On September 11th, 2001, Major Dan Caine was an Air National Guard F-16 pilot scrambled out of Andrews Air Force Base — with the authority to shoot down Flight 93 if it came for the Capital. He told his wingman: "Don't shoot anybody. I'll make the decision."

Twenty-five years later, that same man — now Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff — was reportedly walked over the line into supporting the Iran war by the Israeli Defense Forces Chief of Staff, the head of Mossad, and the head of IDF Intelligence in a sustained influence campaign that lasted about three weeks.

In this episode, Dan McKnight tells the story of two warriors who started in the same place and ended in two very different ones.

The first — General Dan Caine — was reported by Axios to be a "reluctant warrior" on Iran in early February 2026. By February 28th, when Operation Epic Fury launched, the Jerusalem Post had reported that Israeli officials had successfully "brought him on board." On April 16th, Caine told a Pentagon press briefing that American forces are "ready to resume major combat operations at literally a moment's notice."

The second — Joe Kent, former Director of the National Counterterrorism Center — refused to be converted. He resigned. He spoke. And last weekend at the Ron Paul Institute's spring conference in Lake Jackson, Texas, he sat down with Dan and endorsed Defend the Guard on camera, calling state-level legislation to prevent Guard units from being deployed to undeclared wars "huge."

This episode also features:— Brian McGlinchey of Stark Realities on the Mossad briefing he calls one that will "live in infamy"— Professor Robert Pape of the University of Chicago on the escalation trap and the doctrine America has abandoned— Former Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene on what it actually means when a President calls a member of his own coalition a traitor

The lesson is not to find a better person.The lesson is to stop depending on individuals to override an institutional machine.

That structural answer is Defend the Guard.

ENLIST IN THE MOVEMENT: https://defendtheguard.usBECOME A TOP 1% ACTIVIST: https://defendtheguard.us/fightforsomethingLEARN MORE: https://bringourtroopshome.us

SOURCES & CITATIONS:

— CIA, "Senior CIA Officer Reflects on Defending Washington, D.C. on 9/11": https://www.cia.gov/stories/story/senior-cia-officer-reflects-on-defending-washington-d-c-on-9-11/— Axios, "Trump's top general warns of Iran strike risks," Feb 23, 2026— Jerusalem Post, "Critical roles of Eyal Zamir, Dan Caine, Brad Cooper in shaping the Iran war"— Jerusalem Post, "US ready to restart combat if no Iran deal reached, Hegseth says," April 16, 2026: https://www.jpost.com/international/article-893248— Tucker Carlson interview with John Kiriakou (referenced cold open)— Joe Kent speech at the Ron Paul Institute Spring Conference, "War Is Back on the Menu," April 25, 2026— Brian McGlinchey, Stark Realities — starkrealities.net— Robert Pape, Escalation Trap — escalationtrap.substack.com— Ron Paul Institute Spring Conference, "War Is Back on the Menu": https://ronpaulinstitute.org/rpi-spring-conference-war-is-back-on-the-menu/

CHAPTERS:00:00 — The Discovery: Tucker Tells the 9/11 Story Nobody Remembers03:00 — Who Is Dan Caine? Major. F-16 Pilot. Guardsman.07:00 — The Conversion: Three Weeks That Changed Everything13:00 — The Bridge: Two Warriors, One System17:00 — Lake Jackson, Texas: War Is Back on the Menu20:00 — Joe Kent Speaks: Shannon, Syria, and the Administrative State26:00 — The Defend the Guard Endorsement30:00 — Voices from the Conference: Pape and McGlinchey33:00 — When the President Calls You a Traitor38:00 — The Coalition Didn't Move. He Did.42:00 — Bring Them Home

#BringOurTroopsHome #DefendTheGuard #AmericaFirst #IranWar #ConstitutionalWarPowers #JoeKent #DanCaine #ArticleI #NationalGuard

At 8:10 AM Eastern, Sunday morning, President Trump postedthis on Truth Social:

"The United States is going to knock out every single Power Plant, and every single Bridge, in Iran. NO MORE MR. NICE GUY!"

Forty-eight hours earlier, the same president had postedthat Israel was PROHIBITED from bombing Lebanon — the first time in a generation an American president publicly subordinated Israel to American policy. The pressure campaign worked faster than anyone expected.

There is a third option the president is not hearing fromanyone on Fox News. Reagan took it in Beirut in February 1984, four months after the Marine barracks bombing. They called it weakness.

History called it wisdom.

This episode lays out the case for it.

Full breakdown includes:

— The IRGC audio that leaked Saturday — Iran's militarycalling its own foreign minister "some idiot" on a maritime radio channel — and the exact parallel between what the IRGC is doing to Tehran and what Israel has been doing to Washington.

— The 24-hour Hormuz timeline. How we went from"completely open" to the Strait being closed by two differentgovernments in one day.

— Israel's record of sabotaging every American peace effortfrom April 2025 onward — including the Israeli attack on Iran the day before Steve Witkoff's scheduled Oman trip, and the 303-casualty strike on Beirut 10 minutes after the U.S.-Iran ceasefire took effect on April 8.

— The civilian cost of what Trump is now threatening.Grandmothers on dialysis. Premature babies in neonatal ICUs. Water treatment. 120-degree summers with no air conditioning in Hormozgan. What a veteran knows about infrastructure strikes.

— The Reagan-Beirut '84 precedent. The "47 years" line and what it erases — 1953, Iran Air 655, the Iran-Iraq war we armed both sides of.

— The direct address. Mr. President, you are in a losingposition. Leave. Put America First for real.

— The closing question: when the IRGC called someone"some idiot" on that tape, which foreign-policy-making civilian government were they really mocking?

🔗 SIGN THE OPEN LETTER:"Veterans Have Earned the Right to Ask" https://campaigns.civiclick.com/06c1b6b7-19bf-4517-8def-df180e901430

🔗 DEFEND THE GUARD — state-level legislation to stop the pipeline: https://defendtheguard.us

🔗 SIGN THE PETITION — Tell Congress to reclaim their Constitutional War Powers: https://bringourtroopshome.us

🔗 NEGOTIATORS LAND IN ISLAMABAD MONDAY NIGHT. CEASEFIRE EXPIRES WEDNESDAY. CALL YOUR SENATOR NOW. Capitol switchboard: (202) 224-3121

FOLLOW:
Bring Our Troops Home on X: @TroopsHomeUS
Dan McKnight on X: @DanMcKnight30
Websites:
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SUBSCRIBE AND SHARE. The more Americans who understand what Article I, Section 8 says — and what happens when a foreign government has a bigger vote in our foreign policy than our own Constitution — the harder it becomes to hide behind classified briefings and Truth Social posts.

For the Constitution. For the troops. Bring Our Troops Home.

#BringOurTroopsHome #DefendTheGuard #ArticleI #EndtheWars#IranWar #NoWarForIsrael #ThirdOption #AmericaFirst

Tuesday night, President Trump announced a ceasefire with Iran. The nation exhaled. We exhaled.

But before you call it a win, you need to understand what we agreed to.

Iran's ten-point proposal — which the White House accepted as the basis for negotiation — includes: a toll on the Strait of Hormuz that will generate over $7.5 billion a year in new Iranian revenue. The current government stays in power. Sanctions lifted. A non-aggression guarantee. Halting of IAEA investigations. Regional ceasefire including Hezbollah. U.S. military withdrawal from the region.

And the one that should stop you cold: recognition of Iran's right to nuclear enrichment.

The same nuclear program we launched Operation Midnight Hammer to destroy. The same "imminent threat" that justified bypassing Congress. The same two-weeks-to-ten-nuclear-weapons claim that came from Netanyahu to Witkoff to Trump — with no intelligence analyst anywhere in the chain.

Six weeks and thirteen dead Americans later, we just agreed to let them keep enriching.

Either the threat was real and we surrendered. Or the threat was exaggerated and we sent Americans to die for a lie. Pick one.

Meanwhile, National Guard units from eighteen states are still in theater — deployed without a declaration of war, with governors who don't know where their own troops are or when they're coming home.

This episode covers:

• The full breakdown of Iran's ten-point ceasefire proposal — and what each term actually means
• The equipment losses: F-35s, F-15s, the USS Gerald R. Ford, and billions in damage
• The thirteen Americans killed and the hundreds wounded in an unauthorized war
• The eighteen states with National Guard deployed — unit by unit, state by state
• What sitting governors said when asked about their own troops (they don't know)
• Why Defend the Guard legislation is the only structural fix
• The one thing President Trump still has to do — and why restraining Israel is not optional

For Defend the Guard resources in your state, visit www.DefendTheGuard.us and click your state on the map.

Join the movementBring Our Troops Home is the only national organization actively working to restore constitutional war powers by passing Defend the Guard legislation in the states.

If you believe Congress — not the president — should decide when America goes to war, join us.

Sign the petition, support the movement, and help us pass Defend the Guard in every state.

🌐 WebsitesBring Our Troops Home - https://BringOurTroopsHome.usDefend the Guard - https://DefendTheGuard.us

Follow Bring Our Troops Home𝕏 /Twitter: https://x.com/TroopsHomeUSFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/TroopsHomeUS

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/troopshomeus/

Joe Kent served 11 combat deployments. He earned six Bronze Stars. He was the director of the National Counterterrorism Center — appointed by Trump, confirmed by the Senate. His job was to know whether Iran posed an imminent threat.

He resigned rather than lie about it.

In his resignation letter, Kent said Iran posed no imminent threat — and that the president was deceived by an echo chamber running the same playbook used to drag us into Iraq. Within hours, the system destroyed him. The president called him weak on security. The press ran FBI leak stories. His colleagues went quiet.

Meanwhile, the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee — the one man with the subpoena power and the gavel to hold a public hearing — refused. And in a classified briefing, Jim Risch told his colleagues exactly why: "I do not believe the administration's decision makers should be subject to public questioning by senators."

Dan McKnight has a long personal history with Jim Risch — from a satellite phone call on a mountain in Afghanistan in 2006 to a box of Afghanistan Papers delivered to his Boise office with no response. In this episode, Dan tells that story in full — and makes the case that Risch is not a bad man. He is a captured man. There is a difference.T

his episode covers:• Why "imminent threat" is a legal standard — not a talking point — and what it actually requires

• The two Tulsi Gabbard testimony moments that contradict the White House's justification for the war
• How the "two weeks to ten nuclear weapons" claim traveled from Netanyahu to Witkoff to Trump — with no intelligence analyst anywhere in the chain
• What Senator Tim Kaine revealed Risch said behind closed doors about public oversight• The Norman Brownstein video — and what it means when a lobbyist calls the SFRC "the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations for the State of Israel"
• A direct appeal to veterans: Joe Kent kept his promise. Jim Risch broke his. Which choice are you going to make?

Read the open letter published in The American Conservative — signed by Dan McKnight, Col. Douglas Macgregor, Lt. Col. Daniel Davis, and Capt. Matthew Hoh: https://www.theamericanconservative.com/veterans-have-earned-the-right-to-ask-its-time-we-did/

Add your name to the petition: https://BringOurTroopsHome.us then click "Stand With Joe Kent"

For Defend the Guard resources in your state, visit www.DefendTheGuard.us and click your state on the map.

Join the movement

Bring Our Troops Home is the only national organization actively working to restore constitutional war powers by passing Defend the Guard legislation in the states.

If you believe Congress — not the president — should decide when America goes to war, join us.

Sign the petition, support the movement, and help us pass Defend the Guard in every state.

🌐 Websites

Bring Our Troops Home - https://BringOurTroopsHome.us

Defend the Guard - https://DefendTheGuard.us

Follow Bring Our Troops Home

𝕏 /Twitter https://x.com/TroopsHomeUS

Facebook https://www.facebook.com/TroopsHomeUS

Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/troopshomeus/

We're not at war with Iran. At least that's what Speaker Mike Johnson says — it's just a "limited engagement."

But President Trump is demanding unconditional surrender.

You can't have it both ways.

When Tucker Carlson explained the historical meaning of "unconditional surrender," the entire right-wing media attacked him. Trump himself said Tucker "lost his way" and is "not smart enough to understand."

But who actually understands what the term means? Dan breaks down the history — from Ulysses S. Grant to the fall of Berlin — and shows why Tucker's analysis was accurate and Trump's definition was... something else entirely.

Plus: If Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan, and Syria taught us anything, it's that regime change fantasies become disasters. So who exactly is supposed to surrender?

And introducing NEOCON IDOL — this week's loser: Lindsey Graham, who's NOT with you... he's with Israel, until his dying day.

Join the movement

Bring Our Troops Home is the only national organization actively working to restore constitutional war powers by passing Defend the Guard legislation in the states.

If you believe Congress — not the president — should decide when America goes to war, join us.

Sign the petition, support the movement, and help us pass Defend the Guard in every state.

🌐 Websites

Bring Our Troops Home - https://BringOurTroopsHome.us

Defend the Guard - https://DefendTheGuard.us

Follow Bring Our Troops Home

𝕏 /Twitter

https://x.com/TroopsHomeUS

Facebook https://www.facebook.com/TroopsHomeUS Instagramhttps://www.instagram.com/troopshomeus/

At the New Hampshire Liberty Forum, former United States Senator Scott Brown cited the War Powers Resolution and called it the Constitution.

So Dan McKnight challenged him.

“Show me where that’s in the Constitution.”

What followed was a moment that stopped the room — and a private 30-minute conversation that may have opened the door to something much bigger than one exchange on stage.

For the first time in the history of the Defend the Guard movement, a United States Senate race may hinge on a single question:

Who actually decides when America goes to war?

In this episode, Dan breaks down the exchange with Scott Brown, the conversation that followed, and the one statement that could dismantle the biggest lie used to stop Defend the Guard legislation in statehouses across the country — the claim that Washington can financially punish states for defending the Constitution.

Scott Brown’s background is uniquely relevant to this question. While serving in the United States Senate from 2010 to 2013, he sat on the Senate Armed Services Committee and simultaneously served as a JAG officer working with the National Guard Bureau inside the Pentagon.

Very few people in American politics have seen the National Guard system from both sides at the same time.

If someone with that experience publicly states what many insiders already know — that the funding threat used to intimidate state legislators is not grounded in legal or political reality — it could fundamentally change the political landscape for Defend the Guard across the country.

That is the golden ticket.

And the New Hampshire Senate race may determine whether that ticket gets used.

In this episode

• The Liberty Forum exchange with Scott Brown
• War Powers Resolution vs. the Constitution
• The private 30-minute conversation that followed
• The growing coalition of veterans and constitutional conservatives
• The funding threat used to stop Defend the Guard legislation
• How National Guard funding actually works
• Why the New Hampshire Senate race matters for this movement
• How one statement could change everything

Join the movement

Bring Our Troops Home is the only national organization actively working to restore constitutional war powers by passing Defend the Guard legislation in the states.

If you believe Congress — not the president — should decide when America goes to war, join us.

Sign the petition, support the movement, and help us pass Defend the Guard in every state.

🌐 Websites

Bring Our Troops Home https://BringOurTroopsHome.us

Defend the Guard https://DefendTheGuard.us

Follow Bring Our Troops Home

𝕏 /Twitter

https://x.com/TroopsHomeUS

Facebook https://www.facebook.com/TroopsHomeUS Instagramhttps://www.instagram.com/troopshomeus/

Last night one of Congress’ most reliable neocon voices, Dan Crenshaw, lost his Republican primary by double digits. Sometimes politics delivers a little accountability.

But today’s episode isn’t really about Crenshaw.

Today we take a closer look at radio host Mark Levin — the self-proclaimed “Great One” — and a viral post he made claiming the Founders did not give Congress the power to control war.

That claim isn’t just wrong.
It completely reverses what the Constitution actually says.

In this episode we walk through Levin’s argument line by line and compare it with the historical record:

• The Constitutional Convention debates
• The Federalist Papers
• James Madison’s Helvidius essays
• Early presidential practice in the Quasi-War and the War of 1812
• Supreme Court rulings on war powers

The evidence is overwhelming.

The Founders intentionally placed the power to take the nation from peace to war in the hands of Congress — not the President.

The President commands the military.
But Congress decides whether America goes to war.

That structure wasn’t accidental. The Founders understood that executives are the branch most prone to war. So they built a constitutional system designed to slow the rush to conflict and protect the liberty of the American people.

If Americans want to restore constitutional government, we have to start by reclaiming that power.

Learn more about our work:

Bring Our Troops Home
https://BringOurTroopsHome.us

Defend the Guard
https://DefendTheGuard.us

Follow Bring Our Troops Home on X
@troopshomeUS

Sources referenced in this episode

• Constitutional Convention Records — August 17, 1787 (Farrand’s Records, Vol. 2)
• Federalist No. 69 — Alexander Hamilton
• James Madison — Helvidius Essays (1793)
• Madison War Message to Congress — June 1, 1812
• Hamilton to McHenry — May 17, 1798
• McHenry to Adams — May 18, 1798
• Bas v. Tingy (1800)
• Talbot v. Seeman (1801)
• Little v. Barreme (1804)
• Tenth Amendment Center — Michael Boldin, “James Madison vs the Modern Myth of Unilateral Executive War Power”
• Tom Woods vs Mark Levin War Powers Exchange (2011)

Massie and Khanna are right.

As two U.S. carrier strike groups sit within range of Iran, Congress has not taken a single vote authorizing war. Not one.

In this episode of the Bring Our Troops Home Podcast, we break down the bipartisan Iran War Powers Resolution introduced by Congressman Thomas Massie and Congressman Ro Khanna — and why this moment is bigger than politics. This is about Article I of the Constitution.

If the United States is going to move from peace to war, that decision does not belong to one person. It belongs to Congress. It belongs to the American people.

We examine the current military buildup in the region, the diplomacy still underway, and the dangerous rhetoric from Washington voices who treat regime change like branding strategy.

This is not anti-war. It is pro-Constitution.

If a war is worth fighting, it is worth voting on.

We also explain why Defend the Guard remains the most powerful constitutional tool available to the states if Congress refuses to act — and why this window matters right now, before escalation becomes automatic.

War is the most serious decision a nation can make. The question is simple:

Does Congress still intend to exercise its authority?

Support our mission:

🌐 BringOurTroopsHome.us
🌐 DefendTheGuard.us

Follow us everywhere:
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If you’re able, become a monthly supporter. Your support helps us pass Defend the Guard in states across the country and restore constitutional war powers where they belong.

This is how we make sure that if America ever goes to war again, it is because the American people chose it — not because Washington drifted into it.