Warning: This is a rush transcript generated automatically and may contain errors.
Asbed: Hello and welcome to this Conversations on Groong episode. In 2024, when Americans and the America First base voted Donald Trump back into the White House, one of the key promises was that of peace. But just months in, Trump bombed many Iranian nuclear sites, empty ones, and declared a ceasefire on Truth Social, complete with a photo op blitz. Tonight, we dig into the so-called 12-day war, the goals behind it, and whether MAGA is quietly embracing war as part of the platform.
We’ll also look at Israel’s role, Congress’s silence, and what it all means for Iran and the United States, the region, and the future of multipolarity. To discuss how we keep going around in circles, in a moment we’re going to be joined by retired Lieutenant Colonel Karen Kwiatowski, a U.S. Air Force officer who also served in the Pentagon as well as various roles in the NSA, the National Security Agency.
Hovik: But before we get into it, Trump says that bombing Iran is part of Making America Great Again. We say it’s time to make analysis great again. competent, interesting analysis. While some MAGA influencers are busy justifying a brand new forever war, we’re over here asking the real questions, bringing you the voices that mainstream media want. So if you’re tired of the spin and want more honest, critical conversations like this, hit that button on Apple Podcasts and Spotify and subscribe to us wherever you listen to us, actually.
And if you can spare a few bucks not already pledged to Lockheed Martin, why not give it to us, podcasts.groong.org slash donate, and your support will help keep us going and help keep spreading the message. Now on with the show.
Asbed: Lieutenant Colonel Karen Kwiatowski, welcome back to the Groong podcast.
Karen: Thanks for having me. I appreciate it.
Asbed: Great to have you.
Hovik: Great to have you back, Lieutenant Colonel. So let’s begin with trying to make sense of what’s happening in the ceasefire. Israel launched a brutal, unprovoked war, targeted assassinations of leaders, political leaders, military leaders, scientists, the top nuclear negotiator, their families and children. And there was even talk about assassinating Ayatollah Khamenei, who is the a spiritual leader of Iran, and talks about regime change.
Even Trump joined into that discussion. And on June 18, the United States ordered strikes on Iranian nuclear research sites. And days later, Trump declared a ceasefire on Truth Social and praised both sides and followed up with a flood of selfies. The ceasefire was set for 9 p.m. on Monday, Pacific time.
And there seem to have been a few violations, but so far it’s holding. Will the ceasefire hold, in your opinion? Why is Trump so confident? He did say it will last forever.
Karen: I don’t think it would last forever. That would be very interesting to see that because Israel is notorious. I mean, probably the most notorious nation on the planet in violating ceasefires. I mean, they usually violate them immediately before they start and right after they start consistently and then sporadically thereafter.
I mean, Lebanon, South Lebanon is a beautiful example. Not beautiful, but that’s to use a Trump word. It’s a beautiful example of how Israel behaves. And it really behaves in a way that we would have to say literally is lawless.
It is a lawless state. It does not care anything for international convention, moral convention. And it’s open about this. I mean, you know, the Mossad’s view, rise up and kill first.
This attitude, which is very different than… the evolution of how nation states would go to war, at least from the European tradition. Now, that’s not to say that war is not brutal and all these rules are violated when countries go to war. But Israel has made an art out of violating the norms of war. And they take advantage of it because they claim to be…
You know, they claim in the Western world, like to the United States, Israel is considered the only democracy in the Middle East, which is ludicrous. But that is their claim. They repeat that frequently. I don’t know if they believe it or not, but they repeat that frequently.
And they also consider themselves insane, very… repeatedly in the Western audience, that they are the vanguard of the West in the Middle East, that they are the defenders of Western values. And of course, that cannot be true. It cannot be true in the way that they conduct themselves, because unfortunately, the U.S. actually, in this respect, we’ve become more like Israel. The way, in particular, the things that led up to the strike that Trump authorized and celebrated after the fact.
You know, he lied to the media. He lied to his own people. He lied to the world. He lied to other nations, you know, the global leaders of the world who are watching this with great concern.
And he lied to them. He lied to the Iranians in the sense that the sixth meeting was scheduled for the day after or the day and a half after these strikes were made. He also celebrated the fact on Truth Social and on Twitter or X, he celebrated the fact that the very people he had been negotiating with Israel had slaughtered. They had targeted assassinations of the negotiating team.
Now, you know, war is war. You know, obviously you want to kill the enemy. But this idea that you go after the diplomats first is very… you know, non-traditional, it’s very brutal. It’s just wrong.
There are no rules. And by Trump, and of course, Netanyahu behaving the same way, behaving as if there are no rules, that means that there will be no rules when time comes to deal with America. So the lessons taken by other countries have to be, you cannot trust President Trump. He will say one thing, he will stab you in the back the next day, then he’ll say something else, and he’ll make a joke about it when your kids die.
So this is who he is. It It doesn’t mean that’s who he really is as a human being. I don’t know. I don’t know him personally.
But who he is as a leader of a state is unreliable, deceitful, and untrustworthy, which will impact how we, as the United States, how we negotiate treaties with any country, including the big guys like Russia, like China. Who can trust Donald Trump? That’s one of the things we’ve learned from this, I think. Even the people that like Trump and support him, and certainly I His America First theme is very appealing to me.
I think that was a good thing, but he’s proven himself to be completely untrustworthy.
Hovik: So what were the larger goals? Because, you know, we heard terms like total surrender, you know, and now it seems, you know, we heard regime change. And now it seems like I think Karen Leavitt said that we are pursuing a path of negotiations with Iran. And yeah, what was achieved?
Who won this conflict?
Karen: Oh, yeah. Well, I think who won was Iran. Iran won, because Iran has way more friends now than it did before. Iran’s the people are united around the leadership around the state.
They may be unhappy with many aspects of the state, but when you attack a government, especially in an unprovoked manner, in a brutal manner, in an unfair manner, And your country then responds in a manner that was cheered by probably 90% of the world’s population. I mean, every time a missile got through in Israel, the Global South and most of the rest of the world was cheering that. They were cheering it now. So that is a huge win for Iran.
Did they take their hits? Yes, they did. They’re an extremely large country with a very large population, 90-something million people they have, and the number of deaths that they took were much smaller in proportion than the deaths and damage done to Israel, which is far, far smaller. Now, from the Israeli perspective, they could say, we’re far, far smaller, but we did a lot of damage.
But it is a militarized Spartan state. Everything in Israel is oriented around the military. It is a military construct. And of course, it’s not self-supporting.
It is supported by the United States completely. In fact, I think one of the big aspects of the ceasefire and why Israel is… at least so far in the few days that have passed since the ceasefire has been in place, have honored it or seem to have honored it, is because they are out of weapons. They have pretty much gone into their stash of defensive air weapons, replacement parts. Those F-35s, they use F-35s.
And every hour you use an F-35 is several hours of maintenance and parts. And all that is provided, the software comes out of Nevada and an Air Force base there. There’s Parts that have to be shipped from the United States and from Europe and other places. And they’ve already dropped the equivalent, I think it is, of eight Hiroshima-sized bombs of ordnance destructive power on Gaza.
So that was weapons and material, maybe not air defense. but it was certainly part of their military stash. So I would say Israel’s pretty depleted and they needed this ceasefire for the same reason we talked why Russia says Ukraine wants a ceasefire so they can rearm. And I think it’s very clear that’s part of what Israel is doing here. So, but for the Israelis, They’ve never taken hits like this before.
So the society there is disturbed. I don’t think Israelis get what they are doing to Gaza as being bad. I don’t think many of them consider it to be bad. It’s just put it out of their mind.
They don’t think of the Palestinians as people.
Asbed: Are they aware of the human impact in Gaza?
Karen: Yeah, I don’t think they are, and I don’t think they pay attention to it. And honestly, just like in this country, you cannot get news in the United States. I can’t get news in the United States. I can’t get anything that’s valuable.
I mean, you do get some benefit from from going on X, and you can see what Trump is saying, because then at least you know who he talked to last. You can get a sense of who’s running your government that moment. But for the most part, in terms of analysis and reporting, you have to go overseas. You have to go internationally.
You have to go on Telegram and follow the people that you trust on Telegram to give you factual information. So this argument that they’re having right now as to did or did not the nuclear materials actually get destroyed, particularly at Fordow. Did they, you know… Yeah, what happened to them?
That’s right. Well, you know, Trump and his administration are very adamant that we must consider that these have been destroyed. And I actually think that’s part of his negotiating position, that we are going to assume they don’t exist, therefore we can engage with diplomacy with Iran now because we’ve solved that problem. They no longer exist.
But there is a thing called reality. that people are interested in reality. They really want to know. And of course, in terms of Israel’s interest, obviously we can talk about regime change. I mean, Israel has wanted regime change.
They don’t want regime change. They want chaos, just like they got in Syria. Who puts an ISIS guy in charge of a country? Well, Turkey and Israel did.
Why? Because they both see benefits to chaos in Syria. And it’s not that they say, oh, an ISIS guy, he’s reformed, he’ll be a great leader. No, that’s not it.
And they want the same kind of thing for Iran. But that’s the regime change thing. But Trump wants to be able to Check a box that says, I made a peace with Iran. And he can’t make that peace if there’s discussions out there of, hey, they actually still have 400 pounds of highly enriched or 60% enriched uranium, whatever it is.
And they can, you know, they’re still three weeks from the bomb, like they’ve been for the last 20 years, according to Netanyahu.
Asbed: Yeah. So Syria, of course, is a completely different story. But in Iran, when we are talking about dropping all these bombs and then claiming monumental damage and obliteration, now Trump suddenly says that negotiations are not even necessary anymore because it’s like the stuff suddenly disappeared. I’m wondering if beyond just negotiations, was he sort of forced into action, which he didn’t want to take?
This is where we come back to the America first promise of not doing any worse. So he just did whatever he had to do and got out of it. And then do you remember that he had a very acrimonious exchange with Netanyahu telling him to stop breaking the ceasefire, that beautiful ceasefire that he negotiated. So I think you already answered.
Is the Iran nuclear program dead?
Karen: No, as far as I can see, it’s stimulated. I mean, now they I think they have more focus in what it is that they need to do. And it’s not just protect. It’s not just air defense and protecting their energy, nuclear stuff and other important things.
It is actually I think they need to. I mean, I don’t know what the I told things, because obviously he does not believe nuclear weapons are. You know, good. They’re not they’re not morally good and they’re not and they’re not morally good.
However, the people of Iran can easily look at the Pakistan model. They can look at the North Korean model. And if you have a bomb, you only need one. If you have it, people take you more seriously, people being your imperial enemies, which are right now for Iran is United States and Israel.
So I think it’s it’s going to be accelerated. I think they’ve learned how this works. You know, they immediately arrested a number of Mossad agents in the country, which was a big part of the success here was the internal the infiltration. of Iranian, not just society, but Iranian government with people that are working for the Mossad or spying for the United States or particularly Israel. And they are, you know, you can’t go back to where it was before.
The way that Israel conducted itself with this and the way the United States pretty much weighed in and did a demonstrative long-range flight of the B-2, this is all… It’s all like for show, but once you show that, now we say, okay, so that’s how you want to play. We will play a different way now. We will respond differently.
It’s just like with the example with the Ukrainians with the drones that had been efficient. Once that happens, you learn. And once you learn, it becomes more difficult to repeat that.
Asbed: Karen, you gave the examples of Pakistan and North Korea, and I’ll bring another example, that of Israel, where hundreds of nuclear bombs haven’t given them any peace. I mean, it hasn’t helped them not get bombed or anything. So I think the Iranians should take an example from that.
Karen: Yeah, yeah, that’s true. You know, the Israeli bombs are interesting because they haven’t… Who has actually… I mean, the United States was attacked on 9-11, let’s say, a terrorist attack.
You can have a nuclear weapon and be attacked with terrorist attacks. Many countries that have nuclear, Russia has received numerous terrorist attacks in their history, and they’ve had the bomb. So the asymmetric warfare can continue. So I don’t consider the types of attacks that Israel has faced. has really depended on their nuclear thing because it’s, you know, what are they gonna do?
You’re gonna drop a nuclear bomb on Gaza because some of us went and stole your people? No, they effectively have destroyed Gaza, but they don’t want the nuclear contamination to blow back on their own territory. So, you know, Israel has started many fights. Having nuclear weapons, I think it’s a huge threat factor for them.
But really, it has protected them in some ways, you know, because they haven’t really been attacked. But then you have to say, well, how much of that is American support? You know, the fact that America will always play ball, will always come to bat for Israel, always have its back. You know, there is that.
But really, Israel is a special case. It’s in a militarized country, a militarized society. And I think it was harmed. I think it was harmed greatly by this 12-day war.
And why did it have to be a 12-day war? I mean, it’s almost like he had thought the name up before he even sent the B2s over there or whatever. But the 12-day war, the damage done, I mean, Israel shut down media and banned its own people from doing any video or recording of damage to Israel. We know the damage was done to Israel, and they’re in denial that it was.
And plus the societal impact, Israelis are frightened. The images, stuff that we did see of Israel, uh israelis in shelters and then locking the door so that there are people that clean their floors and you know the immigrants um that wanted to go in the show no no this is just jewish shelters you know the the way that they behaved um very uh cowardly uh i think that reveals a great deal um both to themselves as people you know because when you’re scared you’re reacting emotionally or whatever But after you think about it, you realize I was a real coward. This country isn’t what I believed it to be.
And also, you would think they would blame Netanyahu after the fact as they look at the buildings that have been damaged and the structures and the cost of rebuilding the things in Israel that need to be rebuilt.
Asbed: Yeah. Well, now there’s growing consensus that maybe the nuclear program was not the target itself. Maybe regime change was the ultimate goal and Israel tried to drag the United States in. We went kicking and screaming for a minimum bombing and declared victory.
Would regime change be possible without boots on the ground? Can you do an aerial carpet bombing and expect regime change to happen?
Karen: It doesn’t happen. And we did. We tried to do that. Didn’t we do that in Vietnam?
And it didn’t work very well. And we ended up leaving. And the thing that we wanted to prevent, I mean, immediately, as if a hand was being pulled out of the water, immediately was transformed into exactly what we had tried to prevent for, I don’t know, 10 or 12 years of involvement in Vietnam. So it The track record on, well, also me being in the Air Force, I’m very aware that if you talk to Air Force people, they think they can bomb their way into anything and they can make it all happen.
And then you talk to the Army and Navy and they explain to you how that’s not going to happen. It doesn’t make any difference. But, you know… Yeah, that’s impossible.
That’s why I use the word demonstrative. I hate to use the word performative, but a demonstrative strike. We have a B-2. It can fly 6,000 miles and drop two bunker busters on a target and then get away.
Oh, and that’s after 10 days of Israeli destruction of the air defense, right? And a heads up to the Iranians that we were doing it, pretty much. So we have this… That’s to show something.
You cannot. That’s that’s almost a political act, even though it is a murderous and a barbaric act. It’s a political act.
Asbed: Yeah. So Israel, obviously, is not going to put the troops to invade Iran. There’s absolutely no way. I sure hope the United States is not going to do it.
I don’t want to see American boys putting their lives for something stupid like this. So I was wondering exactly where boots from would come from, because is it? Azerbaijan, which is a very strategic ally for Israel, and Turkey have been holding constant military exercises right on the border, the southern borders of Armenia. And Armenians like to think that this is aimed at them because they’re trying to get an extraterritorial corridor through Armenia.
But the timing of all these… I was a little suspicious. I don’t want to assume a lot of things, but is it possible that these military exercises were timed to take possible advantage of a window of opportunity, geopolitical opportunity to grab territories either from Armenia or also provide the boots on the ground, Turkish boots on the ground inside Iran to effect regime change?
Karen: Well, that’s a great, it’s possible. It is possible. Because there aren’t any troops anywhere else. And Turkey has a massive army.
And I guess Azerbaijan is able to field a massive army. The thing that causes me to hesitate on thinking that, that regime change wasn’t Not for Israelis. Israeli may have a regime change plan. But the idea, you know, the Shah’s son popped up.
I guess he’s been living in the United States. Nobody hears anything about him forever. And all of a sudden he pops up like Ahmad Chalabi, you know, did for Iraq. You know, here’s this guy.
But… At least Chalabi had a government in exile of some sort on paper.
Asbed: The Pakistani response to the Shah’s grandkid was hilarious, I thought. Oh, yeah. Hovi, can you remind me what it was? They told him to…
Shut up. I mean, it was not as nice, but I have to go back and find a tweet. I can’t recite it right now.
Karen: That did not show seriousness in a real typical American-led regime change. Because… we would like to, I think if it was an American regime change, we have many examples of how we like to do that. You know, the color revolutions, but the USAID money, things like that, all the preparation that’s done, the diplomatic insiders in our country who push and manipulate in order to get political support for regime change. That usually goes on years in advance.
And I know Chalabi was working with the Project for New American Century And those people long before we invaded Iraq. So I didn’t see I saw them pulling the Shah’s grandson or son or whoever it is. I saw them kind of yanking him to the fore and quickly discarding him. But he had absolutely no internal support in Iran, none at all, and would be, I mean, that would just be literally impossible.
Asbed: There’s no legitimacy, yeah.
Karen: No legitimacy whatsoever. And so that doesn’t seem like a typical American regime change program. That seems like something they pulled up to say, oh, well, if the Ayatollah goes or if the president is killed, we can… you know, we’ll put this guy in. It’s like, what?
You have no facility or ability to put a guy like that in or any other person for that matter. Well, again, The people that make our decisions in Washington, they take all their information on the Middle East from Israel. Whatever the Mossad tells them, they believe that. They don’t do any of their own independent research.
I don’t know if you saw the Tucker Carlson interview of Ted Cruz.
Asbed: Yeah.
Karen: Did you see that? Ted’s like an idiot. I mean, here he is a senator, and he’s been a senator for many, many years. And certainly he’s done media interviews, right?
I mean, I would think he ran for president. He’s done interviews. And yet he was incredibly unprepared to answer questions about a country he’s demanding war with, because he was one of the ones demanding war. And he admitted that his biggest plank for running for senator was to be a friend of Israel.
Well, I mean, even if it was, why would you tell Tucker Carlson that? That’s just silly.
Asbed: It was silly.
Karen: It was silly. Yeah. And so but I think really the reason Cruz did that is because he hangs out with a bunch of people, other congressmen, politicians, diplomats, people that work in government and funders. He hangs with these people who all believe the same thing he does.
So he’s never questioned about this. It’s never a factor that you don’t know anything. You just have a chessboard, a global chessboard, and you can move pieces from here to there and make it happen, which the U.S. has been accused of doing. But to do it so ignorantly…
You know, again, it’s just nuts. And maybe that’s why Trump is flip-flopping and changing because he was happy with Netanyahu. Then he was mad at him because he broke the ceasefire with his airplanes. And he said, bring those airplanes back like he’s in charge of Israel.
And then… He does it. And then he sends out this, he sent out today a glorious defense of Netanyahu. And he said, he’s, I can’t get over.
I don’t know if you saw the one I’m talking about. It’s a very long truth social. And he goes, he goes, Netanyahu and I have been through hell together. And I’m like, what are you smoking?
This is just unbelievable, his idea of this relationship. And as I read through the whole entire thing, I almost thought it was so over the top, I almost thought it was on purpose to actually show Netanyahu as really big time trouble legally. Because there’s no doubt his people are blaming. They blame him for the hostages not being back.
They blame him for the cost of living that has risen. They blame him for all the businesses in Israel that have closed. They blame him for the ports being either closed or bankrupt. the damage done that somebody’s got to pay for. Will the Americans pay for all that damage?
Probably. But, you know, somebody, Israel has to rebuild. They’re never usually in that position of having to rebuild. And it’s all because of Netanyahu.
And he’s saying, oh, we have a great victory. We have a great victory. I don’t think his people believe it. I don’t think they like him very much.
Honestly, it’s a rare leader that’s going to be popular after as many years that Netanyahu’s been in charge. And he’s corrupt as he can be, which is well known among Israelis how corrupt he is. And here’s Trump saying, oh, he shouldn’t be charged. This is crazy what they’re doing to him.
He should get a pardon. Who’s going to pardon him? Trump, are you going to pardon him? This is like just insane stuff.
Is this guy our president? It’s just amazing the things that he says.
Hovik: And in addition to being amazingly I mean, eye-opening. That letter is basically intervention in internal affairs of a foreign country. But Trump would not know that, you know, it’s okay. I guess he didn’t learn that in school.
But, you know, going back to Netanyahu, I mean… This was entirely his war, you know, from beginning to end. He was responsible for it. Do you think that his political future…
I mean, there’s a lot of noise that, you know, he’s going to be prosecuted as soon as he’s out of government and so forth. But how serious of a blow is this to his political future? And I would think that if someone is a serious war criminal like that, and if he… dragged my country into war, I would want him out immediately. But do you think there is sufficient…
Well,
Asbed: he’s still convicted by the ICC as far as I know, right?
Hovik: Yeah. But do you think there is still sufficient support in Israel for Netanyahu and that’s why he’s in power? Or what are your thoughts about the internal societal support for Netanyahu in Israel?
Karen: Well, so I don’t know exactly, but I thought the government would collapse under the argument about the Hasidic, or not the Hasidic, the traditional Jews that their children go to school instead of serving in the IDF. I guess it’s 10 or 15% of the population. And these guys generally are giving, they’re allowed not to serve in the IDF. And so…
They’re running out of soldiers. You know, people are getting the idea of soldiers themselves. Some of them have been disturbed by what they’ve done and they don’t want to do it anymore. Just like soldiers everywhere.
Right. And so I thought the government was going to dissolve. And at the last minute, they… kept together i don’t know what deal was cut between this faction and that faction but they they came together and um i think and i was i was a little bit disappointed because i thought well shouldn’t the people of Israel don’t they deserve a better leader or whatever and uh i think that politically the people in israel are um so besieged propaganda wise, that they are a put upon people, that they never do anything wrong. They never start wars.
It’s always other people that do this to them. And they’re always defending themselves against this horde of Arabs and other people who hate them and want to destroy them. I think that they are kind of like in a wartime mode all the time. And during wartime, And Netanyahu has leveraged this very well.
But during wartime, you rarely change horses. You keep with that one leader. And Netanyahu has worked that wonderfully for the past 20 years. I mean, it’s one crisis to another, to another, to another.
You know, Israelis are not happy about October 7th. Right. I mean, that was preventable. That was they had warnings about that.
It looks very much to many Israelis that that whole thing never should have happened. Never should have happened. Why did it happen? Well, it happened because Netanyahu needed it to happen.
OK, this is he is a only useful as a wartime or crisis president at this point in his career. So, yeah, I think I think he’s going to die in office is what I think. And I don’t think he’s going to get assassinated. I think he’s going to he’ll get he’ll become ill at some point with whatever he’s got or it will be communicated that way.
Asbed: You’re thinking Ariel Sharon type retirement.
Karen: Well, yeah, I mean. I think he’ll retire and whoever’s next will be somebody he picked and that guy will probably pardon him or ensure that the charges are all not pursued. This is how corrupt politicians end for the most part. We the people, we think, oh, we should find out the corruption and the bad people should be punished, right?
We think that. It doesn’t happen.
And this is something that the MAGA movement has seen firsthand because when trump ran the second time as well as the first time i mean he did this the very first time and this is very typical of of what happens in these in our democracies if you want to call them democracies you know when he beat hillary and hillary had done some bad things and lied and russia stuff they wanted to put Hillary you know put her on trial right after the election but immediately Trump as soon as he was elected the first time he forgave her he said look it’s politics I get it you know don’t worry about it it’s no big deal and he didn’t prosecute her and some people are obsessed with Hillary and they wanted her to really be punished and he didn’t do that and then this time there were a whole range of evildoers influencing our government not just the deep state but You know, the Epstein situation, there was, oh, the auto pen, the auto pen for Biden and all the people that covered for Biden.
And just every little bit of things that caused Trump to be elected because he ran against these things. What has been done? You know, he’s done a lot in five months. He has done a ton of things.
He’s issued more executive orders than I think any president has issued in five months, or six months now. But has he gone after the actual evil? Have any of those guys, even the neocons, have they been exiled from office?
Asbed: Almost nothing’s happened.
Karen: Almost nothing has happened. And he recently… You know, he fired Mike Waltz from the National Security Council and and just that was a month or so ago. And then just last week or the week before, he fired some of the people he had brought in that were Mossad agents for all intents and purposes.
They worked for Israel, not America. And they were on the NSC. And he got rid of those guys too later. So it’s like he’s got a few things.
He’s moving them around. But overall, there is no clear pattern that Trump is exhibiting to hold the guilty responsible. And that is something he was elected on because his movement is a populist movement. And like all populist movements, They’re about justice.
They’re about whatever is perceived to be just. And we, the people, wanted other people in government who had done bad things to be punished, and they haven’t been. They haven’t been. He’s proven to be just like all the other previous presidents.
His style is very different. His qualifications are different, but his output is much the same.
Hovik: So do you think that, you know, with the exception of, I guess, a few MAGA figures like Tucker Carlson and Steve Bannon, many others have stayed silent, even though there is this sense that his base is uneasy in terms of what he did. Do you think that he will be able to fix that problem or will there be a split in Trump’s base? What are your thoughts on that?
Karen: Yeah, um… Well, I thought, well, we saw a split with the decision on this bombing. And also, people who don’t pay close attention, and I really am in that category in one respect, because I remember Trump saying, I’ve got two weeks, I’ll make the decision in two weeks. And it didn’t dawn on me until, I mean, probably just a few hours before he sent those B2s, that he was, that whole thing was a fraud.
It was a charade. The decision had been made long before And probably he knew he was going to call it a 12 day war. I mean, the whole thing was, was orchestrated. And, that was something that’s entering into a war for Israel, entering into another war, starting another war, that was very much opposed by more than the half of his base, probably 80% of his voters opposed that they opposed it on principle.
And, Then by ending it very quickly, I think he got back about half of them. So I don’t think it’s a 50-50 split. I think Trump and his voters, it’s almost like the people in Israel, they’re stuck with Netanyahu. Who are you going to have?
Who are you going to get? Are you going to get somebody better than him, worse than him? We don’t know. So I think Trump’s base is stuck with Trump.
We are easy to forgive him, I mean, on this thing, because basically… for all of the bluster and all of the idiocy that comes out of his mouth, we haven’t put boots on the ground. We haven’t suffered serious losses of any type. I think it’s going to be forgivable. But the problem is, The trust isn’t there.
He has destroyed the trust, not just with global leaders and the rest of the world. He’s destroyed trust with his base. So now the people and many and you think about the people who voted for Trump, many of them were first time voters or second time voters in that they had voted for Trump before. But that prior to those years, they didn’t participate.
Many of them are independents, which means they don’t care what the political party says. make a decision based on their own assessment. And Trump is behaving in such a way that many people’s assessment is permanently changed. So I don’t think his base is split in a significant way. I think his base has become smaller.
And many people, in my opinion, are just not going to support him. They’re just going to go back to the kind of Americans they were before. We don’t vote because it doesn’t make any difference. No matter who you vote for, like Tom Woods says, no matter who you vote for, you always get John McCain.
So they’re tired of it. They’re not going to they’re not going to.
Asbed: Nothing ever changes.
Karen: Yeah, nothing ever changes. Your vote doesn’t matter. They turn away from the president and he can win them back. Because we’re this group of populists, this populist people, we want to hear what we want to hear.
Just like he strokes Netanyahu and says, oh, wonderful Netanyahu. We’re friends. We’re blood brothers. We’re whatever, whatever.
Oh, you’re so smart and wise. You should be pardoned. There’s no crime. Whatever.
That’s Netanyahu. If he says that to the American people and starts doing America first type of things, It won’t take much. And his base will say, well, at least he’s doing that. And they will not they will not desert him.
I don’t know if he knows this. I think he does. He’s very seems very political. He seems to.
Asbed: He’s very inconsistent from time. I mean, sometimes when you talk about any issue, whether you’re talking about these bombings or tariffs or whatever, it’s almost like you have to ask, are you talking about the morning tariffs or the afternoon tariffs? Just unclear. But let’s close with a question that’s been on our minds.
Across the U.S. cities, when these B-2 bombers started rolling and the bombings happened, only hundreds protested the unlawful bombing of a sovereign nation, which was not even an imminent danger to the United States. And we did this sort of unilaterally without any kind of authorization from U.S. Congress. What’s happened to the peace movement in the United States?
Hovik: And not to mention, Lieutenant Colonel, you famously left your position and blew the whistle because of that war. So there were a lot of conscientious objectors in the US. I mean, there were other people like you, but… Yourself in the ranks, yeah.
Yeah.
Karen: Yeah. You know, I don’t really… I don’t see a peace movement in this country. I don’t see a peace movement.
What we have… And I don’t think we’re a fascist state. I don’t believe that. I’m not a critic of America.
Like, say, oh, like, I’m not on the left criticizing Donald Trump as being a dictator. But… I’m a constitutionalist to some extent. I mean, I would like to be one, but our Constitution is nothing.
OK, it is a piece of paper that no one knows what’s in it and no one cares what’s in it. And if you ask people today, 75 percent of the people think the government gives us our rights. We are so oriented towards the state, we might as well be a fascist country. And I’m not calling Trump a fascist.
You know, the label of fascist is usually thrown about by people who don’t even know what fascism is. But, you know, fascism is when the state is integrated in every aspect of your lives and industry is controlled by the state itself. Czech, we have that in this country. The people are tightly, tightly integrated into the state.
And we have that in this country. And then you have a propaganda state and a surveillance state, both of which are burgeoning, they’re growing in the United States. Not as bad as in Germany, or in some of the European countries. Not as bad as in North Korea, perhaps, as a stated…
I think they’re… Are they communist in North Korea? Yeah. So they have an ideology that they run by, which entails all of this stuff.
But see, we call ourselves a republic. We call ourselves a democracy. But we don’t have those trappings anymore. So what we have to say is, like, is there a peace movement?
Well, there is one. But can it get any toeholds? No, it can’t, because we actually operate… as a um almost a proto-totalitarian state that that is how i see it um you know there are calls out of Washington to arrest reporters for reporting that it’s possible that trump did not eliminate the nuclear materials in in four dollars or these other places Natanz or whatever to arrest the reporters for saying that, okay? And yet we have, we proudly talk about our First Amendment rights, but nobody knows what that means.
And there’s no, the Congress, there is a problem that the Congress is owned by AIPAC. So when everything, anything that comes to Israel, anything relating to Israel, they vote as Israel demands that they vote, not what the people do. And it’s almost like, How are you going to fight that? You know, we don’t have a lobby.
The populists don’t have a lobby. That’s why they elected Trump. Trump was supposed to be their guy in Washington to stand up for their interests because the Congress clearly doesn’t do it. And they know that it’s the least popular entity in the United States is the U.S.
Congress. I mean, I think that’s like 17 percent approval rating. So we’re a country that says we’re one thing, but really we are proto-totalitarian empire in decline. So that’s what we’re dealing with.
So was there a peace movement in the Roman empire when it declined? No, but people left at the margins. People stopped supporting the declining state. People left.
And I think that’s what we see here. Yeah.
Hovik: Well, on this note of caution and warning from you, I think we want to leave our listeners and viewers and thank you for your time, Lieutenant Colonel. Thank you so much. We hope you can come back again in the future.
Karen: Absolutely.
Hovik: Thank you very much.
Karen: Okay. Bye-bye.
Hovik: Bye.
Asbed: That’s our show today, folks. We recorded it on June 26, 2025. We’ve been talking with Lieutenant Colonel Karen Kwiatowski. She is retired from the U.S.
Air Force with assignments that included duties as a Pentagon desk officer and various roles at the NSA, the National Security Agency. For more information on her and also us, go to the show notes, podcasts.groong.org / episode-number.
Hovik: Don’t forget to check us out on Spotify and Apple Podcasts. Not only does it help us, but it also ensures that you will be able to get our content on those platforms and leave a rating when you can. Thank you very much. Again, Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
Asbed: Okay, I’ll plug my favorite in, Substack. Substack also.
Hovik: Groong.substack.com.
Asbed: That’s right. I’m Asbed Bedrossian in Los Angeles.
Hovik: And I’m Hovik Manucharyan, in Los Angeles. We’ll talk to you soon. Bye-bye.