Speaker 1: And hello everybody, Welcome to the Big Podcast. It is Thursday.
Today is the twenty eighth day of May. You're of
our Lord twenty twenty six. My name is Tom Sullivan.
Glad to have you come by. I I don't know
what to say about this, but it is. I mean,
Wall Street has been suckered in so many times about
the President always saying, oh, yeah, we're very close, Oh
they want a deal, Oh we're about ready to do it,
and everybody's kind of looked rolled their eyes. I think
I rolled my eyes going how many times has he
said that we're oh, yeah, any any day now, we're
going to have an agreement. Well there may be an agreement,
but it looks like it's got Swiss cheese all over
it because they are mad. I mean it was. It
came out about noon today Eastern time, and the report
coming from Axios. Brock Revied is the guy who broke
the story, and he's got good contacts, there's no question
about it. He has some inside sources. But the more
you look at this, the more you go this doesn't
look like what we were looking for when we started
the war back on February twenty eighth. They have and
there was a huge hullabaloo about breaking news and all
that sort of stuff, And I'm looking at it and going, Okay,
maybe this is a way an off ramp for everybody
to get out of this war. But you listen to
the explanation that Barack Revide has and see if you
feel like this is really a breakthrough.
Speaker 2: US and Iranian negotiators have reached a deal on a
memorandum of understanding that will extend the ceasefire by sixty
days and launch negotiations direct negotiations on Iran's nuclear program.
This I hear from two US officials and another regional
diplomat involved in the mediation efforts. The US officials told
me that President Trump still hasn't gave the final sign
off on this deal. The US officials told me Trump
has relayed to the mediators and through the mediators to
the Iranians, that he wants quote a few days to
think about it. But US officials are optimistic that this
deal is likely to go through unless some surprising thing
happens over the next twenty four to forty eight hours.
This deal will basically include a statement by Iran that
it will not pursue new clue weapons and affirmative statement.
It will include a commitment by Iran to allow commercial
shipping through the Strait of Hormuz unrestricted, no tolls, no harassment.
It will include a US commitment to negotiate over the
lifting of sanctions and the unfreezing of Iranian funds abroad.
It will include an Iranian commitment to negotiate on the
disposal of the highly enriched uranium Iran has and on
the future of its uranium enrichment program. US officials also
hope that some other articles in THEA, like a clause
that talks about committing to regional peace, will allow negotiations
on Iran's support two proxies around the region. The deal
was concluded already on Tuesday night, and the Rangers needed
to run this through their system. They did on Wednesday.
They told the US that they're ready to sign. That's
what the message of the mediators gave the US, and
then President Trump told the mediators that he wants a
few more days to think about it.
Speaker 1: So there's a lot in that that He kept referring
to the fact that everybody has agreed to negotiate this
negotiate that at first he said that the nuclear program,
that they were willing to stop the nuclear program in Iran,
but then the fact that they won't pursue the new program.
But then later he said that they will negotiate the
nuclear program and negotiate the enriched uranium and that Nego
will negotiate the sanctions and a cease fire for sixty
days during that time they negotiate this. I heard a
lot of They're going to negotiate a lot of stuff.
So it seems to me like this is both parties
looking for an off ramp to get out of this war.
Speaker 2: Yes, I think basically the haggling over the language has
concluded has been concluded. Now it's up to President Trump
just to give the final sign off. We have to
understand this deal. What it does immediately is only an
extension of the ceasefire, the starting the process of reopening
the street of Ormoves and launching negotiations on Iran's nuclear program.
This is a sort of This deal is sort of
like a path that allows both sides to go into
the room for direct negotiations on the issues that they
really care about, which is on the one hand, runs
and Richmond program, And it's a highly enriched uranium stockpile,
and on the other hand, US sanctions against Irandi. The
Iranians want to see lifted any runs frozen money, which
is tens of billions of dollars in bank accounts around
the world. So I think that this is sort of
we need to look at this memorandum of understanding as
a path for a more comprehensive deal. The negotiations will
be sixty days. They will be able to both sides
if they agree, they can extend it. But the practical
side of this memorandum of understanding is fairly limited. It's
extending the ceasefire and starting to starting to reopen the
Strait of Hormuz and launching talks on the nuclear program
regarding the Strait of Hormuz. According to the memorandov understanding,
within thirty days, Iran needs to remove all the minds
that it had deployed in the Strait of removes. The
faster the Iranians do that, the faster they take out
the mines, the faster that they stop restricting ships from moving,
the faster that the US removes its own naval blockade
that it has imposed on Iranian ports over the last
several weeks. US officials tell me that the more Iran does,
the more the US does. The faster Yuan does it,
the faster the US does it.
Speaker 1: This was the President yesterday at the Cabinet meeting, talking
about the fact that he's not in any hurry. Don't
think that I'm rushed in doing this. I don't care
about the midterms. Here's what he said.
Speaker 3: They thought they were going to outwait me. You know,
we'll outweait him. He's got the midterms. I don't care
about the midterms. So what happened last night I was
the prelude to the midterms. People understand that they know
that very simple, Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon. I'm
doing that for the world. I'm not doing it just
for us.
Speaker 2: Well, in the MoU, Iran will say it will commit
not to have a nuclear weapon.
Speaker 3: That doesn't mean much.
Speaker 2: Okay, The problem is not that Iran says that he
doesn't want to get a nuclear weapon. The problem is
how to make sure that in practical means that it
doesn't have the practical means to do it, meaning it
doesn't have an enrichment program and it doesn't have a
highly enriched uranium stock. Pile, and those things will not
be solved in this specific memorandum of understanding, but this
memorandum understanding will open negotiations that will allow to maybe
reach a deal on those issues. And what I hear
from you as officials is that they think that very quickly,
when they enter the negotiation room with the Iranians, they
will know if they Iranians are serious in addressing the
concerns about the nuclear program or not, and if they're not.
Those US officials told me we didn't really lose much
because we didn't give the Iranians anything other than a ceasefire,
and therefore this thing can always be reversed if we
figure out that the Iranians are not serious.
Speaker 1: Well, he's right, it could be reverse because there still
is a lot of negotiating to go. And then whoever
he was talking to about the fat we didn't really
give up anything other than a ceasefire. And yeah, there's
another sixty day cease fire after we've been in what
are we in week seven of the current ceasefire, So
it doesn't really change anything. And again the details unrestricted
straight up Hormuz shipping, no tolls. Iran removes the straight
minds within thirty days, the naval blockade by the US
will be lifted with conditions whatever that is, and pledges
no nuclear weapons. I'm sorry, I didn't mean the snicker.
They promised boys and girls that they won't do nukes.
They lie through their teeth. These are evil people. They're
the number one sponsor of terrorism in the world. And
we're going, oh, okay, all right, so there's your update
on the war and give it the president once a
couple of days. I think they're going to sign this
thing and get into diplomatic pablem and and people will
move on to other things. But it's not it's kicking
the Iran problem. The kicking, kicking the can down the road.
The next president, the next generation Iran's not going to stop.
They are wanting. That's their theocratic leaders. This is what
they want to do. They want to build a nuke
and destroy Israel and the Great Satan, which would be us.
All right, what else have we got going here? Oh?
A little bit of New York City news for you.
First of all, the mayor of New York City, the
Democrat socialist, has been making mocking doing bits that air
on commercials that he runs about making fun of rich
people in New York City. And so today he got
the New York City Council to pass a tax for
people that have a second home in New York City.
Pierre de Taire there is what a lot of people
call him, that there's wealthy people from all over the
world that keep an apartment here that they own, and
this is what they passed. And it just comes down to,
I know, there's a lot of people that for some reason,
and it's just jealousy, which is one of the old
seven deadly sins. The people don't like rich people, whoever
they might be. But this targets people who have luxury
real estate in New York City. Now, during the first
two years, the tax will be as follows. Condos. Now,
this is supposed to be for properties second homes valued
at five million or more. This is where once they
cracked this open, it will be they will start taxing
people with homes less than five million. For example, it
starts off that way. Condos and co ops valued between
one million and three million will be taxed at four percent.
Extra properties between three and five million five and a
quarter percent tax. Over five million six and a half
percent tax. So it's a way where they will eventually
bring it down to where they're just going to raise
the property taxes on everybody. So not only is that interesting,
but on the same exact day, I saw a story
that I've been semi following for those of you in Florida.
Governor DeSantis one of the last things he wants to
do is Florida to plan to increase the state's homestead exemption,
which would eliminate property taxes for more than ninety percent
of Florida residents who own their own homes. I know
the wealthy well that will still pay their taxes, but
for ninety percent of Floridians it will reduce if the
homestead exemption will go from fifty thousand to two hundred
and fifty thousand, and eventually double it to five hundred thousand.
So if you've got a property that's worth five hundred
thousand or less, you're not going to pay any property taxes.
Why do you think people are leaving New York and
going to Florida. Why do you think wealthy people that
have second homes here in New York are not going
to invest and they're going to leave? And then people
around the world thinking about investing in New York. No,
they'll go somewhere else. It's I don't understand somebody has
a second home in New York City that's wealthy. They
don't use very many city services. They don't take the bus,
they don't use they just don't use a lot of
taxpayer paid services. Yeah, the sidewalks on the roads and
all that sort of stuff. But they I don't know
why you want to shoe wealthy people away. They pay
a lot of the bill. So that's out of New
York and in Florida. And another idea which came up,
This is one that apparently Mark Wayne Mullen came up with.
And I like Mark Wayne Mullen. I know people make
fun of him. He's got a good old boy from
Oklahoma City and he's but he's smart as a whip.
He has built up a bunch of businesses that are
very successful from scratch. This is a smart man. So
now that he's head a department of Homeland Security, he's
trying to figure out what to do about about sanctuary
cities and sanctuary states. So he came up with this
idea that they were going to take away customs and
border patrol at international airports in Red States. Well, I
mean that's not going to build. No, that's not going
to happen. But if you think about it, the Red
States West coast, your international flights that come in start
up with Seattle, down to San Francisco, Los Angeles, San Diego, Oakland,
all of those are international airports. Go to the Midwest,
there's Chicago, Illinois, Nice, Sanctuary City and State. Go to
the east coast, Boston, Massachusetts, of course, Sanctuary, JFK, Newark
in New York, BWI, Baltimore, Washington in Baltimore. All of
those are Blue states. And the hotel industry is going
crazy about this. The airlines. You want to put some
more airlines out of business. That certainly hurt them because
they make most of their money on international flights. There's
about somewhere around a million people a day that fly
into our country from outside of the US, and that
means some US citizens returning, a bunch of foreign people
coming to the US for business or pleasure. But I
just what did the hotels, what did the airlines? What
did they do wrong? But they're the ones who are
going to get punished. So I like Mark Wayne mullen.
But I got to tell you, this is not an
idea that I am. I'm thinking, this doesn't make sense
to me.
Speaker 3: All right.
Speaker 1: Last night there was a big breaking news and a
lot of the cable networks were breathless about it. How
the Department of Justice has started an investigation into e
Jean Carroll, the woman that sued successfully twice Donald Trump
for sexual abuse and she won I think eight million
and then another eighty million. And what the DOJ is doing?
At first, you go, oh, boy, there he goes, There
goes Donald Trump. He's off on his on his retribution campaign.
He said he was going to do retribution. But I
mean you got Letitia James, James Comy twice, John Bolton Brennan,
I mean you get on the list of there's a
whole bunch of people that he's going after. So you think, oh,
don't don't abuse the DOJ on something like this. So
a lot of people on the left are absolutely disgusted. However,
David Urban is a big Republican guy, and he brought
up an interesting point and I wanted to play it
for you because a lot of people are thinking, oh,
Donald Trump and his retribution thing, doesn't sound good. But
here's David Urban with the other side of the story.
Speaker 4: I think that they've got a lot of things to
focus on. But I would just ask Norm. I'm not
sure the statute of limitations is on perjury, but did
she perjure herself or not?
Speaker 1: Norm?
Speaker 4: In this case, it seems to me she clearly perjured herself.
You can ask your colleague who solicited her. I think
your colleague at George Conway, who who your associate with
now solicited Ms Carroll to bring the suit and then
help set her up with reed Hoffman. When she was
being deposed, she denied that she was, that she knew
that she was, or she didn't deny. She denied having
any funding for it, and then later admitted she she
was getting the third party funding for it. So I'm
not quite sure what's so outrageous about, you know, someone
who persues himself in a very serious proceeding now being
looked at by DOJ for a criminal price. Yeah, so
so I'm happy to answer. Unlike Norm, I'm not gonna
filibuster you here. I don't think it's weird. I think
Norm loses all credibility when when he just can't admit
if somebody perjures himself. This wasn't a small thing about
like it was a Tuesday versus a Wednesday. This was material.
You heard Ellie before say did she know it was false? Yes,
she knew was false. Wasn't material, Yes, she knew his material.
All these things are going to be proven out. Listen,
it's who was funding your lawsuit? Who funded this? That's
not something that just just she forgot conveniently. So I
don't think. But if those things are true, I'm not
quite sure why they weren't prosecuted before.
Speaker 3: They should have been prosecuted.
Speaker 4: If you lie under oath in a deposition, the Department
of Justice will prosecute. Ask Mike Flynn, right, Ask Mike
Flynn about that, Ask you know, ask you know, uh,
numerous people who've gone to jail for perjury.
Speaker 3: It happens.
Speaker 4: Norm is being disingenuously because it doesn't admit in his
thirty five years of being a criminal prosecutor, he hasn't
seen it happen. So do I think it's the best.
Speaker 1: Preferring the Norm he was on opposite Norm Iisen, who's
a big left e Democrat lawyer. But David Urban has
a very good point. E. Gene Carroll was asked, do
you have any funding from anybody for this lawsuit that
you're bringing against Donald Trump? And she said no. And
the answer is Reid Hoffman, who was a billionaire and
big lefty supports all kinds of democratic causes, and he
supported her bringing her lawsuit many many, many many years
before accusing Donald Trump of sexual assault. Reid Hoffman put
up the money so she could sue him, and she
was successful in the lawsuit twice for not for sexual assault,
but for disparaging her you know, defamation. That is what
she claimed, and that is what the jury said. Yep,
he depained you. So here's eighty eight million dollars. At
most media went crazy because of the fact that Donald
Trump is using the Department of Justice, they say, to
go after his enemies, anybody that he perceives has wronged him.
And so it was at first an eye roller, but
then David Urban, smart guy, said, wait a minute, she lied,
And I think, sadly, I think people lie in court
all the time, but nobody ever prosecutes them for it.
So if you're going to take on the president of
the United States, you better make sure that your ducks
are lined up perfectly in a row. What's also fascinating
is that you've got this billionaire Democrat who was willing
to put up a lot of money in order to
go after Donald Trump. They hate him so much. He
was willing to fund this woman's lawsuit about an accusation
that took place decades before. Now the other side of this,
Elliott Williams, former federal prosecutor. He was asked about it,
and he says, this case probably won't go anywhere.
Speaker 5: It's very low to launch an investigation, and I wouldn't
even use the term launch, I would say open an investigation.
They simply have to have even just an inference that
some criminal activity has happened. Now, again, that's just the
preliminary step. We're not talking about charges here, or indictments
or grand juries. They can open an investigation into anything,
and quite frankly, this Justice Department has made clear that
they're willing to do so in what's say abusive manner
for people that are opponents of the president.
Speaker 1: So the question was asked, is there anything that E.
Gene Carroll can do at this point?
Speaker 5: Well, at the moment, really none, only because you know
what we have is reporting from CNN that an investigation
has been open. Now, if in fact she ends up
charged or induided with the crime, she can certainly move
to dismiss that on the basis that one she can
say that it's political prosecution and as others have done
with respect to this Justice Department as president, but also
that the evidence is Then the mere fact that there
is a false statement made is not itself enough to
sustain a perjury conviction. Does Justice Vart would have to
prove that she knowingly made the statement with an intended deceive,
And she may just come into court right when that
indictment is filed and say that, look, this indictment is
so thin and on such shaky ground, your honor, that
it ought to be dismissed.
Speaker 1: So it's probably not going anywhere. But I thought it
was interesting because everybody was apoplectic about the fact that
the president's using the DOJ to go after Ejen Carroll,
and yet she apparently lied about the fact that nobody
funded her lawsuit. I still am blown away by the
fact that there are billionaires willing to put on or
they're saying you, if you've got something that you can sue.
Donald Trump on I'll pay for your lawyers centrally. What happened?
We got some economic news out today, the whole slug
of different stuff that I've talked about this before, the PCE.
The Personal Consumption Expenditure Index. I know, it's a mouthful.
It's one that Alan Greenspan identified many years ago and
it has stayed as one of the favorite indexes that
the FED uses to judge inflation because it's about not
a basket of consumer price index that has all kinds
of things in it, this is personal consumption things that
you actually buy. Well for the month of April, guess what,
up three point eight percent year over year. Three point
eight that's the highest inflation rate on this index in
three years. A year ago it was two point three.
Now it's three point eight, so it's up one and
a half percent in one year. The core was up
three point three percent. Another report out about I'll give
this to you, durable good orders were up seven point
nine percent. That sounds great, except for durable goods are
things that are supposed to last three years or longer. Washers, dryers, refrigerators, airplanes.
So if Boeing sells a bunch of airplanes, it distorts
this up a bunch, So that's it's interesting, but I
don't put a lot of weight into it. First time
jobless claims last week two hundred and fifteen thousand. It's
about where it's been now for weeks.
Speaker 3: On end.
Speaker 1: Personal income was expected to go up. It did not.
It did not go down either, remained unchanged, and that
is a negative because costs are going up but income
not going up. Personal spending was up a half a
percent in April. The savings rate for people, how much
of the paycheck did they save two point six percent?
That very close to historical lows. New home sales down
six point two percent, meeting in price of a new
home four hundred and twenty two thousand dollars. So we've
also got kind of a weird story from from CBS.
I think it was on their Sunday morning program and
it's getting a lot of publicity. Jill Biden, doctor Jill sorry,
was being interviewed and was asked about what did you
think when you saw your husband on the debate stage
with Donald Trump and he had that meltdown? What were
you thinking? And her answer is getting a lot of
pushback here.
Speaker 6: It is were you horrified as you saw it unfold.
I wasn't horrified. I was frightened because I had never
ever seen Joe like that before or since. Never since, yes,
or never seen him never?
Speaker 3: No, why happened.
Speaker 6: I don't know what happened. I mean when as I
watched it, I thought, oh my god, he's having a
stroke and it scared me to death.
Speaker 1: So a lot of people, even the reporter at CBS said,
you've never seen since, because all of us saw that
he was having problems way before the debate and certainly afterward.
So either Jill is like the blind wife that ignores reality,
or she's just covering up she doesn't want to admit it.
But Alex Thompson, he and Jake Tapper interviewed over two
hundred people that worked at the White House about Joe
after the election, was after Donald Trump was reelected, and
they came out with this book, so they have a
lot of sources about people who talked about what they
saw with Joe Biden. So Alex Thompson was the co
author along with Jake Tapper.
Speaker 3: Here's Alex Well.
Speaker 7: She says that she's never seen him act that way
before since, But in the interviews, that over two hundred
of which that Jake and I did. Other people did
see him act like that in the months before and
in the months after that, and those moments became increasingly
hard to predict, and the White House was increasingly trying
to manage them to keep those moments out of public view,
and eventually, you know, during the debate they could no
longer hide those moments from the public. I'd also say
that what she just said there is very much at
odds with what many of Biden's top aides said at
the time and have said, you know since the twenty
twenty four election, which is they didn't think they was
that bad, and they think they thought the Democratic Party
way overreacted. They certainly didn't think that he was having
a stroke at the time, and they thought it was
you know, he was clearly trying to say big pharma
and instead of beat medicare, and that this was a whole,
you know, tempest in a teapot overreaction. But Jill Biden
is now saying that at the time, when she was watching,
she thought her husband, the Prais of the United States,
was having a stroke. And then also later that night
spoke at a rally in which she praised his performance,
then also did an event right afterward at a restaurant,
and then also let him go into a rally the
next day in North Carolina. That seems to be a
little bit at odds with her level of worry.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't know. Maybe there's a human condition where
we absolutely do not want to wreckon eyes something that's
clearly in front of us. His staff that thought that
it was way overblown and wasn't that big of a deal.
Oh it was a big deal. It was a shocker
for anybody who saw it. If you saw it, you remember.
And I still think that doctor Jill was the one
who tried to keep him in for her own grandeur,
and as a result, he stayed in too long, did
not give the Democrats a chance to have primaries. The
appointed Kamala Harris, and well we know that that turned
out to be a disaster. So Jamie Gangal, she's been
a correspondent with She was of NBC for a long time.
She's now with CNN, and this is her reaction to
doctor Jill.
Speaker 8: A couple of things. It is true that that debate
moment was striking. We have never seen anything like that before,
but it wasn't in a vacuum. We had all been
watching Joe Biden for quite some time in public, not
looking his age, not looking quite right. The other thing
that I find interesting, just to go back in time,
is the Sunday after this, you'll tell me the event
the family, the Biden family gets together, and there's a
lot of talk in the party that Biden is going
to step aside and drop out, and instead they come
out and they say he's staying in. So it's again
hard to match her reaction to that to the fact
that they then stayed in.
Speaker 1: So part of the whole interview was because doctor Jill
has a book coming out, and so it was a
promotion effort on her part. It's sad to see because
I think we all saw it with our own eyes
what actually happened. All right, one more little bit. The
President said that he is thinking about coming to a
game at the garden at Madison Square Garden. The Knits
are in the NBA playoffs for the first time, well
since nineteen ninety nine they were in the playoffs. The
last time they won was in nineteen seventy three. So
the President said he wants to he's thinking about coming
to Madison Square Garden for one of the games. And
the problem with the garden is there's no luxury skybox.
They're just out there, so security wise, it's going to
be something else. But he's still I know he moved
to Florida, but he's still in New Yorker. And this
is what he said at the cabinet meeting yesterday.
Speaker 3: I think I'll be going to one of the games.
I was invited by numerous people and Jim and I
think I'll be gone.
Speaker 1: Well if he does go, I mean, he got a
lot of rave reviews about the fact that he got
like thirty some percent of the vote from New York,
which obviously Kamala Harris won New York by a big margin,
but that was much better than any Republican has done
in a long time. But still most New Yorkers they
don't like him. So I'm thinking, if he's going to go,
I'm presuming there will be a bunch of bronx cheers,
if you will, in other words, a bunch of booze.
So they asked the Governor, Kathy Hokel about this, and
she tried.
Speaker 9: Etaner, what do you make of President Tom Wane to
come to Gay Finals and the Nicks are possibly playing,
Do you think you could go?
Speaker 10: And you would also say hun no.
Speaker 9: What do you think of Keim saying he's a night
of a lifelong nient. I think that's how the Times
subborted it.
Speaker 10: I asked him to name the starting lineup from nineteen
ninety three championship team and see how he does. If
the President wants to come to a championship game in
New York City, I suspect he'll also be a World
Cup events. I mean he comes to the fights. It
doesn't affect what I do. My job is a Keith
New Yorker is safe and you know, celebrates the extraordinary
teams that we are blessed to have and here in
the city on New York. So I don't see any
problem with him coming.
Speaker 1: She referred to the nineteen ninety three championship team. Problem
is nineteen ninety three. It was the Chicago Bulls versus
the Phoenix Suns. Michael Jordan was still playing for Chicago,
Charles Barkley was still playing for Phoenix. That was nineteen
ninety three, and Chicago won the championship that year. Last
time the Knicks won the championship was in nineteen seventy three.
They beat the Los Angeles Lakers. So the governor tribe
she got her dates kind of mixed up a little bit. Well,
we have Wall Street to take a look at. And
with all the as we let off the podcast today,
with all the news about the fact there may be
some sort of wink wink breakthrough, how did the markets
react to all of that? And while they were the
Dow was way down this morning, and so they did
come up to about break even, and that's kind of
where they finished the day. The Dow was up twenty
four to close, the fifty thousand, six sixty eight SMP up,
forty three, NAS deck up two hundred and forty two,
the price of gold up eighty one dollars to four
thousand and five twenty nine, and oil, despite all the
news about the Middle East, up just almost a dollar
higher to eighty nine dollars for one barrel of West
Texas Intermediate Crew. So that's it for today. Thank you
for coming by. We'll be back again tomorrow. I hope
to see you then tomorrow. I hope to see you
then