TRUMP & BIBI EXPECTED TO MEET THIS WEEK, OIL AT $70 - w/ Chris Martenson, Lt. Col. Karen & Others.

Yeah, it's been a rough year. You still uh, did you do anything yesterday?

>> No, just just hung out with some friends in town and we had a barbecue going and that was about it. There were fireworks nearby.

>> Did you reflect on the year?

>> Of course. Yeah. Um

>> How were the discussions like?

>> You know, it was interesting. So, so more people than ever kind of feel like there's something wrong with the story and something isn't quite adding up. And um, yeah, these these are these are good folks in Western Massachusetts, you know, they would call them, you know, working class and yeah, something's not quite right in the story here.

>> Yeah. Like I feel I can't remember which guest told me, but people are looking, I think. And I spoke to a lot of economists yesterday. He's like, Mario, like people are just looking at the, you know, that we're talking about the gap, the inequality gap and like people keep talking about Trump praising the stock market, etcetera, which we know is led by these big tech stocks. The average American, you know, doesn't know that, but they also don't see their own lifestyle improve. They're like, "All right, you keep talking about the stock market doing better, but our life is just getting worse and worse." And I, I was actually saw a clip of um, one of the guests, comedians that Joe Rogan has on his show all the time. The big guy. He's on the show all the time. The big comedian. Um, and uh, he's like, you know, I just, since I was young, I just gave up on on voting because every four years you get a new president. He says all these things and then does the same things as the last guy. And I think people are, I think this year broke a lot of people, I feel, because a lot of people put a lot of hope into Trump and he did seem like the first president in so long, in so many decades, to really go against the swamp, whatever you want to call it. But then for him to revert back to such an extreme level to the swamp, swampy behavior, from making money from the presidency, going into forever wars, increasing debt. I think it really shook a lot of people.

>> Yeah, I, I would agree. And and sort of that was my local bookend to last Wednesday. I was down in Washington DC at a Feds for Freedom um conference and and this is being led by a bunch of federal workers who um really, they started, they got like really canned for their refusal to take the the CO jab, right? And so it was feds for medical freedom, but they found out they have a lot, it's a bigger issue than that. And and so they were really talking about, I mean, this was um, Jim Erdman invited me down. He's the CIA whistleblower who's been um, you know, in front of like Rand Paul. Anyway, but these were really great people, very dedicated. I was, it was really heartwarming to see people that were like this, solid, full of integrity. Joe Kent was there. Um, and they're just very worried about the direction of the country. They were, um, I consider myself red-pilled, black-pilled, depending on the topic. Um, they, they were pretty concerned that there wasn't an easy fix here.

>> Yeah. No, I'm, I'm starting to get that feeling as well. Yeah, that's worrying. Um, well, it kind of links to um, a piece of news that came out a couple of days ago and that's Tucker. Did you see the the comment he made about starting a new party? Actually referenced Joe Kent. I actually brought it up with Joe Kent as well and he started floating the idea. Actually, I think I floated the idea to him. I'm like, um, you know what? You and Massie and MT Marju Teleg, I mentioned Matt Gates because he was part of the conversation and Tucker and others. Um, it's not about forming another party. Someone was explaining to me yesterday, it's about forming a block that has enough voting power, similar to what RFK did. I think Robert Barnes was explaining to me yesterday, it's like having a a block that has enough following that could shift the needle for the Democrats or the Republicans and then they have influence over the policies of whatever party they decide to back. So, it's not about a third party getting the votes. It's about a group of a new party, if you want to call it that, that supports that emerges with the left or the right. Again, RFK is the best example when everyone's was waiting to see which, which side he picks.

>> Yeah. Well, that's an attractive idea because I think a lot of people, myself included, feel politically homeless. To your first point, it doesn't seem to matter who you elect in. We get the same policies, right? It's just nothing seems to really change, right? The same war policy, the same, same foreign aid policies, that the same lack of reform at at the major health institutions. It's, it's kind of, it, nothing changes, you know, and and so, uh, that was that was what I found like was really concerning with these, uh, feds for freedom was the stories they told about the pressure they were put under by their respective organizations to to get the the vaccine when they didn't want it, right? And had every legal right, constitutional right to say no. Um, but the pressure tactics were extraordinary and the CIA people, they filed a suit against the CIA because what the CIA had done was, rather than saying, "Oh, this is an HR matter, you know, we're going to try and lean on this person," they actually shifted the investigation of these people over to their counterterrorism task force, which you reserve for terrorists and known spies. So that's in their files now. They were treated in the same category as terrorists and known spies for simply saying no thank you.

>> Yeah, that's pretty screwed up. Um, another thing as well for for someone that creates a lot of content, then me, a story that I saw yesterday that the UK is trying to have influence over YouTube's algorithm in the UK. Not sure if you saw that, but this I started, I thought I saw two days ago and I started thinking a lot about it. What I was thinking of is like, if they actually do this, people would either not even realize and the ones that realize would still accept it and just choose complacency. For example, when we realized, when people realized that YouTube was censoring content related to CO, as one example, and I'm sure there's other many other similar examples, people complained, but the majority of them just didn't care or didn't know about it. And even the ones that complain, I'm sure most of them still go on YouTube and still watch their content on YouTube. So I'm like, man, if I was in those in in those uh rooms where, you know, the guys that have the influence making decisions, in their mind, do they think that they they just have that ability to do whatever they want? Like even if we know what they're doing, for example, the YouTube algorithm or the way they've weaponized lawfare to be able to get their agenda across, in their mind, there's nothing people can or will do about it. It's almost like the ship has sailed, which is even more worrying. Like if Trump was able to start a war with Iran, it's like this is like the craziest thing. Right under, probably the only worst thing that's logical, starting a war with Russia. It's like the only next level, next step up. But other than that, starting war with Iran was like one of the craziest things Trump would do if I told you that when he first got elected. Yet, he still does it. And while he lost popularity, he still has a pretty strong support base in MAGA, weirdly enough.

>> Yeah. Yeah. It's, it's there's that sense of inevitability to all this, right? You know, and um, there's a direction to this story and it's been going there and it's independent of who's who's in power. Weirdly, under Trump, we've had a much faster progression towards what we would call that technological, you know, dystopia. I think of it as, other people think of it as a utopia. But, but things that that never could have been done under Biden because MAGA people never would have put up with it, but because it's Trump, you know, it's okay. But when we're looking at the flock cameras bringing Palunteer in to harmonize and merge government databases and on and on and on that, I don't think any of that would have been possible under a Democratic president. So, faster.

>> Yeah, I agree. I agree. It's a good point. That's a good point. Trump, I remember one of my guests told me talking about the Iran war. Um, they said something along the lines of, if if there's any person that could really break that relationship with Israel, it is Trump, who's right now the the biggest backer of Israel, because Trump is, he's just got that ability to really do the unthinkable and get away with it. And you've given an example where that that has happened or accelerated. Um, but it could also accelerate in the other direction. It's not looking like, I don't know, like do you, is the, what do you think of the possible shift with Israel? And we've talked about it for many weeks now. Are you seeing anything sub, substantial or not substantial, anything, uh, of substance other than the rhetoric since all the statements were made in a few weeks ago? Because in in Lebanon, they're still, Israel's still there.

>> Mhm.

>> Um,

>> The bombing is still happening on a daily basis. I don't know.

>> Yeah. And and Iran is not reacting for some reason. So maybe we could discuss that in a bit. But I, I trust, I trust actions, not words, you know. So if a central bank tells me gold is a barbarous relic, but they're accumulating it, I prefer to watch what they're doing. So in this case, um, there's words that say, "Oh, there's this fracture, not with Israel, per se, but maybe between BB and and Trump." But on the other hand, we have this um, section 224. Looks like it's going to scream right on through, right? Which is going to harmonize and merge the Israeli military with our own.

>> It's going to get through. It looks like it's going through.

>> It looks like it at this stage.

>> [ __ ] I completely lost track of it. I, I'm guilty of losing track of it. [ __ ] hell. That's wild. That's worse than anything else.

>> Mhm. Yep. No, I would totally agree. But um, you know, I think Joe Kent makes this point very, very well. He says, cuz he's, he's just trying to get the Overton window open a bit. He says, "Look, it's totally okay for Israel to be Israel, but they have their interests. We have ours and they, our interests are our interests and their interests are their interests. They're not always overlapped perfectly. So we should make sure we have autonomy and separateness in in decisions." And it's just very sensible, obviously. But I feel like we've kind of entered an age where like sensible things are, I don't know, we're just in in an era where like there's a lot of nonsense going on right now. It's almost like reason has left the room entirely at this point for a lot of things. I, I can't explain it.

>> No. Or just people are not aware. I just don't, I, I think we go too deep and start imagining that most people know what we know. I, I bet you if you just go to the average American, just walk down Times Square and just ask 20 Americans, 100 Americans there, "Do you know what section 224 is?" I bet you you'd be lucky to get one. I think that says a lot. I think the dissemination of information is the main, main issue because you could do, if, if you know, if you're controlling what information people get, and that's why freedom of speech is so important, you can get away with anything. Like I saw a poll, I don't know if I saved it actually, just before we started. It doesn't make the point too well, but in New Financial Times, uh, and foral focal data poll found that 60% or 58% of US voters believe Trump's war with Iran was not worth the cost as the conflict continues to weigh on his approval ratings, blah, blah. 58% believe the war was not worth the cost, but that means 42% of Americans believe the war was worth the cost. I'm not saying who won the war or whether the objectives are achieved. It's worth the cost. Almost half of Americans believe that one or two. But that's like an extreme stance. It's like some things are disputed. Who's winning the war between Russia and Ukraine? Depends who you ask. You know, there's a lot of nuances. But in terms of, was the war with Iran worth it? You speak to any analyst. Even the most pro-American, anti-Iranian analyst, people from the FDD would tell me the same thing. Like, from an ROI perspective, looking at America's interests, it was not worth the cost. But then so I might get, you know, one out of 20 analysts that wouldn't say that. But then to have one or two Americans, it just shows that the, the information that the average American has is not only in the US, but we're just talking about the US because that's like the pinnacle of freedom of speech. Um, yeah, section 224 seems like a drop in in the in in the ocean.

>> Well, I, I think most people are probably.

>> We're very cynical today, Chris. On July 5th.

>> July 5th. I know. Looking forward to the next 250.

>> Exactly. Exactly. Exactly, man.

>> And the irony as well of the of the. Sorry, go ahead. I'll let you make the comments.

>> Well, I'm just, it's hard because, you know, you and I and and our followers, I'm sure, are are very high context people. So, we're tracking all of this and and and it, I think it's hard once you really become familiar with what's actually happening and you can start to see the patterns for what they are. It's difficult not to say, "Wow, this is, this is wrong. It's going in the wrong direction." I mean, just from my perspective, you mentioned, you know, UK wants to control YouTube's algorithm, right? In the UK right now, I literally can't believe what I'm seeing in terms of who police are arresting, what they're arresting them for, which crimes they're they're not prosecuting, which ones they're they're being soft on. If that isn't an intentional dismantling of the culture of the UK, I don't know how else to interpret it. And when you see it that way, once you realize you're under attack, I, I don't know that there's any other proper response besides to, you know, get angry and put up a wall around that or I, I don't, I don't know how to interpret that. But the, the, I know so many people in the UK who are considering bailing on it at this point in time because it's bad and getting worse and they don't want to live there as it goes through its descent into wherever it's headed.

>> Yeah. I um, I spoke to the producer of the movie um, the citizen one. You know which one I'm referring to? The one that Elon posted about.

>> Vigilante Citizen.

>> Vigilante. Yeah. Vigilante Citizen.

>> Um, so I was speaking to the producer of that movie and uh, you, you know about the, obviously you know about the storyline. So it's about um, a person that had his family, I think killed by a migrant, something along those lines and then he became a vigilante and then one of the first um victims he, he, the first crimes he acts on was a woman was raped by six men, I think, illegal immigrants, Muslim illegal immigrants and it was inspired by the the gang rapes in the UK and then he takes matters into his own hands. He kills the judge because the judge called one of the perpetrators, one of the boys that raped the girl um, a also a victim. So the girl was a victim, but the boy that raped her was also a victim. So that mindset, that mind virus triggered the vigilante to kill the the judge. And then he goes and not only kills the boy, but he also kills the boy and his whole family, including his mother who posted on social media that some, something along the lines of the girl, the girl that was raped deserved it because of the way she's dressed. So I'm, I'm, you know, I'm trying to get the story right. I haven't seen the movie. I've just seen clips of it. But I spoke to the producer about it. One of the questions I asked, one of the conclusions we made is like, the movie, there's no risk of the movie leading to violence. It's more the movie is an indication of the mindset that people are at because remember Hollywood makes movies or people make producers make movies that people could relate to. To relate to a movie that means you have to have those feelings or or those thoughts already in real life. So that the, the, the mindset of people in Europe is in a, in a very worrying place. There's another gentleman I speak, spoke with, Mr. Oliver, I forgot his first name, but from GB News. He's been on the show a couple of times. Great guy. Neil Oliver. Great, great guy. And he's very concerned, as in genuinely concerned, um, that his country, the UK, is heading towards um, um, I'm just going to say the word civil war. It's like a taboo word, no one wants to use.

>> But um, and and and you know, you get to that level when kind of all else fails. And I feel like people are just trying to.

>> People are are starting to feel that way, like no matter what we do, no matter who we vote in, no matter what, how many times we protest, protest, nothing changes.

>> Um, yeah.

>> Well, yeah. So, if we look at the direction things are going, you know, economically, obviously, that that's where a lot of people start to feel the pinch, right? And I think, you know, Trump likes to say, "Oh, the stock market's going up. That means everything's awesome." And and the issue is is that when you look at it, the top 10% of households in the US own 93% of all the equities, right? So, so the stock market might be going up and that's really good for the top 10%, but it's has no bearing on everybody else, pretty much, right? So, so it's not even like remotely an in a general indicator of health, right? We would be wanting to look at other things like, I don't know, are people having families? Are they starting households? Are they, are they in the labor force? Are, you know, what's their happiness index? There's a lot of things you could, you could look at. I just get the sense that the people in charge, not only, it's, I think they're actually indifferent to the plight of the average person, which is a pretty harsh statement, right? They're indifferent. It's not even that.

>> Sometimes I feel like, you know, you get the sense that like almost like you're an enemy of the state if you don't say exactly what the state wants. That's clearly how the UK is treating its citizenry. Like they're enemies. If you don't believe in our policies over here, you're, you're, you're the enemy. But I think it's, I think it's worse than that. I think they're indifferent. And I don't know how we got there.

>> Yeah. When you speak to, so I live in my um, in my bubble like I.

>> I don't speak to a lot of people and the only people I speak to really um, are people like yourself, you know, again, people that that have all this information, have all the context, are high achievers, and um, and all the other time and I'm in my world running my businesses and stuff, so I never really get the chance to speak to the average person about these things. I'm also not a social person, so I never sit there having a coffee or beer with friends and chat about these things. So I'll ask a question that might sound silly to you, but it, it's actually some, I'd love to know the answer is, when you speak to the average American, um, I don't know if you get that opportunity. I'm sure you do. What do they say? What's, how do they see things? Do you know what I mean? Like, how, how do they see things? How do they see where their countries are? Maybe they in a completely different mindset. Maybe they think the country is doing great, but then how do they make sense of how they're living and how the cost of living has become a lot worse? Everyone's worried for their children. People starting to worry about AI and how their children are going to find a job. What should they learn about? Um, what are these conversations like?

>> So, this is a great question. Um, it's been shifting lately. So, I think just as recently as a couple years ago, there was almost, it was almost verboten, like we just don't talk about those things. Simpite, like, you know, sports, weather, kids, you know, you stick to the topic, safe topics. And then um, people started to slowly start to notice they were allowed to notice this thing that maybe the the CO jabs were not good, right? That everybody now knows somebody who they suspect had or or know in their heart of hearts, you know, had a a very bad reaction to those. And so you're starting to see, you can have conversations like that now. And as well, a big topic that's now totally safe to talk about is inflation. It's the cost of everything, right? Because it's not just the cost of milk and eggs. It's, it's insurance. Insurance costs have exploded in the United States. You know, home, health, auto. And um, so people are talking about that openly now. And that shock level is rising up the socioeconomic ladder where I think we're starting to see a a clear majority of people can talk about this stuff. So the way the way I, I think about this is um, there's a guy, Ben Hunt. He put together like a really beautiful series of essays, I don't know, five, six years ago and he related it around this idea of of the story of the emperor has no clothes, right? And he said, this is a very, very important phenomenon because social change happens when something comes out of what's called private knowledge. You and I talking, everybody listening, we can say whatever we want, is still private knowledge, even though lots of people know it. Something becomes common knowledge when everybody knows that everybody knows the same thing and then suddenly, boom, it changes, right? So, in that story of the emperor has no clothes, the emissary is the, is the kid, is the child. Everybody, everybody has private knowledge that he's naked, you know, but until somebody yells it out, so the whole crowd knows that the whole crowd knows the same thing. And then suddenly, whoa, you know, King's embarrassed and he walks off and all that stuff. So, private knowledge was like in the way um, Ben Hunt wrapped these stories up. He said, remember Harvey Weinstein? Everybody knew this guy was not a good guy. You didn't want to get caught alone in his office if you're a young starlet, right? And there were whole networks of women who would take the young starlets aside and say, "Hey, don't get caught in an office with this guy." Everybody knew, you know, privately. And then it took Rose McGowan saying it out loud and all of a sudden, oh, the Clintons didn't want anything to do with him and prosecutors were prosecuting. And once it went into common knowledge because everybody knew the same thing, that's when the change happened. So that's why it's so important to have these conversations like you're having, like I'm having, because we have to just say things as if we want to get to that common knowledge stage where we can just openly admit something that everybody kind of privately knows but isn't yet there. So, so that's why I consider myself to be as a common knowledge emissary, just say things that people need to hear. And um, and if you do that often enough and it breaks through that that mindset, then all of a sudden you can have those conversations. So, two, three years ago, if I said on a crowded bus, "Hey, I think these CO jabs were harmful," I mean, you would have gotten frowny faces. I mean, there would have been all that. Now, I think you get people just kind of nod and go, "Oh yeah, you know, I know that now," because it's, it's moved out of private into common knowledge. So, so that's kind of that's the work. The work is how do we get these things that everybody knows to something that everybody knows that everybody knows, that same thing.

>> That's so well explained and I feel like, so if we go back to the Israel issue and the way Israel first, America first, I think we're crossing the chasm on that front. It feels that before, no one would dare say become anti-Semitic. Now it's, you know, becoming slowly becoming something that everybody knows, that everybody knows, everybody talks about. And I feel like as we're crossing the chasm, they're trying to crack down on it. They're trying to censor it. But it's a bit too late, kind of when you cross into that into into the, the everybody knows that everybody knows. Uh, when you cross into that world, then it's really almost impossible to put the genie back in in the bottle. Do you think we've crossed the chasm on that front or we're still not there yet?

>> I, I think it's, it's dangerously underway for the people who want to keep that genie back in the bottle. Um, it, it's for sure one of the things that we know is that um, the Israel firsters, they've lost the younger generation, almost, I mean, pretty comprehensively, right, at this point. They still have the boomers. But so we're getting that generational divide on the whole piece, right there. And I think it was, you know, astonishing how little coverage it got in this country, but just looking at the outpouring of support and and mourning at at Khamenei's funeral, how many world leaders showed up there, right? Like from how many different countries and just the, I mean, if, if anything, I think it's common knowledge across the rest of the world, maybe not in the United States, but it was an enormous mistake, a strategic mistake, a tactical mistake to kill this, you know, their supreme religious leader.

>> Um, if you can play a KK, can you play funeral clips? Um, because they are massive, 9 million mourners, according to some estimates, um, that have, uh, hit the streets and obviously leaders from around the world. But that's one of the biggest, I think, the third biggest. There was one in India decades and decades ago in terms of funeral processions, the most people to attend a funeral procession. Um, second biggest was the, the death of the last supreme leader, Mushabi, um, sorry, Ayatollah, um, and now Ayatollah, um, he's, he's got what about 10% of Iran's population on the streets along with with world leaders from around the world. So I think that, um, yeah, from a strategic perspective, short-term thinking, you don't look at the consequences of this. But these are tens of millions of people that see the US in a negative light. And that is the sentiment that leads to things like, like 9/11. You know, I've, I've had guests on the show and one thing I learned in the last year, couple of years, or last year really, was the fact that the main reasons Osama bin Laden did what he did, he said it himself in various writings and in interviews, is the, uh, US bases in Saudi and US intervention in the region. And number two is American support to Israel. So it's the US intervention and what the US did in the region that led to that level of hatred that led to an act as violent as 9/11, that then led to the destru, the the destructive foreign policy or self-destructive foreign policy the US within the region, Iraq war, Afghanistan war, was still stuck in the region till now, decades later. Um, and then things like the killing of the, the leader, um, there's chance on the streets in Iran, "Death to Israel," and "Death to the US." "We will avenge your death." Dele leaders, things like that. I was watching those clips. So these are Iranians that might have been indifferent to the US, might have even liked the US. Their whole mindset changed. And for 10% of the population to be on the streets, that means a lot of these people are people that don't even like their government. They're people that maybe were on the streets in January, but they're on the streets now again. Um, but these are things that are not being measured. When Trump talks about, "I've sunk their navy," that is being, that's not even short-term thinking. That's just a, a, a marketing, um, a marketing slogan. But what really matters are things like this, the people on the streets. And Trump, Trump yesterday, I was shocked when I saw this. I don't know if he's just talking [ __ ] or whether he means it, but he said something along the lines of, "I saw people weeping and I don't know why they're weeping because they're supposed to hate their government." Um, he's like talking like, how it's bizarre. He was surprised to see people crying at the funeral. If that's true, that means the president of the United States, it's not delusional, but he's living in his own bubble, and that's pretty dangerous. Well, even more shocking, he said out loud, uh, again, he could have been just talking [ __ ], but he said, "Oh, you know, we could have bombed them and taken them all out, but then we wouldn't have anybody left to negotiate with." So he was openly talking about bombing heads of state at a funeral procession in a mourning session, right? Which is, I, well, that's, I'm, that's a level of moral nihilism I think is kind of hard to wrap my head around. Um, yeah.

>> That is not the the leader of the free world, the people who are defending democracy. That's not the kind of statement that comes out of um, the people who are, uh, the people you, you want, you want to be in charge of anything. I was, I found it shocking that that level.

>> Who? Sorry. Who who said it? I know that the guy, the u, the commentator, the pro-Israeli commentator, the one that him and Tucker fight all the time, Mark Levin. I know Mark Levin was saying that, but you're saying Trump said that as well, or just Mark Levin? I didn't.

>> Yeah, Trump said that too. I know Mark Levin posted something along the lines of, uh, a missed opportunity. All the leaders were there in one place. It's a missed opportunity to kill them. Something like that. He posted it today. But what did Trump say? Can you, do you, do you remember approximately what he said?

>> Yeah. If you give me a second, I can, I can dig it up here.

>> Yeah, if you can. I, I missed that. Please don't tell me he said it on the yesterday on the on July 4th during the celebrations of the 250 50th anniversary because that would make it even worse.

>> Let me find you the Mark Levin. Let me find you the Mark Levin tweet. I'll actually read that out as well. But um, let me see. But um, and oh, by the way, you know, Mustaba Khamenei actually didn't, didn't. Oh, there's Mark Levin. Uh, Mark Levin says, "Yesterday the enemy gathered on in mass on mass all in one place. Opportunity lost." And he was quote tweeting another account on X who was saying, "At Khamenei's funeral, the crowd chanted death to America. Every US ally who attended should be forced to answer questions." But this is the problem. So again, I'll read out the statement that someone said that Mark Levin is quoting. He says, "At funeral, the crowd chanted death to America. But instead of reflecting on why they called, they're calling for death to America, what did the US do to lead to millions of people making chants like this?" His conclusion, instead of, you know, reflecting on what did we do to lead to all that hatred, his conclusion is, "Every US ally should be forced to answer questions." It just, it's just weird. It's just weird that that's the conclusion they come to instead of, "The US needs to answer questions on why and what they did, what decision they made to be able to lead to to lead to so many people calling for death to America and death to Israel and death to Trump." Some by name.

>> Yeah. So, here's um, here it is. Um, Economic Times reporting Trump said, "One shot and we can take them all out."

>> Oh, yeah. I saw that one. Yes. Yes. Yes.

>> Yeah.

>> Yes, I did. I did. My my team put it in one of the titles for one of our interviews today. Uh, let me get it out. I've got the whole statements. Um, K, you know which one you're referring to. K, can you send me that story? I saw it earlier. I want to open on my screen as well. But that's, uh, I, I'll read the whole context as well because I was reading it a few hours ago. Uh, President Trump told Axios that the Iranians, quote, "are begging to make a deal," but said both sides decided to take a week off. And then he says the following on the funeral. "They all, they are all there. One shot and we can take them all out, but we are not going to do that because we would have nobody to negotiate with." But just the mindset of making statements like this is just, these are the things that people like Ben Gir say.

>> Even, even if, you know, we always give him and I give him that kind of leeway. It's like, look, this is Trump, you know, he speaks his mind and, you know, when someone speaks their mind, if I speak publicly, the things I would say to my loved one, you know, it would be perceived in different ways, but you speak a lot more freely when he's speaking to you. I'm sick of this guy. Like, remember the Fox News, the Tucker's messages came out, what he was saying privately about Trump? So when you say these things privately, you don't say them publicly. But Trump kind of blurts everything out sometimes because you can always give him that leeway. But there are limits when you're the leader of a country. There are, there are certain levels of etiquette because what you're doing is setting the precedent where this is okay. And it just makes it harder to criticize people who call death to America, for example, or the annihilation of the state of Israel. When we criticize them, they could just respond, say, "Hey, your own president said he wanted to wipe out a civilization to never return again. So who are you to dictate to us what we could say?" So see the, the, the, the moral, there's a term for it, moral, whatever that would cause the moral harm that was caused by this. So, yeah.

>> Yeah. I mean, it's just a, a, it's not diplomatic. B, it's kind of a bad look all around. But, but C, it sends the message that says, "Look, when we negotiate with you, you have to accept our terms or we'll kill you." And that's not negotiating anymore, right, at that point in time. But clearly, where I think Trump should be aware at this point in time that you and I have been aware for months now, is that the United States doesn't really have any good military options left. And so we're going to have to negotiate and possibly admit maybe it wasn't worth the cost. Maybe we shouldn't have done it in the first place. That there were lots of other avenues. I mean, let's not forget that the Strait of Hormuz was never closed. We never had any tolls, never had any friction prior to February 28th of this year. So, so I mean, that's the reality of the situation. So, I don't understand where all this bluster goes. But last time you and I talked, like, well, if you wanted to keep things sort of like fiery and and like cooking, this is the kind of again, actions not words, right? So the actions of the United States have been not, I would not consider that we've negotiated in good faith or with any urgency to say, "Hey, we got to get the Strait open as soon as possible." That has not, not how I've perceived it so far.

>> We're going to get to the Straits and I want to ask you about oil prices because I've just learned a lot in the last week. So I've got a lot of questions for you. Um, just one, one thing on that on that front. Um, are you worried that Netanyahu and Trump are meeting next week or that worry is gone knowing that the US has no options left? So, nothing Netanyahu would say would change that reality.

>> So, my belief system is that Israel has a very strong compelling interest separate from ours. They want to keep the United States engaged with Iran. I don't believe that um Iran has been properly defanged by Israeli standards. In fact, worse, they may have be coming out of this with a a bigger swagger and a sense of of more power than before the war. Uh, that's certainly how I'm seeing it at this stage. So I, you know, you know, Israel is always going to be advocating for "do more, do more," you know, um, and Israel's approach is always "bomb first and you know, ask questions never." I guess that's just how they are and they've done that with, you know, the West Bank and Syria and you now Lebanon and of course Gaza. So I don't know, I, yeah, Israel's interest is very strong to to keep us involved in this whole thing. So, so that's that. I don't know what if Trump has to be getting talked to at this point in time, you know, by senior military leaders saying, "Look, there's only so much we can do here." And I don't think there would be anything to be gained by going back into just sort of what we'd call just airstrikes because airstrikes never really change the shape of war. They're, they're, they're painful, but they don't change anything. Nobody ever won a national international campaign by air alone. And I can't see anything anywhere that would suggest that it, it makes any sense to put any boots on the ground. But if we did that, as we've talked about before, colossal mistake. Uh, it's going to be very painful. And um, I, I will regret that too, I would bet. So I don't, I don't know what the options here really are besides negotiate and give up some things that you, it's going to hurt a little.

>> Yeah. I just don't want to get too complacent because I'm, I'm in your camp. I don't want to get too complacent because I never thought a year ago we'd be in this war in the first place. So I just, I, what I would consider unthinkable, um, I should probably always leave on the table. But um, I, I'm in the same camp that there.

>> The other argument that people make is that it's a matter of when because of the importance, we've talked about this a while ago, or the importance of the Strait of Hormuz for the US. So the cost is significant, but one can argue that the cost of not capturing the Strait of Hormuz or not, uh, causing regime change in Iran is even more significant in the long term because it just gives the world's most most important energy choke point to China. So now China has still has rare earth refining, but also and, you know, renewable energy, etcetera, getting miles ahead of the US and the rest of the world catching up with nuclear energy, but also control or influence over the Strait of Hormuz. And look what we're seeing right now with the with the Straits. We've got the Americans trying to escort ships out of there and failing time and time again. The Straits, uh, there was a report yesterday. I'm not sure I've been keeping track of it. Let me, I was looking at it yesterday. So there was a report by um, um, uh, by Kepler talking about the number of ships going through. So the number of ships going through the Strait of Hormuz was about half of what the Trump administration's claiming and about a, a third of what it was before the war. So still significantly less. Um, and then there was also yesterday, there were a few ships trying to get through the Omani side, but then they turned around and went back. Some of them just did not go back in. Others went through the Iranian side. Um, and the Omani side completely closed yesterday. Today, a few more ships started going through, just a handful. There was one escort, but it's fair, not fair to say the fact is, Iran still controls the Strait of Hormuz. And there is that big power struggle happening right now. The Americans are trying to make some sort of offer to Iran to just give up on controlling the Strait of Hormuz. Apparently, they're dangling a carrot of lifting the sanctions in return for Iran not charging a fee. Meanwhile, the Europeans, according to Bloomberg, have already accepted that there'll be some sort of fee. The Omanis have also given a formal proposal to the US a few days ago about the new management structure, which includes fees of the trade of Hormuz between Oman and Iran. Um, and the only things the Europeans are looking for now is not not having a fee. It's for Iran to charge the same fee to everybody. It's like, hey, please, you know, treat us like you would treat Russia and China. Don't give preferential treatment to any countries. That's what the Europeans are allegedly requesting from Iran. Whereas the US is still trying to wrestle that control away from from Iran. But if, um, but that gives you an idea that Iran is controlling the Straits and the only question is, can the US really afford it or is it worth another gamble or two?

>> Um, I mean, listen, like you said, anything's possible. I, I've given up trying to to predict this along rational lines. It would be irrational at this stage to um, you know, renew attacks, but that could easily happen for reasons, you know, and we've all seen that there's like, you know, a little back and forth. Iran has has sort of floated the trial balloon that maybe they have to preemptively attack Israel. Tired of sort of, you know, doing tit for tat. Maybe it's time to like, you know, become aggressive again. Um, we, we've found out this last week from some satellite photos that actually the damage that Israel had sustained from those missile attacks was a lot higher, obviously, than than they were admitting at the time. I think one of their main refineries up in Haifa is going to take a long time to fix. Um, and so as we look at all of that, uh, you know, obviously Iran also said earlier on, I don't know if they're sticking to this, but they said, "Listen, if you attack us again, we're going to go after the remaining infrastructure and we're just going to take out all, all the energy infrastructure, right?" Which is of course, creates a global catastrophe. So, nobody wants that whatsoever. Um, and so I can't imagine what the upside would be for the US to to do more attacks at this stage. I can only see pretty significant downside because, honest, obviously Iran, we, we, Israel and the US lacked the capability to stop them from launching missiles. Tried hard, bombed a lot of sites, bombed where we thought all those missiles were stored, and they just patched up the tunnels and brought them back out and kept firing. So, um, I think that's just the reality of the situation. We, we, the US and Israel were unable to stop them from firing missiles. And if they wanted to, we also learned from satellite photos we saw last week that how accurate they were. I mean, really accurate. Um, you know, not just hitting buildings, but hitting specific parts of buildings, you know, from, you know, a thousand kilometers away. So that's the reality of the situation. And plus now, as we just saw with with the mourning um processions, that that it's a fairly galvanized nation as well. So, so those are, those are bad sort of signs to say, "Well, let's just, let's keep annoying them and with with these bombings and, you know," because I think Trump's one, one of his, like we mentioned last time, one of the things I love about him is that when he does speak, he has no filters. So, just what he's thinking comes right out. And, you know, two weeks ago, he said we were four weeks away from real catastrophe, running out of, you know, reserves of oil and that would lead to very bad economic outcomes. I think all that's true and um, you know, that's that's the reality.

Right now. Um, there is something I learned about recently. Uh, do you know much about the crack margin? The crack spread, how that's calculated in the oil prices? Okay.

So, one of my guests was telling me about it. I've had him on the show twice to really do a deep dive into it, and, um, his name is Phillip Pilington. And, um, who's in the interview yesterday, he kind of went deeper into it, trying to calculate it. And based on his calculation, looking at the, the, the, the price of the refined oil coming out of the refineries and looking at the margin they're making, he's like, "Man, there's two logical explanations for their margins." One of them is price gouging. One of them is their cost is actually significantly higher than the spot price. And based on these calculations, etcetera, this, the how much they're paying per barrel right now coming out of the Strait of Hormuz is $110, $115 a barrel. There's no way to know for sure, but this is based on the calculation from the available data. So, his argument is that the prices on the markets, the spot prices, and obviously the futures are heavily manipulated.

Um, how much so? First, do you think there is some sort of manipulation going on? Number one. Number two, what would you say is the price of the oil coming out of the Strait of Hormuz? And that links to number three, which is how long before the US, because even low oil prices doesn't mean the US is getting enough oil. The US could still be using its reserves, which are already almost completely depleted. And that means the US would lose significant leverage in any future conflict with Iran. So, Iran knows that, and that gives them the upper hand in the negotiations. But I'd love, love to get your analysis on the price of oil and the current supply glut that everyone's talking about, because the numbers just don't show up. Like, in the last 24 hours, there have been 39 ships that went through the Strait of Hormuz in the last 39 hours. So, still the same average that's been going on for the last few days, which is again, half of what the Americans are saying and a third of what it was before the war.

Yeah, let's, let's take the, um, so, so for in, in the price of oil, we're really quoting the futures price, which is a paper market, right? And so, in the paper market, you and I could, could open up an account and start trading oil, right? You don't produce any. I'm not consuming any. We have no interest in it. We're just speculators, right? And so, right now, the amount of speculating in the oil market is super high, right? So, if you consider the signal producers and consumers coming to a fair market price, that's the signal. The noise is people like you and I just trading who have no interest in either producing or consuming the stuff. And I get there's there's a point where you say, "Okay, you know, it's good to have some speculators. They provide additional liquidity. That's good. You know, it's easier to sort of make trades." But right now, the noise to signal ratio is 50 to one, right? So, for every barrel that's finally produced and consumed, there's about 50 that are traded off, and it's just all this paper going back and forth.

Okay, that's part one. Part two is all those managed money people, you know, the money managers, the CTAs, those are the commodity trading advisors. These are the people that are really out there doing all of this crazy paper trading. All right, that's highly subject to being manipulated. If you have a big player come in who just starts just selling paper oil, and that'll make the futures price for oil go down. It just will. And there's a normal ratio that they look at, which is, okay, how many of these managed money people are bullish versus how bearish are they? That is, how many long positions have they taken compared to how many short positions are they holding? And then this chart just came out that I'm going to put up here, um, just came out a couple of days ago from John Kemp. And this is absolutely astonishing what we're looking at here. So, what this is, is this is the ratio of money managers' total long and short positions. So, it's long divided by short. So, if you see here a number like 18, it says they had 18 long positions for every short position. They were heavily long. In March 31st of 2026, they were sitting at about 12. And this is between 2011 and 2026. So, this is 15 years of data. So, Mario, in 15 years, we've never seen a reading as low as this one on June 30th of 2026, where these money managers are as bearish on oil as they have been at any point in time in the past 15 years. Not just a little bit bearish, but the most bearish they've been in 15 years.

Now, how do we begin to account for that? Because normally, what you're doing in this market is you are saying, "Well, um, what are the risks?" So, we're seeing inventories get drawn down. Normally, there's a ratio between the inventories and the price. We've set new records for how low the price is, given where we are in the inventory curve. New, new records, right? Like, "Oh, never been here before." And as well, you and I both know that if you're in this space, these are very smart people. They have to be looking at the tanker traffic. They have to be looking at the verbiage going back and forth. They have those are risks, right? Is the risk of the Strait being reclosed zero? No, it's not. It's something higher than that. So, just seeing that that we have max bearishness in these money managers, there's two explanations. One, they've completely lost the plotline and they've become idiots. Or two, somebody's in there selling a lot. Just selling. Somebody's got a sell order in on that. "Hey, just, just sell this." So, that's when we say manipulation, to me, that would mean some entity, maybe a government, maybe Japan, maybe ours, maybe both, has somebody with deep pockets has an interest in saying, "We need the price to go down," and so we're just going to, you know, we have a standing sell order. If any buying comes in, just sell it. Um, that's how you would create that. But that Charlie just showed is like, we've, this is max bearishness at a time of literally, what I can't, is one of the most elevated risk structures that I've ever seen in the oil space. Is an odd signal.

So, let me give you one other possible plausible explanation, though. In truth, there's actually a massive recession that's already been kicked off because of all of the stuff that's already happened. And that's what we're seeing is there is going to be a big dive in demand because something really got injured in the global economy. That's the other way to interpret that at this point in time. But I, I don't have good data for that in my economic statistics yet.

Yeah, it's not that. And, and yeah, and there's not like a massive, at least no, there's the possibility of a big recession, but nothing too significant that would lead to those prices considering the risks involved. A third explanation that Philip was talking about, what he believes is that he thinks algorithmic trading is very easy to manipulate, and that's what Trump and the administration are doing. When you feed news to algorithms, you're saying, "A deal's on the verge, there's a deal about to happen. There's that many ships being escorted. We control the Strait of Hormuz. We got a great deal with Iran." Um, all these different claims, while we, you know, the analyst that's following this closely would read these statements, know, "Ah, he's manipulating the markets," and we start making jokes about it. "Oh, it's, you know, it's Sunday again. Monday markets open tomorrow. Trump's going to say something positive," and then he says something positive. But what Philip's argument is that these algorithms are not taking that into consideration, and that manipulation is an information overload for the algorithms that is actually having the effect, um, that's needed on algorithmic trading. So, all these different algorithms are selling oil and bearish on oil because of this massive amount of information that talks about a massive glut in oil and a drop in oil prices, and the war is over forever, and all that, whereas reality is different. So, that's the, so that's what the market manipulation is, a manipulation of the algorithms rather than the people.

Well, that, that's true. And let me take it a step further, because the vast majority of these algorithms are, listen, they're machine algorithms. They have no emotions. They don't really care. The vast majority of them also are not basing their, their positionings or their trades and all their behaviors on actual fundamentals. Most of them are what are called momentum trades, right? So, they're agnostic. If oil's going this way, they go this way. If oil's going that way, they go that way. And, you know, these are the machines that are actually collocated on the floor of the trading houses, right? So, the Chicago Mercantile Exchange in Aurora, Illinois, there's people, there's the firms with these algos, they have machines tucked right on the floor of that, right? Just like they do at the New York Stock Exchange, etc. And they have really short fiber optic cables because they need to be a millisecond or a nanosecond faster than the next guy or gal, right? So, that's that's the nature of the beast. So, how easy is that to manipulate? Well, one, you do the headlines. But two, if somebody just comes in and gives a little nudge at the right time, in coordination with the headline, you get everybody stampeding off in, you know, all the algos start going this way.

What type, what type of nudge? What do you mean by nudge?

Nudge is somebody just dumps. So, I, so, just by way of context.

Momentum trading, so, so exactly. So, it's like a big dump along with the news. So, you put out a news saying, "Peace deal imminent. Trump says he got, he has a deal with Iran." And then someone gives that nudge by doing a big sell order, obviously a few sell orders. The algorithm from catches the headline, catches the momentum, ticks all the boxes, and then the cascade begins.

Exactly. So, so the way that that I detect this is, um, the, the smallest resolution I have on my trading screen is a one-minute chart, right? So, normally, there's a normal amount of volume that happens. You know, a few hundred lots go this way or that way, right? There's normal volume. But then all of a sudden, you'll see something, right? In coordination with those headlines, two, three, four thousand lots just come piling in, right? Which is two, three, four million barrels of oil suddenly all being sold in that one little chunk of time. Well, that's that little chunk of time. All these other algos are looking at that going, "Oh, I, I better be on the right side of that trade. Let me get out of my longs. Let me go short, too." Right? And so, yeah, that's the nudge that happens.

Yeah, interesting. I never thought of that momentum aspect of it. And then there's China as well.

I don't know what China's up to. Do you?

Exactly. I swear, it is just insane. They're just so quiet in the background. I feel like they're like steps ahead of all of us, or maybe they're behind us. We're giving them too much credit. I don't know. I don't know what the hell's happening there. Their economy is an enigma. There's all these different cracks that people tell me about, but somehow they keep humming along.

Well, it's astonishing. So, China's housing market went from super bubble territory into deep correction, and everybody said, "Well, that's it." Cuz that was 30% of their GDP was just building apartments, you know. Um, so that should have just, that should have just absolutely cratered their economy, and I don't think it did anything. And I, I don't understand that. You know, it's a very weird thing. So, they have a different, they have a command and control economy. I think they're able to move pieces around in ways that other nations can't, cuz otherwise, that should have, that should have really cut one of two, at least two legs off of their stool, you know, and nothing.

Yeah. And Jeffrey Curry, um, he, he, um, a couple of weeks ago, we're talking about the price of oil and trying to figure it out, because obviously he's been extremely long oil and he's just surprised by how far it's dropped and how quickly it dropped. And he's telling me how, Mario, something happened in that Trump-Xi meeting, cuz since then, that was the peak, that around that period, you know, three days plus or minus.

And something happened in that meeting to not only bring down, because it already started going down, the Chinese demand for oil, but keep it down despite the low oil price. He doesn't know what it is. Doesn't know whether next month we'll have Taiwan as part of China or something completely different. But something was a discussion was had at that time between Trump and Xi, we just don't know what it is.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, the quid pro quo was, China stopping importing oil like pretty dramatically. What's the quid pro quo? Don't know. But there's guaranteed China got something out of that. That was max leverage. Um, so we'll see what it is.

Have you been, uh, have you been looking at the, um, the numbers coming out of Trump's wealth? How much money he's making from all this, all the stock trades and stuff?

Yeah, you have. Yeah.

Crazy. Crazy. Uh, when I talk about the moral nihilism, it's just insane to me that a president not only can trade stocks and then make deals with that being not somehow completely illegal, but the volume of his trading, it's like a full-time sport. Like he would have a hard time trading that many shares if that was your full-time job, right? So, he must have somebody doing it for him, I guess. But at any rate, it's just, it's just as unseemly as it looks. And then, you know, all there's all kinds of stuff that happened with obviously the meme coins and then, um, this crazy, crazy thing that happened where, and this is the one that still, I don't know how to interpret this one, bothers me a lot. Um, so, there was this shooting at Brown University, and then a couple of days later, there was this, uh, professor, an MIT professor, gets gunned down at the door of his home. Oh, these two people must have known each other way back when they were both college students. That guy was the head of a fusion company. Um, you know, it was one of his jobs. And the competitor to that fusion company, just days later, got a $9 billion funding commitment from Truth Social, which is a Trump's, um, you know, it's not an energy company. Uh, you know, it's just very weird. And I will not be surprised to find out that that company, TAE Systems, ends up with a big contract at some point. I mean, that's, we've seen enough examples of this. Like, this is now a thing. Look, I, I've said this, I say this a lot. Um, the more I do, obviously, what I'm doing and talk to the people that I talk to and, um, especially when I have these private conversations, the more I realize how much is happening behind the scenes. It is wild. It's not, you know, I'm not in the belief that there's a few people pulling the strings. It's that easy. They meet in one room and make decisions. But I definitely don't believe that the system is perfect and decentralized and fair as I used to believe 20 years ago, even 10, 15 years ago.

Um, the reality of it just,

There's a lot there when you understand things like how much influence certain people have, easily they can be impacted. Let's just give you a silly example. There was a video a few hours ago I saw it. There was a video of, I don't know if you could find it, KK. It's a video of Trump watching himself on Fox News. Did you see that? Did you?

I saw a still picture of it.

I, I got to see the video. Let me, let me see if I can find it. KK, if you can find it. It's the most hilarious thing. Oh, there it is. There it is. If you can, if you can please play this, KK, show it on screen. And the reason I mention it right now is, and I want you to play it, KK, while I explain it. And this is not the best example because I'm talking about private conversations and private decisions being made, and they're pretty much people that do pull the strings. Just, it's not as simplistic as people make it out to be. But this is a smaller example of it. So, this is Trump watching Fox News, and on Fox News is filming the, it's him being filmed watching Fox News and waving. Fox. This is, you can't make this [ __ ] up. So, now, the reason I mention this is this is the person that is making, is influencing the world the most right now and will be for the next couple of years, and his mind that is coming up with these decisions is being influenced by Fox News and people speaking on Fox News. So, this gives you an idea of the network alone has the ear of the president of the United States. So much so, and I can't remember who told me this, I think it's public information, is that people that want to influence Trump, I think it's public, but people that want to influence Trump would get on the right spot or on the right segment on Fox News and say something specific to get his ear. That was one of the ways to do it. Other ways is like, you know, buying Trump Social, buying membership to his club or son's club and all that. But that was the way to get the president's ear. And again, this is an innocent example that I don't have much of a problem with. This is just how the system works. The, I wouldn't say more sinister examples, but the examples I've started getting a better idea of is like the conversations that Xi and Trump have, that if we were on a fly on that wall and we'd hear the conversation like, "Ah, number one is holy [ __ ]. Number two, now it makes sense." Um, so this is something I'm realizing more and more. And this kind of, even if you go all like, some of my private conversations made me realize the process that led to Trump to start the war in Iran, who had his ear on the power struggle and who had his attention more, etc. And there's some truth to what people say. The person that has Trump's ear last has the most influence. It's not as simple as that, but it does speak, there's some truth to it. The truth is like having his ear, especially at the right time, has an impact. So, yeah, it's, it's, uh, it's just fascinating to see. And then it links to the whole oil price discussion, what's happening in the markets, and the, the corruption we're seeing with the presidency as well. It's, it's kind of, I feel like it's, we're starting to see reality more and more.

I agree. But Mario, how, how much power do you think Trump actually has? Is there a force larger than him we have to discuss or consider?

Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Like I've realized that, and you've been speaking about it for a long time, but I've realized that as well more and more. Joe, Ken, Tucker, etcetera, have done a great job explaining it, and they've kind of woke me up even further to it, like how much influence there is over him. But yeah, freaking hell, yeah. Like, absolutely, man. Yeah, we're, he's the lightning rod, and we're like, "Look what Trump is doing," but actually, there's a machine operating somewhere in the background that's carrying us along in this story. And, and so, um, again, you know, so sort of maybe the larger framing on this is like, here's my, here's my, here's what I'm worried about from an oil price perspective. What I'm worried about is that, you know, we're draining our SPR. We're draining our commercial stockpiles. We're draining our inventories of gasoline and diesel. They're all at like multi-year, if not multi-decade lows at this time of the year. Um, and so I'm worried that we're just going to keep this fictitious low price of oil, which keeps demand high. Right? So, in the United States, year-over-year demand amongst the citizenry for oil products was up 2.9% year-over-year. Not down 2.9%, not down five or 6%, which is probably where it needs to be.

It's higher than ever, right? Jet, jet flight miles driven, like we're just, hey, we're just, hey, the price is not nearly high enough to cause any sort of demand destruction. In fact, demand is higher. And that's kind of true worldwide as well. We're seeing, I, I can't find this demand destruction. So, we're just eating into our stockpiles. And my concern is that we just keep that up, we keep that up, and then, "Oh no, something goes wrong with the negotiations, the deal falls apart," and, you know, things get spicy over there again for a bit. And next thing you know, we just slam into oil shortages across the world, but here in the United States as well. You know, we just, we just, we just hit tank bottom. And that's probably one of the most destructive things I could imagine. Um, it would be highly irresponsible to end up there because somebody said, "Let's, you know, manipulate oil futures lower for some short-term political gain. You know, we want to get through the July 4th weekend." You know, being able to crow about how, you know, oil prices were low, and then we'll let them go, or whatever the story is that I can't. So, again, if we get to that point, this is a big if, big scenario, but if we get there and we slam into that, and that was because, um, of, I don't know, we'll just call it ignorance, right? We just got there because it was just some broken process, or it was intentional because somebody was actually trying to engineer that outcome because, you know, Washington D.C. never let a good crisis go to waste. It. However, we get there, you know, in your heart of hearts, there are people behind there who are going to be all ready for this crisis. Air quotes, right? "Oh, good thing we put all those Flock cameras in because now we can see if, you know, Joe Blow was trying to like evade the system and he drove too much or more than his allotted amount, or tried to get around, you know, the purchasing, um, requirements, minimums, maximums that we had in place for gasoline." Whatever the story is, you just know that that next crisis is going to be an opportunity to really use the data centers, use the Flock cameras, use the whatevers. Um, and you already heard, I think, um, Marco Rubio coming out talking about how passports now, well, we'll just use this facial recognition thing now. You don't have to go to Walgreens anymore. You know, that that digital future state, that's something they want. Whoever the "they" is in this story, but that's something they want. And we know that because when they want something, it's always easy, right? It's just easy. Data centers popping up. It's almost impossible to for locals to organize against them. Uh, all sorts of inconvenient narratives like climate change suddenly got, they took those right off the table. Like, "Stop talking about that." That's easy. If you want to do something else, though, that they don't want, it's always hard. It's like selling raw milk, man. That's hard, you know, or something. So, that's the easy-hard framework that we use, um, over at my site with my tribe. We talk about that because when things are easy, that's just something that they want.

So, I guess, I guess they, they want, you know, data centers and Flock cameras at this point, you know, figure out why.

Yeah. Yeah. Well explained, Chris. Um, thanks for jumping on. Always enjoy our conversations. Thank you.

Likewise. Thank you for having me again.

Can't wait to do this again. Um, all right, guys. Karen Katovski, how are you? Except a little depressing listening to what Chris was talking. My God. And he's, he's incredible. Yeah. It's, it's, it's something I'm discussing more and more because it's, it's just, it's just true. It's like, if he told me at the beginning of the conversation that Section 224 seems like it's going to pass. So, I'm like, if Section 224 is going to pass, one of the most obvious, stupid, bad things for the United States, for the average person, like, if you go to an average American on the street and say, "Hey, there's a section that says XYZ, and that's going to pass and become law." They'd be like, "No freaking way. You're making [ __ ] up." No, it's actually about to pass. Um, if that passes, how the hell are we going to prevent censorship or or or having that, I wouldn't say autocracy, but kind of that level of control by the government that we've been, that we believe is, is will never happen in a country like the United States that is based on the foundation of liberty and freedom, um, is, yeah, it's concerning. And now, and all started with the visit that, cuz Bibi's visiting Trump early next week. So, that's never a good thing. Um, and then you've got also Trump just a few days ago saying about the funeral. So, that was a massive funeral. You saw the funeral for?

Yeah. I can't even.

9 million people.

Yeah. That's what I saw. That's onetenth of the population. Just under onetenth. So, imagine that in Washington. That would be like, um, 35 million people coming to DC. Or.

Imagine, do you ever, would you ever have we ever seen that in the United States, that level of mobilization for anything?

No. I, I remember maybe it was under Obama, we had a Million Man March, and they used to have there for a couple, three years, we had Million Man Marches, and I forget what they were about, probably civil rights or something, but could have been anything. Anyway, they didn't quite make a million. They were almost a million, you know, and and that was kind of the target goal. And, um, I think they, they don't have those, but that's less than a million. That was probably the biggest thing in my lifetime. Uh, so this is, this is just, uh, incomprehensible, really. And then you see the, yeah, from a distance, and you see where people. It's crazy. We're talking about how, like, maybe the government was not popular before, but like, this is the cost of this war. Like, all these people, how do you think they look at the US? A lot of people in Iran used to love the US, and so many of them, Israel, too. How do you think they see the US and Israel now?

Oh, yeah. I mean, how can they, um, you know, that's what assassinations of political or civil rights leaders, you know, Martin Luther King, his assassination brought out crowds. I mean, people felt that even people that didn't even support Martin Luther King, they still felt like they had been personally attacked. Um, and that wasn't from another country. Can you imagine if another country had come in and killed an American figure, whether 60 years ago or right now? It's just, uh, I, I think we don't understand the ramifications of our policies, and we don't even try to, because it's very easy to understand them. You just, you know, look at some case studies, and this is this is totally, uh, I think predictable. And also, um, I was watching some of the guys, um, English speakers who are there, broadcasting stuff, and one of them had some pictures of parts of Iran that had been really destroyed, hit hard, and not, you know, haven't had a chance to really build them back. And, you know, you think about the number of, uh, average Iranians that have also died. Of course, the children, you can't get away from, uh, the Manob 168, but it's not just that. I mean, they've had other, uh, families and, and children, men, women, and children targeted. So, they've lost a lot. And they lost their leader. And this is almost, I mean, it's not, it's understandable in some ways. In another way, for Americans, though, it's not understandable because we, this is their religious leader. We don't have an American religious leader. I think Trump with MAGA had maybe he thought he was going to do that, but we don't have a single religious leader in the United States that, um, that everyone respects and honors and feels connected to and has confidence in. We don't have anything like that in our country. And so, when we took out, when we, this assassination was executed, um, you know, we took out not just the political top dog in a sense, but the religious inspirational leader, the one who puts together what it means in today, in this day and age, what it means to be an Iranian, you know, and, and also he's the symbol of all those years of suffering and sanctions and everybody saying bad things about Iran. He led his country through really a desert, you could say. So, like a Moses figure, almost. And Americans, we don't think in those terms. We don't, you know, we have freedom of religion, that means freedom not to have a religion. That's what a lot of Americans think about. And they, they don't, we don't even imagine that countries like Iran even exist where they are not just bound in a political state structure, but they're also bound in a religious construct. And, you know, it's interesting because the Christians, the Jewish communities, the other religious communities that exist in Iran all have representatives here. They're all paying, you know, their respects and homage to the Ayatollah. So, yeah, I, I don't think, I mean, it's like it's like our government. I mean, why do we have highly educated and highly paid people in government? Don't they know that this? Don't they? I don't think they even have any concept. Trump seems very surprised. "Oh, I thought everybody hated them. How can he possibly be that stupid, that ill-informed?" Even on his own, but much less with the whole system of US intelligence and US policymakers able to communicate to him. And how could we all be that stupid? It just, it just makes, um, it's, it's very, very, it's incomprehensible, really.

Yeah. It's concerning. For when I saw him put say that, um, there were like two theories for me. I'm like, either he's just saying the truth, he genuinely is surprised, or, um, he's just saying it because politically, you know, he's just, he's just saying things just political, just trying to make a point. Um, but if it's the first, if he was genuinely surprised by this, um,

It concerns me because you worry that the person that has so much influence around the world is

is actually living in an information bubble. And I don't think people understand how dangerous it is to be

misinformed. The dangers of ignorance. Um, when you have someone making decisions, you know, thinking, "Hey, if I kill their leader, they're all going to collapse like Venezuela. I'm going to control their oil." Decisions like this lead to, sorry, false assumptions like this lead to decisions that have severe consequences. The consequences of this war that was meant to be a quick four-day war, whatever it is, one week, two-week war, are going to be felt for years and decades. As I said, those millions of people are going to have the wrong perception, not wrong, a very negative perception of the US. They're actually chanting on the streets, "Death to Israel," and "Death to the US," and some of them saying, "We're going to avenge our dear leader and kill, go after President Trump," etcetera. Yeah.

You've just created that hate in millions of people. And I was telling Chris earlier that, um, you know, 9/11, Osama bin Laden, when he gave the reasons, you, when someone does something evil, you'd want to ask him like, "Hey, why did you just freaking do this?" Um, and he told the world, he's like, "Hey, I did this because the US is causing a lot of death and destruction in our region, has bases in our holy land in Saudi. That's our land. It's Muslim land. And, you know, it's killing a lot of Muslims through all these different wars and backing all these different proxies." And number two is the support for Israel, which is doing what it's doing to Palestinians in the region. And that only got worse since, by the way, just to be clear, that was back then. And, you know, 20 years later, look where Palestinians are at. Um, so instead of learning from this and just trying to change our foreign policy, America's foreign policy,

Um, we just feel like I feel like we're just doubling down on that path. And it's to what end? When will things change? That's that's a big question. Like, when will we really disengage out of the region? We thought we'll disengage. The US will disengage after this war with Iran. Well, there's a new deal that the US signed up to in Lebanon. Get the hell out of Lebanon. Let the Lebanese figure it out. You've caused enough mess. There's meetings with Al-Shara trying to figure out a plan there and telling Al-Shara to go into Lebanon. Um, there's talks about how to deal with the Houthis, visits to the Gulf regions, continuing work on the Iran deal, and trying to enforce America's control over the Strait of Hormuz unsuccessfully so far. Um, and now Bibi's going to Trump. Trump should even just say no to Netanyahu's visit. Like, he visited me last time. He got me into this freaking war. Let's just have a phone call. That's a. Let's avoid meeting one-on-one.

Well, well, Ben Gvir didn't go. Ben Gvir didn't go to New York. You know, he canceled his New York trip.

Yeah, I saw. Arrest him. So, so I think, uh, there's some things that we don't measure, um, if we only look at what the government policymakers are doing, because clearly, yeah, we are expanding military footprint in Lebanon, in Gaza, in Israel, in Jordan, uh, beefing up the base we have in Jordan there. Where else, uh, uh, you know, so, so, but we are in a, I don't think Rubio's trip was successful in, uh, telling the Gulf States what they need to do. I think they pretty much nodded and thanked him and then continued to do what they were going to do, which is to balance their foreign policy much more closely with their neighbors and with the region. So, I think that is happening. I think our retreat is right now eastward, not all the way back to Washington, but eastward, at least into the, to the, you know, where Israel can fly an airplane, drop a bomb, and not have to be refueled on the way back. That's, we're moving to that. So, we are seeing a little bit of a shift in our foreign policy. The language and the leadership has not woken up to what, uh, everybody else in the world is waking up to. You know, Trump, well, first off, Trump has, uh, I, I think, you know, we talked about this before. You know, his whole "Car Island" thing was invented in the late 1980s, and he never let it go. He never let it go. It was like, you know, "I got a good idea. I'm gonna hold on to it for the next 50 years or whatever." And he did. Okay. He says, once he gets an idea that he thinks is good, then he checks that box.

You think, do you think Netanyahu can play on that card to try to convince him again on Iran? Does that worry you?

Well, no. I, I actually think Trump, you know, he likes to, well, Trump never blames himself, right? Trump never makes a mistake. It's always somebody around him who's done something wrong. They've told him wrong, or they let him wrong, or they were in it for their own business. They didn't flatter him enough. That's why he didn't listen. Whatever it was, it's never him. It's always somebody else's fault. So, he is, um, not happy with Netanyahu. And, and I've said this before, but Netanyahu is not a winner here. You know, he's very unpopular at home. Trump is very, now, this is something Trump is aware of. You know, he doesn't understand his potential enemies or people that he wants to attack or regime change. He has no interest in how those countries actually work or what they think. He doesn't care about that. But he does have an interest in Israel, partly because Israel, Zionists have given him a lot of money. He's benefited from them throughout his whole life. So, he has a connection there. Many of his friends, his son-in-law, are avid Zionists. He trusts them. Um, so he pays attention to Israeli politics. And Netanyahu is very unpopular. You know, Trump tells the nation, "I'm the most popular guy." He's still out on a, you know, all his speeches like, "Look how great everything is." And you watch him, if you're an American and you watch him, you go, "Well, that's not true. That's not true. What do you mean, jobs, economy, stock market? That's how you make." He said he made all his money because the stock market went up. I mean, my God. So, a lot of people don't believe what he says, but he's big on how popular he is, but he does know, he does pay close attention to how popular Netanyahu is not, which he isn't. I mean, his government, they're going to have elections. There is, uh, he, and you know, I'm not saying Netanyahu's coalition couldn't squeak through, but basically, he's not popular. Trump knows this, and Trump does not associate with losers. This is Trump's, this is just his operational policy. If you're a loser, I'm going to humiliate you, you know, publicly torture you, or whatever. I'm going to have fun with you like a cat with a mouse, but I'm not going to, I'm not going to really hang with you. I'm not going to defend you. I'm not going to help, you know, try to make you more popular than you are. This is why we see this all the time when he endorses in primaries or when he makes an endorsement in a domestic race. He always waits until the numbers pretty well show that his candidate is going to win, and then he does it. So, in some ways, he's not a risk-taker. And I think, um, he may call Netanyahu, he may end up canceling Netanyahu's visit, or have a visit with Netanyahu that's not the typical, you know, "I pull out my chair in the Oval Office," and, you know, it's all, it's all differential. Um, so, because Trump is a blamer, and I think Netanyahu is getting some of the blame for this, but Trump, I mean, we, I'm just saying this based on what he's been saying, you know, "Well, look how much we've done for Israel." Uh, Vance is echoing some of this. You know, "We've done everything we could possibly do for Israel. They should show some gratitude." Remember when Vance said that a couple, three weeks ago? So, this kind of messaging is floating around in Trump's head. So, um, this visit may not be.

But it just depends. So, that's, so I've been saying what you're saying, but that's based on looking at it from the outside. And then there's another way of looking at it, another lens. Some people say, "What does Netanyahu have on Trump?" Other people say, "How much influence Netanyahu and the lobby have on Trump?" Other people say, "How much does Trump even matter, really, in those conversations? How many of the decisions does he make versus others in that, in that beast, in that system that is the United States?" So, there's all these questions that are up in the air. They make it difficult to, like, I don't know if I feel like if it was just Trump calling the shots, then why did we even get into this war? If it was Trump that said, "No more forever wars," and "I want the Nobel Peace Prize for ending wars," how are we even here?

Yeah, well, we have the Congress also bought and paid for. They like the war. The military-industrial complex supports them. They like the war. So, there's a lot of folks interested in making money in war. But that also assumes that you are going to make money. You know, there are systems that, um, well, there's two things going on, I think, in our military-industrial complex. One is this outrageous amount of money going into, not just AI, but computing and information technology of all types. And that is not, you can make a lot of profit there, but ultimately, your manufacturing of that is zilch, okay? It's all, it's not like a job creator, okay? So, as the military industrial complex needs fewer people, employs fewer people at home, uh, yeah, sure, there's still profit for the guys at the top, but you're not actually employing a bunch of people. And that is a, that's a problem because we hate the rich. All countries that have poor people, pretty much look at the rich folks that are skimming off the top, particularly in government with government contracts. They don't like them. Like, if I say Alex Karp, most people who know who he is have a negative perspective on this guy. Um, and he's not the only one. Peter Thiel, who, um, you know, is a fellow libertarian, I guess, or what he was years ago. Peter Thiel's a bad guy. Um, most of the people that hate Vance, the main reason they hate him is because he's a product of Peter Thiel. His political career was subsidized by Peter Thiel. So, anyway, these guys who are working, kind of for the new totalitarianism in our country. That's the next phase of the military-industrial complex. They're not popular. And Congress can't do everything at once for them because there's no job benefit to do that. You know, these data centers, nobody in America wants data centers. And it's not just because they use up your water and drive up your electricity bills. It's also because you can take a massive data center, put it somewhere, and they say, "Well, how many jobs are we going to get for all those billions and billions of dollars?" And it's like, anywhere from 50 to 85 people. And what are those jobs? Well, they're kind of like air conditioner repairmen, okay? They're walking around making sure all the systems are running. These are not high-tech jobs. So, data centers have a problem in selling how great they are because they make profit for very few and they don't create jobs. So, our military transition is away from construction of things because we don't have the, we've abandoned that for the most part. It's going to take decades to really get shipbuilding back or sub-building back. And we certainly can't beat what the Russians, the Indians, and the Chinese can do. We can't beat that. So, we're going to be doing more purchasing with our military dollar, more purchasing, more IT and totalitarian surveillance type stuff, which is huge profit for few people, and very few jobs. And so, when you wean people off of those government, those defense jobs, and the baby boomers start to die off, and they're not worried, they just care about their social security check, they're good. So, then you have people disconnected from their government, which is what how you get revolutions. And Congress knows this. The Congress members know this. You're seeing it all over in these races. How in the world did the Democratic Socialist win the Democratic primary in Colorado? Well, how did she do that? Well, it's a Democratic district. So, she, she and the Democrat argued Democratic principles, and she had the, she had the lead on justice. She had the lead on, "We're not, our government should not be taking our tax dollars and murdering babies in Palestine, bombing countries for no reason and enriching the elites." Right? That's the Democratic Socialist message. Guess what? Very popular. It sells. It. And if you had a bunch of people in a military town who were all making money off the military base and, you know, lots of people had good.

Jobs making weapons, old old style weapons, um, then they would fight back. They would say, "No, no, you know, I like this." But they can't fight back because those jobs aren't there.

So, as we blew up all of our antique stuff, both in Ukraine and and lost a lot of what we thought were good systems and and technologies, uh, they were shown not to be as effective and they got blown up. Pete Hegseth wants, you know, $2 trillion to redo military acquisition. But what's he going to do with that two trillion? Let's assume he gets two trillion, even if the Israelis get half of it, right? Because this is a whole different issue, the Israelis in our system. Uh, that's also the totalitarianism that's coming. We'll have to deal with it.

But the the uh money that Pete Hegseth will will spend, a lot of it's going to go to the AI and the the IT stuff, which doesn't hire a lot of people. It doesn't create jobs. AI can write you code. I mean, you could hire an AI company with 10 people and they can do what, you know, a thousand or 2,000 people might have done before that, or maybe a 100,000. I don't know.

We also are going to have to upgrade into drones. Well, how do we do drones? It's off the shelf, commercialized. Uh, get an LLC, buy somebody else's stuff, stick an American part on it, and now you have an American drone, right? We copy, or we copy like we did the Shahed drones, we copied those. So, that also does not create a lot of high-paying jobs. Uh, that manufacturing, that kind of manufacturing is just like with cars and and other things. You got robotics to do it, computers to do it, uh, 3D printing to do it. You don't need people working at that.

So that money that Trump is going to pour into the military that Hegseth wrote a really uh insane article about how great the military was and how they were going to use all that money and how accountable they were for it. You know, that is not going to equate to jobs. And so now you have further disconnection between DC and the five wealthiest counties in the United States around DC, and then all the rest of the people. So Congress depends on those people to vote for them. And that's the wild card. That's what, of course, AIPAC and Israel are worried about. That's why they have to spend a million dollars to to to to do Hobsbor to to make sure people are are not alienated by Israel or whatever.

But this disconnection, these congressmen, and it's not just the ones that are in that are hoping to get reelected. It's their competition. It's their competition like that Democratic socialist. It's the competition like Mum Dami. You know, you're like, "H, how could New York do that?" Well, I don't know how New York could do that. But guess what? Apparently something Mandami said was way more appealing than what the other guy said. So why was it appealing? Why would uh, you know, knocking the elite off of their ivory towers, why is that appealing? Because because really, I mean, capitalism, we tolerate it. It's not a bad thing. But when it becomes abused and when it becomes a target of why I don't have anything, why I have all this student debt, whatever your thing is, then politics change. And so Congress will respond to that and and we will elect a president perhaps, or have one that's that that almost gets elected in 2028, which who who is going to tap into that much like Trump.

>> But then but then what happens is when that new president with that messaging similar to Manny takes the office and then reverts back to the same policies because remember Trump was that person.

>> Yeah, he was. Then people will just completely lose their [ __ ] because I think people are just on the edge. They're just really fed up by voting different person every time getting the same results.

>> Yeah, they they are um uh they are fed up with it. And I I'll tell you I I watched your uh really fantastic interview with Barnes with with Robert Barnes.

>> Well, Robert is great. Yeah.

>> Yeah. And he's he's like he says, "Oh, it won't be 2028. It'll be the one after that probably." But but we are in a in a place of uh, you know, we're transitioning. uh our country is is changing um and and actually something has already changed which government is not adapted to and that is America Americans don't want war. This Iran war was unpopular from the beginning and even after some people, you know, we had 13 supposedly 16 casualties or something, but even after that, uh, you know, in all the political Fox News everything, you know, war, the war, we have to beat these terrible Iranians. And of course, we did not beat them. But I'm just saying at no point did that war become more popular with Americans than it was. It became even less popular after the president started it, after the deep state started, after Israel started it. So, you know, that's different. That's different. That is a fundamental coalescing of a of a uh, a true America First type of perspective in this country that's got to be dealt with. And if they don't deal with it, that's right. It will be it'll be revolutionary.

And I don't know, I hate flot cameras. Um, I thought Chris was talking about, you know, the flock cameras and stuff, but you know, people, if there's anything that people can strike out at, and obviously we're not going to go shoot all the elites. That's not something a few might do that. Very few. But how many people or teenagers or old folks are able to take out a flot camera? And I don't mean take it out, just damage it so that it doesn't work. Those targets are everywhere and they're not protected except obviously by other flot cameras. But um, you know, this this movement is very it's very interesting and um, it's it's not necessarily good, but it's just the way it is. Our government has alienated the people.

But I will I agree with you back to Iran though that um, you know, it's it's heartwarming and and amazing to watch, well, and sad to to see how the people are uh participating and sharing their grief. Uh, but at the same time, you're getting messages particularly from the IRGC and others and the people with the down with America or whatever they want. They this is this is the end of the grieving ceremony for the most part. Once this is done, then we go forward. We finish the rebuilding and we deal with what's been done to us, not just to um, a, you know, ham, but to the people of of Iran. And there is a lot of language which is which Americans should totally understand that says we're getting even or we are going to

>> take revenge.

>> Just for people listening, what did the US do when 9/11 happened? Wars that killed tens of thousands of people, hundreds of thousands of people.

>> Um, what do you think the US would do right now if a country came in, killed Trump, and bombed a school?

>> Well, we would probably

>> country would be wiped out.

>> It would we wouldn't do we wouldn't play little military float your boat over there and and try to blockade something. We wouldn't do that. No, we I think our our government is um really irrational in so many ways. And so we would probably nuke them. We would turn them into a parking lot. And guess what? Probably if something like that happened, 70% of the population would would cheer it. Not not maybe not 70. Maybe 20 years ago, 70. Now maybe at least 60%, maybe 55 would cheer it. Um, there are a lot of people in America who understand there's a big difference between what Washington says wars are about and what they're really about. I mean, we have multiple generations of folks, um, Vietnam generation, the first Iraq war generation, second Iraq war, Afghanistan generation, and now our younger people who all know everything there is to know about the genocide in Gaza. Um, and yet are powerless to do anything about it. So you've got all these waves of people who understand that our government lies and they lie particularly about war and it's usually because they're profiting from it.

So it is possible that if something like that happened um Americans would take that opportunity to, you know, which is what we want them to do with regime change, right? We we go hit somebody, we knock off their leader, we put them in a war. Um, we say, "Oh, you're going to rise up and throw your government out." Well, wouldn't that be interesting if somebody hit us and yeah, we're going to fight back, but then also we did a regime change at home. It those those techniques of regime change usually don't work, but the psychology of regime change we aren't immune from that in this country. We are not immune to it at all. I mean, uh, you know, uh, honestly, I can't think of a single country, regardless of what they did to us, that would cause Americans to young Americans, to rush down to the recruiting offices and sign up to join the military. I can't I don't see it. And we saw that after 9/11, but at the time of 9/11, sure, we had cell phones. Um, you know, we had the internet, but we hadn't had it for very long. You know, I don't think I did much on the internet before 1995.

>> Not even close. The access of information was very different than to what it is now. Incomparable.

>> And so the narrative control from Washington through the main what CNN, ABC, CBS, NBC, they were all

>> convince the Americans that Iraq made sense.

>> Yeah. Well, they did. And they lied. And it was known that they lied because I was I was one of a number of people that were uh I was just a tiny portion of I mean actual paid journalists who uh were doing their job globally and in the United States were you know pointing out that a lot of what we were being told wasn't true. But it we didn't have the countervailing impact of being able to find out for ourselves. You couldn't just go on the internet and find out. You couldn't. But see now we can't we can not only do that, we can actually talk to people in other countries. We can read what they're saying. We can watch them live. We can ask them questions. We can I mean, there's just amazing the connectivity that we have.

So I think and and again, I would have thought that the COVID thing would not have gone as smoothly as it did from the government's perspective. I thought more people would have pushed back and they didn't. So fear is a problem. But even with COVID, there is a whole bunch of people who bought the COVID lies who have since then come out of that stupor and realized that um oh my god, the the government just said that because it had an agenda which we're not quite sure what it was. Maybe it was to enrich big pharma or kill old people. You know, we're not sure what the agenda was. We don't know. But it had something that it wasn't really telling us. And so and it was also misleading us and taking advantage of our fear.

So every little thing that happens, uh, the world changes, the technology, the connectivity, the information, all these things, they make us a slightly different people in a slightly different political environment. So I'm not 100% sure if we had attack. And I'll tell you this, I don't wish any harm on anybody, including Trump or any of the administration officials, and there's many of them that I despise. But if you just take Trump alone, he's such a lightning rod for antipathy and and hatred amongst the people in this country, not the MAGA people. I mean, I look, I've admitted and apologized for voting for him, but a lot of people um did not vote for him. You know, they had Trump derangement syndrome or whatever, and they really don't like him. They they look at all the negatives that he brings to bear, which are many.

So, you know, uh, you remember the guy that shot the United Healthcare CEO? I guess he's having to try

>> I say I mean he's accused of it. Who knows what really happened. I mean, but the guy's gonna be

>> Luigi.

>> Yeah. But when that happened and I pay very little attention to I don't know a lot about big pharma healthcare insurance companies. I didn't know who this guy was. But what surprised me was the outpouring of support for the Luigi guy. The one who was accused of doing it. Not

>> not that he was innocent. They were just assuming that he did it and they loved it. He did it. They said this guy.

>> That's worrying.

>> Yeah, that's so I I'm not sure that if you killed an unpopular president and I don't know anyone that hasn't been none of

>> Oh, look what people look people celebrated. There's some people that celebrated the killing of uh Kirk. How messed up is that?

>> Oh yeah. Well, there you go. That's I hate to say that's

>> a crazy time. Yeah, exactly. But that was a crazy there were a lot of people and and again uh the left-wing types or Democratic party types or even even some of the rhino types that didn't really like uh Klie Kirk or what he was doing. Um, and they saw and what did they what did they what labels did they give him? Well, he's probably, you know, a white supremacist. He might be a racist and certainly he's a troubleman, you know. But turned out they didn't they just was all they didn't know him. They didn't read his listen to his speeches. They didn't know him. Um, and but they they were able to put him in a category to instantly say, "I don't like this guy." And then move to the next stage when he got killed to celebrate it and think that's great. Why don't we too bad they didn't get his kids or something, you know? I mean, terrible things. Now, I don't like to think of my country as being filled with people like that, but unfortunately, um, we have a lot of people like that. And it doesn't I'm not saying they would hate anybody that's killed, you know, maybe if Bernie Sanders, you know, that that they would they would be upset about that. But the way they went after the way they the way they supported the guy that killed the United Healthcare guy, assuming he's the one that did it, they celebrated that. And and given the way Trump is held in contempt by so many people in our own country, uh mainly because he lies so much. You know, I think, you know, don't have you can't just keep telling people how great it is with no context because so many people are not feeling it. They just don't think it's great. They have evidence in their own lives that it's not great. And they see you making a lot of money quote unquote on the stock market doing things like, you know, that that no, even Biden couldn't get away with. I mean, you know, we had the Hunter Biden thing with Ukraine.

>> Exactly. Trump to a whole other level. Whole other level. It is insane the amount of money they're making. I made a joke, too.

>> Yes. I really

>> because I I was um having a private conversation earlier. I'm like and you know, we were told certain information and in my mind like you can never trade on that information. It's not legal. So something I don't even consider

>> but I put a joke off the cuff joke. I'm like, just imagine if we were in Trump's circle, we'd be able to trade on all that information because it's just wild the amount of money they're making and they just trade on everything with just complete impunity. So it has taken it to a whole other level.

Even I think the Iran war itself is not look presidents break promises all the time. It's bizarrely and unfortunately the American voters are just you it's expected from a president to break campaign promises. It's just a matter of which ones and to what extent.

>> But when you break the biggest promise that you make to the voters.

>> Oh yeah.

>> That's different. So, so it's like you go to someone, you're like, "Hey, I'm going to do this, this, this, this, this, but the most important thing I'm going to do is I'm going to do that. That would be my main focus." And you go ahead and you first thing you do is you just break that so blatantly. I just feel like it's

>> Yeah.

>> It just it and I was saying this to Chris earlier, it it did break a lot of people. And I everything's everything's possible now. Like that meeting between Netanyahu and Trump. I believe and as you know, I've been saying it for a long time that I think the war is over. I'm still in that camp, but I wouldn't discount that might not restart next year or there might not be something like Israel was meant to pull out of Iran. Israel still, sorry, pull out of Lebanon. Israel's still there. Israel's still bombing Lebanon a lot less than it was. So, it is abiding to an extent by a ceasefire, but a lot less so. Netanyahu proudly said today in a speech, he said the following. Let me get that for you. He says, um, where is it? Um, okay. Iran wants to remove us from southern Lebanon and they are trying to put pressure on the US. We are handling this pressure well. We have received legitimacy to maintain the security zone from our great achievement against Lebanon, but they will try to eliminate it in every way, including putting pressure on the Lebanese government.

Um, and then he says, "I heard reports the media claiming that Trump asks that asked us not to take action against terrorist tunnels in Lebanon." That about not demolishing villages. That's what the claim is. New York Times that's a myth, fake news. He didn't say anything to me about it and I didn't ask him. We act according to our considerations. So here we are believing and then he says another statement. There will be no reconstruction in Gaza without disarmament and demilitarization in the designated area. So when you see statements like this, you look at all the rhetoric we've seen a few weeks ago, Karen, and then you look at the actions that follows.

>> Yeah.

>> Nothing's changed. Nothing seems to have changed.

>> Nope. Um, and it and it Yeah. It and I don't know what it will take. Obviously, you know, if Trump wanted things with Israel to change, that relationship could be shifted even despite AIPAC, it doesn't even matter about that. Trump could um just from executive uh power that he has already could suspend and halt and threaten to halt and all these things. And then this relationship does provide the United States since we're providing the oversight and the political support and the aid and the military spending and the cash and the Israeli bonds, all the things that the US is providing. Each one of these things is a leverage point that could be leveraged to get Israel to get back in their borders and start behaving like a normal country.

Um, but we but Trump doesn't do that. So he doesn't want to do it or he can't do it. Well, if he can't do it, maybe that's why he's getting himself so rich. Maybe he needs more money because otherwise he can't build a bunker that's secure enough to prevent him from being assassinated by by his Israeli his people in Israel who are threatening him. So that's

>> how is that something do I'll ask you a question that Chris asked me. How much how much how many of the decisions he makes are his own decisions in your mind?

>> Yeah. Well, you know, I even I used to think every Truth Social tweet that he made was his because of the weird way that he writes them, right? You know, he puts capital letters where you wouldn't have capital unless you're writing in German. You wouldn't put Americans. We don't use capital letters on everything. We don't bold-face stupid things and we and we don't we don't speak in that kind of halted uh weird language that he uses. Nobody texts to write. Well, okay. The guy that killed the guy the psy that killed Charlie Kirk did write texts very similar to the way Trump writes them. So maybe I'm not saying Trump did it, but there may be a family of writers that write that write to social post. I'm not sure. But I did think he was writing those. He was producing those because of the way they're written. And I know older people sometimes people older than me write weird stuff. I don't know. And Trump Trump has a a big personality. I thought maybe he was expressing, but it turns out I'm not sure he does that either. I I think that whole part of some of his his some of his writings are produced for him by others.

Um, I think maybe when we think about the Trump presidency, we need to look at all the members of the Trump board of peace because that's most of the White House staff plus Trump's relatives and his best friend Wickoff. So you know, and his kids I guess are in part, well, Kushner, son-in-law. So if you look at the Trump Board of Peace and the membership of that, then you have a circle that includes all the inside staff at the White House plus Trump's relatives. And I think that's who that's really what's governing us. And it's it's smaller than an oligarchy. I mean, it is an oligarchy of a sort, but it's a really small. And then it interfaces with the other powers. So yeah, but I do think Trump or fear of Trump is keeping some some kind of uh discipline in the White House like don't piss Trump off or he'll fire you. So there is some kind of consistency in how they're going to behave. We must please Trump. So whatever is on Trump's mind, you know, how do we sell it to Trump? If we want to put something in his mind, how do we make him think he thought it up? How do we sell it? But all of this is there's a small group of people doing that, not a large group. See, if there was a large group of people doing that, that would be like a more I think more normal presidency or whatever.

>> Yeah. Where you have a guy that, let's say, he goes out to the countryside or he goes meets with the governor and he comes back with a really cool idea that he never thought, "Yeah, I met with the governor and I know he's a Democrat, but the guy, you know, he gave me an idea, right?" That's you could see that happening with a normal presidency or any leader, but we don't see that with Trump. Trump's ideas are coming from a very small and narrow circle of heavily populated with Zionists. And of course, that's a military state constantly uh, you know, under risk by neighbors. You know, it's always in a lifetime, you know, existential survival battle. You know, that way of thinking, very high tech, very interested in financial things and dealings and in money and global control of uh via the financial system, that kind of thing. I mean, that just that Israel is interested in that. Trump is interested in that. So this is a little circle that kind of feeds itself ideas and no new really new ideas come into it. Um, and I think that's the big problem. But uh, so I don't know if Trump's completely in charge, but he does have a way of limiting the people that influence him. He's not really bringing in new people. And I I'm going to say something really sexist, I guess it is, but you know how they all the presidents and even I remember uh Bush Jr. did this. You know, they always want to talk about how many women they brought in to the government or uh, you know, if it's if blacks or uh Hispanics, you know, they're always it's and it's not DEI. If it is DEI, it's been around for 25 years. But this idea that that we listen to everybody, right? It's kind of a we're America, we're a melting pot and everybody has a chance to govern. But when I saw and Trump has brought in women, a number of women, some very competent into his administration. He did it the first term, he did it the second term. But there is a there is a kind of this is where I'm going to get catty and I'm sorry. It's just this is what I think.

Um, you know, you look at the way the women present and except for the World Wrestling or the Wrestling Federation when we put in charge of the education department and Susie Wilds and those are women that are in their 60s. If you look at all the ones under 50, they all present in a way that is kind of reminds you of Trump's days when he ran beauty contests, right? Everybody has to look a certain way. Everybody. You know, I want to see um, you know, I mean, I don't miss this, but you remember Biden and he put in he had some like crossdressers and he had a transvestite man woman. Yes. Woman started out as a man, woman. She was running one of the health I guess she was the the surgeon general or something. I don't know what it was, but anyway, she was not an attractive woman. She I'll give her that she says she's a woman. She's a woman. But she was not like attractive. She was like, you could you would just run into her in Walmart, you know, that's like fine. It's all right. But with Trump, you see appearance over everything. Appearance over competence, appearance over uh, you know, loyalty to Trump. A comp in a competition. And I I've said this before about Pam Bondi, but that famous thing couple months into the administration, they had something and he's going around recognizing people and he left off Pam Bondi and she goes, "But sir, I'm right here, sir." You know, like look at me. Look at me. And again, that's not very professional. You know, in in my world, in the military, if somebody didn't mention your name, you're you're in good shape. You do not want to like attract undue attention to yourself.

>> It's it's a focus on the wrong things. It's um it's no longer a focus on merit. There's um a military um I think one of the generals that he fired, one of them the guys he fired that put out um [ __ ] I didn't save it that put out a book or something or an article wrote an article for the first time on foreign policy and he was talking about this. He was saying that the president I think he's talking about how the president number one is is using the army on domestic issues and that's moving away the focus and that's stretching them too thin and number two he's no longer focusing on merit and that's a problem that a lot of people have. A lot of the decisions are being made are not

>> are not focusing on the right things.

>> Heads is a prime example. He's not he doesn't fit into the well I call him the Kendall. He's the Kendall to the rest of the Barbies. But but headsets clearly to put a guy with with his uh lack of experience, knowledge, and also just judgment um on top of the is is your guy in the the Pentagon that the the overall in charge of all your generals. Um, honestly, you know, if if if we lived in a time, which Trump and all presidents think they live in the most dangerous and and and time of the you know, we have wars, we're trying to end wars, whatever. If you really believed that, then you wouldn't put an incompetent in charge of your Pentagon. You'd say, you know what, uh, some of these things aren't that important to me. Some of these positions like health and human services, there's a bunch of guys that could do that. Where do you put PY before he put him in intelligence, right? PY was up housing or something. So, yeah, it's fine. He knows a little about housing. It's not a big deal because it's not my priority. But Trump said, you know, we're going to take Greenland. We're going to do, you know, Canada. We got Venezuela. We got all these things. We're going to be back. America is back. We got the new Dunro doctrine. Okay, that's a lot of change. That's a lot of challenge. That's a big a big ask of the Pentagon. You think you'd put your best guy, your very smartest guy, the one who would not just have credibility in your eyes as president, but would also have credibility from the rest of the organization looking up to that guy. And he didn't do that. He pulled heads off Fox News. I mean, that was Headset's last job was Fox News mouthpiece. That's not that doesn't that does not work. Okay. And then Hedgeth has stumbled again and again and again. At any time people say, "Well, he's going to he's going to fire Hadith. He's going to never fired him. Hadn't fired him so far. Maybe he will. I mean, he certainly could have fired him any week of of the past year and a half. He could have fired him for something he did. Um, he is incompetent. Um, not qualified to do the job. And yet, that's Trump's pick." Now, why is that? Why? What is Trump's thinking?

>> Loyalty, flattery. But seriously, Optics are terrible in the military. That's what I don't I don't know. I think I know which one you're talking about. Which general

>> optics for the average opt Yeah, exactly. You wrote one. But optics, when I say optics, it's not for the for the military personnel, but it's more optics for the average voter. The Fox News uh audience,

>> you know, and and that might have worked for a while until the Iran war because he well obviously he screwed up when he didn't go after Epstein. That was over a year ago. But then he this this spring he screwed up again with this Iran war. So he has broken MAGA. You know when you got Tucker and and uh Margie Taylor Greene, all these people talking about new parties, a new party, not new parties, not like, oh, I'm going to be a libertarian. I'm going to be a green part. They're not saying that. They're saying we're going to do what uh uh Perot did in 1991 or whenever it was. We're gonna we are gonna have an America First party, a real America First party, which is what you know what was it what was it reform his party was the reform party Perot do do you ever do you remember him

>> I know yeah I don't remember him but I know about him a few members a lot of comparisons are being made to what Tucker is trying to achieve now to Perot's success

>> but Perot did not have particular um Perot's audience was really the Republican audience I mean the the existing Republican party for the most part had been a Republican. Um he was big in the military-industrial complex. You know, he'd made his money selling arms, fighting the first Iraq war. Um, and so, but different world from then. I mean, that was ages ago. So, what these guys are talking about, that's actually possible. I mean, you've got a bunch of non-voters. You've got probably half or twothirds of MAGA, which is which will never trust a Trumpite ever again. I mean, look at look at Dan Bino. This is what happens. Dan Bunino was like, "Oh, big-time Trump guy. Everybody loves his talk show, his pod, his podcast." But then what happened when he got out? He didn't disavow Trump because he's too loyal to do that or whatever. And uh he can't get his numbers back. Nobody wants to hear what Dan Dan

>> Really? I didn't check that. He didn't get his numbers back.

>> No, he didn't get them back. And Dan Bonino has he lost a bunch of his audience. And now he's ridiculed by some of the former folks that were a part of his audience because he he lost his credibility. He had credibility before as a podcaster because of his background experience. You know, he'd been a secret service. You know, he done done these things, knew these people. His credibility was was solid. And then he worked for what couple three months and then he quit. But he didn't he didn't throw Trump under the bus. Well, guess what? We're we are a nation where if you quit the Trump administration, you're going to be criticized if you don't spill the beans and explain why this guy lied to everybody. Why did you know why? What caused him? If you're going to say, "Oh, no, Trump has a plan. He's playing 60 chess." And you're still saying that, nobody's listening to you. So, I'm just saying it's a different world. So a third party, an alternative party um is is you know I mean our system is not geared to that, but there are plenty of people out there that would be very appealing that would be appeal and then I mean look at look at how Tulsi a Democrat Tulsi Gabbard and uh RFK Democrat lifelong Democrat brought in disaffected you know, MAGA people, health people, um your average non-voting independent and people that had had a bad experience with the uh health system. These guys were saying just on RFK's side and on Tulsi's side, she's anti-war. You get the anti-war vote, you get the pro-health vote, you get disaffected young Republicans and conservatives. You get your Democratic socialists who are being beat down or will be beat down soon enough by the Democratic party. You know, they're going to they're going to make what Hillary Clinton did to to Bernie Sanders look like child's play. They will not, you know, they know they that the old neocon Democrats cannot tolerate uh the new the new young Democrats. So, there's tons of people who could easily come together. They're already together. They just don't know it. So, um that is a lot easier than what Perot did back in the day. He had to, you know, he had money. He could get himself on ballots. He only got on 20, I think, states. He wasn't even on every state ballot. So you think this time around that if they come together, if they join forces, if Massie, Kent, all of them come together, they could really make a difference.

>> Well, it's it's you know what? Okay. In politics, there one of the things they say is like, you know, there's a cartoon. It's a cartoon. It helps you understand everything. So, uh the politician is in front of the thing. He looks back to all the people and um he's and they turn away. This is not the other one I told you where the guy walks off the cliff. This is when the politician, he's got his all people behind him, turns and looks at him and he notices they're walking another direction. The whole crowd's just moving in another direction. And the politician says, "Wait, wait. I must lead my people." And he so he can run around and get in front of it. That's what politicians do. They need support to propel them forward. Even the worst politicians uh who have the worst messaging like Hitler. Well, his messaging wasn't that bad for the Germans, but Hitler couldn't have gone anywhere without a whole bunch of people saying, "Hey, this dude's saying what I think. This dude is putting it all together. I like that." So, the politicians when they see the movement of uh popular opinion and they they understand that it's real, that people actually will not vote, they no Republican or Democrat is going to get some of these people's votes. They will not vote. So, it's either well, I could get their vote and then I could be in power. The politicians love power. This is what they're about, most of them. So, uh yeah, the politicians will I think they're already sensing that this uh sea change is happening and and we won't see it in full this next election because only two two years away. But, um, it's a big problem for the country, which again, let's take care of our country. Let's figure out what our politics ought to be. You know, let's give Americans a voice. Why don't we do I hate to say America First because Trump ruined that, but um, you know, we do need to take care of our own country. And none of that includes all these wars and it also doesn't include all of this profit taking by American elites and by

>> the profit the profit taking is wrong. It's morally wrong. It's such a but for me but for me that bothers me. That bothers me but nothing compared to the war. The war is just a whole other level. The war causes you know profit taking. It makes a billion there, two billion there, three billion there. The war costs hundreds of billions of dollars.

>> Yep. And it and it ruins everything. I mean, you know, the the pe the parents of the if you have a child that's killed in a war that should never have happened and it did because, you know, arrogant Americans or or arrogant Israelis or arrogant anybody that said, "This is what I want. I'm going to kill your kids." You don't get over that. You know, there's um and and everybody knows this around the world. I mean, Americans watch um we watch all these crime shows like like Cold Cases, right? And they interview people who have lost a child 30 years ago and they finally find out who it was that killed their kid 30 35 years later and those parents, it it is the exact same pain that they felt the day they their kid disappeared. Okay, so we know the cost of war. You kill people's kids, it stays with you until you end your time on earth. It does not go away. Most of the time it's not forgiven. You know, we're not all uh uh Erica Kirk, right? Where she could get up there on the day of her two days after her husband shot and say, "Oh, I forgive the guy." You know,

>> I've never had time to do a deep dive into this without such a weird

>> You probably don't need to. But that's interesting that she would say that because even Christians and you know, we're supposed to forgive, forgive, forgive. We have it's hard to do it, but you're commanded love your enemy and all that. So this is the challenge for Christians to do it. But when Erica Kirk said that like two or three days after this happened. Oh this is what I want to say to the guy I forget his name that they said shut I forgive you. I forgive you. And I think the Christians in that crowd which was most of them most of the people in that crowd were probably uh Protestant Christians for most of some Catholics. Um, you know, they're like what that's a little soon because we know that it's just not normal to do that.

Um, anyway, the cost of of destroying lives in uh land. I mean, this is this when you see what they're doing not just in Gaza, not just in Lebanon, but in the West Bank where it Palestinians have been, you know, they're carving up the land and using the law. They've always done that. But now you've got unleashed settlers, which really should be leashed. If they were on leashes, I think we would all be happier. But but they're unleashed. They're they're kind of like like wild dogs, you know, in packs and they're going around setting fire to wheat fields and, you know, uprooting uh olive trees and stealing sheep, you know, stealing goats, walking around people's houses, knocking on the window saying, "Get out. Get out." Well, that's thug behavior. It's it's uncivilized. And you know, this is nobody wants that. It's just not allowed. That causes great harm. And it only takes a few stories like that. Then now that becomes part of your lived mythology, right? And and you don't that happens when you're 16 or 17. You really going to change your mind when you're 80? No. You know, settlers are evil. And again, the Palestinians have done a wonderful job of being kind to people. Um, I mean, people that meet them, they say, "Well, they don't talk bad about the Israelis. They talk a little bit bad about people that might have personally harmed them." and Zionism as a as a destructive uh political view. But but they don't they don't blame all Jews for everything. And and the Iranians impressed us too with this. They said, "We the Iranians know that Americans don't support the war." And they accept that. They say they don't say like, "Well, you have a you you voted for the president and that means his war is your war." They understand the difference between our government and the people. And honestly, even even the Russians understand that. And I think um we understood that about the Soviet Union back in the day. You know, there was a a lot of people when we thought about the Soviet Union, we say, "Well, it's their government." The Soviet people, you know, they just want to be free. They're a lot like we are, you know, uh we would say that. But when it when you interface directly with people that harm you or take your kids or destroy your property or injure you,

>> you don't forget it. It is a lot of work to do that. And you know you it's it's natural that the we would hear death to America. I mean my god it's all all could have been prevented.

>> Exactly. How do you think Iran will would be moving forward if a deal is reached or not even reached? Do you worry that maybe some commander in Iran takes a decision that drags the region back into war, drags the US back into war? Do you think Iran would seek their revenge? Maybe two, three, four, five years from now. Um, how do you think Iran would look like post this war once they have time to reflect on everything?

>> Yeah. Well, if anything, the the next year or two as we try to fumble through theou and then extending theou hopefully and you know, maybe getting to a different place, assuming we don't decide to forcibly rebuild all our bases and make this our top issue, which we shouldn't do. I don't think our national security strategy really includes making the Middle East our top issue. But if we don't if we just keep kind of withdrawing and uh, you know, leaving Iran alone, I think we'll be fine. But there is going to be great strength. Well, there's already great strength in Iran and you can see it. You can see it with the the response to the uh the participation in this funeral. But there is a a lot of folks there that want justice and um and not just for the manab 168. They want justice for all the wrongdoing that has been done to them and conducted against them by Tel Aviv and the United States specifically. And uh that's not going to go away overnight.

Um, but I think what what it should do instead of them trying to like maybe IRGC commander or somebody, you know, stoking up something, I think they're going to have they're going to do it in unity. So, I don't think they're going to make mistakes. They haven't made any mistakes so far. They've been very cautious. You know the things that they are celebrating or remembering in this funeral is the wisdom and the patience and how the guidance of uh Hommin was to make Iran strong resilient self-sufficient these are the things sovereign these kinds of things are what I think's bringing the people together now and I think that'll hold them together and we don't have that in this country sovereignty what Donald Trump the king no we don't have that um we have issues at home. We have issues with Israel. Israel has never been less popular in the United States than it is now.

Um, and that that includes back in the day when uh we had real anti-semitism. You know, in in the 40s when uh a lot of Americans, they did not want, you know, that was true anti-semitism, hatred of Jews. We don't have that now. We have we have intolerance of of Zionism, and it's very widely shared. So yeah, we're not in a good place to to do anything. I don't think and I just don't think we have it in us. Uh no, our leadership might be crazy, but um, but there's no there's not going to be any followup. Like I said, nobody's gonna I don't see anything happening in the world, whether it's the Middle East or any place else that would cause literally uh three or four million young men and women uh 16 to 24 rushing into their recruitment offices. I see nothing.

>> That's that's something that should

>> not happening. We don't believe in it. We're not doing it. Nobody's going to do that. Um,

>> yeah, I think this is this is a self-reflection that is really needed hopefully post this war for the US and for the Western world. I think it's not just the US. But, um, Karen,

>> thank you as always. It's a pleasure to chat to.

You. >> Yeah, same here. Thanks, Mario. >> Um, professor, how are you? >> I'm fine, Mario. How are you today? >> Um, what's happening with the economy, professor? What is going on? Oil prices are just not making any sense right now.

>> Well, uh, yeah, let's let's get into that a little bit. Um, the, I think the one thing, uh, following up on other conversations that we've had, uh, is the fact that, uh, on the 1st of July, the transit fees that Turkey charges to go through the Bosphorus and the Dardanelles went up. And those are legal, of course, under the Montreux Convention of 1936. Now, if you listen to the, what's coming out of Washington D.C. as well as other capitals around the world, the claim is by the U.S. Secretary of State is that no transit fees, tolls, whatever you want to call them, are charged on any international waterways or straits any place in the world. And he, he claims that those are illegal. Well, here, here's a legal one. There is a legal one. It's a Montreux agreement. And it was just July 1st, only a few days ago, that the rates were increased by 15% by Turkey. They annually adjust these, but they, the fee went up by 15% on July 1.

>> Is that more than usual? Is that more than it usually goes up?

>> Uh, not, no.

>> Okay. But it's this, the symbol, the symbol is the timing of it and the symbolic nature of it is that while we're negotiating, while we're talking about the Strait of Hormuz and how Iran should not be able to charge a fee, Turkey's fee in their straits went up. The fee they charge per year.

>> It, it went up and, and it is legal under an international convention and agreement where the, the countries that signed that agreement, by the way, were all the countries that border, have access to the Black Sea. Point, those countries plus France, Greece, Yugoslavia, which doesn't exist anymore. Of course, some of the borderlands were the Soviet, the Soviets signed it, but the U.S. and China did not, were not involved.

>> So, so you had a, you had a small list of countries. All the Black Sea countries plus France, Yugoslavia, Japan, Australia, uh, those were the signatories. Uh, the U.S. and China were not involved with the thing.

>> Do you think, do you think the U.S. will come around to it and eventually accept an Iranian fee, or they would continue resisting it? And the reason I ask is a lot of people are worried that this is, this disagreement is what drags the country, one of the both countries, but one of them will instigate it back into war. European countries, according to Bloomberg, have already accepted, some European countries, sorry, and some Gulf countries have already accepted that a fee is inevitable. Um, I don't know what the sentiment is in Asia, but the U.S. is still saying that is a red line. They will not accept a fee by the Iranians. And the Iranians are still saying is they will not go back to how things were. And the Omanis, which are in the middle, according to, I think New York Times or Wall Street Journal, they've sent an official proposal to the Americans of the structure of the fee that they will be charging with the Iranians, the new structure of the Strait of Hormuz that will include a fee. So, just trying to understand what the outcome is likely to be.

>> Yeah. Well, the, some, some of the Europeans are already on board with the concept anyway. Maybe, maybe it's because they're used to paying a fee to Turkey to go through the Bosphorus and the Dardanelles, and, and the Asians are on, on board, uh, or appear to be on board. I think the best way to solve it and, and have a stable situation going forward would be to have a convention like Montreux because it, uh, that, uh, by the way, that was preceded by Lausanne. They, there was another agreement before the Montreux. So, it, it went on for a long time, a, a after World War I, basically, and the, and the, and the breakup of the, uh, Ottoman Empire. By the way, before those agreements, just, just to put things in historical context, Turkey, the, the Ottomans, Turkey had fortresses and, and military operations overseeing what was going on on the Bosphorus and the Dardanelles. And these agreements kind of, shall we say, demilitarized the thing and eventually settled it down into what, what we have today. And I think the, the easiest way to do it, you, you've got the Gulf States. Those would be, uh, similar to the Black Sea states and, and maybe the, the, you know, the great powers also, Russia, United States, and China. And, and they have a convention and, and settle the thing.

>> Um, were you surprised by the way of the size of the funeral in Iran? Over 10 million, now that was nine yesterday's, 10 million people have attended so far the funeral processions. That's a, that's a massive number. All right. I don't, I don't know. Like, if you look at the number, that just shows that the, the Iranian government, the Iranian regime, whatever you want to call it, the IRGC is there to stay. And obviously, they're all pretty upset with the U.S. And then if you look at the red lines that the Iranians have drawn, they haven't really budged from them. Um, I, I don't know, just, and then you've got Netanyahu coming to the U.S. in a few days, I think in a couple of days, and two days. Um, so putting all these pieces together, I just worry that we are at an impasse. And then, but then that's the negative side. Then the positive side, professor, is that the argument that the Americans cannot afford a resumption of the war. Um, people are challenging this argument, saying, "Hey, there's breathing space now. Look at the price of oil." That gives Trump the flexibility to maybe reconsider military action because he has, you know, he has more leeway. You know, it's a very different world now to what it was when the price of oil was over $100. What's your analysis of the situation now?

>> Well, I, I think, uh, first of all, I, I think Trump has concluded, and he's, he literally has said this, that if, if the strait continued to be completely shut off, uh, we would end up with an economic catastrophe. So, he, he wants a deal and he wants to get out. Uh, and, and it's clear the, the, uh, is just the starting point in that. But you, you have to remember, I, I view that as as essentially signing a, a, uh, a document that basically said, I, I, we, we give up and, and, and, and we want to get out. Uh, so, so, I, I think that's, that's where we're at. I, I think he wants to get out and he doesn't want to continue. We know what Netanyahu is going to try to talk him into, and that is continuing and ramping the thing up. So, so, so, there, there, there you have the, the dilemma that is going to face Donald Trump. What do you make of oil prices? That's something that's been really perplexing me. I've spoken to a lot of economists about it. Um, the amount of oil coming out of the Strait of Hormuz is still about a third of what it was before the war. Yet futures prices are down to pre-war levels when the strategic reserves are still low, and there's still that massive shortage that the market is, is, you know, the market needs, really, it needs the oil that was coming in before the war to get back to the status quo. There hasn't been that massive demand destruction that is needed to maintain low prices when supply is restricted, and that's not even considering the risk premium that should be taken into consideration about the risk of the war restarting or Iran closing the Strait of Hormuz again. So, putting all these pieces together, how are oil prices so low?

>> Well, I, I think to look at that, uh, by the way, just back to the, the word that was going through my mind but not coming out of my lips was, it, it was really a surrender.

>> The U.S.?

>> Surrender document. Yeah.

>> So, so, so that's that, that's that. Now, let's go to the oil prices. The, the oil prices, understand what's going on. You have to look at the forward curve, that is the, the spot or current market for current delivery versus the price at some future point in time. And what happened after the war started? The oil market and the diesel market and gasoline market, all, all the derivative products went into what they call a, a extreme steep backwardation. That's when the spot price for current deliveries is way above the price for some future delivery point, whether it be the end of this year or end of next year or what have you. So, so that's the, that's the thing that happened. Now, this is fairly unusual because if you look at the last 20 years of data, the, the crude market, the Brent market has only been in backwardation about 5% of the time. Now, what, what normally, I'm, I'm setting up the economics, kind of the principles of what's going on here. Normally, it's in what's called contango or carry market, where the spot market is a lower price than the future market, and that is for Brent, 95% of the time, that's the way it is. So, so it flipped from contango, basically. It was kind of flat, right? Right before the, it, it wasn't contango, it wasn't backward. It was basically flat. So, the, the war starts, it goes into this huge backwardation. And the best way to understand the, the shape of the forward curve, it, it gives you that, basically, it's a loan market. So, if, if a market is in backwardation, that means that inventories are, are very scarce, and people are trying to borrow from the future and resupply short, short inventories. That's, that's when things are in backwardation. Normally, it's in contango. It's adequate inventories, everything is fine, positive carry, and so forth. So, now, what's, what's happened, uh, it hasn't completely flipped, by the way. I, I just looked at this, the Friday markets, it hasn't completely flipped into contango. So, uh, it, in fact, it hasn't flipped into contango. The oil market's still in backwardation. If you look at Friday's spot market, we were, Brent was $72.13, uh, the one year out, it was more or less flat, $72.37, and then if we go to December 2027, it's $70.34. So, it's, it's basically kind of flat now. And that compares, by the way, to April 7th, 2026, the spot was $111, and the 2-year December 2027 was at $75. So, so it's a huge difference. Now, what you, what you get into, and you, you've interviewed Jeff Curry about this, who's, he's on top of the thing. And so, the oil market's kind of flat. It's gone from backwardation to flat. The gasoline and diesel, that's not the case. There, there's still, uh, considerable shortage in inventory showing up if you read the curve properly. And, and the curve now for gasoline, spot $2.95, forward one at the end of this year, $2.27. So, the spot market price is a little higher than the futures market for the end of the year in December. And, and diesel, uh, you end up with the same thing. The spot price is $3.26, and the December 2006 is $2.99. So, that means there's still tight, quite a bit of tightness in, in these product markets.

>> On the refined product side.

>> On the refined products. Now, this, this is a point that Curry's made in interviews you've had with Curry, of course, he's, he's one of the real experts on this kind of stuff. Um, so, we, we've had this kind of temporary increase in the flow, kind of, shall we say, unanticipated increase in the flow coming out of the Gulf as, as things loosen up a little bit. And, and they're only loosening up at a trickle. I would say it's not a flood coming out of there. Some, some more is coming out than was coming out before. And as a result of that, you've had the, the immediate spot inventory starting to fill up, and that backwardation has come out of the curve and, and, and it's settled down. That's not the case with these refined products. By the way, the, the, the refineries are going full blast, and we still have shortages in inventories of gasoline and diesel, as well as all the other refined products, by the way.

>> Is that because, is that because of the issues in Russia, as well as the logistical issues with all that oil stuck in the Gulf and coming out slowly at a trickle and not going to the right refinery to be refined? Is that why the refined products?

>> Yes, that, that's the, the Russian thing comes into the picture because the, the Ukrainians have been, uh, denting the refining capacity and damaging it in, in Russia, and the refined products have dried up, the ones coming out of Russia. I mean, Russia's into rationing for gasoline and, and diesel fuel, and, and importing some of those refined products. So, so that's, that's why we, we have this situation for the refined products. Now, going forward, what do I, what do I anticipate that the markets don't seem to be anticipating? And, and that is that the people are going to find out that, well, we, we actually are short of inventory. What, what about all, all the crude that was drained out? We're at all-time lows and inventories, but that isn't showing up in the market today.

>> Exactly.

>> The market, the market would be normally, I think the market should be in backwardation for Brent, and, and it isn't. It's flat.

>> Where the spot price is higher than the futures price.

>> Yes, spot, spot prices should still be higher than the futures price, in my view, even.

>> Because of the shortages? Because of the shortage of, of, of oil for the refineries as well? So, not enough is coming out of the Strait of Hormuz.

>> Well, it, it's mainly, my, my argument would be that the, the inventories are at all-time lows. And normally, normally, by the way, all you have to do is look at a forward curve with the spot and futures prices, and you know whether you've got adequate inventories. If you do, the spot price will be lower than the futures price. You'll have a carry trade, a carry market, a cont, so-called contango. If you have a shortage, however, and inventories are low, you're always in backwardation, a heavy, heavy backwardation where the spot price is above the futures price, and, and people are actually borrowing from the future to put product into inventory.

>> Yes. And they're, and they're paying a price for it with the spot price, of course, being above the futures price. That's normally what happens. So, so this, this is very abnormal, by the way. And, and all this was worked out, by the way, in 1930 by Holbrook. He, he was the big expert who, who got into the relationship for the first time between the forward curves and inventories. And what we, what we know from that work and, and the work going forward is that when inventories, you know, when inventories are inadequate, when you see a backwardation in the forward curve. But we're not seeing that right now, but we know inventories are at very low levels. So, it's, so it's kind of anomalous what we're, what we're seeing right now.

>> It is bizarre. It is like, I don't know why people, traders are just expecting not only the war to have ended, but oil to just flow out of the Strait of Hormuz at the same numbers as it did before the war. But that's just not happening today. In the last 24 hours, only 39 ships in total went through the straits, about a third of what it would be, even less than a third of what it was before the war. So, reality is just so disconnected from what the markets are telling us. It's just weird for everybody, and different people have different explanations. Yeah, I, I, I have no explanation except to say that this, we, we know this is anomalous, and, and we can go back to all the academic and, as, as well as industry studies that have been done relating the forward curve to inventories. And, and if inventories are low, which they are now, we know that that's something we know. You find the price structure should be one in which you observe spot prices above futures prices by a considerable level. They are a little bit now, but not, not very much. But they should be really quite, you should be seeing quite a bit of backwardation in there for Brent, and, and you're not.

>> Agree, professor. Always a pleasure. Thank you so much for the analysis. Really enjoyed it, and I always appreciate you giving us the time on the show.

>> Great to be with you, Mario. Have a great day.

>> Same to you, professor.

>> Thank you.

>> All right, guys. Will be live again in about an hour with Aaron David Miller to go through the latest updates with the negotiations. I'll see you guys shortly. Bye-bye.