Speaker 1: Hi, how are you hello? Welcome to the Big Podcast
on this Tuesday. Today is the twenty third day of June,
Year of Our Lord, twenty twenty six. My name is
Tom Sullivan, and well, we have some serious things to
talk about. We've also got some kind of wacky things
to talk about. I don't know, you want to start
with the you want to start with the wacky. I
thought it was kind of a lot of the news
is leading with the reflecting pond. Yes, the one in Washington,
d C. Goes from the Lincoln Memorial to the Washington
Memorial kind of reflects both of those. And the president
was going to go out and fix that because he's
beautifying Washington, DC. And I don't have a problem with that.
Make the fountains work and take the graffiti off of
the monuments. That's good, good, good for him, Glad he's
doing it. But the reflecting pond we talked to, I mean,
so my humor about it is Fox. Everybody's everybody's talking
about it. But Fox said, I can't believe all these
media outfits that are reflect that are talking about the
reflecting pond. By them talking about the reflecting pond. They
also got into it about Oh my gosh, they're resting people,
and there's there's all well, they're misdemeanor tickets for some
people that probably won't hold up in court. But the
reflecting pond has turned green. And then the people the
contractor who put down I don't know what's that is,
but it's kind of they apparently kind of rubbery, supposed
to be some paint. Uh, they put that on the
bottom to make it blue, and then they poured a
whole bunch of hydrogen peroxide in, which apparently damages the
paint that they just put down onto the floor of
the thing. And they're in DC, folks. D C in
the summertime is what it used to be before it
became our nation's capital. I don't know who it was
who thought up the idea, why don't we put our
capital here? Because it's it was. It was a swamp.
It's still a swamp, and in swampy climates you get
green stuff that grows.
Speaker 2: So they're.
Speaker 1: They're all having a big fuss about the reflecting pond.
I I think it's I mean, it's kind of it's
not important. So that's why I thought i'd start with it,
because we've been talking about all these serious things about
war and peace and death and destruction. So in any case,
the reflecting pond, now they're panicking and they literally have
put up security camera. I thought Washington, d c. Was
free of crime. Any case they've got they're really focusing
there on this reflecting pond because and so anyway, Fox
was asked, well, why the media talking about this reflecting pond?
Because the president is talking about the reflecting pond. That's him.
He's into building things and fixing things. And I told
you the story. One of the ways that Donald Trump
first became famous in New York City was Woman's ice
rink in Central Park and the City of New York
was trying to fix it, and it went for two
or three years in dist repair, and they had bids
in them millions and millions of dollars to fix Woman's
Woman's ice rink still there, Donald Trump called up sod
He Hall and said, I'll tell you what, I'll do
it for you no charge. And he went and did it.
It cost him very little money and he had it
done in like a week. So he has a history
of going in and fixing things. But New York City
is not a swamp, DC is. That's why they leave
in the summertime. It's really bad. So anyway, the swamp
seems to be or the reflecting pond, same thing seems
to be the top story. I guess. I guess assignment desks,
assignment editors are looking around and we've done enough on Iran,
haven't we? And besides that, Vice President Vance he and
Jared Kushner and Steve Whitcoff they're out of there. They
got out of there yesterday afternoon and are backed in
the US. So what are we going to do. We're
going to cover the technical talks, because apparently that's what's
left is a bunch of technical talk people on both
our side and Orn side. And they're back. They're still
they're still in this resort. This Have you seen the
resort where they're doing the negotiations. It's just outside Lucerne, Sweden, Switzerland,
and it goes back well over one hundred and fifty
years old. It's a beautiful, beautiful place on this hilltop
overlooking Lake Lucerne. And I started thinking the other day
about that too, and I thought, wait a minute, So
they left a bunch of technical talkers to talk about
technical stuff in this really palatialist a state. And I'm
thinking they're not in any hurry because if they wrap up,
wrap up business, then they have to leave the palatial resort.
And who picks these things? Why why don't they have
They have perfectly good meeting rooms in government buildings all
over the world. Why didn't they go to some government
building and have you know, the fold up tables and
the fold up chairs and you sit down. It's not elegant,
it's not lush. Maybe they would hurry up in their anyway,
somebody's spending a lot of money and having a wonderful time.
I would like to go to this resort in Lucerne,
Switzerland for a week or two and have have it
paid for by the government. Does seem excessive, doesn't it.
So anyway, we got that, we're waiting for the Supreme Court.
They have everybody's expected. Their term is up in two
days on Thursday. They've still got twelve big opinions that
they need to release, and I don't know why they're
not doing that, but they're not. So they're going to
go over time, obviously. But today, let's talk about a
little bit about today, because today there are primaries, and
the primaries today are in four states. You've got New York, Maryland, Utah,
and the runoff primary in South Carolina. But a lot
of focus because the media is here in New York,
so we focus on New York. But I mean New York.
I know it's a wacky place. The whole state isn't.
It's just New York City's a wacky place. But they've
got they have mayor Ma'm Donnie is pushing to see
if he has any political power. And you listen to
some of the surveys and you look at some of
the polls, and there are more and more people that
are saying that they don't trust big tech more than
they don't trust government. It used to be government was
always the boogeyman, but now corporations have always been a boogeyman,
but it's now government isn't the big bad the big
bad wolf. So I don't know what they're what they're doing.
But the Democrats that are the socialist Democrats are really
trying to take over the Democrat Party. Now parties change,
I mean, MAGA took over the Republican Party. For the
old school Republicans, they're kind of homeless, they don't have
they don't have a home. And now it's the Democrats turn.
They have these Democrats socialists and that's proudly the label
that Bernie Sanders goes by. And then Mayor man Donnie
comes along. They're calling them now locally they call him
Mayor z Yeah, I know. Anyway, he wants to try
and move the Democrat Party into a socialist party. And
Melissa de Rosa, who was the chief of staff for
Governor Andrew Cuomo before he got booted out, weighs in
on what is going on with the Democrats in New York.
Speaker 3: Well, first of all, they're not Democrats, right, they're socialists
and they're essentially parasites. They've decided that they cannot win
on their own by creating their own parties. So they
are going to latch onto the Democratic Party, feed off
of it with the overall goal of taking it over
and killing it. And so that's what the DSA is doing.
Started this back in twenty sixteen with Bernie versus Hillary
AOC then gets elected in twenty eighteen, you see the introdution,
introduction of the squad, and you what's been happening since then,
and so this year. They really do feel like it's
their big opportunity. They are going for broke and you
don't see them trying to win purple seats or red seats.
You see them trying to pick off Democrats in safe
blue seats. One of the candidates that you just had
up on the screen is actually going against the chair
of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, Audriano Westbatt one hundred percent
voting record with the Democratic Party. But he is not
a socialist, He's not an anti Semite. He believes in
public safety, he believes in opportunity and in innovation, in capitalism,
and for that they are trying to off him. And
so yes, it's terrible thing for the Democratic Party. And
if they are successful in taking over, then I think
it's going to set the party back decades.
Speaker 1: Welcome to what Republicans have had to deal with. For
those of us in my little world of kind of
establishment Republicans I used to be, I'm not. I'm an independent.
Have been an independent for many, many years now because
the Republican Party went too far to the right and
the Democrats are going too far to the left. And now,
I mean, you've had the squad, as she mentioned, but
it's now getting to go way beyond that. So today's
primary in New York is going to be interesting to watch.
Roger Zakim, who's with the Reagan Foundation, has this observation.
Speaker 4: He doesn't want to be the leader of the socialist block.
He wants to be the leader of the Democratic Party
and make it a socialist party. And that is exactly
what they are doing. Bernie aoc Zooran Mamdani are leading
the charge. They are moving this party further to the left.
They are winning congressional primaries.
Speaker 5: As our friend Matt Continetti calls it, this is the
age of Bernie Sanders. He may have not won the
Democratic nomination, but when sixty six percent of Democrats have
a positive view of socialism, we are in Bernie territory.
And with the Mayor of New York double downing on
his critique of Apak by calling them monsters who traffic
and dark money, I mean, we're in a city with
one point four or five million Jews. I mean, this
is not just anti israel behavior. This is blatant anti Semitism,
and he is trying to export it across the city.
It needs to be sold it needs to be counted.
I hope the candidates are defeated. But it's a new
day for the Democrat Party and it's looking red.
Speaker 1: That is so, I mean, I know there's like I said,
there's also primaries going on in other locations Maryland, Utah,
South Carolina. But this movement of the Democrat Party over
to the far left to socialism and more and more Democrats,
a majority of them. He quoted some static some statistic
of sixty six percent of Democrats. I think socialism is favorable. Well,
there's a lot of young people especially that have come
out of school and they've tried to work, get out
there into the workplace. They cannot afford a home, they
can't afford barely groceries. Affordability is a problem, and so
they're looking around. They're young people, and they're going, what's
this what's so great about this capitalism thing? If we're
living in capitalism, why am I not able to buy groceries?
Why am I not able to buy a home? And
I see no future where I can. So they're very hopeless,
and that's where a lot of this is coming along from.
So it's a perfect opportunity for socialists to take over
this country. Look at they haven't. They haven't stopped crying.
They've been just because the Berlin Wall came down, socialism
the feet of the Soviet Union. They didn't all go
home and say, Okay, I guess we were wrong. Those
communists and socialists are just trying harder now than ever,
and they have an opportunity in this country after almost
two hundred and fifty years. They're going, this is our time.
So watch the election returns tonight. That's going to be
a hint and then really in November, but a lot
in New York. If you're a Democrat and you win,
it's like California or Illinois, you know you'll win in November.
Frank Lunz, the big Polster, he says the same, not
the same thing. He's looking at it and going the
Democrats especially, you want to take over the Senate. Democrats
where people thought there was no way they may get
the House, but the Senate, Frank Luntz says, they have
an opportunity.
Speaker 6: The most impactful leader that I've seen in decades. When
he made an endorsement in the Texas Senate race, it
changed the outcome, and he made endorsements in Louisiana when
he's done so in congression races in places like Kentucky
and California. It really does matter, So it doesn't have
to be there. He is more seen, more heard, and
more listened to than anyone in American politics.
Speaker 1: Okay, so Frank says that President Trump has most listened to,
most influential person when it comes to helping somebody win
an election. But what is it that Democrats? Where do
they need to focus on?
Speaker 6: Affordability? Affordability? Affordability, affordability, it's all that matters in the end.
People aren't concerned about their jobs. They feel relatively secure,
they're not concerned about their retirements. Right now, it's can
they afford gas, which you've seen prices have gone down.
Can they afford food? Can they afford healthcare? And housing?
Speaker 1: Again, these are the issues that a lot of young
people are going So tell me again about how capitalism
is such a great plan because of all these things
that I can't afford. And that includes the farmers in
this country who are definitely hurting.
Speaker 6: Essential for him because that's who Republicans are up for
re election, and if he loses the farm constituency, he
loses the votes and the people who matter most, his
efforts to keep both the House and the Senate.
Speaker 1: The problem is the people that want to go into politics,
the people that are in politics. I've said this before.
It's been a while since I used to use this
a lot. They're the C minus students. They're not the
brightest and the best. That was the concept was that
we would send our brightest and best to Washington to
decide on all the big decisions that have to be made.
But instead you've got some C minus students and I'm
being very favorable using C So they're not the smartest.
So they're all of them. Democrats and Republicans are not
meeting the needs, want and desires of the people in
this country.
Speaker 6: Some people talk about oversight, other people talk about accountability.
I consider it much more of a proctology exam that
they will look at.
Speaker 2: A Congress would be doing, Oh.
Speaker 6: My god, it would the president would be more. It
would be very difficult for him because impeachment would start
in day one, day two, day three, day ten, day
one hundred and nothing would get done. And I don't
think that's good for the country that in the end,
at some point, at some point you have to put
aside politics to do policy. And if you have a
Democratic House and Democratic Senate with a Republican White House,
with the leadership that they have right now, I don't
see anything getting done.
Speaker 1: Well, let's talk about that, because a lot of you
that are cheering, going good, good, checkmate, nothing gets done.
The Republicans blocked the Democrats and vice versa. And he
also mentioned can we can we be real about this?
Quitt Democrats, I see a lot of you that are going, well,
I'll tell you what we get the house back, I'll
tell you what we're going to do. First, We're going
to impeach Donald Trump. That's what we're going to do.
You've done it twice, and you've failed twice. And the
people that wrote the rules about impeachment were brighter than
the average person. And what they said, I have to
remind you is you need fifty point one percent of
the House to start the impeachment process. The trial is
held in the Senate, and you need two thirds. Two
thirds of the Senators have to vote to convict. That
is why, going back to Andrew Johnson, there has never
been a conviction of a president under any impeachment trial
ever and I doubt there ever will be, so waste
your time on an impeachment because it's not going to
go when you where and Donald Trump will still be president.
So the House may very well wind up being controlled
by the Democrats. And Hakeem Jeffries is behind two members
of the House that are running for reelection here in
New York, and they're not the ones that Mam Donnie's behind,
So Mam Donnie has got a different list of people
he's supporting than Hakim Jeffries. So once again a big
division within the Democrat Party. But in the Senate, that's
still up in the air. It's still up for grabs.
And back to Frank Lunson, does he have any opinion
about who's going to control the Senate.
Speaker 6: There are specific Senate races, and the three that I'm
watching the most are main because you've got a monitor
Republican against very progressive Democrat Iowa, which would not have
been up in play if Jony Earns said run free election.
And now it is up for grabs in Ohio where
the Republican incumbent was not elected initially and we have
a former Democratic senator running. Those three states are the
states I'm going to be watching over the next one
hundred and fifty days to see which way the winds
are blowing.
Speaker 1: Right, So there's a guidepost for you on all things
regarding elections. Andrew Decizadero, who was with Bunch Bowl News,
he weighs in.
Speaker 7: Well, they're absolutely concerned, right haw Keen Jeffries of course
from the same state. He could be the next House
Speaker and his job is to protect his incumbents. And
in this case, you have both Dan Goldman, as you mentioned,
and Adriana a Spayat being challenged by progressives from the left,
and both of them are endorsed by of course, New
York City mayors. Don't run Mondanie. This will be a
major test of Mayor Mom Donnie's political power, not just
within the state of New York in your city specifically,
but more broadly because these are obviously federal races.
Speaker 1: Yeah, in the local polls are Dan Goldman, who I
think is a very pompous ass, but that's my opinion.
He going up against Brad Lander, and Brad Lander is
a is a gadfight who always is running for some
political office in New York City. Well, guess what Goldman
in the polls, Goldman's only attracting about eight percent support,
So Ladner may finally win an election. We'll see. Let's
you want to touch base on Irana. What's going on?
Britt Hume, the Dean of Washington analyst, weighs in on
the fact that there are the ground rules that have
been set up by our president, which is which prevented
us from basically going in and winning militarily.
Speaker 2: Here's bread well, I think, judged against the standard that
the President set basically when early going, when he spoke
of unconditional surrender, this is not a particularly good deal
for the United States. On the other hand, it's worth
remembering and not setting aside. I think the extraordinary amount
of damage and has been done to Iran militarily, you know,
the loss of their navy, their air force, much of
their missile capacity, their WAYDAR systems, and so on have
left Iran a much less important power in the world
than it was before all this. It's still as evil
and determined as ever, perhaps, but I think greatly weakened.
I think that's important to keep that in mind as
a backdrop for this. It may also be worth talking
about the unwritten but I think very real rules of
engagement under which this conflict was fought, which is basically
that the United States could not have any ground troops
because the president and I guess the country as a whole,
don't want any casualties. Hard to fight a war with
no casualties. We had very few, though, and on top
of that, of course, you know, no ground troops, no casualties.
And then there was an extraordinarily broad effort I think
in this conflict, with all the destruction we did, to
try to hold a civilian population of it around harmless.
That's a very unusual way to fight a war. Obviously,
we're trying to keep those people on our side. We're
not trying to hurt them all. That is true. Nonetheless,
it does reduce the options that you have militarily if
you're trying to protect the civilian population. So those things
all feed into a situation which may have induced the
administration to go ahead and make this deal.
Speaker 1: Well, finally I found somebody that thinks like I do.
I wanted them to go in and basically take over
the regime, arrest them, kill them whatever they got to do.
That's what you do in war. But the president doesn't
want to use any ground troops, and you can't use
because he doesn't want any casualties, and you can't have
ground troops and no casualties. Those don't fit into the
same paragraph. And the same with not hurting the population.
So I've found a kindred somebody who agrees with me.
I'm glad to hear it. General Keen again going this
is great. Everybody's doing hooplaws about the fact that Iran
has agreed to allow inspectors. Let me just play General
Keen one more time. He's not impressed.
Speaker 8: He's been conducting inspections in Iran's for decades, dealing with
nuclear things. They're told where to go, They're told what
time to come and how much time they're going to
spend there, and other places where they need to go
and should go. They're not permitted to go. They have
been manipulated by Iran for years. I'm not saying they
shouldn't come, but we need to have us inspectors qualified
to do this.
Speaker 1: Yes, he's talking about the IAEA and they're worthless. Senator
Tim Sheehy, who was a Navy seal, weighed in this way.
Speaker 9: We need to because the General's absolutely right. I mean,
these inspectors can't be coming from countries who have openly
supported Hamas and openly supported the Iranian calls. Let's not
forget the IEA is largely a European populator organization, the
European the Europeans have not exactly been our friends in
this latest phase of the conflict. In fact, in many
cases they have declared Israeli war criminal. So politically they're
not really aligned with ensuring Iran doesn't get a nuclear weapon.
So the IEA, whatever that inspector framework looks like it
needs to be American inspectors, and we need to have
free reign to inspect anything in the country we want.
As he pointed out, it's like the Chinese Wuhan Institute inspectors.
When we sent people there, the Chinese kept them in
the single van, told them.
Speaker 2: What they could look at and what they could see.
Speaker 9: That's not an inspection that that's a kid's play on stage.
We need to make sure that actual controls are in place.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So he's not in favor of the everybody's excited
about the Iran is willing to have these inspectors as
they know they can control them. Bill Poulti is now
the acting Director of National Intelligence. He's a political headman.
That's what his job is. He's has no experience whatsoever
in national intelligence. He doesn't have any classified, any security clearances.
But he's going to work. He's starting to fire. We
don't know how many, but apparently that is what he's doing,
is announcing all the people that he's going to be firing. Now,
the question, obviously is if you don't know anything about
the agency, how do you know who is fat and
who is muscle? And that apparently we'll see if he
does a good job on this or not. So I've
been very critical. I've been I think it's this is
why people don't like politicians, and it seems like nobody
likes Bill Pulty. But the more I look into this,
the more I see where this is bipartisan. But the
Republicans are not going to tell you that right now.
They're going to complain. I'm sorry, the Democrats are going
to complain. But the Democrats and Republicans have both been
saying that the Office of the Director of National Intelligence,
which was created right after nine to eleven by George W. Bush,
that it has grown exponentially into a big bloated bureaucracy,
and nobody seems to be too upset about the fact
that Polti's in there clearing things up. Here's Andrew Desisiderio well.
Speaker 7: As Kevin mentioned, this idea of shrinking or downsizing OD
and I has long been a bipartisan sort of goal
over the years. The Senate Intelligence Committee has debated it
very extensively behind closed doors. However, there hasn't been a
bipartisan agreement to actually get that done and get that
enacted into law. Now, what Republicans are Republican leaders at
least want from the President, is for him to stop
blocking his permanent nominee J. Clayton, of course, from appearing
for his confirmation here, which you'll recall last week, the
President abruptly in the middle of the night caught every
Senate Republican leader off guard, blindsided them by ordering j.
Clayton not to appear for his own confirmation hearing, and
as a result, FIZA section seven oh two that warrantless
surveillance authority is still in limbo, has been dark since
the night of June twelfth, and frankly, if this stalemate
continues past this week, it looks like seven oh two
will be dark well into July.
Speaker 1: So on one hand, Congress cannot, Washington cannot, They cannot
cut anything. All they talk about is more spending. And
so the president doge was his idea. This is kind
of a mini Doge. It's directed at the Office of
the Director of National Intelligence. It would be very helpful
if Bill Poulty knew what he was doing, so he
doesn't cut muscle, but that that's what this is. And
the President is basically doing a mini Doge on our
National Intelligence Director's office. So we'll see how this turns out,
but it is by partisan. Nobody is too upset about
the fact that Poulti is in there making the agency smaller.
And speaking of government, agencies are not an agency the
Supreme Court. We keep waiting for Shannon Bream. She goes
out there every day, is pouring down rain and Washington.
This morning she had to go out there in the rain.
And because they've got twelve opinions, big ones, big controversial
ones that they still have to release, and they did
not do that today, and their term expires on Thursday,
so you know they're going to go over time. But
we're still reporting and waiting.
Speaker 10: I feel like a broken record. I'm doing this again,
another release day out here in the pouring rain of
the Supreme Court. We got five opinions. None of them
were on our watch list. So we're coming down to
the wire. The term is supposed to end Thursday. That's
unlikely given that there are still twelve outstanding opinions. We
care about birthright citizenship. There are transasthlete cases out of
West Virginia and Idaho where they've banned biologically born males
from being in female sports. There's a case about how
many days past election day you can count mail in ballots.
There are other things stretching and looking at just how
far the president's executive power goes with things like dismissing
a Fedboard governor. So there are a lot of biggies
we know for sure. We're going to do this again Thursday,
maybe some other days this week. But again five today
that weren't on our list, twelve lifts. Overall, all the
hard ones come down to the end. That's whyther the
difficult ones turning back and forth with the writing and
the descent and all of that behind the scenes. So
we'll see what we get Thursday. If they don't add
tomorrow as.
Speaker 1: Well, so maybe we'll get some tomorrow, probably Thursday, but
this I think is going to go into July. Did
Wall Street boy? Wall Street is really in a bad
mood about tech stocks. They ran up very very fast,
and when that happens usually there's a pullback. So today
it was a pullback primarily in the tech stocks. Everybody
was down. The Dow was down forty five to fifty
one thousand and six, sixty six, SMP down one hundred
and seven, NAZDAC down five hundred and seventy nine. Bryce
and goldfell seventy four dollars down to four thy one
twenty eight, and even oil down sixty cents or so.
But we'll take it. It's down to seventy three dollars
and some change for one barrel of West Texas Intermediate.
So that's it for today. Thank you for coming by.
We'll be back tomorrow and I hope, hope to see
Eton today