Transcription
Hello and welcome to The Rest Is Politics US. We are going to talk about whether Donald Trump is in step with America over the war in Iran. And there's been some kind of interesting politics news. So we're going to do a little bit of domestic politics. I think Joe Rogan and Tucker Carlson have had things to say about the war. We will talk about how the exit strategy may or may not be going, uh, for Iran. I'm starting to sense people feeling more nervous in this town than they were a week ago. I've had a couple of conversations with MAGA types just in the last day which were interesting. But we do know that the number of casualties actually is higher from the first week of the campaign than we had initially been reported or led to believe. So obviously, and the number of people who are affected by this campaign will affect the president's support for it in the population, right? I mean, Anthony, obviously there's two things it seems to me that are dramatically affecting support for it, and we can talk about that: price of oil and then the number of casualties would be another, American casualties.
So Caddyy, before we get into all of that, and you know, I'm gonna lead with my punchline. Is Trump out of step with America? I think Trump is not only out of step with America, he's out of step with MAGA. But before we get on all that, I have to ask a journalist a journalist question. Is the press doing a good job reporting on what is actually happening in the Middle East as it relates to the missiles, drone strikes on our Gulf allies? What's going on with the US, the Navy? How come the Navy can't get in there and sweep the mines? Uh, why is our Navy less aggressive than you would think, being the largest navy in the world, etc.? How do you think our press, Western journalism, is doing in the reporting on the war?
Look, I think there are some really good defense correspondents. I think Shashan Johi, uh, shout out to him at The Economist, is really good, knows his stuff. I follow his stuff very closely, and he's very good on the details of what the Navy is and isn't doing. In fact, he just did something recently on why it's difficult to get these tankers through the Straits of Hormuz and why that's a particularly hard strait to navigate, piece of water to navigate. Would I like? Yes, I think you're right. You're getting at something. I would like more information on why these drones and missiles and mines are still producing a threat when what we hear from the Pentagon is gross numbers of the number of targets that have been struck by the American forces, as opposed to the impact those those strikes have had. And I feel like we're missing something there. We're hearing from the Pentagon, we've struck, you know, X number of thousand targets, but we're not necessarily understanding the implications of that. And it's hard to see when the president says, you know, we've struck whatever it is, 20 mining boats, and yet we still aren't getting tankers safely through the Straits of Hormuz. And why is it difficult to escort those tankers through the Straits of Hormuz? Why do they even need escorting through the Straits of Hormuz if, as the president says, we have basically obliterated Iran's capacity to retaliate? I see where you're coming from in that there's a disconnect there. And maybe part of this is that the Pentagon threw out correspondence 6 months ago, and so it's a little harder to get the information that we would normally expect to be getting.
I think they've done a disastrous job, and I think that the, uh, Arab states are wicked pissed off at the Americans for what's going on down there. Yeah. Remember, I have capital in the area. I have capital investors in the area talking to a lot of people. They think the thing has been ridiculously mishandled. And the notion that the quote unquote world's biggest military would not work shop and have a war game plan where the Strait of Hormuz would be closed and 20% of the oil, which affects fertilizer, microprocessors, and I could name 50 other things, fabrics, textiles, etc., around the world, has now been hampered as a result of this. The fact that they had no contingency plan for this. Uh, and I know for certain, and I'm going to report it directly on this podcast, cuz I understand that we're upsetting people in MAGA that we're getting all these different insights. I know for certain they thought they were going to decapitate the regime's head and then the regime was going to topple. It was sort of like the wicked witch melting in The Wizard of Oz, and then all the guards were going to say, "Geez, I'm sorry, Dorothy." Of course, or orange Darthy being Donald Trump, and then everyone was going to skip down the yellow road together. So, so that obviously did not happen. In fact, if anything, they've hardened the regime. So, no, I don't think we're reporting it well, and I think he's got the living daylight scared out of a lot of reporters.
I actually think there's been a lot of critical reporting of the lack of planning, the problems particularly with the oil markets. I mean, if you look at the front pages of the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, the Washington Post, and most of the TV, they're all full of stories. I mean, the Wall Street Journal in particular are full of stories about how there are knock-on consequences that don't seem to have been planned for.
Let me rephrase the question. Is the war going well for the Americans and the Israelis?
No, I think the war is not going well at the moment. And I think that's a shift. I mean, I think it's been interesting to see in the past, even in the past 3 or 4 days, largely driven by what's happening in the Gulf and the oil markets, how much concern there is in the White House, but in MAGA world. I've been in contact with a couple of MAGA supporters today of the president's who are pretty close to the president, and they're both acknowledging that. One of them said to me, "It's all about energy now. It's all about energy." And you and I raised this earlier this week. Why didn't they plan for this? You bomb the Middle East, the Straits of Hormuz get affected. I mean, it was it was such a no-brainer that it makes you wonder, you know, where is Doug Bergen, the go former governor of North Dakota, who's now Interior Minister, who understands oil markets. Why is the Energy Department sending out tweets saying that the tankers are being escorted by military vessels when they're not? I mean, that level of incompetence makes you worry about not just the reasons for the war, but now I think what is facing them is is right now the White House is think having to think, "What is our exit strategy?" Because we can't sustain this level of discontent around gas prices much longer. Isn't that what you're hearing too? I mean, apart and what you're hearing from the allies in the region. I mean, that...
Yeah, but I mean, this is, you know, Bin Laden said this. Bin Laden said, "We're going to hit you, you're going to overreact, you're going to spill your blood and treasure here. We're going to exhaust you like we've exhausted every other empire. You're going to evacuate. We're going to still be here."
And the Iranians have heard the word "taco."
They went from Khamenei to Khamenei in less than a Scaramucci. And that's better than the 20 years the Taliban to the Taliban. But let me, let me follow up with another question if you don't mind, because it's somewhat Shakespearean. The man who built his brand on America First, and whose coalition is a group of anti-conservative conservatives that are all about America First, may be remembered for a war that put America Last. Okay, so where are we, Caddy? You think that's interesting. This group of supporters is super happy with the war and how it's going down. A quick caveat on the polling before we get into this, because support in the country for the war at the moment, 13 days in, about 50/50. The country is split. Most Democrats, 86% say they don't like it. Interestingly, 6 in 10 independents also say they don't like it. But when you look at Republican polling on this, you've got 84% either strongly supporting or generally supporting the American military involvement in the region. So, what I think that you've got, I'm not sure that he's lost MAGA over this. I don't think I agree with you on that one. I think you've got a couple of very outspoken MAGA voices, uh, who have a lot of weight. Joe Rogan, who has said on Tuesday on a podcast that the war in Iran is crazy. He says it's left America feeling betrayed. He said, "Trump ran on no more wars, end these stupid, senseless wars. And then we have one that we can't even really clearly define why we did it." So, you've got Joe Rogan there saying that. You've got Tucker Carlson obviously being very close to people in the region, particularly for, for example, the Qataris, being a strong critic of Israel, saying that he opposes this war. But if you look at that 84% figure of Republicans, and this is what the White House is banking on, I am told. They think that the American public is still with them. The thing they are really concerned about is gas prices, but they think they have another four to six weeks, I'm told, of this campaign and managing to keep the support of the American public. I think that may be pie in the sky. I don't know what they're smoking in the White House. I don't think they've only had gas prices rising for a week and they're already panicked about it and they're already looking around to see what they can do about it. But I don't know. I don't think yet that we can say he's lost all of MAGA over this. I still think Donald Trump's grip of MAGA is very powerful.
I, I, I want to restate. I think you've convinced me, and I, and I would just go back to some of the polling because I looked at the different polls, and the weighted average is north of 80%. So that's...
Evidence to what?
In the Republican party, you mean?
Yes. In the Republican party and MAGA. So that's more evidence to what you're saying. And it's interesting, depending on how they ask the question, Caddy, it goes from 88 to 68, you know, because they, they can finagle the question a little bit.
To rile people away from the president. But in fairness, I'm going to, I'm going to concede to you that 80, 90% of MAGA still with the president. Guy's unbelievable. Shooting people on Fifth Avenue, shooting people in the Strait of Hormuz. He can do anything that he wants to do with a very large group of people. But what I think makes politics interesting in the United States is the differential and what happens with the independents, who unfortunately...
When it's not going your way with the independents, they decide the election.
And I think this split is hurting him because there are tens of millions of people that are listening to Tucker, Candice, I'll name the names, you know the names, Coulter, etc. And none of them are happy, right? Are any of them representing themselves? This is great. Let's jingoistically George Bush, George W. Bush too. And by the way, you know this because I have watched you for 20 years on shows like Morning Joe and the BBC. Uh, you know that Iran is a way more difficult terrain and a way more difficult country to attack than Iraq. You know this. I know this.
And, and so I don't know. Tell me, Caddyy, what's the planning? Tell me how he's doing, and and tell me, and tell me who, you know, let's make the case for him. Look, I, I, you know, everyone says, "Well, I don't like him, so that's my thing." No, I'm trying to be objective. Let's make the case for him. Push back on what I'm saying, but I, I think he's going to start losing big Republicans. Ted Cruz is going to split from him. He wants to run for president. JD Vance, who he put in the wood chipper, as the chipper's going, he said, "I told you. I told you." as he's going into the wood chipper.
And there is Trump flying around the country telling everybody how wonderful little Marco is.
Okay, but it turns out that he's helping Vance.
Vance may be on the right side of this one.
But, but Cruz is going to have to get on that side if he wants to run for president. Okay, go. Here's the other side of this that I'm hearing that's interesting from some Trump supporters, but who are the hawkish Trump supporters? Cuz they're the ones who are now saying, "Listen," and actually you're even hearing some Democrats saying this, interestingly, having started this, having created this chaos in the region that this bombing campaign has created, he actually has to carry on. And one Trump supporter said to me, you know, he doesn't want to end up being George H.W. Bush after Gulf War I, where he started the job and never finished off Saddam Hussein. And so now what you're hearing some Republicans pushing Trump, and I think Trump is kind of hearing these different voices. Some of them are saying, "Listen, you've got to go for regime change at this point because the worst thing would be to go in having spent, what is it? We've spent $12 billion. The numbers are just eye-popping. Having spent $12 billion in 13 days, if you then leave in place an a regime that is anti-American, they're just going to start rebuilding their ballistic missile campaign as soon as you turn your back." And as Trump said yesterday, I he said it in Kentucky, "We're just, we don't want to be in a position where going back in there in two or three years' time." Well, that is the concern of some people in the hawkish world who are pushing him, saying, "Okay, you've got to make sure that you actually finish the job that you've started having gone in there." So I think he's hearing it from all sides, and I don't think he's hearing anyone saying actually that this is going super well. I think he is hearing the message, "They are worried in the White House about these gas prices and this appearance that things are going chaotically."
How do you think they're doing with the Gulf state allies? And so this would be people in Qatar, this would be people in Bahrain, UAE, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. How do you think, how do you think we're doing with them?
Well, I think they don't like the disruption to the energy sector either, right? I mean, their whole economies are based on this. I mean, what's interesting is, first of all, the Saudis didn't really like this. MBS jumped on this one. My understanding is when the war started because he realized it was going to start anyway because Netanyahu had been, you know, Trump whispering and had got Trump to a position where Trump felt, "Okay, let's go for it." MBS thought, "Okay, I better jump into this because I don't want to be left out of the table. I want to have some say in this," but I don't think he was ever a big fan of this. And now they're in a position where their main sectors have been disrupted and will be disrupted for a long time. They can't rely on the Americans to pull this off efficiently. And they're still getting attacked in the region. Okay. Yes, I understand the missile strikes have gone down in number a lot, but they haven't stopped. This has not been a one-and-done in-and-out mission. This was not Venezuela. This is not Cuba.
Well, well, I want to get you to react, if you don't mind, because these numbers are staggering, and I just want to read them to our viewers and listeners briefly. $600 million of lost business per day. Airport is shut down. Trade is shut down. Remember, that's a big port. People coming through there to connect. They can't land there. Uh, the hotel bookings are down 60%. 3,000 flights per day have been disrupted. 80% of the flights have been canceled. Of course, the Dubai financial markets were suspended trading on March, uh, uh, 2nd and 3rd. Okay, it's the first wartime closure in UAE history. They have branded themselves as a neutral place. They're good with the Russians. They're good with the Americans. They're good with everybody. Uh, thousands of years as a trading port. They did something that's really going to hurt them. They arrested uh a couple of Brits that were photographing bombs going into the airport and bombs going into the apartments. Reputational hit all over is bad.
They may have served two to three years in jail for a quote unquote cyber crime of displaying the violence that's happening in the area, but again, that hurts their reputation as this place of great freedom and great hospitality. Uh, you're seeing the ugly side of the situation, right? Lastly, you got 6.7 million barrels a day can't get through the strait. So if, if you were the Dubai head of tourism, let's say you were Minister Al-Maktoum, he's a friend of mine. Uh, they spent 30 years building this brand. And it was a brand of stable, tax-free wealth. Magnetize the whole expat community here. Get away from the volatility outside of your traditional markets. Come into our market. And it turns out we're in the last scene of Westworld. Turns out geography matters after all.
Yeah. So, you know, Trump is not just an arsonist. He has set fire to the entire region. And so, again, Caddy, you're well-sourced in Washington. So, go ahead, tell me the administration saying what to that. You know, "We war-gamed all this. Trump was playing 19D chess with Bibi, and uh, all of this was in our plan," or what do you think is going on here? I mean, clearly not. And clearly that has pissed people off, and the reputational damage could take years to overcome. I mean, people, I, we live in a world where people have amazingly short-term memory. So I don't know, maybe in six months' time, people are going back on holiday to Dubai for their winter holidays, and the expats are all moving back there, and they think everything is fine. We live in a kind of weird topsy-turvy world, and I don't discount that that's a possibility. But set that against, okay, the seriousness of the impact on this to the people in the region, not to discount the fact that we've had, I think, more than a thousand children who have been killed in these strikes as well, and the acknowledgement, begrudging acknowledgement from the Americans that, yes, they did actually bomb that school and 150 kids and teachers were killed, uh, because they had the coordinates out of date. I mean, that having said, "We don't do that kind of thing." The least you can do at that point is show some empathy and take responsibility for it, which they're still really loath to do, as far as I can see, in the White House and the Pentagon. But set that seriousness against, here is Donald Trump. Do you want to know what he said last night when he was out, uh, he's been out in Kentucky and Ohio supporting candidates out there for the midterm elections? Here is what he said: "They gave me a list of names to choose. Sir, you can pick the name you'd like, sir." I said, "The name of what?" "The name of the attack on Iran, sir." And they gave me like 20 names. I'm like falling asleep. I didn't like any of them. Then I see "Epic Fury," and I said, "I like that name. I like that name." This is how Donald Trump is talking about this campaign in the heartland of America right now. This campaign that is causing a huge amount of disruption. He's dancing to "YMCA," talking about the gamification of the name. How reassuring is that going to be to people both in the region and to Americans as they watch their prices go up? And at the same time, he's saying, "We're done. We won on day one. We've got to stay until we finish. We don't want to have to go back in two years' time." I mean, in the space of the last 24 hours, he's both said that they've won already, that it's almost over, there are no more targets, and said, "We've got to stay to make sure that we don't have to go back again and we finish the job." I mean, it's not surprising that people. It's surprising perhaps that 80% of Republicans think this is a good idea, but it's not surprising that you've got a rising number of Americans who are worried both about petrol prices and the strikes generally, because this is what happens when you don't have a clear strategy and a clear communication of the strategy. But I thought that whole section in his long speech, over an hour-long speech in Ohio, where he talks about the name, and I mean, it's classic Trump. It doesn't surprise you, but it's that's what he's focused on is that it has a great name.
Mr. President, I voted for you. I'm pro-MAGA. I'm America First. You campaigned on ending forever wars. I'm now upset with you. Nick Fuentes is telling me to vote Democrat. Uh, so I'm not going to vote for you, Mr. President. I'm going to look for a solution. Trump's response to those people is, "Well, you were never really MAGA anyway." That's Trump's response. He's saying that flat out.
That's what he's saying out on these campaign rallies.
Okay. So then who's MAGA? That's one question. And then the other question, Caddy, like if I was advising these people, I'd be like, "Hey, man, your most dangerous critic isn't the one that hates you because everyone knows that that person hates you, and so they build in the hate factor. Your most dangerous critic is the one that who endorsed you, Catty Kay, and now feels betrayed by you, aka Joe Rogan." So, how would you play that, amazing communication strategist that you are, and let's channel some MAGA, be in the White House? What would you say to the president? "These guys are breaking from you. It's going to really hurt us in the midterms." What would your recommendations be to these people?
I think there is only one person in the White House who can have a conversation with Donald Trump at the moment and say, "We have a problem and we need to do something about that," and that's probably Scott Bessant. The Trump president still does listen to this Treasury Secretary, uh, and they can speak the same language, and he feels that Bessant is on his side. A bunch of other people who ought to be able to talk to him and give him a clear message he's not listening to. But I think this is the problem of a president to whom nobody is saying, "These are the pitfalls." My understanding is that when they went to him before the strikes began and said, "These are the second and third consequences," he didn't want to listen. And we said this right at the very beginning, there's a reason you need a clear articulation of the strategy because when you start getting into trouble, you need to be able to go to your public. You need to be able to go to your voters and Joe Rogan and say, "Here is the message. We could not let the Iranians have nuclear weapons. We could not let the Iranians have ballistic missile programs. We could not let them carrying on sponsor terrorism around the region. The regime was very weak. This was the best shot we had." They never articulated the message like that. It was all over the place. It was regime change. It was, "We're going to send in ground troops." It was not regime change. It was, "We're going to help the Kurds. We're going to promote a civil, foment a civil war." Uh, the message was all over the place. And that is the problem. And what is Joe Rogan saying? Joe Rogan was saying, "We don't understand why we're there because the message has been all over the place." I don't think he's suddenly going to start changing that now. I don't think he's suddenly going to get, just based on the last 24 hours, when he's talking about the confusion around the exit strategy, I don't know that he's suddenly going to start coming up with a message that's going to satisfy Joe Rogan.
Yeah, I think I think Joe Joe Rogan is a huge problem for Trump. You and I have said it many times. He speaks to alpha male independents, conservatively inclined in one way, socially agnostic, and he's giving them space now to also break from Trump. And again, these politics are one in inches and differentials. Maybe Anthony, you know, people like Joe Rogan shouldn't be surprised that Donald Trump runs on one thing and then offers something else because you and I have been doing this series for our founding members on the early years of Donald Trump. And what was one of the things we found that when he ran for politics, this week's episode is all about his very early runs for politics in the Reform Party. And even back then, he says one thing at one point in his, uh, career and then runs on something else. He has multiple different positions throughout his political career on multiple different subjects. So maybe America First and no stupid wars is just another one of those things he has different positions on. If you'd like to hear the rest of that series, do become a founding member and sign up at the restispoliticsus.com and you can find the whole series there.
Have you ever heard of a woman by the name of Carrie Pjan Bowler? Have you ever heard of her?
No.
Okay. So, so she, she was a woman that was appointed, and she's a Roman Catholic, and she was appointed to the Religious Liberty Commission. Okay. And, uh, this is, you know, she's a big donor to the campaign, and they're giving her this plaudit of being on the Religious Liberty Commission. Uh, she got a message from the White House yesterday. "Dear Mrs. Bowler, on behalf of President Donald J. Trump, I am acting to inform you that your position as a member of the Religious Liberty Commission is terminated effective immediately. Thank you for your service. Mary Sprout's Personal Director." Now, what happened was, she's a Catholic, and guess who doesn't support the war? Caddy.
That'll be the Pope.
The Pope, right? You have to remember this, okay? Because I'm coming at this cuz Vance is tied to this, okay? So the bishops have spoke out about it, the Pope has spoke out about it. This woman who's exercising her religious liberty, who happens to be on the Religious Liberty Commission, spoke out against the war, and the White House immediately terminated her. And again, the only reason why I'm bringing this up is that you're now killing your own. These are people that gave you money. These are people that worked for you. These are people that advocated for you and voted for you.
But you're all over the place. Some of them are anchored and have principles, and you're strafing them.
Okay? And so he, by the way, he does it to everybody. He did it to me, and he does it to everybody. So the good news is, misery loves company. Uh, you know, Miss Pan Bowler, I'm sorry he did it to you, but I responded to her this morning on X and said, "Hey, he does it to everybody." And she wrote a four-page open letter to the president. I said, "Listen, he's not reading that because he's not reading the, he's not reading the war plans." Why are you laughing? Because four pages, the chances of Donald Trump reading a four-page letter that's been sent to him on X? No. Even if Miriam Adelson, who gave him $250 million, sent him a four-page letter.
Yeah, he's still not reading a four-page letter. No.
You got a better chance that he eats the letter with ketchup than he would read the letter. But, but I'm, I'm bringing her up as an obscure person, but I'm bringing her up for a reason. He's going to take out everybody, Caddy. Okay? He's going to keep shooting and keep shooting and keep shooting. And the 80% number that you're referencing, which is, you know, bolsters your point of view, is going to degrade. And he, he can't afford a lot of degradation. He can't afford it.
Well, he can't afford it given the midterms and given how the polls are looking. Um, 'cause they're not looking good right now for him. There's a new Economist/YouGov poll that's finding that Latinos favor Democratic candidates over Republicans by 43 to 27. If you remember, it was Latinos, of course, who put Donald Trump, helped put Donald Trump in the White House in 2024. The prediction markets now have the odds of Democrats flipping the House, and they've gone up from 69% likelihood to 85% likelihood. The prediction markets clearly think that they're going to lose the House. So, a question for you. If Donald Trump is seriously worried about losing the House and all of his tours, there he is going out around the country trying to shore up MAGA candidates or Donald Trump-friendly candidates in the midterm elections. And his poll, he knows what the polls are telling him. He's even talking now in the kind of language that is saying it's normal for a president, uh, to lose seats in the midterm election. So, he knows that, and the White House knows that there's a very good chance that they lose the House of Representatives. What, what are they doing? What are they doing to try and make Americans feel better? Because I think they know that Americans don't like this. I think they know this comes with great peril. I've heard one plausible scenario which he thinks is that he has four weeks, then the gas prices go down again, and you're just in time for summer when Americans are traveling and you get a bit of a spending and kind of sugar high from the gas prices coming back down again. That sounds way too well thought out and planned, and the chances of it all going to that kind of plan seem, that's a big gamble to me. But anyway, that's the only plausible scenario that I've heard. But what do you think they're doing to try and turn around those midterm numbers?
Well, I think the first thing you said is the, the most true because I'm still on their fundraising, uh, form letter dissemination. And so what they said this morning was, "Hey, we need your money. Since 1938, uh, of the 22 midterms or whatever the number was, the incoming president has lost 20 of the 22 midterms." And so this is to be expected. They're trying to build in the midterm loss, but send us your money. So to see if we can, uh, not do that. But the big thing is, they care. The House cares, the Senate cares. Trump is acting like he doesn't care. And again, I want to stipulate. I know this might sound repetitive.
Maybe. And except that he's going to be...
That's the point. Thank you, Caddy. Cuz I have been saying to people, he doesn't care. He's not, you're not getting his money. You may get his tid endorsement. He doesn't care.
He's fundraising for himself. I mean, he's fundraising off the war in Iran. He's making a lot of money already out of that, but I don't think he's going to necessarily spend it on...
Belleaguered candidates. Right.
But, you know, listen, I mean, Caddy, Wall Street is pricing, 'cause I'm on Wall Street. I'm telling you what Wall Street is pricing. They're looking around and saying, "We now control Venezuela. They still see a positive outcome or potential near-term ceasefire." And Wall Street is now pricing, as of this afternoon, five rate cuts. Gaddy K, that's 125 basis points. And let me just remind everybody listening in, interest rates are the physical gravity of financial assets. As interest rates go down, asset values go up because it has to do with the net present value of the cash flow that comes from those assets. If that's too complicated, it just means that people are willing to pay more for your assets if they're producing in a lower interest rate environment. And so Wall Street was down today because the news is showing tankers on fire, and the news is showing, unfortunately, despicable anti-Semitism where there's a shooter in Michigan, uh, uh, going after people at a synagogue. So, so Wall Street doesn't like that. Doesn't like that uncertainty, but generally Wall Street is looking at this thing like it's going to end well.
Do you think the markets are right, Anthony?
So, I think that...
Or just that it's going to end soon.
I was going to say, Don Rumsfeld said the Iraq War was going to end in six weeks, and it didn't. And I'm going to say something that I actually don't know the answer to, and maybe you do, but how are you going to get the mines out of the Strait of Hormuz? The USS Gerald Ford or the USS Abraham Lincoln, a 13 trillion dollar, 13, excuse me, 13 billion dollar aircraft carrier, is not going to do it. But how are you going to get it out of there? You know, well, it turns out we don't have the capability to do that. We just have this very big, ponderous Navy. Okay. So, do you have to put ground troops in to the area? Do you have to, do you have to control the whole port around where, where the Iranians are, where the American troops, put the 101st Airborne in by parachute and start shooting everybody in the area to control the port to then go in and take the mines out? Because if you have to do that, Wall Street's not ready for that one. Okay? And the Gulf is not ready for that one. But the Iranians, you know, you got a guy where you killed his father, his wife. I think he killed his sister and his mother and a couple of his kids, and the reports that he's wounded. He may have lost a leg or a limb. I don't know if any of that's true, but do you think he might be pissed off? And you think he might be a radical? I don't know. He might be. Okay. So, you're playing with people on the other side that don't care about death. And so, to me, there's a mispricing. So, Wall Street's probably not right, but they're probably right on where Donald Trump is. You know, there, there are reports on Arab television. Okay. There's reports in the Gulf that the administration has reached out to the Iranians twice and asked for a ceasefire and a return to the negotiating table. And they're launching statements saying that they don't want that. They don't have an interest in that. And they want compensation, Caddy, for the damage that's been inflicted on them by Israel and the United States. So, does that sound like a war to you that's going to end very quickly?
I see a world in which Donald Trump gets spooked by the oil prices and the Straits of Hormuz and you know, kind of right done and dusted, "I'm gone." But I don't see a world in which that ends well. So Caddyy, a lot of Americans don't know this, so I want to share it with people. The US decommissioned four dedicated mine sweepers from the Persian Gulf last September. So this was 4 months before the war started. We sent them home. Uh, and we don't have anything in the area that can really sweep the mines. Uh, and by the way, we're blowing up their miners. The Pentagon has reported that that they blew up 16 of their miners, the the boats that actually lay down the mines. But there hasn't been one report from the United States or the Pentagon that we've taken any mines out of the water. Okay. And this is the main reason, Caddy, why the Navy doesn't want to go in there and escort the boats. Cuz Caddyy, could you imagine if one of our destroyers hits a mine while it's trying to protect a non-American flag tanker coming through the Strait of Hormuz? So, so, so again, I just want to point out to everybody that there was no Mr. President. Yes. Well, we're going to hit them. They have a 20-year plan to react. They're going to shoot at our allies, and they're going to close the strait, and they're going to mine the strait, and we decommissioned our mine sweepers. Okay.
Well, you know that that was probably longer than four pages, and so President Trump can't give that to him.
I mean, it's a bit like the targeting of the school. I mean, it's not the same, obviously, it's not the same activity, but it, it gets to weaknesses in the system and in the decision-making process. There are reports that the types of people who were meant to be there in the Pentagon whose job it was to make sure that you didn't target things where there were civilian casualties, some of those departments have been downgraded and the personnel numbers have been shrunk under this administration because, as Pete Hegseth likes to say, "We're fighting without concerns about rules, and we're not fighting with kind of woke principles anymore." Well, if that turns out to be the reason that they had outdated data and targeted a building that was a school and they killed a whole bunch of school kids because they had not paid enough attention to the to civilian casualties, well, again, it gets to, a bit like the decommissioned mine sweepers. It gets to this great military, which we are being told can do no wrong and achieves the best results of any military in the world. It makes you start to wonder, does it actually, or is it actually flawed and fallible in the way that every organization in the world in all of history has always been, because organizations have flaws.
I'm going to be optimistic for a second. Okay. I'm going to say something optimistic. This has exposed a very dangerous miscomprehension of a very small group of people about how the world works. And it turns out that the systems and the processes that the Americans, alongside of their allies, had in place for 80 years was generally a good system. And I'm going to make the bet that there's very smart people in America that are going to come together. And so, weirdly, what these mostly men, some women, but mostly men have done here is they've exposed that the way we were doing things and thinking about these things actually generally worked. Again, granted, not without mistakes and certainly with levels of imperfection, but the processes generally work. And maybe, uh, with God's good grace, we'll get back to those processes. And so that's my optimistic note before we end.
Okay, guys, we're going to leave it there. We will be back, uh, next week with more, of course, and the latest on Iran as well next week. Thanks for listening.
Have a great week, guys. We'll see you next.