The Truth with Lisa Boothe: Buck Sexton on Iran, Regime Change & Manufacturing Delusion
3/3/202624 mincomplete
0:00This is an iHeart Podcast.
0:02Guaranteed human. ABC Wednesdays. The Emmy -winning comedy Scrubs is all new.
0:09This is a whole new chapter for me.
0:10No more sad sack. That's what I'm talking about.
0:13I want both of our sacks to be fun.
0:15You two idiots are perfect for each other.
0:17From executive producers of Ted Lasso and Shrinking.
0:19We were all a part of this victory.
0:21Now get those nachos out of the preemie warmer.
0:25Nachos! Feels like there's more applause for the nachos than my speech.
0:28The new season of Scrubs.
0:30Wednesdays, 8, 7 central on ABC.
0:32And stream on Hulu. Welcome to The Truth with Lisa Booth.
0:41Where we get to the heart of the issues that matter to you.
0:44Today on the show we've got my friend Buck Sexton.
0:46He is the co -host of the Clay Travis and Buck Sexton show.
0:50He is also a former CIA analyst.
0:52And the author of a New York Times best -selling book.
0:57Manufacturing Delusion. We're going to break down the Iran conflict.
1:01What's it really about? What follows the bombing?
1:04What does an exit strategy look like?
1:07We'll also talk about how President Trump laid out last year in Saudi Arabia.
1:11How he sees the future of the Middle East.
1:13Commerce, not chaos. Is that an achievable goal?
1:16We're also going to talk about the parallels between what we're seeing now in Iran
1:21with sort of the jihadist regime.
1:23This brainwashing going on with his new book, Manufacturing Delusion.
1:29We'll talk about some of these tactics of totalitarian regimes.
1:32Whether it be Stalin, Mao.
1:35Dig into his book. What you need to know about it.
1:37Also, we'll talk to him about why it's a New York Times best -seller.
1:41Stay tuned for my friend Buck Sexton.
1:46ABC Wednesdays. The Emmy -winning comedy Scrubs is all new.
1:50This is a whole new chapter for me.
1:51No more sad sack. That's what I'm talking about.
1:54I want both of our sacks to be fun.
1:56You two idiots are perfect for each other.
1:57From executive producers of Ted Lasso and Shrinking.
2:00We were all a part of this victory.
2:02Now get those nachos out of the preemie warmer.
2:06Nachos! Feels like there's more applause for the nachos than my speech.
2:09The new season of Scrubs, Wednesdays, 8, 7 central on ABC and stream on Hulu.
2:16Well, Buck Sexton, it's great to have you on this show, my friend.
2:19Also, we'll get to your birthplace.
2:21Congratulations to New York Times best -seller.
2:23So that's awesome. Thank you.
2:26Manufacturing Delusion, number four, New York Times best -seller.
2:29So I've got to be kind of happy with that.
2:31And I hope all of your fantastic audience goes and gets a copy of Manufacturing
2:35Delusion. Because I've got to tell you, Lisa, the biggest compliment that I've gotten is,
2:39wow, it's much better than I thought it would be.
2:42I said, okay, I'll take it.
2:44Well, also, make the New York Times best -selling list as a conservative is not
2:48an easy task. Thank you.
2:50I actually sold more books than the number three, but it was John Meacham.
2:54And they just decided that he's John Meacham, so he gets to go ahead of
2:57me. But it was total Nepo nonsense, if you will.
3:00Well, you made it. So that's a good honor.
3:03But we'll get to that in a second, and also parallels between what's going on
3:07with Iran right now and your book.
3:09From what you've seen so far with Operation Epic, what do you think this war
3:13is really about? It's about a lot of things.
3:16You know, Lisa, I come from a background, I know you know this, but for
3:20everyone who's joining us, joining the CIA's Iraq office, after the enormous debacle of weapons
3:27of mass destruction assessment by the CIA, by that very office, I wasn't there when
3:33that happened, to be clear.
3:34But a couple of years later, I joined that office of the CIA, and it
3:38was at a time when the Iraq War was going terribly.
3:42And we recognized that we had a full -blown insurgency.
3:46And we were in for, we had kicked the hornet's nest, essentially, and we were
3:50in for a really tough battle to try to stabilize things.
3:53And so those were, those were lessons learned for the whole country, for the millions
3:57who served in uniform, and obviously many who never came home or were grievously wounded.
4:03We had a very painful lesson as a nation in Iraq.
4:08But one of the lessons from all this is these things are complicated.
4:11And I think that people right now need to understand there's many different pieces.
4:16There's a, clearly, there's an interest for the Israeli government and the Israeli national security
4:25and what's going on in Iran.
4:26That's why they're involved in the strike.
4:28There's an interest for the Iranian people in achieving freedom.
4:31There's an interest for all of our Sunni Arab allies in not having the greatest
4:34state sponsor of terror right next door and or funding terrorist groups in their midst.
4:39There's a U .S. national security interest because we don't want Iran to not only
4:43have nukes, but people have to understand Iran with nukes is a massive proliferation threat
4:47as well. Who gets nukes after Iran if they get them, right?
4:51And then, of course, the reality of China buying 90 percent of Iranian oil and
4:56what that does to the geopolitical realities we face with China as a competitor.
5:00You know, Lisa, I just, I try to avoid the simple or the straightforward answer
5:06because one thing I know from these kind of conflicts is the simple answer is
5:09always incomplete. It may be right, but it's incomplete.
5:12Well, that's the thing. It's like, what would an exit even look like from Iran?
5:17Because historically, there's not really evidence to point to where, like, bombing campaigns alone produced.
5:24regime change? Typically, there's got to be some sort of on -the -ground effort.
5:29Usually there's an on -the -ground element.
5:30Yeah, what you're pointing to, Lisa, for example, the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan was our
5:36on -the -ground partners, and we unleashed an incredible aerial assault on the Taliban after
5:429 -11, but the ground fighting was done by the Northern Alliance, and we knew
5:47they were in place, we knew they were capable, and we essentially were their air
5:51force. So they had the best air force by a factor of 10 or 20
5:56in the world, which is a really big battlefield help, especially when you're dealing with
6:00an adversary that has effectively no air force and really no anti -air capability to
6:05speak of. Same thing when we were dealing with the, it was actually a NATO
6:09mission, which I think people forget now, or really a European -led mission in Libya
6:14with the ouster of Gaddafi under the Obama administration.
6:18That was, we were the air force but we didn't really have a ground force
6:22that was reliable or trustworthy in any meaningful sense.
6:25And so that, we turned Libya into Somalia because of all the warring factions on
6:30the ground and led to Benghazi, as everybody knows, and the disaster that happened there.
6:35So in this case, I am not aware of, now that doesn't mean it doesn't
6:39exist, I am not aware of a clear ground force that we can work with
6:46in Iran. I think the hope is that one will coalesce.
6:52And by the way, I want to be very clear, some people may be, Lisa,
6:55guffawing when they're like, yeah, one's just going to come out.
6:58I'm not saying it's going to happen.
6:59I'm saying I believe the Trump administration is hoping to be able to chip away,
7:06well, more like slowing with a sledgehammer, but to really degrade the Iranian state's capability
7:11and then have some emergent faction that says, okay, okay, we're kicking out all the
7:18mullahs, we're renouncing terror. You know, you need a general or 10 to come forward
7:24who have some control in the security forces and say, we'll basically be your partners
7:29on the ground here. That to me is the single biggest variable in this whole
7:33equation because everybody knew the Northern, I mean, Lisa, it should be noted that the
7:38head of the Northern Alliance, Ahmed Massoud, Massoud is what he was known as, Massoud
7:44Shah. Massoud was assassinated, I believe the day before 9.
7:49I mean, they knew they had to take him out in the Northern Alliance because
7:52he was such a capable military ally for the United States.
7:56So they took him out before they hit us.
7:59I'm not aware of a Massoud -like figure in Iran, and that's a huge challenge
8:04for us. But how does the fact that, you know, I mean, you look at
8:09these, the Iranian regime, I mean, they're jihadists, right?
8:13And so they're martyrs, and they're okay with being martyrs, like that's their culture.
8:19And so how does that shape, I mean, because, you know, most people, like if
8:23you see your colleagues getting taken out left and right, you're probably like not really
8:26going to want to raise your hand for the job.
8:28I mean, you know, like, but so how does that shape, you know, sort of
8:33that, what you just mentioned, like the hope and the desire that maybe some of
8:36these commanders or, you know, more reasonable minds step forward and can coalesce sort of
8:41a new regime or a new governance?
8:44But like, how does a jihadist, like want to be martyrs and okay with being
8:48martyrs, maybe impact that or prevent that?
8:52It's, it's a critical question.
8:54And again, I, there's no simple answer.
8:57I mean, I think what you're asking is something that the planners in the Pentagon,
9:01the people that are in charge, you know, Trump himself in the White House that
9:04are making these kinds of decisions have to grapple with, because we are dealing with
9:09a lot of known unknowns to borrow from Rumsfeld, as well as a lot of
9:14unknown unknowns in all of this.
9:16And I think when you're looking at the leadership, you're talking about jihadism.
9:21Yes, there's an ideological hard line across the top of the Iranian government.
9:26There's also their version of the Nazi brown shirts, if you will, the street thugs
9:33of the besiege. The besiege are like the paramilitary arm of the Islamic revolution of
9:39Iran. Street thugs. Yeah, the street thugs.
9:42I mean, they're the ones that go out there, you know, they'll arm them up
9:44if they have to, but they'll go out there and they'll, you know, they'll, exactly.
9:48They'll, they'll, they'll beat the protesters with, with bats and they'll, you know, they'll mess
9:53people up and do terrible things to people's female family members that, I mean, this
9:57is, this is who they are, right?
9:58They're, they're evil thugs. So the thing about regimes like Iran, and we saw this
10:03in Syria as well, is they tend to have a tremendous amount of durability because
10:09their entire existence hinges on the ability to use force to stay in power.
10:15It's like their singular obsession.
10:17The one thing that the regime really cares about is staying in power because they
10:21have no legitimacy if people aren't afraid of them and they don't have all the
10:24guns. So that means that they can handle a lot of internal repression because that's
10:29what they do. That's what they excel at.
10:31They can handle a lot of leadership losses because they've prepared for people to take
10:36over. I mean, you think about something like Syria.
10:39Sure, eventually the regime fell eventually, but there were many attempts over decades to get
10:46rid of, um, uh, the Assad regime.
10:50And I think now he's like playing video games in a tower in Moscow or
10:54something. I mean, he fled to Moscow.
10:58The reality of the Syrian regime was that they, I think in 2012, 2013, there
11:04were suicide bombers who were getting near them in their inner circle.
11:07I mean, they were very close to being taken out, and then they managed to
11:11hold on for the better part of a decade, right?
11:15So these things can be very unpredictable with how long these people are able to
11:21stay in power even when they've lost the ability to project power externally.
11:26They can often maintain a lot of authority internally through force, through violence.
11:32And you're asking about the jihadist side of it.
11:34It's really complicated because you have a jihadist leadership layer on top of a massive
11:41security apparatus, on top of a country of 90 million people with it's multi -ethnic,
11:50it's multilingual, it's you've got like 15, I think, 15 to 20 % are Kurds.
11:55You've got Azeris, you've got Turkmen, you've got Persians.
12:00I mean, you've got all these different groups and factions within.
12:04And so how do you cobble, how do you, this is what we didn't really
12:08think about in Iraq, and I'm just going to say this, the huge and really
12:11unforgivable mistake of Iraq was that for ideological reasons, the U .S.
12:16government and the Coalition Provisional Authority decided we have to eliminate all traces of the
12:22Ba 'ath Party, which is effectively Saddamism.
12:25We have to get rid of every, you know, if you were like a low
12:28-level traffic cop member of the Ba 'ath Party, you can't work in the new
12:31government. Well, that was completely insane because all the people with any training, any government
12:37connection, and any sense of keeping order became our enemies overnight.
12:42And that was how we got a huge insurgency and massive problems.
12:46So I think that Trump realized, I certainly know Pete Hegsath, who served in Iraq
12:51and is a friend of yours and a friend of mine.
12:53I know he knows that lesson.
12:55I really hope that it is able to endure, though, because the enemy gets a
12:59vote in all of this.
13:00And there will be moments, I think, where it's really tempting to not just use
13:05the air power we have, but to want to tip the scales even more.
13:09And that means, you know, boots on the ground.
13:11And that's what everyone, I think, in this country is so concerned about.
13:14Well, and then also, I think one thing we're seeing with all of this, and
13:18then we'll shift your book in a moment, is, you know, President Trump has really
13:22taken sort of an unconventional approach to the Middle East.
13:25Like, Saudi Arabia was his first trip, foreign trip in 2017, 2020.
13:32That was different than, you know, past presidents.
13:35You've got the Abraham Accords.
13:36Like, he's really brought in, like, these Gulf states into the fold.
13:40He's not told some of these monarchies, like, how to do their job, right?
13:43So it's like, he's just taken totally.
13:44And then now we're sort of seeing with the Gulf Cooperation Council, like, put out
13:49this joint statement against Iran, right?
13:51Like, so he's really sort of, like, built a coalition differently than past presidents have
13:56been able to do in the Middle East, which I think kind of helps with
13:59all this. But before we shift to your book real quick, and, you know, looking
14:03back at your experience of the CIA, like, tactically, what we've seen with the Maduro
14:09capture, and then even just Iran, like, it really felt for four years under Joe
14:13Biden that we were just, like, this pathetic wheat nation, and now we're seeing with,
14:19like, the military and the tactical and the intelligence, like, it's badass, right?
14:24So, like, touch on that, just, like, tactically, what you've seen based on your experience
14:28with the CIA, and then we'll get to your book before we go.
14:30I really believe that Trump's focus, or I should say Trump's mantra of you can
14:37just do stuff is an incredible revelation in foreign policy and intelligence circles.
14:43You can actually just do the amazing thing with the United States capabilities.
14:48You can do the things that you want to do.
14:50You just have to have the resolve, and you have to be willing to take
14:53those risks politically. And I can point to a whole range of operations.
14:58I mean, you look at, and now I'll call some of these, these are really,
15:01in most, well, in all but one case, they're either Israeli or joint American -Israeli
15:07operations. But the pager operation against Hezbollah to essentially decapitate Hezbollah leadership by infiltrating their
15:14supply chain is one of the most incredible intelligence operations of all time.
15:20And then you pile on top of that the U .S.
15:22and Israel striking Iran's nuclear facilities and dramatically setting them back and degrading those capabilities
15:29and bringing in that bunker buster, not losing a single plane, defeating all of the
15:34Russian, Chinese, all the tech that the Iranians were able to buy with their oil
15:38money. We defeated all of that, didn't lose a single plane.
15:41Then you add on top of that, the Maduro capture operation where we deployed, and
15:48Trump spoke about this, so it's known now, a never -before -seen -or -heard sonic
15:54weapon to help incapacitate the bodyguards around Maduro.
15:58He had dozens of Cuban -trained bodyguards, and to pull off that operation without a
16:02single casualty. And then this operation now of taking out, along with Israel, the entirety,
16:09really, it seems, of the Iranian leadership after we had already hit their nuclear facilities,
16:14after we had, you know, these are tactical successes and...
16:19and I think have strategic implications that are truly just way beyond what anybody outside
16:27of the planning circles in the Pentagon, the White House, would have thought were possible.
16:31And it's giving a renewed sense of confidence.
16:34It turns out being the most powerful, most capable country in the history of the
16:38planet has some advantages, and Trump is willing to use them.
16:42Got to take a quick break.
16:43More with Buck Sexton on the other side.
16:48ABC Wednesdays, the Emmy -winning comedy Scrubs is all new.
16:51This is a whole new chapter for me.
16:53No more sad sack. That's what I'm talking about.
16:55I want both of our sacks to be fun.
16:57You two idiots are perfect for each other.
16:59From executive producers of Ted Lasso and Shrinking.
17:02We were all a part of this victory.
17:03Now get those nachos out of the preemie warmer.
17:07Nachos! Feels like there's more applause for the nachos than my speech.
17:11The new season of Scrubs, Wednesdays, 8, 7 central on ABC and stream on Hulu.
17:17In your work on jihadist indoctrination and what you've written about, how sort of these
17:22movements kind of construct these moral binaries with oppressor versus victim narratives to try to
17:28mobilize support. What we saw with the Islamic revolution in Iran in 1979, that these
17:35Islamists worked with the communists together.
17:38We're sort of seeing that in our country now as well.
17:42Why do they align and sort of walk us through that a little bit?
17:46Sure. It's the most basic.
17:48And I do get into this in Manufacturing Delusion, which is the book that I
17:51certainly hope your audience will go check and get a copy of.
17:54Help me stay up high on that New York Times bestseller list.
17:57There's a lot of research, a lot of history.
17:59You'll learn a lot of cool stuff in the book.
18:01And part of it is what Lisa's talking about, which is these factions on the
18:05left, ideologically, how do they recruit people?
18:09How do they indoctrinate people?
18:10But then also, why is it that they're willing to work together, even though they
18:15can have very different ends themselves for what they want to see in a state,
18:18in a country? And that's because the enemy of my enemy is my friend.
18:23I mean, it's an old adage that is very applicable to what I would call
18:26these anti -civilizational elements. And in Manufacturing Delusion, one of the things that I try
18:33to grapple with is you have to see that the reason that jihadists go through
18:41a similar process in how they convince people to blow themselves up, there are, they
18:47want different things, obviously. In fact, they would despise the transgender community, and they would
18:52truly be bigoted against it.
18:53But to make somebody so militantly trans that they're willing to engage in violence, which
18:59we've seen now many times, these mass shootings with trans individuals, the ideological brain -mind
19:05control processes have similarities, similarities that people should be aware of, tactical similarities.
19:12And that's what I lay out in Manufacturing Delusion that I think is resonating with
19:17people so much, because they're going, oh my gosh, he's right.
19:19Whether you're in a cell in the gulag in the 1950s, or you're on a
19:25college campus and you've used the wrong pronoun, why do they insist on making you
19:29confess? Why do they insist on your public humiliation?
19:33They could just expel you, or they could just, you know, in the gulag, obviously
19:36make you disappear. It's because it's part of the control mechanism to make you go
19:41through these processes of confession, of isolation, of identity construction.
19:46And these are all, by the way, chapters in the book, in Manufacturing Delusion, that
19:50when people read them, they'll understand how these processes of coercing the mind really function
19:57for any kind of radical.
19:59And that's why I think it's so important today, because Lisa, it's the radicals in
20:04our own society and around the world who pose the greatest threat.
20:07It is not climate change.
20:08It is not, you know, all the whales are going to die, or the polar
20:12bears are going to drown, or, you know, we're not going to have enough racial
20:16justice or something. The worst thing in the world is mass delusion and a state
20:21in the hands of those who are deluded that they can then mobilize for the
20:24purposes of war, of ethnic cleansing, of repression, any number of things.
20:28And so that's why Manufacturing Delusion is such an important book, and I really hope
20:32your audience will do me the honor of picking up a copy.
20:35Yeah, I mean, I think with climate change, like, you get one chance at predicting
20:38doom and gloom, and then when it doesn't happen, we ignore you after that.
20:41I would think so, yeah, you should, yeah.
20:44I want to ask you about, I'm lumping these together for the sake of time,
20:49but you write about, like, with Stalin and Mao and sort of, like, the collective
20:54reinforcement and that it's psychologically costly to speak out or to dissent.
21:02But now we have social media, and we saw, like, even with Black Lives Matter,
21:07people, I think it was, like, this, I don't remember, I didn't do it, or,
21:10like, COVID, right? So it's, like, now we have sort of social media sort of
21:13amplifying that you're a bad person or you're wrong or you're dangerous if you speak
21:19out against what's being sort of, like, collectively pushed.
21:24So how does that sort of, like, amplify regimes or governments or the ability to
21:30control society when, you know, now it's more visible if you're not, you know, part
21:36of the collective? It's that, Lisa, and it's even more because you're more visible, but
21:40also the ability of the state to monitor, to track, to try to hold you
21:47to account. for wrong think, as Orwell would have called it.
21:51Big Brother's technological capabilities. And I think Orwell's work in general is among the most
21:59important of the 20th. And I think 1984 is one of the most important books
22:03written in the English language in the last hundred years.
22:05And you look at what Big Brother was capable of in his dystopian future in
22:11that novel versus what Big Brother is capable of now.
22:14We walk around, we have microphones all over our own houses.
22:17We're typing our own thoughts into our smartphones.
22:21We're sharing with big tech.
22:23We're sharing, therefore, with governments that have access to big tech data, what we're thinking.
22:29And then we also expect that on the other side, the outputs are going to
22:32reflect something, you know, whether it's the search or the video that comes up or
22:37whatever, reflect something that is objective and true.
22:40When, as we know, that's certainly not the case in China, which is the second
22:44largest country in the world, the second most powerful country in the world.
22:47And in America, if we aren't willing to be vigilant about maintaining that intellectual freedom,
22:54it will disappear here, too.
22:55And we certainly saw that during COVID, which I mentioned in Manufacturing Delusion as well.
23:00So I really hope people go pick up a copy of Manufacturing Delusion, How the
23:04Left Uses Brainwashing, Indoctrination, and Propaganda against you.
23:07And my dear friend, Lisa Booth, you are the best.
23:10Thank you so much for having me on your show.
23:12That was our good friend, Buck Sexton.
23:13Appreciate him for coming on the show.
23:15Appreciate you guys at home for listening every Tuesday and Thursday, but you can listen
23:18throughout the week. I also want to thank John Cassie, my producer, for putting the
23:21show together. Until next time.
23:26ABC Wednesdays. The Emmy -winning comedy Scrubs is all new.
23:29This is a whole new chapter for me.
23:31No more sad sack. That's what I'm talking about.
23:33I want both of our sacks to be fun.
23:36You two idiots are perfect for each other.
23:37From executive producers of Ted Lasso and Shrinking.
23:40We were all a part of this victory.
23:42Now get those nachos out of the preemie warmer.
23:45Nachos! Feels like there's more applause for the nachos in my speech.
23:49The new season of Scrubs.
23:50Wednesdays, 8, 7 central on ABC and stream on Hulu.
23:54This is an iHeart podcast.
23:57Guaranteed human.