Speaker 1: And welcome to the Big Podcast. Happy.
Speaker 2: What is today?
Speaker 1: Today's Wednesday, the eighteenth day of June. Year of our War,
twenty twenty five. My name is Tom Sullivan, So we
have Yes, the war is still or the potential war,
the continuing war, however you want to describe. It is
still the top story today. But it's not so much
about who shot what or what projects were damaged. It's
about who supports the United States getting involved versus those
who do not want us to get involved in any way,
shape or form. And it really comes down to the
I told you the other day about the MEGA I
was the the first one to tell you about it
on Monday, the fact that there's a split in MAGA,
and I'm not even sure if you can call both
sides mega anymore. The MEGA crowd very much is upset
that Donald Trump is even considering any sort of engagement
in this war against Iran, they claim, and I think
they're right. They voted for Donald Trump because he said
I want out of foreign wars, I want out of
endless wars. I don't want anything to do with that.
And there's a number of people within the MAGA side
of the Republican Party that are very much in favor
of isolationism. And listen, if you look at the history
of isolation as countries, it never turns out well. But
it's been tried many, many times. And that is where
the wing of the MAGA they don't want anything to
do with us getting involved in this war against Iran.
Now you've got another and that, by the way, that
is led by Tucker Carlson, and boy Tucker's getting a
lot of grief from Republicans that are opposed to his
views of Ari Fleischer, many of them calling him all
kinds of terrible names. So he's not making any friends
out of this. And he and Steve bannoner kind of
on the same page. On the other side of the
coin is the President, and there's others as well, the
Ari Fleischer's and more of the I don't want to
say traditional Republican crowd, but not isolationists. Let me put
it that way. They're not even hawks, they're.
Speaker 3: Not pro war.
Speaker 1: It's just that they're looking at this and saying this
is an opportunity handed to the world on a silver planter.
Iran has since nineteen seventy nine when they took up
when the Iotola marched in to Tehran and took over
our embassy and the Shaw and his people ran for
their lives. Since then, Iran has done nothing but build
up proxies and they're the number one supporter of terrorism
in the world. So I'm not quite sure why anybody
would be for them, but they don't want us to
get involved with that. It comes down to can Israel
handle this on their own? And we've got some people
that know what they're talking about to chime in on
all of this. Let me start though, with Harry Entton,
the statistician over at CNN, because Harry has a breakdown
exactly how the support for our involvement in this war,
how it stacks up on this Wednesday.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 5: Look, I think it's a complicated picture overall, but on
this Tickler question and overall, I feel like there's more
support for Donald Trump's positions than is comically acknowledged opposer
Ran getting a nuclear weapon. I mean, look at this,
Seventy nine percent of adults agree on that they agree
with Donald Trump and Ron cannot get a nuclear weapon,
eighty three percent of Republicans, seventy nine percent of independence,
seventy nine percent of Democrats. When you get seventy nine
percent of Democrats and eighty three percent of Republicans agreeing
on anything. You know that that position is the very
clear majority in this country. And so the American public
is with Donald Trump. They definitely oppose in Ron getting
nuclear weapons, right, if you buy Donald Trump's theory of
the case. And I think that's important to note, this
is polling far from April for RAN's trying to make
a nuclear weapon.
Speaker 3: Look at this overall, you get.
Speaker 6: The slight plurality, I mean it's within the margin amber,
but the slight plurality of Americans actually favor US air
strikes compared to forty seven percent of posing it. Now
here's the other Nugget'll note right, there's been a lot
of talk online and on social media and in podcasts
of a divide within the Republican ranks. But here on
this question, if for RAN's trying to make a nuclear weapon,
look at that sixty nine percent of rep Republicans, The
clear vast majority of Republicans favor US air strikes on
Iran on their nuclear facilities. But there is this substantial
minority twenty seven percent, who oppose such an idea. So
it's not surprising you're hearing those other voices Besides Donald
Trump out there, there are plenty of them in the
Republican ranks who oppose striking the US striking Iran if
they're trying to make a nuclear weapon. But the clear majority,
the clear majority of Republicans are with Donald Trump if
in fact Iran is trying to make nuclear weapons. They do,
in fact potentially favor US air strikes. So you know
we're talking about you can favor one thing, but you
could also favor another thing. More so, Yes, the US
public plurality and the vast majority of Republicans would favor
US air strikes if i Ran is trying to make
a nuclear weapon. But what do they prefer to limit
the risk of Iran making nuclear weapons? The American public
prefers what they prefer a negotiated agreement. Sixty nine percent,
sixty nine percent of the American public prefer negotiated agreement
as compared to fourteen percent who prefer taking military action.
I will not, Sarah Seiner that this sixty nine percent
includes sixty four percent of Republicans. So even there, even
if Republicans, the clear majority would in fact support airstrikes
on around US airstrikes on a run.
Speaker 3: They prefer a negotiated agreement.
Speaker 1: So those are the numbers, and then the question come
down to who are these people that do not want
to support Donald Trump on participating in this war. One
of them is Congressman Tim Burchett from Tennessee. I mean,
he was asked, does he have any interest in the
United States getting involved with Israel on this war against Iran?
Speaker 2: Very little.
Speaker 7: We give Israel about four million dollars a year and
other military assets.
Speaker 2: I think we should allow them to fight this thing.
I share. Basically that's rage front war.
Speaker 7: You know, we were involved with with Ukraine and then
we pull out from around Taiwan and that exposes them
to China. That's something that China would love to see.
And you know, we don't need another endless war in
the Middle East. I think Israel has the capabilities. They've
shown they have the technology and the intelligence. You know,
taking out three of their top people is a good thing.
And of course those eye tollers are going to say
that they're hiding out in some caves somewhere and they're
going to you know, old people make all men make decisions,
and young men die and that's the history of war.
I would warn folks, though, that we need to vote about,
we need to do about what's right and not what
our stock portfolios say, because a lot of this military
assets is a lot of people vote for these things
because they have jobs in their districts. And that's just
the cold hard facts of warfare.
Speaker 8: So you say you would like to see very little
US involvement. There are Republicans Lindsay Graham and others who
say that around nuclear capabilities are a threat to the
United States, not just Israel, but to the US, and
that the US is the only country with the capability
to take out the nuclear rich facility in Forido. What
do you say to that.
Speaker 7: They can't get past grease with their missiles. I think
if they had, they wouldn't already launched them. That's pretty evident.
And their last missile missile strike, I think they put
two of their major missiles in the air. That tells
me they're just about out. And your previous your previous
expert talked about their apparatus was inoperable. That means that
Israelis blew the hell out of it on the ground. Again,
I think we need to take a deep breath and
slow down this thing and let the Israelis do their thing.
Speaker 2: And that's and ultimately that's what's going to bring them
to the negotiating table. We, like I said, we do
not need another endless war. The white weapons of mass destruction.
I'm pretty confident there.
Speaker 7: Iran has those capabilities of nuclear war, but they can't
get to us. And I think the Israelis are doing
a great job right now of eliminating any threat, and
I think we should allow them to do that well.
On war pimps. You know, Lindsey Graham's a friend of mine.
Ted Creues is a friend of mine. I just look,
I got a daughter just turned eighteen last week, on
the same day as the president did in the United
States Army.
Speaker 2: I don't want to see her go to war.
Speaker 7: My daddy fought in the Second World War. Now, my
mama flew an airplane there in the Second War. She
lost her brother to the day she died. Every time
they unfurled that flag, she would tear up. And that
was for a just cause. I just don't see American
boys and girls going to a far away land that
many of us can't even find on a map. Again,
it's it's Israeli. The Israelis can handle this thing. Let's
let them handle it. We do not need a three
front war in our lifetime right now. I just don't
think that's a that's the route to go. They'll be
room for the day. But I think we ought to
let the president do is negotiating skills. That's what I
elected him to do.
Speaker 1: Yeah, okay, So that was Congressman Tim Burchett from he's
a Republican from Tennessee. On the Democrat side, Tim Kaine
from Virginia, he says, hey, wait a minute, there's a
clause in the Constitution that we have to pay attention to.
Speaker 9: There's no part of the Constitution it's more important than
the Article one provisions making plane that the United States
should not be at war without a vote of Congress.
And yet the news of the day suggests that we
are potentially on the verge of a war with Iran.
Speaker 1: So this debate over should we get involved or not?
It winds up in the Wall Street journalist Rupert Murdoch publication.
They've been day after day pushing hard for the President
to get involved. They are urging President Trump not to
go the Biden route, as they call it pushing to
end the nuclear threat by going all the way and
defending our number one ally in the Middle East. And
the question has been brought up. General Kean brought it
up yesterday. If we don't defend them, what about all
of our other allies around the world. Will they look
at us and say, well, are you going to bail
on supporting us when we need you. Iran is already
hinting by the way that they have a nuke and
they're kind of just leaving that out there for people
to stew on. So the question is is the president negotiating?
He says, nobody knows what he wants to do. He
had kind of a many news conference today out in
the Rose Garden. They're putting up on the White House.
He's installing two flagpoles, one on the north lawn, one
on the south lawn. So he's out there with all
the construction guys putting up the flagpoles, and reporters were
there and asked him questions. I'll play just a little
bit that pertains to the question about what's he going
to do regarding Iran, and then at the end of
this podcast up the whole thing because it's probably twenty
minutes something like that. But here how the President responded
to some of the reporters questions about getting involved in
this war between Israel and Iran.
Speaker 10: You even to answered questions about whether you are moving
closer you believe the US is moving closer to striking
Iranian nuclear facilities?
Speaker 8: Where's your mindset on that?
Speaker 3: You're going to say that? Right?
Speaker 11: You don't seriously think I'm going to answer that question?
Will you strike the Iranian nuclear component? And what time exactly?
Speaker 3: Sir sir?
Speaker 11: Would you strike it? Would you please inform us so
we can be there or watch. I mean, you don't
know that I'm going.
Speaker 3: To even do it. You don't know.
Speaker 11: I may do it, I may not do it. I mean,
nobody knows what I'm going to do. I can tell
you this that Iran's got a lot of trouble and
they want to negotiate. And I said, why didn't you
negotiate with me before all this death and destruction?
Speaker 3: Why didn't you nego?
Speaker 11: I said to the people, why didn't you negotiate with
me two weeks ago?
Speaker 3: You could have done fine. He would have had a contry.
Speaker 11: It's very sad to watch this I mean, I've never
I've never seen anything like it.
Speaker 3: So you everyone thought it was going to be the reverse.
I didn't. I didn't think so.
Speaker 1: So that was just the first part of his answering
the questions out there again. I'll play the whole unedited
back and forth with the White House Press Corps at
the end of the podcast today. So he's got to
make a decision. He's not going to say. He's saying
I may do it, I may not do it. There's
a lot of advisors that are giving him opinions on
both sides of the Isle's start with a general that
General Wesley Clark, who is very much hangs out on
the left side of the political isle, and this is
his advice to the president. He was the former NATO
commander in Europe, so four star general retired but a
big lefty. Here's what his advice would be.
Speaker 4: Well, I think it's not so much a matter of
reading the songs. It's a matter of trying to think
through the right way to do this. As your previous
panel pointed out, we had numerous failures in this before,
so I think you can't get mesmerized by looking at
aircraft and sorties and what happens if a pilot gets
shot down. On all the military details, I know they're
fascinating to the public. The issue is what's the end
state and how do you get there. So it seems
to me we're approaching a period of maximum diplomatic leverage.
Hopefully that behind the scenes someone is applying that leverage
against the Iranians in direct conversations that are not public.
We did this in Kosova. We bombed for about three weeks,
we then started the negotiations. It took another four weeks.
Israel's got the momentum. Israel's going to be able to
use hard bombs and not missiles, So they've got plenty
of ordinance on it, and you've got to keep the
option of the US strike alive. To do that, Israel
has to shift from the nuclear to working against the
Iranian deterrent forces that would strike the United States or
block the strait of our moves. So it's time to
go after the short range missiles, those boats that the
Iranian navy uses, where the mines are stored before they're released.
Take all that out. We know where it is. Maybe
the Israelis do too. We can certainly share that intelligence,
and as we ramp up that pressure, we have behind
the scenes dialogue and it's like a live and let live.
You open up, you say, the Iranians, you up and
up all your nuclear facilities. You're going to lose them all.
You're going to take them all out. We won't change
a regime. That's up to you. If you need energy,
we'll be happy to supply you our nuclear reactors. You
pay for them with your gas and oil, and you
work with us. It would be a feasible way to
go in, and I would strongly encourage the administration not
to simply go in and use a couple of B
two's and try to bomb that big plant that's deep underground.
That's not gonna get us where we want to be.
I've got to think about this thing from working backwards planning.
What's the desired in state. If you've got an alternative
government and you can really get regime change, and you're
pretty sure that government is going to give up all
the nuclear secrets and work with the West and its neighbors, great,
I don't think there's that plan in place. I don't
think those people are in place. We do have a
pro Western population in much of Iran. That's a good
asset for us. The regime is weak, but I would
certainly be working two paths parallel, the military path to
take out their ability to dalliate if and when we
do intervene, and that's the targets along the golf and
second the diplomatic path to try to work some kind
of a live and live in which they renounce their
hatred of Israel in the United States and in return
we say Peter's Supreme Leader.
Speaker 1: So that was Wesley Clark, again hangs out on the
left side of the political isle, but was a varstar
general who ran NATO in Europe. On the other side
of the aisle hr McMaster, who was the National security advisor.
He was a lieutenant general. He advised Donald Trump and
Trump one point zero as his national security advisor. Here's
what hr McMaster that he would advise the president to do.
Speaker 12: Really, we know the president had gone to Camp David
about a week ago and then he spent about eighty
minutes in the situation room with his advisors, and I'm
sure what they did is framed the discussion around first
of all, what does the president want to achieve?
Speaker 3: What we want to achieve if the US does.
Speaker 12: Become more directly involved here, is it is it regime change,
you know, or is it just a complete dismantlement of
the of the of the nuclear program, both or which
of which are ambitious objectives. But of course what they
would have covered as well is the situation in which
Iran finds itself here in a really devastating, a devastatingly
weak position. What Israel has done is really astounding in
terms of going after the entire nuclear supply chain, including
you know, fourteen or so scientists, the missile capability and
the missile supply chain, the military leadership. You know, three
days ago they killed the commander of the Islamic Revolutionary
Guard's Corps and the army, and then somebody assumed command
and then he was killed yesterday. So the military and
leadership is really decapitated. They've also going after the arms
of repression, you know, like the besiege, kind of like
the brown Shirts, you know, who repressed the Iranian people,
energy targets. A massive cyber attack on the Islamic Revolutionary
Guards core Bank has just occurred. And so the question
is now do they go after civilian leadership and is
there really a you know, a decapitation sort of strategy
that'll pursue. I really don't think he's going to do that.
The President would join it into that. I think the
president the decision before him is whether or not to
strike these deeply buried facilities to set back the Iranian
nuclear program even further. Well, I think what they would
be a strike initially, you know, like against against Bordeau,
and there's one other deep buried site as well. Israel
I shouldn't know is having an effect on those sites already,
but this would be a more devastating effect. Iran has
already said that the way they will respond is activate
the proxies that it has left in the region, and
the Hastashabi, the various range of militias that are in
Iraq have already pledged that they would attack US interests
and US personnel in the region, and so have the
Houthis for examp. You could see Iran maybe activate its
worldwide terrorist network, remember what like what it did in
the nineteen nineties, nineteen ninety two and nineteen ninety four
in Argentina, for example, when it attacks the Israeli embassy
and a Jewish community center. You're killing over one hundred people,
you know, So you could see attacks like that around
the world and maybe against US interests, potentially even in
the United States. Remember they already have you put a
hit out on the President of the United States and
the Secretary of State and two national security advisors, and
so you know, we're dealing with a regime that really
is hostile to the United States, that has been fighting
a four decade plus long proxy war against Israel, you know,
the Great Satan, you know. And I would say they're
Arab neighbors as well. So you know, the President was right,
I think today to not say what he is going
to do, keep the pressure on the audience. The more
bellicos the iridience get, I think, the higher the chances
are that the United States will join with Israel.
Speaker 1: These strikes on.
Speaker 3: These deeply buried nuclear facilities.
Speaker 12: Well, what I would do, you know, is layout really
you know what the objective is, to get the Presiden's
concurrence on what is the objective and then come up
with courses of action that integrate all elements of national
power as well as efforts of like minded partners. And
when I say elements of national power, of course I
need the military strike, but then there are all sorts
of intelligence capabilities that you have, financial capabilities, cyber capabilities,
and partners in the region and beyond. They also can
bring capabilities to bear depending on what the objective is
and so what you want to integrated options to present
to the president and then to explore obviously what are
the second and third order effects. Right, It's never just
like a strike and you're done, unless it's a very
limited rate. For example, President Reagan's raid against against Libya
after Elderoro Canyon, after the Lockerbie aircraft shoot down, So
there's going to be a second order effect. Iran still
has some capabilities. But you know, I'll tell you I
told Ahmede he's in a bunker. I mean he turned over. Uh,
you know, whatever they're trying to do to to hobble
together a response to the to the Guardian Council. And
and I think it is it is really important to
recognize the profound state of weakness that Iran has. And
by the way, they've always been weak, but they've gotten
a free ride, you know, because we would never really
very rarely do we act like we knew what the
return address was when they were using their proxy forces
against us.
Speaker 3: And I told it, Hamedy he blew it.
Speaker 12: He blew it when he conducted two direct attacks against
Israel in April and October of last year. And then
and then of course, you know, now he's reaping the
whirlwind from that. You know, as we would think logically, right,
and President Trump would think maybe is from his real
estate background, Yeah, it makes sense for them to cut
a deal. But I think we we oftentimes undervalue the
ideological drivers of the Iranian leadership. Hey, these are true believers.
These are the revel lutionaries, right, who believe in exporting
the revolution. Their their strategy of forward defense was always
a strategy of forward offense with this strange blend of
you know, a a religious, uh sort of ideology, with
this ravonirous agenda to kind of re establish the grandeur
of the of the Persian Empire. So these true believers
are the ones who are in charge in Iran. For
many years, we tried to maybe conform our policies to
strengthening what we would regard as the republicans or the reformers. Hey,
but you know they lost, and and of course you
know what this regime has done. Is it has not
only put itself in this situation, but it is has
for decades, really made the Iranian people destitute. You know,
a society that that has tremendous cultural strength, that has
tremendous you know, human capital and talent, and they've kept
them down for four plus decades. So I really liked
the message the President Trump had for the Iranian people
and what promised to Yahoo after the Riding View. And
I think that we should continue to emphasize that these
actions are against this regime that has caused so much
human suffering, including in Iran, and not against not against
the Iranian people.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so that was h R. McMaster Liet Farmer, retired
lieutenant general, but he and also national security advisor to
President Trump and Trump one point zero. But he brought up, yeah,
there's a hit out from the Ayatola on President Trump
and also on Mike Pompeo and on John Bolton. So
these are bad people and they do want to kill
our leaders. They really mean death to America, death to Israel.
So the President today, the question we talked about so
far is do they go in and hit the with
the bunker buckster bombs and take out the nuclear facilities
in Iran? Or are we talking about going all the
way and taking and dec capitating. We've decapitated their military leadership,
Israel did, and Israel did the same thing in Hezballah
and in Hamas, and so they take out the top people.
Now they the question they have is are they going
to take out the Ayatola? President Trump sent out a
true social post saying, we know exactly where the so
called Supreme Supreme Leader is hiding. He's an easy target,
but is safe there. We are not going to take
him out kill at least for now, but we don't
want missile shot at civilians or American soldiers. Our patients
is wearing thin. So he says he's not going to
kill him for now. And that's the second question is
do you want us to be involved to take out
the nukes in Iran? And if so, do you want
us to take out the leader? And I have to
ask you, if you go back to World War Two,
could you imagine that this Ushan where we said, no,
we're going to leave Hitler in charge of Germany and
we'll just take out some of his army, but we'll
leave Hitler in charge.
Speaker 3: No, no.
Speaker 12: I mean the.
Speaker 1: Nuremberg trials, they put to death many of the top
German soldiers.
Speaker 3: So I.
Speaker 1: Believe this is going to end with the Ayatolo's death
and the nukes being taken out. Danzignor was a top
national security executive in the George W. Administration. This is
what he has to say about the events going on
in the Middle East.
Speaker 8: Israel can manage the defense of Israel alone.
Speaker 13: Israel can continue to do serious damage to Iran's military assets,
its military leadership, and its nuclear program, with the exception
of four doh.
Speaker 8: That is the big question mark four dau. As you know,
is this enrichment.
Speaker 13: Capability or asset that's deep punkered down in to bunkers,
basically very hard to access. And it's I mean, the
Israelis say they have some capabilities that could tackle four dough.
They've done n tons. The question is can they do
four dough. They say they have capabilities to do four dough.
The Americans, the US definitely has the capacity to do
four dough. I think Israel's capabilities are probably there, but
they will be messy and they will take longer. And
I think the US, if the US participate in some
way would be a much cleaner shot. Well, they've already
gotten warmed to the possibility of war because there is
a war going on that the US supports. The only
question is is one US Republican US senator put it
to me the other day who has been talking to
President Trump? He said, to finish this off. Israel has
done all the difficult dirty work. It has cleared the
path now for the US to come in the end
and finish it off. Israel could probably finish it off,
as I said earlier, which is again four dough, but
he said Israel's chance of success doing it on its
own is much lower. I think the big question for
the president is if this doesn't wrap up cleanly and soon,
you will have this war dragging on. Right, Israel is
not going to pull back, and presumably Iran is not
going to pull back. What does that look like? What
does that look like to Israel? What does it look
like to Iran? And what does it look like to
the region.
Speaker 3: A B.
Speaker 13: Never forget that Iran has been a threat to the
United States in the West for decades. I mean we
can I mean literally after al KaiA, you can't think
of a bigger source of terrorism. You can't think of
an entity or a country that has more American blood
on its hands than Iran American military. I saw it
firsthand in Iraq where they were killed by terror supported
by Iran, directly by the Iranian military. They run rabid
all over the world, threatening American interests. So this is
the best shot President Trump hass since the revolution in
nineteen seventy nine to put the Irani in a threat away.
He would be the president that makes this thing go away.
If he did, the man would deserve the nobel peace price.
I I don't think he has many On my podcast
this morning, I interviewed an expert who's lived in Iran,
who's Kareem Sajopur, who's an expert on Iran. He says
he can't think of many cards, any cards Iran has
right now. And the problem is with the Supreme Leader
is he's old, he's dug in, he's deeply ideological, and
he's really uncompromising. The Iran deal he did in twenty
fifteen with Obama, which was an enormously generous deal to Iran,
was considered by him a massive capitulation. This is not
a man who wants to make real concessions. So unfortunately,
Iran does not have many cards right now. And for
the running people, what's tragic is they have a leader
who's in his eighties and does not seem to be
prepared to change his ways.
Speaker 1: No, the Iotota is dug into his ideology and the
question now, in fact, we're getting news this afternoon, the
president says that he has a plan if there is
regime change.
Speaker 3: So that's.
Speaker 1: I read that is that's their plan is to have
regime change. But that's the question. If you're going to
go into a war, if you're going to strike along
with Israel, what happens after that? So you drop the
bomb or bombs and then what because it's not going
to end right there. And the question is who if
you do regime change, who is going to take over?
Because there's going to be a lot of bad actors
that want to take over as well. So it sounds
like they have a plan, and so they have set
up their idea of a regime change before there's a
regime change, which is the way you probably should do this.
So we have much more besides Israel and Iran. The
FED meeting was today and to nobody's surprise. The FED
came out and said, we're leaving interest rates unchanged. They're
not dropping them or not raising them. They're going to
leave them unchanged. The President called J. Powell, Oh, is
it stupid? I think today then he's probably not going
to drop the right he did not. The Fed left
the interest rates where they are literally no surprise to
anybody on Wall Street. We have TikTok. The President signed
another executive order extending for another ninety days. The fact
that TikTok is supposed to be shut down and they're not,
and the President doesn't want to do that now he
did before, So TikTok lives for at least another ninety days.
The Supreme Court out today with a decision that had
to do with the case out of Tennessee, but it
also will impact twenty six other states, and the Supreme
Court basically, well, they agreed with Tennessee on banning gender
affirming care for transgender youth. They do not believe, and
I don't believe that people under eighteen years. It used
to be where you couldn't give a school nurse, could
not give an aspirin without getting permission from the parents,
And it's just you're not ready to make a decision
about your sex life for the rest of your life
when you're a teenager or younger. So Tennessee and twenty
six other states have a ban on gender affirming care
justice sort of. I or wrote a dissent about the
fact that this was unfair and left transgender kids in
a lurch, something to that effect, and it was I'm thinking, no,
it's protecting these kids until they can get old enough
to make that decision on their own. And if they
want to try and change their sex and go through
all the medical process to do that, I don't care.
That's their life. It doesn't affect me. But children don't
have that ability to make that decision. That's why we
have so many laws that prohibit people from smoking, from drinking,
from joining the military until they're at least eighteen years
of age. Jonathan Skametti, he's the attorney general for the
state of Tennessee. This was his reaction, right.
Speaker 14: I mean, the takeaway is the Constitution leaves room for
the states, through their elected representatives, to make these big
decisions about open questions in science and medical care. Yeah,
I mean kids who are dealing with gender dysphoria carry
a heavy burden, and we should take that seriously and
we should have empathy for them. If you look at
the evidence, though, most kids who experience gender confusion in
their use grow out of it unless you medicate them.
And if you look at these countries in Western Europe,
I mean the United Kingdom, Norway, Sweden, all these countries
that were formerly very keen on this kind of treatment
have started rolling it way back and restricting and prohibiting
it because the evidence keeps showing that there are huge
risks to kids and very little, if any benefit to them. Yeah,
I think the plaintiffs that were challenging the law knew
that that was a pretty heavy lift, and they didn't
have anybody who had had surgery. If they had people
who were taking the different drug regimes, so they only
challenged to the extent that they had plaintiffs who were
actually up against the law. But the ruling here covers everything.
I mean, according to the court, it is entirely constitutional
for Tennessee to have passed this law, and every state
has the opportunity to make its own decision about what
their law should be.
Speaker 1: So the Supreme Court certainly isn't done. They're just getting
started back. We were expecting not just a decision about
the Tennessee law on transgenders, but we were expecting more,
at least some of those that are still outstanding of
the birthright citizenship case limiting judicial power. Can these federal
judges do nationwide injunctions. Can parents opt out of their
kids opt out of school classes with LGBTQ books. And
there's a Texas age verification law for young people in
Texas to access porn and that is being challenged before
the Supreme Court as well. So there's much more. I mean,
here we are in June. They're going to be wrapping
up with a lot of Supreme Court decisions over the
next couple of weeks. In the economy, we had today
housing starts came out and housing starts big drop down
nine point eight percent. Permits to build homes were also
on the light side. The single family home numbers were
kind of flat, but it's the multifamily. It's the apartments.
They were down over thirty percent, and permits however for
building apartments was up thirteen percent. So the housing market,
big surprise. House he starts down nine point eight percent.
These are the builders out there that are cautious about
committing to a big investment to build a new home
for somebody before they can sell the house to somebody.
With all the questions about the economy, first time jobs
claims two hundred forty five thousand. That was exactly what
was expected. However, that number has been building slowly but
going up surely over the last For the last three
weeks in a row, it's been going up continuing claims
a million, nine hundred forty five thousand. As far as
the economy in general, Roger Altman, who started Evercorp, one
of the big Wall Street firm, was asked about just
what he sees going on in the economy from where
he sits.
Speaker 15: Well, it's a double edged sword, though, so right now
we're seeing a surprising and that's the word. I think
it's important amount of resilience in both the economy and markets,
and it's confounding a lot of experts. I spoke to
two or three the economists I really respect yesterday in
anticipation of coming on here today, and they really couldn't
explain it because of the following And I'm going to
tell a little story here. If the three of us
four years ago today, I've been having a cup of
coffee and into the room walked a profit or an
authentic prophet, who said, let me tell you what's going
to be happening. Four years from today. There are going
to be wars raging between Israel and Iran and between
Russia and Ukraine. A powerful new regime of tariffs on
imports will have been installed by the Night States. There'll
be mass deportations occurring in large public protests over that.
What do you think the impact of those will be
on the then economy, on the then markets. I think
most of us would have said, well, not very good.
And so at the moment, that not very good impact
has not materialized. But I think there's this pretty serious
chance it's the calm before the storm, and that the
resilience will not last.
Speaker 2: And here's why.
Speaker 8: First of all, we're starting to see beginning signs of weakness.
Speaker 15: You see that in retail sales, industrial production, continuing claims,
home builder sentiment, and actual new home starts.
Speaker 8: And by the way, that's why yields in my viewer down.
Speaker 15: And I think there was a lot of anticipatory behavior
by consumers and businesses around the tariffs inventory, stockpiling, advanced
purchasing by consumers and so forth, which meant that the
impacts of the tariffs were delayed and so and then
you see just US GDP forecasts at the beginning of
the year January one, all in the twos now right
around one percent, whatever forecast you want, Golden Sachs, World Bank,
and so forth. And so I think, yes, we have
seen a stunning level of resilience, but I think the
prospects that it lasts are low. But I think the
tariffs are just one level of this picture. But I mean,
just ask ask yourself. If any of the three of
us are average consumers and we're seeing all this news,
it's going to cause us to be hesitant and and
and the same with businesses on capital spending and other
expansion plans, and the same with hiring. And I think
that's about to begin to show up. Yes, but it's
a it's a cumulate, it's a it's an overall impact. Now,
you know, I'd like to be wrong. And the market,
you know, as we all know, is a run around
in all time high, although if you strip out the
magnificent seven is lower and obviously a big thesis there
is the we're in the earliest stages of a revolution
in terms of ai that will arrival of the industrial.
Speaker 2: Revolution and so forth.
Speaker 15: I have no reason to question that, but I think
the resilience we've seen so far is unlikely to maintain itself,
as surprising as it has been.
Speaker 1: So speaking of the markets, kind of a boring day
today when all was said and done, despite the fact
there's all this derm oil around the world. The Dow
was down forty four to forty two thousand and one
seventy one, the SMP down just one point, NASDAK went
up twenty five points, so very little movement. The price
of gold fell again, down twenty five dollars down to
thirty three eighty one, in oil up about twenty five
cents over seventy five for one barrel of oil. So
before we leave you today, I trapped the entire commentary
by the President as he was interacting with White House
Press corps out on the lawn. They're putting up flagpoles
on the north lawn and the south lawn, and he
was out there with the construction cruise, and the reporters
were there, and they asked him a bunch of questions
I played for you earlier his comments about what he
was going to do regarding he may or may not
get involved in the war in Iran and Israel. But
there was a lot more to it. So I promised
you I would give you the whole thing unedited, and
that is what we're going to play right here. So
thank you for coming by today. We'll be back again tomorrow.
And here is the President's full commentary today on the
White House lawn, and you.
Speaker 10: Even's answered questions about whether you are moving closer you
believe the US is moving closer to striking Irani and
nuclear facilities.
Speaker 8: Where's your mindset on that?
Speaker 3: You're going to say that? Right?
Speaker 11: You don't seriously think I'm going to answer that question?
Will you strike the Iranian nuclear component? And what time exactly,
sir sir? Would you strike it? Would you please inform
us so we can be there and watch. I mean,
you don't know that I'm going to even do it.
Speaker 3: You don't know. I may do it, I may not
do it. I mean, nobody knows what I'm going to do.
I can tell you this that.
Speaker 11: Iran's got a lot of trouble and they want to
negotiate and I said, why didn't you negotiate with me
before all this death and destruction?
Speaker 3: Why didn't you?
Speaker 11: Nego, I said to the people, why didn't you negotiate
with me two weeks ago? You could have done fine.
You would have had a country. It's very sad to
watch this. I mean, I've never seen anything like it,
so you neveryone thought it was going to be the reverse.
Speaker 3: I didn't. I didn't think so.
Speaker 11: And they're telling him you got to you got to
do something, you got to negotiate. And at the end,
last minute, they said, no, we're not going to do that,
and they got hit. Remember sixty days, And then came
the sixty sixty one is going to become a very
famous number. That was one hell of a hit, that
first hit. That was one hell of a hit. Not sustainable,
to be honest. That's where it ended. It ended on
the first night.
Speaker 10: Yes, too late, though, do you think it's too late
to now?
Speaker 3: Really, nothing's too late. The only thing too late is Powell.
Powel's too late. Too late, Powell.
Speaker 8: For president?
Speaker 3: What have you? Ryan's reached out to you. Yes, and
what I said, it's very late, you know, I said,
it's very late.
Speaker 11: To be talking we may meet. It's it's uh, I
don't know. There's a big difference between now and a
week ago, right.
Speaker 3: I think he said there's someone that we may meet.
This is about Van's.
Speaker 11: Possibly about anybody. They even suggested they come to the
White House. It's a big difference. But they've suggested that
they come to the White House. That's you know, courageous,
but you know it's like not easy for them to do,
but they suggest. Because I can't go now because of
what's going on. I had to come back early from
the G seven, which was terrific by the way, in Canada,
really terrific.
Speaker 3: Good people. Is there a possibility of next week or
sooner that you're.
Speaker 11: Well, I don't know how much longer it's going to
go home. They're totally defenseless, they have no air defense whatsoever.
They're totally captured. You know, we've totally captured the air Brian, Yeah,
it's the president.
Speaker 16: You've been fairly compassionate towards the Iranian people's suggestions.
Speaker 11: I know a lot of people from around from New York,
from Washington, mostly from New York.
Speaker 3: They're are incredible people.
Speaker 11: They're smart, they're energetic, they can't be difficult, but so
can you.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 11: No, they're great people, and they're smart people, and those
people are getting healthy out of them now. And it's
really a shame. So stupid, it's so stupid. This is
another one, you know, Russia, Ukraine is so stupid. What
have never happened If I was president, you guys agree
with that would have never happened. If I was president,
Putin would have never done it. And I spoke to
him yesterday and I said, you know, he actually offered
to help mediate. I said, do me a favor, mediate
your own. Let's mediate Russia first. Okay, I said, Vladimir,
let's mediate Russia first. You can worry about this later.
But uh, I think that's going to work out too.
But it's so many people have been killed. The big
thing with that one is far more people are dead
than have been reported in the Ukraine, Russia, many many
more people.
Speaker 3: A building falls down, they say nobody was hurt, you know,
so ridiculous.
Speaker 11: Unconditional, very simple words, have very simple unconditional surrender that
means I've had it. Okay, I've had it, I give
up no more. Then we go blow up all the
you know, all the nuclear stuff that's all over the
place there. Now they had bad intentions, you know, the
for forty years they've been saying death to America, death
to Israel, death to anybody else that they didn't like.
They were bullies, they were schoolyard bullies. And now they're
not bullies anymore. But we'll see what happens. Look, nothing's
finished until it's finished.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 11: War is very complex. A lot of bad things can happen,
a lot of turns are made, So I don't know.
I wouldn't say that we want anything yet. I would
say that we sure as all made a lot of
progress and we'll see. The next week is going to
be very big. Maybe less than a week, maybe less.
But is there anybody here that said it would be
okay to have to have a hostile very you know,
zealous really, but to have a hostile country have a
nuclear weapon that could destroy twenty five miles, but much
more than that could destroy other nations just by the
breeze blowing the dust. You know that dust blows to
other nations and they get estimated. This is just not
a threat you can have. And we've been threatened by
Iran for many years. If you go back and look
at my history, if you go back fifteen years, I
was saying we cannot let Iran get a nuclear up.
But I've been saying it for a long time, and
I mean it more now than I ever meant it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, rush on deportations, mister Price.
Speaker 17: And you've said last meeting changes would becoming her farmers
who have seen a lot of the workers they rely
on taken away. But then DHS said this week that
work site enforcement would remain in place, that it's a mornerstone.
So what's your message to farmers.
Speaker 11: We got to get the bad people out of here first,
So we're doing that. We're taking them out by the thousands. Murderers,
drug dealers, people that are mentally insane, from insane as islands.
What they gave to us fallows, they gave for Do
we have anybody and Anderson number?
Speaker 3: And I don't think so. You've known all these people
for a long time. Any illettle emmivent.
Speaker 11: Said no, If they they'll find out, they'll be checking you.
You won't believe your whole life will be destroyed because
of this press conference. So I'll just destroy these people.
I didn't want to tell them that you for this said,
they'll end up being he's a so and so. This
one is from you, no where.
Speaker 3: Don't worry.
Speaker 11: I think I think you're going to be okay, sir,
I'll be right behind you, far behind you. I'll be
right behind you. Now, look, we have to take care
of our farmers. We have to take care of people
that run leisure hotels. I mean, we got to take
care of them. Most importantly, we have to get the
criminals out of our country. And Biden led in thousands
and eleven thousand and eight eighty eight murderers.
Speaker 3: Many of them murdered more than one person. Can you
believe it? Many?
Speaker 11: Almost fifty percent of them murdered more than one per
You let them into our country. They emptied out the
jails of countries from all over the world, from the Congo,
from Venezuela, from all over the place.
Speaker 3: They emptied out. There's just many of them.
Speaker 11: I would if I were running one of the countries,
I would have emptied out my prison population into the US.
And many countries did. And we're getting them out. Okay,
we're getting them out, thank you very much.
Speaker 3: Listen, let's just watch this, Brian.
Speaker 16: Go ahead, you can't get to follow up on the
immigration real quickly. Can you comment on the impact of
a Trump card? How much of Yeah, we have a
thing called the Trump card. This has not been done before,
a thought out and for five million dollars.
Speaker 11: This is usually people that would either be working for
companies like Apple, I think is going to buy a
lot of them because they can't get people into the country.
You know, if you come in through the Southern Board,
you have no problem. You can be a criminal, you
can be a drug dealer, and you have no problem.
But if you if you go and graduate number one
in your class from a great school, you can't get
a job because there's no access to getting it. You
can't get a green card. So we're going to sell
that to people, in some cases wealthy, in some cases
not wealthy. They'll be paid for by universities. Look at Harvard,
they've got fifty three billion dollars. That whole thing is
coming to an end. It's it's amazing what we what
we found out, what is discrace fifty three billion dollars.
We gave them five six and some people say it's
as much as nine billion dollars over a short period
of time.
Speaker 3: So that's very much coming to you.
Speaker 11: They want to make a deal more than I would
say Harvard wants to make a deal, more than Iran
wants to make a deal.
Speaker 3: And Iran wants to make a deal. But I mean
a lot of things.
Speaker 11: Look, a lot of things are happening on a lot
of front's print, a lot of good things are happening.
And frankly, you know, it's a little bit of a
as we used to say liberal, Now they say progressive.
I used to word liberal, progressive. To Night said word
because they're destroying the country. They're really destroying these these
liberal politicians are destroying our country. Look what they've done
during Biden's four years. I mean, we're working on I mean,
so much of our effort goes to getting people out
of the country that should have never been here in
the first place. What he's done to this country is
not him. He had no idea what was going on.
Everybody knows that it's other people. It's Lisa and this
one and that, all these people, all this scum that
was around the Oval, you know, the Oval office, or
around the beautiful resolute desk telling this guy here do
this or that, and not even telling they just go
over to the auto pen and sign whatever the hell
they wanted to sign to say, what do you want
about God? He wasn't for open borders, he wasn't for
transgender for everybody.
Speaker 3: He wasn't for men playing in women's sports. But he
has no idea. What the hell?
Speaker 11: He has no idea? And they were very upset. They
wanted Bernie Sanders. And after about a week of this guy,
they said, wait a minute. We just said, we just
said gold. This guy has no clue. He'll do anything
we tell them. And then they realized they don't even
have to get permission. They just go up to the autopen.
That's a subversion. That's the takeover of our government, and
you people are to start looking at it.
Speaker 3: That's a takeover.
Speaker 11: Not only did they sheet I guess you saw yesterday,
came out with China and the license plates, tens of
thousands of cards to use those cards to vote on
the second election, my second twenty because as everybody here knows,
I won that election by a lot. But the only
good thing I can say is this is a much
much more historic term than I think I could have
had as a second term. This is a much more
historic election. And now we're going to put up a
beautiful flag pole. And we're going to put up a
flag and I hope you enjoy it. And let's see
how real people work. These are real people. You're not
real people because you have it is soo easy. Okay,
thank you very much. Close to one hundred feet. You
have a meeting today with the with the with the
Pekistani Army chief of staff. What are you looking what
are you looking forward to achieving?
Speaker 3: Diplomatic for you?
Speaker 11: Well, I stopped the war between Pakistan. I love Pakistan.
I think Modi is a fantastic man. I spoke to
him last night. We're going to make a trade deal
with with Modi of India. But I stopped the war
between packed.
Speaker 3: Sand and India.
Speaker 11: This man was extremely influential in stopping it from the
pakistansa Moti from the India side and others, and they
were going at it and they're both nuclear countries.
Speaker 3: I got to stop. I don't think I had one search.
Speaker 11: Did I have one story written about I stopped the
war between two major nations, major nuclear nations. I don't
think I had a story written about it. You know
why the people know the people know, did anybody write
that story about the war? Did you rune it? Did
you run it yours?
Speaker 3: Just you run it. Investments that need to be made
from Leene Wind departed here and.
Speaker 2: No, no.
Speaker 3: We put it so that Marine one is very far away.
Speaker 11: We did it in conjunction with the Air Force with everybody,
and everybody signed off on it.
Speaker 3: We uh know, we have to have it far away.
Speaker 11: It's very far from Marine one's up there south in
the field, so you have to have a certain distance.
We're about three times at distance. Okay, thank you very much, everybody.
Speaker 3: Are you sure? Prime Minister net and Yah