REPORT: JD Vance Thinks Hegseth LYING To Trump About Iran War

We talked earlier about factional conflicts breaking within the Iranian government. Well, very same thing happened in our government. Let's put this up here on the screen. From the Atlantic, multiple reporters here on the byline. The two I will draw your attention to are Vivian Salama and Nancy Youssef. These are very, very good Pentagon correspondents. I followed them both for years at various different outlets. They decamped to the Atlantic,

so their two bylines here definitely makes me pay a lot of attention. And they say, the Pentagon may not be telling Trump the full picture about the war. Now, I don't think you really need a reporter

to tell you that part, but the rest of it is interesting. They say Vice President Vance is worried about what the US is running low on weapons. In closed-door meetings, J.D. Vance has repeatedly questioned the Defense Department's depiction of the war in Iran and whether the Pentagon has understated what appears to be the drastic

depletion of U.S. missile stockpiles. Two senior administration officials told us the vice president has queried the accuracy of the information the Pentagon has provided about the war, has expressed concern about the availability of certain missile systems in discussion with President Trump.

The consequences of a dramatic drawdown, its reserves are potentially dire. US forces would have to draw from the same stockpile to defend Taiwan against China, South Korea against North Korea, and Europe against Russia.

Both Pete Hegseth, the secretary of defense, and General Kane have publicly said U.S. weapons stockpiles are robust and portrayed the damage to Iranian forces as drastic. Vance's advisors, who spoke with us on the condition of anonymity,

told us the Vice President has presented his concerns as his own rather than accusing Hegseth or Kane of misleading the President. Vance is trying, they said, to avoid making this personal or to create divisions in Trump's war cabinet. Some of his confidants believe, however,

that Hegseth's portrayal has been so positive as to be misleading. In a statement, he said that the Pentagon chief is doing a great job and cited his work with Trump to ensure a wearier ethos. White House officials said he asked a lot of probing

questions about strategic planning, as do all members of the President's national security team. I think that about sums up the whole thing, don't you? Is you've got somebody who's got a concern here about the war, but you can't say, hey, sir, they're lying to you because they are. That's very obvious. So, you know, you got to play the game and you got to do, oh, well, actually, he's a great guy, but maybe he's got bad information, right?

It's like, no, the information's just bad. The problem, and I already know this, this is based on no inside info, but this is just my own theory, is Trump loves Hegseth. That's why Hegseth is out on the,

why do you think he does these bullshit press conferences about how we're taking it to the enemy and the warrior ethos and everybody loves President Trump and decisive leadership and we're winning? Why do you think that they do that, right? They do it for his consumption. Trump loves it and he berates the press.

What did he say, compare them, again, I don't know anything about the Bible, something about Pharisees, he's like, people are Pharisees, like some biblical curse or something on the members of the press corps. Like, that's what it was all, it's all designed for one audience

so that whenever he goes to him and tells him how much we're winning, that he's gonna believe it. And then, same with the munitions stuff. Like, remember those early truths from Trump. We have all the weapons we could ever need. Where do you think it's coming from, right? Is anybody putting a spreadsheet in front of the man

and being like, here's what you use and here's what we got left, or they're saying, don't worry, there's plenty more to pull from, but they're not explaining necessarily the consequences. At the end of the day, let's just be clear,

this is all Trump's fault. wanted to do this. He's not a complete idiot. He can read, he reads the same Wall Street Journal, you know, pieces that you or I do about munitions stockpiles. So he knows if he wants to, but he's also being told something very, very different from a lot of the people who are directly in charge of running the war.

Well, and Trump decides to believe the things that he wants to believe. That's why when our own military officials were maybe way too meekly being, you know, I see some problems here, right? There could be some issues here, sir, but of course, we're behind you if you want to do it. What he wanted to hear was the Israelis going,

oh, it'll be a cakewalk, don't worry about it. You'll take out the Ayatollah, you'll be in and out of there three to four days. Because that's the narrative he wanted to hear. That's what he chose to believe. So he may be reading the same Wall Street Journal pieces about, oh, the munitions are diminished in this way and that way, and 50% of that used, and 60% of this used,

and we barely have any interceptors left, and Israel's down to double digits of interceptors, etc. But if you've got someone else coming in with a happier narrative, he'll just go, oh, well, those people are just fake news and they hate America, and I'm going to go with what Hegseth is showing me in my two-minute hype reel

of all the ways that we're bombing and destroying the Iranian military. So, you know, he, his own mental, like, he has his own sort of landscape that he's created, an information bubble that he himself enforces

even when counter-information is easily, readily available. In terms of the Hegseth-Vance thing here, too, I mean, I think that J.D. Vance, based on this and based on other reports that have seemingly come from his camp, I think he wants to have distance from this war because he recognizes it's disastrous.

He recognizes it's politically extremely unpopular. He still, you know, wants to be president in the future and thinks that one way that he can help position himself is if there's this track record relayed through the media of all the objections he had and all the concerns he had behind the scenes, et cetera, et cetera. Now, I think that's foolish. I think, you know, you're vice president,

you're gonna own whatever happens at this administration, but there also is that political game that is being played. And this article also indicates that Hexeth fancies himself a future presidential contender, so he's playing the same game at the same time. His calculus is, no, the way for me to get ahead is to be the most sycophantic devotee of Donald Trump, which is why I'm going to do my press briefings at 10 a.m.

I know that's a time when Trump is watching Fox News. That's why he's doing all this performative victory narrative more aggressively than literally anyone else, because he knows that's what Trump wants to hear. And Pete, whose primary background is in television and Fox News cable production, probably has a better lane to understand the mentality of Donald Trump than basically anyone else.

I also heard, again, this is just from a few people, I heard Pete wants to be the governor of Tennessee. That would be something that he has his eye on. And that's where he used to live previously. Again, that's just my own personal-

I think you should resign and pursue that dream. You know, I think there's no time like the president. Carpe diem, Pete, go for it.

Right. You know, I mean, it's Tennessee. How much damage can you really do, right?

So I'm sorry, Tennessee. All right, I'm sorry. No offense to Tennessee, which I actually do love as a state, but I don't even know who the governor of Tennessee is. That's how important they are to the rest of the nation. So if the residents of Tennessee want Pete Hegset to be their governor, I say they should have that right.

Go for it today. I agree. Don't they have great, isn't that in Tennessee? I'm pretty sure. All right. He could go. There's beautiful lakes there, mountains.

It's Nashville, obviously. There's a lot of great cities.

Okay, let's continue here. B-2, let's put this up here on the screen. Again, just to this point, this is from the New York Times. I mean, at a certain point, this is almost repetitive, but having it on the record is really important. So let's read all the numbers. The United States has burned 1,100 long range stealth cruise missiles built for a war with China.

This is for a person close to the total number of remaining in the US stockpile. The military fired off more than 1,000 Tomahawk cruise missiles, 10 times the number that it currently buys each year. The Pentagon used more than 1,200 Patriot interceptors

in the war at more than $4 million a pop and more than a thousand precision strike and ATCAM ground-based missiles, leaving inventories worrisomely low. The Iran war has significantly drained much of the US military's global supply of munitions

and it forced the Pentagon to rush bombs, missiles and other hardware to the Middle East from commands in Asia and Europe. The drawdowns have left these regional commands less ready to confront potential adversaries like Russia and China.

The Defense Department has not disclosed how many munitions it used in the 38 days of the war. The Pentagon says it now hit more than 13,000 targets. Now again, if these numbers were bullshit, they would say that they were bullshit. Let's just be very clear about that. So the truth is very clearly that in the first two days alone, two days of war, they fired

six billion in munitions. Let's do some quick math here for the Patriots. 1,200 times four million. Let's see how much that is. So 1,200 times four million is what? That's like 4.8 billion, is that right?

Yeah, it sounds right. I might be totally wrong. It's either 48 billion or 4.8 billion. Either way, I'm using the Google back here. But the point remains, that's an insane number, no matter what, that it actually is.

And it's almost unfathomable, because we're not just talking about it in terms of dollars. What we're talking about is in terms of how long would it be to replace said interceptors? And you and I know the answer. 10 years, at a minimum, at a minimum 10 years.

Which leaves you really, really unsafe. And also, what, China doesn't read the news? Russia doesn't read the news? Russia doesn't read the news? North Korea doesn't read the news? I think that they all can. They all have New York Times subscriptions. So, and again, you know, these numbers,

one of the most consistent pushback I get when I talk about this is, you idiot. You think that they would just tell you the exact number? And I'm like, no, I don't. But we live in actually a much more open society than people take, that people just like seem to forget. Pentagon has got to go to Congress.

All you got to do is read these boring ass reports for production timelines and deep within the spreadsheet are all of the numbers for the last 10 years. Not the exact number, but a general ballpark, because again, they have to justify each weapon system and what they're buying it for.

So you have a pretty good idea of what the exact total number is. Now, in terms of what's being used, you're really going off of ballparks, but same, I mean, these think tanks and all these people, they are scarily accurate

whenever it comes to their overall projection. And it's been tested time and time again. They would come out with an estimate from the April 2024 conflict, where we shot down all those Iranian missiles and drones headed towards Israel. Then a year later, it would all get confirmed in an open source.

So you really should trust a lot of this stuff, because this is not just from leaks, this is also from estimates that have come out from a lot of these think tanks. And the real reason why any of this would matter in the first place, let's put B3 up here on the screen,

is as they pointed to, some of those missiles, they were literally designed for a potential conflict with China. And now, you know, the same war planners and others are openly just leaking this stuff. The Iran war complicates contingency plans to defend Taiwan.

Fully replacing stockpiles of weapons fired in the Middle East could take up to six years. That's an accelerated timeline. Let's keep that in mind. And they have burned through so many munitions that some administration officials increasingly assess that the U.S. couldn't fully execute these contingency plans from a Chinese invasion if it occurred in the near term.

Wholly replacing would take up to six years, kicking off discussion in the administration about adjusting operational plans in preparation for any order by the military to defend Taiwan. Xi Jinping is now preparing to hold his high stakes summit in Beijing, and China's military is still reeling from a purge of generals. What they say though, specifically inside of it, is that the people familiar with the munition status didn't detail the precise impact that the depletions would have on the

Chinese-Russian related talks, but it means that it would potentially increase the, on the agenda item for where they would discuss Taiwan in some sort of potential summit. I would also note ahead of the Taiwan summit, something very interesting happened yesterday, which very few people paid attention to. Facebook and or Meta tried to acquire this new Chinese AI company. It was a $2 billion acquisition, and they're actually going through it right now.

China out of nowhere just came out, barred the founders of the company from leaving the country. And their equivalent of the FTC just came out and like, yeah, no, that deal, it's not going to go through. Now, practically, the deal probably will still go through because it was already happening and there's some offshore stuff. I don't fully understand it. It's a signal, though, to the United States and others.

All this financial entanglement, that's over. We don't want much more of that. We want it totally on our terms. So I view all of these things as interconnected. You know, their economic leverage is their smartest play. They've used it time and time again, not just us,

Korea, Japan, any country that they're having problems with. So I put these two things together. They're feeling a little bit more bold, they're definitely going, they're building a long game for any potential problems. And they can do math in the same way that we can, except their math looks a hell of a lot better than our math.

Yeah. I mean, listen, this is the goal of every administration, both Republican and Democrat, is the idea that our military needs to be of a sufficient size and scope to be able to counter China, whether you agree with that approach or not, that certainly has been what the U.S. Empire has done. And I think there's an argument for it.

Like you don't want to be left vulnerable. You know, I personally think, look, I feel for the Taiwanese people, I personally think it would be insane to go to war with China over Taiwan, but we do need to get our semiconductor act together,

and we have not done that. We have not gotten our act together on any number of the critical supply lines that China has significant control over, which is why when Trump tried to implement a massive tariff regime against China, China was like, great, let me show you some of the cards

that we hold, And Trump immediately folded to use the analogy that he prefers. So the other way you can tell that this reporting about munitions is relatively spot on is the fact that the administration is desperately trying to get more funds from Congress to rearm both for the short

and the longer term. They keep making these announcements that like, oh, we went to the Ford and the automakers so that we can invoke the Defense Production Act and get them to start making, helping us with weapons production. And, oh, we have this agreement with all of the military industrial complex providers that they're going to quintuple production or whatever the number was. Oh, they met with us. And, oh, my God, turns out they're happy to make more money. Isn't that crazy? But none of those things are going to be built out

until they actually have secured the cash from Congress, which has not happened. So, as of now, there is no increased ramped-up production. We're still on the same, you know, slow timeline. And burning through, I mean, we burned through so many different types of munitions

during the period of this war. And again, I think it looks increasingly likely, certainly possible if not likely, that we will go back into some level of hot conflict because you've got Rubio and Trump both signaling that they do not find this limbo to be satisfactory. You've got continued pressure on the U.S. economy

and all of the logic pushes in the direction of some sort of heightened conflict. You know, at the same time, just to get back to the like Vance Hexeth thing, like Hexeth is such an incredible, this is just such a ridiculous country

we live in at this point. We put B4 up on the screen. Ryan is the first to report this, and then the Pentagon actually confirmed it. They did some whole like presser with Kid Rock. But he had this first, he said, "'Kid Rock' flew to Fort Belvoir this morning on his private jet, took a joyride

on two Apache helicopters with War Secretary Pete Hegseth. According to multiple Army sources, Apaches typically have two pilots. They went up with one, so the boys could each ride shotgun, I'm told. Apache helicopters are not stationed at Fort Belvoir, so unclear where they came from. Spokesperson at the base referred questions

to the Secretary's office. So, we're in the middle of a war, and, heck, Seth, the Secretary of War is spending his time taking Kid Rock on joyrides in military assets. So, that's kind of the state of the country right now.

Yep. It's almost like two... It's like a skit. It's like an SNL skit, you know, that they're hanging out with Kid Rock. And Kid Rock even did a brief, look, whatever, all right? I got nothing against Kid Rock, I guess.

I like the Born Free song, that's about it. But beyond, you know, why is the Secretary of Defense hanging out with Kid Rock? And then giving him joy rides on military helicopters, and then letting him do like a briefing or whatever with the troops.

Maybe the troops wanted it, okay, fine. But you know, this is where your attention is, dude. Really? And remember, you know, we talked about his press conferences earlier. He actually gave one on Friday, which is really important

for the same victory narrative. Remember, this is the stuff that's going into Trump's brain. Let's take a listen.

Operation Epic Fury has delivered a decisive military result in just weeks. Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan. As the president has pointed out, all took years, decades. Vague missions, shifting sands, little to show for it.

Operation Epic Fury has been laser focused from the very start, as I've said to all of you. Clear mission objectives, and ultimately Iran will not have a nuclear weapon. It's a bold and dangerous mission, a gift to the world. The War Department stands ready for what comes next,

locked and loaded. May God continue to bless our warriors each and every day, and on each and every mission.

Okay, yeah, this is Korea and Vietnam, they were declaring victory all in the middle, it's so ridiculous. There are a few important things that we did want to flag. Let's put the next one up here on the screen. The House is now voting on Josh Gottheimer's Iran War Powers Resolution.

And the only Democrat, Jared Golden, to join the Republicans defeating it is an original co-sponsor now of the Gottheimer Resolution. So nine members had introduced that new War Powers Resolution actually on the Iran war. It would still direct the U.S. president to end U.S. military action against the Islamic Republic of Iran within 30 days. So signs of some movement inside of Congress, Crystal, but still none of the requisite amount

of pushback needed, I think, in the Senate and in the House.

This one is really interesting and kind of funny because so when the original War Powers Resolution push was being made by Ro Khanna and Thomas Massey and others, Gottheimer and Jared Golden and some others introduced this alternative War Powers Resolution to which had like, you know, a timeframe on it and was much weaker to undercut support

for the more fulsome War Powers Resolution being offered by Ro Khanna and Thomas Massey. So now, that original and that thing had like, you know, a date set of like, okay, this is, you know, the timeline

and here's how we're gonna vote on it, et cetera. And so now that one is coming up. Jared Golden, who had originally sponsored this War Powers Resolution as a way to undercut Ro Khanna's War Powers Resolution, now he is in the position of,

okay, so you were originally co-sponsor of this thing when you thought that this was going to undercut a vote on a War Powers Resolution. Now that it's actually coming up for a vote, what are you going to do? And, of course, Julian with DropSite News

caught up with Josh Gottheimer, who was another one who obviously spearheaded this original War Powers resolution and asked him, hey, did you talk to Jared Golden? What's he gonna do? How's he gonna vote? Which seems like kind of the first thing

you would wanna know here in terms of whether it will be successful or not. And he's like, oh, I haven't talked to him, I don't know. So we'll see how all of this goes down, whether Golden votes against his own War Powers resolution because he actually appears to be pro-war. He's also retiring,

so it doesn't really matter to him politically how he appears or how much the base hates him appearing as a warmonger, monger siding with the Trump administration on their disastrous war. So we'll see how this all goes. Maybe they'll find another rotating villain

to fill in that spot to make sure that this one fails as well. But right now the outcome is pretty uncertain. So definitely something to watch.

Yes, that's right. All right, why don't we move on to the ballroom? Hey, if you liked that video, hit the like button or leave a comment below. It really helps get the show to more people.

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