Speaker 1: You know, I think people don't appreciate Trump's success over
his long career has been his ability to gauge and
measure ricks and take risks. And you know this is
there's no way you can't say this is a gamble.
Speaker 2: It is.
Speaker 1: But then the other characteristic he has, he's an incredible improviser,
and so once he's into something, he can do a
one eighty to go a different direction if things are
not working out with the initial plan. And of course
you know that's that's the way almost all great leaders operate.
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Speaker 2: And welcome you are listening to and watching the Financial
Survival Network. I'm your host, Carrie Lutz, and we are
with Bill Walton today. Bill, you just wrote a piece
for Blaze. It's up on your substack. Bill Walton dot
substack dot com, Our substack, khl FSN dot substack dot
com And basically you're talking about Trump Iran and the
coalition against victory. Is that what the what the opposition
really is? I mean, is Rand Paul really against the
country winning or is he just really fundamentally opposed to
UH to the country going into wars without problem congression?
Speaker 1: Well, I'd put Rand Paul in a in a special category,
which is where he's always been. So I don't think
he I don't think that's it. He's exactly who had
in mind. I mean, obviously the Libertarians don't want any
wars whatsoever. But you know, there's some people in this
country who supported all the other wars when somebody else
was president, and now because it's UH the Donald doing this,
they're they're implacably opposed to it. And you know, they're
accusing of him of jumping in willy nilly and and
and it's true he did not do a very good
job building any kind of coalition or consensus to UH
to strike against Iran with with Israel.
Speaker 2: The way he did.
Speaker 1: But I think he correctly points out that they've been
monitoring Iran for a long time. And you know, I
didn't know this, but the Israelis had cracked the uh,
the IT systems in Iran, and Iran has run has
tens of thousands of more of cameras that they use
at surveillance and the Israelis broke into that and uh
they've been monitoring that for two three years, maybe longer,
and they caught the Supreme Leader out in daylight with
with all of his uh, you know, collaborators, and they
were going going into a really unsecured place and they
took the opportunity to take them out and they did.
So there was no the timing was I think dictated
by the street, the opportunity to take out the Supreme Leader.
And now we find ourselves all in and you know,
we got to figure out what to do next. And
you know, the point of my article in part there
are lots of aspects was, you know, I think people
don't appreciate Trump's success over his long career has been
his ability to gauge and measure ricks and take risks.
And you know, this is there's no way you can't
say this is a gamble.
Speaker 2: It is.
Speaker 1: But then the other characteristic he has he's an incredible
improviser and so once he's into something, he can do
a one eighty to go a different direction if things
are not working out with the initial plan. And of
course you know that's that's the way almost all great
leaders operate. It was in Napoleon's there's no battle, No
battle plan survives the sound of the first gun shot.
I mean, there are all sorts of few people attributed
to that quote, but it's it's. It's it's a case
where we've got somebody who I think is probably one
of the better presidents we've ever had. And he's got
to say in his style is very off putting, but
nevertheless he always seems to have something, something going, and
I'm we're all eager to find out how this thing
wraps up. I mean, it's it's if you stare at
a map of the Middle East very long, you'll draw
some pretty sober conclusions.
Speaker 2: So I bring this back to Art of the Deal,
and I read that book when I was a much
younger man. I mean, I think the book came out
in eighty seven, and I might even still have a
copy around of it. But what he said was when
he goes into a deal, he doesn't look at the upside.
He doesn't spend all his time looking at the upside.
He looks at the downside, and that's what makes him
decide whether or not to go in a deal, into
a deal. And what's really cool about that is exactly
what he did here, exactly what he did in Venezuela, Cuba,
Panama Canal, and when he goes into other situations, because
what's his downside going into Iran? We're heading for war anyway.
You know, it might get bogged down, but in more
likelihood they're never going to win or force a settlement
upon the United States in Israel. Same with Venezuela. Hey,
where's that happens? Is you go to get Maduro and
he gets killed. Either way, the US is a winner.
You know, Panama Canal, Cuba perfect example. What's our downside there?
You know the Cuban people are going to suffer, but
they've been suffering for sixty seven years. So that ability
to look at his downside, to calculate the risk and
then actually make the decision to take the risk is
really what sets him aside from other presidents. You could
argue whether his assessment of the risk is wrong, but
it's the outcome that counts, and we're going to find
out soon enough, right, well, yeah.
Speaker 1: I agree that with your other examples that those are
pretty much not much downside initiatives if he does that,
you know, especially Cuba, but Iran I think is a different,
different situation. I mean, first place, it's a massive country
and size and population over ninety million. You know, he's
up against the leadership that evidently, even after we take
the Supreme Leader out as extremely deep and also just
as fanatic as he was, and so we've lopped the
head off, we've lopped the next level off, and now
we're in the third level and they don't see, they
don't seem any less intransigent than the Supreme Leader. So
we're still dealing with the irrational negotiators, irrational depending on
your point of view. Now, the risk, though, is that
of doing nothing. I think that was the key calculation.
And you know, we saw when when they launched a
ballistic missile that ended up in Diego Garcia over two
thousand miles away Indian Cea. Diego Garcia is the joint
UK US Air Force base. That proved that they've got
something that if they turned that launching pad around, you've
got Paris at London, you know, Berlin, you know, and
then it's not too far along to you know, you
start thinking about the United States. So they and the
other thing is they you know, we thought, well, we've
taken out their nuclear bomb making capability. That didn't really
happen night, and we're not sure what did happen, but
it's clear they were working working on something and there
was some thoughts that they could put together or something.
It may not be perfect, but it would certainly kill
a lot of people. And they were not years away
from that. They were months away from that. So if
we didn't act, we'd end up with with Iran, with
those weapons, with people who believed in martyrdom and and
the glories of all those virgins in heaven. And that's
not an enemy. That's not an enemy you'd like to
you like to sit across the trenches from what people
are willing to die for their cause happily.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, it makes it different for sure, And you know,
I'm just hopefully it'll work out. But what about this
group opposing him, particularly the people on the left, without
using party tags if you will.
Speaker 1: Well, the people on the left have not been for America,
at least America that you know, constitution limited government, you know,
freedom of speech, all the all the protections we've got
in the Constitution, they have not been for that country
for a long time. And the Democrats have been increasingly
taken over by the by the radical lefts who would
go even further in the culture wars as we've seen.
You know, they were never going to support Trump. But
it's interesting they just don't even care that they also
might be supporting their country, because that's not that's not
where they are. And the thing it's interesting is that
there's a lot of Republicans that are not in that category,
but nevertheless they're they're luke warm because you know, the
awful lot of deep state Rhino Republicans and lobbyists and
people of Washington who really want Trump to go away
because he's ruined their game and so if he me
has nothing to do with the war, but they just
want to see Trump fail, and if Trump fails, then
they think they can win the election in twenty twenty six.
Can Yeah, And you know, there's some Republicans that don't
seem to mind being in the minority. So it's it's
not like we've got a lot of a lot of
ferocious warriors on on on the right, if that's what
you want to call it. We don't, so it's it's
Trump been a few supporters against virtually everybody else.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: By the way, he's got the he's got the Wall
Street Journal, which is interesting because I've been reading the
Wall Street Journal for the last year and they had nothing
good to say about Trump. But you know, they were
big Paul g. Joe was all in on the rock.
And I think they still feel like, you know, we
ought to be projecting power abroad. So they've been supportive
of of of President Trump, which which I'm glad to see.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, definitely, And uh, well I guess well, uh,
history will be the judge. But it's a big gamble
to be taking. And but I think it's also a
big gamble to be taking that that, you know, betting
against the country, rooting for defeat. That that's pretty bad,
you know, Bill, it really is. It's kind of disgraceful, disgusting. Yeah,
that's more disgusting in one word.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, let me tell you some horribles that I
didn't quite realize. I spent that three hours looking at
a map of the Middle East yesterday, and a couple
of things jumped out. One is the you know, United
Arab Emirates is just right across the strait from Iraq,
and so all those Arab countries which I sort of
thought was remote from from Iran rather Iran, are not,
and they're they're easy shooting distance for for whatever weapons
that Iran has left. The other thing, if you just
look at the political map, you don't recognize how the
terrain in Iran is Awfully you know, it's it's mountainous,
and if you look at the shoreline, it's also mountainous,
and there's there's really no beaches or any place you
could land to go in to launch an invasion, even
if we did want to have ground troops. And then
you know, the thing about this Carg Island is it's
just off off the shoreline of Iraq, and you know
there are lots of other ways that they could you know,
if we did take If we did take Carg, then
it's most likely that Iran would shut off. They put
the oil there and may and get it delivered in
some other ways. So it's not exactly a checkmate if
we get it. And as far as taking the uranium,
I mean, you got to believe these people aren't dumb
enough if they've got four hundred and fifty what is
it four and fifty pounds or four and fifty I've
lost track five the kilos. Anyway, we've had enough uranium
to make like ten or twelve nuclear weapons. And after
the last strike last year, you have to believe they've
got that scattered all over the country. So we couldn't
we couldn't gather it all up now, you know, on
the other side, what's not being reported around has been devastated.
I mean, the bombing campaign is you know, they've they've
delivered something like three times three times the amount of
explosives as we had the Hiroshima bo Hiroshima weapon that
and we used in World War Two, and you know,
so it's it's it's not like Dresden in World War Two,
where you're bombing a very concentrated areas all over the country.
But they've they succeeded in taking an awful lot of
the infrastructure. So you know, they're they're they're on the
verge of societal collapse because of the collapse of the infrastructure.
And you don't read about that in the US media
or even the European media. For that matter, because again
that's that coalition against victory I think we're up against.
Speaker 2: Couldn't agree with you more so, how do you think
it's going to wind up? Your prediction?
Speaker 1: Okay, I don't know Donald's. Donald's doesn't like to be
pinned down. Yeah, it seems to me like there's if
we'd hope for regime change, I don't think we realized
how deep their bench was and that there they've got
enough enough people still in place that I don't think
they're inclined to let let a regime change happen. And then,
of course, the only people that have guns are the
leadership in Iraq and all the rest of the people
are unarmed, and they were able to kill thirty two
thousand people just last month. I don't know, So we're
not going to get a regime change, but we certainly
defanged that their military, their war making capability, and so
I think there could be a basis for for some
sort of negotiated into this. But their demands right now
are completely extreme. We're supposed to exit the Middle East
and you know, do all sorts of things. We and
of course our demands are from their perspective equal, you know,
it's extreme to them. And so we're pretty far apart
on on on any talking. So my guess is we're
going to keep shooting. And the thing that we don't
want to have happened, and and and it's a card
that Iran has is these desalienation plants, which are so
critical to the Middle East. They're there within uh they're
within shooting distance of of Iran, and if they start
going after desalination uh plants, all of a sudden, the
ability to's the same society in those countries goes away.
It would be a human rights catastrophe. So you know,
that's that's where this could go. And so we need
to be you know, it's it's not like we like
the other side doesn't hold cards. So I think we've
got to figure out some way to wind this down,
excepting that we're not going to get total victory.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well that's where I think the invasion from the
north is coming, but we won't know until it's done.
Trump is the master of distraction. I mean, if he
was a magician, he would be better than David Copperfield because.
Speaker 1: I quite agree agree.
Speaker 2: Going man, he's fun to watch.
Speaker 1: Hey, I'm with him, but I just this. This is
a tough game.
Speaker 2: Well, on the one hand, he's got everybody looking at
the the Straits of Hormuz, the Strait of Hormuz, and
on the other hand he's got the Iranian armed forces
pinned down over there. Now it's ripe for an invasion
from the north using the Kurds as well as other
mercenary force. How many Kurds are there, because I you know,
ten to fifteen thousand I've heard, but you right, how much.
Speaker 1: Iran's got an army, army that has a million men
in it.
Speaker 2: They know how many the loyalty we don't know about.
But to point is that could very well be planning
an invasion from the north, and not that the Strait
of Horror moves doesn't matter, but they're not ready for it. Mountains,
the eighty second Airborne probably going to go in there,
see some airfields, air bases and fly them in. Anyway, Hey,
make sure you check out Bill Walton dot substack dot com,
k h l FSN substack dot com. Bill always a pleasure,
Thanks so much for here stopping by.
Speaker 1: Okay, Kerry, great talking with you.
Speaker 3: Thanks for listening to Carrie Letz's Financial Survival network your
solution to today's trying times. For the latest, go to
Financial Survivalnetwork dot com. Financial Survival Network now more than ever,