Speaker 1: And welcome to the Big Podcast on this Tuesday. Today
is the nineteenth day of August year of our twenty
twenty five. My name is Tom Sullivan. So we have
a lot to go over today. We'll pick up where
we left off yesterday with Ukraine. We have shake up
at the FBI to at least make sure you're aware
of Texas. I mean they only lasted two weeks. At
least a couple of you four or five years ago.
The Texas Dems that ran from this date, they lasted
a month, but now they're back. Yeah, they accomplished nothing,
absolutely nothing in any case. So we'll get to all that.
But let me start with Ukraine, because where we have
left it was yesterday. It was historic. All the European
leaders were there and the President Zulyiski and the head
of the EU, the head of NATO, and so they
had their powow and they talked about what they wanted
to do, and they wanted to come up. And we
talked yesterday about this question about the security agreement that
Ukraine is going to need in order to do some
sort of peace agreement. They're worried that Vladimir is going
to say yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, we'll sign this thing
and then come running back in with his troops and
keep attacking Ukraine. So the security agreement looks like, acts like,
smells like, sounds like Article five from NATO, and we
know Article five is the article that says if anybody
attacks any one member of NATO, they have attacked all
of us and we all must respond to defend that
NATO country. So what they're saying is, we will set
up a security agreement and we will say Ukraine, you're
not part of NATO. But it sure looks like it,
sure acts like it because we're all going to agree
to defend you. To the tune of troops having European
troops in there, from France, from Spain, from England, from Germany.
And the question that we left off yesterday was what
about the United States? And yesterday there was some conversation
that made it sound like, yeah, the US will in
fact put boots on the ground. But this morning the
President called in to Fox and Friends and this is
what he had to say, what.
Speaker 2: Kind of assurances do you feel like you have that
going forward? And you know, past this Trump administration, it
won't be American boots on the ground defending that border.
Speaker 3: Well, do you have my assurance? And I'm president and
I'm just trying to stop people from being killed.
Speaker 4: Charlie.
Speaker 3: Look, they're losing from five to seven thousand people a
week in that ridiculous war that should have never happened.
If we had a normal not even a great president.
If we had a normal president, that wouldn't have happened.
But we had a guy that didn't have a clue.
And they're losing, think of it, five to seven thousand
a week. So even these guys say, I'll say, okay,
let's meet next week. I say, you can't meet next week.
Next week you're gonna have seven thousand more dead people.
You can't do that. You got to get this thing done.
One of the things at the table was one of
the gentlemen, who's a great guy. But he said, I
hope I didn't insult him. He said, well, let's meet
in another month or two and let's see if we
can start, you know, making some money. He said, a
month or two. You're gonna have another forty thousand people
dead in a month or two. You have to do
it tonight. And I did. Actually, I called President Putin
and we're trying to work out a meeting with President Zelynsky.
We'll see what happens there and then if that works out.
If it works out, then I'll go to the Trilath
and close it up. All right.
Speaker 1: So you heard him say and asked about security guarantees
in US troops, boots on the ground, and he said,
you have my assurance we're not going to So now
the answer at least from President Trump is clearly no.
Now I don't mean to be parsing the words too carefully,
but boots on the ground. Does that include? Because they're
talking about that, you can't have a security agreement without
some sort of protection in the sky. So would the
United States Air Force be used to protect the sky?
How about and the Marines they have airplanes, but also
the Navy out in the Black Sea or I don't know.
We're going to have to find out more, and the
details we're not going to find out at any time
real soon. Because one of the correspondents in Moscow says
that the word in Russia is not as positive.
Speaker 5: Yeah, the Kremlin, the Russian Foreign minister really not being
committal so far on wanting a bilateral meeting between Vladimir Zelenski,
the President of Ukraine, and Vladimir Putin, or that trilateral
meeting afterwards. Either it was quite interesting because, of course
yesterday you had that phone call between President Trump and
Vladimir Putin as those meetings were going on in DC.
And even though even then afterwards the readout coming from
the Russians was quite different than what President Trump was saying,
the Russians certainly remained noncommittal to having those meetings. Even
yesterday senior Kremlin aid came out and said that the
Russians and the US had agreed to continue consultations between
the Ukrainians and the Russians, Those, of course have already
been going on so far to very little effect. And
all the Russians have been saying so far is that
it was discussed to possibly raise the level of the representatives,
which could obviously mean to the top level of the president,
but could also mean a variety of other things. And
then today there was an interview by Russian Foreign Minister
Sergei Lavrov with Russian state media where he also appeared
to pour at least cold water on something like this
happening quickly or the Russians being committed to it. I
want to read you really quick what Sergei Lavrov said
in that interview. He said, any contacts involving top officials
must be prepared with the utmost care, he said, and
then we do not refuse any form of work, neither
by lateral or trilateral. So the Russians are saying it's
something that could happen, not necessarily something that will happen. That,
of course, has been their line for quite an extended
period of time. One of the things that Vladimir Putin
had said before the summit in Alaska took place is
that he said that he was never completely against meeting
Voladimir Zelenski, but at the same time, a meeting like
that need to be prepared and there needed to be
several things taken into consideration. He believed that a meeting
like that was still very far off and that the
conditions for such a meeting simply had not yet been met.
One of the things that also makes it quite difficult
for the Russians to agree to such a meeting is
that Russian state media, but also the Kremlin itself, has
painted Voladimir Zelenski as an illegitimate president because of course,
there haven't been a elections in Ukraine. The Russians walking
back from that a little bit now saying that such
a meeting is possible, but certainly at this point in
time at least, not saying that a meeting like that
is in the books anytime soon. Certainly not within the
next week or two. As some have said. Who attended
those meetings in Washington, d C. Yesterday, Yeah, so there
you go.
Speaker 1: Sounds to me that they are putting on a big
stall job, that they're going yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. We
need to have everything prepared, We need to line up
our pencils. It sounds to me like they are not
eager to stop this in any short period of time.
Mark Penn, who is a Democrat strategist, has been putting
out some tweets over the last couple of days. The
one today I wanted to share with you. This is
again Mark Penn writing, this is from what I can see,
nearly a million people have died in the Ukraine War,
and Joe Biden was unable to even attend G seven
meetings with embarrassing the country. In contrast, Donald Trump is
pulling off unprecedented diplomatic feats to advance serious negotiations that
has a reasonable chance of being successful, and the press
coverage of it has been ludicrous. If Obama had pulled
off these things, it would be hailed as a tour
de force rather than downplaye and naysaying everything we see
in the press. He may or may not be successful,
but it is incredible effort that should be respected and applauded,
and for the people involved, a new hope for designing
a lasting peace with real enforcement, unlike the previous empty
security guarantees. I mean, I couldn't say it any better.
It's exactly what it is. I mean. Joe Biden did
not lift a finger, and the Secretary of State did
nothing other than wring his hands and talk about how
they're working diligently on trying to find some peace and
never together. I would say on the program, for those
of you that listen to my radio show, I've said
it for the last three and a half years, why
doesn't Joe Biden try and put together some sort of
peace deal? Why doesn't he bring the parties together? He
did nothing, and Anthony Blinken did nothing. So it is
I hope and pray that that Donald Trump is successful
and he's able to pull this off. And I don't
care about the Nobel Prize. He should get it, but
that's not the point. I think he cruly is genuinely
trying to stop the killing. He brings it up all
the time. But I'll tell you on the other side,
I think Vladimir Putin is not interested in stopping the killing.
He's interested. He only has one thing on his mind,
and that is, and we've all learned about it over
the years, that he wants to bring back Mother Russia.
That's what he wants, and Ukraine is a big piece
of that. And I don't think he's going to stop.
He's going to try to make Ukraine part of Russia again,
the former Soviet Union. And I don't think all of
his other I think he's just stalling, and that he's
very good at stalling. I don't know how long President
Trump is going to put up with it, because I
think everybody can see what's going on. So Mike Pompeo,
former Secretary of State, guy who actually did know what
he was doing. Do you know he was the top
valvictorian for his West Point class. Yeah, he graduated from
West Point, went into the army, did. I don't know
why he left the army, but he became a congressman,
and then from Congress he was the CIA director in
Trump one point zero and then Secretary of State. I
don't know why Donald Trump didn't bring him back. I
think the guy is excellent. In any case, this is
what he had to surmise about where everything sits right now, Well.
Speaker 6: I think that'd be real progress. Certainly wouldn't happen to
under President Biden. Look, they'll get a chance to both
state their positions. They'll each state maximalist to relatively maximalist
positions because they know that there is some tough negotiating
that lays ahead. So neither of them is going to
walk in with just a deal that the other one's
going to say yes to, So we shouldn't hope for that.
But they'll begin to take the measure of where you
can actually resolve this and you start to see it
take shape. You heard the European leaders talk about this
in the White House yesterday. They began to think about
what the security guarantees would look like, what the architecture
of that would look like, realistically, where the line of
contact might resolve and ultimately how you might deliver a long,
just and lasting piece in Europe in a way that
President Biden simply couldn't achieve to be. The line of
contact will almost certainly be wherever the forces are, that is,
where the actual line of contact exists when the agreement
is reached. I think that's why it's going to require
even more US pressure in the days and weeks ahead,
because Putin today thinks, look, why do a cease fire
if you're inching along and it's expensive, lots of manpower,
lots of losses, but still firing a couple hundred rockets
drones into Ukraine every night, putting pressure on Zelenski and
then making advances along that line. So I think he's
going to chase real estate until the agreement hits, and
the United States is going to have to demonstrate that
it and its European partners are prepared to impose real
cost on Putin before he'll come to say yep, okay,
good enough and then allow the security architecture to fall
into place. Remember what Putin will be giving up by
allowing the security architecture. Everybody talks about troops on the ground,
The most important thing he'll be giving up is that
the Ukrainian airspace will be patrolled by the Coalition of
the Willing, no longer missiles and rockets able to be
fired into Kievan surrounding civilian populaces. So he's going to
keep at this on the ground until there is economic pressure.
I think the way you just described it, it makes sense,
and we shouldn't forget the critical nature of these secondary sanctions,
not only against India, our friend, our partner, but against
the Chinese who continue to provide resources to the Russians
that are killing Ukrainian kids every night.
Speaker 1: If Pompeo also responded to the reporting about the peace
efforts put on by President Trump and right along the
same lines that Mark Penn wrote his tweet in X
Today about the fact that at least President Trump is
giving it an effort, a major effort, a good effort,
and Donald, I mean Joe Biden did literally nothing.
Speaker 6: It's actually worse today than when Agnew made that statement.
They were just ignorant. Then now they are downright malicious
and anti Trump. And you can see that. Look they
forgot that President Trump for four years didn't give up
an inch or allowed an inch of Ukraine to be
given up. We were very successful to turning letteric. But
they forget the historical fact that this invasion occurred because
for a year, putent build up troops, and the United
States and Europe did nothing. And so you know, my
advice to the White House and the press team is
ignore these these these folks, it's all just foolishness. Can
stay on the mission, stay focused, get real objectives, get
real outcomes on the ground, and deliver a justin lasting
piece for Europe. It's achievable. It's a lot of hard work.
But if you pay attention to York Times in the
Washing Post, you're only gonna cause you're your own cardiologists
to have to prescribe more metas.
Speaker 1: So this is going to take a while, but at
least forward progress is being made. You want to talk
about some place where there's no zero products, talk about
doing nothing, accomplishing nothing. Can we talk about the Texas Democrats.
I don't know how you feel about all this redistricting thing,
but the Texas Democrats look downright foolish in my eyes.
I don't understand. You knew this was going to be
the outcome, knew what the score was going to be.
So the Texas. Democrats have gone back to Texas and
the legislature is back in session and they are back
to debating a lot of different issues facing the state
of Texas. It's the second special session that Governor Abbott
has called. They go for thirty days. It expired while
they were gone, so they called another special session. So
they're now going to be debating a lot of different things,
but one of them will be obviously redrawing the legislative districts.
The thing about all of this is California is trying
to They're not trying to do it, and they look
foolish too, because California says that they're going to try
to get more democratic seats, and what they have to
do is they have to go to the people and
get their permission to draw them. Because the people took
that away from the California politic editions and gave it
to an independent commission and put it in the state constitution.
So what they have to Democrats in California have to
remove that permission. They have to adjust the constitution somehow
and then hope that people vote Democrat in the area.
There's significant areas of California, not the majority where it's
all read it's Republican. The population centers Los Angeles and
San Francisco are deep, deep blue, so I don't even
know if they'll be able to change any of that.
But what they're doing is at the behest of Gavin Newsom,
who wants to be the Democrat Party savior. He's been
very weird lately, writing very strange messages. He appears to
be making the same strategic mistake that Hillary Clinton made
a bunch of Democrats have made, which is vote for
me because I'm not Donald Trump. They hate Trump so
much that that's all they can focus on. It's not
about what can I do to help you with your life.
So I got a call from Barbara who lives in California,
and she's befuddled by what Newsom is doing as well.
Speaker 4: I just wanted to bring to the attention of who's
ever on air right now that Newsom, being all over
the airwaves with his awful awfulness of himself, has doing
this because of the fact that that guest tax in
California that they were so trying to tamper down with
his handsticked group of people just jumped by thirty cents
a gallon in California in the last week. I just
thought that needs to be brought to the attention of
all of the public. The views he snuck that in,
and he's all over the news about Trump ump and
everything else. And he's done, snuck his gas tax in,
jumped our prices thirty cents just last week, and it's
going to go up again and again and again under him.
Thanks goodbye.
Speaker 1: Well you can tell Barbara's not happy. But we're really
talking about Texas and the fact that they're trying to
redraw their lines. And again we'll see what the voters
do in Texas, also in California. But California has another problem.
This is Gavin Newsome that most people don't know about.
She lives there locally, but I'll bet you nobody knows
what the average price of gas is in California other
than people that live in California. But I'm looking at
a triple a. The average gas price in the nation
right now is three dollars and thirteen cents. Here in
New York, that's about where it is. We see. I've
seen some gas stations with a two in front of
a two five. So national average three dollars thirteen cents California.
Most of this is because of taxes that they have
assessed on top of gasoline prices. The average gasoline price
for the cheap stuff is now four dollars and forty
nine cents versus three p thirteen across the nation. I
don't see how he's going to run for president and
not be asked about, Hey, how come you, how come
you can't manage the California gas prices? Yeah, so four
forty nine. I'm looking on the map here, though, and
there's some that are worse than that. Sam Louis Obispo
County four dollars eighty four cents. Let's see what else
I got, Oh, Mono County up by Yosemite, five dollars
and eighty one cents a gallon, And that's the average
for that part of California. Back to Texas, though, because Barbara,
thank you, and I'm sure she just kept my number
from when I was doing my radio show. She wanted
to talk to anybody that was on the air. Well,
I get what's going on. Carl Rove though, was asked
about this whole business of redistricting going on in Texas. Well, Look,
the Texas map is not going to be overturned. It
creates two black majority districts for the first time in
Texas history, and creates an eighth one more additional the
eighth Hispanic majority population district. The Voting Rights Act is
going to be is going to be a good cover
for it to be done. And look, California has already jerrymandered.
Donald Trump got thirty eight percent of the vote there
and eighty three percent of the members of the delegation
are Democrats. The new map, if the Republicans do take
five seats, and remember one of them, they're going to
have to defeat and a popular, albeit troubled, incumbent Democrat
who ran six points ahead of Kamala Harris. So no,
there's no guarantee that it's going to be five. Even
if they get all five, though the state is going
to is going to have a bigger delegation of Democrats
a percentage wise, then there are Republicans in California or
New York or Illinois.
Speaker 4: No.
Speaker 7: In fact, I think the gap is eighty million dollars
raised by the Republican National Committee and fifteen million dollars
raised by the Democratic National Committee. And that's bad, but
it ain't that's only the beginning. The Republican Congressional Super
pac Senate Leadership Fund Congressional Leadership Fund raised fifty nine
million dollars in the first first half of the year
have sixty two million dollars cash on hand. The Democrat
Congressional Senate and House Committee raised thirty nine million and
have thirty six million cash on hand. Then the GP
House members in battleground districts are raising about twenty five
percent more than Democrats in battleground districts. And then looming
behind it all is Donald Trump has si President Trump
has set up a super pack to support Republican members
of the House and Senate, and he has raised two
one hundred million dollars as of the end of the
first half of the year. Well, you've got to go
in knowing that there's as of today, going to be
a big, big, big financial hill to climb. The question
is are the Democrats going to get their acting? There
are plenty of time to get that done, but they
have to have the leadership to do it. And so
far this year they're being outgunned on the money front,
and they're going to have to do a lot lot
more and they're going to have to get some generous
people like George Soros and others to drop lots of
money in it, and that itself is a problem because
then it becomes an issue.
Speaker 1: So one of the other questions is, well, Texas will California.
Will they get all of this redistrict team done if
they get any of it done before the midterm.
Speaker 7: Election, Well, Texas will because we are filing. Deadline is
not until later in the year. And you know, the
court challenges are going to be the key that the
Democrats are not going to be able to sort of
begin to sort of say we're going to run until
after the November fall of the November constitution election. If
they win it, which is two thirds of the voters
today say they're not four taking the power away from
the Independent Commission the.
Speaker 1: Car right up. The fights will be in court. Everybody's
going to be issuing everybody. Governor Abbott thinks that Texas
is going to be just fine.
Speaker 8: What the Democrats have done is disgraceful and potentially illegal.
I'll tell you this much. If California theresould try to
squeeze out more Republicans, they're going to be lawsuits, say
we'll overturn that. What I can tell you in the
state of Texas, the five Republicans seats that we are adding,
they are going to withstand legal challenges and those will
be Republican members added to the United States Congress.
Speaker 1: So this has a long way to go. It has
to go through the courts and that will take months
at the very least. In other news, it's not a
shakeup yet, but it really is a shakeup at the FBI.
Pam Bondi has asked Andrew Bailey, who is the Attorney
general for the state of Missouri, to be the co
deputy FBI director. So ag in Missouri, big conservative guy.
All the media was all griping about the fact that,
oh my gosh, he's a big conservative. What do you
think a conservative president is going to a point? And
Pam Bondi is going to a point. The big thing
out of all of this is Dan Bongino. Remember he
kind of threw down the gauntlet about this whole process
when the Epstein files all of a sudden did not appear.
In fact, Evan Perez, who is a lawyer, had this
to say about the shakeup at the FBI.
Speaker 9: Well, the question is how much longer is Dan Bongino
in that job. It appears perhaps not for very long.
And so what President Trump, what Pamel Bondi, the attorney general,
was doing, is bringing on a fierce loyalist to prey
Trump in Andrew Bailey. He is currently the attorney general
for the state of Missouri. But he's shown that he
is very very much pro Maga, pro Trump. He has
done a number of things, including, of course, endorsing the
president's claim that he won the twenty twenty election. He
sued the federal government repeatedly, including over student loan forgiveness,
tried to sue the State of New York until the
Supreme Court rejected it, to try to stop Trump's sentencing
in that hush money case in New York, New York State.
And so now he's going to be taking place alongside
Dan Bongino. That basically the people who day to day
run the FBI. It's a very unusual thing. We've never
seen something like this before. And of course the question
is why do you need a second co director deputy
director of the FBI. Well, the reason is because Dan
Bongino and Pam Bondi had a confrontation a few weeks
ago over the handling of those Jeffrey Epstein file. He
essentially through the on a gauntlet and told the White
House it's either Bondy or me and Cash Battel. And
in the end it's clear the President has chosen Pam
Bondi because Bongino is widely expected to not be very
long for the shop.
Speaker 6: Now.
Speaker 9: In reaction to the announcement last night from Bondi, there
was a social media posting from Bongino. He said welcome
and posted three American flag emojis. Obviously everybody appears to
be trying to sing from the same song sheet, but
it's clear that Bongino is on his way out.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that would be well, not surprised since he did
get into a confrontation with Pam Bondi. His well, Cash
Battel is his boss. But Cash Bateel's boss is Pam Bondy.
And I mean the writing was on the wall, so
Bongino was still there. But you can't have two co
deputy directors of the FBI, So we'll see. I wish
Dan well, but I don't I think he's going to
have much more tenure at the FBI. And Scott Besson
the Treasury Secretary had a lot of news this morning.
He was on CNBC and the first question that was
asked is one that I do not I'm sorry, I
do not like this. Remember when Barack Obama, President Obama,
I forget one hundred million dollars. I think it went
to Celeindra and they went bankrupt and we the tax players,
lost one hundred million dollars on that deal. And everybody,
including me, was screaming at the time the government should
stay out of the private sector because otherwise the government
then promotes the private sector company that they're putting money into. Well,
guess what the Chips Act, which wound up helping supposedly,
it really hasn't helped produce moreps here in the United States.
Computer chips, No, not potato chips, computer chips and Hello salty.
So what is? Intel has just had a terrible time
and they've fallen behind. They used to be the leader
of everything in semiconductors and chips, but they've fallen behind.
And the President went after the new CEO they recently
brought in because years ago he did some business with
Chinese companies, and so the Intel CEO went to the
White House a couple of days ago, and they came
out in a big love fest that the President thought
this guy was great. So I thought, okay, they've smoothed
over the ruffles at Intel. But now we find out
that soft Bank, which is headquartered in Tokyo, has just
announced that they are going to make a two billion
dollar investment in Intel, and that will make a soft
Bank the fifth largest shareholder of Intel. Now, Intel got
a lot of money from the Chips Act that was
passed in twenty twenty two. And what President Trump wants
to do, and this is what I'm totally against, is
they want to swap out the money from the Chips
Act and had the government take an ownership position in Intel,
a ten percent stake worth about ten billion dollars. And
what that does is it puts Intel into a quasi
government run company. Here's Scott Besn't, the Treasury Secretary, was
asked about all this on CNBC this morning.
Speaker 10: Maybe some of the discussion we were having earlier, and
it relates to Intel and the potential ten percent stake
that the US might take in in that company, and
what you think, I think, what steps you think either
the White House or the Administration might otherwise take to
try to persuade or aggressively sell Intel chips to US companies,
because one of the biggest issues about Intel thus far
has been that they're not selling as many chips as
they should. And the Biden administration actually tried to put
some pressure on big tech companies to buy these chips,
and a lot of those companies said, we don't think
the chips are good enough.
Speaker 11: Yeah, and the last thing we're going to do is
put pressure is take the steak and then try to
drum up business that the steak would be a conversion
of the grants and maybe increase the investment into Intel
to help stabilize the stabilize the company for chip production.
Here in the US, there's no talk of trying to
force companies to buy from Intel.
Speaker 12: But no concern that you know, if you prop up
a company that deserves not to make it that it's
just another example of almost too big to fail? Is
Intel the In the past, the government has been great
at picking winners and losers. But you think, because of
the foundry that Intel has, it's that important that the
government actually helps to keep that viable.
Speaker 11: Joe, they're industries that we have to on Shore. I
think you and I are the only ones in this
conversation old enough to remember the Arab oil embargo in
the seventies and gas lines. And I would say that
the single point of failure for the global economy is
that ninety nine percent of the advanced chips in the
world are made in Taiwan. And for national security, we
have to, you know, we have to stop that single
point of failure.
Speaker 1: So I really don't see the difference between this and Cylindra.
The government, as Joe Kernin said, is not very good
at picking winners and losers. They should not be investing
in the private sector because that private sector company then
becomes essentially an arm of the government. I don't like it,
and I hope it doesn't go through, But this is
getting Intel stock was up substantially today on the news
that maybe the government is going to take a ten
percent ownership in the company. Yeah, stock was up just
about seven percent today. But another point, if I may,
just throwing money at Intel is not going to make
them successful. The successful companies happen to be right now
in Taiwan, and we should do everything in our power
to take a page out of China's playbook where they
subsidize a lot of their companies, but we should do
everything we can to make some make it easier for
some of the Taiwan chip makers to move to the
United States. They are starting to move here. But the
other part about it is the manufacturing of these chips.
You just can't build a plant and move in and
start making chips. This is three to five year effort
from the time you say we're going to build a
plant until the time you start producing these high tech chips.
So I don't like it. I'm I I just don't
want to see the government getting involved even in chip manufacturing.
It just is there's everything wrong about it in my book.
So the stock was up, like I said, just under
seven percent today for Intel. The rest of the market. Again,
we saw the Dow go up and flirt intra day
with a new record high for the Dow, but could
not hang on to it. Dow up ten to forty
four nine twenty two s andp down thirty seven, NASDAK
down three hundred and fourteen. Price of gold fell nineteen
dollars to thirty three point fifty eight, and the price
of oil down a buck sixty two dollars for one
barrel of oil. Thank you for coming by today. We're
going to be back here again tomorrow. Hope to see
you then.