Speaker 1: And Hello, how are you welcome to the Big Podcast
on this Friday. Today is the seventeenth day of July,
year of our Lord, twenty twenty six. My name is
Tom Sullivan and man alive. But we got a busy Friday,
I mean, from the president's speak last night, to the
latest updates on Iran, to some things about the economy.
We'll get it all in, I know we will. So
let's start with the elections from last night. The election speech.
The speech by the president, I don't know it was.
Somebody must have said, but you have to say something
about the Iran war, and so I think did he
mentioned affordability? I think he did. Anyway, he spent less
than a minute on that. His purpose was he wanted
to talk to the nation about the twenty twenty election.
Which interesting about it was a lot of it to
me was regurgitation of things I've heard in the past.
There wasn't much new. It wasn't a very long speech.
I think it was about twenty five less than thirty minutes,
which is for him, considered to be rather short. But
he never said during the speech that he lost the
twenty twenty election or that he won the twenty twenty election,
he didn't see he talked about the election system in
this I I saw him do this in Georgia and
in Georgia. This is back in twenty twenty, and he
went or was it twenty Yeah, I was twenty twenty
and he went to Georgia. And the way it works
in Georgia is they have the election and then for
the Senate they have a runoff. Wee, there were two
Republican senators in Georgia, and the President went to Georgia
and said, the system is rigged. You can't trust it.
It's basically he talked people. He talked his supporters into
not trusting the election system. And guess who did not
show up? His supporters. So guess what we got out
of that? We got two Instead of the two Republicans
being re elected, we got two ran new Democrat senators
and that flipped the Senate to where they had control.
That's what I'm worried about with this. If you are
a Donald Trump supporter, I'm sure that well, I'm not sure.
There's a lot of Donald Trump supporters believe he won
the election in twenty twenty. Others don't. It's and I'll
get to that whole point in just a minute. But
the fact that he spent almost a half an hour
denigrating the election system that we have in this country.
I would think the Democrats would be jumping for joy
because it was the same message that he gave to
his base in Georgia and they did not show up.
They were discouraged about the voting system, so they said, Okay,
why bother He described the election system that we have
in this country as untrustworthy. That so's doubt for voters.
So why why did he do this? I don't know.
Susie Wiles and others tried to talk him out of it, saying,
don't do it, it will you'll have a backlash on it.
The other part about it, let me get let me
get back to twenty twenty four minute. That was six
years ago. We know that what difference does it make
at this point whether he won or whether he lost.
Let's say they come out and they have the smoking document.
They did not. They had a lot of paperwork, but
there's no smoking smoking gun in there. But let's say
they did and they found out that Yep, he actually
did he won the twenty twenty election. I don't believe
he did, But I know some of you do. Oh,
and I respect your opinion. I don't find it worthy
of fighting with you want it. You have your view,
I have mine. That's okay. But what if he did win?
What are you going to do?
Speaker 2: Now?
Speaker 1: What would you doesn't change anything? He's president until twenty
twenty eight. In many cases, he's kind of laughed about
the fact that the fact that he had the four
years in between the first term and the second term
has actually worked out to his benefit. So I don't
know what difference it would make, because what would you
do if they said, Okay, he won, what do you do?
I'm not quite sure what that election is all, what
that argument is about about anymore. I could see why
the argument was going in the first six months after
the election, but after that it's like, all right, let's
move on the other thing about it was the twenty
twenty election. Who was in charge of the twenty twenty
election while the states were, But as far as the
federal government oversight, it was the Trump administration. He lost,
in my opinion, So now we come to twenty twenty four.
Who was in charge of the federal oversight of the election.
That would be the Biden administration, but Donald Trump won.
And when we come up to the midterms coming up
here in November, who's in the federal government oversight of
the elections? Who's in charge the Trump administration? So I
saw this election official talking about the whole business of
how many election districts there are out there, and the
answer is that we have more than ten thousand independent
election jurisdictions responsible for managing the vote. Counties, cities, townships.
There's a bunch of them that are anyway the discrepancy.
Are you going to have mistakes with ten thousand various
independent election jurisdictions? Yes, do they try hard? I think
they do. Do the Chinese try to interfere, of course,
But can they go into ten thousand the various counties
and then go from the county to various towns that
had their own election districts? In New England, they decentralize
it right down to every tiny town in township and
they run their own elections and they have their own
election clerks. So are the Chinese infiltrating all of those
little towns? And the Russians, well, they try the big picture.
They tried to They placed a lot of ads on
social media to try to talk you in to seeing
things from their point of view. They were being sneaky
about it, and that's always happened. Then the other part
about the fact that prather have talked about how many
election places have been hacked. I don't know what you
do about it. I actually have a little service I
subscribe to that looks for my information that shows up
in the dark web. I gotta tell you, there's a
list pretty long. Every month they send me a list
and say, we're going to clean these up. These are
the places that your name, or your social Security number,
or your address, or your whatever it might be, lots
of information you are hacked. I am hacked. We don't
even know it. Our information is being sold. It's just
part of living in twenty twenty six, is yeah. So
do they hack places. I'm sure they're trying. I'm sure
they're pretty successful at They're pretty good at it. The
thing that's going on today is Mark Wayne Mullen, which
I like him. I know some of you don't, but
I kind of like Mark Wayne Mullen. He's a tough,
ombree but very successful businessman from Oklahoma. He's now the
head of the DHS, and he gave a speech today.
He's taking questions and answers, and he really is doing
what the President wants him to do, and that is
is to get all of the voter information from the
fifty states. I have to tell you, I don't like it.
I like the fact that cities and counties and states
run the elections in this country. I know it can
lead to maybe some mistakes, but again, I really think
they give it the best effort and it seems to
work pretty well. But the idea of the federal government
getting first of all, if China wanted to hack or
Russia wanted to hack our elections, if it was centralized
in Washington, d C. It would be a lot easier
for a hacker to get all that and to manipulate
it and to make changes. But otherwise, I like the
idea that my little tiny district that I live in
doesn't know. They'd have to have one of their agents infiltrate.
I've never shown up in an election and said, somebody's
already voted for you. But they want to get all
this centralized, and I don't like it. There's over thirty
sub states that have said we're not sending you our
voter data. Your voter data, by the way, there's a
lot of it that China and Russia and you and I.
You want to buy the voter voter polls, the voter
registered voter polls. You can buy them from any place
that has some a city, a county, whatever. They're for sale,
and they have a lot of information about you. Your
name for sure, your address for sure, and in many
of them, your Social Security number. That's just what the
hackers love to have, that kind of stuff. So all
that's available out there. But I was looking down the
list of some of this. Wisconsin has over eighteen hundred
municipal election jurisdictions. Michigan you have more than fifteen one
hundred of these sub county systems. That's I mean, you
put all that together, that's why you get to ten
thousand plus election jurisdictions in this country. But here's here's
a little bit about Mark Wayne Bullen is he likes
to talk tough, kind of a tough guy. This is
what he said to a group of reporters today.
Speaker 3: Thank you.
Speaker 4: When we start talking about can we can we ensure
that the midterm elections are going to be secure? Yes,
We absolutely can build confidence in the American people, but
the states have to do the part. I will tell
you if the states that choose not to participate with
the SAVE program, and they choose not to participate in
secure in elections, we will make sure that we make
those states a priority to look at who voted in
their states and hold then the election officials accountable. If
the election officials, once we gave them the information they
need to secure their elections and they chose not to,
then those individuals can also be held accountable by fines,
by penalties, and even depending on how far it goes,
prison time.
Speaker 1: He's threatening election officials with prison if they don't turn
over that data, you better send that stuff to it,
And I'm thinking no, it's the other way around. The
federal government should be offering you need any help from
any of our experts, our cyber crime people, whatever it
might be, but don't demand that they have to send
you that. It should be the cities and counties and
states should be saying to the federal government, you know,
we would like little help with whatever it might be,
but primarily cyber stuff. That's where the hacking stuff comes in.
Ben Ginsburg, Oh my, gosh. Ben's been He's a big
Republican lawyer. He's been around forever. He's represented the Republican Party.
He represented Bush during the Bush Gored two thousand election debate.
He's represented all kinds of Republicans for all kinds of
things regarding their elections. He's an election expert. So here's
Ben Ginsberg reacting to the president's speech last night.
Speaker 3: Well, no, I think, given that the president has had
all the powers of investigation for the last eighteen months,
the FBI, the intelligence community, to not have any specifics
and to have a session where the rhetoric is strong
but the facts are we should give the American public
confidence that our election results are accurate. In terms of vulnerabilities,
we have a system that's very decentralized and with so
many different voting places, it's not consistent. So we have
a system that can be improved, and so to I
don't think it's vulnerable, but it needs improvement. So it
would be good if we want to get rid of
whether he thinks their vulnerabilities or not, to actually do
some studying of what those vulnerabilities are, and most importantly,
to provide funding for the very underfunded elections, infrastructure, and community.
Speaker 1: I'm with it. I like Ben, I think he's absolutely right.
There's always ways to improve, whatever it might be. But
at the same time, all of the federal governments offer
to help cities, counties, and states with their election process
have been cut. The budgets for all of them have
been cut, they've been shrunk down. So you've got to
be consistent, and in this particular area there is no consistency.
But again this also it just smells. I haven't also
that this happens just a few months before the midterm elections. Generally,
the term elections go with the party that is not
the president's. That's been history, very few exceptions to that.
But and the president more than anything else. And this
goes back to when we first really met him as
a presidential candidate. The people that really know him and
knew him well his whole life said that his father
didn't physically beat it into him, but beat it into
him psychologically that if you're not number one, you're a loser.
If you come in number two, I don't care if
it's out of a thousand people, you are a loser
and you should be ashamed of yourself. So Donald Trump
was browbeat, at the very least by his father into
never losing, and that I'm sure is a great part
of why he was a successful businessman. He is hell
bent to always come in number one. So for him
to handle twenty twenty loss psychologically is difficult. And I
think he's afraid that they Republicans will be handed a
loss in the midterms. Who knows. The Democrats look like
fools right now. But and the Republicans if they just
just don't make any big mistakes and let the Democrats
just keep doing this socialist American the thing, Republicans will
do just fine. So that the question is, was that
a mistake last night for him to come out and
try to diminish and so doubt into our election system
to where people that would normally support a Republican will go,
you know, I'm not going to even bother. You can't
trust it anyway, Mildred, that kind of thing. So that's
I don't know, We'll see what happens. States do a
good job, I think in cities and counties. I want
to talk about Iran. Everything's picking up steam. There's more
shooting going on every single day. Let's start with General
Jack Keeam.
Speaker 2: Well, actually we're executing Project Freedom. Remember that was the
plan to open the straits of a moves back on
May to fourth. It was a plan at that time
to be about two weeks in length. It was a
very comprehensive plan, and we're executing it and we're not
naming it, but that's the fact. And that plan is
one to secure the straits, to clear the straits, and
then also to protect shipping. And what you're seeing is
one the focus to take down all the means for
them to interfere with shipping, missiles, drones, fast boats, and
then the things that help and enable it, command and
control sensors, radars, and the logistical infrastructure support for it.
And then we're also hitting their Iran's ability to retaliate
against the Gulf State's US bases or Israel if they
choose to do that as well, and that's ballistic missiles,
launch systems, and also drone inventory and storage sites. Taking
isolating the straits of the Moods was always part of
the plan. So that's why you see bridges being destroyed,
because we don't want them to come in and be
able to reinforce logistically and begin to recover the capabilities
that were taken away from them. So nothing different about this.
We just never saw Project Freedom being execute fully. Remember
it got stopped in the thirty six hour, something outrageous
by Saudi Arabia, if you recall, who would not permit
us to fly out of their airbase and not permit
us to use their airspace and also put pressure on
us to stop the operation. So this is this takes
some time to unfold to truly get it right, and
hopefully this time we'll be able to complete it and
get it right. And then here's what we got to remember.
For the Iran, the straitsmo Moves is a strategic asset.
No matter what happens here, they will continue to want
to take it back from us because it's number one.
They don't have a nuclear power capability, they're not even
close to developing a weapon.
Speaker 3: Now.
Speaker 2: This is their number one strategic asset. It gives them
leverage over the Golf states in a region, and they
truly want to have an element of control here and
they are willing to fight us for it, and we
have got to take it away from them and prevent
them from ever getting it back under their control again.
And let's finish this operation. To get that done.
Speaker 1: Now, they're the real Jack team coming out there. He
was trying to be politically nice about Well, the president
has different ideas when he stopped the military campaign, and
you just heard Jack Keenes say, let's let's complete this
campaign and get it done. Do the finish the job
is what he's preaching. Admiral stravenas the former Supreme NATO commander,
former Navy admiral, he has a very intellectual look at war.
Speaker 5: First, it is going to attempt to cut off, to
kill the assets that could be used to close this
straight and four moves. I've been to bond Robos before
the revolution. Obviously it's a very important naval port for
the Iranians and cutting it off has high military utilities.
So point one, go after the places where the Iranians
have weapons systems that help them close the straight.
Speaker 2: Point two.
Speaker 5: In general, going after infrastructure like bridges, roads puts economic
pressure on Iran. I think that is part of the
administration's strategy here to get Iran back to the table.
In a phrase, what they're doing is escalate in order
to de escalate, meaning go after economic targets, military targets,
put pressure on more attacks with the hope that you
can then de escalate and the Iranians will come back
to the table.
Speaker 1: Well, if you listen to me at all, you know
that I'm not interested in getting back to the table
because the people at the other side of the table
are a bunch of crooks, liars, cheaters. You can't trust them.
You're going to have to replace the regime if you're
ever going to make Iran safe so that we are
safe from their future efforts. Remember Nicki Hayley, I mean,
there was a lot of Republicans that did not like
Nicki Haley. I've always liked her. I don't know why,
but she popped up today and I thought, well, we'll
play what she thinks about the war with Iran.
Speaker 6: Well, I think General Keen is exactly right. We want
to make sure that whatever we do it is more permanent,
that they don't come back and start to do this again.
And I think, look, I mean President Trump realized that
there was no MoU. I would you know, push it
to say they never had any interest in following the MoU.
They always knew they were going to violate it. The
Ayatolas said that he was opposed to it on principle,
so that wasn't going to happen. And you know, unfortunately,
they were able to get a few billion dollars during
those days that the sanctions were weighed to allow oil
to go through. But now I think President Trump is
doing exactly what he should do, is to get that
blockade going. You know, they went to the heart of
the naval base, the Revolutionary Guards naval base, which was important.
They're going after their missile and drone stockpiles. That's going
to be really important. And making sure that we that
they don't have any other ways to get through. The
key is to isolate them and make them the pariah
that they are. We don't do that alone. We do
it with the golf allies. We do it with the Europeans.
We come together and we make sure they don't get
one single dollar because that's how they do all of
their terrorist activity is with funding. If we keep this
blockade on for a few months, they will literally be
at zero. They are already economically strained, they are already
militarily strained. They basically have no government. This is about
finish what you start so that they can never do
this to anyone again.
Speaker 1: So that's why I like Nikki Haley, she likes Jack Keine.
She says, finish what you start. That's my whole point. Again.
I'm not pro war, but if you're going to go
to war, go full board, don't do it halfway. And
I felt like we've been doing it halfway. We need
to go in there and just finish off the regime
and get the people of Iran their country back that
they want. So that's a little bit of a ron
a little bit about the speech and the elections the
folks in ICE. There's the two latest incidents that have
caused all kinds of questions about about ICE. One was
in Maine, one was in Houston. Two individuals shot and
killed while while in their vehicles. I saw a video
of one of them last night. The guy was stopped
by ICE in unmarked cars. They blocked him in, not
that well, they really didn't block him in. They turned
in front of him little bit and stopped their car,
but he just went right around him, and sure enough,
one of the ICE officers got out and started shooting
at the vehicle as it was driving away. You just
don't do that. Any police officer knows. You don't shoot
at the vehicle that just drove away. You get the
information and you can chase them. You can get the
information and go arrest them tomorrow morning. There's all kinds
of things do, but you don't shoot at vehicles as
they're driving away. It shows that they don't have basic
police training. They really don't. And I think part of
it is remember they had a search where they needed
to hire lots of more agents and I think with
that they got people that are rambos or something. I'm
not quite sure what they are. But about the body
Warren cameras that police do use them, yesterday there was
a lot of hubbub about Ice isn't wearing them. Caroline
Levitt had an update for us at the White House
press conference today.
Speaker 7: Over half of all ICE field offices now do have
body cameras, and the remainder of the field offices are
expected within sixty days. It's been a slower rollout than
we would have hoped, but that's because of the Democrat's
decision to shut down DHS for several weeks. So we
expect to fully execute on the promise of body cams
to all field offices across the country.
Speaker 1: Very stands ahh, so that shut down of DHS. There's
one of the reasons they could not go out and
buy the body camera's. Former DHS secretary Chad wolf nodded
on that one.
Speaker 8: Well, it's very dangerous. Obviously, these folks are lunatics, and
that individual probably has not left his mother's basement in
quite some time. He doesn't understand law enforcement, he doesn't
understand the mission, and he doesn't understand the statutory mission
that ICE has been given by the United States Congress.
They have to do that job and remove dangerous folks
from the country. You can disagree on policy, you can
disagree about targets and who they should remove, but what
everyone should agree on is that those that don't have
a legal right to be in the United States should
be removed. Every other country around the world does this right.
You don't have a country without borders and without enforcing
that border security and immigration.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that seems kind of basic to me. But they
need good trained officers so that people will respect ICE
instead of trashing them like they have been lately. As
far as the economy goes looks pretty good. Retail sales
numbers came out yesterday June retail sales were up two
tenths of one percent, and the only reason they were
up was because of gas prices being where they are.
Otherwise you take out automobile sales, which were way up,
and you wind up with minus two tenths of one percent,
So retail sales and kind of flattened out in the
month of June. Natasha Sarah, she is an economist and
a law professor over at Yale.
Speaker 9: She had this observation, I think where we are this
week is we got an inflation read that was lower
than expectations but still pretty high. We're in the mid threes.
We have consumer retail sales holding up pretty well. We
have jobless claims indicating what the job's numbers have been
indicating for the last few months, which is the labor
market is doing pretty well. And so I think where
we're looking at a picture that is starting to form
of an economy where inflation is really a core issue.
And remember, all of these are backward looking indicators except
for what it was saying towards the end on business indicators,
and that means that we're not actually capturing a bunch
of what is happening with respect to the conflict in Iran,
where I suspect upward pressure on oil prices and gas
price is going to continue in the next few weeks.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so that's the war heats up, Watch prices heat up,
inflation will heat up. And she's basically going, yeah, what
we think the FED is going to be raising interest
rates later this year, not towing them. Joe Lovarno is
an economist. I believe he thinks that they're going to
raise rates at the FED as well. Yeh.
Speaker 10: I mean, the economy is booming, but there is certainly
inflation pressure. Today's this week's data was obviously excellent, as
Natasha mentioned. However, given the fact we're going to have
double digit if in the mid to high teens for
CAPEX and GDP, the retail sales are strong, The labor
market shows no signs of weakening now it's actually appears
to be firming. Claims are super low. You've got monetary
policy that's very easy, and inflation will not go back
to target without some help from the Fed. Last year
I got seventy five bases points and easing from the
Fed because there was concern about the labor market. Those
concerns now are misplaced and the inflation outlook is more uncertain.
It's more fraught now than it was six seven months
ago when the FED was easing or contemplating further easing. So, yes,
the economy is good, but it's going to need some
help from the FED to kind of slow things.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So those are two economists that agree with each other.
The economy is doing fine, it's moving along a little
bit faster. It's above the inflation target that the FED
once and so expect them to raise interest rates as
we go through the rest of twenty twenty six. I
think that's just about You can bet the farm on
that one Wall Street today. Let's see what it did.
Should probably set this up with what we got yes
Also yesterday IBM, Big Blue, they came out with terrible,
terrible earnings for the quarter. There's Talck fell twenty five
percent yesterday, twenty five percent, and a lot of people
are looking at Big Blue and going, that's the canary
in the coal mine. What about all the other tech
sectors out there? Well, more selling of chips again today,
Dow Jones industrials went along for the ride, down four
hundred and six. The Dow at fifty two thousand and one,
forty six, the SMP down seventy six, NASDAK down three
hundred and sixty one. The price of gold it went
up twenty three dollars to four thy fourteen. And oh man,
look at oil, it just keeps climbing another three and
a half dollars today West Texas Intermediate now more than
eighty two dollars for one barrel of oil. So that's
it for today. Thank you for coming by. We will
be back on Monday. In the meantime, have a wonderful weekend.
It we'll see on Monday.