Latest / Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar / 7/22/26: Trump To Bomb Pickaxe Mt, Lebanon Civil War, GOP Screwed In Midterms

Transcript

7/22/26: Trump To Bomb Pickaxe Mt, Lebanon Civil War, GOP Screwed In Midterms · Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar

0:00
Speaker 1: Hey, guys, Saga and Crystal here.
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Speaker 3: The biggest news of course, will keep this for the
1:01
Speaker 3: end of the show, which is an old kind of
1:02
Speaker 3: radio trick to keep people listening. That'll be Emily's review
1:05
Speaker 3: of her first Fish show. That's what everybody wants to hear.
1:08
Speaker 3: Any any top line thoughts, let's talk. We'll can talk
1:11
Speaker 3: about at the end of the program.
1:12
Speaker 4: Vibes word chill es three words.
1:15
Speaker 3: Vibes were definitely chill.
1:16
Speaker 4: Seeing Ryan at a Fish show is seeing Ryan at
1:19
Speaker 4: his absolute peak, my happy place, no truly, truly. And
1:24
Speaker 4: Ryan brought his kids, which was super fun too.
1:25
Speaker 3: The kids were they were not so keen on it.
1:28
Speaker 4: But they got you know, slushies or whatever else.
1:31
Speaker 3: It was an education, it was, It was.
1:33
Speaker 4: But lots to get to on the show today. Ryan
1:35
Speaker 4: breaking news on the Iran front. Also Trump striking a
1:39
Speaker 4: brand new deal with Saudi Arabia on It's about nuclear
1:44
Speaker 4: proliferation in the Middle East, so obviously relevant to ongoing
1:47
Speaker 4: negotiations in Iran and strikes continuing as well, so Mussha
1:52
Speaker 4: breakdown on that front. Just in the last few.
1:54
Speaker 3: Hours, Hexith was on Capitol Hill, Trump was in the
1:57
Speaker 3: Oval Office. So we've got a lot of sound work
2:00
Speaker 3: our way through.
2:00
Speaker 4: Yes, thikes Ith begging for money on Capitol Hill, and
2:03
Speaker 4: I promise you he's going to get it. Well, he will,
2:06
Speaker 4: He's going to get it. Might be a little bit of.
2:07
Speaker 3: A fight, then we'll pay up.
2:09
Speaker 4: Yeah. Also, huge, huge developments in Lebanon that we are
2:14
Speaker 4: going to go through. Ryan Dropsite's been doing a lot
2:16
Speaker 4: of work on this.
2:17
Speaker 3: Yeah, nobody's ever tried a civil war in Lebanon, So
2:19
Speaker 3: Trump's like, let's let's do that. Meanwhile, meanwhile, Yemen is
2:23
Speaker 3: threatening to close down and has in fact for Saudi
2:27
Speaker 3: ships shut down bob elmandeb Straight, which has been running
2:30
Speaker 3: a couple of million barrels per day of oil. So
2:33
Speaker 3: if you liked four dollar gallon gas, you're going to
2:38
Speaker 3: love what's coming next.
2:40
Speaker 4: Just you wait, it's only only getting better. Midterm elections.
2:44
Speaker 4: We have some results to get to in Arizona. But
2:47
Speaker 4: also new polling showing exactly how bad the situation is
2:50
Speaker 4: for Republicans. New polling putting the House in the Senate.
2:54
Speaker 4: We won't this is another radio trick ry and we
2:56
Speaker 4: won't tell you who the polling is from, but trust
2:59
Speaker 4: us significant that the polling is showing Democrats now face
3:04
Speaker 4: toss ups, face a toss up in the Senate and
3:06
Speaker 4: leading for control of the House. So we'll go through
3:10
Speaker 4: those numbers with everyone new tariffs on Canada. This is
3:16
Speaker 4: a pretty significant economic development. Lots of foreign policy and
3:19
Speaker 4: politics in the show, but a pretty significant economic development
3:22
Speaker 4: to go through. John Stewart and his thoughts on the DSA.
3:26
Speaker 3: That'll be fun.
3:27
Speaker 4: You don't want to hear this. John Stuart's thoughts of
3:29
Speaker 4: the DSA. Also Republicans saying the quote Bolshevik takeover of
3:32
Speaker 4: the Democratic Party is in full swing. We might debate
3:36
Speaker 4: who the Bolsheviks are in this scenario. And Ryan, who's
3:40
Speaker 4: our guest.
3:41
Speaker 3: We had Kyle Blomquest who's running in the Upper Peninsula
3:44
Speaker 3: of Michigan against Jack Bergman and Republican if he wins
3:49
Speaker 3: the Democratic primary, and we'll talk to him also about
3:51
Speaker 3: the Abdulla l side and Haley Stevens race. And also
3:55
Speaker 3: he's another candidate who's really being propelled by his opposition
3:58
Speaker 3: to data centers.
4:00
Speaker 4: Yeah, massive, you know one thing that is the new
4:02
Speaker 4: data centers just it's not in the show, but it
4:04
Speaker 4: occurs to me. There's the data centers, and there's the
4:06
Speaker 4: flot cameras, And I feel like flock cameras are starting
4:09
Speaker 4: to be slotted into that same role as the data
4:13
Speaker 4: centers and being this like sneaky, under the surface issue
4:17
Speaker 4: that unites people who are maybe on the left and
4:20
Speaker 4: on the right, are just normal and hate what this
4:22
Speaker 4: stuff stands for, and it's starting to have political ramifications.
4:26
Speaker 4: So a quick thought, not in the show, but much
4:29
Speaker 4: to discuss with.
4:29
Speaker 3: Everyone likes their own flock camera, they just don't like
4:32
Speaker 3: the other. Yes, blot cameras.
4:35
Speaker 4: That's yeah, flot cameras everywhere at the Fish concert. I'm
4:40
Speaker 4: sure personal flot cameras in your pocket. All right, let's
4:44
Speaker 4: get to the show. Let's start now with this Wall
4:45
Speaker 4: Street Journal story is an exclusive to the Journal. They
4:49
Speaker 4: are saying Trump has approved a landmark nuclear deal with
4:52
Speaker 4: Saudi Arabia in big win for the Kingdom. Reading a
4:56
Speaker 4: bit from the piece, they say President Trump has formally
4:58
Speaker 4: approved a landmark Saudi Arabia that will provide the country
5:02
Speaker 4: with a civilian nuclear program and potentially open the door
5:05
Speaker 4: to uranium enrichment in the Kingdom's territory. According to administration officials,
5:10
Speaker 4: this piece popped at six A. M. Ryan quick reaction
5:14
Speaker 4: to this development.
5:16
Speaker 3: Well, see, this is a theocracy that is responsible, and
5:21
Speaker 3: so we're going to provide them with nuclear weapons. They
5:25
Speaker 3: haven't dismembered a Washington Post journalist for at least several
5:29
Speaker 3: years at this point. They haven't launched a reckless war book. Actually,
5:34
Speaker 3: they've brought launched several reckless wars fairly recently, So never
5:37
Speaker 3: mind they haven't. They're led by an impulsive, authoritarian dictator
5:43
Speaker 3: who actually has very few checks on him.
5:46
Speaker 4: Who happened institutionally it happens to be very good friends
5:48
Speaker 4: with the president's son in law.
5:51
Speaker 3: Yes, the friendship between Muhammed bin Salmon and Jared Kushner
5:55
Speaker 3: and Trump was forged with billions of dollars of bribes,
5:58
Speaker 3: and so that may it the kind that is able
6:03
Speaker 3: to be kind of endowed with a nuclear proliferation agreement
6:07
Speaker 3: in which we proliferate nuclear technology to Saudi Arabia, which,
6:12
Speaker 3: by the way, credibly involved in the attack on nine
6:16
Speaker 3: to eleven.
6:17
Speaker 4: Yeah, now they say the new Deal, Fine, it gets
6:20
Speaker 4: better because this is going to last for thirty years.
6:22
Speaker 4: According to the Wall Street Journal, the new Deal, which
6:23
Speaker 4: would last thirty years, is estimated to be worth tens
6:25
Speaker 4: of billions of dollars. It is designed to give American
6:28
Speaker 4: companies a central role in developing Saudi Arabia's nuclear infrastructure
6:32
Speaker 4: while shutting out other foreign competitors. The journal says a
6:36
Speaker 4: key provision of the new accord would have American companies
6:38
Speaker 4: built a uranium enrichment facility in Saudi Arabia if a
6:41
Speaker 4: joint US Saudi study determines such a step would be warranted.
6:45
Speaker 4: So very trumpion Kushionarian, if that's a word, to bring
6:50
Speaker 4: in the American companies and make the deal worth tens
6:53
Speaker 4: of billions of dollars for apparently at least thirty years
6:57
Speaker 4: in Saudi Arabia.
6:58
Speaker 3: I just so happy for everybody involved. Meanwhile, Trump is
7:02
Speaker 3: moving forward with his attacks on Iran. Overnight, there were
7:08
Speaker 3: continue to continue to American air strikes across Iran, and
7:11
Speaker 3: he's claiming that he's going to attack pick Axe Mountain.
7:16
Speaker 3: If you're confused about where this Pickaxe Mountain is coming from,
7:18
Speaker 3: all of a sudden, it's part of the Natanz nuclear complex.
7:22
Speaker 3: Why is he calling it pick Axe? Well, because you're
7:26
Speaker 3: not an idiot and you heard it. You were like
7:27
Speaker 3: wait a minute, in the Tans, didn't we obliterate that
7:31
Speaker 3: in the Twelve Day War last year? Yeah, we were
7:35
Speaker 3: told we obliterated it. So if we're going to attack
7:38
Speaker 3: it again, we have to rename it so that people
7:41
Speaker 3: don't realize we're attacking the same thing. So there's another
7:46
Speaker 3: hole in the mountain like a mile away or half
7:48
Speaker 3: a mile away from what we previously bombed that.
7:50
Speaker 4: We call it Pickaxe Mountain.
7:52
Speaker 3: Pick Axe Mountain. That's what this Trump says he's going
7:54
Speaker 3: to get now in all a one, do you believe
7:56
Speaker 3: that Iran has moved nuclear centrifuges into Ax Mountain?
8:00
Speaker 4: And when you say we're not done yet, what is
8:03
Speaker 4: left to finish?
8:03
Speaker 5: Well, I think that they they may have. We don't
8:07
Speaker 5: have it on record. All we do is read the
8:10
Speaker 5: fake news. You know, we see the news is so
8:12
Speaker 5: wrong so many times. So you know, maybe this one
8:16
Speaker 5: they have right, but it's okay. It doesn't mean anything
8:19
Speaker 5: unless they have the material. You're talking about, the centrifuges.
8:22
Speaker 5: It doesn't mean anything unless they have the material. They
8:24
Speaker 5: don't have. We follow the material. That's where the action is,
8:27
Speaker 5: and we'll be hitting that area very probably pretty soon,
8:32
Speaker 5: and there's not a thing they can do about it.
8:34
Speaker 5: You know, normally I wouldn't say that. If I thought
8:37
Speaker 5: they could do something about it, I would never say that.
8:39
Speaker 5: But we'll be hitting that area pretty soon, and very heavily.
8:45
Speaker 3: So there's Trump saying that, Okay, maybe they did move
8:47
Speaker 3: the centrifuges, but what good is the centrifuge if you
8:50
Speaker 3: don't have highly enriched uranium to spin in it. He
8:53
Speaker 3: makes a very good point. So the Israeli intelligence, which
8:57
Speaker 3: is pointing towards Pickaxe Mountain, comes out. They're like, oh, update,
9:01
Speaker 3: by the way, we forgot to tell you that also
9:04
Speaker 3: we can put up a two here. Is really intelligence
9:07
Speaker 3: concludes that, yes, they also moved there and reached stockpile
9:13
Speaker 3: there too. That's according to Israeli intelligence. I think this
9:16
Speaker 3: sounds totally on the up and up, and you could
9:18
Speaker 3: take this to the bank, right, Yeah.
9:20
Speaker 4: I mean, it seemed like that is really intelligence. It's
9:24
Speaker 4: always interesting to go back and anatomize how something goes
9:27
Speaker 4: through the media, like the life story piece of intelligence,
9:31
Speaker 4: as it makes its way through the media, and it
9:32
Speaker 4: does seem like that really was the genesis of Now
9:35
Speaker 4: everybody talking about Pickax Mountain, including of course, the President
9:38
Speaker 4: of the United States also worth bringing back in the
9:41
Speaker 4: Saudi nuclear deal we were just talking about further in
9:44
Speaker 4: the Journal article, you have a quote here from the
9:47
Speaker 4: executive director of the Non Proliferation Policy Education Center who says,
9:50
Speaker 4: whither goes Saudi Arabia, so goes the UAE Turkey in Egypt.
9:53
Speaker 4: The idea that this will have a happy ending is delusional.
9:57
Speaker 4: And so just to bring it all together with nuclear proliferation,
10:02
Speaker 4: this is the Trump administration now going after Pickax Mountain
10:06
Speaker 4: while cutting deals with the Saudis on nuclear proliferation.
10:10
Speaker 3: Yeah, and when it comes to things that Trump has
10:12
Speaker 3: consistently believed in for many decades, tariffs are one of them,
10:17
Speaker 3: thinking that Japan is ripping us off as another. They
10:20
Speaker 3: just flipped that to China, like the nineties. Being against
10:24
Speaker 3: nuclear proliferation is one of them. Like if you go
10:26
Speaker 3: back to there's interviews from the eighties. He's been concerned
10:29
Speaker 3: about nuclear power, yes, nucar weapons and their proliferation for decades.
10:34
Speaker 3: Clearly he has a higher value in life, and that
10:37
Speaker 3: is corruption, and so he's willing like he doesn't think
10:41
Speaker 3: about it. There are very few things he actually believes
10:44
Speaker 3: in and nuclear proliferation being one of them. But he
10:48
Speaker 3: doesn't believe in it so much that he's not going
10:51
Speaker 3: to just discard it for a couple billion dollars.
10:54
Speaker 4: He's not even conditioning this on normalized relationships between or
10:59
Speaker 4: normalized relations between Saudi Arabia and Israel. According to the Journal, that.
11:02
Speaker 3: Used to be one of the hold ups there. Yeah,
11:05
Speaker 3: it was. He's recognizing that Israel's just not going to
11:07
Speaker 3: do it.
11:08
Speaker 4: He also said on Truth Social this is our next element.
11:11
Speaker 4: We can pop up on the screen. Enough is enough,
11:13
Speaker 4: No more talks because they just lie. It's time to
11:16
Speaker 4: all caps finish the job. So what that is going
11:21
Speaker 4: to look like still a bit unclear. If we move
11:24
Speaker 4: on to A three B. What you're seeing here, according
11:28
Speaker 4: to drop site analysis, is basically US striking Auran for
11:33
Speaker 4: the eleventh straight night overnight, as air defenses were activated
11:36
Speaker 4: over at Tehran. Explosions were reported across Iran overnight and
11:40
Speaker 4: eleventh consecutive night of US attacks, with air defenses activating
11:43
Speaker 4: over Tehran for the first time in the current round
11:46
Speaker 4: of escalation. That's according to Al Jazeera. In Tehran, the
11:50
Speaker 4: strikes hit a military base inta breeze. That's in the
11:53
Speaker 4: northwest of Iran for a second straight day, and then
11:56
Speaker 4: explosions were reported in three different cities and one overlooking
12:00
Speaker 4: the Strait of Hormuz. USCOM said it targeted Iran's maritime capabilities,
12:05
Speaker 4: strone facilities and aircraft hangars, describing the campaign as an
12:08
Speaker 4: effort to degrade Tran's ability to threaten shipping through the
12:12
Speaker 4: Strait of Hormuz. And then the IRGC vowed to keep
12:14
Speaker 4: operating to punish quote the aggressor and Iran's rhetoric escalating
12:20
Speaker 4: significantly Ryan in recent days as well, if that's even
12:22
Speaker 4: possible for escalation at this point, but clearly there's always.
12:26
Speaker 3: Room, yes, And so if you remember, was it last
12:30
Speaker 3: week we discussed the US strike on a dormitory housing
12:36
Speaker 3: conscripts in Iran. Iran vowed to retaliate for that because,
12:42
Speaker 3: like we were saying at the time, okay, you're in
12:44
Speaker 3: the military, it's plausibly that's a military target, but there's
12:49
Speaker 3: something unspoken that just like killing people in their sleep
12:54
Speaker 3: is just it's not gentlemanly, maybe we could say. And
12:58
Speaker 3: so Iran vowed a time, okay, we're going to respect
13:00
Speaker 3: and so they had been run up until now had
13:03
Speaker 3: mostly been targeting military infrastructure, the early warning satellite systems,
13:07
Speaker 3: all of our multi billion dollar pieces of what are
13:09
Speaker 3: now smoldering junk that we had lying around the Gulf.
13:13
Speaker 3: They now appear to have moved to targeting actual service
13:18
Speaker 3: members and so we can actually put up roll a
13:21
Speaker 3: three C. This is This is a footage that was
13:25
Speaker 3: posted from a base in Jordan by a service member.
13:28
Speaker 3: You can hear the warnings, you know, coming from the
13:33
Speaker 3: sirens and everybody just kind of scrambling to get to
13:39
Speaker 3: the safest place that they can before the ballistic missiles hit,
13:43
Speaker 3: which you have. You now have you know, much less
13:46
Speaker 3: time to do this because they have hit so many
13:51
Speaker 3: of the early warning radar sites and so the missiles
13:55
Speaker 3: are getting much closer. In some cases you're seeing video
13:58
Speaker 3: of strikes impacting without even hearing the sirens. Or in
14:05
Speaker 3: Kuwait you might hear the siren for you know, eight
14:08
Speaker 3: seconds and then building it and a building has hit nearby,
14:13
Speaker 3: or Bahrain you might You're unlikely to get even eight seconds.
14:18
Speaker 3: We can add in post this is something I put
14:20
Speaker 3: up on Twitter last night. Of sorts sent to me
14:23
Speaker 3: two photos of the results of the attack on tower
14:28
Speaker 3: twenty two, which is a base in Jordan, and there
14:31
Speaker 3: you can see that the dorms were just completely annihilated.
14:35
Speaker 3: I was told that there were no fatalities, but a
14:38
Speaker 3: significant number of traumatic brain injuries as a result of
14:41
Speaker 3: this attack. And they've they've evacuated this quite you know, influential,
14:46
Speaker 3: you know, and at one time powerful base as a
14:49
Speaker 3: result of them being unable to fend off drone and
14:53
Speaker 3: ballistic missile attacks. It's also told that that they are
14:58
Speaker 3: shifting from the shot head to thirty six is down
15:00
Speaker 3: only to thirty one. Basically the point being that they're
15:03
Speaker 3: sending smaller drones which are harder as you can imagine,
15:09
Speaker 3: to shoot out of the sky, so that the bigger
15:11
Speaker 3: ones obviously pack a bigger punch and have a longer range,
15:14
Speaker 3: but the smaller ones are you know, much more able
15:18
Speaker 3: to kind of weave their way through American air defenses.
15:25
Speaker 3: President Trump has found the guy responsible for all of this.
15:30
Speaker 3: It's the Jordanian air defense operators. He did he figured
15:34
Speaker 3: this out. So demerits to that guy. So let's go
15:38
Speaker 3: to A four.
15:39
Speaker 5: They did slip something through in Jordan, and if we
15:43
Speaker 5: had other operators, you know, would have not happened, unfortunately,
15:49
Speaker 5: But we because we have the best equipment in the world.
15:52
Speaker 5: You know, we've stopped almost everything. But when you let
15:55
Speaker 5: other people do your job. With the United States, who
15:58
Speaker 5: let other people do the job, and sometimes it doesn't
16:00
Speaker 5: work out.
16:00
Speaker 3: So well, oh yeah, Trump never fails. He can only
16:06
Speaker 3: be failed.
16:07
Speaker 4: He said they slipped something through in Jordan. Three American
16:13
Speaker 4: soldiers died in Georgian hundred wounded, Isabella Gonzalez Tyler Fienn
16:19
Speaker 4: and on how romper sought in addition to another death
16:21
Speaker 4: that occurred. I think it was in rock over the weekend.
16:24
Speaker 4: That's what Slipping something through in Jordan is right.
16:28
Speaker 3: And that's right. And so that's three people who would
16:33
Speaker 3: be alive if Trump had just stuck with the MoU Yeah.
16:36
Speaker 3: Plus the fourth in Iraq who was apparently nearby when
16:41
Speaker 3: they were trying to detonate an unexploded drone and was
16:45
Speaker 3: killed in the explosion. Plus then we're talking about ast
16:49
Speaker 3: at least one hundred casualties. Some of them probably be
16:52
Speaker 3: suffering with it from the results of it for the
16:55
Speaker 3: rest of the rest of their lives. There's a lot
16:57
Speaker 3: of complaints that the medical attention they're getting is extremely
17:01
Speaker 3: substandard even when they get flown to Germany, which at
17:05
Speaker 3: Tammy Baldwin was bringing this up in Senate yesterday. It's
17:08
Speaker 3: like we've been doing this for twenty five thirty years, Like,
17:10
Speaker 3: how do you not have better medical care for people
17:14
Speaker 3: who were paying the price here for this absolute folly. Meanwhile,
17:22
Speaker 3: Besileel Smotridge thinks this is in fact actually the best
17:26
Speaker 3: of all worlds. Let's put up a five rather startling
17:30
Speaker 3: remark from Smotrich, reported by Amed Siegel, who's very close
17:33
Speaker 3: to Benjamin net Yahoo Finance Minister Smotridge after the lengthy
17:38
Speaker 3: security discussion last night. He says, quote, the State of
17:41
Speaker 3: Israel has no interest in joining the contained confrontation between
17:45
Speaker 3: Iran and the United States. The current situation is the
17:49
Speaker 3: best one for US. Rather crass, I think, after four
17:54
Speaker 3: American service members are killed and Iran continues to oblit
18:00
Speaker 3: rate our all of the military infrastructure that we've built
18:05
Speaker 3: up in the in the Gulf to protect Israel, by
18:08
Speaker 3: the way, like we built we built it to protect Israel.
18:12
Speaker 3: But as we said at the top of the program,
18:14
Speaker 3: the American warplanes continue to strike a run. So that's
18:18
Speaker 3: what that's what Smotrich means like he's he's completely content
18:22
Speaker 3: with that, and Israel can use its time to continue
18:26
Speaker 3: to destroy villages in Lebanon and continue to launch daily
18:32
Speaker 3: attacks in Gaza despite having agreed to a ceasefire, and
18:36
Speaker 3: continue to try to push their imaginary yellow line deeper
18:39
Speaker 3: and deeper into Gaza. And luckily for Smotrich, according to
18:44
Speaker 3: Fox News or this Fox News guest, you know, he
18:47
Speaker 3: might get the best of all worlds for another twenty
18:49
Speaker 3: years or so. Let's roll a six. How much longer
18:53
Speaker 3: do you expect this to go on? And do you
18:54
Speaker 3: think munition should be a limitation at this point? What
18:57
Speaker 3: do you hear?
19:00
Speaker 5: No, I don't think.
19:01
Speaker 6: You know, the Pentagon has done a great job of
19:04
Speaker 6: restocking the munitions. I don't think that's an issue at all,
19:08
Speaker 6: But I can I do expect that we're going to
19:10
Speaker 6: be there a long time. You know, Operation Northern Southern
19:13
Speaker 6: Watch went on for almost twenty years. I think so,
19:16
Speaker 6: I think this is going to be something similar. We're
19:17
Speaker 6: going to have to stay there. Those guys aren't going
19:20
Speaker 6: to change their behavior. We have to adapt, and I think,
19:24
Speaker 6: you know, we're going to have to get the gold
19:25
Speaker 6: States and those who rely on the oil coming from
19:28
Speaker 6: the Gold States to help pay for this.
19:30
Speaker 3: Curious for a take on this, because I thought that
19:31
Speaker 3: was an extra revealing remark. He's talking about Operation Northern
19:35
Speaker 3: Watch there, which is a reference to how in the
19:39
Speaker 3: nineteen nineties the US had a no fly zone over
19:44
Speaker 3: Iraq and would just bomb it like once or twice
19:47
Speaker 3: a week and sanctioned it to death. In the seventies
19:52
Speaker 3: and eighties, Iraq was the wealthiest country in the Middle East.
19:57
Speaker 3: It was very it was very powerful, and then in
20:01
Speaker 3: nineteen ninety one there was what seemed to be a
20:04
Speaker 3: deliberate miscommunication between the US and Iraq and which we
20:07
Speaker 3: greenlit them going into Kuwait. We then launched the First
20:12
Speaker 3: Gulf War, and after that we Israel considered Iraq to be,
20:19
Speaker 3: you know, its greatest kind of jew strategic threat in
20:22
Speaker 3: the region. Tsaddami same it was very sympathetic to the
20:25
Speaker 3: Palestinian cause, and so we spend the nineties just bombing
20:31
Speaker 3: the hell out of Iraq and sanctioning them, and then
20:35
Speaker 3: once it was sufficiently weakened in two thousand and three,
20:37
Speaker 3: we went in and we topple it. And so what
20:40
Speaker 3: he's suggesting there is that that should be the roadmap
20:43
Speaker 3: for Iran that we just spend ten years just like
20:46
Speaker 3: bombing it once or twice a week, and then maybe
20:49
Speaker 3: twenty thirty five we can send some troops in there
20:52
Speaker 3: and just push over what's left of it.
20:54
Speaker 4: Well, and as always, it's worth popping the general's name
20:58
Speaker 4: anytime you see a talking head on Fox News that's
21:00
Speaker 4: very excited Fox News, CNN, MSNBC. Honestly, that seems to
21:05
Speaker 4: be analyzing a war as a never ending one that
21:08
Speaker 4: might involve years of conflict.
21:11
Speaker 3: Who does he worked for, let's hear it.
21:12
Speaker 4: Oh, he's a founder of his own AI company that
21:17
Speaker 4: happens to have contracts with the Pentagon, and it's a
21:21
Speaker 4: data center. It's a micro data center company. It's called Semper.
21:24
Speaker 4: Actually just did a whole write up of his company
21:27
Speaker 4: back in twenty twenty one. He's also a senior fellow
21:29
Speaker 4: at the Hudson Institute, which of course gets a significant
21:31
Speaker 4: amount of money from defense contractors. So no surprise to
21:35
Speaker 4: hear Spalding thinking this just might take a long.
21:38
Speaker 3: Time, just pulled himself up by his bootstraps. Yes, well,
21:44
Speaker 3: see hard work rewarded now.
21:46
Speaker 4: Secretary of HEGSA, speaking of money from or four the
21:49
Speaker 4: Department of War Secretary Hegseth was on Capitol Hill yesterday
21:53
Speaker 4: asking for what was it run? Like seventy billion more dollars?
21:56
Speaker 3: He said the sixty seven billion I think he wants, right, Yeah,
21:59
Speaker 3: and he said the war que amount for a organization
22:02
Speaker 3: that doesn't know how to count its money every year.
22:04
Speaker 4: Well, the price tag for the Iran war, according to
22:07
Speaker 4: testimony from Dan Cain and Pete Hegseth yesterday, is now
22:10
Speaker 4: up to thirty seven and a half billion. Actually, how
22:12
Speaker 4: do they know that'stified?
22:13
Speaker 3: They can't. They don't know how to do an audit.
22:15
Speaker 3: How do they even know they're out of money?
22:17
Speaker 4: Thirty seven and a half?
22:18
Speaker 3: Like, we're out of money? Like, how do you know
22:19
Speaker 3: you're out of money?
22:20
Speaker 4: Not thirty seven?
22:21
Speaker 3: Again, there's money somewhere.
22:22
Speaker 4: I check out of the couch. Well, anyway, he was
22:25
Speaker 4: confronted by Senator John Ossoff. Let's take a look here
22:29
Speaker 4: a day seven.
22:29
Speaker 7: You stated on March eighth, day nine of the war,
22:32
Speaker 7: on sixty minutes, you assured the American people of Iranian surrender.
22:36
Speaker 7: Does that remain your prediction?
22:40
Speaker 2: Ultimately, Iran will never have a nuclear weapon to threatn
22:43
Speaker 2: in the United States of America.
22:44
Speaker 4: That has been the objective and it remains so.
22:47
Speaker 7: So just to review, you will not answer whether your
22:50
Speaker 7: statement made on the fourteenth day of the war that
22:53
Speaker 7: Iran's military had been quote destroyed and made combat ineffective
22:57
Speaker 7: was a truthful statement to the American people. As you
23:00
Speaker 7: sit here and ask for tens of billions more.
23:02
Speaker 6: The senator's time has been a historic and effective military
23:06
Speaker 6: campaign against the largest state sponsor of terrorists.
23:08
Speaker 3: And answer the question.
23:09
Speaker 4: I meanwhile, Splet's screen here on Capitol Hill, Mike Johnson,
23:14
Speaker 4: Speaker Mike Johnson, who's looking at potentially becoming minority leader.
23:17
Speaker 4: Mike Johnson is a little bit more concerned about the
23:22
Speaker 4: timeline of the war. Let's take a leston.
23:24
Speaker 8: The administration is working very hard, the Commander Chief and
23:27
Speaker 8: the whole Department of War working very hard to bring
23:30
Speaker 8: this to a resolution. There's a lot of discussions about
23:33
Speaker 8: how that will be done. We're all closely watching those developments.
23:37
Speaker 8: Of course, I don't think an aumth is in order
23:40
Speaker 8: right now. I think we need to bring this to
23:42
Speaker 8: a resolution. Look, I think it's important for all of
23:45
Speaker 8: our international partners, is my personal view, to have a
23:49
Speaker 8: role in this I mean, we've got all of our
23:51
Speaker 8: alleg nations through NATO, We've got the Arab countries over there,
23:54
Speaker 8: the Gulf states that are in closest proximity to Iran.
23:57
Speaker 8: Iran is now fired on all of its neighbors, and
24:00
Speaker 8: they're turning everybody in the world into an enemy. And
24:03
Speaker 8: I think this is an important moment of history for
24:06
Speaker 8: all of the world community to decide how they want
24:08
Speaker 8: to handle this. It shouldn't just be America's obligation. My
24:12
Speaker 8: view is that everybody needs to play a role, so
24:14
Speaker 8: we'll see how that develops. I think we have to
24:16
Speaker 8: allow the space to do that, and I know that
24:19
Speaker 8: this administration is working around the clock to resolve that
24:21
Speaker 8: in a way so they don't suffer any more true losses.
24:24
Speaker 8: This is a great tragedy. It shouldn't happen, but it
24:27
Speaker 8: is a very important, very important objective that I believe
24:31
Speaker 8: we've achieved to ensure that the largest sponsor of state
24:34
Speaker 8: of a terrorism does not have a nuclear weapon that
24:37
Speaker 8: would be a disaster for everybody, and everybody around the
24:39
Speaker 8: world understands that. Now we've got to wrap it up subtle.
24:42
Speaker 4: But you probably caught at the end there him saying
24:44
Speaker 4: we need to wrap it up. There's no need for
24:45
Speaker 4: an AUMF specific to this Iran war. Got to resolve it,
24:50
Speaker 4: because we just got to wrap it up, Brian. And
24:52
Speaker 4: you know what, maybe I agree with that at this
24:53
Speaker 4: point if we don't need to have an AOMF, because
24:57
Speaker 4: you guys would rather just wrap it up by all means,
24:59
Speaker 4: wrap it up.
25:00
Speaker 3: Also, they've already voted, they passed a War Powers resolution
25:03
Speaker 3: ending the war. Amazing Congress did that, great work. Yeah,
25:09
Speaker 3: so yeah, wrap it up.
25:10
Speaker 4: Yeah, all right, well, Ryan, let's talk now about Lebanon.
25:16
Speaker 4: Also crucial to this entire conversation about the negotiations in Iraq.
25:20
Speaker 4: Trump was saying yesterday that he's it was going back
25:24
Speaker 4: and forth and whether or not he's negotiating with Ron,
25:27
Speaker 4: he would be willing to center our Secretary of Rubio
25:31
Speaker 4: in the same kind of vein fluctuating on whether or
25:34
Speaker 4: not they're willing to talk publicly, privately all of that.
25:37
Speaker 4: So let's move over to Lebanon, because Donald Trump was
25:40
Speaker 4: with the President of Lebanon yesterday in the White House.
25:42
Speaker 3: Yeah, and so Treta parcy had flagged. And you can
25:45
Speaker 3: put this element up on the screen, this wall Street
25:47
Speaker 3: Journal article that floats the various ways that the US
25:52
Speaker 3: is exploring the idea of basically sparking a civil war
25:57
Speaker 3: inside of Lebanon. And I wanted to just read a
26:01
Speaker 3: little bit from this Wall Street Journal article because I think,
26:05
Speaker 3: just hearing how the mainstream media writes about it, you,
26:09
Speaker 3: as a normal person, will be able to immediately spot
26:12
Speaker 3: all of the problems with this proposal. So the journal
26:17
Speaker 3: rights Israel has battered the Lebanes militia Hesbela over two
26:21
Speaker 3: years of fighting. Many Lebanes are turning against the militant group,
26:24
Speaker 3: and there's growing consensus in Beirut that Hesbela must finally
26:27
Speaker 3: be forced to give up its weapons. But American Israeli
26:31
Speaker 3: in Lebany's officials are finding there are no easy options
26:33
Speaker 3: to disarm a US designated terrorist group that is embedded
26:37
Speaker 3: in society and bound to its cause with religious zeal.
26:40
Speaker 3: Complicating matters is Israel's invasion of Lebanon and its continuing
26:45
Speaker 3: occupation of swaths of the country's south, creating a point
26:49
Speaker 3: of tension with Beirut, just when the two countries leaders
26:52
Speaker 3: are aligned on disarming Hesbela, and then they go on
26:57
Speaker 3: to say that dilemma has opened the way for once
27:00
Speaker 3: unthinkable ideas pushing ahead. US Israeli and Lebanese officials are
27:03
Speaker 3: pushing ahead with a plan to train and vet elite
27:06
Speaker 3: units of the Lebanese armed forces. The idea here they
27:09
Speaker 3: will train these Lebanese armed forces and then Israel will
27:13
Speaker 3: then kind of after training them, turn over the occupation
27:16
Speaker 3: of southern Lebanon to them. But I just love this
27:19
Speaker 3: delightful line in here. Complicating matters is Israel's invasion of Lebanon.
27:24
Speaker 3: Small matter and a mere complexity does make it a
27:29
Speaker 3: little extrac a wrinkle, we'll agree with that. The piece
27:33
Speaker 3: then goes on to kind of try to disentangle this
27:36
Speaker 3: complexity which comes primarily from well lots of different elements,
27:41
Speaker 3: but the fact that Hesbela is a key element of
27:45
Speaker 3: the Lebanese military. There are Hesbela sympathetic and Hesbola linked
27:52
Speaker 3: people who make up significant swaths of the Lebanese armed forces.
27:58
Speaker 3: And so anytime the Lebanese arm fource verses try to
28:01
Speaker 3: move against Hesbela, Hesbela gets tipped off immediately because they
28:06
Speaker 3: are in there because they are Lebanese. Complicating matters. Yeah,
28:12
Speaker 3: So then they go on to say, well, maybe we
28:16
Speaker 3: can get al Shara two. You know, like, they don't
28:23
Speaker 3: even say they're gonna get Alshara, who's the you know,
28:25
Speaker 3: Syrian president, to go to war against Hezbela. What the
28:28
Speaker 3: journal is suggesting here is that they'll get al Shara
28:31
Speaker 3: to cut off the supply lines between Iran and hesblah.
28:39
Speaker 3: That would be a plausible thing that you could do,
28:41
Speaker 3: and is a reason that Israel wanted to overthrow Aside
28:47
Speaker 3: and replace him with al Shara. The problem is Israel
28:50
Speaker 3: couldn't help itself, and as soon as al Shara took over, Israel,
28:55
Speaker 3: through a series of air strikes, obliterated the entire national
29:01
Speaker 3: security infrastructure available to al Shara, blew up every truck,
29:05
Speaker 3: every tank, every plane, everything capable of firing a shell.
29:11
Speaker 3: And so now Israel is saying, oh, hey, can you
29:13
Speaker 3: go ahead and use your state apparatus to intercept the
29:19
Speaker 3: smuggling that is going on between Iran and Hezwa and
29:22
Speaker 3: Alshara is like, yeah, about our state apparatus, you may
29:29
Speaker 3: recall or may not recall. You destroyed it all, Yeah,
29:34
Speaker 3: so sorry, we can't. So then you could build them
29:39
Speaker 3: back up, but that would create state capacity on the
29:44
Speaker 3: part of Syria. Israel has said that their strategic assessment
29:49
Speaker 3: is that state capacity itself is a threat to Israel.
29:54
Speaker 3: They don't care if a country is threatening them, if
29:58
Speaker 3: they have the capacity to threaten them, they consider that
30:02
Speaker 3: a geostrategic vulnerability. So they want to degrade every state
30:06
Speaker 3: near them to the point where they don't even have
30:09
Speaker 3: the capacity to think about challenging Israel. So they want
30:13
Speaker 3: Syria to have the state capacity to intercept the smuggling roots.
30:19
Speaker 3: But they don't want Syria to have any state capacity
30:21
Speaker 3: because then that could be used to challenge Israel's occupation
30:27
Speaker 3: of the Goal On Heights and increasing occupation further north
30:30
Speaker 3: towards Damascus. So the entire idea here is completely convoluted.
30:39
Speaker 3: Unless all they want is just a giant civil war
30:42
Speaker 3: to go on for decades, then maybe they could get
30:44
Speaker 3: that if you send it enough weapons and train enough
30:48
Speaker 3: quote unquote Lebanese special forces or elite units.
30:52
Speaker 4: It put the Lebanese president in a rather interesting position
30:54
Speaker 4: yesterday as he was meeting President Trump at the White House.
30:57
Speaker 4: Let's take a listen to a flavor of their conversation
30:59
Speaker 4: in front reporters.
31:00
Speaker 5: Be too, mister President, it's an honor having you. Thank
31:03
Speaker 5: you very much. Other Oh, thank you, thank you. I'll
31:06
Speaker 5: be looking forward this visit forty long time.
31:08
Speaker 3: Thank you. Meeting such a great president like yourself.
31:11
Speaker 5: That's a very nice thing. So he knows how to
31:13
Speaker 5: get to me. Now we have anything, would you like
31:18
Speaker 5: to say?
31:19
Speaker 4: Well, the meeting finished, and the Donald Trump posted untrue
31:22
Speaker 4: social that after it, he says, I am hereby directing
31:26
Speaker 4: my administration to allow all US airline carriers to fly
31:30
Speaker 4: directly to Lebanon so that Americans can easily visit this
31:34
Speaker 4: beautiful land. Hopefully other countries will do the same. Enjoy
31:38
Speaker 4: President Donald J. Trump. Now, Ryan, I'd love to go
31:41
Speaker 4: to Lebanon.
31:42
Speaker 3: I'm not sure now's the time, a little weekend.
31:45
Speaker 4: Especially in the context you've just laid out about the
31:48
Speaker 4: ambitions for potentially a civil war.
31:51
Speaker 3: We got friends there. Well, we'll make sure you're taking
31:53
Speaker 3: care of there. It'll be fine. At first, I read
31:56
Speaker 3: that as all airlines will go directly to land.
31:59
Speaker 4: Every single are not going to Detroit anymore.
32:02
Speaker 3: No, everyone's going to everyone's going to Lebanon. There haven't
32:05
Speaker 3: been direct flights from the US to Bay route since
32:07
Speaker 3: I think nineteen eighty five. When there was a h
32:11
Speaker 3: haswell linked. I think it was heslolinked. I don't know
32:14
Speaker 3: enough about it to confirm that. But hijacking, I think
32:17
Speaker 3: a plane that was flying from like Rome to Athens
32:20
Speaker 3: or something got hijacked and FLOWNDA FLOWNDA Bay route and
32:22
Speaker 3: Reagan was like okay, Reagan had already taken all the
32:25
Speaker 3: Marines out, and I was like, okay, no more, no
32:28
Speaker 3: more flights either. But yeah, so Trump and Owner, you know,
32:34
Speaker 3: clearly making making making it forming a bond.
32:39
Speaker 4: What that's gonna What that does politically to Lebanon is
32:42
Speaker 4: an interesting question. Yeah, look to the competing factions for
32:45
Speaker 4: power in Lebanon.
32:47
Speaker 3: Yeah. Meanwhile, the agreement that Trump has with the with
32:52
Speaker 3: the Houthis interestingly remains in place. The Houthis over the
32:55
Speaker 3: last couple of days announced we'll announced that they actually
32:59
Speaker 3: could start with it. You put up B six that
33:03
Speaker 3: they they announced that any ships docking in Saudi Saudi
33:09
Speaker 3: ports or any Saudi flagged ships are now banned from
33:13
Speaker 3: going through the Babel Mendeb Straight, which is the way
33:16
Speaker 3: that oil has been basically flowing. You know, it would
33:19
Speaker 3: go across a pipeline to a Saudi port and then
33:23
Speaker 3: through the Red Sea south over to Asia. What it
33:26
Speaker 3: has to do now is go up through the Mediterranean.
33:29
Speaker 3: If if it if it gets struggled. All if you
33:32
Speaker 3: want to have some fun, you can pause that video
33:35
Speaker 3: and read the actual like healthy statements. They're also over
33:37
Speaker 3: the top, kind of kind of crazy. Uh, the the
33:44
Speaker 3: A B five some Saudi tankers. You can put this
33:48
Speaker 3: up are all you know. I've already made U turns
33:51
Speaker 3: immediately after this this warning because they have seen that
33:55
Speaker 3: the the yemen forces there have the ability to those
34:00
Speaker 3: strikes out. But interestingly, the US and Yemen still have
34:04
Speaker 3: a ceasefire in place because it's a bilateral ceasefire, doesn't
34:08
Speaker 3: involve anybody else. It's just between us and them. And
34:11
Speaker 3: Trump observed that that it's still in place, but threatened
34:16
Speaker 3: that if it, if it falls apart, he'll quote unquote
34:19
Speaker 3: take care of it. Let's listen to Trump in the
34:21
Speaker 3: Oval office. This is before the level of.
34:24
Speaker 5: Concern of a blockade of the Red Sea by the
34:28
Speaker 5: hoothy rebels opening up another front.
34:31
Speaker 4: In the war.
34:31
Speaker 5: What happens so far, it hasn't happened, might happen, but
34:35
Speaker 5: we take care of things. If something like that happens,
34:37
Speaker 5: we take care of it. You know, we've done that
34:40
Speaker 5: with the Hooties before, and we haven't heard from them
34:43
Speaker 5: in a while since we did what we did. Originally,
34:46
Speaker 5: it was about forty five days of very powerful action
34:50
Speaker 5: we took against the Hooties, and we've had no problem
34:54
Speaker 5: with the Hooties. They've had no problem with us for
34:57
Speaker 5: a long period of time, including during this conflict. I
35:01
Speaker 5: think that if there is something like that, we'll just
35:04
Speaker 5: have to take care of business.
35:05
Speaker 3: Also, that Oval Office, by the way, I just can't
35:08
Speaker 3: get over it.
35:09
Speaker 4: I know, it's really it's something. Have you seen the
35:11
Speaker 4: outside of the White House? My restaurant Chic just cursive.
35:18
Speaker 4: It's like a resort. It's like a golf resort. It's
35:19
Speaker 4: like one of his golf resorts. I don't know why
35:21
Speaker 4: we're on this tangent right now, but it's truly like
35:24
Speaker 4: the Oval Office in Gold cursive outside. So you know,
35:27
Speaker 4: when you're on a big resort campus, right that you
35:30
Speaker 4: have entered the wreck room, you have entered the restaurant.
35:36
Speaker 4: That's what it looks like. It's egregious. And then if
35:40
Speaker 4: you if you want a little laugh, you just turn
35:43
Speaker 4: over and you see on the wall the Autopen under.
35:46
Speaker 3: Joe Biden's name, the actual autopen.
35:49
Speaker 4: Yeah, no, he is a picture of the Autopen instead
35:52
Speaker 4: of Joe Biden's portrait is all the other presidential portraits
35:55
Speaker 4: and Biden it's a picture of an autopen. It's actually real,
36:00
Speaker 4: actually really can confirm. I have seen it with my
36:02
Speaker 4: own eyes.
36:03
Speaker 3: Amazing.
36:04
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's something, but truly. The region in chaos right now.
36:09
Speaker 4: But don't you worry. Donald Trump is.
36:11
Speaker 3: At the helm. Yeah, and so this is good. Yeah,
36:14
Speaker 3: if Saudi Arabia is crimped from exporting it's several million
36:18
Speaker 3: barrels per day through the Red Sea. The ability of
36:23
Speaker 3: the US, like we're still drawing down our strategical petroleum reserve,
36:27
Speaker 3: Like yep, the latest we heard from our government expert.
36:32
Speaker 3: It's like, you know what, maybe we can go a
36:34
Speaker 3: little bit lower on the petroleum reserve then we thought
36:38
Speaker 3: we could before. So we can. And as somebody pointed
36:41
Speaker 3: out on Twitter, like we're the US is just basically
36:44
Speaker 3: driving with the light on at this point, the gas
36:48
Speaker 3: light is on, and we're like this is fine, next
36:50
Speaker 3: exit twenty two miles. Yeah, we can make this.
36:52
Speaker 4: We do that with basically all of our policy right now,
36:55
Speaker 4: there's the gas, there's the debt. We're just we can
36:58
Speaker 4: keep making it a futures down to your point, basically
37:01
Speaker 4: across the board except for oil this morning, as we record,
37:05
Speaker 4: and that probably explains what we're about to discuss in
37:07
Speaker 4: terms of the midterm election pulling. Well, amidst this conversation
37:13
Speaker 4: at the White House with the head of Lennon yesterday. Yesterday,
37:16
Speaker 4: Donald Trump got a question about the midterms.
37:19
Speaker 7: Here's what he said, Well, you believe that Iran is
37:22
Speaker 7: trying to impact the midterm elections by threatening the street
37:25
Speaker 7: of four hours.
37:26
Speaker 5: They won't have any impact on me.
37:28
Speaker 3: I'm just going to do the right thing.
37:29
Speaker 5: I don't view it as having an election in a
37:32
Speaker 5: period of time, and everyone says, oh, I'm doing something
37:35
Speaker 5: before now the election. I can't think about that having
37:40
Speaker 5: to do with this. I think people are very impressed.
37:43
Speaker 5: I mean, we took over Venezuela. We now have a
37:46
Speaker 5: great relationship with Venezuela. We went to war with Venezuela
37:50
Speaker 5: and the war ended in one day.
37:53
Speaker 4: What he said there was it won't affect me, which
37:56
Speaker 4: is exactly what is getting so deep unto the skin
38:00
Speaker 4: of Republican operatives around the country and certainly here in Washington,
38:03
Speaker 4: d C. Yesterday Fox News ruled out updated power rankings
38:08
Speaker 4: for the House and the Senate that spelled disaster for Republicans.
38:14
Speaker 4: Let's go ahead and roll first here the Senate power rankings.
38:18
Speaker 4: Take a listen to Bill Maligion.
38:20
Speaker 9: Beginning with the Senate forecast, Fox News is projecting that
38:24
Speaker 9: control of the Senate is essentially just a toss up
38:26
Speaker 9: right now, with the balance of power likely coming down
38:29
Speaker 9: to Senate seats in four states that are all considered
38:32
Speaker 9: coin flips right now. Those four states are colored in yellow.
38:36
Speaker 9: Fox News projects that Alaska, Iowa, Ohio, and Maine all
38:40
Speaker 9: have Senate races that are all toss ups. These are
38:43
Speaker 9: the matchups that will likely end up determining control of
38:46
Speaker 9: the Senate now.
38:47
Speaker 3: Republicans are lying a handful.
38:48
Speaker 9: Of potential Senate pickups in Georgia, New Hampshire, and Michigan,
38:52
Speaker 9: all of which Fox News Power rankings project as leaning Democrat,
38:56
Speaker 9: while Democrats think they can flip Texas, which obviously lean Republican.
39:01
Speaker 4: So a couple of takeaways here not at all surprising
39:03
Speaker 4: if you've been following the developments, But they have Michigan
39:06
Speaker 4: leaning dem They have North Carolina leaning DEM. I think
39:09
Speaker 4: that's abundantly clear from the polling that North Carolina, as
39:12
Speaker 4: of right now, at least unless there's some black swan event,
39:15
Speaker 4: will likely be on election day leaning DEM. Ohio listed
39:20
Speaker 4: as a toss up, Alaska listed as a toss up.
39:22
Speaker 4: Ohio particularly interesting, very big struggle for Republicans. They didn't
39:27
Speaker 4: expect to have such a significant struggle in Ohio at
39:30
Speaker 4: this point. But that's exactly what happens coming back. Yeah, absolutely,
39:35
Speaker 4: it's exactly what happens when you get into an unpopular
39:37
Speaker 4: Warshared Brown is up in the real Clear Politics average
39:39
Speaker 4: byzero point six at this point. Polling's been kind of
39:42
Speaker 4: clustered together in either direction. But that's just a disaster
39:46
Speaker 4: for Republicans at this point.
39:49
Speaker 3: And I noticed, and you probably did too, since you
39:51
Speaker 3: guys watched this show, that they didn't put Nebraska on
39:53
Speaker 3: that list. Yeah, if you look closely at it, they
39:55
Speaker 3: have it as a likely so pretty dark red YEP Republican.
40:00
Speaker 3: I would rate Nebraska as now it's not a Democrat,
40:03
Speaker 3: it's an independent who's running Dan Osborne. I'd rate Nebraska
40:06
Speaker 3: as more likely to flip than Texas.
40:09
Speaker 4: I agree with that he's running in about thirty percent
40:12
Speaker 4: according to real Clare Politics right now.
40:13
Speaker 3: But that can thirty percent likelihood?
40:18
Speaker 4: You mean thirty percent in the let's doo we have here.
40:22
Speaker 4: Looks like this is actually polymarket, So he's real good
40:24
Speaker 4: politics integrates poly market now. Yeah, so they have him
40:26
Speaker 4: at a thirty percent on in polymar.
40:29
Speaker 3: Thirty that's higher than I would give tal Rico. Agree completely,
40:32
Speaker 3: What do they give to Talerrico. It's a good question,
40:34
Speaker 3: not that we should be promoting this guard.
40:36
Speaker 9: Yeah, I know.
40:36
Speaker 4: I thought it was going to be the poll and
40:37
Speaker 4: I pulled it up and it was polymarket. It looks
40:40
Speaker 4: like tall Ico is at forty four. Time to get
40:44
Speaker 4: in on this one.
40:45
Speaker 3: But yeah, so maybe a real Cleare politics is selling
40:48
Speaker 3: out to the the polymarket to poly market here. I'm
40:51
Speaker 3: sure they're not doing that for free. That's annoying. But
40:53
Speaker 3: in any event, if this war continues, I think that
40:59
Speaker 3: it gives taler Go a better chance, but also gives
41:03
Speaker 3: Dan Osbourne and Nebraska a better chance because O and
41:07
Speaker 3: iowas he is just getting wrecked. Turrek could plausibly win and.
41:12
Speaker 4: He's up in the latest Fox newspol they had him plus.
41:15
Speaker 3: Four, Iowa has been hit harder by Trump than basically
41:19
Speaker 3: any other state. The tariffs, the cattle stuff, the soybean stuff,
41:26
Speaker 3: like he's just killing them all over the place.
41:29
Speaker 4: Which in the first term, you would see a lot
41:32
Speaker 4: of sites, you'd see a lot of patients, or you'd
41:36
Speaker 4: hear a lot of patients, particularly from Trump friendly farmers
41:40
Speaker 4: in Trump's first administration, because they understood there needed to
41:43
Speaker 4: be I think everybody understands there needs to be some
41:45
Speaker 4: type of regriggering. But no question that in the second administration,
41:49
Speaker 4: as Trump has been much more ad hoc, that patients
41:52
Speaker 4: has likely worn't thinner in many communities around Iowa. So
41:56
Speaker 4: on the House side, Yeah, and Maine, could I mean,
42:01
Speaker 4: what do you think of of Maine right now? Because
42:03
Speaker 4: Troy Jackson was up in a recent poll over Susan Collins.
42:06
Speaker 3: Yeah, Troy Jackson doesn't have the same riz obviously as
42:10
Speaker 3: as Platner, but to say the least. But but he's,
42:17
Speaker 3: you know, a very credible progressive, populist, working class guy
42:23
Speaker 3: with a lot of people and mane don't know who
42:26
Speaker 3: he is.
42:27
Speaker 4: But that's and so that that'll give that could be
42:30
Speaker 4: a good thing for Democrats.
42:31
Speaker 3: Could go both ways. Susan Collins is going to spend
42:34
Speaker 3: you know, one hundred million dollars defining him as God
42:37
Speaker 3: only knows what, who knows what they'll try to unearth
42:40
Speaker 3: about him, But he's he's a very very serious candidate.
42:45
Speaker 3: I think he's probably more likely to win than than not.
42:51
Speaker 3: And it doesn't help Susan Collins for Trump to continue
42:54
Speaker 3: this this war for another deep into the fall.
42:58
Speaker 4: As a brutal one ahead. Let's take a look at
43:02
Speaker 4: the House now. This is Fox News is House power
43:05
Speaker 4: rankings now projecting that Democrats will take the House. And
43:07
Speaker 4: by the way, before we leave the Senate just occurs
43:09
Speaker 4: to me about a year ago here in Washington, talk
43:12
Speaker 4: in geop circles was basically, we got the Senate. Don't
43:16
Speaker 4: worry about this. Yeah, the House, we might we might
43:18
Speaker 4: lose a little bit in the House, we might have
43:21
Speaker 4: a slim minority. There might be a little bit of
43:24
Speaker 4: a margin, a small margin between us and the Democrats.
43:26
Speaker 4: We might go back into the minority, but the Senate
43:28
Speaker 4: will almost certainly be Okay. That's what you were getting
43:31
Speaker 4: from the kind of stages of Republican politics here in
43:35
Speaker 4: Washington a year ago. Now, not only is that a
43:38
Speaker 4: toss up, but of course the House is looking worse
43:40
Speaker 4: and worse for Republicans. Let's rule new Fox News polling
43:43
Speaker 4: again or new Fox News projections C three.
43:46
Speaker 9: As for the House, Fox News projects that Democrats have
43:50
Speaker 9: the lead to flip control of the House back to blue,
43:52
Speaker 9: and they're in better shape than Republicans there. Right now,
43:55
Speaker 9: there are sixteen House seats projected as toss ups that
43:58
Speaker 9: will end up designing control, So Republican redistricting wins could
44:02
Speaker 9: end up blunting some of the losses that the GOP
44:05
Speaker 9: was potentially facing. The Fox News power rankings also show
44:08
Speaker 9: as of right now, voters preferred Democrats on the generic
44:12
Speaker 9: ballot against Republicans by about four percent. That's a flip
44:17
Speaker 9: from twenty twenty four when Republicans led that by one percent.
44:21
Speaker 9: So you're looking at about a five point swing towards
44:23
Speaker 9: Democrats since the twenty twenty four race.
44:26
Speaker 4: No, that's interesting, Ryan, because actually Democrats probably should have
44:31
Speaker 4: an even bigger lead in these House races. And Harry
44:33
Speaker 4: and ten on CNN recently was showing differences in how
44:36
Speaker 4: Democrats are running now in the generic congressional ballot versus
44:39
Speaker 4: two thousand and six and twenty eighteen, both blue Wave
44:42
Speaker 4: twenty eighteen basically blue Synomi years. And they actually don't
44:46
Speaker 4: have as big of a lead in the generic congressional
44:49
Speaker 4: ballot right now as they did at the same points
44:51
Speaker 4: in time twenty six and twenty eighteen. So those numbers,
44:55
Speaker 4: I mean, sixteen toss up races Dems right now with
44:57
Speaker 4: I think it was a three margin plus three margins
45:00
Speaker 4: in the Fox News power rankings. If they pick up
45:02
Speaker 4: all sixteen toss ups all ten toss ups, that's getting
45:06
Speaker 4: in the healthier direction, but it's still going to be
45:08
Speaker 4: a pretty slim majority for them. It's either way, we're
45:12
Speaker 4: looking at probably more deadlock.
45:15
Speaker 3: Yeah, in my sense, I guess this is not a
45:17
Speaker 3: novel thought. Is that just the increasing polarization of the
45:21
Speaker 3: country as more people just identify as either a Democrat
45:25
Speaker 3: or a Republican or they call themselves an independent, but
45:28
Speaker 3: they always vote Democrat or Republican.
45:31
Speaker 4: YEP.
45:31
Speaker 3: As that phenomenon, it continues to kind of calcify or coagulate,
45:38
Speaker 3: you're just going to have there's less room for a wave,
45:42
Speaker 3: Like it's a wave instead of washing up on sand,
45:45
Speaker 3: it's washing up on granite.
45:47
Speaker 4: To your point. In January, Gallup found a record number
45:50
Speaker 4: of people in the United States identifying as political of
45:53
Speaker 4: political independence. That's up to forty five percent, and it's
45:56
Speaker 4: been a very steep industry.
45:57
Speaker 3: They say that, but they're less independent in their behavior.
46:02
Speaker 4: They are people who are ideological but not necessarily partisan.
46:06
Speaker 4: They just tend to swing one direction or the other.
46:09
Speaker 4: But that's towards populist candidates in a lot of cases.
46:12
Speaker 4: I think that's probably where you see the increase growing up,
46:14
Speaker 4: especially going up, especially with Trump and Bernie Sanders. It's
46:16
Speaker 4: somebody who's a standards or Trump voter might think of
46:18
Speaker 4: themselves as independent, but find themselves reliably voting in one
46:23
Speaker 4: direction over the other.
46:24
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, exactly. And so no matter what happens, you're
46:27
Speaker 3: going to have just less of a movement. Plus with
46:30
Speaker 3: the redistricting, you really take off the board a lot
46:35
Speaker 3: of races that might otherwise be in play.
46:38
Speaker 4: Well what the redistricting. Republicans have had so much swagger
46:41
Speaker 4: in the last couple of months about how they're going
46:43
Speaker 4: to be just fine in the House of Representatives, and
46:45
Speaker 4: again here you have Fox News projections putting them.
46:48
Speaker 3: Like they think they might hold it at this point.
46:50
Speaker 3: That's what They're pretty confident.
46:51
Speaker 4: They had a new found pep in their step after
46:55
Speaker 4: the redistricting on the Supreme Court decision.
46:58
Speaker 3: But it's I mean, they have Democrats of no money.
47:01
Speaker 4: Yeah, they're being outspent for sure. Which there's just a
47:04
Speaker 4: report and playbook this morning about Democrats frustrated over their
47:07
Speaker 4: spending disadvantage.
47:09
Speaker 3: Trump like the entire D triple cy has like, you know,
47:12
Speaker 3: five dollars and Haley Stevens has like seventy million dollars
47:16
Speaker 3: being spent for her and she's gonna probably going to
47:18
Speaker 3: lose the trip.
47:19
Speaker 4: Yeah, Like, yes, Trump ran the table in Arizona last night.
47:24
Speaker 4: He got Ai Biggs his endorsement, also got Karen Taylor Robson,
47:30
Speaker 4: and it's looking like some interesting races for the fall
47:33
Speaker 4: down there. What else happened in Arizona last night? Any
47:36
Speaker 4: interesting DSA stuff populist the stuff.
47:39
Speaker 3: Yes, the first first district what's his name, Amy Shah
47:46
Speaker 3: was had like two or three million dollars spent against
47:51
Speaker 3: him basically by a pack front groups and the D
47:56
Speaker 3: Triple C supported his opponent, and so it's kind of
47:59
Speaker 3: like an a D Triple C alliance and and Shah won,
48:04
Speaker 3: and so he'll go he'll go to the general.
48:07
Speaker 9: Uh.
48:08
Speaker 3: Then you had in the fourth district, Kai k Newkirk,
48:11
Speaker 3: who we had on the program, spent almost no money
48:16
Speaker 3: and ran against Greg Stanton at a top kind of
48:19
Speaker 3: pro business new Democrat and ended up with I think
48:22
Speaker 3: thirty thirty plus thirty five percent or so, but so
48:25
Speaker 3: not not terribly close, but he got a much bigger
48:29
Speaker 3: chunk than an incumbent would like to see from somebody
48:33
Speaker 3: who spent like a honor grand or something.
48:35
Speaker 2: Wow.
48:36
Speaker 3: Yeah, and nobody voted like the the like if you
48:40
Speaker 3: look at the actual turnout, yeah, here, So in the
48:45
Speaker 3: first district you've got Ami Shah won the vote with
48:53
Speaker 3: twenty six thousand votes and beat the D tripleC candidate.
48:56
Speaker 3: So like total of sixty thousand people voting, Arizona doesn't
49:02
Speaker 3: have the most robust kind of democratic primary participation.
49:06
Speaker 4: You could say, yes, all right. And finally, I just
49:10
Speaker 4: wanted to note since we mentioned those gap numbers, record high.
49:13
Speaker 3: Two thousand voted in the fourth district.
49:15
Speaker 4: Jeez, wow, that record high of people identifying as independence.
49:20
Speaker 4: Just an interesting note on that. If you go back
49:22
Speaker 4: and you look at Gallops data that starts to spike
49:24
Speaker 4: at a very particular time, and it's two thousand and eight,
49:28
Speaker 4: so it tells you about the direction of politics have
49:30
Speaker 4: gone since