Speaker 1: And welcome one and all. How are you welcome to
the Big podcast? Is Thursday. Today is the eleventh day
of June, year of although twenty twenty six. My name
is Tom Sullivan. And forgive me, but I've got a whiplash. Yes,
I have a whiplash. We had everything all lined up
for the podcast today and then lo and behold, we
got news out of the White House that things regarding
Iran have drastically, drastically changed. We were expecting. Well, last
night the President did authorize limited bombing in Iran. So
the military strikes began again last night and earlier today.
The President said, yep, we're going to go back and
bomb them again, even worse than ever. We're going to
bomb the bleep out of them. So he was talking
tough right up until about one thirty this afternoon, and
all of a sudden, out of nowhere, the President put
out a true social that read as follows. He writes,
based on the fact that discussions with the Islamic Republic
of Iran have been brought to the highest level of
Iranian leadership and approved, I have, as President of the
United States of America, canceled the scheduled strikes and bombings
against Iran. This evening. Discussions and final points have been
in both concept and great detail approved by all parties involved,
including the United States, Israel, Saudi Arabia, UAE Guitar, Turkey, Pakistan, Bahrain, Kuwait, Jordan, Egypt,
and others. The naval blockade will remain in full force
an effect until this transaction is finalized. Time and place
of the signing to be announced shortly. I told you whiplash,
he was talking earlier today. Let me let me let
me play this for you. This was from mid morning.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there will be more bombing tonight. It'll be a bigger, bigger,
more powerful. Don't forget. We've knocked out all of their
anti aircraft. They don't have any anti nothing. I mean
they may get lucky with the shoulder weapon or something,
but for the most part, you know, they have no
they have no defense.
Speaker 1: What are the representatives saying, your phone call the excuse
me have finished, but the papers the media refuses to
write it.
Speaker 2: They have finished. We can walk in there tomorrow. We
could take soldiers. I don't want to have foods on
the ground, but if I wanted to, we could put
a small group of soldiers and take over the whole place.
They have finished.
Speaker 1: That was mid morning. We're gonna bomb them, and bombing
even more, and there was some other profane language that
we won't we'll skip over, but more bombing tonight. They're finished.
In the media, blame the media. They're not writing about this.
Let me just put it this way. It was more
than a surprise. Everybody's jaw dropped when we got the
true social about the fact that he's canceled the scheduled
strikes and bombings against Iran this evening, that all the
final points have been in details have been agreed to
by all parties, and that the time and place of
the signing to be announced shortly. So, now, what do
you think. I don't know if you're four the using
the military. I've said yesterday, I've said it for many,
many days. The fact that it takes diplomatic pressure, it
takes economic pressure, and it takes military pressure. And the
President for some reason, keeps broadcasting what we're going to do.
I wasn't ever in any high level of the United
States Army, but I do. You never tell the enemy
what you're going to do. And yet every day he
would come out and say this is what we're going
to do, or this is what we're not going to do.
So I am baffled by this. Let me start with
leon Panetta. Leon Panetta was the Defense Secretary, he was
a chief of staff in the White House. He was
the head of the intelligence of our country. He's been
around Washington for a long time and he knows where
all the where the ropes are. Here's Panana.
Speaker 3: Well, you know, this has been the most screwed upset
of negotiations I've ever seen when it comes to trying
to end a war. These negotiations have been going on
in the dark. We've been going through intermediaries with Pakistan
and Katar and others, and they've exchanged one sheet documents
to try to summarize some kind of framework. But there
really is no hard line negotiations going on between the parties.
They're kind of, you know, sending signal one way or another,
but you're not looking at each other in the eye,
and so you're not really negotiating what you're hoping for.
And I think this is the problem. I think what
you're hoping for is that the other side is willing
to blink and compromise, And I think that's what Iran's
hoping from the United States, and I think that's what
the United States is hoping from Iran, and that's why, frankly,
these negotiations have gone nowhere. I'd be very surprised if
what the President says today in fact happens.
Speaker 1: He's not alone. I'd be very surprised as well. Let
me go back to this cruse social where he goes
through this whole thing. Back down near the bottom of it,
it says the naval blockade will remain in full force
and effect until this transaction is finalized. He views this
as a transaction, a real estate deal. So was in
one of his interviews this morning, this is before he
changed his mind. He was talking about the fact that
he said the American people, Yeah, let me pull up
the quote so I get it right. He said, the
American people don't have the stomach for an invasion of Iran.
He was talking about he had an idea about going
into carg Island and taking that hold on because we
got some oil, at which you say, that's ridiculous, it'd
be make no sense whatsoever. But that's what he was
talking about. And I think what he was doing was projecting,
projecting his own real thoughts that he doesn't have the
stomach for it. It appears that way that he doesn't.
Now I'm sure some of you don't either, but there's
a lot of people that do. Would say, let's just
go and take down the regime, let's finish the job.
But he doesn't seem to have the stomach for it.
David Sanger talked about this big switch ru in the
fact that the president, for one reason or another, he
is fixated on how long it took in Vietnam, and
how long it took in Afghanistan, and how wonderful everything
in Venezuela went.
Speaker 4: The presidents compared the Iran conflict to Venezuela consistently since
it started in late February, and it's an analogy that
I think we've learned time and again simply doesn't apply.
Ven azuel as a small country of a few million people,
fairly contained in size. Oil resources are in a fairly
contained area that we know well. Iran's a country of
ninety three million people, a vast country, and the idea
that the US could go in and control that infrastructure
without having people on the ground, it's hard to imagine
as for Cargo Island, telegraphing this seems strange. Imagine if
CNN or at the New York Times had written They'll
take Carg Island in the next next number of hours,
probably some government would charge us with violating American national security.
So there is some question about how seriously to take this,
in part because while the United States could grab Carg Island,
holding it would be very difficult, and the Iranians could
easily cut off the oil supply that is going to
Carg Island.
Speaker 5: Right now.
Speaker 4: The President's and original classifier, which means he can declassify
and say anything he wants. But certainly, if he's serious
about taking Carg Island, it seems like he may have
made life more difficult and perhaps jeopardized the operation. If
he isn't serious about it, well then he will have
made a claim that the Iranians would conclude was not
in in fact viable. And you know, the whole thing
is is underscored by this concept that if you threaten
the Iranians, you will get an agreement more quickly, or
if you bomb them, you will And he tried that
experiment for thirty eight days and it did not actually
result in making much progress in the negotiations. We reported
the other day the details of where those negotiations now stand,
and while certainly they have not closed up everything, it's
not as if they've made no progress at all.
Speaker 1: So the talk about carg Island and we all have
learned by now, and that's the terminal area where all
of the oil from Iran gets unloaded onto ship or
loaded on ships. Bob McNally is an oil expert, highly
regarded oil expert. Rapidan is his company, and he was
asked about that situation.
Speaker 6: Now it has there being more public about it now.
They had initially wanted to keep it quiet to avoid
attracting Iranian fire. But over recent weeks in June, we've
seen this. The ship trackers have seen this. The US
is shepherding out sometimes over twenty ships a day through
an Omani channel. They're hugging the Omani coast oil. And
they're prioritizing very large crew carriers we call them VLCC,
so the big boats with lots of oil, and that
is increasing the trickle into a small stream of oil
coming out of Horrmus and it's good news.
Speaker 1: I think.
Speaker 6: Now we're seeing more press supporting of it. They want
the world to know it and it's happening. It's a
good thing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this is one of the comments of President made
earlier about carg Island.
Speaker 2: Look, my preference has always been take carg Island, I said.
My preference would be that I don't know that America
has the stomach for it. To be honest with eat Well.
Speaker 6: I think if we seized carg Island, we would have
a general escalation in violence Iran. We go back to
hit critical infrastructure in neighboring countries, attacking ships and hormus,
and we would do the same against it. So we
just have a big price increase. I don't know of
a military expert who believes we need to seize carg Island.
We are already blocking the oil that comes from carg Island,
so Iran's getting no benefit from that, and seizing it,
I'm not sure with the benefit. There are smaller islands
that we would want to seize if we want to
prevent Iran from threatening those ships. They have assets, radars
and so forth. But carg Island, I'm not sure what
the benefit is there.
Speaker 1: So Bob mcdally is the expert, and he says there's
not a military expert that he ever talked to who
sees the benefit of taking carg Island. But there is
another serious problem. We talked about it yesterday. That's the
world's oil inventory, including our own strategic petroleum reserve. They're
running low, and if this continues on for much longer,
we're going to have a big price spike.
Speaker 7: Out barrels for thirty five years.
Speaker 6: I've never seen a time in my career where just
about every oil analyst I know, whether it's the oil
companies you mentioned Exon Chevron, every analyst I know. My team,
we predict and forecast. If this continues this summer, we
will see very low inventories, which will require very high
oil prices. It is a train wreck heading our way
if we can't get Hormuz open soon.
Speaker 1: So when you talk about very soon, how much time
do we have to get that straight open before the
price is spike up.
Speaker 6: That needs to happen right about now. Our base case
is we start the flows in July. There'll be a
ramp up of several months. I think if the market
sees that coming, we still may have a bump in
prices because we're going to dig into those inventories in
July and August. But I think you'd see a peak
worst case if we go into the fall and Hormuz
is basically shut or down to about ten percent or so,
then I think we're going to see much much higher prices.
So the good news needs to come here very soon,
coming weeks.
Speaker 1: There's no question the President is feeling pressure, and the
pressure is is to not let those prices spike. He
doesn't want anything like that to happen. David Drucker, longtime
Washington observer, reacts to this whole idea that all of
a sudden, the President has done a one to eighty
and canceled everything regarding bombings. And guess what, there's an
agreement that everybody has signed on to. Well they haven't
signed on yet, but they've agreed to.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 8: Well, you really can't handle this kind of messaging because
it's so unpredictable. But look, it's kind of like groundhog Day, right,
I mean, how many times we've been here before the
President either strikes or on order strikes or threatened strikes.
Then he pulls back and says we're on the cusp
of a deal. At certain points he says we actually
have a deal. Then we find out we either don't
have a deal or we don't have a deal that's
acceptable to Republicans on Capitol Hill, even though it may
be acceptable to President Trump. And so I think gonna
have to wait and see here what we're actually dealing with.
And I think given the pattern, it's simply impossible to know. Look,
the President had a real opportunity, at least with Republicans
writ large, to really gather a lot of support for
the war in Iran. It's something a lot of Republicans
looked favorably on. Even though elements of the President's base
were attracted to his no new warst promise, many other
Republican voters have bought Iran a menace, and there was
a really good case to make for US military action.
The President never made that case. He never involved anyone
on Capitol Hill. Not Democrats obviously, but not Republicans either,
Nor did he involve our allies. And that's why, ultimately
he's been alone on an island here trying to find
a way to extricate himself in some sense, to be
able to say what I've established now is better than
what President Obama established so in a way that does
not cause further political erosion. And the one thing we
could do that we haven't is launch more of a
full scale land invasion to take control of certain parts
of Iran. That is the sort of thing that my
sources have told me for months would cause a further
political problems with the Republican base and the Republican Party
and leading into an election. It's simply knock something the
president has been willing to do.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's always stuck. I mean, people get mad about quagmire,
but this is really the definition of a quagmire. Justin Wolfers,
he's an economist, professor of economics at the University of Michigan.
He's been keeping track of how many times the president
keeps flipping back and forth.
Speaker 9: David Drekker asked, how many times have we seen this
why the president leans in says we've got to bum
you tonight, and then pulls back. The answer is five
times so far, just over the past few weeks. In fact,
I was looking, and so far during this war, the
President has come up at a minimum thirty eight separate
times and told the American people that were on a
cusp of a deal with a run. So today, happy
thirty ninth and given that track record, it makes it
doubly hard for any of us to know what to do.
It's clear that the president has been wrong thirty eight
times in a row, and the question is he's going
to be right the thirty ninth time. So when you're
seeing stocks rise on this news, it's actually been the
most persistent pattern was seen through the war, which is
every time the president de escalates, American stocks rise, and
notice they're even rising despite its a de escalation from
a bloke who you know only sometimes tends to mean
what he actually says.
Speaker 1: And the same happens today. The markets took off on
the idea that me, oh, this is it. This is
now for the thirty nine time we've heard this, but
this time it just may be true. So let's go
ahead and stock market rallies on that kind of news.
So while we're recording this podcast, the President decides to
have one of his Oval Office meetings with the pack
of reporters, and I thought it was important to pull
this out of his comments because they asked him specifically
about are you sure that this deal is gonna gonna stick?
Speaker 10: On iran Ah mister President on Iran, how confident are
you that there will be a signing this weekend because
you have come close to sealing a deal that at
the last minute it has fallen out.
Speaker 5: And it'll be it'll be soon, maybe this weekend.
Speaker 10: And has the Supreme Leader approved this deal, sir.
Speaker 5: I understand the issues.
Speaker 10: Yes, And when the and when the steal is signed,
is the United States going to immediately lift the blockade?
Speaker 11: Yes, that's true, that's part of the deal. And just
want to have oil prices dropping like a rock.
Speaker 10: And so have you actually secured an agreement on the
discussions about the nuclear material and the nuclear negotiation?
Speaker 11: Yeah, actually on that and nobody's getting close to it
because it's buried under a mountain.
Speaker 5: Basically, this would be two bombers and will not have
a nuclear weapon.
Speaker 11: They've agreed to that there will be no which is
the whole reason, which is a big part of the
reason agreements. They will not only not have they will
not purchase develop in any way any shape, in any way,
shape or form a nuclear weapon.
Speaker 5: They will not have a nuclear weapons.
Speaker 1: Right, So that was the guts of the Oval Office
meeting with the media, and they pinned them down and
said are you sure. He goes absolutely, Well, when are
you going to sign it? Maybe this weekend? Conceptual agreement
on nuclear arms, but he says they definitely won't have them.
But that's the latest, And it was a it was
a big surprise mid afternoon when we went from the
going to bomb a more tonight, We're going to bomb
the bleep out of them, to oh, we have an
agreement and everybody is ready to sign it. So that
wasn't the only announcement from the President today. We also
found out that the President has decided to nominate for
the office of Director of National Intelligence Jay Clayton, who
is the current US Attorney at the Southern Distinct of
New York. That is by far the most prestigious US
Attorney's office in the country. They handle a lot of terrorism,
they handle a lot of international counter terrorism issues and
everything else. But Jay Clayton doesn't really have a direct
background in national intelligence. Before before heading up the US
Attorney's office in New York, he was the Securities and
Exchange Commission Chairman in Trump one point zero. So why
this came about today, Well, there's another issue that is
expiring tonight, and that is the FISA Act, and the
FISA is the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, and this is
expiring at midnight tonight, and it's important to keep this.
It's specifically what they call seven h two. It allows
the US to do electronic surveillance on foreign targets outside
of the United States. It is one of our nation's
most vital intelligence gathering tools. And the Republicans in the
Senate said, we're not going to approve this, and the
Democrats certainly are not going to because of the fact
that you want to put Bill Poulty in as the
head of the Director of National Intelligence, and Poulty is
a political hatchet man, and we're not going to have that.
This is a very important position. A lot of people
suspicious that the President picked Bill Poulty because he wanted
Bill Poulty to go dig through the intelligence records to
find something that would say that the twenty twenty election
was rigged. So does this mean that Poulty's out. Well,
Poulty apparently called Tulsey Gabbert today and said, I know
you said you stick around till the end of the month,
but let's put it this way, move your stuff out today,
get out of the office today, and that's kind of
the reputation Bill Polti has. He's a hardball guy. So
all of a sudden, the President comes out and says, oh,
I'm I'm nominating Jay Clayton to be the head of
the Director of National Intelligence. So where this leaves Bill Pulty.
I don't know at this moment, But will this now
all of a sudden, will the Congress rush around this
afternoon and try and pass the Fice Act? I doubt it.
It's a it's very hot on the East Coast today,
and they don't work Fridays, and there's a lot of
members of the Senate and the House that have already
they're over at the airport kitchen flights home. So Ellie Honig,
who was one of the members of the Southern District
of New York Prosecutor's office, weighed in on just exactly
who Jay Clayton is.
Speaker 3: Well.
Speaker 12: J Clayton certainly has more national security expertise than Bill Poulty,
but still not a lot in the grand scheme of things.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 12: Jake Clayton, as you said, is the US attorney right
now for the Southern District of New York my former office.
But Before that, the thirty years of his legal career
were primarily spent either as an associate or a partner
at a big Manhattan law firm where he was doing
primarily corporate deals and that type of thing. And in
twenty seventeen he became the chair of the SEC the
Securities and Exchange Commission, where he was involved with regulating
the markets and financial transactions. So his only real experience
in the national security area comes over the last year
when he was a US attorney at the Southern District
of New York. Now that said, if you're going to
get experience in terrorism cases and national security cases, the
SDNY is probably the single best US Attorney's office in
the country to do that, because the SDNY specializes in
those areas, has long brought cases involving terrorist attacks, international
and domestic terrorist organizations, and indeed J. Clayin has overseen
some investigations and prosecutions of that nature during his time
as US attorney over the past year.
Speaker 1: One of the things that came out from the President
after he nominated Bill Poulty to be the temporary Director
of National Intelligence was he he was very open about it.
He said he wanted Poulty to go in and start
firing a lot of people in the national intelligence agencies,
and that is what Poulty is good at, is chopping heads.
So Ellie was asked about, Well, I think Jay Clayton's
going to go in and fire a bunch of people
in intelligence branches.
Speaker 12: Certainly, with regard to firings, he will have the power
to fire whoever he wants or whoever the President tells
him to. Jake Clayton, though, I think, is different than
Bill Poulty when it comes to his level of political
loyalty to Donald Trump. Bill Pulty was a twenty twenty
election denier. Bill Poulty wasn't over the top pro Trump
political partisan.
Speaker 5: Jay Clayton certainly is a Trump person.
Speaker 12: He was nominated both to his SEC job and now
to the US Attorney job by Donald Trump. So he
does have that sort of typical amount of allegiance to
Donald Trump. But he does not appear to be a
frothing partisan. He does not appear to be somebody who
has espoused false conspiracy theory. So I think there's a
difference in kind here between j Clayton and Bill Pulty.
Speaker 1: So again, trying to figure out Jake Clayton's role and
how his background would fit over at the Director of
National Intel Diligence. Larry Pfeiffer was the chief of staff
to a former Director of National Intelligence, so he's got
years inside the d and i's office, and this is
his reaction.
Speaker 7: For those of us who are veterans of the intel community,
the name really meant almost nothing to me. I had
to scramble a little bit to look him up and
see get reminded about the posts he's held and the
career he's had. My initial thoughts series, I don't know
if this scratches the itch of concern on the part
of those who criticize the faulty nomination. Clayton comes to
the job as well without extensive national security experience, which
is what the law requires. In addition, it appears through
his career in the financial world he's got some pretty
interesting ties in the past to Chinese firms that are
of some concern to the US. To Russian firms as well.
I think he helped a Swedish firm acquire some Russian
firms at one point, and then just the other day
he was on the television jumping into the fray on
election denialism and promoting unfounded conspiracies about election fraud and
lack of integrity in California, for example. So I imagine there'll
be some who will applaud him as a better choice
than Pulty, but I think the jury's still out on
those who strongly opposed Pulty how they'll feel.
Speaker 1: Well, I saw that interview on CNBC Jay Clayton. He
did not try to push conspiracy theories. He said with
the delays that everybody was asking about that California takes
so long that it could lead to conspiracy theories. And
that's exactly what I said as well, is that when
you have these open ended, not finished up election results
and they're just kind of hanging out there, you get
all kinds of conspiracy theorists. And that's all Jay Clayton said.
So he doesn't have an extensive intelligence background, So we'll
see where this goes with the Senate that has to
approve him. And then finally, as we're recording this podcast,
we're running late today, but Senator John Kennedy was asked
about the flip from We're going to bomb the bleep
out of them tonight to guess what we have an agreement,
and Kennedy was asked, what do you make of that?
Speaker 13: I want to read it. I listened to the presidence interpretation.
I appreciate that he's there. I'm not, but I trust.
I trust the leadership political leadership in Iran like I
trust a rush stop bathroom. They they're not rational people,
so like dealing with Charlie Mansion Mansion, they all think
they're on a mission from God. They learned alive before
they learned to talk. Uh do I believe even if
they put it in writing that they will never attempt
to develop a nuclear warhead? Note, So the balances and
the checks in this document are going to matter. I
also want to know how much money we're releasing to
a Ron the blockade. I know this from both classified
and unclassified information. That blockade is hurting them. It's hurting
the the the military, and the elite, but it's also
hurting the people. And they're desperate for cash. And I
want to if all we get in reach turn for
if I would get in return for giving them some
of the money is their promises. I'm not saying that's
the case, but that's going to get my attention. Look,
I hope the President's right, He's worked hard on this.
It sounds like good news, But how can I put this?
I played poker every now and then with my friends,
but they are all my friends, but I cut the
cards every single mile. I want to read this document.
Speaker 1: There's a reaction from a little boy, John Kennedy from Louisiana.
So Wall Street today also did a lot of flipping,
if you will. This actually started off positive this morning,
which was nice to see it as a rebound, if
you will, from yesterday's nine hundred then some point drop
nine hundred and fifty three points down yesterday, So today
it was up, not a lot, but it was up.
And then when the President came out and said that
an agreement has been reached with Iran and that the
bombing had been canceled, the market took off and the
Dow finished up nine hundred and twenty nine. That's just
the reverse of yesterday at fifty thousand and eight forty five.
The SMP went up one hundred twenty seven, the Nasdaq
Big rally up six hundred and forty. Part of that
is the tech stocks are all excited because tomorrow SpaceX
goes public, and so a lot of interest in what's
going on in the tech world. Price of gold up
one hundred two dollars to four thousand and two thirty five,
and oil president said, dropped like a rocket. It went down.
It wasn't like a rock. But we'll see more importantly
what happens in the next twenty four hours or maybe
over the weekend, to see what happens to oil. But
down three dollars eighty closing it eighty six dollars and
some change for a barrel of oil today. So that's
it for today. I appreciate you coming by. We have
a lot of changes during the day to day. We'll
see what tomorrow brings. I hope to see you then.