Speaker 1: And hello, Hi, how are you welcome to the Big
Podcast on this Thursday. Today's the twenty first day of May,
Year of Our Lord, twenty twenty six.
Speaker 2: My name is Tom Sullivan.
Speaker 1: And well we've got of course, we're always keeping track
of what's going on with Iran, but we've also got well,
Congress is bucking the system. The President is looking for
some money, and the Republicans in Congress are push back
going on. We're not so sure so they are. They
are pushing back on the one point eight billion dollar
weaponization fund. They are pushing back on the ballroom, they
are pushing back on I think even the reflecting pools.
So they I'll get into the details with you as
we go through the program today. But we've also got
Stephen Colbert. Tonight is his last show. It's been the long, long,
long goodbye. It never happens in broadcasting. It just doesn't
ever happen that they let somebody stay. Usually when they
are going to cancel the program, they cancel it, and
that is that the last time you're going to see
that person.
Speaker 2: But I don't know, I don't know what.
Speaker 1: The deal is with CBS, and this is before they
changed owners. But it's still h he's out the door.
And the problem with all all of this is they're
trying to make it. I don't know, they're trying to
come up with all kinds of excuses. But bottom line,
in broadcasting, it's ratings because ratings equal advertising and advertising
dollars go up for CBS if the program gets if
the ratings go up, and they go down. With ratings
going down, well, Stephen Colbert took over from David Letterman,
and David Letterman his audience was shrinking, but it was
much bigger, much much bigger than Stephen Colbert's and Colbert
I mean, the problem with it is is that it's
not funny. And he's a comedian, or he was supposed
to be. I liked Colbert's show on Comedy Central. He
was a comedian and the role he played was a
big concernervative commentator. So was that made up? Because now
they say, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's not him. But when
he comes over to CBS and he's doing the show
instead of of making people laugh, it's all about a
gripe session. It's been a gripe session now for eleven
years that Colbert has been doing the Late Show on CBS,
and not only does he have the problem of the
comedians not doing comedy, but he also has the problem
of late night is dying.
Speaker 2: It just is, and.
Speaker 1: America gets up earlier and goes to bed earlier than
they used to do generations ago. Johnny Carson, everybody refers
to him as he was the guy who tucked everybody
into bed at night because his show came on at
eleven thirty and I believe it was a one hour show.
Speaker 2: Well, funny, I can't remember anyway.
Speaker 1: Eleven thirty and people would have a TV in their
bedroom and turn on the Tonight Show and watch Johnny
Carson and drift off sleep. But that isn't what happens anymore.
In fact, but America watches morning shows and doesn't stay
up late to watch the late night show. So the
story on Colbert is that CBS was losing between forty
and fifty million dollars a year, and.
Speaker 2: That's too much CBS.
Speaker 1: I can't believe that they had a budget well north
of one hundred million dollars. He made somewhere around fifteen million,
and the rest of it was for all the things
that the staff and everything else that they need to
put on a television show, So it's it's been interesting.
I haven't watched that show. I don't think maybe the
first show or two when it started.
Speaker 2: But that was a long time ago.
Speaker 1: I've never watched it since, but I've seen clips, and
the clips are all about Donald Trump, and I don't
know how he became a political show because one of
the things about Johnny Carson, who was the King of
Late Night, was nobody ever really knew was he a
Democrat or was he a Republican? And did he make
jokes about the sitting president. Yes, he did, but they
weren't acerbic. They were funny, and he had entertainers on
his show, and they would entertain you, whether it was
a musician or whether it was a very rarely a politician,
very rarely. Usually it was a Hollywood person. So I
don't know. So anyway, Colebert's going away tonight, and it's
a mystery because there are no guests listings, and yet
at the same time they're thinking that possibly there is
going to be some surprise of some kind.
Speaker 2: Don't know what it is.
Speaker 1: But the guy who's going to replace him, I really
wish him the very best. His name is Byron Allen.
A lot of you know who he is, but a
lot of you don't. And Byron Allen is an amazing guy.
Speaker 2: He has a show.
Speaker 1: What are they going to call this thing? I think
it's the yeah, Comics Unleashed. And so at eleven thirty
five on your local station on CBS, Comics Unleashed will
come on and it will be a thirty minute show
and then they'll replay it, so it's two thirty minute
shows back to back. And then after that at twelve
thirty five, CBS is going to run another show called
Funny You Should Ask, which is also produced by Byron Allen. Now,
this guy has been kind of a sleeper. He's been
very quiet, but he's been gradually. He started off as
a comedian and a funny guy, classy guy. Wasn't any
vulgar comedy involved with this guy. He's a top notch guy.
And so he has accumulated companies that have taken Byron
Allen from the shadows to where he's still kind of
in the shadows. I think this will make him much
more prominent. But he started or he bought a film distributor,
Freestyle Releasing. He started the Grio, which the Grio is
a broadcast directly aimed at African Americans. He bought the
Weather Channel. He owns an ownership chunk of Sinclair Broadcasting,
which is one of the largest local television companies in
the country. They have a number of TV stations. He
owns a piece of Fox Sports Network. He has a
number of television stations that he owns. He made a
bid to buy the Denver Broncos so he's got some money.
He didn't get it, but he made a bid for it.
And he also made a bid put up a three
billion dollar bid for Paramount for Beet Media, and he
didn't get that either, but he put up a three
billion dollar deal. So this is a guy his comics
unleashed with Byron Allen, and he's a I think he's
a billionaire. I mean he's a he's a tycoon. I'll
tell you that. So CBS is going to try this.
Oh and oh and the way it works, CBS is hurting.
The way Byron Allen worked the deal was that CBS
doesn't pay anything for his shows. What he gets is
the airtime and he gets to sell all of the commercials.
So it's on him to make money by selling the
commercials in these shows, Comics Unleashed and Funny you should
Ask and so forth and so on. So he's hoping
that he will make a lot more money on that
and it'll more than pay for the production of the show.
So he's an interesting man. I wish him well. He's
done well almost everything he's touched. He well, yeah, he
also bought a controlling stake in BuzzFeed for one hundred
and twenty million dollars. So he's a very successful entertainer
who is really a businessman who does entertaining. So Colbert,
I don't know what's going to happen to him. The
left on the has embraced him, but obviously not enough people.
His audience is so small. When I did local television,
we had bigger, much bigger audiences than Stephen Colbert has
with a national footprint. So he hasn't succeeded, and it's
been way pastime for him to go. I know the
politics are a lot of people focused on that. I'm
focused on the business side of it. So it will
be uh, it'll be interesting tonight he goes away and
Byron Allen starts tomorrow Tomorrow night on CBS. All Right,
So we've got Colbert, We've got the funding problem that's
going on with the President. He's pulling his hair out.
There was supposed to be the Senate was supposed to
vote for funding. Yeah, remember they still haven't funded they
they voted to Remember they already funded DHS, but not
ICE and not the border patrol. Well, the Senate was
going to have a vote before Memorial Day, which is
this weekend, and instead President added the one point eight
billion dollar Weaponization Bill to pay people for the government
weaponizing against them. And a lot of people are going,
what's this about. Oh, there's a lot of pushback, lots
of pushback, including some Republicans. Democrats of course are going crazy,
But there's a lot of pushback because there are no guardrails.
Who are you going to pay? And this this was
Donald Trump settling a lawsuit against the IRS, and the
IRS said, fine, we will drop the lawsuit. Trump says,
I'll drop the lawsuit against the IRS if the IRS
goes to the DOJ and gets a one point eight
billion dollar weaponization fund to pay people who were wronged
by the government. But Todd Blanche, the acting Attorney General,
is supposed to set up a five person committee. The committee,
we don't know who's going to be on it. Donald
President Trump can can fire any of those people at
any time.
Speaker 2: It's a lot of people are.
Speaker 1: Pointing in saying, you're you're going to pay off those
jan six people, aren't you? That's what you're going to do.
And a lot of Republicans are pushing back and saying
you better not, especially you better not pay anybody who
attacked law enforcement. So there's lots of pushback in meantime.
So because of the fact of the President adding this
to the pile of things for the Senate to do
before Memorial Day, the Senate folded their tent this afternoon
and said we're out, we're going We're going away.
Speaker 2: And so the House said, oh, the Senate is going away.
We're going away too.
Speaker 1: Now, not only the president, it also has problems with
the ballroom, because remember when he first announced the ballroom,
it was going to be a two hundred million dollar ballroom,
and then by sleight of hand, all of a sudden,
a couple weeks later, it was a four hundred million
dollar ballroom. And then all of a sudden, the President
was asking the Senate and the House to fund a
billion dollars for the ballroom because they're going to build
some military secret site underneath the ballroom, and therefore they're
trying to make it into no, no, no, it's not
about the ballroom. It's about it's a military issue and
a security issue. And then on top of that, two
days ago the parliamentarian in Congress said no, you no, no,
you can't fund the ballroom. That doesn't know, you can't
do that. And then on top of that, there's the
reflecting pool, which nobody is giving. The answer keeps changing,
on the fact that somebody got hired to paint the
bottom of the reflecting pool blue, and I don't know,
I've seen it. I thought it looked nice. It was
a reflecting the Washington Monument on one side and the
Lincoln Memorial on the other. So all of these personal
spending wish list that the president is wanting is seems
like they're facing a lot of blowback. So on the
weaponization Fund, it's actually one billion, seven hundred and seventy
six million, get it, seventeen seventy six. Well, because of
the fact that there doesn't seem to be any guidelines
or guardrails or whatever you want to call it. Republicans
are even pushing back in. One of them is Tom Duprie.
We've talked about Tom dupri many times. He is a
former federal prosecutor and he is a self proclaimed conservative.
This is his pushback on the weaponization bill from Todd
land O Where to begin?
Speaker 3: So my first point is that on the question you
asked him about will people convictive assaulting police officers on
January sixth be eligible for the payment funds? He gave
a long answer. The right answer was a one word answer, no,
those people are not eligible. They shouldn't be eligible. And
I think the Attorney General could give a lot of conservatives,
myself included comfort if he would put some guardrails in
this system rather than say the commissioners will decide at
all in due time. Take a clear position, clear answer.
If you assault a cop, no money from the fund.
That's number one. On the point about the settlement, what
makes this whole thing so unusual. Besides the fact that
it's the president, it's that the president is on both
sides of this dispute. The president is both the plaintiff
and the defendant. So he's suing himself, he's negotiating with himself,
and he's settling with himself. I think what would give
a lot of people comfort is if you had some
independent entity like say or judge look at the terms
of the settlement and say this is fair, this is
a reasonable outcome. That's what's missing from this equation is
that normally, when you the Justice Department settles a case,
there's typically some involvement of a court system to look
at it and make sure that it's not an unfair
sweetheart deal.
Speaker 4: That's what's missing from this.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he said it right, it is.
Speaker 1: It is squirrely, and there's a Yeah, the president is
the plaintiff, the defendant, and the decider. So Todd Blanche
who has been told to set this thing up, this
is what he said about it.
Speaker 4: Well, if you're just upset, you're not getting a dome
on the other And I think if you said it
the American tax paper, pay that there is a horrible
wrong committed by your government. And now you can apply
and you can have your lawyer's fees back, you can
be compensated for what you lost financially. What American would say,
Oh my gosh, that's terrible. I mean, I don't know,
I very much disagree with the idea that the American
taxpayer is indignant about the fact that a victim of weaponization, Okay,
a victim who suffered, whether it was legal fees, lost
a job, had their life turned upside down in a
way that was not appropriate. If it was appropriate, there
should be no compensation. And that's why we have five commissioners.
So we'll take a look at it. But I do
not think the American people have issues with that. To
the contrary, I think they do want their tax dollars
spent on things like that.
Speaker 1: Well, I don't know, that's debatable, but I will tell
you this, if you have if the government has wronged you,
there is a process. You hire a lawyer and you
sue the government and goes to court and a judge
decides whether the government is liable and if so, then
there is a fund that the government has to pay
if you have been wronged by your government. Jay Clayton
he is the US Attorney for the Southern District of
New York. He was former Securities and Exchange Commission Commissioner.
He's on the Morning Show at CNBC this morning and
Andrew Ross Sorkin, and he went round and around on this.
Speaker 5: It's not the president, Pretend it's me. Yeah. And let's
say you thought that I was a tax cheat. Why
would you I'm not saying that he was a tax cheat.
I'm just saying, let's say you thought that I owed
the government money. Wouldn't you want me to pay the money?
Why would the government not want me to pay pay
the money?
Speaker 6: And we have two things going on here. We intentionally
leak your tax returns to embarrass you in the public.
Speaker 2: You have a claim against us.
Speaker 6: There's an audit that we don't know whether there's money
owed or not owede to resolve that, we say, you
know what, Andrew, We're going to drop the audit. We're
going to move on, and you're going to drop your
claim against us for trying to name and shame you.
That's a deal I think that you know, is actually
a pretty good deal for the government. If the government
intentionally leads somebody's tax returns, that's a horrible thing.
Speaker 5: Do you think it's any different? I don't just look
the leaking pieces. I agree with you one hundred percent.
Only question I have for you that relates to this
is whether you think being in the position of being
the president changes that dynamic at all.
Speaker 2: I do not what he is.
Speaker 6: The president's supposed to say, you know what, you can
do whatever you want to me, and I have no recourse,
and it was done when he was a private citizen.
I don't think we're going to be time, no, no.
Speaker 5: I just wonder maybe there should be a way.
Speaker 2: I don't know if it should be.
Speaker 5: A third party that makes the decision or something like that.
Speaker 6: I don't think we're going to be talking about this
issue in a week, because the American people are going
to say, look, they leaked his tax returns. They tried
to name and shame them, they tried to destroy him. Okay,
we resolve that in terms of the audit that had
been going on for years with obviously you know, no
findings to date.
Speaker 2: That's gone.
Speaker 6: Let's look forward this as I read the settlement, the
audit going forward, the tax returns that are filed going
forward are subject to the same screwing as anybody else
just in the past. It's in the past, and presidents
get eye log it out of it every year.
Speaker 2: All right.
Speaker 1: So they're talking about the way this all started, and
the reason why Donald Trump sued the IRS was the
IRS somebody worked their contractor released his tax returns. That
is a major sin at the IRS. And if they
released your tax return and then tried to shame you,
then you're going to have the government. You're going to
sue the government and win. And that's what Donald Trump did.
He sued him about the fact that when he was
a private citizen, released his tax returns so they could
shame him. Now, the other part about this is that
they've agreed not to audit any of his prior tax
returns as of now. And people are going, oh, my gosh,
that's crazy. Well, it was a long time ago when
I worked in the accounting profession and that was not common.
But I've I've seen it. I've seen it more than
the number of times that at some point you come
to an agreement with the IRS and everybody goes, all right,
let's start fresh. Don't know, you can't go back to
any of my tax returns in the past. So from
here on out, my tax returns are subject to audit,
but not the ones in the past. So it's not
like something special on what Donald Trump has agreed to.
What's different is this one point eight billion dollar weaponization
fund and Congress Republicans. There's a number of them that
are saying, I don't like it. So I don't know
if this thing's going to go through or not. But
the Senate and the House are gone, so this won't
This will be taken up after Memorial Day. So let's
get the latest on latest on the war. I hate
to say latest because it keeps changing, but it is.
I thought it was interesting. Richard who was the longtime
president of the Council on Foreign Relations, He's a big lefty,
he's a big diplomat, and this is why we did
not do anything about Iran for forty seven years, because
of people like Richard Hoffes, who go, I don't know
if we should do anything because I mean, there might
be there might be some problems.
Speaker 2: Listen to listen to the guy. Here's what he said.
Speaker 7: It's pretty clear to me we do not want to
initiate or resume military activities. Worried about how iron might
respond to that retaliation could be very expensive for our
friends in the region or for the world economy.
Speaker 4: Do you think it's the strategic concerns is driving.
Speaker 7: That or economic concerns here at homely largely economic, not
to see at home, but really globally, I think so,
I think that's a lot to talk about a military force.
The reality it's not an attractive set of targets.
Speaker 2: Winds the deal, And you think the administration.
Speaker 7: Absolutely because right now we're in a situation or drift,
But sooner or later the price of drift is going
to go up. So I think, yes, the administration wants
a deal.
Speaker 1: See, he's worried about Iran. How they will respond. Of
course they will respond whatever they've got. They're going to
throw everything at defending their country and attacking the US
and Israel.
Speaker 2: But the other side of this is, if.
Speaker 1: You don't get that regime out of there, take their
power away, it's going to be just a matter of
time before they are going to attack anyway. So Richard
Haas is the one that sits around like a good
diplomat and wrings his hands worrying about what will happen
if they respond. Of course there will be damage, of course,
there will be surprises. That's called war. So Rebecca Heinrich,
she's with the Hudson Institute. Let's see what her take
is on where we are on this stalled out six
weeks of ceasefire.
Speaker 8: Well, first of all, I think it's really important. Your
reporter was talking about the White House pushing back hard
that they're from that Reuter's report that the son of
the Supreme Leader. So the images our viewer saw is
the deceased Supreme Leader, that israelly An America strikes eliminated.
But now we haven't heard much from the son of
the Supreme Leader. If he is the one calling the shots,
then there is no deal to be had because he
is committed to the Islamic Revolution, and we are no
closer to a deal than we were before epic fury began.
So I think that that's really important. Second of all,
if the Iranians, however, were wanted the United States to
resume military strikes, I don't really know how they would
be behaving any differently. I mean, you see them now
making increased demands. Pointed out how they're now expanding the
zone that they want to control of the Strait of Hormuse.
That's a deal breaker for the United States and for
our golf partners in the region. And they're also demanding
that the United States pay reparations and lift sanctions. And
so I think we're no closer to a deal, and
I think President Trump of course, is ready to initiate
military actions. Again, I do think that that's the direction
that we are headed.
Speaker 1: Well, I think so too, But the president's dragging his feet.
Maybe it's the art of the deal or the fear
of pulling the trigger. I'm not quite sure which. But
there's another little episode. Don Junior is getting married this Saturday.
I think think in the Bahamas. I'm not sure. In
any case, he's getting married this Saturday, and his father,
the President, is not scheduled to attend.
Speaker 2: If he was asked.
Speaker 1: About it, and he said, I don't know, I'm kind
of busy. So it does make you wonder if the
wedding's on Saturday, maybe the president and his advisors are
looking for pulling the trigger on Saturday. But meantime, back
to Rebecca. She's talking about the recent testimony by Admiral Cooper,
the head of Sencom.
Speaker 8: Well, look, I mean Admiral Cooper, of course, the head
of Central Command, just gave some very compelling testimony days
ago where he said that the Iranians do not have
an air force anymore, they really don't have a navy.
The United States is much safer now than we were before,
but there is still the ability that the is this
rump regime has to coerce and compel the United States,
and that cannot stand. And so I agree with the
general there who's making the point that this is more
than just about Iran. This is about the entire Middle East.
It's about the United States finishing a job that it started.
Regardless of what anybody thinks about initiating epic theory, here
we are and the Iranians are making increased demands. So
this is I think we're headed again in the direction
of military force. I one last thing President Trump before
Midnight Hammer, just a couple of days before he initiated,
he was saying that he was still committed to diplomacy
if the Iranians would come to the table, and he
was really engaging in a deception campaign. I suspect that
that's what we're in right now, and that there could
be military activity within days.
Speaker 2: Yep.
Speaker 1: I think so too, and I kind of hope. So
I want to get this done. I don't want this
drag on. And meantime, Asset's dragging on the global economy
is getting hammered. So can we hurry this up and
get this over with. I think if we go full force,
this will end sooner than you might want to think.
So she would talk about the general. She would talk
about General Keane, and this is his latest comment about
where we are.
Speaker 9: Well, I don't think that makes any sense. I think
what I've heard is likely transferred to a third party.
And certainly the Iranians want to keep in Richmond for
civilian purposes used quote unquote, you know the three point
sixty seven percent that was in the jcp A Radio
Obama deal. I can't imagine that being acceptable to the
administration because you give them any capability to enrich uranium,
they can expand that into weapons grade uranium at some point,
which obviously is their intent. So there's a lot more
to be seen here in terms of what a good
deal looks like. But my problem with a deal here
is that we leave Aron bruised but intact, and they'll
walk away from here citing and convincing themselves that they
got the United States to back down. And as a
result of that, we extend a lifeline to the regime
for sure for them to do what to recover, and
in the deal, the unfrozen assets are about one hundred billion.
It's likely we're going to take some part of that
and give that to them up front, and also reduce
some of the sanctions, and certainly we're going to monitor
their behavior. But nonetheless, it is a lifeline to the
regime that extends them for years to come. The next
administration is going to wind up having to deal with them.
That's not where we started. Remember, we started to weaken
this regime to devastate and take away their capabilities to
do be a predator in a region, support the proxies
for sure, and obviously not have any nuclear capability whatsoever,
and reduce this ballistic missile program quite substantially. And the
idea was to weaken the regime and military and also
economically that at some point it's on a pathway to collapse,
and we're going to leave that up to the Iranian
people to assist them in doing just that. But if
we cut a deal here, we're giving them unfrozen assets
billions and billions of dollars that enables them to recover
and it extends their lifeline. That's not where I think
where we started on this thing. It seems to me
that we've been trying to get a deal for six
weeks now. The military operation would largely have been over
by now, and certainly some of the pressure that the
administration feels would have been quite removed by that point
in my judgment, And where we are now is we
can't seem to get a deal. I think we need
to go back to where we started from, renew our
commitment to the original goals of the regime, and conduct
this combined operation with the Israelis and the United States.
We're at full mag Maine depth. We have exquisite intelligence
over the last six weeks of what we need to
do and where we need to do it, and the
attacks are going to be quite devastating in terms of
reducing their capabilities for the future. Well, I don't think
the President's going to accept a bad deal. I truly
believe he's the backstop here. So that's number one. Number two, Yes,
their likely is concerning about Iran's ability to retaliate against goil,
oil and golf infrastructure of our allies and partners. They
had plenty of opportunity for five weeks to do that,
and they were not effective at doing that. If we
need to bulk up their defenses. Certainly, we have the
capability to do that. We've done that for Israel. Israel
asked us to assist with their defense, and we have
done that and done that quite effectively. And I'm confident
if that's needed here to assist our allies and partners
to protect their oil and gas infrastructure, we can do it.
The other thing is, let's give some credit to what
the military operation will do in reducing their ability to retaliate.
We're almost looking at this thing as if we don't
lay a glove on them, and they're going to be
able to fire missiles and drones at all of that
capability and destroying and hit desalination plants. Well, we're going
to take a lot of that capability away from them
rather quickly and reduce that effects. And plus, they have
defenses of their own.
Speaker 2: Give you an example.
Speaker 9: The UAE's got nineteen Patriot batteries, nineteen in addition to
iron dome capability that the Israelis gave them. I don't
know exactly what the number is on the Saudia's, but
they have effective defenses. If they need more of it,
I think we can help them do that well.
Speaker 1: As usual, General Kean is very optimistic about being able
to be militarily successful.
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 1: My caution is, I don't know how you're going to
change the regime with just bombs. Going to have to
put boots on the ground, go in and literally take
these people into custody, arrest them. And that's what we've
done in every successful war that we have conducted. So
we'll see what happens. But the General obviously is chomping
at the bit. The president may have this conflict on
his son's wedding on Saturday, maybe that's today, but well
we'll find out. So in summary, a lot of the
funding the president wants for things like the weaponization fund
and the ballroom and the reflecting pool, and we can go,
I guess, go on and on and on. There's a
lot that he wants. And yet the Senate and the
House are gone. So that that's going to mean, hopefully
you have a peaceful Memorial Day weekend. Wall Street today,
let's talk the number, and once again Wall Street is
the President is almost using a yo yo to boost
the market back up again. The market was underwater this morning,
and then the President came out and said the Iran
war will end very soon, vague, but that's what he's
always said. And as a result, once again, the market
followed in order, went up and finished three hundred points higher,
the Dow at fifty thousand and three to nine, SMP
up thirteen NASDAK up twenty three, the price of gold
up five dollars and twenty cents to four thousand and
five forty, and oil down almost the dollar to ninety
seven dollars and some change for a barrel of oil.
So that's it for today. Thank you for coming by.
We'll be back tomorrow. I hope to see you. Then.
Speaker 2: We'll be back tomorrow. I hope to see you then.
Speaker 4: Time sa