Speaker 1: Well, look who's here. Yes, I made it to the
podcast today. Welcome to the Big Podcast on this Wednesday.
Today is the fourth day of March, Year of Our Lord,
two thousand and twenty six. My name is Tom Sullivan.
I start with apologies yesterday, and you may hear a
little nasally in my voice today, because man, I got
walloped on Monday. I wasn't feeling good. I was feeling terrible,
and I went downhill fast. I was I don't know,
I'd got some bug of some kind. But I'm seventy
five percent of the way back. But my voice may
sound a little nasily. But I realized yesterday that I
don't get sick very often. I'm pretty healthy guy. But
I realized for the first time since I started this
podcast back in June, that I didn't have anybody to
call into to say, hey, I'm sick. I mean, my
whole working career has always been somebody to call at
the office and say, I'm not coming in today. But no,
I mean it's me and a whole series of computers
and a podcast platform, which again is no. I didn't
have anybody to call, So I apologize. I have to
figure out a way where if I'm sick in the future,
there's some way to notify you. They don't waste your
time trying to dial in. In any case, Well, anything
happened lately, Yeah, I mean, it's pretty interesting to watch
what's going on with As you would expect in this country,
you're going to have people that are raw raw, let's
go get them, and others that are going on. I
don't know about this. I'm a little bit worried, and
I've told you before, I'm it depends on what President
Trump does. Sometimes I agree with him, sometimes I don't.
On this, I couldn't agree more with his taking military
action against Iran in in kotes with Israel. The reason
I say this is for the longest time, I don't
remember when I first heard. It must have been right
after the Shah was overthrown and the Ayatola Komani came
into power back in nineteen seventy nine. And ever since then,
Iran and the Ayatola and the regime there has been
death to America. And we make, i mean, comedians make
little jokes about it, but they have been death to America.
And of course they want to wipe out Israel. And
they said boyle, boy a boy when we we're going
to figure out how to make an atomic bomb a
nuke bomb, and what we're going to do is we're
going to completely annihilate Israel, wipe out everybody there and oh,
by the way, death to America. You're next. And so
this has been going on for forty some years, almost
fifty years, and so along the way, Democrats and Republicans
have been presidents and they have all said the same
thing that we're not going to let Iran have a
nuclear weapon. We're just not going to let them. And
I've finally got to the point, probably I don't know,
within the last ten years, where I've said, you know,
that's nice, but Iran is I was convinced Iran was
going to get a nuclear weapon someday. And when that
day came, well, all hell literally is going to break loose.
And the reason I thought that was because every president,
like I said, D's and ours, have all said the
same thing, We're not going to let them have an
atomic bomb. Well what are you going to do that?
We had negotiators, we had treaties, we had everything you
can possibly imagine to try to get them to not
have a nuclear weapon. The Israelis have used their counterintelligence
to go in and fry their centrifuges, and they've done
everything to try to delay them, to stop them, to
upset them, to keep them from getting a nuclear bomb.
But I never saw anybody doing anything about it. And
I really did think someday they're going to get a
nuke and they are going to drop one right in
the heart of Israel and kill I don't know, thousands
of hundreds of millions of people. And then when they
figure out how to get an intercontinental ballistic missile, they'll
drop one in New York or Los Angeles or Chicago
or someplace and kill lots of Americans. They're crazy people.
They're truly crazy people. And so that's why I look
at what's going on and between last June when we,
along with Israel went in and tried to take out
their nuclear facilities, and I know, I know, I know
the presidents that we obliterated it. Well, we did a
lot of damage, but they have, according to the spies
in the sky, they have been trying to rebuild and
get started again. They're they're not going to stop. They're
like cockroaches. They're not going to stop. They were going
to rebuild their nuclear capabilit and they have enriched uranium underground,
lots of it, more than enough to build plenty of
nuclear weapons. And so it wasn't a matter of if,
it was a matter of when. And so the question
I come to on this news of the of the
war in Iran is when was anybody going to do
anything about it? And because of what happened last June
in taking out a lot of their nuclear facilities and
so forth, and a lot of the Israeli intelligence in
the taking out of Hamas and has below mostly both
of them, we finally have them in a position of
weakness that we've never had them in before, and if
we were truly going to match our actions with our
words of not letting them ever have a nuclear bomb,
And one group after another over the last i don't know,
ten years, twelve years have said, well, they're very close.
Oh they're really close. Oh you won't believe how close
they are. It'll be in and we heard that over
and over again. So I assume that they were close
to getting a nuclear bomb and that they were going
to use it. And so the big opposition to this,
I think is a couple of things. One of them
is there is a hangover from the Iraq War, a
hangover from Saddam Hussein and weapons of mass destruction, and
George W. Bush went in there with guns blazing, and well,
we didn't find the weapons of mass destruction the way
we thought we would, and so that went on to
nation building, and that cost us a lot of treasure
and blood. And I think there's a lot of people
in this country we don't want another failed Middle East
war that we're involved in. And I've seen some of
the Democrats today saying failed Middle East war. Another one,
Tammy Duckworth, who was injured, almost lost her life in
that war. She came out today and said, yeah, I
don't want another failed Middle East war. So I don't either.
I don't think you do either. But it seems as
if this is a totally different situation. And again, I
think that that shadow of the Iraq War is haunting
a lot of people, Democrats and some Republicans that are
looking at this and going, I don't want anything to
do with this, because I remember it wasn't that long ago,
and I remember it wasn't good. So well, we'll see,
we'll see. Let me go through some of the the
statistics here, does this is a Fox News bowl? Does
Iran pose a real national security threat? Well, sixty one
percent said yes, thirty eight percent said no. So I
don't know, maybe thirty eight percent or just I'm more trusting.
I think they posed. They did pose a real national
security threat. As far as supporting the current strikes on Iran,
Republicans eighty four percent approve, Independents forty percent approve, Democrats
only twenty percent approve. And what's sad about this is
that it is because of the way that everything is
so political and because of Donald Trump. This is this
is Trump derangement syndrome. They would rather say I'm against
it because Trump's doing it, rather than looking at it
going is this really a problem, So then it's broken down.
Let me give you another little bit bit more from
the Fox News poll. As far as all the voters
are concerned, it's fifty to fifty fifty percent approve, fifty
percent disapproved. Like I said, Democrats twenty percent approve, Independence,
forty percent approve, Republicans eighty four percent approve. So I
guess we'll just have to hope and pray that we
are successful in getting rid of that regime. That's the
other thing a lot of Democrats are are saying, and
I think they have a decent point. Is what is
our objective? Well, the list, according to our government is
destroy Iran's missile capabilities. All right, Well, so far, it
looks like we're doing a pretty good job on that. Apparently,
the missile strikes are down. The number of missiles they
first fired versus what they have doing today is that
the missiles that they're firing off towards whoever they want
to fire them off to are down eighty six percent.
Are they running out of missiles or are they preserving
their inventory to try and wait for the enemy to
get closer. Drone strikes are down seventy three percent. The
penetration of missiles and drones is only ten percent, so
they're not getting through the defense networks that are out there.
One of the other objectives annihilating their navy, Well, it
sounds like they've hit a lot of their navy. I'm
not sure if it's all of it or not, but
it sounds like it. Another one ensuring Iran can never
obtain a nuclear weapon. Well, I think so, But we're
going to have to get a different type of regime
in there, because the current regime and their successors are
not going to stop. Like I said, they're like cockroaches.
They won't go away. They're going to keep as long
as they have some power. And then finally ensuring that
the Iranian regime cannot continue to arm and fund global terrorism. Well, again,
that takes a regime change. So everybody's afraid of saying
they're in for regime change. But I'm going I don't know,
it seems pretty obvious that you got to change the regime.
I mean, when we defeated Adolf Hitler, what do we
do with all of Hitler's people? We put him on
trial Nuremberg. Most of them went hanging by a rope.
Same in Japan. Otherwise, now we kind of leave everybody
in place. But as we record this podcast, the Senate
is going to hold a vote sometime today. They haven't
done it yet. They say they're going to vote today,
but probably knowing them, it'll be late tonight on whether
to give congressional approval. And the strange part about that
is does Congress need to give approval before we go
to war? Let me give you what the Constitution says
Article one, Section eight gives Congress the exclusive power to
declare war. Okay, that was the founders deliberately placed the
power in the legislature to prevent a single person from
taking the country to war unilaterally. But in nineteen seventy three,
this was after Vietnam, and Congress is trying to claw
back some authority. The War Powers Resolution of nineteen seventy
three requires the President notify Congress within forty eight hours
of deploying troops into hostilities. Okay, well he did that.
I notified Congress within forty eight hours. And then it
goes on. It says it limits unauthorized military engagement to
sixty days plus thirty days for US to withdraw our
troops without congressional approval, So they still have military unauthorized
military engagement. With the sixty days, they still have fifty
six days to go. So we'll see how this works out. Hopefully.
We don't know how long. That's the problem with war.
You don't know how long it's going to go. So
in practice, presidents have largely bypassed this. The US has
only formally declared war five times. The War of eighteen twelve,
the Mexican American War, the Spanish American War, World War One,
and World War Two. Every president since Richard Nixon have
argued that the War Powers Resolution is unconstitutional infringement upon
the commander in chief. Congress has often avoided a formal vote,
So broad Authorizations for use of Military Force a WHIMS
as they're called, passed one after nine to eleven in
two thousand and one, and then they expanded it again
in two thousand and two two and so Congress eventually someday,
somehow may need to approve this, and hope and pray
that this is all going to be over before that
comes along. As far as kind of asking the Democrats
what they think, Bill Malushan, who's a reporter for Fox,
was asking Haakim Jeffries earlier today this question.
Speaker 2: Back in twenty eleven, Nancy Pelosi.
Speaker 1: Said that then President Obama didn't need Congressional approval to
Obama Libya. Now how Democrats say President Trump needs that
approval to Obama ron what's the difference.
Speaker 3: Well, obviously Libya and the circumstances connected to that were
very different. In the circumstance that we face an Iran
right now, I mean, I don't even understand the genesis
or basis of that question, not suggesting that you're not
asking it in good faith.
Speaker 1: Libya went on, I'm just thing months while he did
not understand, because there isn't any difference pretty much. In fact,
he talked about Pelosi. Here's here's Nancy Pelosi when she
was asked as Speaker of the House.
Speaker 3: Adam, Leader, you're saying that the president did not need
alterization initially and still does not need any authorization from Congress.
Speaker 4: One Libya, Yes, thank you, thank you all very much.
Speaker 1: Yeah, she was short's waiting to the point, yes, and oh,
thank you very much, and tailed right out of that
news conference. Tim Kaine, the Senator from Virginia, is sponsoring
the war powers vote today in the Senate, and he
had these comments, well, look.
Speaker 4: I think that that's a fair critique of what Congress
has done under presidents of both parties. But I haven't
when I came into the Senate twenty thirteen after having
been governor and watched my Virginia Guard deploye again and
again and again into Iraq and Afghanistan, and going to
the funerals and wakes and to the deployments and the homecomings.
I made a pledge when I came in I would
stand up against any president trying to take us to
war without Congress, and especially if war in that circumstance
is a bad idea. And I've held the same standard
to President Obama, President Trump term one, President Biden, President
Trump term two. We don't need another war in the
Middle East. My state, Virginia is very pro military. We're
probably the more most connected state to the military of
any in the country. I'm on the Armed Services Committee.
I have a kid in the military. I support our
troops and support our military. They served bravely, but they're
often betrayed or sacrificed by bad civilian decision making. That
was the lesson of Vietnam, was the lesson of Iraq.
We should have learned that lesson and we need to
avoid it. So if we've abdicated in the past, then
it's a muscle that is weak through not being used.
I'm forcing the muscle to exercise, and it'll get stronger
with exercise. This is the sixth or seventh Warpowers vote
that I forced in the last thirteen months, and I
can assure my colleagues I'm going to keep doing it,
because this muscle that's grown weak through non use, I'm
going to try to exercise it so it'll grow strong again.
Speaker 1: I'm no psychiatrists, but I swear a lot of this
is and he brought up Vietnam and Iraq. Is that
a lot of it is the shadow of both of
those wars that were not clear wild victories like World
War Two where we had celebrations in parades. I think
that's what's the hangover. So John Feerman, the Democrat Senator Pennsylvania,
has his own ideas well.
Speaker 5: What I think it's very clear now It's like I
don't really think Iran was able to to really engage
in any meaningful kinds of way. I mean, the only
thing that they've ever been to do is to create
the kinds of chaos and fire these kinds of cheap
drones into Dubai and Kuwait another thing. But overall they
never really put up any kind of a fight. They
never had a shoot, they never had a shot to
shoot threat that so clearly I remain just in the
same view where like, after they've eliminated their entire leadership
of one of the worst regimes in the world, and
I think this is a good thing. And now I
don't know why we all can agree that the world
is better, safer, and it's more just, and now there's
could be real peace because if you have said we
can never allow Iran to acquire a nuclear weapon, well
now that's happened and now they can't ever have that now.
And now on top of that, their entire most of
their military has been dismantled, and that's probably going to
be finished off over the next days. I think that that, yes,
it's been very successful and I can't why we can
celebrate that so far. And this is not a boots
on the ground thing, and neither of those kinds of
things about the War Powers resolution from nineteen seventy three,
they had the forty eight hours, and now we also
have sixty days, sixty days, and now there's no boots
on the ground. So now if they have that today,
then I will vote no against that because overall there
has been a successful strike and that has eliminated the leadership.
So I think it's a good thing right now, and
I don't know why we as a Democrat just say
I think I don't have to agree with parts of it,
but I think it's a positive reaction. And now where
we are.
Speaker 1: Well, I like Vetterman, but I don't want them to
count the chickens before the eggs are hatched. This it's
not over. It's clearly the pivot point is I think
way past. But at the same time, you don't count
a victory in war until you truly have a total victory.
By the way, they just held the vote in the
Senate for the War Powers Act. Yeah, they didn't wait
until late tonight, and so far John Fetterman voted with
the Republicans and Ran Paul voted with the Democrats. So
that means that the War Powers Act will not pass.
The motion that was put together by Tim Kaine will
not pass the Senate tomorrow. They do have a vote
in the House of Representatives where things are very tight there,
and there's a couple of Republicans that are saying they're
not for the war, so that may add more congressional
drama to all of this. Some of the Democrats that
came to the microphone earlier today were all opposed. I
think it's mostly because of they just don't like Donald Trump.
But let's listen to their side.
Speaker 4: I mean, the point is it was no immineent threat.
There clearly was oming a threat.
Speaker 6: We've seen Secretary of Ruvio bobbing and weaving so much
in the last forty eight hours and they can't make
up their mind why they took the action.
Speaker 7: I will give you my impression, which is that there
is still no evidence, none of an imminent threat that
would justify an attack on Iran.
Speaker 1: Now either I've been reading different books than they have,
but it just like I said at the beginning, this
has been death to America and once we get that nuke,
we're going to wipe out Israel. That's been their their message.
They've been very good and very consistent about putting that
message out for decades. And the Democrats gator is no, no, no,
we don't see any threat, no eminent threat. Well, what
are you going to wait for? You're going to wait
for themse Here's the other part behind it. One of
the Rubio brought this up the other day. They are
building these ballistic missiles as fast as they can build them.
They've got hundreds and hundreds of they've building a couple
hundred a month. What happens there comes a point where
they have so many ballistic missiles that no military ours Israel,
nobody could go in there and stop them from whatever
they want to do. So once they get to that point,
what they were doing was hoping to have enough ballistic
missiles to cover them so that they can launch their
atomic nuclear weapon against US or against Israel, or both
at the time of their choosing. So you want to
wait until the first one explodes. I think that's what
they're saying. I don't think that's what they really mean,
but that's what they're saying. Good old Senator John Kennedy
from Louisiana always has an interesting take.
Speaker 8: I think the president's actions will be sustained.
Speaker 4: I think that.
Speaker 8: I think that too many of my Democratic colleagues want
to quote Socrates we're in when we're in the middle
of a bar fight. I mean no disrespect in saying this,
but they are weak. They are weak in a dangerous
world today. To fight our adversaries, you have to have
military power. We have that, but you have to have
political will. They don't have the political will.
Speaker 4: Now.
Speaker 8: Look, I am in awe of the solemnity of where
we are. Uh we're fighting another country, powerful country, ninety
million people. But here's what I see. I see a
country that is run by Jack Nicholson in the shiny.
These are religious zealous. If you don't agree with their
version of Islam, you have to die. I see a
bunch of religious zelots who are determined to get a
nuclear warhead. They're never going to stop. I see religious
zelots running a country that even after we bomb their
nuclear facilities in June, they've already started back and they've
lied about it. I see a powerful country that's amassing
anywhere from two hundred to six hundred missiles a month
a month, so that eventually they'll have enough missiles to
threaten the whole world and prevent us from doing something
about their nuclear capability. I see a powerful country of
religious zelots at the leadership level, who, if they get
a nuclear weapon, will use it. I think that's what
the American people see. I think that's what President Trump saw.
I think he did the right thing. I'm not saying
that because he's in my party. I'm not saying that
because he's scared of me or I'm scared of him.
If you had been in the classified briefing underneath the capital,
you both know where we meet and heard Peach said
Pete said Headseth, General Kane, Marco Rubio, John Radcliffe walk
us through this. You would agree with me, but unfortunately
it's classified information. Well, many too many of my Democratic
friends are weak. Their weakest rot war. But it's not
just Democrats. I understand many of my Republican friends think
this is a mistake. They don't want another Iraq, neither
do I. But if they can see what I see
in terms of the class that classified information, I think
most of them would agree with me. Maybe not, but
they have the right to their opinion.
Speaker 1: Mike Pompeo, our former Secretary of State, also one of
the people that was on a hit list. Everybody, the FBI,
everybody's agreed that President Trump and John Bolton and Mike
Pompeo were on a hit list that was put out
by the regime in Iran to kill all three of them.
So he has a reason to be happy that this
has taken place. Here's Pompeo.
Speaker 2: Look, I think she laid out precisely three things that
are important. One, the reason for the President's efforts in
Iran right forty seven years of Iran being at war
with US. Second, she talked about the reason for the
timing of this, why now? And then finally she answered
that important question about what could President Trump have just
kicked the can down the road in the same way
that so many previous presidents had and that was just
unacceptable risks to the United States of America for him
to have done that. So he's done the right thing.
She spoke about the successes todate. No one's saying victory
is at hand, but they've talked about the enormous successes
in the opening half a dozen days of this conflict.
The Iranian regime is weaker today than it was five
days ago. Moreover, the American people are far safer than
they were five days ago.
Speaker 1: So what about regime change? Talking about Iatola's son being
the next leader, they really haven't come up with a
name yet, but Pompeo has this reaction.
Speaker 2: Well, look, guys, for that particular individual, he's got blood
on his hands as well. That seems a very difficult
person for the West, who have swallowed once we've done
all this hard work. I think the Israelis would likely
share that same view. And as for others, what the
United States is going to demand, no matter who ends
up in charge, is that they john they behave like
a normal nation, right, That's all we've ever asked of them.
Don't build nuclear weapons, don't threaten Israel with ballistic missiles,
don't now attack your Muslim brothers in the Gulf Arab States.
Don't run a terror campaign all throughout the Middle East,
in Syria and Lebanon and Iraq and in Yemen. Those
are the things we're going to ask of the next
set of leaders. The Uranian people will ultimately get to
sort that out. The IRGC, right there, force that owns
about a fifth of the Ranian economy, will have something
to say about this. They're not going to go quietly
into the night. But the pounding that they have already taken,
and the pounding that I expect that they will take
in the days ahead, will greatly diminish their capacity not
only to terrorize the world but their own citizens inside
of their country.
Speaker 1: Well, we got to get General Keenan here to give
his impression of so far. What does he think?
Speaker 9: Well, I think the message is pretty clear. Everybody got it.
How remarkable successful this operation truly is. I'm stunned by
how much we're able to accomplish pretty much on pace.
I mean, I knew full well that at day three
we wanted to have reduced their retaliation capability by seventy
five percent in terms of ballistic missiles, and we hit
that mark, and now we're up to as reported eighty
six percent. It's truly remarkable here what we know about
the enemy, and because we have such exquisite knowledge about
them that we're able also to use our combat power
and distributed so effectively and accomplished so much. And when
I first saw what we were attempting to achieve, I
knew that these were ambitious goals to try to accomplish
so much in that period of time. And our people
are right on the mark here. The Navy is essentially gone,
and they did have an air force, but their major
weapons systems, the ballistic missile is the focus that that's
their major conventional system. It can do the most harm
because of the lethality of the They have considerably more drones,
but they're not as lethal. And the fact that we've
got the drones now down to they can only at
seventy three percent retaliation. We reduced them that much. The
drone penetration is around ten percent, which is what the
ballistic missile penetration is and you can see out there
that the casualties are very light. We know full well
what Iron had planned. They had learned a lot of
things from a twelve day war, and from day one
they were expecting to unleash massive retaliation on a strike
at Israel and our US basis with missiles and with drones,
and they were not even able to do that. Remember,
on the first day the report out of the Central
Command that the Israelis was a much more weakened response
than what they had anticipated, and that had to do
with disrupting the chain of command and also us attacking
so heavily on that first day against those very targets
to reduce their capability to literally to return fire. So
we're really on a very good pace here. The Israelis
are moving to another phase of the operation. We're going
to continue taking away the weapons and when you see
us doing that, ballistic missiles, drones, the navy, and we're
also going to systematically take if you're manufacturing a weapons
system in Iran, that's a target, and we're going to
take down all of those targets. We don't want them
to have anything left at the end, not only in
terms of the things that they have on hand to fire,
but they so they cannot manufacture anything. What the Israelis
are going to do, they're going to still focus on
some of those targets, but their primary focus is going
to be on what it's the organization. They want to
set the conditions for a regime collapse, and that is
going to begin in earnest. They did a tremendous job
obviously along with US and taking down leadership targets, and
those will continue, but systematically they're going to strip away
what the IRGC and its capabilities. That's the people, the organization,
and the facilities, the infrastructure that supports it, in other words,
their networks, the technology, the communication systems, all of it.
The same thing with Basil militia who repress the people,
the same thing with intelligence and security forces who repress
the people. The same thing with the police infrastructure that
repress the people. Over a thousand munitions been hit into
Tehran in the last couple of days in doing that,
and hundreds more are coming in in the next twenty
four hours. But it's going out to all of the
provinces as well, because in those provinces, as we have
seen those protest movements. When they moved into those other cities,
there were security forces and police infrastructure that came out
on the streets and mowed those people down. Those security
forces and infrastructure are going to be stripped away. This
is a systematic reduction of the entire infrastructure that does
want it sustains the regime. It is likely going to
take more than a week or two just to do
what I'm talking about. This is how much of a
focus this really is. In other words, at the end
of the day, this regime will not have much left
to be able to govern or be able to repress
its people.
Speaker 1: So now we wait and watch and see what the
people do. See if they can take over their country,
See if the regime can be eliminated the people that
have repressed the people for all this length of time.
And how they're going to do that is going to
be the next chapter of this war. Wall Street. Well,
what can I say? It's been It's been absolute roller
coaster ever since this started. Today was no different, but
it finished on the upside. We started on a big
drop and worked our way back to a gain of
two hundred and thirty eight points on the DOW up
to forty eight thousand and seven, thirty nine, SMP up
fifty two NASDAC up two hundred and ninety, gold up
twenty eight dollars to five thousand and one fifty one,
and oil yeah, it still is acting well. It's the
high was seventy eight dollars a day, but it finished
up seventy six dollars a buck and a half for
the day for a garrel of oil. So that's it
for today. Thank you for coming by. We will be
back again tomorrow. I hope to see you there.