Badlands Media

Badlands Daily: 6/19/26 - Pulte Enters DNI, Vance Drops Iran Numbers, Supreme Court Rules

CannCon and Chris Paul close out the week on Juneteenth with a show that covers geopolitics, the courts, and an intelligence battle playing out in real time. JD Vance holds a press conference confirming the Iran MOU is producing results: 12.5 million barrels moved through the Strait of Hormuz the prior night, gas prices dropping below $4, and Iran honoring the agreement for the second night running. CannCon and Chris walk through Vance's pointed message to Israeli cabinet members attacking the deal and his revelation that the US has been funding Lebanon's internal security forces, the ones tasked with rooting out Israeli spy networks. The Supreme Court rules unanimously that the federal government cannot broadly ban marijuana users from owning firearms, with both the ACLU and NRA on the same side. Bill Pulte walks into DNI headquarters and reportedly arrives eyeing hundreds of firings, as Trump simultaneously cancels the Jay Clayton hearing and demands Jamie McDonald be confirmed for SDNY first. Steve Bannon says the quiet part out loud: Pulte knows exactly where Tulsi's election fraud files are. Mark Warner accidentally admits communication companies will keep working with intelligence agencies even after 702 lapsed. Chris Paul closes with his most complete analysis yet of the Tucker-JD Vance-Massey coordinated post-MAGA op.

Badlands Story Hour Ep. 172: The Godfather III

Chris Paul and Burning Bright close out the trilogy with Francis Ford Coppola's much maligned 1990 finale The Godfather Part III, now known as The Godfather Coda: The Death of Michael Corleone. Starring Al Pacino, Andy Garcia, Diane Keaton, and George Hamilton, the film tracks Michael's failed attempt to leave the criminal world by going legitimate through a foundation and a Vatican real estate deal, while his nephew Vincent (Sonny's bastard son) rises as the next generational vessel for the family's worldly pursuits.
The guys argue this one gets a bad rap and is actually a fitting close to the saga's core thesis, which is that you cannot reform a system from inside the system. They dig into the Vatican as a higher mafia than even Capitol Hill, foundations and philanthropy as the next evolution of the illusion of legitimacy, the Sicilian vendetta as an example of how honor cultures decay into rule sets when the original meaning is forgotten, and Michael's spiritual confusion when he confesses to Cardinal Lamberto and still believes worldly steps can undo damnation.
From there they go big picture on systems as self perpetuating organisms, the bag man problem and why this many people can't be in on it is a nonsense argument, NGOs as criminal shielding structures, and whether bringing back a monarchy with a real value bloodline would actually be more honest than the bureaucratic illusion we live under.

SITREP Ep. 159: Alpha's Shark Attack Saga, Marijuana Gun Ruling & Why Gen X Saves America

CannCon and Alpha Warrior open with a tribute to a Marine major who kept calling fire missions through morphine and a broken body, then the show takes a hard left into the most ridiculed shark attack story in podcasting history. Alpha's Marine Corps nickname is Sharky, and the story behind it stretches credibility from the first sentence to the last. CannCon and the chat spend the better part of an hour grilling him on the size of the shark, the missing scars, the beef jerky in his cargo pocket, and whether a teenage Mako really shredded his shorts or if he just got friction burn from rubbing against the skin.
In between the bits, the guys cover the SCOTUS ruling that sided with Texas, knocking down the federal law that banned marijuana users from owning firearms, the same one used to prosecute Hunter Biden, plus the still pending birthright citizenship decision.
The closer is the real meat. Alpha torches the boomers for handing the next generation a wrecked country, then turns around and torches millennials and Gen Z for crying about it, before landing on his actual thesis. Gen X is going to be the generation that fixes this mess.

Quite Frankly Ep. 56: Hindenburg as False Flag, Old World Airships & The Line Unraveling

Frank welcomes Logan from Luminary Lighthouse for his debut on the show, and the topic is the lost age of the rigid airship. The Hindenburg is the spine of the conversation: a luxury hotel in the sky that could circumnavigate the globe without refueling, that carried tens of thousands of passengers without a single injury before May 1937, and that died in a few televised minutes in Lakehurst. Why did one disaster end an entire industry every major country had invested in? Whose timeline got rewritten that day?
From there it goes deeper. The Empire State Building topped with what was clearly designed as a Zeppelin mooring mast. The Waldorf Astoria built in three years and torn down after thirty two. Frank pushes back on some of Logan's old world theories while running toward others, and they land on world's fairs as previews of timelines we were never permitted to reach.
In the second hour Frank watches a fresh deep dive on NEOM, the Saudi Arabian Line that has quietly scaled back from 170 kilometers to 2.4, with tens of thousands of workers living in unmarked desert camps. Lost futures, and the futures we got instead.

Taking it Back Ep. 132: The Final Episode, Trump's Israel Pivot & The Iran Peace Framework

After roughly seven years and 132 episodes on Badlands, Taking it Back wraps up with the full crew back together: Adel Nero, Zak Paine, and Frankie Val. They open with a long reminiscence, from Patriot Soapbox and the early Q days to Adel's decision to finally show his face, Frank's brave early example, and Zak getting hooked on the boards before there was a public movement. From there, the conversation shifts to the news of the week: Trump's stunning pivot on Israel and Iran. Frank takes a victory lap on having been called a Zionist for not attacking Trump's Iran posture, and Zak lays out the full strategic argument that Trump's public posture toward Israel was never meant to be taken at face value. He walks through the Iranian government restructuring, the new Middle East security agreements, and why Israel's continued provocations are isolating them on the world stage. They dip into the Promethean Action thesis on the City of London as the puppet master, work through Zak's Venn diagram of overlapping deep state, banking, and Jewish identity, and close with a Pennsylvania minor league team forfeiting a game rather than wear pride sleeves. Last call, sentimental and sharp.

Badlands Media Special Coverage: 6/18/26 - Medal of Honor Ceremony: Capers, Ripley & Dockery

President Trump hosts a Congressional Medal of Honor ceremony for three recipients spanning Vietnam, the Easter Offensive of 1972, and Afghanistan. Marine Corps Major James Capers Jr. receives the honor he was recommended for in 1967, delayed nearly six decades after his commanding officer was killed before the paperwork could be signed. Colonel John W. Ripley is honored posthumously for single-handedly destroying a bridge to stop 30,000 North Vietnamese soldiers and 200 tanks over five straight hours under direct fire. Army Major Nicholas Dockery receives the award for a 2012 Afghanistan ambush where he rescued two teammates, administered CPR to a soldier who had stopped breathing, and signaled enemy positions from an exposed rooftop to bring in American gunships. Trump opens with a brief aside that the stock market just hit another all-time high and oil is dropping, then gets back to the business of honoring people who actually deserve medals.

Badlands Book Club: The Creature From Jekyll Island - Chapter 6, Part 2

CannCon and Ashe in America finish Part 1 of G. Edward Griffin's The Creature from Jekyll Island and the country-by-country bailout autopsy is relentless. Panama's canal gets handed to a dictator so his banks can collect interest. The Monetary Control Act of 1980 quietly authorizes the Federal Reserve to create money for any government on earth. Mexico defaults serially, gets currency swaps, debt swaps, and a $50 billion Clinton bailout bypassing Congress entirely. Brazil, Argentina, China, Poland, and Russia all run the same play. The Great Deception chapter argues the fall of communism was stage-managed for global convergence, not organic. And Griffin closes Part 1 with a direct challenge: this cannot be accidental. Intelligent people following a plan that fails every time are following a different plan. CannCon opens the show connecting the Iran deal to the same globalist infrastructure Griffin describes, and the whole episode lands with a viewer rant about being 38 years old with a twenty year old car, no house savings, and fifteen years of decent income. The book is doing its job.

The Choice (S4E4): Calm Before

Ghost and Ashe in America walk through Season 4 Episode 4, the aftermath of Reyma's death. Quintus gets demoted, not for killing a Jew but for killing a Roman citizen in front of a crowd, because in Rome the offense was always optics. Gaius gets elevated to Praetor with a heart that has already been quietly converting for months, slapping the water every day without realizing what it was building toward. The hosts walk through how the showrunners present every character outside the Sanhedrin on a sliding moral scale and what that says about the difference between Roman morality, Jewish morality, and the new thing Jesus is introducing.
Then it lands on the scene. Gaius kneeling before Jesus, confessing the illegitimate sick son he was too ashamed to bring before, and Jesus marveling that he has not found such faith in all of Israel. The hosts unpack why it is always the Gentiles in the show who push the envelope, why James and John picking that exact moment to ask for seats at the right and left hand makes Jesus look so tired, and why the Great Awakening is the slap, not the title.

The Daily Herold: 6/18/26 - Iran Deal Fallout, Tucker Flips & California Fraud Ceiling

Jon Herold comes in Thursday with plenty to say about the people who are saying plenty. The MAGA hawk crowd that spent months cheerleading US military involvement in the Middle East is now loudly attacking Trump over the Iran deal, and Jon finds the shoe-on-the-other-foot energy deeply satisfying. JD Vance ran the White House press conference and delivered one of the most pointed defenses of Trump's Israel positioning Jon has heard from anyone in the administration. Tucker Carlson, who spent months calling Trump a slave to Netanyahu, is now posting clips calling the deal a betrayal, and Jon asks whether Tucker is running an op, just being inconsistent, or both. California's US attorney announced he expects election fraud charges while simultaneously explaining that proving outcome-determinative fraud requires charging thousands of voters, which Jon calls the real headline. The Supreme Court ruled unanimously to limit the federal government's power to disarm marijuana users. The federal probe expanded to America Votes, a major NGO funding the Ohio voter mobilization network, and Jon is genuinely enthusiastic about going after the NGO money trail. Jon also casually reveals he built a fully functional AI news aggregator that posts automatically to Twitter and has some other projects coming soon.

Badlands Media Special Coverage: 6/18/26 - Vance WH Briefing: Iran Deal & Israel Rebuke

Vice President JD Vance steps to the White House podium to deliver the first full briefing on the Iran MOU since its signing, opening with news that gas prices dropped below $4 for the first time since the conflict and 12.5 million barrels moved through the Strait overnight. Vance walks through the deal structure in detail: Iran gets nothing unless it performs, the US pays zero, and every sanction comes back on if they misbehave. He draws a sharp contrast with the Obama JCPOA, noting the deal was negotiated from a position of total military destruction rather than a position of trying to bribe a functioning nuclear program. The briefing closes with one of the sharpest lines of the week, directed at members of Netanyahu's cabinet who have been attacking Trump publicly, reminding them that two thirds of the weapons protecting Israel were built by American hands.