamentally if you look at what they're proposing, they're proposing an endless conflict. They want
this to go on until every bomb has been dropped or until every Iranian is dead.
That is not what the president of the United States wants. What he said is, I said about this to end their nuclear program, to eliminate their ability to
threaten their neighbors and project power, and to fundamentally make sure that no future child would have to deal
with a terrorist regime with an atomic bomb. That's why the president set out to do this. He feels, and he's right,
that he's accomplished that goal and now we can get to the negotiation to see what are the other benefits that we can get from this. And frankly, what are the benefits the Iranians could get from
this if they behave? I just don't think that that people who are criticizing this, one, they're not actually dealing with the reality of what's in it. And
number two, they don't have an alternative. If your alternative is just to drop bombs without any clear goal or
any clear American interest implicated, then you're not making the wise decisions on behalf of the American people.
Well, an entire field of straw men is now burning because this is what we colloially call a lie. This is a lie. An
endless conflict would be, say, a 47-year conflict with an intrigent radical Islamist enemy that wants to destroy America. Some of us have been
calling for the president to end this war quickly. Like from the beginning, I've been saying for literally months that instead of signing onto a useless
ceasefire, that we ought to take or bomb Kar Island, open the straits with operations like Project Freedom with the pres which the president announced and
then unannounced and then leave overwatch to our allies like Israel and the UAE. That is not an endless war. You know what an endless war looks like? It
looks like a bad deal. You know how I know that? Because Barack Obama did it and that war didn't end. And now JD Vance is pushing one and the war ended.
You want to make sure that you have an endless war. An endless war looks like pouring hundreds of billions of dollars in unfrozen funds into a terror
supporting a nuclear weapons seeking sworn enemy of the United States in an attempt to get them to open up a straight that was open before the war
started. But guess who is celebrating the deal and even congratulating Iran for scoring a splendid victory against the settler colony of Israel?
It's Nick Futis. I don't know about you, but I am here for it. Congratulations, Iran.
You fought hard. You left it all on the field and you won. God bless. The Islamic Republic of Iran. And I said it on Twitter. Iran won. Israel lost.
So delicious. Laura Loomer was in my replies. She said, "Gropers are Islamists."
I'm like, "Well, Jews lose. Gropers are Islamists. Yeah, whatever, Jews
are losers. Israel are losers. Zionists are losers. You lose. Iran won. Thank
you, Supreme Leader. On behalf of all Goyam of the world, on behalf of all Gentiles, Americans, Christians, thank
you, Supreme Leader. And Iran, you did it. So, I love to see it. Sounds like a
sore loser to me. Mark Levin, Ben Shapiro, Randy Fine, Josh Hammer, Laura Loomer.
Sounds like a lot of sore losers.
Tucker Carlson too has reacted as he repeated the phrase that I have always used from this platform for Trump. He
too expressed his shock over Israeli slave Trump. This time Tucker has used this phrase instead of me making this spectacular U-turn.
No group has done more damage to the United States. No group has come close to doing the amount of damage to the United States that the neocons have done over 25 years. So when you see them go
totally bonkers and start rending their garments on Twitter, you're like, I kind of enjoying this. On the other hand, you just got to be honest and say, I get it.
You went into this thinking this would be the war that allowed Israel to fully take over and control the Middle East.
They would have no more real imminent threats.
And yet, in one of those ironies that defined life, the war ended up radically diminishing
Israel, radically strengthening Iran, which you consider the existential threat to Israel, which is absurd, but they think that. They've talked themselves into believing that, some of them.
and you lost the only president you had full control over. Trump went from being a slave to Israel to comparing Benjamin
Netanyahu disfavorably to al-Qaeda.
Man, what a ride. Iranian expert Wali Nasar says that the latest development shows that the Israeli strategy to
always use the US to fight its war in the region finally has backfired. This is what he told Democracy Now.
First of all, the most important part is that President Trump decided to sign this himself rather than have Vice President JD Vance do it. Uh which then
now means that he basically owns uh this this document. I think it's important uh in the sense that it ends this war. It
closes the parenthesis on a 100 days of uh both hot war and economic war that has devastated the the the global
economy uh at face value. Uh and the way in which the political commentary particularly in the west and the United
States is interpreting it is that this is a major strategic setback for the United States. Uh the US started this war with the with the belief that it
will destroy the Islamic Republic within days. President demanded utter surrender from for Iran. And now he has to settle
for an agreement. And the way this agreement reads, it looks like that the United States is more eager for this war
to end than Iran is. The United States has given Iran a great deal of economic incentive in order to agree to uh sign
this agreement, end the war, and then agree to negotiate over the larger issues which supposedly uh caused the
war in in the first place. So, and and also it's very clear that in Iran they're very triumphant. They think this is a big victory for them. Not only that
they survived the war, but that they forced the president to sign this agreement. And more importantly, everything the president said yesterday
was uh was breaking taboos. Iran can have enrichment. Iran can have missiles.
Uh Israel cannot destroy buildings in Lebanon at will or should not. Uh and that Iran is entitled to have its own
frozen assets taken back taken given back to the country.
Former British ambassador to Iran, Sir Richard Dalton, says that Trump should finally realize that Americans are not
entitled to anything or everything just because they are the Americans. Iran has clearly changed this reality forever.
Iran has shown the world economy the door that if you transgress against international norms of sovereignty and
independence and the grounds on which it is possible to conduct a war against another state which is only self-defense
that if you transgress there will be consequences. Now, all of us who've been following this matter for years knew that that could well be an outcome of a
war like this. And let us hope that after their failures in Afghanistan and Iraq and now Iran, the United States
will at last realize the limits of their military power. They're not the only kid on the block. They're not entitled to
whatever they want just because they the United States. Just because they've got the strongest military in the world,
4.5% of their GMPP spent on the military, it doesn't mean that their leaders are capable of executing a
political strategy, which is what war is all about. War is an extension of politics, not a replacement for it. So
maybe Congress will at last get a grip of not just this administration, but that the American people who haven't
supported this war will be able to change the trajectory of US policy which has been so damaging to stability in the
Middle East and so damaging to the rest of us. I will add one more point here.
Up until now I was bit skeptical about Trump's criticism for Israeli terrorist because that's what he has always done for public consumption.
But this time it looks that he's indeed fed up with his Israeli masters
and that's why he is time and again he and his deputy criticizing the Israeli
government. Now this is the biggest achievement for me more than any other victory. To me, this is the biggest
victory that Iran has scored over the US and the settler colony because for the
first time, Iran has caused a direct fight between the US administration and the rogue settler colony of Israel.
I will now leave you with this another edition of fascinating Iranian Lego video produced by Explosive Media, whose
latest creation makes fun of Trump in the midst of the ongoing World Cup football.
Oh here we go again.



That's it from me. Thank you very much for your support of this platform and our journalism. If you haven't subscribed to my channel, please do so
because that's one of the many ways you can support independent journalism. God bless you all.

[admin]

Football Against Enemy - E02A LEGO Series
by Explosive Media
Jun 16, 2026 #FootballParody #Zidane #Trump

When Trump kidnaps the opponent's goalkeeper with a helicopter and Zidane takes his revenge! Watch the funniest football parody animation in this video.