Speaker 1: And hello, how are you on this Friday? Today is
the nineteenth day of June, year of our Lord two
thy twenty six. My name is Tom Sullivan. And well,
I mean, it's always always something new. We've got to
Eaglestorm sent me an email the other day and he says,
can we talk about something fun besides the war? And
I would love to, but I think that I come
from the news world, and you start with the most
important story and you work your way down you do.
The fun stuff is a kicker that they call it
at the end. So I mean, we've got we've got
some things in here. We've got we talked about a joke.
The reflecting pond in Washington, after all this time, is
back to being full of green algae, and the paint
that they put down on the floor of the reflecting
pool is starting to peel off and float around in
the water. It's a mess. So we've got that. What
else do we have? I guess when it comes to humorous,
there's something not humorous. But it's good news. Gas prices
continuing to drop down a little bit. We've got the
price of average price of regular gas, the cheap stuff
three dollars in ninety seven cents, Diesel five nine. Both
of those down three cents from yesterday, down thirteen cents
from a week ago. So they're going the right direction.
But Washington, State of Washington, and California, Hawaii, and Alaska,
they're still all all above five dollars. But that again,
I don't know about Alaska. I don't know about Hawaii.
I know the state of Washington has a lot of taxes,
but the number one cost of living in is gasoline.
In California, number one cost and that is because mostly
because of taxes that they have assessed to each and
every gallum. So we've got fat. I also, well, we
can get into some of the reflecting pool. Let me
know something. I started talking about it. The algae is back,
the blue paint is peeling off. The guy who was
the contractor for this, the President said, oh yeah, it's
gonna cost I'll do it in one week. It'll be
one point eight million dollars because there was some bid
from somebody before for three hundred million dollars. And I'll
do it in a week and one point eight million.
One of the things about Donald Trump that made him
pretty famous in New York City was the Woman Ice
Rink and the Woman Ice Rink in Central Park was
in a state of disrepair and they couldn't get the
water into make the ice in the winter, and it
was a mess. And the city of New York had
spent I want to say, a couple of years working
on it and had all kinds of cost on it,
engineers on it. And Donald Trump, this is long before
he got into politics, he called up the city and said,
I'll do it for you. And it was some of
I don't remember the numbers, but it was like in
a week or two he had the he had it fixed,
and it was like for a fraction of the cost
that they were paying to everybody else. So he has
a history of fixing things like this. But the problem
that he has and everybody has had trying to fix
the reflecting pond in Washington is the fact that it's Washington.
And if you know anything about Washington, d C. I
when they call it the swamp, because before it was
our nation's capital, it was a swamp. And so it
still is the same weather system. If you will, it's hot,
it's high humidity, and this time of the year, I
don't care you set a bowl of water out on
your back porch. You'll probably turn into some sort of
green thing in a very limited time. So many administrations
have tried to deal with this. The problem is the
fact that they've got it in a swamp and it's
in the summertime. So far, the no bid contract with
fourteen million dollars, and there's a photo going around today
of the contractor who apparently is a neighbor of Trump's
and must live somewhere in Palm Beach apparently, And he's
like this big fat guy with his cigar and he's
got some like purple sports jacket on and on his
arm is some young model. It, you know, typifies I
don't know if that's really him or not, but that's
what's going around on on X today. So the reflecting
pool is still a problem. I don't Yeah, so I'm
sure they're going to try to ignore that for a while.
All right, there you go, eaglestorm. We talked about something else,
but uh oh, and one other thing I do want
to talk to you about. I was very surprised and
I kind of keep one eye pretty close on aviation.
But Monica Crowley, who I used to work with, she
is now the some big position at the White House. Anyway,
she travels with the President and was over in Geneva
and was on Air Force One as they flew home
from Paris the other night, and she took a photo
of Air Force one sitting on the on the apron
of Andrews Air Force Base, and instead that she was
it was her honor to be able to fly on
the last flight. Now what do you mean the last flight, Well,
they have two of them. They're identical. The tale is
twenty nine thousand, and they're not getting rid of it,
but they are parking it in the hangar as a backup.
Because remember the newer seven forty seven. It's not brand new,
but it's a newer model. It's the eight hundred model
of the seven forty seven that Guitar gifted to I
don't know, to the nation or to Donald Trump. I'm
not exactly sure. So he had that thing painted red,
white and blue, and they've installed various security measures on
it and the new communication system and things for the President,
and that is going to be the new temporary Air
Force one until Boweing gets their act together. So the
last flight of the of what you perceive as Air
Force one. The design, the blue and white design created
by Jackie Kennedy back around nineteen sixty one, and we've
had that on the old seven O sevens and now
the seven forty sevens. Those seven forty sevens are thirty
six years old. They originally were put into work when
George H. W. Bush was president. They went from the seven,
the old Boweing seven O seven to the seven forty seven.
It was quite a step up, but it's thirty six
years old, and they wanted newer, modern aircraft. So they've
got it, and apparently they're going to be flying around
in this red, white and blue seven seven eight hundred.
It's maybe I'm a sucker for tradition. Maybe I'm also
a sucker for Jackie Kennedy had style and she designed
that schematic that livery as they call it, for seven
for air Force one and four a bunch of government
planes over the base at Andrews. And so I'm sorry,
I hope, I hope the next president paints it back
the way it was. I just do I know Trump
does all this stuff that is the arch, the ballroom,
that all these things that he does, and I'm just
going I don't I'm not on the same page with
his his gold leaf stuff and everything else. So anyway,
don't be surprised if you see the new seven for
the new air Force. One is red, white and blue,
and I think it's I don't like it all right now, eaglestorm,
can we get to the Okay, now we can get
to the war, because this is getting to be you
step back a little bit. Oh, by the way, the
everybody was supposed to be in Switzerland for the big
start of the sixty day negotiation. Well that's canceled. Yeah, JD.
Vance never got on a plane heading there. The talks
are on hold. Iran has backed out of the talks.
Vance has canceled his trip to Geneva. The reason is
is because overnight Israel and Lebanon has belaw we're firing
missiles back and forth at each other. I think has
belaw what started it? And they killed four Israeli soldiers
and so Israel responded as you would expect them to,
and so they said, oh up, nope, you know that
that memory the fourteen point memorandum of understanding says that
that's supposed to be a ceasefire. It's weird because neither
Hesba Law or Lebanon or Israel are signatores to this
fourteen point memorandum of understanding. So it's still I said
yesterday that this I'll be surprised if we get through
sixty days without this whole thing falling apart. I didn't
expect it to be before the first hour. But that's
what's going on. And it's interesting also because Jadie Vance
came to the even like I told you, he was
running around doing all the network shows here in New
York Thursday, Wednesday, and then yet today he was in
the press room, press office, press briefing room. And what
his job is to sell the fact that this memorandum
of understanding is a great, great, great idea. There aren't
a lot of people that agree with him, and a
lot of Republicans don't agree with him, but he's selling
it based and what I don't know if this is
really him or whether he's just selling the program because
the boss told him to. But I got the feeling
this is really JD. Vans, because he is very much
along the line of, well, you know what we need
to do is we need to trust these guys. We
need to trust the Iranian leadership Let's give them some incentives.
Let's give them a bunch of money, Let's drop the
sanctions against them, Let's do all these wonderful things and
embrace them, and maybe they will become normal, nice people.
And I'm thinking he's I mean, I guess if it works,
I'll eat I'll eat crow. But I'm going jd vance.
You know what I think he's doing. I think he's
hurting his chances to be the nominee after Donald Trump
is out of office. I think Marco Rubio is going
to looking better every single minute. The other day, when
the President was still over in France and they had
the news conference the G seven meeting, and standing behind
him was Howard Lutnick and Marco Rubio. Lutnick was laughing
and chuckling and smiling and shaking his head at everything
that Trump said. Marco Rubio, I would not want one. No,
I don't want to play poker with him. His face
never changed. He didn't grin, he didn't he didn't look concerned,
he didn't raise his eyebrows, he didn't smile. He was
like a stiff soldier standing there. But Jadie Bance is going,
come on, let's give let's give these Iranian guys a chance.
Let's give them a bunch of money and drop the sanctions,
and they'll be No. Without incentives, they're going to be
good guys, I don't think so. So let's start off
with President Trump was interviewed first interviews since the MoU
has been off.
Speaker 2: There.
Speaker 1: He did a thing with Mark Caputo over at Axios.
Here's a little couple of clips from the Q and A.
Speaker 2: What have you learned about not just the exercise of power,
but the limits on your power as a result of
the conflict.
Speaker 3: There are no limits, no, no, not I haven't learned
that lesson yet. I know there are, but you know
there are no limits. We defeated them totally militarily. We
have the most powerful military in the world by far.
Who else could have done a blockade like that. I
did a naval blockade when one ship was able to
get through. Some try they didn't. You know, it didn't
last very long.
Speaker 2: And it certainly brought around to the table more than before. However,
beginning of conflict you had talked about you only wanted
unconditional surrender, and well the MOLU doesn't look like unconditional surrender.
Speaker 3: Well, it really probably is unconditional surrender. I think so.
Speaker 1: Well, it's interesting here he says, the unconditional surrender. Unconditional
surrenders mean unconditional. There's no thing to negotiate, not fourteen
points to negotiate. There's nothing to negotiate with an unconditional surrender.
It's I give up. That's it. There's no well, let's
talk about it. There's none of that. So the President
went on with the market, putive over at Axios and
let me touch more, let me go back for just
the second on jd Vance jd Vance. The more he talks,
the more he sounds like he does not like Israel.
He's talking down to them, going, who do you think
you are? You ought to be grateful for us. He's
not making friends with anybody in Israel. And the President
has a tone of that as well.
Speaker 3: If it weren't for Donald Trump, Israel would have been eviscerated.
Speaker 2: Your relationship with Nan Yaho's it's good, but we have
to keep them a little bit, saying are you going
to be able to control Israel from attacking Lebanon? Yeah?
I will be, I mean I would. Uh. They have
a lot of respect for me, and they do as
I say.
Speaker 1: Yeah, no surprise or the narcissist part of him saying
they have great respect for me, that's why they'll I
can control them. But the fact that they will do
what I say? Do you know how much? That probably
doesn't go over very well with anybody. Are you in Israel?
I've between Jadie Vance especially and now the president are
we are breaking our friendship with the greatest ally that
we have in that part of the world. That's Israel,
all right? Rock Gravid also from act sho He actuos
He's he's very tied in with the people in the
Middle East, with especially in Israel. And the whole idea
about the ceasepire that Israel is supposed to do even
if they're being fired upon by Hesbal law is what
Barack Ravid talks about.
Speaker 4: So first I would just add the word alleged before
renewed ceasefire, because the seafire was supposed to coming to
effect at four pm Local time nine am Eastern and
as we speak, I think just like half an hour ago,
there were still fighting, still fighting in southern Lebanon. And
what I hear from Israeli officials, from Israeli Defense officials
is that the guidance, the directive that they got from
Israel's political leadership is to hold their attacks northern of
what's called the Yellow line, which means that ten kilometer
buffer zone that Israel occupies in southern Lebanon. So everything
north of that is a ceasefire, but everything south of
that is business as usual, and the IDF has been
directed to continue taking military action against threats in this area.
So I think that there's a quite quite a big
difference in interpretation between Israel on the one hand, Hezbolani
one the other hand, when it comes to what the
seas fire actually includes.
Speaker 1: So is this the beginning of a divorce between the
United States and Israel.
Speaker 4: The Israeli government is not monolithic. It has different parties
and different elements and different characters. And NATANIAO is definitely
much more leaning towards accommodating Trump's request this way or another,
even if not one hundred percent of the time. But
he's not the only one calling the shots, or at
least he's dependent on hardline ultranationalist politicians that he has
put in key positions in his government. And he has
an election in less than four months so this dependency
on those extreme right elements is even higher. And this
is why people like Itamar Beankvir the Minister of National Security,
or bet Salies Motrit the Minister of Finance, or even
Nataniao's Minister of Defense, who is in his own party,
when they do things or when they say things, Nataniao
is not really saying anything against it. He's not going
out against them. He's not forcing them to change course,
especially because he knows that a lot of his political
base supports what they say. And this is why, even
if he wants to accommodate Donald Trump's request, he's not
always able to do so. And this is why I
think we got to the point that we got with
the Vice President of the United States basically saying the
quiet part out loud from the podium in the White
House and saying what many people around Donald Trump think
for a long time, that what this current Israeli government
is doing is contrary to US national security interests.
Speaker 1: So when Donald Trump looks at Israel, he probably thinks, well,
wait a minute, the regime in Iran can order Hezbo
law and Hamas and the who thies to do what
they want couldn't he order Israel to do that, but
you did heard a brocrat. So there's lots of different factions,
of different political stripes within the Israeli government, which is
why I say I will be surprised if this gets
very far in these so called negotiations over the MoU.
Speaking of the MoU, General Ben Hodges, who used to
command our military in Europe, was asked what does he
think about the memorandum of understanding?
Speaker 5: Obviously this memorandum of understanding has so many holes in
it that even the Republicans are criticizing it as or
just told us. The fact that it's alleges that Israel
and Lebanon will do certain things or implies it, yet
neither of them are actual parties to the negotiations and
the agreement. So I think it's naive to think that
Israel is going to do something that's not in its interest,
or that Hamilla is going to do something, and it's
interesting unless it is they are compelled to. So the
idea of a ceasefire never seemed likely to me.
Speaker 1: Ditto the same for me. I don't see ceasefire because
his Bella has been sending thousands of rockets during the
previous ceasefire into Israel, and you expect Israel just to
sit there and take it. I don't think they will.
So General Hodges was talking about the Republicans that are
complaining about this memorandum. There's just a little sample.
Speaker 6: Iron's left stronger, we are left weaker, and a lot
of stuff into them.
Speaker 3: Everything I've heard about it causes me concern whether or
not you can land this deal with Iran. I don't know.
Speaker 2: They certainly would walk it around.
Speaker 7: My history demonstrates that giving billions of dollars to theocratic
lunatics who want to murder us is an exceptionally bad idea,
and I think, unfortunately the President has received some really
bad advice on this deal.
Speaker 1: That last one was Senator Cruz. Ted Cruz started off
with the Bill Cassidy and John Cornyan. Of course they're
mad at Trump because he basically got them pushed out
at the end of their term. Lindsey Graham was one
of those. Lindsey Graham apparently he's waffling back and forth.
One hour, he's upset about this, the next hour he's
Donald Trump is his best friend. So that but that's
Lindsey Graham. Michael Allen, who was one of the National
Security Advisors George W. Bush. His analysis is Asphala.
Speaker 8: Well, I think maybe it's given them a few moments
in time to negotiate something that would be more stable.
But this is a real full crumb going forward, and
that is what will Israel do if fired upon by Hesbola.
The United States and others say, of course, you have
not relinquished your right to self defense, you very well
can go them. But then you juxtapose that with what
the Vice President said and his press briefing recently, he
was very negative towards Israel. He said, you can't kill
and shoot your way out of everything. So I mean,
I think we're setting up for another divergence between the
United States and Israel as Israel feels like we have
to go after them. And on top of that, it's
the Israeli elections later this year and arguably Netanya who
has to keep being aggressive or he's not going to win.
Speaker 1: So the theme of what I'm playing for you today
is there's a lot of people that are Republicans or
conservatives or from a Republican administrations that are pointing out
that we're going to have a problem with Israel, and
I know there's a lot of young Republicans who are
not happy about Israel in general. And the older you are,
the more you're more favorable towards Israel. Has nothing to
do with your Your religion is just. Israel has been
a good friend of the US for sent well since
they were created back in nineteen what was it forty eight,
So it has a long history of friendship and friendship
should last. But it looks like it's under a little
bit of stress right now. One of the other items
of stress is the cia Bill Poulti, who is came
from the Poltie Housing family, even though that corporation kind
of pushed him out, but his grandfather started the company.
He was the grandson who they brought in, and so
he got a job as the head of Fannie May
and Freddie Mack mortgage operations in the government. And he's
the one who went after Leticia James and went after
Lisa Cook over at the FED and went after was
it a bunch of different politicians, all Democrats. He ignored
the Republicans, so he apparently President Trump liked him. So
when Telsey gabberts is I'm quitting as the Director of
National Intelligence. He nominated Bill Poulty. Wow, has there been
a pushback again from the right and the left. This
is bipartisan. Guess who showed it. He's supposed to take
over today. Felci Gabbert's packing up her stuff and leaving
the office today. Yesterday, apparently Bill Poulty walked into the
office and said I'm here, and they said, well, well
you're not, And he said, I want a list of
all the employees. Give me a list of every employee.
I don't know if it's in just the Office of
Director of National Intelligence or all of the eighteen intelligence agencies.
I don't know if they gave him the list, but
he basically was implying that he wants to look over
the list to see who he's going to fire. The
President was not shy about it. He said he wanted
Poulty to go in there and fire a whole bunch
of people. He wanted the intelligence units to shrink. So
they tried the Republicans once. The President the other day
said well, I'll put Jake Clayton. I'll nominate Jay Clayton
to be the permanent Director of National Intelligence. They hustled
and hurried to get Jake Clayton in for a nomination hearing,
and the President called up Jake Clayton and said, don't go.
So that's on hold. I don't know what's going to
happen with the Director of National Intelligence, whether anybody in
the intelligence community even is going to cooperate with him,
But he showed up. John Zeipher's former CIA officer, was
stationed in Russia and he was asked all about this
from the eyes of a CIA agent.
Speaker 6: Well, it's clear that every day more and more the
president wants somebody in that job whose job is just
to be a political hatchetman, cherry pick intelligence so they
can publicize fire people they don't like, and so, yeah,
the danger is you have serious people doing serious work.
You have a very powerful foreign intelligence agency and agencies,
and if you're going to use them for political purposes,
like to go check voting machines and get involved in
US elections, that's something that's very dangerous. And we've done
reforms over many decades to try to avoid exactly those
kind of things happening. So when you have somebody like
this who's not a serious person, who's in there only
to cause trouble, Yeah, it is going to cause trouble.
Speaker 1: Okay, so it causes trouble, but is what do you think,
what do you think, mister Czeipher, is just going to
impact the morale of the people that are out there
collecting secrets for our government.
Speaker 6: Well, you know, most of the people who work there
have worked there for years, who have variety of presidents,
a variety of policies. They take their jobs seriously. They
believe they're doing important work for the American people. So
they do their work even if morea if you know,
what they see in the political process goes up and down.
But it does matter ultimately if you're not taken seriously
by the people you work for. If the president shows
contempt for the intelligence community by putting people in that
probably wouldn't even be able to get an entry level job,
nonetheless lead the DNI, it's a real problem. You got
to remember here. The dn I, too, is a very
different kind of thing. It was created after nine to
eleven in two thousand and four for political reasons. It's
very much sort of a boring nerd job whose job
is to create standards over the intelligence community, worry about
budgetary issues, solve problems between different agencies to have somebody
come in and think that they can just sort of
pull and figure out who to fire. I don't know
how you would even do that.
Speaker 4: But it does.
Speaker 6: It sends a bad signal, so that the people who
work for the intelligence community.
Speaker 1: So put yourself in the shoes of somebody in the office.
And here comes Bill Pulti in and he doesn't have
a security clearance, he has nothing, and he starts starts
demanding lists of the employees. I mean, do you say no, no,
you can't have these. You're not even you don't have
any degree of class information that you can have. Well,
you won't say no to him because you know if
you do, and he's going to get that job, he
will be fired. You will be fired. So at this point,
I don't know what they're going to do, but it's
going to be one to keep an eye on. Back
to John Cipher about the fact that this job, being
the director of the eight seventeen or eighteen intelligence agencies
seems more like a traffic cops job.
Speaker 6: Yeah, so clearly it looks like the president put an
arsonists in charge and then hope that the Senate would
push back so that he can then bully the Senate
to get what he wants on this voting thing. The
Democrats clearly put held back on authorizing flies A seven
oh two to try to put pressure. So it's going
to be interesting to see because I do think they're
a mixture of Republicans Democrats will come together on this
because Pulti is is it, like I said, a political
arsonist and is quite dangerous in that position. Yeah, flies
A seven or two. It's a complicated thing, but as
essentially collecting foreign intelligence over the air way, so someone's
on computers or phones overseas and it works its way
through United States infrastructure. We need to have a means
to collect that. It's been complicated. But I think this
is just a political game to try to stop somebody
like Paulty being in charge. And so it's communediancy if
Democrats and Republicans will work together because this person is
so unfit to the job.
Speaker 1: The Republicans and Democrats did work together on the Senate
committee to try to nominate Jake Clayton really really quick
so that Bill Poulty couldn't come in, but that was
all stopped. So it's a political chess game. I agree
with mister Steifer that this guy, Bill Poulty is a
danger being in that position. This isn't fine. Put him,
put him in charge of mortgage regulations, but our national
secrets and he doesn't have any experience or knowledge about it.
He's I don't know what kind of guy he is.
Maybe he's got thick skin, but in nobody likes him.
Nobody And speaking of people who are not well liked,
Luigi back in court because well he wasn't back in
court of his yesterday. His legal team had him in
court and they were implying that they were going to
use the insanity defense, that yes, that there was some
sort of emotional disturbance. And yet now today and this
defense team that they that he has are supposed to
be really super caliber defense lawyers, and apparently they aren't
looking very good because they switched today and said, oh, never,
never mind on the insanity defense. Here's Joey Jackson, who's
a great defense lawyer.
Speaker 9: It's unusual. Good to be with you. But I think
they had to do it. And what do I mean,
Let's remember what the extreme emotional disturbance is. It has
a couple of flaws. Why Number one, what you're doing
is right, as Carascanal just pointed out, is that you're
admitting that you did it. You're simply giving a justification.
So there's that admission. Number two. It does not exonerate
you at all. It simply mitigates, lessens the sentence that
you will have. Now that's problematic because what happens is
is that this is the state murder trial, and even
if it were successful at the state murder trial, it
would not have been successful in the federal trial.
Speaker 2: How dare me say that?
Speaker 1: I say that.
Speaker 9: Because extreme emotional disturbance is not a defense federally, and
so that's a problem. It's a problem because if you
make the admission that I did it in state court,
which is a defense because you had a reasonable justification
and excuse if the.
Speaker 2: Jury would buy that.
Speaker 9: Now when you go across the street to federal court,
you can't use that. And if you can't use it,
and the federal prosecutors have the admission that you did it,
and they have psychiatric records where you're giving admissions it
explaining yes, I did it and here's why, and they
parade that before the jury. You're guilty. And what a
guilty finding in the federal case, you're facing life in
prison without parole, and so it was not a viable
play right overall when you consider his staycase and his
federal case.
Speaker 1: So if I'm ever on trial for something like that,
I mean, I would want somebody who got good grades
in law school and all those sorts of happy things.
But man, one thing that would be really important would
be somebody that was really smart strategically, and these lawyers
that are working for Luigi strategically were like first first
day law students. They really blew it. So in any case,
we know Luigi did it. Just a question of man,
take how much time and money is being spent on
something that is so clear and obvious. All right, let's
speaking of time and money. Guess what did not do today?
We did not do anything on Wall Street because it
is Juneteenth and it is a federal holiday, and the
stock markets were closed today, so there's a little bit
of a pause. We wait to see what happens. There's
a lot of news that's taking place internationally, but the
oil markets are definitely trending lower that you would expect
because of the fact that there is a chance of
some breakthrough here. But as far as the markets go.
No stocks, no bonds, but we did get oil commodities
were trading in Chicago and West Texas. Intermediate cruise went
up to seventy six dollars and some change. That was
up just about a dollar from yesterday, and in the
aftermarket that I'm looking at right now, it's up another buck.
So oil price is kind of scooting up just a
little bit because I think they're looking around and going, man,
we didn't even get the sixty days negotiation period started yet,
so maybe they're not having as much optimism about it
as others. So that's it for today. Thank you for
coming by, have a wonderful weekend, Happy Dad's Day, are
you fathers, and we'll see you back here on Monday.