Speaker 1: And welcome.
Speaker 2: Hi.
Speaker 1: How are you welcome to the Big St Patrick's Day
edition of the Tom Sullivan Podcast on this Tuesday, the
seventeenth day of March, Year of Our Lord, twenty twenty six.
I already said my name Tom Sullivan. Let's get this
show on the road. Happy Saint Patrick's Day to you.
It's crazy here in New York because it's the biggest
parade in New York has lots of parades, but this
is the biggest parade today. Goes down Fifth Ave, starts
at Saint Patrick's Cathedral and works its way up from
the forties to the eighties up by Central Park. And
it's a huge crowd. I mean a huge crowd that
turns out for this. So anyway, it's it's always exciting
in New York or Saint Patrick. If you're if you're
coming to New York around Saint Patrick Day, make sure
and mark down the parade, for it goes all day
long and it goes for hours in any case. So
we've got that nice place to start. As opposed to war,
but we'll get you up to date on the war
and also Cuba. You know, we're so focused on everything
going on in the Middle East. But the issue with
Cuba is it's they're out of power. They're their power
supply has their power grid has totally collapsed. So we'll
get to that. Update you on oil prices, update you
on the lines at the airports in some I mean there.
I saw Atlanta today. It's crazy. And it's not just Atlanta.
There's all kinds of problems at the airports that are
going on. So let's let's dig into it. We've got,
first of all, let's start with the Iran and what's
going on there. Plus there's a big sting today because
the head of the counterintelligence department in our government has resigned.
His name is Joe Kent. I want to get in
to that with you as well as we go through
the program. Let's start. Rebecca Heinrich is with the Hudson
Institute and that's her field of study is watching everything
in the Middle East. Here's which she said about where
we are with Iran and the fact that overnight we
took out two of their leaders. One of them was
a guy by the name of Solimani. I don't know
if he was related or that's a common name or not,
but the other one was Laren Johnny who was the
de facto leader, and he's the guy who ran a
lot of the government, so we were expecting he was
probably running things right now. And Solimani was the guy
who was running the mowing down of the citizens. So
they're both gone. Rebecca Heinrich chimes in on what that
all means.
Speaker 3: Well, First, clearly, President Trump is saying, look, we've done
a lot, We've accomplished a lot of our military objectives.
And this is the key part. He said, we want
to make this more permanent. And you saw this from
Admiral Cooper, the Sentcom commander who's leading this mission against Iran.
He said something similar yesterday, which was that we've moved
into a second phase, which is destroying the military production capability.
And some of this is in the deeply buried, hardened targets, tunnels, undergrounds.
We want to make sure that we destroy that so
that the effect of these strikes are longer lasting. And
that's what President Trump, I think is alluding to, which, Yeah.
Speaker 1: I'm glad. If we're going to do this, let's do
it right. Let's not just do a haphazard approach to it.
Take out a few people and then say victory. I
know he likes to talk that way, but he's staying
and I hope he does to take up the deep
down delivery systems that they have built in Iran that
are way underground.
Speaker 4: Here's Brett McGirk on the latest. Well, Sarah, iarn created
a system with no indispensable officials. That's the design's distributed power.
But in fact Ali Larjani is about as indispensable, about
as irreplaceable as you can get. He's had a whole
career across the entire system, from the Revolutionary Guards, which
we've talked a lot about, to the Supreme Leader's Office.
He was the longest serving speakers of Parliament, his family
has positions throughout the government, and he has been the
figure in this crisis going back to the June War
and now this most recent conflict. He has been out
front kind of like basically everybody believes he's the power
behind the throne, with a couple others behind. Most of
the new leader who has not been seen. So it
is hugely significant to wake up to this news. And
we're heading into no Rus the Persian New Year this weekend.
We'll see what happens. I mean, Iranian has usually come
out in the streets and celebrate the besieged militia, and
the leader of the besiege militious there was also killed
last night in a strike. That is, the internal apparatus
that maintains internal security is responsible for those crackdowns against protesters.
So really dynamic situation. I think this war is going
to go on for some times. I think we're maybe
at the halfway mark, but this is a significant development.
How it plays out, we have to see. I'm too
early to draw a conclusion.
Speaker 1: Okay, So again, they took out the top leaders of Iran,
and then they brought these two guys who have been
top leaders but weren't taken out on day one. They
were taken out last night. So anybody want to fill
low shoes. I think people might be a little bit hesitant.
But the news is getting a lot of headlines today
is about this guy named Joe Kent, who was the
head of the counter Intelligence Division, and in his resignation
letter he basically said there was no imminent threat to
buy Iran against US, and he doesn't believe that this
is the right thing to do, so he threw in
the towel. Now, Joe Kent. I couldn't believe it when
Trump appointed him the head of the counter intelligence apparatus
because he's from the state of Washington. I got to
tell you, he has an amazing background. As far as
he's a veteran is a small way of saying it.
He served eleven times in Iraq, but he has been
anti war all the way along from the state of
Washington down in the southern part of the state of Washington,
just above the Oregon border. He ran twice for Congress
and he lost in a very Republican, mega pro Trump area.
He lost twice to Marie Glosen camp Perez. And if
you know anything about her, she's different. Let me just
put it that way. She's a Democrat, but she's not.
Even the Democrats are scratching their head. She's kind of
a hippie, dippy lady from south west Washington. And they
looked at her versus Joe Kent, and they voted for her.
This is mega country. So he's a strange guy. He's
a very strange guy, and he's been writing. So he
was in the military and served, like I said, as
an intelligence officer. I think is a soldier that was
radicalized by wars that he came to the conclusion that
were senseless. He wrote articles about how the Iraq War
was senseless and now this war is senseless. And he
makes clear that his enemies in the columns that he
has written are general Are you are generals? Us generals?
He blames our generals for the deaths of family and friends.
He thinks that the wars that we have fought have
been against middle class America. He thinks that Black Lives
Matter and Antifa are organized crime syndicates and terrorist organizations.
So he he positions himself as a class warrior. But
but he's he's just an odd guy. And when I
saw that the President Trump appointed him to be the
head of the counter intelligence, they went, really that one's
that one's was a headscratcher. Some of the art he
wrote articles for CNN, for Breitbart, for Fox News. He
kept asking through these articles, was war worth it for
our nation? And what have we gained? And war is
hard to justify. He's a big election denier. Maybe that's
what Trump saw in him. That he liked big jan
sixth defender of the people that stormed the Capitol. So
that's how he got to be the head of all
of this. But now he's done the same, He's still
being the same Joe Kennedy was. He doesn't like war.
Yet he was a soldier, and yet he got radicalized
against war. Probably not the only former battlefield soldier who
doesn't like war. Here's the president's reaction.
Speaker 5: I always thought he was a nice guy, but I
always thought he was weak on security. What I read
a statement, I realized that it's a good thing that
he's out because he said that Iran was not a threat.
Iran was a threat. Every country realized what a threat
Iran was. The question is whether or not they wanted
to do something about it.
Speaker 1: Back to Rebecca Heinrich responding as well, well.
Speaker 3: Respect to Joe Ken's service, he's an American veteran, but
he never should have been in that position of leaderships.
He was leading a counter terrorism unit, and Iran is
the greatest source of terrorism, not just regionally but across
the world, responsible for the maiming and killing of Americans
through proxies in Iraq and Afghanistan. And even at last year,
Joe Kent even alluded to the fact that the Iranians
were trying to assassinate President Trump. So clearly he should
never have been in that position of leadership, and it's
a good thing that he has decided to step aside.
Speaker 1: Let me assure you the left, all the Democrats are
jumping on this, going see see see this is wrong.
So Mike Johnson was asked about it. We had a
speaker's news conference today and people said, hey, what do
you think about Joe Kent.
Speaker 6: So we all understood there was clearly an imminent threat
that Iran was very close to the enrichment of nuclear capability,
and they were building missiles at a pace that no
one in the region could keep up with. They were
far outpacing our allies and friends in US in our
defense capability because we had personnel installations, members of the
armed services and civilians in the region. Iran was building
up ballistic missiles at such a rapid pace, and we
knew that their plan was to fire them upon Americans.
Speaker 1: That's my sense of it. They've been building this storage
of missiles drones to the point where there would have
come a point where we would not have been able
to override that. They would have had more firepower than
we have ability to stop it. So I mean we're
having a tough enough time trying to stop all their firepace.
It's working, but you have to get them before they
got even bigger and stronger. Ed roll Mark Fox kind
of weighs in with similar view, Well, bad things happen
to bad people sometimes. Wow, that's the only way I
could put it. Well, I think whoever steps up into
that will probably meet a similar faith. Oh, you know,
this campaign, let's put it in context. This is probably
the most remarkable air campaign ever waged. Back in Desert
Storm we were airplane how many sorties per target? Back
in Iraqi Freedom we had shifted into precision weapons and
how many targets per sorting They've taken this to an
entirely new level. Now, this is unprecedented, and so in
spite of the fact that yeah, tech Iron is twice
the size of Texas, it's a large country, a lot
of people, and they've built a lot of very bad
things that need to be eliminated. Back to the discussion
of the succession of leaders, I think that as long
as the Iranian regime as it is known today, they
will always be They don't think the same way that
you and I think. This is the regime that set
little boys with plastic keys. In the Irana Rock War
back in the nineteen eighties to clear minefields that was there.
They set little boys out to die to clear minefields,
and they gave them little keys to the kingdom. That's
the kind of people we're dealing with. So we may
have to kill a lot of them in this.
Speaker 7: Regime to be able to accomplish our objectives, but we
must not grow weary of doing what we know is
ryan well. The straight up horror moves is. It's a
solvable problem, but it takes time. The geography is set,
it is what it is, and we need to have
an absolute godlike awareness of what's going into the water.
I haven't seen or heard any reports of minds going
into the water, and we've also destroyed their small boats
and their layers, so I think in terms of mind
I think we're probably okay. But the ships that have
been damaged have been hit by these drones and by
coastal defense cruise missiles, and we still need to continue
to eliminate them. But if you look at the how
many weapons that they're expending as supposed to what they
started with, the curve is in the right direction. We
are eliminating their ability.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So again, as he says, always just be patient.
This is a test of wills and we've got to
go through. And the military is going through methodically checking
off the punch list to get rid of their ability
to make war against other people. So it's been it's
been eighteen days. That's it. So I know you expect
things to wrap up in one hour like a TV show.
So while we're watching that, keep an eye on Cuba.
The power is out. Their power grid has absolutely collapsed.
Dan Hoffman, former CIA talks about what's going on inside Cuba.
Speaker 8: Yeah, and Cuba's been suffering blackouts for years, frankly, and
every time that happens, we see some protests on the ground.
Particularly over the past five years when we shut off
the supply of oil from Venezuela to Cuba. That gave
the United States the leverage we needed to impact conditions on.
Speaker 1: The ground in Cuba.
Speaker 8: And that's why you saw Secretary of Rubio reportedly conducting
discussions with Raoul Castro along the lines of figuring out
where we might be headed with some sort of a
change in the regime in Cuba, maybe a soft change
where the current leader of Cuba, the president is forced
out and maybe there's some political freedom there all in
return for US enabling Cuba maybe to import some of
that oil that they need to get their economy going again.
I mean, this is the best chance we've ever had, arguably,
And the key thing that I would highlight is it's
not just Venezuela that was supporting Cuba's China, the Cuba's
largest trading partners China. China, in return for that trade
and the subsidies to the Cuban government, receives land to
conduct signals intelligence operations against the United States. Cuba is
an outpost for Russia and for China to spy on us,
and that and the criminal gangs in Cuba. We need
to put a stop to that, and this is probably
our best chance that we've ever had with the leverage
that we have to impose some change on Cuba, which
would benefit the Cuban people as well.
Speaker 1: Obviously, So if they're an outpost for Russia and for
China to spy on the United States, which makes sense
right next door, what is Russia and China going to
do about the fact if we try and take some
sort of control over the Cuban government.
Speaker 8: I just expect to see the same sort of perfunctory
comments from Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov that we've seen about
Iran and about Syria before the government to Bashar al Asadefeld.
Russia doesn't have the throwweight anymore to influence events outside
of their war against Ukraine. Their barbaric invasion of Ukraine.
The Russians have suffered over a million casualties. That's where
they're focused, and they cannot project power beyond that war.
Speaker 1: So Marco Rubio is heading up whatever the negotiations are,
the talks with the Cuban leaders, and since he came
from a Cuban family and he speaks perfect Spanish, let's
find out what Marco has to say.
Speaker 9: The bottom line is their economy doesn't work. It's a
non functional economy. It's an economy that has survived. It's
for forty that revolution, it's not even a revolution. That
thing they have has survived on subsidies from the Soviet
Union and now from Venezuela. Theyn' get subsidies anymore. So
they're in a lot of trouble and the people in
charge of they don't know how to fix it. So
they have to get new people in charge.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they're in a real pickle. They have run out
of everything, and as he said, they've been subsidized. That's
how they've lived ever since Castro took over back in
nineteen fifty nine. The Venezuela, Russia, China, all these places
have been giving them subsidies, giving them money, giving them oil,
and now they're out of subsidies. Here's General Keene.
Speaker 10: We can bend this regime to our will in a
way that we've never been able to do since Batista
was deposed by Castro. You know, they've been giving us
the finger for decades and posing their will on the people.
We can change their behavior fundamentally.
Speaker 1: And the President is only say things the way he
says things, says that he wants to basically do with
it whatever he feels like. Here's the president.
Speaker 5: I do belie, I'll be the honor of having the
honor of taking Cuba, A big good honor. That's a
big honor, taking Cuba, Taking Cube in some form, Yeah,
taking Cuba, I mean whether I free it, take it.
Think I could do anything I want with it.
Speaker 1: I think your best plan would be figure out a
way to hand it back to the people so that
they will have an opportunity to select their own leaders.
Same thing with Iran, same thing with Venezuela. Let the
people decide. A US reporter who lives in Havana. He's
the bureau chief for CNN. His name is Patrick Openman. Yeah,
he lives there. So this is what he has to
say about the condition totally.
Speaker 11: And you begin with the blackout. Of course, the power
goes out all the time here. We've had island wide
blackouts before, but not like this.
Speaker 1: Under an oil.
Speaker 11: Embargo from the United States. According to Cuban officials, it's
been three months any oil has come into this island,
and that is just going to complicate efforts to get
this aging power system back online. Only some pockets of
power have been restored so far across the island. The
majority of the island is still in the blackout. And
of course, as the days go on, people's fuel runs
out if they're lucky enough to have a generator, the
batteries if they have those, run out, and their food
begins to spoil in their fridge, and so this comes
not an inconvenience, but it becomes quite a dire situation.
In last night, it was completely dark across Havana, and
for anybody who need to go to hospital had an emergency,
it gets something of a dangerous situation. Cuban's worst done
when I told them, because of course, people really aren't
connected at the moment about President Trump's comments and about
reports in the New York Times in the Miami Herald
that Trump is demanding the Cuban's president, Miguel dis Canal
step down, that he and others and the government are
seen as an obstacle to change. And that's part of
the negotiations they're carrying on with the representatives and family
members of Raul Castro, who, though retired, is still seen
as the ultimate authority in this country. And so Cuba
is very much under pressure at the moment.
Speaker 1: And what we heard.
Speaker 11: President Trump say, many US presidents over the years have
claimed that the Cuban government was going to end communism here,
was going to end on their watch. Certainly, though in
this case, we have not seen the Cuban government in
such a weakeed position in many, many years.
Speaker 1: So what will Raoul will do? And I mean they've
been in charge for a long time, and just to
say okay, especially to the United States, here you go.
We'll send your people in and start running the island
of Cuba. It's going to be fascinating to watch to
see again. I believe Castro overthrew a dictator by the
name of Baptista. I think it was nineteen fifty nine,
so we're talking sixty seven years. Maybe rab Wolf's gotten
so old that he doesn't care anymore. Maybe he's giving
up and is willing to throw into toel. But it's
going to come to a head very quickly. Like the
guy said that they don't have electricity, their food is
going to spoil. They don't have any power. I mean,
you can live in the dark at night, but you
can't live without food. Meantime, you're traveling. Are you going
somewhere for Spring break? Spring starts this Friday, I believe,
So you're going to get on a plane or not. Well,
the airports are bad, and it's because of TSA. There
was a report that at one of the airports, I
believe it was Houston, they normally have dozens of TSA
officers sitting there At the first point that you check in,
you show them your ID, and you show them your ticket,
and then they move you on to the next place
to check your luggage and all that. Well, normally there's
dozens of them, and instead this morning there was two
two and as a result, the lines were just as
far as the eye could see. Remember Chris Sanunu, the
former governor of New Hampshire, Well he timed out so
he got a job running a being the head of
some airline association. Here's what Chris Sanunu had to say. Well,
they should vote yes.
Speaker 12: So remember there's no there's no funding over ice issue
here in that ice is already funded. It was funded
in the Big Beautiful Bill. So that's not going to
fundamentally change. This is a purely political play and so
the poll numbers speak for themselves. Over ninety percent of
Americans want TSA agents paid. Over ninety percent of Americans
want this nonsense to end. You can't get ninety percent
of it gets their crea almost anything, but this is something,
and so I think the data is there, the demand
is there, even that we're going to see record numbers
of travel over the next forty five days. We're showing
that spring break mode. People are spending money. We're going
into the summer pretty soon. So there's a record number
of bookings coming in this summer. So the pressure on
the system is there, the demand is there, and the political.
Speaker 1: Opportunity is there.
Speaker 12: Right because the issue was folks wanted to see a
change it at Homeland Security, they're going to get new leadership.
They wanted the Minnesota issue to calm down and be
better managed. They're getting that. They wanted body cameras, they're
getting that. So, whether you want to call it, the
White House or the administration has kind of given in
and made some changes that folks wanted to see. Well,
now pay your own federal workers that have nothing to
do with this, and that's your TSA agents. And again
you see those lines, you see the pressure on the system.
You know, I was a governor. That's what negotiation is.
You go in and saying, Okay, what am I willing
to give in on one side is given in. The
Democrats really aren't coming to the table, So I'm not.
I don't want to put blame on one side of
the other. We don't care. We're agnostic as to who
delivers the best result. But the answer is say yes,
this bill sitting right there, say yes, fun fund these
these opportunities. Keep managing you have the new secretary coming in,
keep managing homeland security with some new policies or whatever
you want to see that with the new secretary coming in,
but get the system operating. It's kind of the basic
fundamental of government to fund and pay your own employees.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I looked it up. The airport that I was
referring to was Atlanta, where they normally have dozens and
dozen Atlanta is the busiest airport in the country. By
the way, they have dozens and dozens of TSA officers
checking you in. There were only two that showed up
this morning. According to TSA, they've had a record high
level of callouts and they've had three hundred and sixty
six TSA officers who have called in to quit. I
don't blame them. I mean this is they just went
through this a couple of months ago. Adam stall is
the acting head of TSA, and this is his comment.
Speaker 13: We're doing absolutely everything we can. We have a National
Deployment Office force and we've fully depleted that. So at
this point we're fully stretched and so frankly, there's not
much else we can do as the weeks continue. If
this continues, it's not hyperbole to suggest that we may
have to quite literally shut down airports, particularly smaller ones,
if call out rates go up and we can't a
lot of these officers can't afford to come in.
Speaker 1: You heard right, He said they may have to shut
down smaller airports just the call out rate continues. By
the way, there is there's an opportunity to do something different.
San Francisco, Kansas City, and not the main airport in Orlando,
but Sanford Airport, and that handles a lot of private
jets and general aviation. They all have private security. Yes,
San Francisco, in Kansas City private security. They had to
go through a lot of hoops because that's we used
to have private security before nine to eleven, and they
did a lousy job. So these private security companies apparently
are managed by TSA, but the bodies that show up,
the people that work for these security companies do not
work for the government. So guess what if you're living
in San Francisco or traveling to San Francisco, they're fine.
They've got all their security agents are there. They look
like TSA, they wear blue shirts, but they are not
government employees. Same with Kansas City. So well, maybe that's
the answer. Take it out of the hands of government.
So all this seriousness and you know, tensions and all
these problems facing our country. But again I go back
to where I shore. Today is Saint Patrick's Day and
it's the biggest parade in the country. It's the biggest
parade in New York. Saint Patrick's Day. Parade goes for
hours up Fifth Avenue. It starts at Saint Patrick's Cathedral
and out in front. Alexis McAdams, who works for Fox,
was running around reporting on what she saw out there,
and she went up to one of the NYPD. Because
the NYPD has a big group of members of the
NYPD that are in the parade. It's not oh, they're
doing security and everything else, but they also have a
bunch that belonged to some Irish group and they're marching
in the parade. Heres. Here's what the officer had to
tell her.
Speaker 2: It's and has Irish heritage himself. Tell me just how
important this is to let everybody know about those roots
you have within the NYPD.
Speaker 1: Milwaukee this way.
Speaker 14: I think it's it's super important, right, so we're not
just New York City. New York City costs to trace
our heritage back the police Department's been around before it
was predominantly Irish, but there we did reach a point
where it was predominantly Irish, mostly immigrants luck of the
draw and no one wanted to hire any Irish but
they spoke the English language, so they ended up taking
the job and built the city. The sand Hoggs Construction
Fire Department, the New York City Police Department mostly built
with Irish right.
Speaker 2: And you would sell people who are interested in being
within the NYPD to sign up because there's lots different
experiences that you can have and look at all these
great people that are out here that protect our city
every day.
Speaker 14: I think it's a great job. I've been doing it
for almost thirty years and it's one of the great
I think it's one of the best jobs ever.
Speaker 1: So at one point the Irish cop, yes, it was
more than just the same, and truly was. The NYPD
used to be majority Irish men. That's what it was.
So today is the two hundred and sixty fifth Saint
Patrick's Day Parade in New York City has started back
in the seventeen hundreds. They have Guinness, the big Irish
beer company, says that on this date they will sell
thirty eight million pints of Guinness. That that adds up
to four hundred and twenty one million dollars of just Guinness,
not just beer, but Guinness beer, which if you've ever
been to Dublin, they have a huge, huge factory right
there to go have an Irish pint, as they call it.
So happy, Saint Patrick's stay to you. Let's see if
people on Wall Street were happy today. Well, looking at
the numbers that they weren't. They weren't unhappy. It's just
compared to the roller coaster that we've had a big
swings way up and way down, it was rather tame.
The Dow was positive, up forty six, green eraws up
forty six to forty six thousand and nine ninety three,
the SMP was up sixteen, the Nasdaq up one hundred
and five, the price of gold was up four dollars
to five thousand and six, and oil continuing to climb
up another two and a half bucks a day now
at ninety six dollars and some change for one 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.