Speaker 1: And here we go. Welcome one and all to the
Big Podcast on this Wednesday. Today is the twentieth day
of May, Year of Our Lord, twenty twenty six. My
name is Tom Sullivan. And well, yesterday we spent some
time talking about the fact that there were six states
that were having their primaries. And the interesting thing about
the primaries, there's a number of them. This is kind
of the busy time for primaries May and June. And
what a lot of the pointy heads in Washington that
follow the politics closely point out is that a lot
of Republicans, especially members of Congress but also Senators, because
the gap between Republican and Democrat control is so narrow
for both of them, that a lot of Republicans are
not going to cross the path of Donald Trump, no way, no,
how so whatever he says, they go, yes, sir. And
after the primaries are over, then it's expected that a
lot of the Republicans may actually start singing slightly different
tunes because they won't be afraid of Donald Trump, because
the primaries will be behind them, and two years from
now Donald Trump will still be there. He may go
after them in twenty twenty eight, but for right now,
they're worried about November of this year. So we told
you that the five state senators in Indiana, the five
or six anyway, Donald Trump got all but one of
them basically primary, and they're out. And then we had Saturday.
We had Senator Bill Cassidy from Louisiana and he was trounced.
He came in third because again he crossed Donald Trump's
path and Trump went after him and endorsed. Actually, the
woman that won, he only endorsed. She just jumped into
the race a couple of months ago. And then last night,
the big one that everybody was watching was Tom Massey,
the congressman from Kentucky, and a lot of people thought
it was going to be close, and it well, it
was closer than the others, but he still lost by
ten points. This guy, Gowering gowerin we don't even know
how to pronounce his name yet, got fifty five percent
of the vote and Tom Massey got forty five percent
of the vote. But Massey, he's an interesting guy because
he's very much an independent maverick. And so at his
election party last night, he didn't have his chin down
on the floor. He did not sound dejected at all.
In fact, it sounds like he is still going to
try to make trouble for Donald Trump until he's out
in January. He says, i still have more than six
months to go, and I'm going to be well exact.
Tom Tillis from North Carolina said I'm not going to
rerun and has been a thorn in the side of
Donald Trump. So watch Tom Massey be even more of
a pain in the posterior for the president over the
next six months. And then he kind of indicated that
it's only two years until the next election and that
he's going to be making trouble during that period out
of office. But as a guy who has a pretty
powerful political machine in the state of he got a
lot of county people elected, and just a lot of
people owe Tom Massey a debt of gratitude, and well,
I'll let you listen. This is a couple different clips
from his election party last night.
Speaker 2: While gas is almost five dollars in diesels, almost six
they're talking about this big ballroom they're going to build,
and it looks it looks like the Roman Empire.
Speaker 3: Architecture from the Roman Empire.
Speaker 2: I'd see a few analogies there, and people are just
trying to make ends meet. There is a yearning in
this country for somebody who will vote for principles over party.
You all don't like bullies and you don't tolerate them,
and I love you for it. Now as an election
and it turned into a movement, we weren't really running
against ed Galryan, we weren't running against Donald Trump.
Speaker 4: We were running for what we believe in.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so that's Massy. And he is officially a Republican,
but he's very libertarian and he marches to a different
drum than most of the others. He voted against the
Big Beautiful Bill because of the fact that he thought
it would be financially too much money, and he was saying,
I'm a conservative, fiscal conservative, and I think that's putting
as our nation more in debt. So that's why he
voted against that. But that was another vote that Donald
Trump said, you're voting against my wishes. So, I mean,
he's always been a maverick. But we'll see what happens
from here, but expect him to not go quietly, let
me put it that way. And then Texas, where the
President picked Ken Paxton, the Attorney General of Texas, over
John Cornyan, the current longtime Republican Senator from Texas, and
that leaves Cornyn in a real pickle. But but the
problem with this is maybe Cornyan will lose the primary,
which is coming up in a week. But what about
the general election where there's this Democrat who is catching
a lot of people on the on the left for
sure on Fire's names Tall Rico, young guy, and he
he may surprise people going up against If Ken Paxton
is his opponent, that's still I don't see Texas turning blue.
But tallar Rico is going to give Paxxton a pretty
good run because Paxton has such a checkered background. Here's
the president today. He was going up to Connecticut for
the Coastguard Academy graduation and before he got on Air
Force one, this is what he had to say.
Speaker 5: Great Candida. I believe in Texas, and I believe that
Texas candidates Ken Paxton. I think he'll win. I think
probably he'll win very substantially, and I think he'll go
on to defeat a very defective candidate, a candidate that
believes in six genders and he takes its to Jesus
Christ and he's wearing a mask six months ago. Where's
anybody wearing a mask six months ago? Doesn't get it?
And he's a vegan. Who's a vegan in Texas? And
you can't get elected as a vegan in Texas.
Speaker 2: If you talked to Senate leadership on the Republican side
of bounding will sing it against and I.
Speaker 5: Did, I did. They'll be all right with it. They
want to win. I know how to win. Some of
them don't know how to win. I know how to win.
I think I've proven that, haven't I.
Speaker 1: So we'll find out about Texas in I think it's
the first week of June. What's that the next week?
Speaker 6: I believe?
Speaker 1: So it's politics is alive, and well, let me put
it that way. One of the other top stories today,
the Department of Justice has gotten an indictment against Raoul
Castro yep Faddel's brother, who has been the leader. He's
ninety five years old. He's been the leader of Cuba.
He has stepped semi aside, but he still is the
controlling force. He still runs the military. He still tells
the others what to do, what not to do. And
it goes back to an incident that took place thirty
years ago when Bill Clinton was president and there were
two airplanes with two people in both airplanes, and they
were flying apparently into Cuban airspace and Cuba shot them down,
and there was a huge ruckets at the time, but
nothing happened. Well, today the DOJ has announced this indictment
against Raoul Castro because he was in charge of the
military then he still is to somewhat extent today and
said that they charged him with murder. This is act.
Let's go back to nineteen ninety six. Here's Bill Clinton
talking about it. When it happened.
Speaker 3: The planes posed no credible threat to Cuba's security, although
the group that operated the planes had entered Cuban airspace
in the past on other flights. This is no excuse
for the attack and provides let me emphasize, no legal
basis under international law for the attack.
Speaker 1: But nothing we've done other than the President gave a
firmly awarded statement and everybody went their own direction. Well,
Francis Soirez, who was the former mayor of Miami, weighed
in on what happened then and what happened today.
Speaker 7: I think what's important first is to note that the
president didn't do anything in response to that attack time
President Clinton. And so what you're seeing here is a
case where justice delayed is not justice denied. You have
President Trump, thirty years after the incident, which occurred in
nineteen ninety six, finally taking action, finally holding the Cuban
government accountable, finally holding Raoul Castro, the person who ordered
the assassination, accountable. And I think that demonstrates the difference
between President Trump and frankly presidents that are Republican and
Democrats that have come before him. He's a person of action.
We've seen it in Venezuela, We've seen it, of course
in Iran, and we're seeing it now in Cuba. This
is the final chapter of the Castro dictatorship, which has
been incredibly repressive, and which has assassinated its political enemies
and jailed its political enemies O Carli Rissette and of
course so many thousands of others. And this is the
first chapter God willing of the freedom of the Cuban people.
So it's a watershed day. It happens on Cuban Independence Day,
which I think is incredibly significant. It's not lost on
the Administration Secretary of Michael Rubio Attorney General, Todd Blanche,
Jason Redding, King Jung, who is the attorney a US
Attorney for the Southern District of Florida, Rick Scott, and
of course Ashley Moody, which will be at the Freedom
Tower today announcing this indictment.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So the people, the Cuban exiles, Cuban people, Cuban nationals, Americans,
given Americans, they're all excited about this. And it ties
in with President Trump, Venezuela, escapade of Iran, all the
other things he has talked about, Greenland, I mean, all this,
and so he's got his eyes on Cuba, and Cuba
has got to be getting a little bit nervous. They
don't have they're out of oil. They don't get any
oil from Venezuela anymore, and Russia has been cut off
as far as killing them anything. So they have no energy.
It's black at night, there's no power. I don't know
how the people are cooking anything. But so a couple
of days ago, John the CIA director here in the US,
went to Cuba to meet with the top officials there.
Here's Francis Suarez again talking about it.
Speaker 7: It's very clear what came of it because the CIA
director tweeted about it. He put it on his social
media He said, do not fall into the same trap
as Venezuela. It's a very clear message. The strategy of
the United States has been executed in a very consistent fashion.
They go after the top while they negotiate. I call
it the bullnstrict strategy. They get a tighten and tighten
the pressure around the country in question as they negotiate
from a stronger position of authority. And then if the
powers that be don't pay attention, take the presidents will
and resolve for granted or don't act in conformity with
at some level the reasonable requests of the United States.
The United States acts, and they have taken dramatic action,
actions that have never been done before by any US president.
We just saw on your show, you know, President Clinton
clearly saying that what the Cuban government did violated international law.
These were unarmed planes, they were assassinated, and what are
the US two? It did nothing? And what's the message
that it sends to the world that they can do
whatever they want, BacT with impunity and the US is
not going to hold them accountable. God has ended under
this presidency.
Speaker 1: Well, the people in Miami, especially all of South Florida.
There's a lot of Cuban Americans there and they are
excited about the fact that there was a news conference
and Todd Blanche went down to Miami to make the
announcement about the indictment against Raoul and the two congress
people that represent that part of this of Florida, Maria
Alvirus Salazar and Carlos Hemenez, they're just coming out of
their shoes. They're so excited.
Speaker 8: Well, thank you for the opportunity. And I just was
telling Carlos that that scene that we that you guys
are broadcasting is my district, is the heart of District
number twenty seven, the city of Miami, and today is
a glorious day for our community, my community, Carlos community,
South Florida, because justice will be done. And do we
know that being indicted by a federal brand jury is
very serious stuff. The first thing that I want to
say is thank you President Trump, because after ten administrations
Republicans and Democrats, this president has had the courage to
bring two Americans who were dead on the Florida Straits
to justice. But not only that, is that Cuba is
the number one enemy in the Western hemisphere for this country.
Speaker 9: Oh no, no, going never make the mistake to somehow
Raoul Castro is far removed from the politics, really, the
ruling class, the government. Really there's a government inside of
government in Cuba is GAYSA. GUYSA is a corporation of
military personnel that's headed by Raoul Castro. Have they ConTroll
seventy percent of theomy of Cuba. So indicting Roll Castro
and if we somehow bring him to justice here in
the United States is a very clear signal from this
administration that you know, they're not there's a new sheriff
in town. We're not going to be playing around with
America's number one threat in our hemisphere, which is Cuba.
And then we mean business. I mean, you know, Noriega
found that out, I guess in Panama. Maduro found that
out a couple of months ago in Venezuela, and things
are changing there. I would expect that something similar may
be happening in Cuba. Now, what this does, it gives
the President of the United States options that he can
exercise in order to bring about the change that is
needed not only for the Cuban people but for the
security of the United States.
Speaker 8: We did to context for your audience. For your audience,
let's put into context with the average American viewer. Castro
and the Cuba regime has been the platform, the launching
pad for the last sixty years for enemies Russia, China, Iran, Hezbollah, Hamas.
Nothing good comes from Cuba. Unfortunately, the Cuban people are
eleven million slaves and this president, President Trump, is the
one who is recognizing that and doing something about it.
So and this indictment is just one of many of
atrocities that the counts have committed. And we are very
fleasing that is happening today.
Speaker 1: So they went on to make many points about the
security of the United States. Apparently Russia has and China
have listening posts in Cuba that are I don't know
how much range they have, but they're definitely listening to
somebody or something here in the United States. Can they
listen to Miami, probably pretty easily. Can they listen to Washington,
d C. I don't know. But they also have drones,
and that's the concern that the people in Miami now
with all these drones being used in warfare. It's only
ninety mile from Cuba to Miami, and will Cuba do
that just to make trouble? So will Raoul Castro. If
I was him, I would lock my bedroom door at
night because he might be looking at the same thing.
You could hear. Carlos Amenez was basically baking. Go get him,
just like we did Noriega, just like we did Maduro
Make you'll grab him and put him in a US jail.
So that's what's going on out of Cuba today. But
that story is not going to go away. But so
we're also we're not talking about Iran. We're talking about Cuba,
and focus over there, look over here, don't look over there.
But we're going to keep looking over there. And Kirk Leopold,
who was the commanding officer of the USS COAL when
it was attacked, was asked about the fact that the
president keeps talking about maybe a couple of days, couple weeks.
I don't know. I'm not in a hurry. Will there
be a military strike in Iran? Yes or no? Here's
the commander.
Speaker 4: For forty seven years, Iran has used time to their
advantage in order to carry out terrorist attacks around the world.
I think it's a matter of not if, but when
we are going to unfortunately have to continue combat operations
because the Iranians are still coming to the table. They
are fusing to negotiate, they are engaged in information warfare,
clearly indicating that the IRGC is unwilling to give up power.
So therefore they're putting the United States in the awkward
position despite this diplomacy, that we are going to have
to continue this fight in order to bring them further
to their knees and make them realize what our redlines
are and that they must give in to them.
Speaker 1: Well, he's speaking pretty much like General Jack Keane speaks,
And the General had this to say last night.
Speaker 10: Weeks into what we're supposed to be a two week
deadline to get a deal. The reality is they will
work very hard and with major acceleration to do what
to turn that deal around, to reverse it, to cheat
on it. And the only way you could have to
make a deal that would have a long term effect
would be if we were making a deal with other people,
not these people who are running the regime. So there's
limitations to the deal itself, and the President is not
going to make a bad deal here.
Speaker 4: Back to Commander Leopold, right, now there is no way
unless we return to combat operations. Clearly, Iran is going
to use the straight of poor mouse and the chokehold
that they have on the world's will supply going out
from the Middle East as a leverage point, and we
are going to have to engage at some point to
do that. General King was absolutely correct when you look
at it, it is going to take Any deal we
have has got to be verified, verify verified. There is
no trust the Iranians, and at the end of the day,
in order to get that straight open, what the last
few weeks have given us during this time is not
only the ability to kind of give a little bit
of crewe rest, get some training in, make sure that
we can do the maintenance, rearm and refuel. It has
also given us the opportunity to build out the target
set that is available to us the Israelis, UAE and
the Saudi's so that if combat operations recommence, it is
going to be on a much larger scale. It is
going to hit them that much harder. And while the
blockade is being effective, the calculus of the strategic deterrence
that's going to be enforced to ensure that we bring
the Iranian economy to its need. We have to start
hitting some of those key logistics transportation nodes as well
as their ability to get oil out because they cannot
be refunded by getting the oil to the world, especially China.
We're sending a signal in their direction as well.
Speaker 1: All right, So Commander, we're talking about the various things
to strike. Keene says they've been using the six weeks
of cease fire to really study more about where the
targets are. But also today we sent the navy out
I believe it, maybe it was the Marines, but they
went and boarded an Iranian flagged oil tanker who was
trying to run through the through the blockade, and we
took over the ship. They landed on it with the
rope ropes off of a helicopter.
Speaker 10: Well, we usually don't board a vehicle unless they don't
abide by our instructors. If they continue to move in
a direction they want to move as opposed to halt
or move to an area where we're where we're sequestering
the ships. Then we bought it and usually it's going
to be uncontested. We accelling our troops who are doing
it in our arm. We don't expect to be in
contact with the people on those ships. There's no Iranian
gunman on the ship, but we have to as an
all military situation, we've got to be prepared for the unexpected.
And what we did there is just take charge of
that ship and direct them to where we wanted to
go as opposed to where they want to go. And
this is the enforcement of the blockade, which has been
enormously successful, as we've been reporting on now for some weeks, and.
Speaker 1: The General sounds more convinced than ever that the targets
that they have now have with a lot more intel
over the last six weeks, that they're going to be
doing a lot of hitting new places and destroying things
in Iran, hopefully to bring down the regime. I don't
know if you can take down a regime from the air,
but it will certainly weaken them even more.
Speaker 10: Back to the General, well, I think what the Iranians
are attempting to achieve here, I mean we're six weeks
into a ceasefire that the original deadline was two weeks,
and I think what the Iranians are trying to achieve
here is drag these negotiations out as long as they
possibly can, believing that there will be more political economic
pressure put on the president, not so much to make
a deal that he doesn't want to make, but to
get fed up with this thing and end it where
it is right now. That's kind of what the Iranians
are doing here, and I think what he's trying to
respond to them. Look at I don't feel any pressure.
I'm not being persuaded by anybody's concerned about political economic pressure.
I'll take as long as it takes here to make
a right deal. I do think we're reaching a point
whether we really can get a deal or not. I mean,
six weeks. We've had plenty of opportunity even before that
to talk to these most of these same people, and
a deal has been quite elusive. In my judgment, I
don't think they're ever going to put a deal on
the table that would be acceptable to our president because
he's not going to take a bad deal. And I think,
in my judgment, is time to return to full out
combat operations. Listen, we've been gathering information on the Runians
for six weeks, and we have increased our capability in
the region militarily. The Israelis are a full suite of
munitions and weapons systems, and we are ready to go
with much better information on targeting. The effects on the
Runnings are going to be quite devastating. And all the
handwringers out there who are worried about the Runnians firing
that golf oil and disrupting it continue to disrupt the
straits of the moves don't understand what the impact of
that military operation will have on their capabilities. I'm not
suggesting it wouldn't be challenges. I'm not suggesting it wouldn't
be the unexpected. That's what war is always about, and
how do you deal with the unexpected? And how do
you have the will to proceed and get to your
final objective. I think the objective from the beginning has
always made sense. Weaken this regime, take away all of
their offensive capability, and no longer predator in the region.
They don't have a ballistic missile program of any consequence,
nor that they have a nuclear capability. They're not supporting
their proxies in the regime. When we're finished, in such
a weakened state economically and militarily that they're vulnerable to
the Iranian people in terms of their resistance, And the
last gesture I would make to the people running the
regime is I'd offer them a free ticket out of there.
Any place they want to go, We'll take them and
see if they take us up on that deal. If not,
they want to stay there and face the Iranian people
and the economic collapse that will be pending, that's certainly
their choice. But we hold all the curds here and
that's the reality of it.
Speaker 1: Well, he sounds pretty convinced to me, but the history
is again, you don't take a regime down with just airpower.
You got to put boots on the ground, go in.
We did that in Germany, we did it in Japan.
We had to go in and physically take arrest the
leaders of those governments, those enemy governments. And so we'll
see how the turns out. But Jack Keene is chomping
at the bit to get going in politics. Remember Barney Frank,
Congressman Barney Frank, he represented big swarthswathe of Boston and
very very smart guy. But he was a big lefty,
big liberal. I don't even know if you could call
him the liberal compared to the far left of the
Democrat Party today. He wasn't there. He was a lefty,
no question about it. But he was a very bright man.
And he was the first one to come out that
as a gay man voluntarily. Some had been busted, but
he was the first one to admit that he was gay.
And he was the first member of Congress to marry
same sex marriage. Well, he died today at the age
of eighty six, and a lot of people are doing
the remembrance of the fact that he was the leader
in the first gay man and on to marry in Congress.
I look at him from the financial standpoint. He was
the head of the House Financial Services Committee. He and
Chris Dodd, who was a Senator from Connecticut who was
the head of the Senate Finance Committee. They were both
they both had control Democrats that control of the House
and the Senate. They put their heads together and this
was back with one of the financial problems in our country,
and they came up with something called the the Dodd
Frank Bill. I get that backwards every time. The Dodd
Frank Bill. It was a massive change on regulations in
our banking system in this country. It was so massive
the big banks had to go through a lot of
extra expense because of the regulatory requirements, the lawyers and
the accountants that they had to hire in order to
meet the new regulations. Problem that they could afford it.
It cost them a lot of money, but it was heavy.
As good Democrats do, they want to regulate everything to
the nth degree. The problem was it literally put out
of business a lot of community banks because they couldn't
afford all of the compliance costs that it would take
to meet the Dodd Frank Bill. So many years later,
after Barney Frank was out of Congress, Congress changed and
relaxed a lot of those regulatory environments because it was
killing the small banks. And as a result of Dodd Frank,
the big banks got even bigger. So it was a
big change, and that's what I remember Barney Frank about
so very much. Meantime, speaking about banks and the economy,
I've often said that I am much closer watcher of
the bond market than I am the stock market. Stock
market is easy to follow. The bond market takes a
little bit more work, but not much. And what's happened
in the last couple of days is the bond market
has been going down, and that drives interest rates up.
It's the reciprocal. If the bond prices go down, the
interest rates go up, and bonds have been falling and
falling and falling to the point where the thirty year
treasury bond hit five point one seven percent, which is
the highest interest rate in nineteen years. So that's the
thirty year and the ten year up to four point
six six. Well as the market went today, the market
was not doing well, and the bond market turned around
and said, all right, that's enough, we don't need to
drop bonds anymore. And people started buying bonds at these
higher interest rates, and that drove bond prices up and
interest rates fell a little bit. The thirty year treasury
to they went from five point one seven dropped down
to five point one one that's still extremely high. And
the tenure treasury went from four point six to six
down to four point five to seven. The tenure is
critical because that is what mortgage bankers use to price
their mortgages. No, it's not one for one. I mean
that they used that as their base. They also have
to put in market fluctuations and also a little profit
for them, but the tenure is what's used to price mortgages.
So they're high. Mortgage prices are going to be higher
because of it. So it was the kind of reaction
that well, John Lonsky, who's an economist was up until
recently the chief economist at Moody's out today and was
asked about, what do you think of these bond markets?
Speaker 4: The economy doesn't like this.
Speaker 6: Economic growth does not like to have this current high
level of benchmark treasury yields. I mean, after all, your
private sector loans and bonds are priced off of treasuries. However,
I would not get especially concerned until that ten year
treasury yield rises above five percent. That would really puts night,
you know. And I can't help but say this, but
I have something I call the frightful fives, and that
is the ten year treasure yield above five percent and
the average retail price of gasoline rising from its current
four dollars and sixty five cents per gallon to something
in excess of five dollars per gallon. At that point,
I think we have a strong reason to worry about
the outlook for the US economy. Well, he mentioned gas prices,
So let's go over there. At triple A today, the
average gas price for the nation to cheap stuff. Four
dollars and fifty six cents. That is, as far as
I can see, that's a new record high. That's up
three cents from yesterday.
Speaker 1: It's up seven cents from a week ago. It's up
fifty cents from a month a month ago, so gas
price is going back up. Let's take a look at
the Let me pull up the diesel five dollars sixty
five cents. That is unchanged over the last week over
and same as yesterday. So diesel a little topping out
here at this particular price. You look around the country
and the winner is still California. Six dollars and fifteen
cents for a gallon of gas in California. And the
markets stock market today it was up dramatically on the
on the fact that the bond prices went up and
interest rates went down. The market turned around on that
news and had a big rally, up six hundred and
forty five points back above fifty thousand to now at
fifty thousand and nine. The S and P up seventy nine,
the Nazdack up three hundred and ninety nine. The price
of gold up thirty four dollars to forty five, forty
five and oil. It came down over five dollars today
one barrel of West Texas Intermediate now ninety eight. Round
it to ninety nine dollars, but it's got a nine
in front of it. That made people happy. Ninety nine
dollars for a barrel of Royal. That's it for today.
Thank you for coming by. We will be back again
tomorrow night. Ope to see you then