Latest / Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar / 4/1/26: Russia Breaks Cuba Blockade, Kristi Noem Husband Scandal, Fmr CIA On Trump Bungling Iran War

Transcript

4/1/26: Russia Breaks Cuba Blockade, Kristi Noem Husband Scandal, Fmr CIA On Trump Bungling Iran War · Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Hey guys, Saga and Crystal here.
• 0:01
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• 0:27
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• 0:29
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• 0:34
  Speaker 4: A Russian oil tanker is being allowed by the United
• 0:36
  Speaker 4: States to dock in Cuba, President Donald Trump said over
• 0:39
  Speaker 4: the weekend, making this the first shipment of oil to
• 0:43
  Speaker 4: the government since early January.
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: And it'll take about a month.
• 0:47
  Speaker 4: To refine and distribute the fuel, and it's estimated to
• 0:50
  Speaker 4: account for roughly a one month's supply. It's unclear if
• 0:53
  Speaker 4: Trump has ended the oil blockade or simply allowed this
• 0:56
  Speaker 4: ship to come in, but the effect of it has
• 0:59
  Speaker 4: been devastating to the island. Cuba's healthcare system continues to
• 1:04
  Speaker 4: face extreme hardship amid the US oil blockade. So I
• 1:08
  Speaker 4: was recently able to tour two hospitals in Havana in
• 1:11
  Speaker 4: the midst of nationwide energy blackouts. In the footage here
• 1:15
  Speaker 4: you'll see a journalist colleague of mine, lizz O Leva Fernandez,
• 1:18
  Speaker 4: a Cuban reporter based in Havana for the independent news
• 1:20
  Speaker 4: organization Belly of the Beast. She helps set up these visits,
• 1:24
  Speaker 4: and if you're interested in news from Cuba, check out
• 1:27
  Speaker 4: their newsletter at Bellyofthebeastcuba dot com.
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: Now.
• 1:31
  Speaker 4: Cuba has long been known for its focus on healthcare
• 1:34
  Speaker 4: and education, and until recently, its health outcomes mirrored or
• 1:38
  Speaker 4: exceeded those of developed countries. In twenty fifteen, President Obama
• 1:42
  Speaker 4: declared the decades of embargo a failure and moved to
• 1:46
  Speaker 4: normalize relations with Cuba.
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: With Trump in office.
• 1:49
  Speaker 4: Not only did we revert to the old policy, Trump
• 1:52
  Speaker 4: severely tightened it. In twenty nineteen, he implemented new sanctions
• 1:56
  Speaker 4: making it harder for banks to do business with Cuba,
• 1:59
  Speaker 4: harder for taurusts to visit, and allowed Americans to sue
• 2:02
  Speaker 4: based on claims from the nineteen sixties. Just before leaving office,
• 2:07
  Speaker 4: Trump added Cuba to the state sponsors of Terrorism lists,
• 2:10
  Speaker 4: which made it that much harder for them to do
• 2:12
  Speaker 4: business with anybody or access credit. President Biden then left
• 2:17
  Speaker 4: the designation on through nearly his entire four years.
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: Tightening the noose even during COVID.
• 2:23
  Speaker 4: Now, the night before we visit William Solair Pediatric Hospital,
• 2:27
  Speaker 4: the entire island was plunged at seven thirty pm into
• 2:30
  Speaker 4: a blackout. The hospital had a generator which takes a
• 2:33
  Speaker 4: little time to kick in. Now, at five thirty am
• 2:36
  Speaker 4: the next morning, power was restored to the hospital, thankfully
• 2:40
  Speaker 4: before the generator had run out of fuel. We spent
• 2:43
  Speaker 4: a few hours with nurses, doctors, their patients, and their parents.
• 2:47
  Speaker 4: So this is a depressing segment, but stick around for
• 2:49
  Speaker 4: the end because I promise it gets better. We'll be
• 2:52
  Speaker 4: joined in a bit by Fernandez, the reporter you saw there,
• 2:56
  Speaker 4: and by Brace Belden, co host of the Truanon podcast,
• 3:00
  Speaker 4: joined us for the hospital visit. You won't want to
• 3:02
  Speaker 4: miss the update to this saga that he'll have to offer.
• 3:06
  Speaker 4: So we met with anesthesiologists al Theo Fernandez. So this here,
• 3:11
  Speaker 4: this is this is my footage, which is not as
• 3:13
  Speaker 4: good as the footage you're going to see from the
• 3:15
  Speaker 4: Cuban videographers that were with us. This is a baby
• 3:17
  Speaker 4: named Eric, and doctor Fernandez is describing for us how
• 3:22
  Speaker 4: when he when the power goes off, they have to
• 3:24
  Speaker 4: kind of rush to the babies who are on these ventilators,
• 3:27
  Speaker 4: lift up that little device there, reach in and kind
• 3:31
  Speaker 4: of hand pump things until the generator power kicks in
• 3:36
  Speaker 4: and they can get the machines up and working, because.
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: You know, you can't. You don't just kind of pump oxygen.
• 3:42
  Speaker 4: You have to, you know, be you have to be
• 3:44
  Speaker 4: kind of uh, you know, calibrated about how you do it.
• 3:47
  Speaker 4: Too much is not good. Too little is uh, too
• 3:51
  Speaker 4: little obviously not good either. So let's let's roll a
• 3:54
  Speaker 4: little bit of the footage from the trip that Brace,
• 3:59
  Speaker 4: Liz and I made. So here is here's Liz talking
• 4:02
  Speaker 4: to a nurse at the hospital asking in those in
• 4:06
  Speaker 4: those five or seven minutes between the time when the
• 4:08
  Speaker 4: power goes out and the generator comes on, you know,
• 4:11
  Speaker 4: what are you thinking? And the nurse is saying, I'll
• 4:14
  Speaker 4: post these on Twitter so people can watch them in
• 4:16
  Speaker 4: full and listen to them in Spanish. She's saying, even
• 4:19
  Speaker 4: when we don't have babies on ventilators, we react instinctively,
• 4:24
  Speaker 4: We're like, oh my god, we have like we have
• 4:27
  Speaker 4: to rush to the babies. And then they realize sometimes, oh,
• 4:29
  Speaker 4: there's no there's no ventilators currently. And now here's doctor
• 4:33
  Speaker 4: Fernandez saying that two years ago that when when they
• 4:38
  Speaker 4: lost power, the generator did not kick in and they
• 4:42
  Speaker 4: were operating on a five year old boy, and he says,
• 4:46
  Speaker 4: we happened to be with an Australian doctor at the time,
• 4:50
  Speaker 4: and so they they pull out their phones and he said,
• 4:53
  Speaker 4: the Australian doctor is just absolutely freaking out because this
• 4:56
  Speaker 4: is not the kind of thing that you know, Western,
• 5:00
  Speaker 4: you know, developed country surgeons.
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: Surgeons are the biggest cowboys on the planet.
• 5:04
  Speaker 4: Turn off the lights on them that a lot of
• 5:06
  Speaker 4: that confidence goes right out the window.
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: So what he's what he says here is that there was.
• 5:10
  Speaker 4: A operating room kind of in a in a facility
• 5:14
  Speaker 4: nearby that did have that did have light and power,
• 5:18
  Speaker 4: and so they took this five year old boy, covered
• 5:22
  Speaker 4: him up, and then we moved him to this other
• 5:28
  Speaker 4: operating room. And he's describing how that how difficult that
• 5:32
  Speaker 4: makes him. He's the anesthesiologist. How's he going to how's
• 5:35
  Speaker 4: he going to monitor? It's it's already extremely hrrowing to
• 5:40
  Speaker 4: do anesthesialogy forty five year old in the best of conditions.
• 5:45
  Speaker 4: Now you're unplugging him, moving him, but they had no choice.
• 5:50
  Speaker 4: He also said it, you know, massively increases the risk
• 5:52
  Speaker 4: of infection, and stepsist and on and on.
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: What he's what he's saying here.
• 5:58
  Speaker 4: And while you're doing all this, you know, you're you're
• 6:01
  Speaker 4: under your own personal stress of living like every other
• 6:04
  Speaker 4: Cuban lives, which is, you know, very little capacity too,
• 6:10
  Speaker 4: you know, get get you know, food, electricity and such yourself.
• 6:15
  Speaker 4: And so let's let's start now because we have one
• 6:19
  Speaker 4: more clip that I that we want to get to.
• 6:20
  Speaker 4: But first I wanted to bring in uh Liz Alie
• 6:24
  Speaker 4: with Fernandez from Belly of the Beast and Brace Belden
• 6:29
  Speaker 4: from Truanon. Liz, uh, Brace, you know, thank you so
• 6:33
  Speaker 4: much for joining us.
• 6:34
  Speaker 5: Thank you, good to see you all again.
• 6:37
  Speaker 1: Nice to see you too.
• 6:38
  Speaker 4: So yeah, so the day before we had gone to
• 6:42
  Speaker 4: a separate hospital and met with another physician who described
• 6:48
  Speaker 4: how how they had previously bought this like three D
• 6:52
  Speaker 4: printer from a German company to try to make the
• 6:56
  Speaker 4: kind of unique medical devices that they were unable to
• 6:59
  Speaker 4: impoort from. One of them was a like an eighty
• 7:03
  Speaker 4: dollars screw that he described. Another is like, you know,
• 7:07
  Speaker 4: if you're going to do a jaw surgery, removing a
• 7:10
  Speaker 4: tumor from somebody's jaw, you have to then replace the jaw,
• 7:13
  Speaker 4: and described how the sanctions and the terror designation made
• 7:17
  Speaker 4: it such that even though they were able to buy
• 7:20
  Speaker 4: the three D printer and the brief window of kind
• 7:22
  Speaker 4: of normalization, then when they reached out to try to
• 7:25
  Speaker 4: get part spare parts for it and a tech to
• 7:27
  Speaker 4: come out, the German company said, nope, forget about it.
• 7:30
  Speaker 4: So then the next day Sunday, we went to this
• 7:32
  Speaker 4: pediatric hospital. It's, you know, under the best of conditions,
• 7:35
  Speaker 4: it's always devastating emotionally to visit a pediatric unit. But
• 7:40
  Speaker 4: but Liz, I wanted to get your get your reaction
• 7:43
  Speaker 4: to you know, you know, you know what we saw
• 7:49
  Speaker 4: in the in the two separate wings of of this
• 7:51
  Speaker 4: pediatric unit and compared to how things have been, you know,
• 7:55
  Speaker 4: over the last five years as things have really tightened,
• 7:57
  Speaker 4: and then previously during the kind of liberalizing period where
• 8:02
  Speaker 4: Cuba was actually allowed to trade with the rest.
• 8:04
  Speaker 5: Of the world.
• 8:05
  Speaker 6: Well, for me, it's really devastating.
• 8:08
  Speaker 7: I think, like before I start this journey with Belly
• 8:11
  Speaker 7: of the Bees and start to go deep inside of
• 8:14
  Speaker 7: the sentions, I mean even journalist, so it's supposed to
• 8:16
  Speaker 7: be no more the senis that I did in the
• 8:20
  Speaker 7: past because I grew up talking about Oh the block
• 8:24
  Speaker 7: is the bloka, so Cuba to have this, but.
• 8:28
  Speaker 6: It looks like it's so metaphoric.
• 8:32
  Speaker 7: It's like it's everything, but it's nothing you can touch it.
• 8:35
  Speaker 7: It's fairly tangible. And then like working with Belly of
• 8:41
  Speaker 7: the Bees and looking inside of the impact of the
• 8:43
  Speaker 7: stations on the given people and you see these cases,
• 8:48
  Speaker 7: that's everything that changed completely your mind because I think
• 8:53
  Speaker 7: like that's the first stept to understand how the sensis
• 8:57
  Speaker 7: affecting the given people. Because if it's like, oh, this
• 8:59
  Speaker 7: is affecting Cuba, but then they said, like it's affecting
• 9:03
  Speaker 7: this baby to have access to the medication, or it's
• 9:06
  Speaker 7: affecting this family that are struggling to.
• 9:09
  Speaker 6: Get the surgery for his kids.
• 9:11
  Speaker 7: That Cuba used to practice in the debet basis, but
• 9:16
  Speaker 7: then from a day to another, they stopped to do
• 9:19
  Speaker 7: it because they run out of resources. If you talk
• 9:22
  Speaker 7: to doctors in Cuba and Havana, everyone's gonna say, oh,
• 9:26
  Speaker 7: the things start to go worse after the COVID pandemic.
• 9:31
  Speaker 7: But of course because in two thou nineteen the United
• 9:36
  Speaker 7: States government that was the Donald Trump first administion and
• 9:40
  Speaker 7: start to implement new senttions and screwt the tools to
• 9:44
  Speaker 7: the Kuban government to try to suffolk in the country
• 9:48
  Speaker 7: in general. So I remember in two those on nineteen
• 9:52
  Speaker 7: September was the started the oil the block oil blockade
• 9:57
  Speaker 7: that started to sanctionce oil time girls that were coming
• 10:01
  Speaker 7: to Cuba to bring oil. That was the beginning of
• 10:04
  Speaker 7: all these journeys. Just it wasn't just January twenty twenty six.
• 10:09
  Speaker 7: And in May they also start to do like like
• 10:13
  Speaker 7: a tourism. So everything started to stop in Cuba. And
• 10:17
  Speaker 7: you can't see the fronde or another one, but you
• 10:21
  Speaker 7: see that it's getting worse and worse. And I feel
• 10:26
  Speaker 7: bad because I don't know what is the moment that
• 10:29
  Speaker 7: this started to going better again, right.
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: And so brace we can bring you in for a second.
• 10:36
  Speaker 4: So when we went to the hospital on that Sunday morning,
• 10:39
  Speaker 4: we first went to the neo nail unit. But speaking
• 10:43
  Speaker 4: of shortages, they had so few gowns that only Liz
• 10:48
  Speaker 4: and if you notice in that some of that footage
• 10:50
  Speaker 4: that Liz and I are in there because they didn't
• 10:52
  Speaker 4: have enough gowns for you and your producer Steven to
• 10:57
  Speaker 4: join us. But then as we were kind of in
• 10:59
  Speaker 4: the neonatal unit, they found a couple more and so
• 11:03
  Speaker 4: when we went to the more adolescent unit, you were able.
• 11:06
  Speaker 1: To join us.
• 11:07
  Speaker 4: You talk a little bit about, you know what what
• 11:12
  Speaker 4: what your reaction was to seeing the that adolescent unit.
• 11:19
  Speaker 8: Man, Yeah, like you're saying, it's it's I don't think
• 11:21
  Speaker 8: it's ever pleasant to visit a a pediatric unit anywhere,
• 11:26
  Speaker 8: but this was it was, it was. It was very
• 11:28
  Speaker 8: difficult to go in there because and first of all,
• 11:33
  Speaker 8: they had a kind of amazing uh nurse to patient ratio.
• 11:37
  Speaker 5: Looked like there was about two nurses in every room.
• 11:39
  Speaker 8: But the thing that we heard from everybody that we
• 11:41
  Speaker 8: talked to is they just didn't have basic things that
• 11:43
  Speaker 8: you would consider like the building blocks of trying to
• 11:46
  Speaker 8: get somebody better. So like, for instance, if you're sick
• 11:49
  Speaker 8: in there with an infection, they might have some antibiotics,
• 11:51
  Speaker 8: but they might not exactly have the antibiotics that you need.
• 11:54
  Speaker 5: But you need some antibotics, you'll take these ones. You know.
• 11:57
  Speaker 8: The Cubans are sort of admired, I think, by Americans
• 12:01
  Speaker 8: for their improvisation.
• 12:04
  Speaker 5: But the thing is they should have to.
• 12:05
  Speaker 8: Improvise, like you should be able to get you know,
• 12:09
  Speaker 8: tubes and bedpans and bags for medication and the medication itself,
• 12:14
  Speaker 8: but they can't. And so the first thing that I
• 12:16
  Speaker 8: noticed with it, it seemed well staffed, and it seemed
• 12:18
  Speaker 8: to staffed by very competent people, but they didn't have
• 12:21
  Speaker 8: very basic tools. And you know, from what I was understanding,
• 12:24
  Speaker 8: this is like we're the best hospital in Havana, which
• 12:26
  Speaker 8: means that really the best in Cuba. And I just
• 12:29
  Speaker 8: kept thinking, like, wow, if they don't have that stuff here,
• 12:31
  Speaker 8: they really don't have anything anywhere like in the provinces.
• 12:34
  Speaker 9: And on that note, let's go ahead and roll this
• 12:36
  Speaker 9: clip this in bea a vo. I want to get
• 12:39
  Speaker 9: all three of your reaction to this posted on Monday,
• 12:42
  Speaker 9: the Russia breaking of the blockade. We have a Russian
• 12:47
  Speaker 9: tanker carrying one hundred thousand tons of crude oil that
• 12:51
  Speaker 9: arrived in Cuba. So you can see a little bit
• 12:54
  Speaker 9: of this on the screen if you're watching a massive
• 12:57
  Speaker 9: tanker pulling up to the port in Havana. So, having
• 13:01
  Speaker 9: seen what you saw just what a week and a
• 13:03
  Speaker 9: half ago, Now, what expectations do we have about how right?
• 13:09
  Speaker 9: Maybe I'll just start with you, this will change the
• 13:11
  Speaker 9: situation on the ground.
• 13:12
  Speaker 4: Well, it's it's uh, I think it's it's it's a lifeline.
• 13:16
  Speaker 4: But you know, it remains be seen how quickly it
• 13:19
  Speaker 4: can be distributed. Liz, I'm curious when do people expect
• 13:23
  Speaker 4: that some of the shortages might be lifted as a
• 13:26
  Speaker 4: result of this, and for how long?
• 13:28
  Speaker 7: Well, actually, I think that of course, as you said
• 13:33
  Speaker 7: that this is a good news, but that's not the solution.
• 13:37
  Speaker 7: The solution is just Cuba being able to trade and
• 13:39
  Speaker 7: to buy oil whatever. We don't need to go so
• 13:42
  Speaker 7: far onto Russia. It's just part of way. We just
• 13:45
  Speaker 7: kept by it in Venezuela, United States.
• 13:49
  Speaker 6: So I don't follow, like, actually, what is what is
• 13:54
  Speaker 6: the goal? Because at the.
• 13:55
  Speaker 7: Beginning they say, well, we are we're going to like
• 13:58
  Speaker 7: terminate the countin.
• 13:59
  Speaker 6: We don't care or nothing.
• 14:01
  Speaker 7: We are going in and we're going to destroy everything
• 14:03
  Speaker 7: and then try and say, Okay, we are going to
• 14:05
  Speaker 7: allow this the Russian oil tinker to go in and
• 14:09
  Speaker 7: whatever it wants. But it's unclear what is this is
• 14:13
  Speaker 7: gonna work. And also it's like, why we need to
• 14:16
  Speaker 7: ask the United States permission to do like a normal
• 14:19
  Speaker 7: trade with the rest of the wall. Why they need
• 14:22
  Speaker 7: to threat countries like Mexico don't sell oil to Cuba.
• 14:27
  Speaker 6: This is crazy.
• 14:29
  Speaker 7: And also the situation that we have now is not
• 14:32
  Speaker 7: just because the lack of fuel or oil is going
• 14:35
  Speaker 7: beyond that, It's like the Cuba has been a stop
• 14:40
  Speaker 7: to have the capacity to buy raw materials that we
• 14:44
  Speaker 7: need to produce the medications that we need inside of Cuba.
• 14:48
  Speaker 6: We need to think about that.
• 14:49
  Speaker 7: Cuba is a country that used to produce the sixty
• 14:52
  Speaker 7: percent of the medications that we consume inside of Cuba.
• 14:56
  Speaker 7: And nowadays, no, you go to a drug store empty,
• 15:00
  Speaker 7: you go to a hospital, they don't have eyeps for patients,
• 15:05
  Speaker 7: they don't have surrunis, they don't have truckers. Like this
• 15:09
  Speaker 7: is crazy. We are talking in a country that is
• 15:11
  Speaker 7: able to create medication for lung cancer that is actually effective.
• 15:17
  Speaker 6: We are talking about a country that is actually.
• 15:21
  Speaker 4: Yeah, so and we lost you for a second, which
• 15:23
  Speaker 4: is I think indicative of the difficult kind of internet
• 15:27
  Speaker 4: and electrical situation there. So you know, as we continue through,
• 15:33
  Speaker 4: as we continue through this adolescent word of intensive care unit,
• 15:38
  Speaker 4: we met a boy named Carlos and I want to
• 15:41
  Speaker 4: talk to him, talk about him briefly. And we met
• 15:43
  Speaker 4: his mom on nielis who is who is in the
• 15:47
  Speaker 4: room with him, her dad, His dad was with him
• 15:50
  Speaker 4: as well. So let's roll this. Let's roll this next
• 15:53
  Speaker 4: clip because and then we want to talk about where
• 15:56
  Speaker 4: you've gone. Says this is this is his his father
• 16:00
  Speaker 4: talking about a child here.
• 16:02
  Speaker 1: So Carlos has.
• 16:04
  Speaker 4: Cystic fibrosis and which is why he's on the ventilator here,
• 16:08
  Speaker 4: which is people know this is a degenerative lung condition
• 16:13
  Speaker 4: that if you have and BRACE knows more about this,
• 16:17
  Speaker 4: if you have the right kind you never have the
• 16:19
  Speaker 4: right kind. But if you have a certain kind of
• 16:21
  Speaker 4: cistic fibrosis, there is medication for it called Trikafta that
• 16:27
  Speaker 4: is extraordinarily effective. And so the parents said, you know
• 16:31
  Speaker 4: understand that this medication is what is what the boy
• 16:36
  Speaker 4: needs to be able to survive in this in the
• 16:40
  Speaker 4: sense he lives about an hour and a half outside
• 16:43
  Speaker 4: of Havana.
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: He'd been brought to this hospital.
• 16:44
  Speaker 4: He's been given palliative care here, which effectively means they're
• 16:49
  Speaker 4: doing the best for they can, doing the best they
• 16:51
  Speaker 4: can for him to make him as comfortable as he
• 16:53
  Speaker 4: can as he withers and dies. He was down to
• 16:56
  Speaker 4: forty four pounds when we met him last Sunday, but
• 17:00
  Speaker 4: a boy that was still full of life and a
• 17:04
  Speaker 4: full life ahead of him if he could just get
• 17:07
  Speaker 4: this treatment which his parents no exists in the past,
• 17:12
  Speaker 4: as the doctor Fernanis had said, medication that isn't produced
• 17:17
  Speaker 4: in Cuba. They would buy it and import it, but
• 17:21
  Speaker 4: they're just completely out of our dollars at this point
• 17:26
  Speaker 4: from the twenty nineteen tightening of the economy around them.
• 17:32
  Speaker 4: And so this is where we bring BRACE in. So
• 17:36
  Speaker 4: Brace you were familiar with this condition.
• 17:40
  Speaker 8: How so, cystic fibrosis is basically the only condition that
• 17:45
  Speaker 8: I'm really familiar with, because when I moved into the
• 17:49
  Speaker 8: apartment that I live in now, my neighbors across the
• 17:51
  Speaker 8: street had a little boy, I think it was like,
• 17:54
  Speaker 8: I think it was four at the time, and and
• 17:56
  Speaker 8: my office is right next to the I guess the
• 17:59
  Speaker 8: hallway or or like whatever, the foyer, the place between
• 18:02
  Speaker 8: our apartments, and I would always hear him coughing, and
• 18:05
  Speaker 8: he'd be coughing like an old ass man, like very loud,
• 18:08
  Speaker 8: very deep cost this yeah exactly. And so I was like,
• 18:12
  Speaker 8: what's wrong with a kid? And they're like, oh, a
• 18:14
  Speaker 8: cystic fibrosis, which I didn't I knew that it existed,
• 18:17
  Speaker 8: but I didn't really know about it. And uh, and
• 18:19
  Speaker 8: they're like, yeah, like you know, it's sort of a
• 18:21
  Speaker 8: shorter life expectancy. And then I just sort of blew
• 18:24
  Speaker 8: my mind. I was like, this kid's gonna die. So
• 18:26
  Speaker 8: I learned a bunch about it, and you know, I
• 18:28
  Speaker 8: became friends with my neighbors, hung with a kid with
• 18:30
  Speaker 8: the parents a lot.
• 18:32
  Speaker 5: Uh.
• 18:32
  Speaker 8: And then a couple of years after moving in, there
• 18:35
  Speaker 8: was a new medication that came out or they told
• 18:38
  Speaker 8: me about it before, but it became available called Trekafta,
• 18:41
  Speaker 8: and they're like this is They had a party once
• 18:43
  Speaker 8: he got prescribed it, you know, like it was a
• 18:46
  Speaker 8: it was a giant, big neighborhood thing.
• 18:48
  Speaker 5: Uh. And then he.
• 18:50
  Speaker 8: Just became basically within like a month, a normal kid,
• 18:53
  Speaker 8: like running around lets himself into my apartment, frequently plays
• 18:58
  Speaker 8: with picks up knives that I didn't even know I had,
• 19:00
  Speaker 8: runs around she's his sister with them. But it's like
• 19:03
  Speaker 8: a normal, very like energetic kid, whereas prior to that
• 19:07
  Speaker 8: he had been just like always sick, always home from school, uh,
• 19:10
  Speaker 8: kind of underweight and just coughing all the time. And
• 19:14
  Speaker 8: you know, cystic fibrosis is a you know, I'm not
• 19:18
  Speaker 8: an expert, but from what I understand, essentially, your body
• 19:21
  Speaker 8: just gets filled with mucus and it's not just your lungs,
• 19:24
  Speaker 8: it's other organs.
• 19:25
  Speaker 5: Uh.
• 19:26
  Speaker 8: You know, you mentioned that Carlos was forty four pounds,
• 19:28
  Speaker 8: which is quite low for a nine year old boy.
• 19:31
  Speaker 8: It's because your body can't really absorb nutrition because mucus
• 19:34
  Speaker 8: is literally clogging your organs.
• 19:37
  Speaker 5: Uh.
• 19:37
  Speaker 8: And so a lot of what happens is people die
• 19:42
  Speaker 8: essentially because repeated lung infections.
• 19:46
  Speaker 7: Uh.
• 19:46
  Speaker 8: And then either just like the closing of the airways,
• 19:48
  Speaker 8: like you really you literally choke to death on your
• 19:52
  Speaker 8: own mucus and and this, you know, this horrible scarring.
• 19:55
  Speaker 8: And in with Trikafta, it's kind of a miracle drug.
• 19:59
  Speaker 8: And I'm not really sure how it works. But but
• 20:02
  Speaker 8: it you know, again I'm not a doctor or anything,
• 20:05
  Speaker 8: but it essentially it really it clears out a lot
• 20:08
  Speaker 8: of the mucans. It's a very thick mucus. It clears
• 20:10
  Speaker 8: it out and you have to keep taking it. But
• 20:15
  Speaker 8: it can extend a life expectancy from anywhere. I mean
• 20:17
  Speaker 8: people assistic fibroscas can can die on their teens or
• 20:20
  Speaker 8: maybe their forties at the latest it appears now. I mean,
• 20:24
  Speaker 8: it hasn't been around long enough that you can actually
• 20:26
  Speaker 8: have a normal lifespan with them. So it really is
• 20:29
  Speaker 8: like the difference between I mean life and death for people.
• 20:33
  Speaker 4: And so the parents are well aware of this. The
• 20:37
  Speaker 4: medical staff was where that he needed this. So what
• 20:42
  Speaker 4: so how did so did you talk to your neighbor
• 20:45
  Speaker 4: when you got home? Like what was the what was
• 20:47
  Speaker 4: the upshot there?
• 20:49
  Speaker 8: Well, yeah, well so she was showing us those boxes
• 20:51
  Speaker 8: of tri kafta and I know what that is. Like
• 20:55
  Speaker 8: I'm like, I know that medication.
• 20:59
  Speaker 5: And I I mean, I it sucked being in that room.
• 21:03
  Speaker 10: It.
• 21:03
  Speaker 8: I got to tell you, I mean, not to be whatever.
• 21:05
  Speaker 8: I know this isn't exactly the question you asked, but
• 21:07
  Speaker 8: I was just like, you know, I talked to a
• 21:10
  Speaker 8: lot of people. I've been in a lot of bad.
• 21:11
  Speaker 5: Situations, I guess throughout my life.
• 21:14
  Speaker 8: This was like the first time where I was just like,
• 21:16
  Speaker 8: I was just crying in next I'm like, dude, this
• 21:18
  Speaker 8: kid is dying and if he had been born one
• 21:21
  Speaker 8: hundred miles from here, he'd be just fine, you know,
• 21:25
  Speaker 8: and uh, you know, addicted to Minecraft or whatever. And
• 21:29
  Speaker 8: I was just like Jesus Christ. And so that, I mean,
• 21:33
  Speaker 8: the whole, the whole. I was in a pretty sort
• 21:35
  Speaker 8: of down mood the entire time, but that really sort
• 21:38
  Speaker 8: of spun me out. And so when I was able
• 21:40
  Speaker 8: to get back to the US the next day, I
• 21:42
  Speaker 8: called my neighbor. I'm like, dude, this sucks. And he
• 21:46
  Speaker 8: was like, well, are we actually we have a bunch
• 21:49
  Speaker 8: of tre ca after and uh and because the kid
• 21:54
  Speaker 8: is aging out of this certain dose that he's on
• 21:56
  Speaker 8: and he's actually his weight is increasing too much, and
• 22:01
  Speaker 8: they're like, we have like a bunch of boxes of it.
• 22:04
  Speaker 8: And so I went crazy, and through read from Belly
• 22:08
  Speaker 8: the Beast and through a bunch of people's help, I
• 22:12
  Speaker 8: was able to get those boxes down to Havana. I
• 22:16
  Speaker 8: guess I got back on Monday, and they were in
• 22:19
  Speaker 8: Havana on Thursday, which is good. They were at the hospital.
• 22:22
  Speaker 8: But the thing is too though. The kid is and
• 22:26
  Speaker 8: and they're working. Parents sent an update yesterday. The meds
• 22:29
  Speaker 8: are working and the kid is. I mean again, he
• 22:31
  Speaker 8: wasn't pallut of care, which means he's gonna die, and
• 22:35
  Speaker 8: with the meds he's able to. And he was on
• 22:37
  Speaker 8: this breathing thing that I think is probably in the videos,
• 22:40
  Speaker 8: and you know it's because he has this tube and
• 22:42
  Speaker 8: as lung as lung as basically collapsed, but they can't
• 22:45
  Speaker 8: really do surgery because it's filled with his mucus. It's
• 22:48
  Speaker 8: a horrible situation, especially about nine year old boy. And
• 22:52
  Speaker 8: and with this they should be able to either operate
• 22:56
  Speaker 8: or clear it out. Yeah, there he is, which I
• 23:02
  Speaker 8: gotta say, he even looks in this a lot better
• 23:05
  Speaker 8: than what we saw, because he looked like a drawing
• 23:09
  Speaker 8: of a.
• 23:09
  Speaker 5: Sick kid, Like his eyes are all shallow.
• 23:11
  Speaker 8: He's on a thing, you know, he's got this, he's
• 23:13
  Speaker 8: got like a basically a cup in front of him
• 23:15
  Speaker 8: that he's like he has to expectorate into.
• 23:17
  Speaker 5: And the cost that this kid was doing. We were
• 23:19
  Speaker 5: there for one of his coffee tech.
• 23:21
  Speaker 8: It's like, you cannot imagine a child making that sound
• 23:26
  Speaker 8: like that is what is So I guess I kind
• 23:30
  Speaker 8: of have I guess what you might call a manic episode.
• 23:32
  Speaker 8: After I got back and I was like, I can't.
• 23:33
  Speaker 8: This is fucking insane. But it's crazy because there's only
• 23:37
  Speaker 8: like one hundred and fifty thousand doses or excuse me,
• 23:41
  Speaker 8: doses diagnosed cases of cystic fibrosis. I think worldwide there's
• 23:45
  Speaker 8: more people with it, but who are officially diagnosed with it.
• 23:48
  Speaker 8: I think there's maybe about forty thousand in the United States.
• 23:51
  Speaker 8: And I'm like, Jesus Christ, what a coincidence. My neighbor's
• 23:54
  Speaker 8: kid has that and they have this exact medication, and
• 23:58
  Speaker 8: so I was like, well, you know, what are you
• 23:59
  Speaker 8: gonna do?
• 24:00
  Speaker 5: You gotta get this down there.
• 24:01
  Speaker 8: But the problem is, and this is the thing, so
• 24:04
  Speaker 8: he's gonna need I think longer term care, which is possible.
• 24:08
  Speaker 8: All the stuff that I'm gonna strive it is possible,
• 24:12
  Speaker 8: and it was possible until recent history for Cuban doctors
• 24:15
  Speaker 8: at that very hospital to do. But because of the blockade,
• 24:21
  Speaker 8: like the scarring and his lungs is pancreas, I think
• 24:24
  Speaker 8: isn't working so hot. All of those things that would
• 24:26
  Speaker 8: be treatable are not as treatable or treatable maybe at all,
• 24:32
  Speaker 8: because of the US sanctions and the US blockade tightening
• 24:35
  Speaker 8: in place since twenty nineteen, but of course since the
• 24:38
  Speaker 8: beginning of the embargo. And so this was a direct
• 24:40
  Speaker 8: thing when we were standing in that room and we're
• 24:42
  Speaker 8: watching this child die, and you can't help but think
• 24:45
  Speaker 8: my government, Marco Rubio and Donald Trump, this is the
• 24:50
  Speaker 8: intended result of this. And I was talking to nurses there,
• 24:54
  Speaker 8: and I was talking to and talked to everybody I
• 24:56
  Speaker 8: talked to in Cuba. My basic question was, how do
• 24:58
  Speaker 8: you get to work in the morning. There's there's no fuel.
• 25:01
  Speaker 8: You might let you know, Havana is a regular city.
• 25:03
  Speaker 8: It's a normal city. I think there's people maybe exoticize
• 25:06
  Speaker 8: Cuba a little bit. This is ninety miles of Key West,
• 25:09
  Speaker 8: Jimmy Buffett. This this is like a people take the
• 25:12
  Speaker 8: bus to work, People have cars, People do these things.
• 25:15
  Speaker 8: If you're a nurse taking care of this kid, you
• 25:17
  Speaker 8: don't know if you're gonna be able to get there
• 25:19
  Speaker 8: in the morning because maybe there's no bus. There probably
• 25:21
  Speaker 8: isn't a bus. And so this is all these cascading
• 25:24
  Speaker 8: effects to where that end up with this child not
• 25:28
  Speaker 8: being able to get care or let alone the medicine
• 25:31
  Speaker 8: because of not only the the the vicious blockade that
• 25:37
  Speaker 8: that Trump and Rubio put in, but also this new
• 25:40
  Speaker 8: oil blockade. And so this is like, you know, you're
• 25:44
  Speaker 8: standing there, man, and I know it affected you too,
• 25:46
  Speaker 8: and you're just looking at this kid dying and his parents.
• 25:49
  Speaker 8: The desperation that was coming off of his parents, And
• 25:51
  Speaker 8: I don't mean to diminish them in any way. I
• 25:54
  Speaker 8: think it's the desperation that anybody with a child, or
• 25:56
  Speaker 8: even without a child would feel in this situation. You're like,
• 25:59
  Speaker 8: I can't is there is something out there that will
• 26:03
  Speaker 8: save my child, that will let him live as close
• 26:06
  Speaker 8: to a normal life as is as he can, but
• 26:09
  Speaker 8: I am being prevented from getting it because of rules
• 26:13
  Speaker 8: put in place by a billionaire real estate developer from
• 26:18
  Speaker 8: New York and one of.
• 26:21
  Speaker 1: The most South Florida.
• 26:23
  Speaker 5: Yeah, one of the nastiest Miami Cubans there is.
• 26:26
  Speaker 4: And for a very deliberate and precise strategic purpose. Like
• 26:31
  Speaker 4: that's that's what I want to underline here. Backing up
• 26:33
  Speaker 4: what Liz was saying earlier, the goal here of hurting
• 26:38
  Speaker 4: regular Cubans, like the goal of killing Carlos rather than
• 26:43
  Speaker 4: allowing him to live, is to make his family that
• 26:47
  Speaker 4: survives angry at the government so that they then go
• 26:53
  Speaker 4: into the streets and overthrow the Cuban government and replace
• 26:58
  Speaker 4: them with a government made up of people from Miami
• 27:02
  Speaker 4: that we believe is a better government. Let let to
• 27:06
  Speaker 4: be the most generous that we believe is a better.
• 27:08
  Speaker 9: Government that's favorable to the government that created the conditions
• 27:11
  Speaker 9: that hurt your son.
• 27:13
  Speaker 4: Right, So, so the immediate, the specific there is a
• 27:16
  Speaker 4: purpose to making it so that Carlos dies, and it
• 27:21
  Speaker 4: is to make it.
• 27:22
  Speaker 1: It is make people angry, and it is.
• 27:24
  Speaker 6: And it's complicated.
• 27:25
  Speaker 7: I think like then, because again we are talking about
• 27:29
  Speaker 7: one of the main hospital pediatric hospitals in Havana with
• 27:33
  Speaker 7: half the best cure.
• 27:34
  Speaker 6: Can you imagine this right in the place.
• 27:37
  Speaker 7: They just batanzas or baraka like for their province, countryside
• 27:44
  Speaker 7: rural areas that there are more Carlos over there, but
• 27:49
  Speaker 7: other with other diseases that are abable to be fixed
• 27:54
  Speaker 7: in this twenty first century.
• 27:57
  Speaker 6: And it's crazy that they can't have the indications that
• 28:00
  Speaker 6: they need.
• 28:01
  Speaker 7: I think like the most of the people are angry
• 28:06
  Speaker 7: in Cuba, but the most I think, like the general
• 28:08
  Speaker 7: feeling is frustration. Is frustration because why we need to
• 28:14
  Speaker 7: deserve it under these conditions. And I think, like the
• 28:17
  Speaker 7: doctor AliOS say is something that stuck with me. It's like,
• 28:21
  Speaker 7: and it puts the example of the one hundred bucks.
• 28:24
  Speaker 7: It's like, if a country only have one hundred bucks,
• 28:27
  Speaker 7: they need to be sure that they can help in
• 28:31
  Speaker 7: the most of the people, the majority of the people
• 28:34
  Speaker 7: with these only one hundred bucks, and Carlos and other
• 28:39
  Speaker 7: kids and other teenagers and other mother fathers, there are
• 28:43
  Speaker 7: other people that have also specific disease that the use.
• 28:48
  Speaker 7: The Cuban government used to buy medication just for them,
• 28:51
  Speaker 7: and now they just they need to do trarash. Okay,
• 28:56
  Speaker 7: we need this specific amount of money. Who we are
• 28:59
  Speaker 7: going to life with this? So sadly, Carlos can't get
• 29:04
  Speaker 7: into the list because as Bray said, it's just a
• 29:07
  Speaker 7: few number of people that have the disease.
• 29:10
  Speaker 6: So this is crazy.
• 29:12
  Speaker 7: So people get sad, get frustrated, get angry, but it's
• 29:18
  Speaker 7: frustration because Okay, this is the medical site. But then
• 29:23
  Speaker 7: the doctors and the nurses have to come back home.
• 29:26
  Speaker 7: You don't have electricity to a black house, or they
• 29:29
  Speaker 7: don't have gas so they can cook, so they don't
• 29:32
  Speaker 7: have anything. They don't have running water because there is
• 29:35
  Speaker 7: no electricity of course to pump in the water. So
• 29:38
  Speaker 7: this is the same people who need to be focused
• 29:42
  Speaker 7: the other day and needs to be rest to save
• 29:46
  Speaker 7: other children and other families live. This is crazy and
• 29:50
  Speaker 7: they need to go through all this, and they say, why,
• 29:53
  Speaker 7: who is there responsible for this? I can't think about
• 29:57
  Speaker 7: the US government. I can't play with because there are
• 30:00
  Speaker 7: two fight away from us. There are too fight away
• 30:03
  Speaker 7: from our life. We need to blame our own government
• 30:06
  Speaker 7: because they need to give an answer, They need to
• 30:10
  Speaker 7: do something to change.
• 30:11
  Speaker 4: These They're the ones you're interacting with on a day
• 30:14
  Speaker 4: to day basis exactly exactly.
• 30:17
  Speaker 1: So we're gonna we'll keep up with this.
• 30:19
  Speaker 4: And and you know, you know, I'm so grateful to
• 30:25
  Speaker 4: everyone who is able to like come together and get
• 30:28
  Speaker 4: Carlos this medication that absolutely should not have to come
• 30:31
  Speaker 4: to this. And the kind of the the relief on
• 30:35
  Speaker 4: on the face of his mother and father kind of
• 30:37
  Speaker 4: is you know, spells out to me.
• 30:39
  Speaker 1: The depravity of of the of denying it.
• 30:42
  Speaker 4: Uh, he'll probably you were saying you need to go
• 30:44
  Speaker 4: to the country of Columbia to get some some treatment,
• 30:47
  Speaker 4: which is which is possible, and we're gonna, well, you know,
• 30:50
  Speaker 4: but we'll we'll keep up with this, but ultimately what
• 30:54
  Speaker 4: the country.
• 30:55
  Speaker 1: Needs just to be able to do normal business and
• 30:58
  Speaker 1: and trade. But then, thank you.
• 31:01
  Speaker 4: Brayce co hosted a true on podcast Liz with Belly
• 31:05
  Speaker 4: of the Beast. Thank you so much for everything you're
• 31:07
  Speaker 4: doing for being here.
• 31:12
  Speaker 9: The Daily Mail dropped a midday bombshell yesterday revealing we
• 31:16
  Speaker 9: can put up on the screen that Christy Nomes' longtime husband,
• 31:19
  Speaker 9: I think they've been married for thirty four years or
• 31:21
  Speaker 9: high school sweetheart was reading what that was, leading what
• 31:24
  Speaker 9: The Daily Mail described as a quote secret double life.
• 31:27
  Speaker 9: The rest of the headline is Nomes cross dressing husband Brian,
• 31:32
  Speaker 9: the pouting, busty bimbo photos and trove of explicit messages.
• 31:38
  Speaker 9: Trove is not an understatement. The Daily Mail has its
• 31:42
  Speaker 9: hand on all kinds of screenshots showing what appears to
• 31:47
  Speaker 9: be a very clear fetish for Christy Noams husband. Again,
• 31:52
  Speaker 9: this is seems have been happening while she was the
• 31:54
  Speaker 9: secretary of the Homeland Security Department who is putting balloon
• 32:00
  Speaker 9: up his shirt, sending pictures of himself with like cartoonishly
• 32:05
  Speaker 9: large breasts to women who apparently he was also into
• 32:11
  Speaker 9: having cartoonishly large breasts. He was paying them money. I
• 32:15
  Speaker 9: mean up to potentially twenty five thousand dollars and this
• 32:19
  Speaker 9: is all coming out now, Christi Noman money. He's an
• 32:24
  Speaker 9: insurance guy. That's his background. So Christie Nome responds yesterday
• 32:30
  Speaker 9: after the Daily Mail drops this in the middle of
• 32:32
  Speaker 9: the day, quote, Misnome is devastated. This is her camp's response.
• 32:37
  Speaker 9: The family was blindsided by this and they ask for
• 32:40
  Speaker 9: privacy and prayers at the time. That's what her representatives
• 32:44
  Speaker 9: told the New York Post. Now Trump also reacted to this,
• 32:48
  Speaker 9: going to skip ahead to eat five. He told, uh
• 32:51
  Speaker 9: the Daily Mail, Wow, well, I feel badly for the family.
• 32:56
  Speaker 9: If that's the case, that's too bad. Why does it
• 32:59
  Speaker 9: matter that? And Christynomer responded in this particular way, Well,
• 33:03
  Speaker 9: it's interesting because as salacious as this story is, this
• 33:07
  Speaker 9: is the Homeland Security secretary who was clearly vulnerable to
• 33:11
  Speaker 9: blackmail on an enormous scale. When these pictures are being
• 33:16
  Speaker 9: sent with her husband's face in them. It's not as
• 33:18
  Speaker 9: though he was trying to hide himself hide his face.
• 33:21
  Speaker 9: Some of the women he interacted with, apparently he was
• 33:26
  Speaker 9: paying and interacting with, said that they figured out who
• 33:29
  Speaker 9: he was. They talked to him about it. They asked him.
• 33:31
  Speaker 9: One of them said she asked him about Corey Lewandowski
• 33:34
  Speaker 9: and his wife having an affair, and he said, well,
• 33:36
  Speaker 9: there's nothing that I can do about it. So if
• 33:39
  Speaker 9: Trump and Nome had no idea about.
• 33:42
  Speaker 1: This, wait, one of the sex workers he was engaging with,
• 33:46
  Speaker 1: who was.
• 33:46
  Speaker 9: Like, E four, did you see this? No? Mark Caputo
• 33:50
  Speaker 9: reported how he was. He got a tip. So Mark
• 33:54
  Speaker 9: Capudo is the Trump White House reporter over at Axios.
• 33:57
  Speaker 9: He's in Florida. He said, quote, Yeah, I got a
• 34:00
  Speaker 9: weird lead. A source texted me February thirteenth. They said
• 34:03
  Speaker 9: an immigrant sex worker, possibly in the country illegally, wanted
• 34:06
  Speaker 9: to go public about Nome's husband using her services online.
• 34:10
  Speaker 9: It was vengeance for DHS's immigration enforcement. I couldn't land
• 34:15
  Speaker 9: the interview. Caputo posts a screenshot of his back and
• 34:20
  Speaker 9: forth with that source. He says, sharing because folks sometimes
• 34:23
  Speaker 9: wonder how reporting works here, I would have needed to
• 34:25
  Speaker 9: talk to the accuser and verify the info the way
• 34:28
  Speaker 9: the mail did. When we use anonymous sources, they're credible.
• 34:31
  Speaker 9: Sometimes it means someone else gets the story for what
• 34:33
  Speaker 9: it's worth. I understand. Yet another media outlet had been
• 34:35
  Speaker 9: shown these pictures last year but declined to run them.
• 34:40
  Speaker 9: A woman then quote tweets another post and Kaputo points
• 34:45
  Speaker 9: to saying when this news broke, I recognized him, referring
• 34:48
  Speaker 9: to Brian Nome as one of my clients, because I've
• 34:50
  Speaker 9: never seen a quote sissy sub have bigger knockers than him.
• 34:56
  Speaker 1: But where did where is it?
• 34:57
  Speaker 4: Where do they say that the sex worker asked him
• 35:00
  Speaker 4: about the affair between Lewandowski and.
• 35:02
  Speaker 9: That's in the Daily mail store, that's the Daily Mail stow.
• 35:03
  Speaker 10: I got it.
• 35:05
  Speaker 4: I thought I had seen that somewhere. Yeah, so that's
• 35:07
  Speaker 4: the other thing. Yes, you could blackmail her over this.
• 35:10
  Speaker 4: You could also blackmail her over this, like widely discussed
• 35:13
  Speaker 4: years long affair with this like the facto chief of
• 35:16
  Speaker 4: staff or maybe like whatever, like whatever you want to
• 35:19
  Speaker 4: call Corey Lewandowski. Why why is she even still married?
• 35:26
  Speaker 4: Like just she's clearly like follow your heart with Corey.
• 35:29
  Speaker 9: Like it's all very weird, and Corey is married to
• 35:32
  Speaker 9: a nine to eleven widow. By the way, it's just
• 35:34
  Speaker 9: a really gross and sad situation. And they've been publicly
• 35:40
  Speaker 9: cheating on their spouses at GOP events for years now.
• 35:44
  Speaker 9: Everyone knows about it. Trump apparently thinks it's hilarious. But
• 35:48
  Speaker 9: that's the reporting from behind closed doores. I think the
• 35:50
  Speaker 9: Daily Mail has also gotten that reporting. It might have
• 35:52
  Speaker 9: been the New York Post, but either way, Ryan, the
• 35:55
  Speaker 9: national security implications of this are not like, it's not
• 35:58
  Speaker 9: insane to be like, did you have any idea? I mean,
• 36:01
  Speaker 9: now they're saying they're totally blindsided by this. Trump claims
• 36:05
  Speaker 9: to have just learned this from a Daily Mail reporter.
• 36:07
  Speaker 9: I mean, that's the implication of Trump's reaction. I don't
• 36:11
  Speaker 9: know that that. I mean, it seems almost impossible for
• 36:14
  Speaker 9: the DHS secretary's husband to be sending pictures of himself
• 36:17
  Speaker 9: like this and to have it not be known. It
• 36:19
  Speaker 9: looks like from the screenshots it's on WhatsApp, it seems
• 36:22
  Speaker 9: really wild that that wasn't known at all by his
• 36:25
  Speaker 9: wife or at all by the government.
• 36:27
  Speaker 4: Well, it's only a national security issue if you think
• 36:29
  Speaker 4: that the Department of Homeland Security has anything to do
• 36:32
  Speaker 4: with actually securing the homeland, Yes, and I've seen no
• 36:35
  Speaker 4: evidence of that. They do a lot of things, none
• 36:39
  Speaker 4: of them are seemed dedicated to that mission.
• 36:41
  Speaker 9: Yeah, well they have powers, yes, And.
• 36:43
  Speaker 4: She has a lot of horses that you can ride
• 36:44
  Speaker 4: around and there's like like t one hundred fifty million
• 36:47
  Speaker 4: dollars ad campaign videos.
• 36:49
  Speaker 9: Yeah, it's pretty interesting that this is coming out after
• 36:51
  Speaker 9: she leaves DHS.
• 36:53
  Speaker 1: I know what it took this, It took this source
• 36:58
  Speaker 1: a while to get it published, but.
• 37:00
  Speaker 9: Absolutely wild story. What's going to happen to the Shield
• 37:04
  Speaker 9: of the Americas because isn't that what she's in charge? Right?
• 37:06
  Speaker 4: She's a special Envoy for Central and South America, which
• 37:09
  Speaker 4: is amazing because I think Central and South America take
• 37:13
  Speaker 4: their traditional morality a little bit more seriously apparently than
• 37:17
  Speaker 4: are traditional moralists here in North America. So that'll that'll
• 37:22
  Speaker 4: be interesting to see how they react to this, this
• 37:25
  Speaker 4: Sheriff and Lewandowski going around.
• 37:28
  Speaker 9: I mean, it could be another problem for I think
• 37:30
  Speaker 9: the stories of coryption that have surrounded Christinomover, I would
• 37:33
  Speaker 9: say like the last five plus years, roughly the last
• 37:35
  Speaker 9: five plus years of her career are it's constant, and
• 37:40
  Speaker 9: that's usually where it's where there's smoke, there's fire, type
• 37:43
  Speaker 9: of situation, like it's every several months. It's like there's
• 37:47
  Speaker 9: a possible corruption story coming out of nomes Orbit. You know,
• 37:52
  Speaker 9: connections that contracts are going to people who are political,
• 37:58
  Speaker 9: politically connected, person.
• 38:00
  Speaker 1: Meets righteous gemstones.
• 38:01
  Speaker 9: It's a life that's really all said, Oh my gosh,
• 38:05
  Speaker 9: that's very good, and so it's not. It wouldn't surprise
• 38:10
  Speaker 9: me if there's more reporting that comes out suggesting that
• 38:14
  Speaker 9: in recent weeks this was known to the Nome family
• 38:18
  Speaker 9: and the government. Obviously, if reporters are sniffing around, it's
• 38:23
  Speaker 9: that wasn't getting back to the Homeland Security secretary. I
• 38:26
  Speaker 9: mean she was just replaced last week.
• 38:28
  Speaker 1: She should have just said, as everybody knows, we have
• 38:30
  Speaker 1: an open marriage. That would have been much leave us alone,
• 38:33
  Speaker 1: would have.
• 38:33
  Speaker 9: Been much more. Okay, cool, yes, right, and should we
• 38:37
  Speaker 9: move on to Bob Bear.
• 38:38
  Speaker 1: Let's do it.
• 38:41
  Speaker 10: All right?
• 38:42
  Speaker 4: Joining us next is Robert Baer, former CIA case officer
• 38:45
  Speaker 4: of more than twenty years, turned author and political commentator.
• 38:51
  Speaker 4: Emily we pretaped this interview yesterday. He said he doesn't
• 38:57
  Speaker 4: actually get up in the morning, which.
• 39:00
  Speaker 9: Okay, nothing but respect for that, nothing but my dream.
• 39:03
  Speaker 1: Yes, I aspire to that.
• 39:05
  Speaker 4: And so Bear is a a highly respected kind of
• 39:11
  Speaker 4: CIA case officer who is unusual in the sense that
• 39:15
  Speaker 4: he knows of what he speaks, in the sense that like.
• 39:19
  Speaker 1: He's been all over the world, he's been an undercover officer.
• 39:21
  Speaker 1: Like he we talked about earlier in the show.
• 39:24
  Speaker 4: He was made famous for a little while because they
• 39:26
  Speaker 4: tried to us I believe, like tried to prosecute him
• 39:29
  Speaker 4: for attempting to assassinate Sodomsane and his defense effective it
• 39:34
  Speaker 4: turned out, was I was doing this on behalf of
• 39:36
  Speaker 4: the CIA, Like don't you understand what it's the CIA?
• 39:39
  Speaker 1: Don't you know what the CIA does?
• 39:41
  Speaker 9: Was Syriana also roughly based on him.
• 39:44
  Speaker 1: Yes, that's that, that's correct.
• 39:46
  Speaker 4: One of his books was turned into Sirianna and the
• 39:48
  Speaker 4: main the George Clooney character is modeled after.
• 39:52
  Speaker 10: Robert behar.
• 39:55
  Speaker 4: Now and so he has he's kind of like the
• 40:00
  Speaker 4: best that the CIA has to offer in the sense
• 40:02
  Speaker 4: of unders trying to understand.
• 40:07
  Speaker 1: Our our adversaries and Iran particularly, But that.
• 40:10
  Speaker 4: Doesn't and I think I want people to want people
• 40:12
  Speaker 4: to understand that Ron and Iran particularly, but I want
• 40:15
  Speaker 4: people to think about that. As he mentions in our interview,
• 40:18
  Speaker 4: he's only been there a little bit, and his understanding
• 40:21
  Speaker 4: of Iran is surface deep, which he would acknowledge, and
• 40:26
  Speaker 4: yet he knows it better than most most of the
• 40:29
  Speaker 4: rest of the CIA. The major thing I took away
• 40:31
  Speaker 4: from the interview is just how screwed the CIA is
• 40:36
  Speaker 4: in our intelligence community, our intelligence Yeah that wow, Like
• 40:40
  Speaker 4: they they've they've they're just operating based on caricatures and
• 40:44
  Speaker 4: like what they read and like the propaganda outlets that
• 40:47
  Speaker 4: we finance.
• 40:48
  Speaker 9: This is dark literally and metaphorically.
• 40:51
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, so we thought, we thought it.
• 40:55
  Speaker 4: He hasn't done many interviews over the last many months,
• 40:58
  Speaker 4: but he agreed to call on the show, and we thought,
• 41:01
  Speaker 4: does not mean any of us agree with everything he
• 41:03
  Speaker 4: said or remotely agreed. So interesting, but it was but
• 41:08
  Speaker 4: interesting to hear you know where he thinks this is going.
• 41:13
  Speaker 1: Not not well for the United States.
• 41:15
  Speaker 4: Yeah, put it that way, and he just he talks
• 41:18
  Speaker 4: about the Sampson option multiple times, which is also the
• 41:21
  Speaker 4: name of a Seymour Hirsch book, which is a reference
• 41:24
  Speaker 4: to this purported Israeli strategy that they would rather basically
• 41:31
  Speaker 4: nuke the world than lose a war.
• 41:34
  Speaker 1: And so that was that's not what you want to hear.
• 41:38
  Speaker 9: It's really not no, nor is his speculation informed speculation
• 41:44
  Speaker 9: of course, about where the intelligence is likely coming from
• 41:46
  Speaker 9: and how we're I think this was the most interesting
• 41:49
  Speaker 9: part of the interview from my perspective, is how we're
• 41:51
  Speaker 9: making the decisions that we're making, How are those being informed,
• 41:55
  Speaker 9: what intelligence is informing them, and how are we gathering
• 41:58
  Speaker 9: that intelligence. So if anyone would know, it would be
• 42:02
  Speaker 9: him and a CIA folks, even former CIA folks are
• 42:07
  Speaker 9: limited what they can say, obviously and are sometimes still freelancing.
• 42:14
  Speaker 4: Yeah, but to hear a CIA former CIA, well, no
• 42:18
  Speaker 4: such thing as format, as they say, former CIA official
• 42:20
  Speaker 4: openly discussing the Samson option, which which.
• 42:23
  Speaker 1: Again he brought it up. He brought it up a
• 42:25
  Speaker 1: couple of times.
• 42:26
  Speaker 4: That's when you're watching this if you don't, if you're
• 42:28
  Speaker 4: not familiar with that fairly common reference. It is the
• 42:31
  Speaker 4: idea that Israel's nuclear strategy includes an option to use
• 42:36
  Speaker 4: overwhelming nuclear force rather than lose something strategically, even if
• 42:42
  Speaker 4: that means the obvious kind of annihilation of Israel.
• 42:46
  Speaker 9: Well, let's get to it.
• 42:47
  Speaker 1: Well, Bob, thank you so much for joining us. Really
• 42:50
  Speaker 1: appreciate it, of course.
• 42:52
  Speaker 4: So let's let's start with from your perspective, what do
• 42:57
  Speaker 4: you think is the thing that the US in Israel,
• 43:01
  Speaker 4: or let's start go with the US most misunderstood or
• 43:05
  Speaker 4: underestimated when they went into this conflict.
• 43:10
  Speaker 10: I think it's the determination of the Uranians. I wrote
• 43:14
  Speaker 10: a book about this that if they were under attack,
• 43:17
  Speaker 10: what they would do is bring down golf energy supplies,
• 43:23
  Speaker 10: which could be up to fifty percent of proven reserves.
• 43:29
  Speaker 10: Now think about that. Let's say you can take proven
• 43:31
  Speaker 10: reserves offline for two, three or four years. It will
• 43:38
  Speaker 10: destroy the world's economy, as it's starting to do. And
• 43:45
  Speaker 10: I think what they confused Tehran with Caracas. You just
• 43:53
  Speaker 10: simply can't decapitate the Uranian regime and expect people to
• 43:59
  Speaker 10: pour out in the street. That's not Iran. I mean,
• 44:01
  Speaker 10: it's so few of these people. I don't know that
• 44:04
  Speaker 10: anybody in the administration has ever been to Iran. They
• 44:07
  Speaker 10: don't they don't understand who these people are. They don't
• 44:10
  Speaker 10: understand they're they're the faithful, if you like. I've spent
• 44:16
  Speaker 10: a lot of time there not a lot, but enough
• 44:18
  Speaker 10: to see that in a way, let me be politically incorrect,
• 44:23
  Speaker 10: it's a death cult. These people, large segment, are ready
• 44:27
  Speaker 10: to die for their beliefs. You know, you go to
• 44:31
  Speaker 10: the martyrs Cemetery in Tehran and it's it's genuine. And
• 44:35
  Speaker 10: I've spent a lot of time with the besiege and
• 44:38
  Speaker 10: that's genuine. They're going to fight. We can turn the
• 44:41
  Speaker 10: electricity off if we like, we can. We can destroy
• 44:46
  Speaker 10: their desolenization facilities, all of them. We could, We could
• 44:51
  Speaker 10: turn the country into rubble. But they're still going to
• 44:55
  Speaker 10: come back. And I mean, look at look at the numbers.
• 44:58
  Speaker 10: You've got ninety three million in people. If you destroy
• 45:01
  Speaker 10: the economy, turn it into a failed state. And you
• 45:05
  Speaker 10: look across the Gulf at a country like Gutter, which
• 45:07
  Speaker 10: has only got three hundred and fifty thousand people. Who's
• 45:11
  Speaker 10: going to defend the Arab Shakedoms. I mean, I'm not
• 45:14
  Speaker 10: big fans of them, but who's going to defend them?
• 45:17
  Speaker 10: Are we going to keep a fleet in the well?
• 45:20
  Speaker 10: I mean, we can't even put boats in the in
• 45:21
  Speaker 10: the Gulf right now, it's too dangerous. But are we
• 45:25
  Speaker 10: going to keep boats there? And then what do you
• 45:26
  Speaker 10: do about ninety three million armed, desperate people and these
• 45:31
  Speaker 10: fragile countries around. Again, you take off fifty percent of
• 45:36
  Speaker 10: the world's oil resource. Let's say a Syria like situation
• 45:40
  Speaker 10: where it's total chaos in Mayhem, oil is closed down.
• 45:46
  Speaker 10: The effect that we'll have in the world's economy will
• 45:48
  Speaker 10: look a lot like the Great Depression.
• 45:52
  Speaker 1: And Emily, I'll like jump in one second. Let me
• 45:54
  Speaker 1: just follow up on the question the death cult.
• 45:57
  Speaker 4: The people would rephrase that as around a lot of
• 46:02
  Speaker 4: people in Iran see this as existential, like we are
• 46:05
  Speaker 4: fighting them, you know, from Tampa, from Nebraska, from aircraft
• 46:10
  Speaker 4: carriers that are out of out of range. They are
• 46:13
  Speaker 4: in their country and they see this as as an
• 46:16
  Speaker 4: existential fight and are behaving rationally. I think because I
• 46:20
  Speaker 4: think death cult suggests like a level of.
• 46:23
  Speaker 10: Yeah, it's a bad word. Yeah it's not, but I
• 46:27
  Speaker 10: mean it was. They fought. They lost hundreds of thousand
• 46:31
  Speaker 10: people in the war on Iraq. They were prepared to
• 46:34
  Speaker 10: defend their nation. They have a very strong historical sense
• 46:39
  Speaker 10: country that goes back four thousand years, any number of things,
• 46:45
  Speaker 10: and they're also looking at it is look, they signed
• 46:48
  Speaker 10: off on the nuclear agreement JCPOA and we unilaterally ripped
• 46:53
  Speaker 10: it up. I mean, they were complying with the terms
• 46:56
  Speaker 10: of JCPOA the two times this administration and has gone
• 47:00
  Speaker 10: into negotiations with them. In the middle of it, they
• 47:02
  Speaker 10: attack them. The intent and I think that you see
• 47:07
  Speaker 10: this on the far right in this country is destroy
• 47:10
  Speaker 10: Iran for past wrongs, and that goes back to Lebanon,
• 47:15
  Speaker 10: goes to Iraq and the rest of it. But they
• 47:20
  Speaker 10: don't see it that way. I mean, look, look, look
• 47:23
  Speaker 10: at the attack on Ross Lafon. It followed our attack,
• 47:28
  Speaker 10: or the Israeli attack on South Pars. They reply in kind,
• 47:35
  Speaker 10: it's a tit for tat and they've always done this,
• 47:38
  Speaker 10: and it don't It's not a question of, you know,
• 47:42
  Speaker 10: defending the Iranians. This is who they are. This is
• 47:44
  Speaker 10: our enemy, and we're so bad at misunderstanding our enemy,
• 47:49
  Speaker 10: what they'll fight for and what they want. I mean,
• 47:52
  Speaker 10: you go back to Vietnam. We had never understood North Vietnam,
• 47:55
  Speaker 10: just American history. We refuse to believe that our enemies
• 47:59
  Speaker 10: have grievances, whether legitimate or not, and so we are
• 48:04
  Speaker 10: fighting their grievances. But in all fairness, let's say to
• 48:08
  Speaker 10: the Cia. It doesn't have anybody that's been to Iran
• 48:12
  Speaker 10: understands the Iranians. Those people have all retired, they've gone away,
• 48:16
  Speaker 10: same way with State Department Farsi speakers. Very few of them.
• 48:21
  Speaker 10: The ones the Iranians we know are exiles. You can
• 48:26
  Speaker 10: never trust exiles, as Machiavelli told us, you can't trust him.
• 48:31
  Speaker 10: So it's a black box. We're going into it, and
• 48:36
  Speaker 10: I cannot tell you right now who's going to give
• 48:39
  Speaker 10: up first. It could be the Trump administration, it could
• 48:43
  Speaker 10: be the Iranians. We don't know. That's the problem. I mean,
• 48:47
  Speaker 10: what could happen in this next week is what should
• 48:50
  Speaker 10: really worry us.
• 48:51
  Speaker 9: Well, Bob I wanted to pick up on that point
• 48:53
  Speaker 9: because something interesting happened in the beginning of March, where
• 48:56
  Speaker 9: Lindsay Graham had made recent trips to Israel came back
• 49:00
  Speaker 9: hold the American press. Israeli intelligence would tell him things
• 49:04
  Speaker 9: that US intelligence was not telling him, which is fascinating
• 49:09
  Speaker 9: and suggests that some information planted to Lindsey Graham is
• 49:13
  Speaker 9: then going into Donald Trump. So what do you believe
• 49:17
  Speaker 9: who is giving Donald Trump information on Iran? That is
• 49:22
  Speaker 9: that's basically the information he's basing his own decisions off
• 49:25
  Speaker 9: of what do we know about that? What can we
• 49:27
  Speaker 9: surmise about that?
• 49:28
  Speaker 10: Well, I think what's telling is that Trump yesterday said
• 49:32
  Speaker 10: we don't know whether Mushtaba the Sun is alive or dead,
• 49:38
  Speaker 10: and that tells me we don't know much about the country.
• 49:42
  Speaker 10: It's one thing for the Israelis to target Iranian nuclear
• 49:47
  Speaker 10: scientists because they all have smartphones. They've got apps. You've
• 49:53
  Speaker 10: got cameras in Tehran that can track people, you can
• 49:57
  Speaker 10: track any cell phone. They do a brilliant job at it.
• 50:01
  Speaker 10: I mean, they really do. But the assembly of experts
• 50:06
  Speaker 10: and the people who were making the decision are offline.
• 50:10
  Speaker 10: I've spent time in Kulm. These people do not do smartphones.
• 50:15
  Speaker 10: It's very medieval. On top of that, you have the
• 50:18
  Speaker 10: Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, which has this mosaic defense and
• 50:25
  Speaker 10: that's commanded. Control is not vertical, and they know what
• 50:31
  Speaker 10: to do and they don't need orders, they don't need communications,
• 50:35
  Speaker 10: and they do it because they've been planning for an
• 50:37
  Speaker 10: attack like this for a loono back to Reagan, the
• 50:42
  Speaker 10: Iran Iraq war. They've been planning for a long time.
• 50:45
  Speaker 10: We in the meantime have ignored them, and the Israelis
• 50:50
  Speaker 10: don't understand the country. You know, I love the TV
• 50:53
  Speaker 10: show Tehran, but trust me, they do not have MOSAD
• 50:57
  Speaker 10: officers wandering around staff officers Tehran. It's too dangerous. I've
• 51:03
  Speaker 10: spent you know. When I was there, I had an
• 51:05
  Speaker 10: Iranian ID card and I was stopped. My group was
• 51:09
  Speaker 10: stopped every fifteen minutes. We were checked for our IDs.
• 51:11
  Speaker 10: And they're very they're very good cards too, they're not reproducible.
• 51:16
  Speaker 10: So the Iranians, I mean, the Israelis are depending on MK,
• 51:20
  Speaker 10: the resistance group, the Iranians, you know, criminals and the
• 51:25
  Speaker 10: rest of it. But that doesn't get to the heart
• 51:30
  Speaker 10: of the Iranian regime, which is very much res opaque
• 51:34
  Speaker 10: to us. So if the Israelis are saying, hey, we
• 51:38
  Speaker 10: decapitate the regime, it's a shot in the dark for them.
• 51:42
  Speaker 10: They don't know, and I mean the Iranians probably how many.
• 51:51
  Speaker 10: It wasn't even really the Grand Iatola. He didn't have
• 51:54
  Speaker 10: the the chops for it, the dissertation and the rest
• 52:00
  Speaker 10: of it. He wasn't recognized as one. He was effectively
• 52:03
  Speaker 10: the spokesman for the Islamic Revolutionary Guard corps. Now the
• 52:08
  Speaker 10: people making the decisions and the mosques are you know,
• 52:13
  Speaker 10: we don't know what they're up to, you know, we
• 52:15
  Speaker 10: just don't. When I went to coombe I, i debated
• 52:22
  Speaker 10: an Ayatola. But I can tell you right now that
• 52:25
  Speaker 10: I didn't walk away from that debate or from going
• 52:27
  Speaker 10: to comb debating other people East Martin of what they
• 52:33
  Speaker 10: would do. And my limited experience in Iran tells me
• 52:37
  Speaker 10: how little the American government knows. You just simply cannot
• 52:42
  Speaker 10: pick this stuff up from academic papers and the rest
• 52:44
  Speaker 10: of it. It doesn't work that way.
• 52:46
  Speaker 4: So the Israelis, you know, really have leaned into this assassination,
• 52:51
  Speaker 4: assassination strategy.
• 52:52
  Speaker 1: You're the perfect one to ask about that. You're the
• 52:54
  Speaker 1: author of the perfect kill, which you know you've got
• 52:57
  Speaker 1: in there.
• 52:57
  Speaker 4: I think it's called twenty one Rules for Assassinations or
• 53:01
  Speaker 4: something along those lines. Like when you when you think
• 53:03
  Speaker 4: about those rules and your in your career as a
• 53:07
  Speaker 4: CIA case officer, how do you assess the effectiveness of
• 53:13
  Speaker 4: kind of US Israeli assassination program, whether it's has Blahamas
• 53:19
  Speaker 4: or or now as it's rolling out in Iran.
• 53:23
  Speaker 10: Well, when I wrote the book, it was it was,
• 53:26
  Speaker 10: like I write, so much somewhat is obvious. Had we
• 53:28
  Speaker 10: assassinated Hitler, had he'd be had he been assassinated early
• 53:33
  Speaker 10: on in the war, we would have saved a lot
• 53:36
  Speaker 10: of bloodshed. But what we're seeing in Lebanon is these
• 53:42
  Speaker 10: Surreelis have assassinated, you know, the leadership of his ball
• 53:47
  Speaker 10: all of them people I know, Mugnia, the rest of them.
• 53:51
  Speaker 10: But now they're in the middle of they're in a
• 53:53
  Speaker 10: quagmire in southern Lebanon because there was a second and
• 53:57
  Speaker 10: third tier of people that may be more effective than
• 54:01
  Speaker 10: the people they got rid of. And I'm you know,
• 54:05
  Speaker 10: they assassinated Hamene, but we don't even know what their
• 54:09
  Speaker 10: sons alive. I mean, I could see the Iranians knowing
• 54:12
  Speaker 10: He's dad died in that first attack, yet carrying on
• 54:16
  Speaker 10: with this whole idea of martyrdom and spirit. So I think,
• 54:20
  Speaker 10: I think, you know, the proofs in the pudding and
• 54:22
  Speaker 10: assassination in terms of Iran and his Balla is not effective.
• 54:27
  Speaker 9: The Israeli outcome is if there's regime change. What we
• 54:32
  Speaker 9: know is that they're not concerned so much about utter
• 54:36
  Speaker 9: chaos englfing Iran. They actually see a week Iran as
• 54:40
  Speaker 9: a benefit to Israel even in the long term from
• 54:44
  Speaker 9: public reporting and statements and the like. What can you
• 54:47
  Speaker 9: tell us about how true that actually is? So, if
• 54:50
  Speaker 9: we take Israel's argument at face value, is it actually
• 54:53
  Speaker 9: true that Israel is safer in the long term with
• 54:56
  Speaker 9: Iran mired in chaos? Or does the factionalization and actually
• 55:00
  Speaker 9: create an enormously different, enormously dangerous situation the likes of
• 55:04
  Speaker 9: which we haven't even seen so far.
• 55:07
  Speaker 10: I you know, Israel lives in a bad neighborhood, and
• 55:12
  Speaker 10: I don't think at the end of the day, chaos
• 55:15
  Speaker 10: and your border on your borders is going to turn
• 55:19
  Speaker 10: out to be profitable. I mean it was. You know,
• 55:22
  Speaker 10: if Oslo hit a work, they had to be better off.
• 55:25
  Speaker 10: And now you are going to once you destabilize, let's
• 55:29
  Speaker 10: say Saudi Arabia. Let's take a scenario that tomorrow we
• 55:33
  Speaker 10: hit carg Island. The next day, the Iranians take out
• 55:38
  Speaker 10: ob cake, shut off seven million barrels a day, take
• 55:43
  Speaker 10: out water supplies. You're going to have an Arab world
• 55:47
  Speaker 10: that's going to fall apart, including Jordan on their border.
• 55:52
  Speaker 10: And what do you do with all of these people?
• 55:56
  Speaker 10: You know, armed, and you're pushing into chaos and I'm
• 56:02
  Speaker 10: not that's not the best solution.
• 56:05
  Speaker 9: Now.
• 56:06
  Speaker 10: What destroyed any chance of a piece was seven October course,
• 56:10
  Speaker 10: which was horrific for the Israelis, and they are responding
• 56:14
  Speaker 10: to it, and this administration is still responding to it.
• 56:20
  Speaker 10: But look, Hamas is still in place in Gaza. The
• 56:25
  Speaker 10: West Bank is not getting any better, it's getting worse,
• 56:28
  Speaker 10: and Jerusalem is and Israeli society is becoming less secular
• 56:34
  Speaker 10: by the minute, which isn't good for It's not good
• 56:38
  Speaker 10: for Israelis because a lot of Israelis is going to
• 56:41
  Speaker 10: pick up and leave the ones that can, and you're
• 56:44
  Speaker 10: gonna have this very small state which is ultimately indefensible
• 56:50
  Speaker 10: if the population is cut way down and you have
• 56:52
  Speaker 10: all this craziness on your borders. So I mean, we
• 56:55
  Speaker 10: are really into unchartered waters here. You don't take value
• 57:01
  Speaker 10: of what net Yahu's done. You just see what he
• 57:04
  Speaker 10: forces he's reacting to, and then you take the forces
• 57:09
  Speaker 10: the Uranians are reacting to. And you have two immovable
• 57:12
  Speaker 10: forces here at Loggerheads. And the entire world will pay
• 57:18
  Speaker 10: for this, you know, I see these these numbers from
• 57:21
  Speaker 10: Hedge Funds in New York about what this is doing
• 57:23
  Speaker 10: the derivatives in the petroleum market. It's we've yet to
• 57:28
  Speaker 10: feel it, and there's no turning back right now. It
• 57:31
  Speaker 10: can't be fixed. And if and if Iran controls Hormos
• 57:36
  Speaker 10: and turns it into a toll booth and keeps it,
• 57:40
  Speaker 10: keeps arab oil from leaving or highly taxed, it's a
• 57:45
  Speaker 10: new game.
• 57:46
  Speaker 1: What's your sense of if you listen to Trump or
• 57:48
  Speaker 1: hagsat the Rubio now the US is just cleaning up
• 57:51
  Speaker 1: and you know, really showing them whose boss? What's your
• 57:54
  Speaker 1: sense of who's winning this war strategically?
• 57:56
  Speaker 10: At this point? I still think it's the Samson option.
• 58:00
  Speaker 10: I think that if it continues, Iran will become a
• 58:05
  Speaker 10: failed state. It'd be like Somalia or Syria. Whether ethnic problems,
• 58:11
  Speaker 10: you know, civil war comes of this. I can't tell you.
• 58:14
  Speaker 10: It's unknowable. So I don't think anybody's work, you know,
• 58:18
  Speaker 10: winning in this. The point is the IRGC is in place,
• 58:24
  Speaker 10: it's calling the shots. We don't know who the second
• 58:27
  Speaker 10: tier commanders are, the third we don't know how devoted
• 58:31
  Speaker 10: they are. And trust me, these people, the IRGC are
• 58:37
  Speaker 10: tough people. I mean they have no sense of humor.
• 58:40
  Speaker 10: When I was in Tehran, I went knocked on her
• 58:42
  Speaker 10: embassy door and said, let me in. This guy comes,
• 58:46
  Speaker 10: This officer comes out and says, go away. You know,
• 58:49
  Speaker 10: I didn't give up, so I pounded it again. So
• 58:51
  Speaker 10: I'm an American taxpayer, let me in. I want to
• 58:53
  Speaker 10: see her property. And he just slammed it. They are
• 58:57
  Speaker 10: very very serious, as we know, and they mow people
• 59:01
  Speaker 10: down in the street. I just don't see them giving up.
• 59:06
  Speaker 10: I mean, these people are still they live by grievances.
• 59:12
  Speaker 10: When the prophet's grandson was murdered, that's foremost in their lives.
• 59:21
  Speaker 10: You know, I just don't seem giving You know, even
• 59:24
  Speaker 10: if we do take out Kark, I would imagine no
• 59:27
  Speaker 10: one's going to dare surrender.
• 59:30
  Speaker 1: Well, have you noticed the kind of meme.
• 59:34
  Speaker 4: War that Iran has been waging. The jokes have been
• 59:38
  Speaker 4: asymmetrically kind of in favor so far actually of the
• 59:42
  Speaker 4: Iranian government.
• 59:43
  Speaker 10: This time.
• 59:44
  Speaker 1: They seem to be laughing all the way to Samson here.
• 59:49
  Speaker 10: Oh yeah, I mean they you know, they've they've been
• 59:52
  Speaker 10: Look here's the problem. Uranian actors from seventy nine on
• 59:58
  Speaker 10: were blamed us for the Shaw. Yes, we participated in
• 1:00:03
  Speaker 10: the corruption, but nothing we did do deserve our embassy
• 1:00:08
  Speaker 10: being overrun. And then there are various terrorist acts that
• 1:00:11
  Speaker 10: they've conducted that the military hasn't forgotten. They did the
• 1:00:15
  Speaker 10: Marines in eighty three. It was them, not His Balla.
• 1:00:19
  Speaker 10: It was Iran who organized that. And I could go
• 1:00:23
  Speaker 10: on and I could just inflame, you know, with all
• 1:00:26
  Speaker 10: attacks that we know they did, and they took the hostages.
• 1:00:30
  Speaker 10: It was Iran, not His Balla. So we have our grievances,
• 1:00:35
  Speaker 10: but now they're meeting. But the Iranians had this deep
• 1:00:39
  Speaker 10: sense of justice and injustice, and they think that they're
• 1:00:44
  Speaker 10: the receiving end of an imperial United States. They look
• 1:00:49
  Speaker 10: at Israel as, you know, an imperial state essentially run
• 1:00:56
  Speaker 10: by the United States. You know that's not true, but
• 1:00:59
  Speaker 10: the way they look at it in the street is
• 1:01:01
  Speaker 10: that we are calling the shots in Tel Aviv. It's
• 1:01:05
  Speaker 10: that's the way they look at the world. And they say,
• 1:01:06
  Speaker 10: you know, there's some sort at the end divine justice,
• 1:01:10
  Speaker 10: or it's secular too. And you know, when I talked
• 1:01:14
  Speaker 10: to the besiege about suicide bombings and the Iran Iraq war,
• 1:01:19
  Speaker 10: they said, no, you people, you have it wrong. It's
• 1:01:23
  Speaker 10: not because of seventy two virgins and they wear the
• 1:01:25
  Speaker 10: little white keys. It's because you agree with one of
• 1:01:30
  Speaker 10: your soldiers rushing and dying take out a machine gun
• 1:01:34
  Speaker 10: nest in World War Two. We're the same way. These
• 1:01:37
  Speaker 10: people are not stupid, and they know what they're doing
• 1:01:41
  Speaker 10: and what they've been hitting. The aluminum facilities and the
• 1:01:45
  Speaker 10: Gulf and the rest of it. It's pinpoint strikes and
• 1:01:49
  Speaker 10: damage it's going to be doing to the West. You
• 1:01:52
  Speaker 10: look at the Islamic State and they just slaughtered for
• 1:01:55
  Speaker 10: slaughter's sake. The Iranians are much more focused and have
• 1:02:02
  Speaker 10: a plan.
• 1:02:03
  Speaker 1: What is the offering for Trump? Where does this? What's
• 1:02:05
  Speaker 1: the best case scenario here? What's the worst case scenario?
• 1:02:08
  Speaker 10: The best case scenario is he says, look, we changed
• 1:02:11
  Speaker 10: the leadership. You know, everybody's being assassinated with the bad guys.
• 1:02:17
  Speaker 10: We can deal with these guys and we're going to
• 1:02:20
  Speaker 10: come to He's going to declare victory and leave. That's
• 1:02:24
  Speaker 10: the best solution. I don't think the Iranians are going
• 1:02:27
  Speaker 10: to surrender to the demands. I don't think his ball
• 1:02:32
  Speaker 10: is going to surrender. I think that's going to keep
• 1:02:34
  Speaker 10: going on. So the best is declare victory and leave.
• 1:02:40
  Speaker 10: You know, we set them back twenty years in their
• 1:02:43
  Speaker 10: industry and the rest of it. But on the other hand,
• 1:02:46
  Speaker 10: if they control the oil coming in and out of
• 1:02:48
  Speaker 10: the Gulf, anybody looking at the numbers economically, it'll look
• 1:02:54
  Speaker 10: like they won.
• 1:02:55
  Speaker 1: Well, Bob, thanks so much for taking some time. Really
• 1:02:58
  Speaker 1: appreciate it.
• 1:02:59
  Speaker 10: Of course.
• 1:03:00
  Speaker 9: Well that's going to do it for us on today's
• 1:03:02
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