JIM WEBB PODCAST

Happy 251st birthday to the United States Marine Corps! On this special edition of The Jim Webb Podcast, we welcome James H. Webb, a Marine combat veteran, Navy Cross recipient, former Secretary of the Navy, and former U.S. senator from Virginia. From leading Marines in Vietnam to serving as Secretary of the Navy, Webb brings a firsthand perspective to this salute to the Corps and the generations...

Something broke between voters and power, and you can hear it in the way we talk about war, leadership, and the Constitution. On the eve of the Marine Corps birthday, we sit down with Scott Ritter, a former Marine intelligence officer, to unpack what the Marine Corps actually builds: seriousness, standards, and a team culture where you earn trust by performing under pressure. His personal story mo...

The midterm results sent a message that Washington keeps pretending not to hear: a huge chunk of the country is done with “team sport” politics, and they will flip fast when they feel lied to, squeezed, or dragged into chaos. We talk through what that backlash means for 2026 and 2028, and why the real battle might not be left vs right, but whether either party is willing to allow real competition...

A midterm “blowout” can look like victory and still be a strategic defeat. We sit down with Scott Horton to sort through the wreckage: what the results signal about AIPAC’s staying power, why personnel swaps like “Netanyahu out” can become a convenient distraction from unchanged Israel policy, and how the Iran War has detonated old coalitions on the right. We also dig into the uncomfortable mechan...

The morning after the 2026 midterms, the map looks like chaos until you follow one thread: war. We’re not buying the “blue tsunami” narrative. What we see is a blunt referendum on the Iran war, on a White House that sidesteps Congress, and on a political class that keeps campaigning on restraint while governing like intervention is inevitable. We walk through the early numbers and the story they t...

The polling story gets boring fast, so we focus on the lever underneath it: war. With Matt Bracken joining me on referendum day, we dig into why an open-ended Iran conflict can crush Republican turnout, especially among low propensity voters who showed up for “no more foreign wars” and now feel cheated. When those voters check out instead of switching sides, turnout becomes destiny and the next tw...

“Short, fast war” might be the most dangerous phrase in American politics, because it’s usually a sales pitch, not a plan. We’re joined by Professor Mohammad Marandi live from Tehran to get the on-the-ground view as Washington signals it may restart major military operations. What he describes is a public mood shaped by threats, bombing talk, and a growing belief that deterrence is the only langua...

The strangest warning sign in Washington might be the most revealing: a sudden spike in pizza orders near the Pentagon. We start there, then follow the trail of cleared political schedules and a fresh report of a high-level briefing on US military options in Iran. From signals to substance, we talk through what an escalation could look like, why it may be tempting for leaders heading into an elect...

A former British diplomat goes to an academic conference in Russia, returns to the UK, and ends up detained at Heathrow with officers demanding access to his devices. That moment becomes a window into something bigger: how quickly the boundaries around speech, dissent, and “acceptable” foreign policy views can tighten when Russia and Ukraine enter the conversation. We walk through what the Valdai...

The Israeli election results are messy, inconclusive, and way more consequential than they should be for Americans but that’s the point. When a client-state relationship and regional war planning sit in the background, coalition math in Jerusalem can ripple straight into US politics, media narratives, and the next “emergency” used to justify escalation. We walk through what the early numbers sugge...

Israel goes to the polls and the shockwaves do not stop at Tel Aviv. We look at Netanyahu’s frantic messaging, the “rigged election” playbook, and why US leaders and US voters keep getting pulled into conflicts they never voted for. Along the way, we unpack the uncomfortable mechanics of influence, the way Christian Zionism shows up in American culture, and how moral language can be used to excuse...

A war decision made for election math can become a world event in a matter of hours. We dig into the mounting reports that the IDF is pushing back against Prime Minister Netanyahu’s push to strike Iran right before Israeli elections, and what it means when senior military leaders demand a clear legal and strategic basis for an operation designed to trigger rapid escalation. If that restraint fails...

The people who actually expect war don’t wait for headlines, they buy plane tickets. We start there, because the clearest signal that the Iran conflict is about to go super hot isn’t a spokesperson’s line, it’s the quiet evacuation of money, staff, and families across the region. Col. Doug Macgregor joins us to map the escalation chain that almost nobody wants to talk about honestly: what happens...

A belief system can be private. A belief system with a national political strategy becomes power. Today we sit down with Melissa Witte to trace Christian Zionism from its theological roots to the modern networks that move money, shape messaging, and win access at the highest levels of government. We start with the foundation: dispensationalism, the Schofield Reference Bible, and the premillennial...

Scott Ritter joins us to analyze why global hostilities appear to be escalating and what that means for the current geopolitical landscape. We break down the shifting dynamics of international conflict, looking specifically at the evolving relationship between Ukraine and Trump. As we observe these changes, we also examine the recent unrest and instability currently defining France politics. This...

A lot of people talk about “free speech” like it’s an abstract slogan, right up until the day a reporter gets detained at an airport, a source goes silent, or donating to the “wrong” organization suddenly feels like a legal risk. Glenn Greenwald joins us for a direct conversation about what dissent looks like now, and why independent journalism keeps getting treated as a security problem instead o...

Something is off in American politics right now, and you can hear it in the way power talks when it thinks nobody can stop it. We’re joined by Robert Barnes to unpack the growing sense of White House dysfunction, why Trump’s campaign trail comments look like “unforced errors,” and how a loss of social filter can turn daily headlines into real strategic damage. We also get into the darker implicati...

A ceasefire that never becomes peace is more than a diplomatic failure. It’s a system that can keep people trapped in rubble, tents, and fear while officials insist progress is being made. I’m joined by journalist Dave DeCamp of Antiwar News to break down what’s happening in Gaza now: ongoing Israeli airstrikes and daily casualties, the sidelined stories like Gaza’s Christian community, and the bi...

You can’t understand modern war without understanding modern intelligence and what happens when it gets bent to politics. I’m joined by former CIA analyst and presidential briefer Ray McGovern for a wide-ranging talk about how “weaponized intelligence” is built, sold, and enforced, and why the public often ends up debating a storyline instead of the underlying facts. Ray takes us back to the momen...

Russia is taking the gloves off in Ukraine, and the targets tell you more than the speeches do. We talk through what it means when a conflict expands from grinding down forces at the front to hitting the systems that keep a country running: bridges over the Dnipro, rail engines and warehouses, power distribution, and the pressure campaign that can empty a city before an assault. My guest, Larry Jo...

Aircraft carriers, hypersonics, drone swarms, missile defense, and the messy reality of command all collide in this conversation with Bill Buppert, the Smedley Butler Fellow for Military Affairs at the Libertarian Institute and host of Chasing Ghosts. We start with how a military career can turn early idealism into realism, then follow Bill’s path from Navy intelligence to the Army, Special Forces...

He called it a “State of the Force” address, but what we heard sounded like a stress test for the entire US national security system. We walk through Pete Hegseth’s speech from the perspective of warfighting basics: readiness, doctrine, deterrence, and the leadership obligation to define intent and an end state before sending people into danger. After two decades of low-intensity conflict, the for...

The US “leaves” Iraq again, the Red Sea stays tense, and a lot of people still can’t answer a basic question: who are the Houthis, really? We sit down with Joe Kent, one of the few guests who’s lived the Yemen problem up close, to unpack what most coverage skips: tribal power, terrain, coalition politics, and the very pragmatic incentives that shape Ansar Allah’s decisions. If you’ve been told the...

Five men get arrested near RAF Fairford, headlines scream “plot,” and then the suspects are released. That whiplash is exactly where we start, because it exposes the hardest part of intelligence-driven cases: the public wants evidence, but intelligence agencies cannot always show their work. With Alexander Mercouris joining us from the UK, we break down what people in Britain are actually hearing,...

A cruise missile hits in the Gulf, Marines and sailors end up seriously wounded, and weeks later we’re still piecing together what actually happened. We work from first principles: what kind of vessel could take a strike and produce nearly 40 casualties, why a “civilian ship” explanation doesn’t square with the physics, and what it says about US force posture in contested waters. If the truth is b...