Speaker 1: And hello, greetings to everyone. Welcome to the Big Podcast
on this Tuesday. Today is the twenty seventh day of January,
Year of Our Lord, twenty twenty six. My name is
Tom Sullivan. And oh, no, long list of things to
talk about today. We've got Iran. I'm still waiting to
see what's going to happen there. Ukraine, the talks between
US Russia and Ukraine. Follow up a little bit on that.
We've got of course, a lot on Minnesota, the presidents
in Iowa. So let's oh and also let's start with this.
Did you know remember when they had the government shutdown,
they finally agreed to come back to work, but they
only passed a temporary spending bill that would expire January thirtieth. Well,
looking at my calendar, that's Friday, so I presume that's
your calendar too. So we're going to be facing yet
another shutdown. But this time they've already passed a lot
of the spending bills. They don't have one big omnibus bill.
They break it down into various things. And so the
Democrats are going, this is our last lever to use.
They want to either get rid of ICE or defund
ice or do anyway. They're mad about Ice and this
is their the only lever they've got to say anything
about it. Here's kind of a montage of some of
the Dems that are upset about Ice and using the
government shut down as a threat.
Speaker 2: I have answers until we start rectifying that situation. I
cannot vote for funding an organization that's going to continue
killing Americans.
Speaker 3: And at the end of the day, this is the
leverage we have. We have to stop and if it
results in a partial government shutdown, this is the lever
we have. It's time to stand up.
Speaker 2: Democrats should be prepared to use every single available measure,
including shutting down our government, to ensure that we get
not just reform, but a complete change at the top.
Speaker 1: You don't need to be a government specialist to understand
that you are not going to do a complete change
to a government agency with three days left to go.
It's not going to happen. The other thing that's about this,
like I said, this will not be a complete shutdown.
I don't know what will be shut down and what
will not, but most of the government will be funded
and operating, which takes a lot of the leverage away
from them. On this. But the other thing about this
is eighty percent of the Department of Homeland Security spending budget,
eighty percent of it has nothing to do with ICE.
ICE was funded by the Big Beautiful Bill and is
funded through twenty twenty nine. So I'm not quite sure
if they know what they're doing or they're just exasperated.
Here's Susan Collins, you know, nice moderate Republican.
Speaker 4: It it includes, for example, funding for FEMA. We've just
gone through a horredic storm that has caused a lot
of damage, and FEMA is very important. It includes funding
for TSA.
Speaker 1: Okay, so I hear some of you cheering about cutting
off the funding for TSA, unless, of course, you have
a flight and you'd like to make sure that TSA
is there working so you don't have more hassles at
the airport than you normally have. That's just a sample
of some of the Democrats other than Susan Collins. Some
of the Democrats talking about they're going to change ICE
in three days. It's not going to happen, but it
goes beyond that. And I know that you love to
hear from Hollywood celebrities about their thoughts regarding ICE. Well,
I just so happened to have one Ed Norton, who
I love his acting. He's a great actor. But Ed
Norton is very upset with what's going on with Ice.
Speaker 5: These are not normal times. We have, you know, extra
judicial like assaults on Americans and humans going on on
a daily basis now, and it's not okay. What they're
doing in Minnesota with the strike needs to expand. I
think we should be talking about a national, national, general
economic strike until this is over.
Speaker 1: He's kind of jumping on the coattails of a there's
a group in Minneapolis who wants to have a strike
and shut down Minneapolis, and you know, go on strike
against it. No matter where you work. I don't care
if you work for a major corporation or you work
for the local coffee shop. So let me ask you something.
I wish I had a way to get a hold
of Ed Norton. But if you want to do a strike,
whom does that hurt? Whom does it help? Well, it
doesn't hurt Ice. They're still working. I know you may
not like what they're doing, but they are still working
and they still get their paychecks. And even if the
demo grants won't pass the funding bill for DHS. The
ICE is still going to get their paychecks and having
a strike will only affect whom the people that go
on strike, because the employer, if you don't show up
for work, they're not going to pay you for not
showing up for your strike. So I look at these
kinds of ideas and I think, are people just not
able to think?
Speaker 2: Is this?
Speaker 1: Is it that hard? So we'll get back to all
things ice in Minnesota in just a few minutes. Let
me let me go back around to remember the President
on the flight back from Davos was talking to the
reporters and said that we have a big armada that
is in the area of Iran, and there is We've
got lots lots of navy that we know of that
are in the various waters that are very close to Iran.
And the question is what's Iron going to do. Well,
let's start with the Navy Admiral Starvinas is a retired admiral,
but he is a former NATO commander. Let's see what
he says.
Speaker 6: Inside Iran. There's going to be a mixed reaction, shall
we say, on the part of the opposition, the dissidence,
those who have been risking their lives one minute. Don't worry.
Help is on the way. It's a red line, as
you point out, you kill another protester and we're going
to take action. You're showing pictures now of Abraham Lincoln,
a carrier I embarked in for a year. She's now
off the coast. So President Trump has a lot of
options to use force here, kinetically with cyber communications, all
of that. But his instincts, as always, are negotiated, find
a deal. Nothing wrong with that other than the fact
that this is the most rotten theocratic regime. They're hardliners.
These are not people like they are in Caracas, who
may be willing to cut a deal, or Kunyang, North Korea.
These are hard line believers in what they're doing. So
while I certainly hope the President can come to a negotiation,
perhaps something that makes them for swear nuclear weapons and
above all stop killing protesters, I have a lot of
skepticism about whether that can land. I'm glad that carrier
is on station.
Speaker 1: Okay, So he's not very optimistic about the fact that
the people that run Iron are going to buckle. How
about general team.
Speaker 7: Well, first of all, I mean this appears to be
a bloodbath that compares to nothing else in terms of
the horror that this regime has inflicted on his own
people for forty five plus. He is these numbers are
absolutely staggering and just dealing anecdotally with people on the street.
So now that the internet is beginning to open up,
they keep telling me that the people that are guarding
them now and forcing them not to come out of
their homes, most of them speak Arabic, not farcie. So
they have brought in militias from other countries to help
them do this dirty deed. Here we are with this
is this massacre for sure exceeds anything as I indicated,
And the President said he was going to help, and
I believe he's going to do just that. Two things
are really at stake here. The regime is the weakest
it's ever been in its history politically, economically and militarily,
and I do believe an appropriate strike obviously to avenge
what has taken place here. Also, the President gave his word.
I think he'll fulfill it. But what the intent of
it has to be is to further weaken the regime
and put it on a pathway to its collapse. If
we did nothing, then we're going to send a lifeline
to the regime and it'll help extend the regime. If
we try to negotiate with them, that'll do much the same.
It legitimizes the regime and it's a gut punch to
the protesters involved here. We have to see the opportunities
in front of it. A military strike by itself would
probably not cause an im media collapse of the regime,
but it will certainly put them on the pathway to it,
because as I indicated before, they've never been so weak.
And yes, Iran has the means to retaliate, but they
don't want to go to Warwick the United States that
guarantees them the loss of the regime, despite the bluster
of their comments that they're making.
Speaker 1: All right, So it's a hotspot and nobody's paying much
attention to it because of everything going on domestically with
Ice and Minneapolis. Mike Pompeo, I thought, one of our
best Secretary of States ever, does he think that it's
really going to happen where we attack Iran?
Speaker 8: I think undoubted the answer to that is yes. Indeed,
your point about the massacre that took place, and now
hearing numbers in the tens of thousands, thirty forty thousand
people killed. I think about the conflict in Gaza. This
is a staggering number of murders committed by this regime
that demonstrates that they are enormously weak. They had to
retaliate with massive force and a military strike or a
set of military strikes on key infrastructure issues like their
energy infrastructure, their telecommunications infrastructure, or even going after the
very murderers who committed this massacre, go after the police
stations and the besiege and the IRGC actors who killed
all these people. This would give the Iranian people the
opportunity to regroup, to get back to the streets, and
to fundamentally change the regime in a way that would
benefit the United States of America enormously.
Speaker 1: So it was oddspot, and we don't know if that's
going to become kinetic or not. The other area that
is kinetic is, of course, Ukraine, and Russia is continuing
to bombard Ukraine even more than they did before. There
was a meeting over the weekend between the US, Russia
and Ukraine and let's find out. Let's go back to
Mike Pompeio find out his take on what's going on there.
Speaker 8: Let's get back to the president's statement that said they
want a deal. I think that's fundamentally not going to
prove to be true. They probably want a deal that
would call off the dogs with the president is amassing
in the region, but they don't want a deal that
would force them to leave, which in the end is
the only thing they can give the Ranian people the
opportunity to restore their freedom and a better life for
their children and grandchildren. A military intervention continues to put
pressure on the regime and the Iotola and empower those
inside the country who are trying to change this regime
in a way that delivers those basic ideas of human
dignity and just to be able to raise their families.
Speaker 2: Bill.
Speaker 8: This is not that complicated. This regime has to go
at this point. There's no there's no deal, there's no agreement.
President Obama tried that path. We led to continue their
nuclear program. Joe Biden. President Biden tried to do the
same thing. This is not a regime that could be
negotiated with. This is a regime that is going to
have to be forced from power by the Iranian people
in the United States can provide support for that.
Speaker 1: I don't even want to bring up Venezuela. We don't
know what's going on there. We don't know what's going
to happen in ran we don't know what's going to
happen between Russia and Ukraine. Everybody and their brother says,
there's no way, there is no way that Vladimir Putin
is going to give an inch. So let's come on
back to domestic stories today. And the whole thing about
Minnesota is getting more interesting to me. I don't. I
know a lot of people are either supporting Ice or
their crucifying Ice, whichever side you're on. But what's been
bothering me is And maybe it's because once you are
a police officer, you're always a police officer. It's in
my blood. I wore I wore a badge in a
gun a long time ago. But I watch what's going on,
and it's dawned on me what my problem is with
what the deal is. They've got the wrong police doing
the wrong job. The border patrol, God bless them, they
are the ones that have shut down the border. I mean,
they have sealed that thing as tight as you can
possibly seal it, because it takes certain skills. And I
know a lot of people also look at Greg Bovino
and think he's the worst guy on earth. I'm thinking
he's probably really good at his job, which is sealing
the border. But going into major urban cities is a
totally different form of police activity. And you want when
you mix yourself in with the civilian population, you want
a professional police management. You want police You want professional
police officers that know how to go about enforcing the law.
And I don't have any any I mean, I definitely
want all the illegal criminals rounded up and thrown out
of this country. But I think the raid, the raids
that they were doing was something that you would do
on a border, but you wouldn't do it in somebody's
neighborhood or backyard. And I think that's where Boveno ran
into problems. And the President is looking at this and going,
you know, he wants all the illegals to be tossed,
but he's also looking at the politics of this and
realizing that pole after poll after pol is saying people
are not happy with this, they don't like to see this,
and what for example, the guy that was killed last
over the weekend Saturday. I would have been fired if
I had walked up and shoved somebody in the chest
and knocked them down on the on the street. That's
not what.
Speaker 2: Local police will do.
Speaker 1: I was trained you don't put your hands on anybody
unless you're taking them into custody. If you're you put
oh yeah, you put your hands on them when you're
arresting them and put him in handcuffs. And as the
same goes for the citizen. The citizen cannot put their
hands on a police officer, border patrol, or ice or
anybody else or they're going to be potentially arrested. But
the way that there was the brutality of knocking people
down on the street. It started with knocking that lady
down and this Alexapretti went to her aid. So the
investigation needs to be done and needs to be done
in a professional way. That's all I'm saying is that
I really think Minneapolis needs a professional police department. But
they won't come out of their precincts because they're not
allowed to by city ordinance. That's where the problem is.
So Tom Holman's there, maybe he can work with them
on getting the local police to go out and help
do the policing. You cannot do successful policing without the
support of the public. That's basic one oh one. And
I don't think the Border Patrol worries about that when
they're out there in the desert of the Southwest trying
to shut down the border. That's not one of their concerns.
So Paul Morrow, former NYPD guy, talks about the details
of what an investigation should be, should.
Speaker 9: Involve sense, But I think that what it goes to
was the larger issue of what the parameters of let's
stick to the investigation here as opposed to larger political aspects.
What are they going to look at? First of all,
we know he had his phone out. That is pretty
did right. You got to get that phone, you got
to get into that phone, You got to see what
it looked like from his perspective, what he saw. That's
maybe the most germane video of all here. You also
want to hear what he was saying. The audio matters
as well. Were they talking to each other, whether commands
he couldn't hear because they were blowing all of those whistles.
You also want to see, obviously, any other video that
you can get. You want to see any messages that
are on his phone. You want to make sure all
the video in the area has been gathered. You have
to do interviews because they're going to be people around
there that you should have detained. This woman that was
involved in the practice, you got to make sure you
talk to her, identify her. This is a lot of
stuff you got to do. Then you got to synchronize
it and come up with the full narrative. And of
course you got to see if this video from the officers.
Most the vice minus standing still doesn't have the body
warning will warrant. They we're rolling those up, but they
don't have those. You got to interview them all and
you've got to see if anything is contradictory. That stuff
takes time, and that's why the safest thing in retrospect
is to say we're investigating.
Speaker 1: Well, he's not alone. John Miller, also former NYPD, talks
about the fact that the commands of if there's audio
on the on the there's four officers of the five
or six that were taking Alex pretty down, four of
them had body cameras, So they need to get the
body cameras and get the audio here's John.
Speaker 10: Miller would normally unfold would be yes, HSI might assist
Border Patrol in an investigation as a as a outside entity,
but still within the same agency. The FBI would be
investigating it because it's a shooting by another federal entity.
But normally this would be something where the Department of
Justice would step up on the level of the Attorney
General and say, we are directing the investigation from the
Civil Rights Division to determine if the civil rights of
the person who was killed were violated. Were conducting an
internal reviewers to the shootings. We're not quite hearing anything
like that. What we've heard is a story that has
already been discounted about how it unfolded, and one that
federal authorities have done very little to readjust even though
more information is out there, and we've heard about internal
investigations and investigations, but not one supervised by prosecutors. If
you just look back on the Renee Good case, which
is not that long ago, we're talking a couple of weeks.
The supervising FBI agent who originally open the investigation into that,
which would have probed whether the shooting had a legal basis.
Basically resigned on the idea that this investigation was not
going to happen. So you're correct, And one way to
put potentially solve that would be to take the Minnesota
Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, which has its own police shooting
officer involved shooting investigative unit, a specialized team. This is
what they do, and to bring them into the federal
investigation and say we will now do this as a parallel.
It would give you an outside, independent entity that could
at least sign off on the fact that there was
a legitimate investigation. So far, still resistance to that one
queue here though, sending Tom Holman out to Minneapolis. The
borders are when you already have Greg Bovino on the
ground in charge of their ground forces. Tom has been
better at creating relationships with law enforcement, even in contentious environments.
It may be a sign that they want to tamp
some of that dissatisfaction and friction down.
Speaker 7: As you know.
Speaker 10: The IACP International Association of Chiefs of Police released a
press release very unusual on a Saturday night to say
that they demanded a meeting with the White House to
find a constructive path forward in a way to get
local law enforcement to be dealing with their federal law
enforcement counterparts again, so we're seeing those fractures. This has
been a real challenge, whether it's the Rene Good case
or the Alex Pretti case. What you have is a
crime scene where they lost control of the crime scene
almost immediately. Now part of that is because crowds showed up,
and you know, DHS agents became the target of that.
It's also because you can't have it both ways, which
is when local law enforcement gets to the scene and
federal authorities deny them access, you're already losing the integrity
of that crime scene. And then when the federal authorities
decide we have to pull out, and you don't know
what evidence have they collected. Have they recovered all of
the shell casings? Is there one that's you know, buried
beneath the snow. Have they The way shooting like this
should be done is a shooting team like the one
that the state has should show up. They should get
their equipment there, They should document every single piece of
physical evidence. They should immediately download all body cameras that
were present, and we understand there may have been at
least two there. They should be able to contain that
crime scene as pristine and work on it for as
many hours as possible. And in both of these things,
we didn't really see that happen. And it's going to
make any any investigation, whether the state does its own
or where the federal agents try to pull one together,
more difficult and less reliable.
Speaker 1: This is part of why I am frustrated, is because
it's making law enforcement look bad.
Speaker 11: It just is.
Speaker 1: And these actions by the officers on the streets of
Minneapolis are not what most city police officers would They
would not they would not handle the situation anywhere near
what these what these ares that. In other words, they
again I repeat, they have the wrong police department doing
the wrong job. Border patrols should be on the border
and Ice should be doing the job in Minneapolis that
they've been designed to do. But they brought in so
many federal officers from some many different agencies. Has just
become mismanaged, totally mismanaged. Which brings up Christine Home, who's
the head of the whole operation, and she spent two
hours along with her friend wink Wink Corey Lowandowski, who's
been fired twice by Donald Trump in the past, but
he's the one who's advising her on how to run
Department of Homeland Security, and they spent two hours in
the Oval office last night and today when the President
was leaving for Iowa, the reporters asked if he if
she was going to step down, and he said no.
So he supports her. He has over and over again.
I'm not a fan, but the president is and that's
the only one that really matters. So this whole investigation
thing still has a long way to go. One other angle,
Bill George, who is a former retired CEO of Medtronics.
They're a huge company based in Minneapolis. There's a lot
of large corporations in Minneapolis, and Bill was asked about
a letter that was signed by sixty different CEOs about
the whole situation in Minneapolis, and his response was, and
this is exactly right up my alley is don't get
involved in politics, don't do it. Stick to the knitting,
stick to business, no doubt. And that's the people fear.
They don't want to be And I actually advise people
to stay below the radar. It's tweaking the bear and
stay below the radar. But I think what happened Andrew,
Let's go back to Minnesota, because in twenty twenty, when
George Floyd was murdered, there was a big swing to
really focus on DEI and it went too far. And
I think pendulum may have gone too far the other way.
And I think now people are trying to figure out
what's the right place. And again I think the feeling
is stick to your business and folks on it issues.
But this is hurting business, and so I think a
lot of them don't want to be in the spotlight. Yes,
the tech guys are way out in the spotlight, they're
way out in front, but I don't think that the
business leaders I know who signed this letter.
Speaker 2: And I know all of them did not want to
be out in front.
Speaker 1: So the President today, I told you he was on
his way to Iowa. He's in Des Moines and he
is giving a speech on the economy and also showing
up how things are in Iowa for Republicans. Republicans do
really well in Iowa. Scott Bennett, the Treasury Secretary, kind
of highlighted what the President's going to say.
Speaker 11: Is going to tell a great story, and he can
tell it like no one else can tell it. And
as you said, this is the one big, beautiful bill
kicking in on the business. On the business side, full expensing.
We've got a capex boom. Capex boom was going to
lead to an appoyment boom. Apployment boom leads to a
consumer spending boom. And then on the other side, as
you said, his signature policies, no tax and tips, no
tax and overtime, no Texan sold security, deductibility of American
made cars. He's keeping his promises to working Americans.
Speaker 1: Well, that's the message that he brings to or brought
now to Iowa. Very friendly territory. Harry Enton talked about
how the Republicans are. That's just Republican territory.
Speaker 12: So if you know anything about Iowa recent politics in Iowa, right,
the President won it by double ditchits. He won it
all three times. There has not been a Democratic senator
that was a non incumbent, a non incumbent Democrat to
win an Iowa Senate seat since nineteen hundred and eighty four.
The chance that the GOP wins in twenty twenty six,
a year ago, to win that Senate seat, it was
eighty one percent.
Speaker 2: Now it's down a sixty six percent.
Speaker 12: Look, that's still a majority chance, but in the state
that Donald Trump won by double ditchits that foreshadows big
problems coming into the midterm elections.
Speaker 1: Well, I don't think so. Sixty six percent approval, that's
almost two thirds of people are are for the Republican
senatorial candidate. So the Senate seat is up in Iowa
and the Republicans they've got to work at it, but
they should be able to hold on to that seat.
This is all part of the promise by Susy Wilds
that the President's going to go out and campaign like
its twenty twenty four. So this is the this is
the kickoff. So on Wall Street today we had a
pretty positive day, hey, but the Dow not so much.
The Dow got clobbered down four hundred eight to forty
nine thousand and three. The reason why mostly United Healthcare.
The healthcare stocks all got hammered after Medicare said that
they're going to have a pay increase for Medicare payments
to insurance companies. It's way below what Wall Street was expecting,
so healthcare companies took it on the nose. The Dow
down four oh eight. Mostly again, United Healthcare is a
big part of the Dow SMP up twenty eight, Nasdaq
up two hundred and fifteen. Gold continuing to go ow
in the new record territory of ninety eight dollars to
five one hundred and eighty. Oil up two bucks, just
under sixty three dollars now for one barrel of oil.
Thank you for coming by today. We'll be back again tomorrow.
I hope to see you then