Speaker 1: And hello, welcome, welcome, one and all to the Big
Podcast on this Wednesday. Today is the twenty seventh day
of May, Year of Our Lord twenty twenty six. My
name is Tom Sullivan. And well, well, well, well, the
war in Iran is still going kind of not well,
it's not been solved. They had the election in Texas
and the President had his medical appointment. Oh and there's
still a big hot potato up in Maine and the
race there for US Senate. So we have a lot
to go over. First of all, the President had is
cabinet meeting today and they he invites It's interesting because nobody,
I don't think he has ever done that, that he
invites the media in and they're supposed to stay quiet
as they go around the table. Now I presume when
they finally after they go around the table, that the
and the cameras are booted out of the out of
the cabinet meeting room, that they get down to the
brass tacks. But otherwise it's always it's always interesting because
I have sat on a fair number of boards, and
I got to tell you, I don't I don't ever
recall in any board meeting that I've ever been in
anybody's saying to the CEO or the chairman of the board, boy,
thanks to your excellent leadership. No, and and so that.
But that's what they do. They all, they all, it's weird,
but they all have to sing a praise of thanks
to you, thanks to the president's excellent leadership, we have
achieved X, Y and C. And that's the other thing
is that they only report how everything is going terrific,
thanks to your excellent leadership. And I I'm sorry, it's
it's it's staged, or's something because I think when they
turn the cameras off and they boot the media out
of the room, they get down to, you know, here's
what here's where the problems are, and this is what
we need to do to try to achieve it. Because
in a board meeting, one of the things that the
board needs to know is not only of course they
want to know what's going right, but they also want
to know what's not going right, What do they need
to improve, what do they need to work on? Where
are the problems? Because I don't know about you, but
there's I don't think there's any organization that doesn't have
some problems. In any case, just a little observation about
the board meeting, the cabinet meeting today. But like I said,
I presume once they turn the cameras off then they
get down to brass tax. So the election yesterday in Texas,
and if you haven't heard by now, it was very,
very lopsided. Ken Paxton sixty three percent of the vote,
John Cornyn thirty six. And John Cornyan has been a
Senator from Texas for twenty four years. And the people
of Texas spoke loud and clear. When you take a
look at what I made a note here how many counties? Yeah,
Texas has two hundred and fifty four counties. It's a
huge state. Two hundred fifty four counties. You know how
many counties John Cornyn won.
Speaker 2: Two?
Speaker 1: That is it. That's how lopsided was the vote. The
vote was lopsided, but when you look at the map,
two counties were only the only two wins for John
cornynan otherwise, Ken Paxton basically rolled the dice and on god,
I've got almost everything else. So congratulations to Ken Paxton.
And now it's going to be a Donnybrook between now
and November, and it's already started. And there there there's
a lot of name calling for both sides, and it
seems like political campaign managers love to do negative campaign
manages management statements, so it expected expect the Well everybody
by now, if you haven't heard, Ken Paxton U long
checkered background of corruption and affairs and indictment, impeachment, all
kinds of terrible things, had been called the most corrupt
politician in the whole country, which makes me stop and think.
Remember I said this yesterday. Remember when Bill Clinton was
running and Bill Clinton certainly had his checkered past, and
the Republicans were absolutely indignant, saying what about character? What
happened to character? And I'm thinking, I guess that's kind
of a thing from the past, because Ken Paxson's character
is in the mud. And as far as Tallarico, the
guy that he's running against, the Democrat, they've got him
saying all kinds of things about there's six different genders,
that he's very woke, and they try to accuse him
of being a vegan, which in Texas, which they love,
they're barbecue in Texas. He's had to come out and
say no, no, no, no, no, I've been eating barbecue
for a long time. So it's kind of crazy. Right
after the polls closed last night, I grabbed a little
bit of what Scott Jennings had to say. Here's Scott. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Look, I think Paxton is right. Democrats are going to
target this. They're going to spend maybe hundreds of millions
of dollars in Texas. My view is it is still
likely to elect a Republican in November. It won't be Corning,
it'll be Paxton, but a lot of money is going
to be spent there. I suspect some Republican money will
be spent there as well. I suspect as it will
be a negative campaign. And when you go back and
forth on who does Texas want to have represented in
the US Senate, I have a hard time believing all
negative attacks aside they're going to want to send somebody
to the Senate who would oppose Donald Trump, who won
Texas by double digits. But look expensive negative campaign to come.
I agree that Republicans still have the upper hand, but
you got to run the race.
Speaker 1: And now that's Paxton's.
Speaker 3: Burden, and I think it was smart for him to
say something nice about John Cornyn tonight. He's going to
need every single Republican on board, and I think he's
going to get them. When the contrast is made here,
you're going to get somebody who's going to vote Republican
and fight for Republican values versus somebody who's pretty far
outside of the mainstream.
Speaker 1: As it relates to Texas well, Scott said, there's Democrats
are going to spend a lot of money, a lot
of money, and actually I think it's the other way around.
In fact, David Axelrod, who will get to in just
a minute, said that he doesn't think the Democrats are
going to spend barely anything the pact. That Tall Rico
can raise his own money, but the Democrats are not
going to get into a checkbook war with the Republicans
in Texas because Texas is a very red state. And
even though this tallar Rico guy has a better chance
than anybody has had in thirty some years, he's still
a Democrat in a very Republican state. So back So anyway,
here's David Axelrod in his views.
Speaker 4: Obviously, yesterday it worked out well for for Paxton, but
he he has tremendous resonance with that magabase within the
Republican Party. There's another base within the Republican party. There
of long standing sort of establishment Republicans who I think
are lesson amored with him. They were the cordon corn
In Republicans and with Independence, his numbers are very, very bad.
So you know, you said at the beginning that Democrats
were they got the guy they wanted. There are two
groups that got the guy they want to if you
consider the president of group him and Democrats. I think
there are a lot of Republicans who are deeply concerned
about this. They think they can win because Texas is Texas,
but they expect they're going to have to spend a
fortune to try and do it because he's such a
heavy lift.
Speaker 1: I think actual Rodd's right about the strategic part of
this is that the Democrats probably won't spend much, if anything,
and the Republicans are going to have to spend a
lot because they got to get they got to get
all of the cornin Republicans, they got to get the independence.
But Paston probably will win, and they don't want to
waste a lot of money throwing it down the drain on.
The Democrats don't on something that probably probably will lose.
But then again, you go back and you take a
look at some of the nominees. The President has a
perfect score for his grip on MAGA. But not all
Republicans are mega and in order to win in a
general election, you need all Republicans plus some percentage of
the Democrats. So I mean, I look back and I
thought about, probably Georgia is the one that I just
shake my head at. The President went into Georgia and
it was it still is a very red state, and
they had two Republicans running for senator. And the President
went in and was mad about the twenty twenty election,
and he said to people, he says, don't vote. It's rigged.
Whatever you do, don't vote. So a lot of Republicans
obeyed him and sat home and as a result, two
Democrats are senators from Georgia because of that. And then
he came along with Herschel Walker, good old Herschel. Herschel
was great for I don't know this kind of entertainment.
And there was one other I thought about, remember Judge
Roy Moore from Alabama, and the President endorsed him, and
he didn't make it. There was some accusations about the
fact that he liked young girls, and so that that
didn't work out, So we'll see what happens on Paxton.
He's and I think about the you know, a lot
of Republicans talk about the values and Ken Ken Paxton
doesn't have any. So we'll see how he should win.
But it's it's it's kind of sad my humble opinion.
All Right, what else have we got. Let's get caught
up on Iran. There's a lot going on there with again,
we're kind of getting in that same mold of Iran
wants to really make a deal, and I'm thinking, no, no,
President Trump is the one that really wants to make
a deal. I'm sure Ron does too. But it's it's
an interesting place where we are because yesterday I was
very frustrated with General Keane, who had been wanting to
use the military option and call me a hawk, but
I'm thinking we stopped the military before they were done
with their mission, and I don't think I don't think
we've got a regime change, and we're trying to negotiate
with the basically the same people, different people but from
the same regime, and we're never going to get an agreement.
The President says, I'm not going to accept the agreement.
Unless it's perfect, then we're not going to get an agreement.
So how to just sit in a stalemate forever? So
I thought today General Keane made a lot of sense,
because yesterday I was really befuddled by the fact that
he was throwing into talent and talking about the fact that, well,
we need to work on the diplomatic angle. I thought,
that's not you, General, what are you talking about? So
today he kind of explained what he's thinking.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, I mean it's almost fruitless to try to
speculate on where we are, because you know, you have
these factions in Iran. The hard line is saying one thing,
and then the Gators saying another, and everybody grabs a
microphone on occasion and puts it out there and you
hear something like he just said or some other hardline. Well,
there's no way we're going to get a deal here.
But that's not who's talking to our negotiators. I think
it's important to know how did we get here. I mean,
the reality is it wasn't too long ago, a week
or so ago, that we were on a cusp of
returning to military operations, and I genuinely believe that's where
the President was, I know, that's where I was, and
some others as well, and we believe that that was
the best option available to us at the time. But
what happened here is the Prime Minister of the leadership
of Pakistan and Katar and some of the others came
to the President and believed, after having spoken to the
Iranians and the pressure that the Iranians were feeling, that
there was an opportunity to make a deal here. So
what did the president do. He listened to that, and
he trusts his instincts.
Speaker 5: You know.
Speaker 2: One of the things that's consistent in this president if
you pay attention to what he says when he stopped
talking he wants to talk about stopping war, he actually
goes further that as I want to stop the killing
and now he is responsible for activating that killing himself.
When you heard him say in Ukraine time and time again,
I want to stop the killing, and he's talking about
it on both sides, not just decide of the Ukrainians
who are defend it against the predator. And now he
isn't responsible for that trigger. So that is a factor.
I think, although we're not stated here, that's in his
mind there's an opportunity for maybe we can get where
we need to be and we don't have to go
back to military operations, and we can avoid the horror
that we're going to inflict and also the potential risks
to cascities our own people. So I do think that's
in here someplace, and he shows in this path. Now
we're on the path, and there's a couple of data
points here that are really important. One. He wants a
perfect deal. In other words, he wants all of his
maximalist objectives to be achieved. I'm going down this path
and I walked away from this military operation. We're going
to accomplish just about everything that we would have with
that military operation. So yeah, he wants the nuclear deal
as he has laid it out, no reason to go
into the details here. He wants the ballistic missile program
completely restricted. He wants no support to the proxies, and
obviously job one open up the straits of a mood
with no restrictions, no implication that somehow, some way, Aron
has some control over what is now legally recognized as
international waterway and freedom of navigation, has precedents all of
those things. Is what he wants, and he's insistent on
getting them there, and he's giving fair warning to the Iranians.
If we were not going to get there, then it's
likely we're going to return to military operations. And he's
a pragmatist in dealing with this, and you can see
that pragmatism coming forward in this kind of loose discussion
and response to questions, But the policy implications there are
very clear.
Speaker 1: Well, I think the General has touched on something that's
probably true is that Donald Trump, and this is what
the surprise was about when we went after Iran last
summer and again this past in March. Donald Trump has
professed the fact that he doesn't want to be involved
in wars, and he wanted to get all the forever
wars stopped. He wanted out of war. He was the
most anti war president or presidential candidate we've seen in
a very very long time. So it threw everybody a
curve when he decided to jump in with Israel and
go and bomb the Beajibi's out of Iran last summer
and again just a few months ago. So that is
not his character. His character, which General Keen's talking about,
is he doesn't want to be involved in war for
I don't know if it's whatever reason it is, but
he just doesn't want to pull the trigger. And it's
very clear that now he's got himself into this and
he's looking around and going, can't we get out of
this with the negotiation? And I'm convinced that he may
want to have all these things that General Kean listed
that that's not going to happen without military intervention, without well,
some boots on the ground to go in and take
the regime out, because you can't this regime theocratic thugs.
They're not going to change. So General Tellogg was asked
about this and he's still like a general, he's still
looking at it as if military action is going to
be needed.
Speaker 5: Yeah, great question. You know, first of all, let's clear
this one out there. President Trump's got incredible courage what
he's done for the last a presidents, and there's been
a lot of people talking about what he's done. And
constitutionally they can run for president. You know, there's an
Article two, Section two. There's clearly one commander in chief. Well,
if you look at who he's dealing with, he's dealing
with a theocratic leadership. There's really four people who's dealing
with You look at Tolmani, who's is basically the supreme leader,
but we haven't seen him because he was injured on
an airstrike. But you also have a Rachi who's their
foreign minister. He wrote the book on negotiations. You look
at Vahiti, who's there runs the Revolutionary Guards, and he's
a theocratic nut. And then you've got probably the only
guy that's reasonable, if you want to call him reasonable,
is Posesski and who's the president, but he's got no
control over and right now, when you look at it,
what they've done is they're actually following their game plan
pretty well. They the Iranians and what they call mosaic,
and what they did is they decentralized all of the
Revolutionary Guards, so each one's in command of their own areas.
That's the reason you're seeing them do dumb things like
sending boats out into the Gulf. And I do think
control of the senior level at all. I think the
presidents in their head, they know it. They're on a
losing side right now. And one of those who keeps
pushing for the only way you can get is changing
for a theocratic leadership. There are people out there that
can do that. You know, when you look at Polavi,
who's the son of the former Shah. You look at
Bryan Rojavi, who runs the National Coalition for the Reasons
to Iran, both have got baggage. One was a part
of the old sovereignty, the other is a new one,
and she's affiliated with the m e K, which was
years ago considered a terrorist group. So you don't really
know right now. I think the President's got a problem
in that he doesn't have anybody who can really deal
with with, who can make any hard decisions because all
of these left up to the Supreme leader when you
got a harmony, which is the one making decisions. But
we don't know if he's really even alive or how
coarity is. So they've got a major problem going on
right now. Who do we really talk to that can
make some hard decisions Because right now it's supposed to
be a Smreeni leader, we haven't found him at all.
Speaker 1: So it's going to take boots on the ground to
get rid of not an invasion, but I think he's
thinking more along the lines of CIA or special ops
or something along those lines. There's a woman who was
raised as a young girl in Tehran. She and her
family escaped. She lives here in the US now. She
has for many years. She runs some organization for benefit
to pushing for democracy in Irun. Her name is Masha Trani.
Listen to her take.
Speaker 6: On this Sean and I think the reason why Iranians
and those in the region are so skeptical is because
of their track record. We really can't trust these guys,
and just over the weekend as we're trying to negotiate
a peace deal, they were mining the straight up foremost.
So it's not necessarily the diplomacy. Everybody welcomes that, but
it's the fact that can you trust the Islamic Republic
to change their behavior in a meaningful and long lasting way.
Speaker 2: And the answer to that question is.
Speaker 6: The overwhelming majority of Iranians think is absolutely not. And
I think President Trump is very well aware of it.
That's why any kind of an agreement really needs to
have some sort of a enforcement clause long after he's
out of the office, because these guys are going to
try to get around it.
Speaker 1: One of the people from this organization is trying to
instill democracy in Iran, talking about the fact that he's
in contact with a lot of the people in Iran
and how they're feeling.
Speaker 7: Something that of course all of us are watching closely.
The people in the country with whom we speak on
a daily basis, frankly or nervous. They're nervous that their regime,
which has held them hostage for forty seven years, might
be thrown a lifeline yet again. They came to this
streets to fight for their freedom.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they're worried about the regime surviving and they don't
want them to back to Masha Trani.
Speaker 2: That's exactly right.
Speaker 6: So aside from these nuclear negotiations right now, what I
really hope isn't fall through the cracks. If there's some
sort of an agreement that's going to be reached, which
I really doubt that anything long last thing can happen,
would be the Iranian people, overwhelming majority of them want
their regime to be changed. They know to get rid
of this evil bully in the Middle East, you got
to get rid of this regime. But if that's not
on the negotiation table right now, the question becomes what
will be in this agreement to what kind of provision
will help free the political prisoners. There's so much torture
happening in these prisons right now, and the execution's horrific.
Executions thirty nine people in the last seventy days alone,
innocent people who are executed. This is not going to stop.
I'm getting as the internet's opening up, I'm getting messages.
Speaker 2: This morning.
Speaker 6: I had a message somebody was saying, you know, we're
so concerned that we're going to become like North Korea,
isolated and alone. Another message saying, we're walking on the
streets and they're checking our phones to see who we're texting,
the context of our messages and our social media following.
So I hope if there is going to be some
sort of a deal that the Runian people are not forgotten.
Speaker 1: Well, she described, the people are afraid of the regime,
and the regime may survive, and that's their worst fear,
and that's the group that the president wants to negotiate
a deal with. I just don't think it's going to
come to fruition, but I wish them well. John Bolton,
former UN advisor, former national security advisor to Trump one
point zero. He's a hawk. This is what he says.
Speaker 8: I don't think the president understands the fanaticism of what's
left of the regime and the people who are in power.
He is somebody who has spent his whole life making
deals with people. He thinks everybody wants to make a
deal on just about anything. That's not what these people
are into. They can see that Trump is so palpably
desperate to have a deal that he can declare to
be a victory, and that lowers prices of gasoline, and
they're playing him on that, they're stretching him out, they're
buying time. All of that works in their advantage.
Speaker 1: I think I think Bolton's right. I think people I
can see it, and I would guess that the Day
I ran regime understands this as well. The President does not,
as Jack Keene said, he doesn't want to start up
military actions again. He doesn't want to drop bombs anywhere
anymore in Iran. He wants to wash his hands of
the military kinetic action. And he wants a deal. And
that's why I say, I think he wants a deal
more than Iran wants a deal. And they are probably guessing,
you know what he's going to He's not going to
resort to military action, So we can just drag this
out for his long as we want. Because remember, their
number one goal for the Iranian regime is survival. They
don't care about the country, they don't care about the people.
They just care about themselves. So Victoria Coach, she was
a national security advisor in the Trump one point Oho administration,
and she is also shaking her head about dealing with
this regime.
Speaker 9: No, I don't trust President Possessikin as far as I
could throw in, which is not very far. But at
the same time, I think he is acting out of desperation.
I call his camp the survivalists. They're just trying to
cling to something within Iran. They're trying to I'm sure,
cling to their ill gotten gains. They want to preserve
their families and what they can of their power. So
the situation is pourting in Iran is dire. I mean,
it's been eighty eight days with no internet. This has
been devastating to their economy, yet another blow on top
of the blockade and the sanctions. They can't sustain this,
and then what you're seeing is the last act of
a very desperate regime.
Speaker 1: Now, So, as General Keane has said many times, the
war is a test of wills and who can stick
to their guns. Literally. I mean, the president has a
lot of pressure on him from the prices going up,
inflation going up, elections coming in November, and then Ron.
They're trying to just survive and their economy is collapsing
around them. But who will outlast the other one is
the big question. So let's ask Kareem sad Jappur from Carnegie.
Let's see what he says about where everything sits.
Speaker 10: It's kind of Layton alluded to. We have a situation
in which both sides believe that they've prevailed in this war.
Because then Trump has constantly said that the United States
prevailed militarily. Iran obviously feels that they've prevailed given the
objectives of the war from the US and weren't met.
And so even though President Trump in some ways its
downsize his ambitions, it's now the focus is simply reopening
the Strait of Hormus and then dealing with iran stockpile
of highly enriched uranium and its ability to enrich uranium.
I don't think Iran is prepared to meaningfully budge on
those issues. It wants to maintain some control over the
Straits of Hormus, and likewise, when it comes to both
its uranium stockpile and its willingness to give up enrich uranium.
I think there's a wide gap still to be bridged.
Speaker 1: So who do you believe is going to blink first?
Do you think the Iranians will finally say, okay, okay, okay,
you can have the nuclear dust as as the President
calls it, and we'll open the strait. You think they're
going to do that without the military forcing them, without
the military arresting them, taking them into custody. I don't. Well,
the president blink and he's in a pickle. I don't know.
We'll have to wait and see. So anyway, the update
today is basically we're still in a stalemate. So yesterday
the President went over to Walter Reid for his annual physical.
This is actually the fourth time that he has gone
to Walter Reed. He had that unexpected visit last year
which they apparently did some sort of cat scan on him.
Doctor Reiner, doct Jonathan Reiner, is a New York Colley
cardiologist and was Dick Cheney's doctor, so they always go
to him to find out what he thinks about this.
Speaker 11: Yeah, well, this is really a tradition. The tradition for
the annual physical exam really was started by Richard Nixon
in the aftermath of Eisenhower's large heart attack. But the
president and his team are not legally required to release
information to Congress or the public, and I think that
really should change. There are so many roles in our
society that require annual assessments of physical capacity, you know, pilots,
secret service agents, school bus drivers, and for the chief
executive of this country and the commander in chief of
our armed forces, we should have a clear understanding that
the president is for duty. I do want to see
this during this examination. A credible explanation for his visible
health concerns his bruising, which initially was described as doing handshaking,
which is not credible, his severe DMA in his ankles,
which was described as chronic venus in sufficiency when just
three months before, one year ago he was his examination
disclosed that he had no idea which would then make
it acute acute venus in sufficiency, which is an entirely
different thing. And finally, the president has severe daytime som
laws he falls asleep very awful. He's fallen asleep in
the Oval office on multiple occasions with people talking to
him in the cabinet room, and was considered yesterday that
he might have fallen asleep at our ow in to
National Cemetery during Memorial Day. Conservancies and chronic insomnia is
a severe illness. It can result in an increase in
the risk of dementia, decreasing cognitive effects in older people.
It's equivalent to about increasing your age by about three
and a half years. It increases your cardiac risk of
having a heart attack or developing congestive heart failure, and
it can produce a decline in your sort of mental
functions like it could increase depression, anxiety.
Speaker 1: So it's a real problem.
Speaker 12: Resident appears to struggle to stay awake during the day,
and I'd like to hear what the White House is
done to evaluate why the President has this increased daytime
somlence and what they're doing to improve that.
Speaker 1: Well, when the exam was over, it was about three hours,
and the President came out and said everything was terrific. Yes,
everything was, of course he would say that. But I
thought doctor Reiner's comments about insomnia were interesting because he
literally does go on a binge of true social postings
in the middle of the night. Was it last night
or the night before. It's reported that he did about
sixty posts, but in over about a three or four
hour period when you and I were sound asleep. So
he is up during the middle of the night. Maybe
it's in insomnia, maybe whatever it might be. But yeah,
if you're up in the middle of the night posting
and doing all kinds of other things during the day,
you're probably going to drift off, especially if something is
kind of low key and not a much of excitement.
So I don't think he's going to change on that.
I think Trump's been that way for a long time.
But I don't know how what you do to cure insomnia,
because it's isn't a sleep disorder. I don't know. I
sleep like a like a baby. So I'm blessed in
that regard. Wall Street today, Well it was blessed. Everything
was positive. Yeah, I know. It just keeps going higher.
The Dad Jones industrials le Yeah, this is a new
record high, up one hundred and eighty two points. The
now at fifty thousand and six forty four. The S
and P up just a little more than one point point.
The NASDAC UP eighteen gold fell today fifty two dollars
down to four thousand and four point fifty, and the
price of oil also fell. I mean, I just finished
telling you about how things are probably stalled out and
we're in this Everybody trying to just wait and see.
We're in a quagmire of some sort. But Wall Street's
fine with that apparently if there's no kinetic action. So
oil went down over four dollars today. West Texas Intermediate
now has an eight in front of an eighty nine
dollars for one barrel of oil. That's it for today.
Thank you for coming by. We will be back again
tomorrow and I hope to see you then.