October 5, 2026 | U.S. SURGES TROOPS To Iran As Hormuz Ships ON FIRE; Trump's BRAIN MELTS As ALL POLLS COLLAPSE!!; CHAOS ERUPTS In Brazil As Far-Right Psychos SURGE!!

Mac (0:00)

All right, guys, welcome to the show. My name is Mac, aka GoodPolitikGuy, and I'm gonna be hijacking Kyle's channel over the next couple of days while he is out on vacation. But we got a lot of important updates that we're gonna get to here. We're gonna start off with some of the latest on Iran, where it looks like the US is continuing this massive military buildup for what seems like, at this point, an inevitable escalation in the next couple of weeks. We also have some wild updates. The war in Yemen has absolutely exploded with Saudi-backed forces desperately trying to claw back at some of the territorial gains the Houthis have made in recent weeks. We just had a Trump campaign event where he was desperately trying to make a final pitch ahead of the midterms, where it looks like, in all likelihood, Republicans are about to get clobbered. And then we're going to finish off with the election results out of Brazil, where the US has done a little bit more than put our thumb on the scale in order to unseat Lula da Silva and replace him with the son of Jair Bolsonaro. So absolutely insane stuff, obviously, off the top here. Remember to like, comment, subscribe, hit the notification bell, all of that good stuff on my channel. You should see it right down below next to Kyle's trying to work our way up to 150K. So all of that is greatly appreciated. Now, with that being said, let's go ahead and start off here with some of the latest from Al Jazeera on this massive military buildup that the US is currently engaging in. So they say here that a US official told Al Jazeera that the USS Theodore Roosevelt Carrier Strike Group left at San Diego Base on Sunday bound for the region, followed a day later by the Macon Island Marine Expeditionary Unit, which is carrying more than 2,000 Marines. The Wall Street Journal also reported that the strike group and naval deployments could involve an additional nine to 10,000 US troops in total, including sailors and Marines assigned to the carrier strike group and other ships. So by the end of November, according to this official, there will be three aircraft carriers and two amphibious landing groups positioned near Iran. So question number one, obviously, what do you need? Three aircraft carriers, thousands of additional troops, and two amphibious landing groups in the region. If you're not planning to do some sort of a massive escalation, question number two is, well, what the fuck kind of escalation are you aiming for here? Because obviously, although the Iranian economy isn't doing great right now with an endless barrage of sanctions and an oil embargo, et cetera, but they're not about to throw up the white flag of surrender. They're not about to give up the fight anytime soon. So another round of sort of like lower level tit for tat back and forth, another bombing run, that's not really going to accomplish anything. So what is the escalation? Are you going to use a couple of amphibious landing groups backed by multiple aircraft carriers to try to take Karg Island, to try to occupy some of the Iranian coastal islands, and have those US troops be effectively sitting ducks getting hit with barrage after barrage of Iranian missiles and drones and having a mass casualty event? Like what exactly is the escalation at this point? There's nothing. Trump has no cards left in his plan to play in terms of a viable military escalation. There's just nothing left at this point but diplomacy. Unfortunately, Donald Trump, because he's completely unwilling to accept that this war has been a humiliating defeat for the American Empire, he's not willing to engage in good faith on diplomacy and accept a deal that would need to be cut in order to bring this about to an end. So it seems like even though this is irrational, even though this is utterly deranged and borderline suicidal, it seems like escalation is inevitably the track that we are heading on right now. We also have, in addition to that, the US now appears to be directly positioning itself for another wave of attacks against Iran, flooding Israel with large numbers of C-17 military transport aircraft as Washington moves, additional troops and aircraft to the region, according to the Israeli security sources cited by Walla.

They also say here that around 3,000 US troops are already stationed across Israel, while Israeli and US forces are coordinating over a possible renewed confrontation with Iran, including potential Iranian surprise missile attacks on Israel and Jordan. Now, this is a possibility that it seems like doesn't get discussed enough, right? Iran is just expected to be this sitting duck and just accept the US pacing of this war. That's not necessarily the case, right? Obviously, we have Trump, it seems like the conversation as well. He's probably going to wait till after the midterm elections to fully restart this war. The war has been absolutely disastrous for him politically going into the midterm. So he has an incentive to wait till after those elections to reignite it. But then you also have Benjamin Netanyahu, who has upcoming elections in late October. He has incentives to restart the war before those elections. Then you also have, as a third possibility, again, Iran, which is its own sovereign actor and could decide to escalate the war at any moment that they choose to, maybe in order to politically punish Donald Trump going into the midterm. So it'll in all likelihood happen at some point in the next month. But it seems like with all of this military movement, you don't do this for no reason. You don't do this just purely for posturing. Now, at the same time, you do have Iran ramping up some of their strikes on oil tankers in the Strait of Hormuz. So here from Brett Erickson, he says, major breaking. Three vessels have been reported struck by Iran per the UK MTO filings in recent minutes with a fourth vessel heating Iranian warnings and turning around. This now brings the amount of vessels struck by Iran in the last week all the way up to 11 And you can see them on some of the map points here. But again, this is something where the Trump administration has been bragging for weeks now at this point of, oh, oil exports are close to or he'll claim even surpassing pre-war levels through the Strait of Hormuz. First off, it doesn't seem like that's actually true. They're probably approaching somewhere close to pre-war levels, but they're still below. And the other problem is that Iran can just ramp up their attacks on these ships whenever they decide to, right? Oil prices remain high, diesel prices remain high. And this sort of like military, let's force through ships regardless of the Iranian blockade and their control over the Strait of Hormuz. This is not a long-term solution to anything. And so as Reuters points out here, Middle East crude exports have exceeded pre-war levels, but tanker attacks are now increasing. So this is something where Iran, if they wanted to, could effectively shut down the Strait of Hormuz overnight. Again, if they decided to launch a couple hundred drones at some of these ships in the Strait. But the other point of this, as Trita is arguing here, is that in all likelihood, the main reason that we have seen the amount of oil that's getting through the Strait of Hormuz tick up recently is because Iran is allowing that to happen. And in all likelihood, they're collecting tolls from some of these countries in the region, many of them US allies, who are just done with the war and want to be able to export their oil. And so they're sort of cutting side deals with the Iranians. So to that point here from Trita, he says, yes, more oil is flowing through the Strait. And here's why Iran may want that. He says, the reason why more crude is getting through the Strait of Hormuz may be because some countries are paying Iran a toll, possibly up to 20% of the value of each cargo. So not only is Iran allowing them to do this, but they're taking some sort of a service fee, I guess you could call it. And that's massive amounts of money that we're talking about here to sort of offset the economic consequences of the ongoing US blockade of Iranian oil exports. So this would be a major cash infusion for the Iranians. But he continues and says, I cannot verify whether this is true or not, but I've heard directly from the Iranian side that certain countries in the GCC have struck deals with Iran to allow their oil to get out and that this is the main reason why traffic is flowing rather than the Trump administration's military efforts. So once again, despite Trump's insistence, his claims that it's because Iran has been defeated and humiliated and they're out of the fight and it's our military escorts that are ramping up oil flows through straight-up Hormuz, in all likelihood, it seems like the real reason the flows have gotten higher is because Iran is allowing them to get higher and they still retain a significant degree of control over the straight-up Hormuz that they could effectively decide to shut down overnight if they decided to. Now we also have here another point of evidence to that same effect from Brett Erickson. He says, hidden in a Treasury press release of sanctions designations is a clear admission that Iran is getting paid by some countries and companies for transit. It said, since June of this year, OFAC designated Hormuz Safe Maritime Services Authority has used BitBank to transfer payments that it received to the Iranian regime. So again, it seems like in all likelihood, more ships are getting through because the Iranians are allowing them to and they're collecting a little bit on the side as sort of a payment for that. Now a couple last things that I have for you guys in this section. We have here from Ryan, Saudi Aramco is warning global oil stockpiles are scarily thin. CEO Eamon Nasser said that 3 billion barrels of expected oil supply have been lost during the war with Iran, forcing more than 1 billion barrels to be pulled from global inventories. Even if the Strait of Hormuz fully reopens, Aramco is warning that rebuilding depleted stockpiles could take up to 2 years. That's if this war stops tomorrow, for example. Now, so you have all of these different compounding problems that are sort of coming together at once. You have the offset of some of the worst aspects of where oil prices could be at right now because we've been depleting our strategic petroleum reserve. Other countries around the world have been taking similar action. We started this war with a pretty significant stockpile that we could pull from. But now it's starting to catch up to that to the point where we're basically tapped out and there's not much more that we can do in terms of continuing this war in the long run. If this is a war of attrition, it's not one that we're necessarily in a strong position to succeed in winning on.