Latest / Cultural Wars | America Out Loud News / The Strait of Hormuz crisis is pushing U.S. toward economic collapse

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The Strait of Hormuz crisis is pushing U.S. toward economic collapse · Cultural Wars | America Out Loud News

• 0:11
  It's the tip of the spare in the epic battle to defend the United States of America.
• 0:19
  The National Security Hour exposes the wolves in sheep's clothing and the nefarious plots to undermine and destroy U.S.
• 0:27
  national security.
• 0:31
  The National Security Hour is the tip of the spear in the epic battle to defend the United States of America.
• 0:37
  I'm Brendan Wykert, your friendly neighborhood host.
• 0:40
  You can catch me right here every single Wednesday night at 8 p.m.
• 0:44
  Eastern, and you can follow me at We the Brandon on Twitter X.
• 0:50
  Well, my friends, the non-war war that was only supposed to last 96 hours at most, is now in its uh 11th week, 11 weeks of this.
• 1:04
  The President of Chevron has told the very desperate and worried world that the shortages will begin in earnest of oil and natural gas products globally beginning this week.
• 1:22
  We've also been told that the final shipments of Middle East oil that was sent around the world to various destinations before the war began on February 28th between Iran and the United States and Israel.
• 1:39
  Those final shipments have now officially made it to those ports of their destinations.
• 1:48
  And uh now from here on out, we will all of us be drawing down from stockpiles, uh stockpiles of oil and natural gas that has been built up, the strategic petroleum reserve, things like that.
• 2:06
  Uh the people in MAGA continue to delude themselves and each other, and they attempt to gaslight the rest of us uh with this um this myth about American energy independence.
• 2:22
  There is no doubt that we have bountiful natural gas and oil resources, bountiful helium, bountiful, all the stuff that are now being cut off to the rest of the world thanks to the Strait of Hormuz II blockades, right?
• 2:41
  Not just the Iranian original blockade, but the equally absurd, if not more absurd, in some cases, uh Trump administration counter blockade.
• 2:55
  And while we certainly do have those resources available to us in abundance beneath our feet in the mountains across the fruited plains of North America, getting them totally out of the ground and into our cars and trucks and into the places that need these resources is easier said than done.
• 3:19
  And there's a variety of reasons for that.
• 3:21
  One of them is onerous environmental regulations stacked up over decades.
• 3:27
  One of the another reasons is uh the limits, actual limits on what industry can do.
• 3:36
  We have a myth in this country that American industry can achieve any goal in any easy time in any simple straightforward timeline.
• 3:49
  And maybe one day long ago that was the case, but again, those regulations and the structure of businesses themselves these days and the way that that very significant mining operations actually work in the continental United States, um, we are not going to achieve total energy independence.
• 4:15
  We could, it's possible, but we've not done it yet.
• 4:20
  And even if the president were to respond to this crisis with how I have been saying he should respond, which is to invoke things like the Defense Production Act and begin basically state-backed, which is probably not a great idea because state-backed anything is not going to be as efficient.
• 4:43
  Um, but because we need lots and lots of oil and natural gas, and it's here in abundance, we just don't really tap into it the way we should or could.
• 4:53
  Um the president's gonna need to do something because what's gonna happen is do something by invoking the Defense Prioritization Act and basically using the immense state power to break the um uh preferences of the private sector and force them to basically um like they did during COVID.
• 5:21
  If you remember uh during COVID, the the Defense Prioritization Act was used to basically massively build um ventilators, was used to um convert um uh breweries, if I can talk today, breweries.
• 5:40
  I can't um but to convert uh, you know, things like that into antibacterial soap production because the alcohol that one uses to create beer can easily be used to create soap.
• 5:56
  And if you remember during COVID, we had a shortage of soaps.
• 5:59
  If you remember, actually, at one point, if I'm not mistaken, the Defense Prioritization Act was used to help boost the production of toilet paper.
• 6:06
  Remember, we had the great toilet paper shortage uh of 2020 during the COVID lockdowns.
• 6:13
  Um something similar on a grander scale with domestic natural gas and oil uh and other things like helium needs to occur.
• 6:23
  But unlike ventilators and antibacterial hand soap, um, or even personal protective gear like masks, um, it's a lot more difficult to rapidly streamline and and scale um production of oil and natural gas and helium and uh whatever other rare earth minerals we might need that are being choked off.
• 6:52
  What about the fertilizer shortage?
• 6:56
  So all of this is uh, you know, something that you know we have a lot of things here in this country that we really don't need the rest of the world for, but for 60 years, 70 years of globalization, we've we've become very dependent or exposed, I should say, to the ravages and peculiarities of global politics.
• 7:00
  You know, we have a lot of things here in this country that we really don't need the rest of the world for, but for 60 years, 70 years of globalization, we've we've become very dependent or exposed, I should say, to the ravages and peculiarities of global politics.
• 7:17
  And then you add in you add in to the the fact that um as terrible as the Islamic Republic of Iran is, and it is it is an enemy.
• 7:17
  And then you add in, you add in to the fact that as terrible as the Islamic Republic of Iran is, and it is it is an enemy.
• 7:27
  We don't want them to get nukes.
• 7:27
  We don't want them to get nukes, the Iran.
• 7:29
  The Iranians did not start this war.
• 7:32
  And I realize nobody wants to hear this, of course, and uh it's painful to say, but the fact of the matter is is that the Iranians didn't start this war.
• 7:43
  We started it.
• 7:45
  And in starting it, we triggered really bad cascading impacts that are now affecting the United States.
• 7:52
  And so the shortages are here now.
• 7:54
  What does that mean for you and me?
• 7:57
  Um, at the very least, it means prices are going to go so sky high for critical materials that we will likely be in a very serious recession very soon.
• 8:11
  Um, I do believe that oil will reach close to probably 200 a barrel, um, which will mean significant price increases at the pump for you and I, but more importantly, higher prices of gas equals inflation, high inflation.
• 8:32
  Uh, JP Morgan predicted at the start of the conflict that if the Strait of Hermoose were closed down and remained closed for a protracted period of time, which it now has been and will be.
• 8:43
  Um, you know, we could see high inflation by the summer, you know, end of June, beginning of July, uh, of uh, you know, possibly 4.1%.
• 8:53
  I was on with Steve Bannon and Eric Bowling about two weeks ago, and bowling said he disagreed with 4.1%.
• 9:00
  He said he thinks it's going to be closer to 7% by July, August of this year, if the strait remains closed and those critical supplies keep being denied.
• 9:15
  The production issue here in the United States is significant.
• 9:20
  Because there's about 15 to 16 million barrels of oil per day that need to be produced that have been taken offline indefinitely because of the Strait of Hermoose closure.
• 9:35
  And the United States can't fill that gap with current production levels.
• 9:40
  And here's another thing the infrastructure undergirding the oil and natural gas production, right?
• 9:46
  Notably those refineries in the Gulf Coast of the United States.
• 9:50
  There have not been new refineries built in years.
• 9:54
  The refineries we have are old.
• 9:58
  And we're already at capacity now.
• 10:01
  And there's still a huge gap, right?
• 10:06
  What does that mean?
• 10:08
  Well, it means that we are not going to be able to fill or plug that gap globally.
• 10:16
  And these are the these are just the real conversations we've got to have.
• 10:20
  You know, I I don't, I'm not here to hold your hand.
• 10:24
  I'm not here to tell you something pretty.
• 10:27
  You can you can go on to one of the other hosts on this network or other networks to hear about how amazing Donald Trump is.
• 10:36
  I'm a three-time Trump voter, but but this war is the greatest self-inflicted, not just political wound, which it is, I've ever seen.
• 10:48
  In some respects, it's worse than COVID because COVID was a, you know, you could it we didn't choose to do this right in COVID.
• 10:56
  It just we were responding and reacting.
• 11:00
  The president chose to go to war.
• 11:04
  He did it very glibly, by the way.
• 11:06
  Very blasé attitude toward war.
• 11:10
  I've never seen that before in an American president.
• 11:13
  American presidents are supposed to know better.
• 11:19
  But it's also the most self-inflicted wound, greatest self-inflicted wound geopolitically, because not only not only have we ensured that the US position in the Middle East will never be the same and not be for the better, but we are also signaling to the world that the United States is a feckless, irresponsible power.
• 11:42
  And so that is being now built up in the minds of world leaders, this image, not of the United States as a competent, serious player.
• 11:51
  The image of the United States after the Cold War, for instance, was that we were basically superhuman.
• 11:57
  But in about 30 short years, uh the image is now that we are just these hapless, feckless morons who are crazy and will absolutely recklessly gamble with the entire world system because we have a leader who, you know, I think the president is delusional, and I'm not just saying that metaphorically or sarcastically.
• 12:22
  I think there might actually be something wrong with him medically.
• 12:30
  Again, I'm a three-time Trump voter.
• 12:32
  I'm telling you this because I'm very worried about the state of things right now.
• 12:38
  You got to know how deep the duty is before you can dig yourself out.
• 12:43
  So the shortages are coming.
• 12:45
  The shortages are going to lead to at the very least a recession.
• 12:48
  We're going to see increases, I believe, in unemployment.
• 12:52
  Um, the president of Chevron says there won't be physical shortages of oil at the pump.
• 12:56
  We weren't the president of Chevron says it's unlikely we're going to see in the United States gas lines, but you will see it elsewhere, notably in places like Australia, places like Europe, places that are traditional American allies.
• 13:11
  Do you think that's going to play well over time?
• 13:16
  No.
• 13:19
  Again, I have no problem with reassessing most of our alliances and saying we need to cut most of our alliances.
• 13:26
  But how we leave the party is as important as how we arrived and what our conduct was in the party.
• 13:35
  And just like the withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021, we are leaving this particular party um in an embarrassing, humiliating fashion that people will remember not very fondly.
• 13:51
  And so when we come back, we're going to talk more about what's going on with this blockade and what to expect because my friends, uh, the war is just getting started.
• 14:00
  Started.
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• 19:10
  So let's get back into the conflict at hand.
• 19:16
  And I'm I'm sure you are as tired of hearing it as I am tired of talking about it.
• 19:21
  But unfortunately, this is the reality that we're living in because this war, ladies and gentlemen, is not going away.
• 19:28
  It is now an insuperable wound in the geopolitical system.
• 19:34
  And it is becoming gangrenous, in my opinion.
• 19:38
  So the Iranians enacted predictably, except for anybody in the White House.
• 19:44
  They clearly didn't they didn't understand.
• 19:45
  The president didn't know what he didn't know what he was doing when he initiated this thing.
• 19:51
  Um the president just thought that he could get this over with in 96 hours that it would be another Venezuela.
• 20:01
  Even though Air Force General Dan Kane, who is the chairman of the Joint Cheese of Staff, told the president the day before the war began, Mr.
• 20:16
  President, this is not Venezuela.
• 20:19
  Iran is not the same.
• 20:22
  The president wasn't listening.
• 20:24
  The president couldn't listen.
• 20:26
  The president can't handle bad news ever.
• 20:31
  And he had Netanyahu of Israel blowing him up, giving him four-hour long messages, briefings in the White House situation room about how this is going to be the be an easy Venezuela-like operation.
• 20:47
  We kill the Ayatollah, we kill top IRGC leaders, and the whole regime will collapse, and the people will have the boost they need to overthrow the government, and it all works out in four days or less.
• 21:00
  Four days or less.
• 21:02
  It was the mother of all sales pitches, and Trump fell for it.
• 21:07
  And now he's stuck holding the bag.
• 21:08
  And now he's stuck holding the bag.
• 21:10
  You and I are stuck paying for it.
• 21:10
  You and I are stuck paying for it.
• 21:14
  So Trump's response was to blockade their blockade.
• 21:14
  So Trump's response was to blockade their blockade.
• 21:22
  Except the blockade is leaky.
• 21:22
  Except the blockade is leaky.
• 21:27
  It's not foolproof.
• 21:27
  It's not foolproof.
• 21:29
  It's not fully effective.
• 21:29
  It's not fully effective.
• 21:34
  Dozens and dozens of Iranian ships, Chinese ships, Russian ships have gotten through.
• 21:41
  American allies like the Indians and the Japanese are believed to have paid ransoms, basically, tolls to the Iranians to move some of their cargo and container ships through the Strait of Hormuz because those countries are doing even worse than we are with the blockade.
• 22:02
  The Iranians have now officially created an entire bureaucracy to basically run the new toll booth system.
• 22:16
  To charge the world's shippers, transit fees that never were a factor before this stupid war began that the president kicked off because the president believed this line.
• 22:32
  It's hard to believe this is the guy.
• 22:34
  The president fell for this.
• 22:36
  I mean, this guy should have known better.
• 22:39
  I mean, he's the ultimate salesman, and he fell for Netanyahu's pathetic sales pitch when Obama didn't.
• 22:47
  People forget this in 2011 or 12.
• 22:51
  Netanyahu tried this with Obama.
• 22:54
  And Obama told him to pound sand.
• 22:59
  Now, people who know me know I am not an Obama supporter at all.
• 23:04
  I mean, I think he was one of the one of the most damaging presidents in American history.
• 23:09
  But what Trump has done is even more damaging with this war.
• 23:16
  And Obama told Netanyahu to pound sand in 2012.
• 23:20
  He said, I'm not going to do it.
• 23:21
  Sorry, Bibby.
• 23:23
  Not my problem.
• 23:25
  And as awful as Mr.
• 23:27
  Biden was as president.
• 23:30
  After 10.7, there was a moment between Biden and Netanyahu, and Jake Sullivan was there, who was the then national security advisor.
• 23:39
  I used to lampoon as boy wonder.
• 23:43
  But gotta tell you, most of the people around Trump are national security wise, very unimpressive.
• 23:50
  I would put them in the same category as Boy Wonder, Jake Sullivan.
• 23:57
  But Biden told Netanyahu after 10-7, don't make our mistake.
• 24:04
  The mistake after 9 11 that we made.
• 24:08
  Don't go too far.
• 24:13
  It was a friendly warning.
• 24:16
  Because after 9 11, we had everybody's sympathy.
• 24:21
  And all we had to do was a punitive raid in Afghanistan.
• 24:27
  You know, from the moment that jawbreaker arrived in Afghanistan to probably spring of 2002.
• 24:37
  So from October 01 to spring 2002, as I have documented on this show, and you can read in books like Ralph Pizzulo and Gary Burnson's book.
• 24:45
  You can read in Gary Schroom's book.
• 24:47
  You can talk to Michael Scheuer, our Monday host for the National Security Hour.
• 24:56
  From October 2001 to spring 02, we had basically fought and won the retaliatory war against the Taliban and Al Qaeda in Afghanistan.
• 25:12
  And everything we did after spring 02 was gratuitous and utterly unnecessary.
• 25:19
  And ultimately, as we now know, 21 years later ended in, or 20 years later ended in total disaster.
• 25:26
  And what Biden and Sullivan were telling Netanyahu after 10.7, a very similar moment for the Israelis, that 9-11 was for us.
• 25:36
  They were saying, don't make our mistake.
• 25:39
  Go in, crush your immediate attackers, and get the hell out.
• 25:44
  Don't get sucked into nation building.
• 25:47
  Don't get sucked into counter-insurgency.
• 25:54
  So Obama and Biden both were wise enough to keep the U.S.
• 26:00
  directly out of this fight.
• 26:04
  Trump in his first term was wise enough to do that.
• 26:09
  He created the Abraham Accords.
• 26:13
  That was the solution to the problem that was the Islamic Republic of Iran.
• 26:19
  That was the thing that should have gotten the president his Nobel Prize was the Abraham Accords.
• 26:25
  And I met with Jared Kushner and Avi Berkowitz at the Capitol Hill Club in 2018.
• 26:34
  The three of us talked informally about what the Abraham Accords were and weren't going to be.
• 26:42
  And I was told directly that the idea was to create a framework of greater cooperation economically and militarily between the Sunni Arab states and Israel.
• 26:58
  And that together, these allies, with our indirect backing, the United States would return to its preferred status as an offshore balancer of last resort, meaning we would not be directly engaged in any kind of conflict against the Iranians or anyone else in the region anymore.
• 27:20
  We would defer to the Sunni Arabs and Israelis via the Abraham Accord.
• 27:30
  And this framework would become the Middle East NATO, basically, for lack of a better term.
• 27:38
  Not exactly.
• 27:40
  But it was the third way.
• 27:42
  We weren't just going to abandon the region and let the Iranians and by extension Chinese and Russians take it over, but we also weren't going to become insnared in another Middle East war.
• 27:55
  The third way, a containment and deterrent strategy, a micro version of what we did to the Soviet Union in Europe.
• 28:00
  Version of what we did to the Soviet Union in Europe.
• 28:04
  And the war now has destroyed that.
• 28:04
  And the war now has destroyed that.
• 28:08
  It has committed us to this very devastating course of action, a course of action that, by the way, there is no solution to.
• 28:08
  It has committed us to this very devastating course of action, a course of action that, by the way, there is no solution to.
• 28:20
  We don't even know what our end goals are.
• 28:23
  The president has not been consistent.
• 28:25
  He has not framed the argument in a coherent, understandable, digestible way for the American people and the world.
• 28:33
  And furthermore, he has not put the forces into the region in a way that would allow for them to achieve whatever his objective is, which it seems is kind of regime change, kind of, maybe.
• 28:48
  Certainly denuclearization, getting rid of those ballistic missiles and drones.
• 28:54
  Well, you can't do that with the current forces we've got there.
• 28:58
  You can do a lot of damage to the Iranians, and we have, but you the kill shot is not there.
• 29:06
  And now you look at what's going on.
• 29:09
  You look at the assets that have been pulled into the region in the last several weeks.
• 29:14
  They're getting ready to do a ground operation.
• 29:17
  And it's going to be a disaster for the United States.
• 29:22
  Mark my words.
• 29:25
  May 6th, 2026, Wednesday night, 8 p.m.
• 29:33
  Mark my words.
• 29:35
  President Trump is getting ready to do a ground incursion into Iran.
• 29:38
  And it is going to be an unmitigated disaster for the United States.
• 29:42
  We're talking Gallipoli levels.
• 29:46
  He will never recover politically, and this country will never recover strategically from this disaster.
• 29:58
  Let's talk about that counterblockade now.
• 30:00
  Let's talk about specifically relatedly.
• 30:04
  The operation freedom.
• 30:08
  Pollyanna Pete Heget has uh come out of whatever hole he was hiding in the last week after his humiliating display on Capitol Hill last week, in which he was rightly excoriated by Congressman Seth Moulton, a former U.S.
• 30:37
  Marine combat veteran of the Iraq war, who is also a representative Democratic Party representative from Massachusetts.
• 30:46
  And he was excoriated and humiliated by the likes of Representative Adam Smith, another Democrat uh from Washington State, but who's somewhat pretty good actually on a lot of national security issues.
• 31:01
  Notably, Adam Smith is a phenomenal supporter of Space Force and Military Spacy in general, which as some of you know is my original area of expertise is national security space policy.
• 31:15
  So Adam Smith is not just another Democrat.
• 31:20
  Okay, he does have some like Moulton.
• 31:23
  He has some kooky ideas on social and economic policies, but he's not a crazy person on national security.
• 31:31
  And so you had Moulton and Smith humiliating, rightly so, Pollyanna Pete last week.
• 31:39
  And so now Pollyanna Pete has come out of his hole to just in an embarrassing irresponsible manner.
• 31:53
  Declare a red, white, and blue dome exists over the Strait of Hormuz.
• 32:01
  And less than 24 hours after those idiotic comments were made.
• 32:08
  The U.S.
• 32:09
  Navy, the President Trump has announced that Operation Freedom is being suspended indefinitely.
• 32:16
  Now, the president claims it's to honor a request by the Pakistanis.
• 32:22
  Yes, you see, the Pakistanis, uh, they are the ones holding all the cards here, interestingly.
• 32:30
  Trump says it's the Pakistanis that are stopping him from going full bore, and he's going to honor them because they're such good friends.
• 32:38
  Hmm.
• 32:39
  Mm-hmm.
• 32:40
  Interesting.
• 32:42
  I'll tell you what really happened, I think.
• 32:45
  Over the weekend, the U.S.
• 32:48
  Navy potentially suffered an attack by the Islamic Republic of Iran with cruise missiles being fired by the Iranians at a U.S.
• 33:02
  Navy warship, as well as container, civilian container ships that were attempting to cross the Strait of Hormuz.
• 33:12
  And the Navy then retaliated by deploying those Seahawk helicopters, and the Army got involved as well, deploying AH-64 Apache land attack helicopters, all of these helicopters armed with hellfire missiles, and they did whatever they could to shoot down incoming Iranian missiles, and allegedly they destroyed six or seven Iranian speedboats that were harassing ships that were firing rockets and missiles at U.S.
• 33:45
  Navy warships and the container ships.
• 33:47
  But here's the thing.
• 33:51
  All the Iranians have to do is get it right one time.
• 33:56
  The U.S.
• 33:57
  Navy and its support have to protect U.S.
• 34:01
  Navy warships in the cramped Strait of Hormoose 100% of the time.
• 34:08
  And whether a U.S.
• 34:09
  Navy destroyer was damaged or not.
• 34:13
  The fact is the Navy's leadership is keenly, keenly aware of what they're up against.
• 34:21
  And the president is delusional.
• 34:24
  And you know, he's doing his untergang bit.
• 34:29
  And uh, you know, the Navy is not okay with this.
• 34:35
  They're not okay with this.
• 34:37
  And so I think what really happened is not the Pakistanis.
• 34:41
  I think the Navy told the president we're not doing Operation Freedom anymore.
• 34:45
  And I'll tell you a little bit about that when we come back.
• 34:47
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• 38:04
  Let's get real.
• 38:04
  Let's get loud on America Out Loud Talk Radio.
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  This is a McCullough Report, and I'm Dr.
• 38:08
  Peter McCullough.
• 38:09
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• 39:11
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• 39:21
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• 39:24
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• 39:27
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• 40:00
  So let's get real.
• 40:01
  Let's get loud on America Out Loud Talk Radio.
• 40:05
  Thank you for listening today.
• 40:06
  And thank you for joining us on the mission.
• 40:09
  The National Security Hour is the tip of the spear in the epic battle to defend the United States of America.
• 40:15
  I'm Brandon Weigert, your host of action.
• 40:18
  You can catch me right here every Wednesday night at 8 p.m.
• 40:21
  Eastern.
• 40:21
  And you can follow me at WeThe Brandon on Twitter X.
• 40:25
  We begin our final segment.
• 40:27
  So, what is Operation Freedom?
• 40:29
  What what is this?
• 40:31
  This was our attempt in response to what I was talking about before the break, uh, our attempt to basically um uh to basically rip open the Strait of Hormoose for lack of a better term.
• 40:50
  Now, I wouldn't I shouldn't say rip open.
• 40:52
  It was um a very interesting uh uh bit of verbal trickery by the U.S.
• 41:03
  Navy because the president, yes, would have described it as we're gonna rip open the Strait of Hormouth.
• 41:09
  In fact, the White House over the weekend when it was announced after this attack occurred, uh, which supposedly resulted in six or seven of those Iranian speed boats being destroyed by American helicopters uh in the Strait of Hormoose.
• 41:23
  The the president, the White House said that they were uh they were going to try to open up this strait beginning this week.
• 41:33
  And the US Navy almost immediately walked it back and sort of uh defined terms a little bit more narrowly.
• 41:43
  Um the the Navy said, oh no, no, uh, you know, we're we're going to assist any ships in the strait by providing them with essentially better better navigation to get out of the areas where the Iranian blockade is strongest.
• 42:00
  Blockade is strongest.
• 42:02
  Now, any ship's captain worth a dern in terms of a civilian ship's captain, is absolutely not going to risk his cargo or his crew or his ship.
• 42:02
  Now, any ship's captain worth a dern in terms of a civilian ship's captain is absolutely not going to risk his cargo or his crew or his ship because the Navy, the U.S.
• 42:17
  Um, because the Navy, the U.S.
• 42:20
  Navy is giving out these conflicting statements.
• 42:20
  Navy is giving out these conflicting statements.
• 42:24
  They're going to stay put.
• 42:24
  They're gonna stay put.
• 42:26
  And that's going to exacerbate the economic decline.
• 42:26
  And that's gonna exacerbate the economic decline.
• 42:32
  But within 24 hours of Operation Freedom supposedly getting underway, the Pakistanis supposedly intervened, and the American president now is saying Operation Freedom is called off.
• 42:47
  Yeah, it's called off all right.
• 42:51
  Nothing the U.S.
• 42:52
  military has done has been effective in this war.
• 42:57
  It is because of a fundamental failure in our intelligence process.
• 43:03
  It is because of a fundamental breakdown between the U.S.
• 43:09
  political authorities and the U.S.
• 43:11
  military leadership.
• 43:14
  It is frankly because the president of the United States is delusional.
• 43:21
  Is a madman.
• 43:25
  And he's taking us all off the cliff.
• 43:30
  And so we now have had an air war that has replaced the Islamic Republic of Iran with the Islamic Republic of Iran.
• 43:45
  We have now had supposedly total obliteration that hasn't actually been total and certainly not obliteration.
• 43:56
  Recently, the U.S.
• 43:58
  intelligence community was forced to reassess its original assessment, which said that we had gotten something like 80 or 70% of Iran's missile launchers while they said that we've really gotten maybe 50%, and I think that's being generous.
• 44:19
  But hey, we got the Iranian Navy, but maybe we didn't, given what happened over the weekend in the Strait of Hormuz.
• 44:28
  We got the Iranian Air Force with their third generation warplanes that hadn't been updated since the 1970s.
• 44:39
  Newsflash guys, the Iranian Air Force was never the threat.
• 44:43
  But those Iranian missiles are that we can't seem to fully destroy, even though Pollyanna Pete says every three days total obliteration, total air control.
• 44:54
  Come to think of it, how do we have total air control when we lost an F 15 SE strike eagle a few weeks ago?
• 45:04
  Whatever happened with that pilot and his WISO.
• 45:07
  No one's heard from these guys.
• 45:26
  On Tuesday morning, the world awoke to reports that at least two of those strato tankers had declared emergencies near or in the Strait of Remuse.
• 45:38
  That's not total air control, Pollyanna Pete.
• 45:46
  The war is not going well.
• 45:50
  And I would just remind everybody that we dropped five point, we ran rather 5.2 million, 5.3 million sorties in the Vietnam War, the Air Force did over 10 years.
• 46:04
  And we still lost the war.
• 46:14
  And we still lost the war.
• 46:23
  And uh the president doesn't seem capable of drawing down.
• 46:29
  He doesn't seem capable of putting the kibosh on this thing before it's too late.
• 46:35
  Gotta wonder why.
• 46:38
  You gotta wonder why.
• 47:02
  Either directly or indirectly.
• 47:07
  Okay.
• 47:09
  So take from that what you will, right?
• 47:17
  And what about the United Arab Emirates, the UAE?
• 47:21
  Israel's basic proxy in the Persian Gulf.
• 47:26
  What's going on with them?
• 47:28
  They got smashed in the last round of violence.
• 47:32
  The Iranians, after they attacked the Strait of Hormoose, they also launched really devastating attacks on the UAE, disproportionate to the other attacks in the region they were doing.
• 47:46
  Could it be because the UAE is vociferously for the war?
• 47:53
  Could it be because the UAE pipeline is key for diverting Middle East energy away from the closed Strait of Hormuz to the Red Sea?
• 48:07
  Could it also be because the UAE was one of the places where U.S.
• 48:11
  forces for a potential ground attack were being massed?
• 48:18
  The world wonders.
• 48:21
  And what would a ground invasion accomplish?
• 48:26
  What would it even look like?
• 48:28
  I think it would likely be a coastal sea control mission.
• 48:32
  I can't imagine we would invade Iran, you know, proper.
• 48:37
  First of all, we don't have the forces.
• 48:39
  Second of all, what a nightmare.
• 48:43
  But yeah, one could see trying to take Karg Island.
• 48:49
  One could see trying to take Kashem.
• 48:56
  And what about this scheme to arm the Kurds of Iran?
• 49:05
  This has uh uh born to lose written all over it, but in that way it is a classic neoconservative ploy, and therefore it is one that the president will likely happily embrace because he has become a full-blown neoconservative himself.
• 49:05
  This has uh uh born to lose written all over it, but in that way it is a classic neoconservative ploy, and therefore it is one that the president will likely happily embrace because he has become a full blown neoconservative himself.
• 49:25
  The Kurds of Iran are not the Kurds of Iraq.
• 49:25
  The Kurds of Iran are not the Kurds of Iraq.
• 49:29
  The president of Iran Pezeshkian was raised among the Kurds of Iran.
• 49:33
  He speaks Kurdish, the dialect.
• 49:38
  The Iranian Kurds are distinct from the Iraqi Kurds.
• 49:42
  The Iraqi Kurds are friendly to the United States.
• 49:45
  They're somewhat the piratical, piratical, I should say.
• 49:49
  The Iranian Kurds are not.
• 49:51
  They're part of the elite, in fact, they're pretty well integrated into the Iranian system.
• 49:56
  They are not feeling as left out in the cold as the Iraqi Kurds did towards Saddam's Iraq.
• 50:04
  So the bottom line here is the likelihood that you will get the Iranian Kurds to rebel against the Islamic Republic is very low.
• 50:13
  We were trying to give them weapons a couple months ago.
• 50:19
  And I have heard from people in the intelligence community that the Kurds took the weapons and basically walked away from us.
• 50:30
  Now that sounds more like an American covert operation in the Middle East, if you ask me.
• 50:57
  But the United States is not performing well right now.
• 51:01
  And we're about to be hit with major shortages.
• 51:07
  Even if the strait were to open tomorrow, many of the shortages and price hikes are going to hit no matter what now.
• 51:14
  This is going to cause all kinds of negative effects for the rest of the world.
• 51:20
  Seventy percent of farmers in America cannot afford fertilizer, at least at the level that they usually purchase fertilizer at.
• 51:59
  Okay.
• 52:00
  Did you know that the Biden administration in its final year in its infinite wisdom sold off America's strategic helium reserve to a German-based company called Mercer LLC, which the U.S.
• 52:20
  House of Representatives Oversight Committee has officially accused of having very deep ties to the Communist Party of China.
• 52:31
  In fact, Chinese officials have been taunting for two years, American officials, that our helium is basically being requisitioned by the Chinese government in China, thanks to this deal with Mercer.
• 52:52
  Helium is a key component in the creation of semiconductors of the material that makes AI data centers possible.
• 53:04
  Now, you and I may believe that slowing down data center builds here in rural America, suburban America is probably a good thing.
• 53:14
  But just looking at a systemic approach, um AI is the only thing keeping the American economy rolling right now.
• 53:26
  Not having access to helium in an over a protracted period of time ensures that a contraction occurs in the AI sector, which ensures that a contraction significantly occurs in the U.S.
• 53:40
  economy.
• 53:44
  That's where we are.
• 53:57
  Made off of ideology over reality.
• 54:02
  And now we're going to pay for it.
• 54:08
  The big one is coming.com.
• 54:19
  Just look at the Air Force budget increase request alone.
• 54:23
  This is preparing for a third world war, a nuclear third world war, mind you.
• 54:30
  This is not the sort of thing that's normal.
• 54:34
  Okay.
• 54:37
  And this is not what anybody who voted for Trump voted for.
• 54:41
  Not a single person who voted for Trump did so thinking that we were going to get World War III by year two of his presidency, of his second term.
• 54:52
  That we were going to get complete collapse of the economic system here in service to this ridiculous conflict.
• 55:02
  Nobody believed that.
• 55:12
  And it will hand the Democrats power back, and the Democrats will take it, and they will stuff it down our face.
• 55:20
  Impeaching Heget and maybe even Trump himself.
• 55:36
  And it will not be replaced by anything better.
• 55:40
  So keep that in mind.
• 55:53
  You can catch me right here every Wednesday night at 8 p.m.
• 55:56
  Eastern on the iHeartRadio Network.
• 55:59
  You can also follow me on Twitter X at We The Brandon.
• 56:00
  Follow me on Twitter X at We the Brandon.
• 56:03
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• 56:03
  Be sure to purchase my books at Amazon or any of your favorite bookstores.
• 56:07
  And if you like this conversation, you can go to NatSec Talk on Rumble and get the full episode.
• 56:07
  And if you like this conversation, you can go to NatSec Talk on Rumble and get the full episode.
• 56:16
  So follow and subscribe to my Rumble Show, where you will find the unedited full hour and thirty-five minute talk, no holds barred, and you'll also find some other exclusive content that you won't hear.
• 56:16
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• 56:33
  Give it a follow, give it a subscribe, check it out, follow at We the Brandon on Twitter X, and check out 1945.com.
• 56:41
  Until then, thank you for listening and God bless America.