Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome to the Big Podcast on this Thursday.
Today is the ninth day of April, Year of Our Lord,
twenty twenty six. My name is Tom Sullivan, and well,
we have a little different start to things. We've been
doing so much about the war, the war and more
about the war. But we had a surprise just a
little while ago, just before we started recording. I got
noticed earlier today all the media did. We got to
notice that Milania Trump was going to be coming out
at the White House and making some statement in the
White House at two o'clock in the afternoon. And I thought, well,
nobody's going to take it. It's going to be probably
something about a garden party or about some effort to
help unfortunate children, something along those lines. But instead, holy moly,
Milania Trump came out and laid into people that are
making up lies and fake images of her with Jeffrey Epstein.
She puts the Epstein story smack dab on top of
the news cycle today. And I know the President wants
to get rid of the story. But she came out
and she was very no, she wasn't emotional about it,
she wasn't angry about it. She just said these lies
and images have got to stop, and she called for
congressional hearings. I mean it was startling because you don't
expect something like that from the first lady talking about
a garden club or something they're going to do with
the White House. So I thought we'd start today with
Malania's statement. It's about two minutes long, and here she.
Speaker 2: Is Chris for Jeffrey Epstein need to end today. The
individuals lying about me are devoid of ethical standards, humility,
and respect. I do not object to their ignorance, but
rather I reject their mean spirited attempts to defame my reputation.
I never been friends with Epstein. Donald and I were
invited to the same parties as Epstein from time to time,
since overlapping in social circles is common in New York
City and Palmvich. To be clear, I never had a
relationship with Epstein or his accomplice Maxwell. My email reply
to Maxwell cannot be catorist as anything more than casual correspondence.
My polite reply to her email doesn't amount to anything
more than a tribal note. I am not Epstein's victim.
Epstein did not introduce me to Donald Trump. I met
my husband by chance at the New York City Party
in nineteen ninety eight. This initial encounter with my husband
is documented in a detail in my book Millennia. The
first time I crossed paths with Epstein was in the
year two thousand, at an event Donald and I attended together.
At the time, I had never met Epstein and had
no knowledge of his criminal undertakings. Numerous fake images and
statements about Epstein and me have been calculating on social
media for years now. Be cautious about what you believe.
His images and stories are completely false. I'm not a
witness or a name witness in connection with any of
Epstein's crimes. My name has never appeared in court documents,
the positions, victim statements, or FBI in interviews surrounding the
Epstein matter. I have never had any knowledge of epstein
abuse of his victims. I was never involved in any capacity.
I was not a participant, was never on Epstein's plane,
and never visited his private highland. I have never been
legally accused or convinced of a crime in connection with
Epstein's sex trafficking, abuse of miners, and other repulsive behavior.
The false smears about me from being spirited and politically motivated.
Individuals and entities looking to cause damage to my good
name to gain financially and climb politically must stop. Attorneys
and I have fought this unfound and baseless lies with
success and will continue to maintain my sound reputation without hesitation.
To date, several individuals and companies have been legally obligated
to publicly apologize and retract their lies about me, such
as Daily Beast, James Carville, and Harper Collins UK. Now
is the time for Congress to act. Epstein was not alone.
Several prominent Mile executives resign from their powerful positions after
this matter became widely politicized. Of course, this doesn't amount
to guild, but we still must work openly and transparently
to uncover the truth. I call on Congress to provide
the women who have been victimized by Epstein with the
public hearing specifically centered around the survivors. Give these victims
their opportunity to testify under oath in front of Congress
with the power of sworn testimony. Each and every woman
should have her day to tell her story in public
if she wishes, and then her testimony should be permanently
entered into the congressional record. Then and only then we
will have the truth.
Speaker 3: Thank you.
Speaker 1: During next to continued serving, Well that was a surprise.
I mean I've truly thought I saw where there was
going to be a statement. I thought it would be
something about some you know program that the first lady's
working on. Instead, she and this is interesting because President
Trump has been trying to push this out of the story,
out of the news, to get it off the table.
Let's focus on something else, quit talking about it, he said.
And so here comes his wife today, in the middle
of all this about wars and politics and mid term elections,
she comes out and she puts the Epstein story right back,
smack dab on the top shelf of whatever is going
to be discussed in Washington. So this was listen listen
to John robertson Sandra Smith from a Fox had taken this,
and this is their reaction afterward.
Speaker 4: Well, the announcement obviously was exactly that. Her first few
words got clipped by the pull mike as she began speaking, John,
and I can tell you she led with the lies,
linking me with the disgraceful Jeffrey Epstein need to end,
making it very clear she wanted to clear up any
rumor of her involvement with him.
Speaker 5: That was a pretty extraordinary moment there at the White
House that we just witnessed, with the first Lady coming
forward to beat back all of these reports that came
out recently with the new dump of the Epstein files,
where a lot of people were linking her to Epstein,
even suggesting that it was Jeffrey Epstein that introduced her.
Speaker 1: I need to do better on my gossip columns because
I skip over those.
Speaker 3: I don't spend a lot of time.
Speaker 1: I had no idea there was a problem with anybody
saying anything about Malaney. I didn't know that she was
in the news. She kind of disappears, but apparently John
Roberts knew that there was something. But even he said, wow,
that was a remarkable moment in the White House. He
went on, let's listen.
Speaker 5: For the first Lady to come out personally rather than
through a statement through her office and slam back these rumors.
I mean, I've never seen anything like that before.
Speaker 4: Yeah, And there was no in the lead up to
the announcement, we were not given any idea what that
was about We were simply told by a White House
official that it would be newsy and it was that.
Speaker 1: Indeed, John, not to bore you with all the technical parts,
but I have a screen that shows me up to
six different networks at the same time, so I can
kind of keep track of what's going on. And I
saw Fox took the I've heard that Malania was going
to make the statement at two o'clock, and I saw
Fox was the only network taking Malania's statement, and I thought, okay,
garden club thing. And then all of a sudden NBC,
then all of a sudden CNN, then the BBC just
spread because everybody went, what is this all about?
Speaker 6: It?
Speaker 1: So I don't know if are you aware that there
are people trying to link her to Jeffrey Epstein in
some nefarious way? I wasn't, And it sounds like John
Roberts and Sandra Smith did not know either. Caught them
by surprise. Ellie Honey, former federal prosecutor. He was asked
about this by the anchors at CNN.
Speaker 5: Well, it was definitely surprising, Brianna.
Speaker 7: It's not entirely clear what precipitated it, but one thing
I think is notable is the contrast between the first
Ladies' comments there and the actual actions and conduct of
the United States Justice Department so far. So we just
heard Malania Trump come out and call for a public
forum for the victims and survivors of Jeffrey Epstein to
go in front of Congress and have their stories be told.
Speaker 3: But let's contrast that with DOJ.
Speaker 7: We know from when Pam Bondi testified last month that
DJ has not even given a face to face audience
to many of those victims. There was this unforgettable moment
where several victims in the audience stood up and were asked,
how many of you have requested a meeting with Pam Bondy.
They all raised their hands. How many of you have
been given any meeting? And none of them raised their hands.
On top of that, we learned yesterday that Pambondi, herself,
now the former Attorney General, believe that she doesn't have
to testify DOJ is taking the position she doesn't have
to testify in front of the House Oversight Committee about
Epstein because she's no longer the Attorney General of the
United States. Now that's a ridiculous position legally and logically,
But I think there's a pretty stark contrast between how
DOJ has approached this and to an extent, how Congress
has approached this. On the one hand, with the open
transparency that we just heard the first lady call for.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so she's not elected, she's the spouse of the president,
but she has cloud and this is going to make
heads roll in Congress, in the Oversight Committee, and this story,
as much as we've got wars and everything else going,
this story, the Epstein story is not going away until
they nail some people. I've said that all along. I
truly believe it. She was talking about images and stories
that you have seen are false, So she's talking about
AI photos and AI stories, I guess. Anyway, I thought
i'd lead with that because it was so out of
the ordinary. It was such a surprise to everybody. Nobody
had an inkling of what was going to be said
or what it was even about. So that, and besides that,
it gives me a chance to start with something other
than war. But loud, no, no, the war is This
is getting whackier too by the moment, isn't it. Is
there a cease fire? I don't think so. Yeah, the
ceasefire says, when one of the few requirements is we
will stop attacking when you open this trade up horror moves.
They haven't opened the strait of horror moves. And the
regime in Tehran knows that that is their ace card
and they're not letting go of that. Then, So let's
start in here with the start in with General Kimmitt,
retired General was asked about what he thinks of this
so called ceasefire.
Speaker 8: The United States has thrown the most advanced military in
the world against the Iranians for the last twenty five days.
The Iranians still think they're winning. They win because they're
not losing. What else can we do to the Iranians
to try to compel or persuade them to change their
views on their nuclear program, their ballistic missile program, their proxies,
and now the strait of horror moves.
Speaker 3: When you add that all up, you've got to say.
Speaker 8: Right now, the Iranians had the upper hand. We've been
surprised that the resilience of the Iranian military, and I
think our intelligence has led us down a little bit
because we seem to keep getting the last launcher. But
I've got to repeat, none of those attacks truly matter.
That's the body count fallacy we had in Vietnam. The
more we kill, the more we're going to be successful.
This notion that's somehow knocking out launchers, notching out air
defense systems, knocking out drones is somehow going to military
victory translating to strategic victory. I think that still is
a flawed strategy.
Speaker 1: Well, he's the retired general, but I'm going yeah, you
can pound him into the sand. But unless you go
in and have troops occupying the government offices and arrest
and round up any of the old regime, I'm sorry.
Speaker 3: This is.
Speaker 1: It's not a victory. It just is not a victory.
Brett McGirk, former National Security Advisor as this observation fragile, I.
Speaker 9: Think is is an understatement because right now, at least
over the last twenty four hours, there really has not
been a ceasefire. So just I mean, I try to
separate signal from noise, and like, what do we know.
So we've seen some of the largest attacks from Iran
into the Gulf today against Kuwait Uae Cutter, Bahrain, even
an attack in Saudi Arabia missiles and drones, the Strait
of Hormuz is not open today. It looked like earlier today,
same arrangement Iran has set during the war that you
have to coordinate with them, you have to go into
their area, pay a toll. That appeared to be happening,
and then later Iran shut the straight because Israel launched
a massive attack against his Bola and Lebanon, which Iran
says violates the ceasefire, and the US says has actually
had nothing to do with the ceasefire. So that's kind
of where we are now, being on the other side
of this in past roles, I don't envy anyone doing
this very difficult work. It is very hard. I really
hope this comes together over the course of the next day.
But right now, fragiles, understatement and ceasefires are kind of
like a humpty dumpty crack. It's very hard to put
them back together. And of the ceasefires I've done in
the past, it's very important to have the sea fire
starts at this time have very clear expectations because they're
very hard to get started, and some on each side
want to fire off the last shot. You know that
might happen, But as of right now, I would not
say we're in a good spot. Just from what we're seeing.
We can count missiles, we encount thrones, and we count
ships whether ships are moving, and so far all of
those indicators went at least today in the wrong direction. Well,
this is where it's empirical. Are ships going through the
strait and are they going freely? Free passage? I think
the president's statement last night to announce the ceasefire was complete, immediate, safe,
whatever that the three complete means status quo antebella, meaning
before the war, it's an international passageway, ships can go.
Iran has made clear that is not what they have agreed.
And ships are not moving. There was a couple today
that looked like they went through that Iranian They have
to go up through the Iranian islands, maybe pay a
toll to Iran. That is not free passage of the Strait.
So again, whatever people are saying, whatever the Iranians are saying,
whatever the White House is saying, we can actually look
at what's happening, and when it comes to whether or
not ships are passing through the Strait, we can count
the ships, and so far today the strait is not
certainly is not open. Well, if it's jd Vance and
if it's the Speaker of Parliament, Mohammed Kabala. I think
that is one of the most senior face to face
meetings we've had with Iran that I can honestly recall.
So again, if that happens, that's a big if. That
would be quite extraordinary, and I think the Iranians are
probably demanded. They're very protocol conscious. If they're going to
send one of their truly top officials, they want to
be with the Vice President. It's not Abasharachi, who is
the Foreign Minister, who would be rubulous counterparts, so that
might be one reason.
Speaker 3: So we have to see.
Speaker 9: I will say, having negotiated with your audience, there is
a zero likelihood case that you're going to go into
Pakistan for a couple of days and come out with
an agreement. Negotiations with Iranians, even in the best case,
if things are going well, can take weeks and months
is very complicated subject matter, and what has been out
publicly that the issues were chasms apart, so nothing is
really close to being agreed. I mean, I would honestly
advise maybe slowing that process down, sitting down face to face.
If nothing has really been pre cooked. At that level,
you're more likely than not to have a breakdown. And
once you have a breakdown at that level, to reuse
a humpty dumpty analogy, it's even harder to put it
back together. So I don't know. I want this to work, Casey,
but I'm very skeptical that something can come out of
this over the weekend in Pakistan unless you have some
look diplomacy, you've got to do a lot of the
back around work, and before you get two very top
officials in a room together, especially something as dynamic and
important as this, whether or not a war is going
to stop or might start again. And just from what
we're seeing, and there could be something behind the scenes
we're not seeing what we're seeing there is. We're nowhere
near an agreement that the two sides might reach. So
having a meeting in itself maybe might reduce the tension,
but there's no sign of reducing the tension. So I
would ask questions about before you do the meeting at
that level, is it really ready or not? And I
from all the kind of this mixed messaging that we've
seen in the last twenty four hours, fifteen point Plan
ten point planned, three different ten point plans. Lebanon's a
part of it, says the Pakistani Prime minister. The vice
president says, they're not. It seems like there's a lot
of work to do before you have that tet a tet.
Speaker 1: Girk has done a number of these, so he knows
what he's talking about. By the way, on this Israel
Lebanon situation, just a brief little touching of the of
the tips on this. Lebanon is a very weak government
and they were getting pushed around by Israel. This is
decades ago, and so a group of Lebanese put together
Hesblaw with funding from Iran. They pushed the Israelis back
across the line and everybody said, you guys are our heroes.
Everybody was saying hes Blah, thank you very much. The
citizens of Lebanon were very, very thankful because the government
had a very weak army and all of a sudden
you've got this group that pushed the Israelis back out.
The problem with that is, over the years, the Lebanese
army is nothing. It's feckless. So hes Belah took over.
They kind of got big bridges and started thinking, well, well,
not only tech Lebanon, we're going to go do other
things as well. So they've become a terrorist organization. And
net and Yahoo keeps talking about willing to talk to Lebanon. Well,
Lebanon's not the problem. It's Belaw is the problem. And
he keeps avoiding the word has Belaw. So that's another
one we have to wait and see. And about the
tariffs for oil tankers going through the Strait, apparently the
the fee is one dollar per barrel. I looked up
what's the average size of an oil tanker and they
range in size from one hundred thousand barrels to three
million barrels. So the tariff is one hundred thousand dollars
up to three million dollars for an oil tanker to
go through. And that's why they keep talking about there's
only been four that have actually gone through. Kareem set
job poor is with the Carnegie Institute knows Ron like
the back of his hand.
Speaker 10: They believe that. And I say that not only because
of their public statements, but because of conversations I have
with people in Tehran that sound as triumphant privately as they.
Speaker 6: Are as they as they are publicly.
Speaker 10: Yes, and listen that could well prove to be a miscalculation.
This regime has made many miscalculations over the years. I
even think that there are parts of this regime within
the Revolutionary Guards who don't mind prolonging this war, because
once this war ends, what's going to happen is that
the Iranian public, the majority of whom hate the regime,
are going to go back to focus on their economic grievances,
social and political grievances, and there could well be more protests.
And when war is happening, it is a distraction from
that public anger against the regime not good.
Speaker 1: So they want to keep the war going so they
can keep the attention off of all the problems that
people are having.
Speaker 3: NATO.
Speaker 1: So the president met yesterday with the head of NATO,
Mark Ruta, and the President said this after the meeting, I.
Speaker 3: Have to tell you, I'm very disappointed in NATO. Very
I think that NATO.
Speaker 5: I think it's a mark on NATA that will never disappear,
never disappear in my mind.
Speaker 1: Though he sounds genuinely unhappy, Mark Ruda, the head of NATO,
had this then, Yes.
Speaker 11: But a large majority of European countrent that's what we
discussed today, have done what they promised before in a
case like this, because they know that when it comes
to NATO, it's there to protect the United States.
Speaker 3: So the US did with Iraan. They could do.
Speaker 11: Because so many European countries lift up to those commitments,
not all of them, And I totally understand his disappointment
about that, but it's is therefore a nuance picture.
Speaker 1: He sounds like a salesman is having a hard time
getting in order. Kurt Volker, who is very involved with NATO,
knows some back words and forwards, had.
Speaker 12: This it is look. First off, Mark Root is a
great Secretary general. He's doing his job here. He is
trying to keep the United States and Europe working together
on the same page, and I think he's doing an
outstanding job. Now, what's the issue here. NATO is a
defensive alliance. The purpose of NATO's defined in a treaty.
It's about deterring any attacks on Europe or the United
States so that no one dares attack because there's a
collective defense. Now President Trump wanted was Europe to go
and join a war against Iran that he started without
telling anyone, and our allies were caught off guard. They
weren't prepared for that, They didn't know what the operation was.
President Trump sometimes said we don't need them, and then
sometimes said they weren't there when we needed them. So
I think you can understand why the allies are a
bit confused. What RUTA is now trying to do is
calm things down and get everybody together. And I think
what we should be talking about is this is not over.
You know, the Persian golf is not fully open. We
will have more things going on. Let's talk now about
what a concept of operations would be that our allies
can take part in that we would lead that would
actually help secure shipping in the golf without the ransom
and taking countries hostage and things. As we were just
hearing about. Yeah, some of them view the US attack
on Iran as illegal under international law, and then view
their support for that as illegal as well. That is
something that we would dispute. We would say that Iran
attacked Israel, there's a war going on, Israel has a
right of self defense, including collective self defense, and we're
just helping them. That's a legal argument that you can
get tangled up on. But the bottom line is that
they did not understand what President Trump was doing. What
the goal was seemed to keep shifting, and they weren't
asked to do anything particular. President Trump just seemed to
want them to be there without there being any common operation,
and then also with our military saying, look, we really
don't need them, so this is something we would prefer
to handle on our own. So a lot of confusion
over this, and I think what happened yesterday it's exactly
the right step President Trump sitting down with Secretary General
talking this through and then hopefully looking forward to what
we do now.
Speaker 1: I don't know if you caught it, but what Kurt
Bolker said was that NATO is a defensive agreement, not
an offensive agreement that we're going to get together and
go bomb a country. It's to defend each other from
attacks from the outside, which puts a different twist on it.
Admiral James Stavritas was the Supreme Allied NATO commander a
few years back, and he says, hey, NATO, from his
view as a military commander, NATO was important.
Speaker 6: First and foremost. I simply want to say NATO was
there when we needed them after we were attacked on
nine to eleven. The Europeans who had not been attacked
came in tens of thousands, almost fifty thousand of them
stationed in Afghanistan under my command. They fought bravely as well.
So let's dispense where the NATO's not there when we
need them. In terms of this particular moment, I think
where this is headed is President Trump will look at
some of the nations that denied, for example, overflight basing rights,
notably Spain, which is also a laggered on defense spending,
and perhaps start pulling some US troops out of those countries.
That's economically significant for those nations who are happy to
have those American troops not only for security but also
for economic benefits. So I think that's where this is headed,
as opposed to a full blown withdrawal from NATO, which
would be a geopolitical mistake of epic proportion.
Speaker 1: That's all going to be sorted out, I guess I
don't think it'll be sorted out this weekend, but at
least the meeting is on in Pakistan. US delegation will
be headed by our Vice President Jadie Vance, Steve Witkoff
and Jared Kushner will be there, and they're buzzing about
the fact that maybe Admiral Brad Cooper, the head of Sentcom,
may also attend that meeting. As far as the Iranians,
the parliament's Iranian parliament Speaker, the Foreign Minister, and the
Deputy Foreign Minister from Iran will be there, so it'll
be very high level. I don't know if they're going
to get anywhere, And the Iranians are famous for obfuscating.
They just that's what they do, all right. The markets,
what can you say? The markets? There's a number of
market prognosticators that are saying, looks like we've hit the
bottom of all this craziness and that the big updrafts
and downdre depend upon the latest headline. I don't think
that's going to go away. So I do think we
may have seen most of the down draft. There may
be some new ones coming along, but I think we
will absolutely see volatility. And nobody better to check one
with his prognostication than professor of finance from the Wharton
School Jeremy Siegel.
Speaker 13: Well, I the soccer market might have bottomed, and I
agree with Tom that we're going.
Speaker 3: To hit all time highs. The question is when.
Speaker 13: And I don't think the short term looks all that
favorable to me, very honestly. I think what happened on
Tuesday was the worst case scenario. And I was actually
with Scott Watner on that Tuesday was that Iran was
going to if the US attack actually destroy many of
the ports and oil facilities up and down the coast,
that's sort of off the table. And I think what
you got yesterday was the relief rally that that worst
case scenario is off the table. But you know, developments now,
I mean, oil is still in the upper nineties and
as you guys say that ven diagram of of demands
on each side looks like it has a zero intersection,
and you know that's a question. I mean, let me
put it another way. We had Delta was very optimistic.
Then he said there's two billion dollars more fuel expense
that he is budgeting. Well, how is he going to
cover that to keep earnings up? The only way to
cover that, to.
Speaker 3: Keep earings up is a raise fares.
Speaker 13: Yes, past bookings have been good, but past all past
bookings have been based on oil that was sixty, So
it's not based on oil that's eighty or or one hundred.
And Secondly, I think any sort of rate cut is
really off the table. And I am beginning to think
that the most likely direction on the FED is a
rate hike, not imminently. And I think that unless something
gets really bad, that power will pass at his last meeting,
which I do think that the next meeting will be
his last meeting.
Speaker 3: But I'm looking at the money supply and.
Speaker 13: I see it expanding, and I'm looking at commodity prices
and I see that expanding fiscal policy defense spending. I
don't see how the FED can in fact ease at
this point. That's going to be a challenge for bondshan
and the equity market.
Speaker 1: So Jeremy Siegel a one view of this.
Speaker 3: We don't know.
Speaker 1: But we did get one report about the economy, and
it is a favorite indicator of the FED. It's the
personal consumption expenditure index, in other words, stuff that you
buy personally consume. And it was well, the year over
year two point eight percent. That's the inflation rate of
things that we buy, and you take out food and
energy to get to the core rate, and that was
three percent, so it's it had from a year ago.
That's about where we were at the beginning of twenty
twenty five. Then it improved. We got the inflation rate
down to two point three and now it's back up
to take your pick, two point eight or three percent,
whichever way you want to measure it. So inflation, that's
These are numbers before the war started, and you know
what's going to happen once we start getting the pricing
in from the effects of the war, we're going to
see higher inflation coming. So with that, on Wall Street
today we saw mildly positive, not much positivity at all
in any of the stock indexes until about halfway through
the day, and then we went the now finishing up
two hundred seventy five to forty eight thousand and one
eighty five. S and P went up same pattern. About
halfway through the day started to gain up forty one points,
same with the Nasdaq finished up one hundred eighty seven.
Gold went up seventeen dollars to forty seven ninety four,
and oil, well, this is oil bounces around based upon
every little headline. It got up to one hundred and
two dollars today, got down to about ninety five, and
it finished at ninety eight dollars in some change for
a barrel of oil. So that's it for today. Thank
you for coming by. We will be back again tomorrow
and I hope to see you then