WATCH: Trump/Netanyahu Attack IRAN - Breaking Updates on "Operation Epstein Fury" with @denverriggleman @thekenhar…
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WATCH: Trump/Netanyahu Attack IRAN - Breaking Updates on "Operation Epstein Fury" with @denverriggleman @thekenharbaughshow
Navy Vet Ken Harbaugh, AF Vet/Congressman Denver Riggleman, join me to break down the very latest and the butterfly effect of Trump/Netanyahu's brazen war in the Middle East
This morning, Ken Harbaugh and Denver Riggleman joined me LIVE as bombs continued to fall. Here’s what two people who actually understand warfare had to say.
Saturday, February 28, 2026
We didn’t plan for this to be a wartime broadcast.
But when the United States and Israel launched “Operation Epic Fury” on Iran at dawn — striking Tehran, flattening Khamenei’s compound, targeting the IRGC command structure, and killing dozens of schoolchildren in Minab — we did what you’re supposed to do when democracy is on fire: we got the smartest people we know on camera and started talking.
This morning’s Substack Live featured Ken Harbaugh — former Navy pilot, Yale Law grad, MeidasTouch host, and producer of the #1 Apple TV documentary Against All Enemies — and Denver Riggleman — former Republican congressman, Air Force intelligence officer, NSA contractor, and senior technical adviser to the January 6 Select Committee who literally wrote the book on institutional breach (The Breach, NYT bestseller).
These aren’t talking heads. These are people who’ve planned missions, analyzed intelligence, and understand what happens when military machinery gets weaponized by desperate politicians.
Here’s what they said. And why it matters.
The Big Takeaways
1. This Was Not a Response to an Imminent Threat
Both Ken and Denver were emphatic: the timing of this strike doesn’t match the stated justification. Oman’s mediator confirmed that nuclear talks were making “significant progress” as recently as yesterday. The U.S. had been building up forces for weeks — carrier strike groups, fighter jets, the largest Middle East military deployment since the 2003 Iraq invasion. This was planned, staged, and executed on a political timeline, not an intelligence one.
Ken put it plainly: when a military operation of this scale is pre-positioned for weeks while negotiations are simultaneously progressing, the diplomacy was never the strategy. The bombs were.
BREAKING: Trump and Netanyahu Attack Iran. Here's What We Know... | ||||||
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BREAKING: Two Authoritarian Leaders Saturday, February 28, 2026 | ||||||
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2. Two Men With Criminal Exposure Just Started A Regional War
Denver didn’t mince words about the elephant — or rather, the two elephants — in the room. Netanyahu is on trial for bribery, fraud, and breach of trust, facing up to 10 years in prison, with an election in October. Trump has 31 credible sexual assault allegations, a civil rape finding, and 53 pages of FBI victim interviews that his own DOJ withheld from the Epstein files.
Denver’s intelligence background made his framing razor-sharp: in the intelligence community, when you’re assessing why a leader takes a drastic action, the first question isn’t what did they say the reason was? It’s what pressure were they under when they made the decision? Both men are under existential legal pressure. Both benefit from a front page that isn’t about their courtrooms.
3. Iran’s Retaliation Changes the Calculus Entirely
Ken’s Navy experience gave this part of the conversation real weight. Iran didn’t just fire back at Israel. It targeted U.S. military installations across the Gulf — Bahrain, Qatar, Kuwait, the UAE. That means American servicemembers are in the crosshairs right now. Al Udeid Air Base. The 5th Fleet headquarters. Bases across four countries.
Ken warned that the moment Iran went regional — hitting Gulf states that host American forces — this stopped being an Israel-Iran conflict. It became an American war with American targets across a massive theater. And the “off-ramps” the Pentagon is talking about become exponentially harder to find when your own bases are under fire.
4. The Intelligence Battlefield Is Just As Dangerous
Denver brought his NSA and data-analysis expertise to the information warfare dimension. Iranian cyber capabilities are real and documented — the Mint Sandstorm/APT42 group penetrated the Trump campaign in 2024. Whether or not Iran actually possesses compromising Epstein-related material involving Trump (and fact-checkers have found those specific claims unsubstantiated), the perception becomes a weapon in wartime.
Denver’s point: in a conflict where one side is fighting for regime survival, every piece of leverage — real, fabricated, or somewhere in between — gets deployed. The intersection of the Epstein files, Trump’s documented legal exposure, and a shooting war with a sophisticated intelligence adversary creates a butterfly effect that no one in the White House war room is gaming out properly.
5. Canada’s Support Needs Context
We discussed PM Carney’s statement supporting the U.S. goal of preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. All three of us agreed: the Iranian regime is a monster. The IRGC is a terrorist organization. The January 2026 massacre of 30,000+ protesters is one of the worst atrocities in modern history.
But Ken and Denver both stressed that supporting an objective is not the same as endorsing the operation. Canada’s position should be clear-eyed: yes, the regime must end. No, that doesn’t mean blank-check endorsement of a military campaign launched by two leaders whose personal legal crises are inseparable from their strategic decisions.
6. “Peace President” Is Dead
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We spent time on the sheer absurdity of a president who ran on ending “forever wars” now conducting what the Pentagon describes as a “multiday operation” with “escalating strikes.” Trump acknowledged American lives may be lost. He’s asking Americans to accept casualties in a war he started while nuclear talks were reportedly progressing.
Ken’s line landed hard: You don’t get to campaign on “America First” and then start a war that puts every American military installation in the Middle East in the crosshairs of Iranian ballistic missiles.
Watch the Full LIVE
If you missed it, the full replay is available now. We covered far more than I can recap here — including the strike on the girls’ school in Minab (53+ dead as of this writing), what Israel’s “Operation Roaring Lion” tells us about Netanyahu’s end-game, oil price implications, the Strait of Hormuz chokepoint, Houthi re-engagement, and what this means for the Abraham Accords.
Ken Harbaugh hosts The Ken Harbaugh Show on the MeidasTouch Network. Follow him.
Denver Riggleman is CEO of Riggleman Information and Intelligence Group (RIIG), author of The Breach, and one of the most important voices on extremism, intelligence, and institutional accountability working today. Follow him.
This is a developing story. I’ll be updating throughout the day as confirmed information comes in.
📬 Share this with everyone you know. The more informed we are, the harder it is to manipulate us
Thank you This Will Hold, Nick Paro, Marcus Flowers, Nyle Biondi, Iulia Huiu, and many others for tuning into my live video with Denver Riggleman and The Ken Harbaugh Show! Join me for my next live video in the app.
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