Speaker 1: And and hello, welcome to the Big Podcast. It is Thursday.
Today is the twenty third day of July, Year of
Our Lord, twenty twenty six. My name is Tom Sullivan.
And another busy day, another busy super so I know
we're in the heart of summer, and we've got the
latest on Ron. We've got a Fox News poll which
I do want to go over with you. Saudis the
more information today about the Saudis and getting a nuke
program and AOC. I know it's early. I know, don't
don't yell at me. I know it's early that the
twenty twenty eight polls about who is going to be
the nominee for the Democrats, AOC is in position number one.
You heard me right, AOC is the early leader. I know.
It's all about the you know, Democrats, Socialists and all
that sort of stuff, and she is. This is the
New Hampshire Granite State pole. And I've heard some of
the pundits talk about the fact that the polling is
very left, but the general election in New Hampshire is
much more moderate. So there's a long way to go
on all we'll get into the numbers and all that
sort of business. I do want to start though, with
this Saudi nuke story, because there's much to it now.
The President has come out today and said that the
Saudis must join the Abraham Accord in order to get
the nuclear deal. That means that they have to recognize Israel,
and that has been a big hang up because the
Audis truly believe that there should be a two state
solution in Israel, and Israel's going we don't want a
two state solution, so that still needs to be worked out.
But there's also another part to this, apparently the deal
is we already have an agreement with the United Arab
Emirates where we supply them with enriched uranium for their
nuclear power, not for a bomb, low grade enrichment for
nuclear power in the United Arab Emirates, And what the
pundits are talking about is that the Saudis would have
to agree to where they're not going to be able
to enrich the uranium. We will enrich it and we
will send it to them though it's a delivery service.
Here's Brett McGirk, who has worked on similar plans for
other countries in the past.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we have an extensive negotiations an n I say
the National Nuclear Security Agency, within the Department of Entergy
all are best experts to make sure that those non
proliferation concerns were met. But I have to say this
was part of an overall package potentially for normalis of
relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia as part of a
broader deal, which obviously got taken off the agenda after
the attacks on October seventh of twenty twenty three. So,
as Beth said, I think we got to see the
details that will be submitted to Congress. If it is
similar to what was done during the Biden administration, I
expect it is, because I think a lot of that
work was already done. It's fairly rigorous. There is the
possibility down the road of a US and Richmond's facility
in Saudi Arabia. That was a very controversial piece. Part
of that is because we still impoort fuel from russ
Shows kind of looking for an alternative fuel source. But
that's kind of down the road. There's going to be
a study about that. Obviously that will raise concerns and
scrutiny in Congress, as it should. So I think we'll
learn more here over the coming weeks.
Speaker 1: And there's a lot more to learn about this deal,
because the problem with the problem with the timing of
this is we are battling Iran about nuclear about them
having nuclear in uranium that they can use to build
a bomb. Meantime, right next door they're saying, hey, we
want one too, And that's the problem with them at least,
is that everybody will want a nuclear bomb. I predict
I don't know, ten year, twenty years, they'll all have them,
and the question is will anybody use them? Beth Sander,
former National Security advisor. She also waited on the Saudis
getting nuclear energy.
Speaker 3: I think, you know, I think it was an opportunity
that the President wanted to take to do a deal.
And I think the question is is this deal so
transactional that it's expediency over some other considerations. I mean,
we have to remember that Saudi Arabia denied the US
military use of its airspace in order to escort commercial shipping,
which they benefit from in the Strait of Hormuz. And
you know, when Spain does this, we get a whole
different reaction. When Saudi Arabia does this. We're anxious to
get this relationship back on track. And we've given up
a few things that I'm worried about in terms of
non proliferation, in terms of i a e. A Nuclear
inspection access that are that are rather unprecedented. We still
don't know exactly what the deal says. It's two secret annexes,
but you know, Congress will have to consider this, and
there many steps ahead. So I don't want to be
too alarmist. But it doesn't seem consistent.
Speaker 1: I can see that. I mean, the President loves NBS.
I mean he just likes he loves all the goal,
he loves the wealth, likes all that stuff. Spain not
the same, so I get how the President's enamored with him.
So since we're talking about the Middle East, let's talk
about Iran. This is still where we're pounding away on Iran.
There is no change. There is a couple of experts
away in Kareem said Jappor is always an interesting guy
from the Carnegie Institute.
Speaker 4: So President's words over the last five months have been
incredibly inconsistent, erratic, contradictory, and the challenges that do the
Iranians take his words seriously? Do our partners and the
Middle East take his words seriously? The challenge is that
Iran has been preparing for war with the United States
for forty seven years. They are one hundred percent focused
on this war. Whole of government is focused. That isn't
the case with the Trump administration. As you alluded to
from the outset. He called this just a little excursion.
He's not even calling it a war, And on various
days he'll say either that Iran is desperate for a deal,
a deal is imminent, or we're going to escalate. And
so I don't believe that the Iranians are taking the
president's words seriously to significantly escalate, and that could lead
to a real miscalculation.
Speaker 1: Well, Kareem is a smart guy and understands what's going
on in Tehran, and we don't trust them, and yes,
rather than Trump says one thing one day and something
different than next. So the question is do they trust us?
Do they trust President Trump's words? And Kareem saying they
probably don't. Here's the president last night, Maryetta Georgia, once
again referring to this not as a war. He seems
to treat it lightly, and he called it just a skirmish.
Speaker 5: Again.
Speaker 6: Why is winning in.
Speaker 7: The Islamic Republic of Iran, and we're ensuring that they
will never ever be able to do to us what
they've done to so many. This is with this skirmish
we have with the Islamic Republic of Iran. And I
call it that because, let me tell you, they're getting
hit so hard and they want to make a deal.
Speaker 1: I gotta tell you, I don't. He says that all
the time they're begging for a deal, they want to
make a deal. We're hitting there. We've completely annihilated their
nuclear program, and guess what, it's just not believable. I
know he likes to sound like that, talk tough and
all that, but no, I don't think they want to
make a deal. Meantime, Robert Greenway is a national security guy.
Let's see what he has to say.
Speaker 8: I think two things. The Iranians have proven once again
they can't be trusted to pursue a diplomatic approach. They
can't abbide by any agreement. And so having closed that,
the President is compelled to resume military operations and escalate
not only to restrict the capacity to disrupt shipping in
the straits of war moves, but also the ballistic missile
capacity that struck our troops in Muafa Calsati in Jordan
over the weekend, and in the end, I think what
we can be encouraged by is that Iran has very
little capacity and capability left and if they escalate, the
United States has rungs in the Ladder which are completely
beyond the reach of Iran and their surrogates in Yemen,
ance a La or the hoo Thies, which you recall
we're striking up to a dozen vessels a day at
one time until the United States launched a sustained campaign
to reduce their capability, which could be in the offing
as well.
Speaker 1: However, there is a new yes as news side the
who these have gotten involved In the last twenty four
hours since we met. They have fired on two ships
in the Red Sea and seven vessels that were going
to go to the Red Sea turned around. So they
are having an impact and it's reducing the quantity of
oil coming out of the Middle East. So what's the
deal with the Hoosies. Are we going to be able
to attack them? We bombed them in the past. What
was the end what was the end result of that?
Here's Colonel Pete Mansu.
Speaker 5: Well, it could look a lot like what it looked
like a few years ago when we bombed the Houties
and to no effect. Quite frankly, they ended up on
the upper end of that exchange. I think instead we
would bomb Iran and hold Iran responsible for the actions
of the Hooties. And you know what we do to Iran,
I'm not sure we can do much more than the
thirteen thousand strikes we've already inflicted on that nation. And
so this is a real issue for the Trump administration
the world economy as a whole. The Saudi oil, by
the way, can still be shipped to the Red Sea
and then go north through the Suez Canal. It just
takes a lot longer to get to Asia, its final destination.
Speaker 1: And by going that direction, by going north from the
Red Sea out through the Suez Canal into the Mediterranean,
go all the way around to get to Asia, we'll
add tremendous delay and tremendous costs to the oil markets,
primarily affecting Asia. But remember oil is priced globally, all right,
so we'll keep an eye on all of that. But again,
the Hoho thisa added a new element to this. The
Fox News poll is out and well, let me go
through some of the items with you. Overall, voters are unhappy.
They are really unhappy, and they're mad at Democrats and Republicans,
but they want major change when they're unhappy. They may
not like the Democrats, but they want to change from
the Republicans. It's pretty clear from this pole. I know
we're still a few months out, but this is people
have been angry for quite a few years, way before
Donald Trump came along, and they're unhappy with the fact
that they're not doing so well economically, and that is
why it will tie all this together. You wonder why
the Democrat socialists of America are doing so well. It's
not that people love socialism. They're just looking at well,
we've tried capitalism that hasn't worked for a lot of people,
and so they're willing to try a big change. When
we look at the poll, President's job approval remains near
record low. More Democrats are motivated to vote. Republicans join
Democrats and independents in rating the economy negative, and four
in ten voters want dramatic or revolutionary change. And there
is where you get the word socialism. Voters say that
Democrats can handle the income, inequality better that Democrats can
handle healthcare better, they can handle inflation, the economy, and
foreign policy better. Republicans hold the advantage on crime, while
government spending and national security are evenly divided between the
d's and the rs. On immigration, the GOP had an
eight point edge in April. Now Democrats have a one
point edge when it comes yes to immigration. That was
something that President Trump owned, not anymore. Nope. They have
a bunch of categories in this poll, and they ask
people again which party you think will do a better job.
There is one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight,
nine categories. Seven of the nine Democrats far much better, fair,
much better than the Republicans. The only two that Republicans
do better than Democrats national security and crime. That is it.
As far as are you extremely motivated to vote Democrats,
sixty eight percent say they're extremely motivated, fifty seven percent
of Republicans, Independents only forty one percent. Big drop off
when it comes to us. As far as the House
to the two thousand and six House voat preference, Democrats
way ahead in that category. Fifty three percent say I
want a Democrat, Forty six percent say I want a Republican.
That still comes down to exactly who the candidate is.
Views on the economy not good. The excellent or good
category has gone down. In fact, it's down basically back
into kind of Biden type era of what's going on.
One third say inflation has caused serious hardships. That's up
eight points from a year ago. A serious hardship. Forty
percent say it's it's not a Yes, it's a hardship,
but not a serious hardship. So forty percent say it's
a hardship. Thirty four percent say it's a serious hardship.
Last time I did my math, that's seventy four percent
of people are not happy about the inflation that we
are dealing with right now. If Congress is doing worse
than even the president. Disapproval of Congressional Republicans and disapproval
of Congresstional Democrats just about tide. Absolutely just about tide.
But it's about seventy percent of people say they don't
like what the Republicans or the Democrats, either one of
them are doing. Brett ju always weighs in on these
political polls.
Speaker 9: The truth is, there's not much good news for Republicans
in this whole poll. We did, you know underwater on
the economy, as you showed underwater on affordability. Those two
issues are the front and center. For sure, Republicans have
a little bit of a lead on national security and
I guess law enforcement. But everywhere you look Republicans are down.
Now there is one there is a bit of good news,
as you mentioned, the redistricting will help them with seats
in the House, and they will probably need every one
of them they can get from that. And the other
thing is, of course, on a question of intensity of
voters sentiment, it appears that Republicans are down, but if
you add to people who were very likely that those
are extremely likely to vote, the difference for Democrats is
very slight. So Republicans can take some faith in some
hope for that. But you know, with the unpopular incumbent
in this particular presidency in its first midterm, the wave
of history is pretty strong, and the party in power
in the White House has historically, with very few exceptions,
done very poorly in the midterm like this one.
Speaker 1: This is shaping up. What I see is shaping up
is remember the last midterms four years ago. That was
when we were supposed to have the big red wave.
Everybody was mad. All the Republicans were mad about Joe Biden.
The big Red wave never happened. It was a red
trickle were there were some red The Republicans won, but barely.
Democrats gained a lot of each as well. I think
it's the opposite this time. Everybody's talking about, Oh, the
Republicans are in trouble. The Democrats are going to be
absolutely annihilating them. There's going to be, in other words,
a big blue wave, and I think it's going to
turn out very much like the red wave that didn't
really turn out. I think this blue wave is going
to be, if anything, a trickle. People are unhappy about
politicians because the economy always number one pocketbook issues. Is
a lot of people that are not doing well in
this economy. And then you throw on top of that
the tariff. The President has done it again. He's going
out and adding tariffs all over the place. There is
a temporary tariff program that he jumped on after the
Supreme Court told him that his TERRORF program was not doable,
and that temporary TERRORF program expires this Friday. So far,
the President has tried three different ways to impose tariffs.
He is obsessed with tariffs, and I've told you a
thousand times, you pay the tariff, not some foreign company,
not some foreign country. So the first round was his
Liberation Day tariffs he imposed around the world with some
wildly unfigured Nobody can figure out what the formula was
that they used on that. Anyway, Supreme Court said that
the Emergency Economic Powers Act, now you can't use that.
So round two he said, all right, then I'll impose
a ten percent universal baseline tariff under the authority provided
to him by the Trade Act of nineteen seventy four.
But he gives presidents temporary powers, and those temporary powers
expire July twenty fourth, which means he's now pivoting to
his third attempt to rebuild his tariffs. And he's got
proposing tariffs on up to sixty countries covering about ninety
nine percent of US trade under a Section three oh
one rule that he has that is supposedly in being
used against countries that have forced labor, and that's what
he's trying now. Jeffrey Sonefeld, who is a Yale professor
professor of Management, was talking about his tariff obsession earlier today, No,
or the.
Speaker 10: Business community, where seventy eighty percent of them told us
in survey after survey and in person as you've been
in some of these forums with the CEO, that this
is terrible and overwhelmingly they say that the American public
is paying for it. It's not our foreign adversaries or competitors,
trading partners that's paying for it. They say, American taxpayers,
American companies. But CEO say they don't like it.
Speaker 11: So why now?
Speaker 2: Why now?
Speaker 10: Yeah, that's a great question. Is because everything else is
failing on him. He gets booted off the stage at
the arena of course, at the World Cup, and that
the head of FAITHA has to go kind of guide
him off the stage. He has tries to co opt
the Fourth of July celebrations, rebranding everything around himself. Why
this because this is one of his old chestnuts. He
goes after universities, goes after law firms, He goes after
places where he pulls a lever where he can find
that there's some disagreement. This one, he sees that there's
a national rallying cry. He's wrong, but he thinks that
people will unify against that. They're eating our lunch, and
that this is something where he thinks he has doesn't
have to go through Congress. Now, the Supreme Court remember
something called i EPO, which is the international you know,
economic a justification for giving the president an override for
emergency powers on economic front that the Supreme Court just
said is illegal. That's going after the penguins.
Speaker 1: No this I mean. Jeff Snndefeld is a highly regarded
business professor, managed the head of the Management Professorship at
Yale University, and he just shakes his head on some
of the things that the President is doing. As far
as the economy goes. We got our Thursday morning jobs
report number out this morning, first time jobless claims one
hundred and eighty seven thousand below two hundred thousand. For
that's the first time in a long time. Continuing claims
also below one point eight million, they've been above that
for a long time. One point seven nine to six
million bond yields. The bond market is doing the job
of the Fed. The Fed may well everybody's kind of
looking at. They're probably going to raise rates at their
September meeting, which isn't that far away, but they may
not have if the bond market is doing the Fed's
work for them. Bond interest rates on thirty year treasuries
now above five five point one nine percent for ten
year treasuries, this is where a lot of mortgages are priced.
Four point seven percent interest rate on the ten year
treasury these are rates we haven't seen for a while.
So the bond market is raising interest rates. They're doing
all the hard work that the FED would normally be doing. Meantime,
over in Europe today, the European Central Bank left their
interest rates unchanged. So the economy, interest rates are going up,
Labor markets strong, the no problems there, but inflation is
still there. What everybody's looking at is inflation is creeping
higher and higher, and so the FED probably going to
raise rates, but the bond market's doing a lot of
the work for them. Meantime, the Hoothies are getting involved
with the Red Sea ron You're gonna have to do again.
You're going to have to do more than just bomb
them for that. Otherwise you're just going to keep going
and going and going. There is a think about democrat
socialist just starting to get people's minds crazy. I told
you at the beginning of this that the AOC has
turned out at the Granite State Pole, which is New Hampshire.
AOC is number one on the list. I know it's
this twenty twenty eight Democrat nominee for president, so I
know we're offully early on that. But right now, let
me go through this with you. She's got twenty two
percent twenty twenty eight Democrat presidential poll, AOC twenty two percent,
Pete booda judge, twenty one percent. They're the only two
that have any numbers. The rest of them are in
single digits. Senator Kelly eight percent, Gavin Newsom eight percent,
Bernie Sanders six percent, Kamala Harris five percent. So that's
I know we're early, but Kamala Harris is at the
bottom of the wrung and AOC is at the top
of the rung. This is AOC asked about it today.
She's I've noticed something. She's pretty good at giving talks
when she's got a teleprompter or she's got notes, but
if she has to add lib she's kind of in
the Kamala Harris word salient category. Listen to her.
Speaker 11: I think when I make decisions about my life, it's
they aren't just rooted in polls. They're rooted in what
people need, what is best for the country, and what
is appropriate for the moment. And I think that right now,
the most important thing before the country right now is
for Democrats to win the midterm elections.
Speaker 1: Let me get back to that Fox News bowl. They
asked a favorable opinion of the Democratic Socialist of America.
Fifty nine percent of Democrats found the Democratic Socialists of
America favorable. Six percent of Republicans found them favorable. Then
they said, what do you think about socialism? Fifty two
percent of Democrats said, yeah, that's that, I'm in favor
of socialism. Eleven percent of Republican How about capitalism? What
do you think about capitalism? Forty one percent of Democrats
less than half have a favorable opinion of capitalism. Sixty
one percent of Republicans have a favorable I looked at
that and that that seems low to me for Republicans.
But again, there's a lot of people that are looking
at their pocketbooks and they're not getting where they need
to get financially and or want to get, and they're going, well,
maybe we should try something else. That is what is
going on. One more sound clip from AOC.
Speaker 11: I feel very you know, humbles by the support of
everyday people. I think that, you know, polls go up,
poles go down. That's kind of part of how all
of this works.
Speaker 9: What do you think gars are going up?
Speaker 6: Right now?
Speaker 11: You'd have to ask folks in New Hampshire.
Speaker 1: She's just not polished when it comes to off the cuff,
you know, comments about you know what I mean when
I'm talking about you know that kind of thing. It's
that kind of kind of language, and then giggling. So
she's good when she's reading notes, when she's reading off
a teleprompter, but asking her questions like that, it's she's
got some polishing to do. Let me put it that way.
Bernie Sanders weighs in as well about the Democrat Socialists
of America doing so well.
Speaker 12: I let me tell you, the American people are disgusted
with a economic system and with one guy on top.
The richest people in America are getting rich, richell the
political system, and they want change. But why aren't they?
Speaker 8: Why do you think Americans are flocking to these candidates?
I mean, are they a liability for November?
Speaker 1: No?
Speaker 12: I think if you have candidates with standing off for
the working class and explaining that there's something wrong when
the billionaire classes getting richer and richer while so many
Americans can't afford groceries. That's not the kind of economy
the American people want.
Speaker 1: I get what he says. But he used to talk
about the millionaires, the millionaires and billionaires, and now he's
dropped the millionaires because he is a multimillionaire and we
told you he has three beautiful homes. And he talks
about the rich being at the top, and I think,
you know, he's not at the top. He's not Elon
Musk wealthy, but he's a wealthy guy. And yet he's
got a message about how the economy is so unfair.
If people would just study what socialism does, it really
does fail over and over and over again. Joe Nosura,
he's with the Free Press. This guy has been around
the block on when it comes to the economy. He
does financial for the Free Press. I play some of
his comments as well about this topic.
Speaker 9: Well, Proug, not.
Speaker 13: Betting on the economy is not my strongest suit, but you.
Speaker 14: Know, I'm with Andrew.
Speaker 6: I worry a lot about a bubble and what that
would mean when you think back to two thousand and
eight and how damaging that was and how devastating that was.
I do think that, you know, we're in this situation
where people just are not making enough money to feed
their families, have by a house, do all the things
that they expect to be able to do, and if
you put take it a little away from the economy,
you think about it in political terms. This explains a lot.
Speaker 14: About the rise of the Democratic Socialists, about Mom Donny,
about all the other progressive candidates who are succeeding because
people are just really upset with what they view as
the failure of the long term failure of capitalism to
give them the kind of life.
Speaker 6: That they have always always expected.
Speaker 14: I don't know where the economy is going to be
in a year from now, but I seriously doubt it's
going to be a lot better than it is now.
Speaker 1: Well, Joe knows why people are upset, but is he
pro capitalist, pro socialist? What's it all about? And he
says he believes is the best system.
Speaker 13: Well, first of all, it is the best economic system
for growth. There's no question that millions, if not billions,
of people have been brought out of poverty look at
China or India because of capitalism, and look what capitalism
has done done for this country over this course of
its over the course of its history. The gap, the
growing gap between rich and poor has corroded people's belief
in capitalism. The sort of lack of loyalty between corporation
and worker has corroded capitalism. But also, I mean, with
this president in particular, the grift after grift after grift,
just it's kind of astonishing. And you know, we've talked
on your show a lot about this, but you know,
I just want to bring up the latest one which
is blew my mind, which is that Trump's social media
company is now saying that they will give Wall Street
Firms a sneak peek at his tweets in advance of
everybody else if they pay him a certain amount of money.
It's just you just can't believe somebody would actually do this.
How does that give anybody faith in the system.
Speaker 1: That's true. True Social says that the president owns forty
one percent of that they will sell to Wall Street.
It's Donald Trump's comment. He's the president, he can move markets,
he does move markets, so he will not he will
give a sneak peak to Wall Street firms who pay
him money to see to get I don't know how
much a minute advance notice, five minutes an hour, I'm
not sure, but that's what he's offering. And yeah, there's
a lot of headshaking going on with the grit that's
going on as well. Don't get me started the coins.
All right, speaking of Wall Street, let's take a look
at how Wall Street did today, and to put it bluntly,
it was pretty ugly. Now, well, we're ramping up more
problems with the war. We've got the Red Sea now
in the hoothies, and that's another crimp on oil plus
the Iran war. So the Dow went down five hundred
and six and now at fifty one thousand and seven
to eleven, SMP down ninety, Nasdaq down five hundred and
fifty three. That's a two percent drop, better than a
two percent drop. Gold went down one hundred dollars to
four thousand and fifty one, and Oil West Texas Intermediate, well,
it closed up up six dollars to ninety two dollars.
For the first time. Brett north Sea crewed was one
hundred dollars a barrel today, So we're seeing oil prices
going back up. Look for that at a gas station
near you. So that's it for today. Thank you for
coming by. We will be back tomorrow. I hope to
see you then