Glenn Greenwald: War Updates, Trump-Clinton Cover Up & Joe Kent

TL;DR

Greenwald discusses Joe Kent's whistleblowing on the Iran war, Epstein's transnational elite connections, and how billionaire co-option has corrupted Trump's second term.

Key Points

• 1.Joe Kent is facing a serious FBI investigation after revealing the Iran war was fought for Israel, not due to an imminent threat. Greenwald compares this to the Pentagon Papers playbook: attack the whistleblower's character, call them mentally ill or a Kremlin agent, and threaten imprisonment.
• 2.Kent is nearly impossible to demonize given his extraordinary military record. He completed 11 combat tours, won every major military award for bravery, served as chief of staff under Tulsi Gabbard, and directed the National Counterterrorism Center — his wife, a CIA agent, died in a Syrian suicide bombing.
• 3.Greenwald argues the harder the government goes after a whistleblower, the more damaging their revelations must be. He cites Daniel Ellsberg, Julian Assange, Edward Snowden, and Chelsea Manning as historical examples of the same suppression playbook.
• 4.Kent was excluded from Iran war planning alongside Tulsi Gabbard because of her years of opposition to war with Iran. The neocon faction inside the Trump administration increasingly mistrusted Gabbard's group and also excluded her from the Venezuela operation.
• 5.Trump's second term has been co-opted by Zionist billionaires who originally backed Ron DeSantis. Greenwald argues these donors exploited Trump's desperation — he was fighting to avoid life imprisonment via Jack Smith's cases and the Manhattan conviction — and used money to ingratiate themselves into his circle.
• 6.Aberrational stock market bets around the Iran ceasefire announcement suggest insider knowledge. Greenwald notes someone made roughly $1.5 billion betting on oil price drops right before Trump announced a five-day diplomatic window, which is not the first time such patterns have appeared.
• 7.The Trump family's financial self-dealing dwarfs Hunter Biden's corruption in scale. Greenwald cites Jared Kushner, Steve Witkoff, crypto deals, and the surrounding billionaire network as making Hunter Biden 'look like a small-time shoplifter.'
• 8.Howard Lutnik, Trump's commerce secretary, publicly claimed he fled Epstein after 20 minutes in 2005, yet Epstein files show years of correspondence and a visit to his island. When confronted in Senate testimony, Lutnik failed to reconcile the contradiction and faced zero consequences.
• 9.On the Trump-Clinton Epstein cover-up, Greenwald identifies a bipartisan elite investment in suppressing the full story. Hillary Clinton's congressional deposition was kept confidential at committee members' request; the government released millions of documents as a satiation tactic while withholding the most damaging material.
• 10.Epstein's primary funding came from Leon Black and Les Wexner, both of whom exclusively support pro-Israel philanthropic causes. They funneled hundreds of millions to Epstein at compensation levels no legitimate tax or advisory service could justify.
• 11.Iranian-hacked emails of Israeli officials, including former PM Ehud Barak — Epstein's closest friend — confirm Epstein performed high-level foreign policy transactions for Mossad. Drop Site News journalists like Murtaza Hussain have analyzed these published emails, but mainstream outlets largely ignored them because they weren't exclusive scoops.
• 12.Epstein's relationship with MBS appears deeply social and personal, not merely transactional. Photos show a laughing, arm-around-shoulder moment between Epstein and the Saudi crown prince, contrasting sharply with MBS's public image of devout religiosity.
• 13.Robert Maxwell's death in the early 1990s coincides precisely with Epstein's sudden leap to billionaire-level wealth. Maxwell, a British media baron who received an Israeli state funeral at the Mount of Olives attended by every current and former PM, was the father of Ghislaine Maxwell — Epstein's longtime partner.
• 14.Greenwald identifies a 'hypernormalization' dynamic explaining why there are no mass protests over Iran or Epstein. Unlike Vietnam or Iraq — where the government at least ran a year-long public persuasion campaign — Trump started the Iran war with no congressional consultation, leaving citizens feeling completely disempowered and with no clear target to protest.
• 15.Greenwald argues the left-right culture war is deliberately engineered to prevent class-based unity against elites. He notes immigration restriction and anti-free-trade were historically left-wing positions, citing Bernie Sanders calling open borders 'a Koch Brothers proposal,' and argues Epstein is the most bipartisan scandal of his lifetime precisely because it is a vertical, not horizontal, conflict.