WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON HERE?

Friday's press gaggle barely exaggerated. At 12:03 p.m., President Trump told reporters he wanted a ceasefire with Iran. At 12:05, he declared victory. At 12:07, he announced he was sending Marines. At 12:08, he said no boots on the ground. "How do you do that at 60 seconds?" At 12:11, he said he did not want a ceasefire. At 12:16, he declared victory again. At 12:17, he asked for a ceasefire. At 12:23, he told NATO they were cowards. At 12:29, he said Iran was begging for a ceasefire. At 12:31, HE SAID EVERYTHING WAS PERFECT. At 12:36, he said $500 oil was a good thing. At 12:37, HE DEMANDED IRAN OPEN THE HORMUZ. At 12:39, he said Hormuz was never closed. At 12:41, he said the US was not at war with Iran. At 12:42, he declared victory in Iran. "What are we doing? There's no way." "We're No, we're we're Did you hear the next thing, though? He's There's actually We've had We've had some developments since this where now it appears that we may jointly operate horm." "Yeah." "Did you see the Dylan?" "I'm sorry, you're wrong. Pentagon ways development deployment of air troops wrong."

"If you blink, you will literally see a role reversal. And my favorite thing cuz as you might know, you know, dirty commie and all, I have this this principled stance that money is more fake. This is the fakest money has ever been. Okay, there's no world where the stock market is is associated with any fundamentals whatsoever. We have never had money be so fake in our entire lives. While this guy is contradicting himself sometimes in the same minute, sometimes in the same sentence, the stock market is leaning into whatever they want to hear and they're going, 'Oh, no. It's it's great. Actually, now all of a sudden the the markets are stabilizing.'"

"Well, I do I do think it was really funny, though, that the market like went back to taking a bit of a and oil went back to increasing as soon as I said, 'Hold up. We're not talking.'" "Yeah. Look at this. Look at this. Look at this. Look at this. Look at this." "It's so good. At 7:04 a.m. Eastern today, President Trump said the US and Iran have had a productive discussion to end the Iran war. Okay. Boom. At 7:10 a.m., S&P surged 240 points, adding 2 trillion to the market cap. 27 minutes later, Iran completely denied all of President Trump's claims and said there has been no contact with the US. At 8 a.m. Eastern, the S&P 500 had fallen 120 points, erasing 1 trillion in market cap. There is a 3 trillion swing market cap at 56 minutes just in the S&P 500. I love that the S&P 500 famous for its volatility. You know what you never see? You don't hear anybody say anymore?" "What?" "Nothing ever happens." "Yeah, that's true." "I think I think I think we got to be we are in something and we're not out of it and it's not ending anytime soon."

"When Francis Fukuyama is running around being like countries need to develop nuclear sovereignty pronto is over. Energy industry insider in Iran tells me the following and it's stunning, says Shapars. Before the war, Iran produced just shy of 1.1 million barrels of oil per day and sold it at $65 per barrel minus $18 discount, i.e. $47. Today, it produces $1.5 million barrels per day and sells it at $110 with only $2 to $4 a discount. And this does not include prochemical sales that not only have increased, but are now being sold as a larger set of customers compared to before the war. Moreover, Iran is receiving payments through new mechanisms that bypass the UAE, which were set up after the June war. In essence, and this is really important to understand, Trump and Israel's war has ended up delivering Iran de facto sanctions relief. And on top of that, they're making them pay tolls if they want to pass the rate of Hormuz."

"Well, and and they're the way that they're making those tolls work. So like in the 1970s, one of the ways that America dealt with the oil shock in '74, in '73, '74 and then in '79, but especially in the earlier phase was that America, we left a gold standard earlier in the decade. But the the biggest like like one of the biggest most unheralded parts of that was that we did, you know, we recycled petrodollars by selling all these governments, you know, crazy huge weapons. You know, that was part of how we fixed all this. You know, we we use that geopolitical tumult and that circumstance to reweight the dollar and rec, you know, and and and help, you know, restore a stronger dollar by having, you know, these Arab governments spend and and Iran at that time spend crazy amounts of money with us on our on, you know, on F-16s on fighter jets and whatever. You know, now like Iran arguably is, you know, trying to force a similar kind of thing because not only have they, you know, like, you know, clearly they're they're in the money as to parse tells it in some respect, but now they're also saying, 'No, no, no. The only way the oil goes if you pay us in yuan,' meaning that they are trying to destroy the petrodollar system."

"Exact. You know, granted, the petrodollar system is like it's a bit of an antiquated way of looking at it just cuz like it doesn't." "It's also It's also one that like I feel like they just kind of threw that out there for China. I examination it's about it's about how it looks." "Yeah. China doesn't even want it. Like I don't think China is ready for being like the the doineering hegemonic." "They want it. They want to do nothing and win and they will. But like IT'S."

"THIS IS THIS is the unironic do nothing win moment though cuz like China is always doing things right. I I don't I don't agree with the do nothing win principle when it comes to China but this is absolutely a moment where they did nothing. They literally objectively did nothing and they will probably be part of the diplomatic resolution." "Yeah. Well, they have to be." "Yeah. At this I'm not really I mean who's going to maintain stability?"

"I mean well right now I mean the crazy thing is that supposedly the the the talks that they're claiming have been happening are in Pakistan and and which is also like not I mean but it's like okay so that's just a rehash of the Oman thing. We going to like a third party." "I personally take offense to as a as a Turk because we are normally the table. The fact that they're going to Islamabad instead of Turkey is is unbelievable. We are the table. We are at the table is really [ __ ] up." "You're under the table right now." "Yeah, we're under the table currently. I mean, yeah, literally the Iranians lasered one of one of our helicopters, which is like there's there's two major military presence uh in in Qatar and it's it's America obviously the biggest one, CENTCOM, and then Turkey. Um, and uh, I don't know what the they were doing, flying around their troops and uh, I believe Aselsan engineers uh, in a helicopter. I don't know what the was going on there, but yeah, they they shot down a Turkish helicopter. We're no longer at the table. It frustrates me. Now, let's look at another exit ramp for uh, the world's least loyal man who has always thrown everybody else under the bus. Perhaps this could be a uh, first inclination of who might be in the crosshairs. Let's take a I came I called Pete. I called General Kaine. I called a lot of our great people. We have great people. And I said, 'Let's talk. We got a problem in the Middle East. We have a country known as Iran that for 47 years has been a just a purveyor of terror and they're very close to having a nuclear weapon. We can keep going and get that 50,000 up to 55 and 60. There's no end. or we can take a stop and make a little journey into the Middle East and eliminate a big problem. And uh Pete, I think you were the first one to speak up and you said, 'Let's do it because you can't let them have a nuclear weapon.' So, we are now having really good discussions. They started uh last."

"I don't know. I don't know if it'll throw Pete under the bus here. It doesn't seem like it. Yeah, that no that sounds like he's giving Pete a pat on the head. I'll be honest because it's like and and I'm sure you know like Pete is got a you know a nice heart ongoing having gotten that pat on the head." "Yeah. Iran's main demand is communicated to the mediators if Trump fires exit all bets are off. Mo Rabani is joking there. Um."

"Breaking the speaker of Iran's parliament who some claim has been negotiated with the US says no negotiations taking place and the President Trump is claiming otherwise to manipulate the markets. It is crazy that like because it's no longer a non-state actor in the same way that like um like we very quickly did away with the Iraqi government right in the in the you know immediate invasion and we were fighting against like not like a fully fleshed out state in the Taliban in al-Qaeda in Afghanistan but Iran is a state actor is a sovereign state especially with like social media you can't really undermine their position as much as you could like dominate the airwaves when you're when you're you know talking about Israel versus Hamas talking about Israel versus like you have dudes with like eight PhDs on you know the interpretation of Quran from a western capitalist framework uh who are just coming out and posting on social media and also doing interviews in English with American news outlets all of a sudden I think that plays a major role it delivers a major blow to uh whatever the American goals of propaganda are because then major media will cover the Iran."

"There's another thing though, which is that it's not just about that Iran's a state and that, you know, Hamas is like a like a political organization with like limited autonomy, you know, whatever. It's that Iran also has like the world economy by the nuts, like that they can do things that force people to take them seriously. And it's just literally not been until this wave of this conflict that all of a sudden the West realized it. Um, because Iran had chosen not to use these not to go this far. Uh, they cho they they made the Iranian government for whatever reason you know much to the criticism of people in the you know much the criticism of western leftists for example you know, they they chose not to take it to this level until you know this most undeniable that it was uh, you know, until Trump said we're coming to kill all of you."

"I think this was Yahwir's calculation. It's just that both Hassan Nasrallah and Khamenei were were far more restrained than he thought they would be. That's what I think." "Meaning like in the prior conflicts, meaning that he thought it would come to this earlier." "I think that the the purpose of the Al-Aqsa flood was to trigger an Iranian retaliation of this sort." "I think it's plausible. I think one of the things though is that like it's it's you know it's there's always this kind of and this is like also what Israel's deal was is that they're always like testing the limits of what they think they can get away with because I also think in some sense what you're describing is that like you know like like uh like yes they they wanted to provoke some kind of response but now we're in a dog getting the car situation and like I think that they actually knew all along that they didn't want that smoke. What they wanted is what they said that they wanted which is that they wanted the Iranian people to rise up. Like I I also do believe that on some level like these guys have been believing their own about the closeness of you know put it this way. You were just in Cuba. You saw what life was like in Cuba." "Mhm." "For 60 years every American president save for Obama has been told by their advisorss we're this close. You're going to be the president who's going to get to see Castro the Castro regime fall. You know, it's the same thing with Iran. Um, and I think that they ultimately believed their [ __ ] too much, even if they weren't believing it coming out of the Pahlavi's mouth. Like they believed it on this, you know, like deeper level because they literally hadn't been presented with like a like a counteract uh at any point until now."

"Yeah. I mean, Trump, I think other presidents have not saying much, but even including Biden, like have at least like demonstrated some level of restraint. Cuz I I believe that Israel behind closed doors was always telling them the same lie. But at least they were like competent enough to listen to their generals and their analysts and their own intelligence assessment to be like, 'No, we're not doing that. You're out of your goddamn mind. It's too much of a risk.' Right? Until Trump demonstrated in Trump one and also in Trump two, as we're seeing now, that he was the guy who was going to be like, 'Yeah, no, you guys, your intelligence is great. I love what you did with the beepers.' You know, that type of running off of like the the highs that he got from the Venezuela operation, which was remarkably competent in comparison to what we're seeing in Iran right now. He thought this would be swift. I think he believed the the Maduro thing really got to his head." "Yeah. No, I think he he genuinely thought, 'Oh, decapitation. Boom, boom, boom.' Because he I know he does not want to put boots on the ground. No." "He has never like he might inevitably lean in that direction because he's like uh he's not going to back away, right?" "I this Okay, this one I don't know about because I also don't think that like you leak that you're considering troops or you don't allow it to get out that you're considering ground troops. uh because it's in this current moment the Iranians will read that as a sign of weakness cuz they're like bring that on if that's the level you're going to bring it on. And politically, domestically, it's insanely unpopular. So, if it doesn't present to Iran as a or the world as a show of strength and it drives the American public crazy, then why are you doing it? And that's where I think that like I I do hold some measure of judgment uh on whether or not Trump is actually like opposed to ground troops. We know that he said he said at different points like Iraq it was a mistake, you know, I'm never going to no new wars, but like." "No, but like." "He's a master liar." "Yeah, but but think about it like he didn't do that in Venezuela. He he amassed a big enough force to potentially draw uh Venezuela or go into uh a much larger conflict in Venezuela. Like you don't you don't amass that level of difficult forces if you're not if your goal is not to like eventually take it. Uh, I mean, if if you're if you're not willing to to present that as a threat while simultaneously uh he has always done crazy but he has also backed away at times."

"I don't disagree. But Venezuela Venezuela worked also though because like like you saw the Wall Street Journal article about the CIA guy." "Oh yeah. the the who worked for Chevron like like Venezuela is different from every other country that we've talked to because American corporation multinationals have had a major like presence in Venezuela for you know like like within the last 20 years. I mean there are people who are you know CIA affiliated who worked with Chavez to get oil out of Venezuela into the world market. you know, it's not like like meaning that there were connections. There were, you know, they they had I think they had a more realistic portrait of what the situation was in Venezuela and how they could exploit it. I just it it doesn't seemed, you know, it's to me it just seems like they had the one radical plan that actually had a chance of working because of, you know, the way they did it out and the leg work they did. And Trump's lesson from that was, oh, I could just do whatever I want now because we we did whatever I wanted here. Even though that wasn't what they did. They did a pretty specific thing with some limits and that's not this." "Yeah. All right, let's hear what Scales new reporting looks like. Senior Iranian official tells Dropside News Jeremy Scale and Mortaza Hussein, there aren't any negotiations taking place. The Iranian side has simply communicated its conditions to the US and even that has been done indirectly, adding that the US messages have also only been passed through intermediary countries."

"Debated how to even deal with this and they they literally ghosted Steve Witoff. They did not respond to him. When we reported that last week, the White House went nuts. They denounced uh Drop Site News uh accusing us of engaging." "Yeah. They said they said drop night dropsite news is a terrorist outlet." "In America last behavior uh said we were abhorrent and then they went and they spun a story to Axios saying that it was actually the Iranians that had been begging President Trump to speak. And and so you know this this kind of played out over the the past few days. And what Iranian sources were telling me, Daniel, is that through a series of uh intermediary countries, including Turkey, Pakistan, Egypt, and also some Gulf countries, there have been a series of messages passed on to the Iranians by the United States, where according to Iranian officials, these third party intermediaries have said that the US wants to wrap up this war. Um, and that happens while publicly Trump is saying, 'We're going to bomb Iran's electrical and power infrastructure,' which by the way would be a war crime, uh, if they did that in a in a sweeping manner. Iran then said, 'Hey, let us tell you what we can do. We can hit not only in Israel, but we can hit in, uh, uh, all throughout the Gulf.' And this this would cause just like catastrophic shock to the global economy. Uh, you know, which we we can talk about later. But the the most breaking stuff I have for you is that Trump today uh posts on Truth Social that there's been this breakthrough that he's pausing his threat to uh to bomb the Iranian electrical grid and other energy infrastructure because there have been these talks going on between the United States and Iran. And Trump implies that he has some secret squirrel that he's talking to um in Iran and he doesn't want to name who it is um because he doesn't want that person to be killed. It's unclear does he mean by Israel or by or by the Iranians, you know, but um what I'm told is that there have been no negotiations, direct negotiations with the United States. And that what the Iranian officials are telling me is that every time a third country comes to Iran and they say the United States wants to talk, Iran says, 'Let us explain to you our conditions.' And and in short, what the Iranians are saying is that they will not agree to the kind of ceasefire that took place last June after the so-called 12-day war because the Iranians view that as having been a gimmick to buy the United States and Israel time to rearm, to reposition, and then come back in with this fullblown war that they launched on February 28th. So, they're saying they won't go for just a ceasefire that doesn't have conditions attached to it. They also want any uh cessation of the war not only to apply to Iran but to apply to two other fronts of battle as the Iranians see it. Iraq as well as Lebanon where the Israelis are increasingly engaged in ground operations. Iraq has also been a spectacular failure that's like not getting a lot of attention in this media cycle because there's so much devastation taking place everywhere. But they had to literally do a tactical retreat, a ceasefire with the Iraqi ground forces, the the Shia forces in Iraq to literally withdraw their troops. Did you see that part?"

"Yep. And well, the it's I mean part of." "Iraq has been trying to democratically force the American troops to leave leave for for years now. And it's and Iraq is like been this, you know, it's like for essentially since the end of the Iraq war because Iraq is this kind of like desecated country, it's been a place where a lot of different militia groups and a lot of other like non-state political and military forces, you know, drive events on the ground. And you know, the US viewed it as essentially like like it went from being its own place and its own war to then becoming like a kind of like soft battle proxy battleground against Iran. And now I mean, you know, we'll see. I I haven't read anything in depth about like the total, you know, how the how Washington takes the total situation."

"More concrete decolonialization accomplished by Iran and his allies in three weeks than most postcolonial studies academics have managed." "I'm sorry. I'm sorry that you see Santa Cruz professors don't carry guns. But yeah, that's that's a that's a ridiculous uh comparison. But I like but it is like fair to say that like Iran is doing Iran is doing something like that." "Yeah. It's not just there. It's Sudan as well. The disruption the disruption of the United Arab Emirates has uh delivered a devastating blow to the Rapid Support Forces in their activities in Sudan where the Sudani population have been able to successfully rise up and actually push out the RSF from all of these towns that they genocided and took over. It's crazy cuz now you have the UAE is way too focused on on you know defending the United Arab Emirates obviously. It's crazy. I mean it is like one of the things I don't know how it'll result because right before all this happened the UAE and Saudi were like like experiencing quite a rift like a split over what was going on in Yemen and over the fact that Saudi wasn't so pleased with what the Emirates have been cooking up in Africa. I wonder what'll happen if the if like if the assuming that the Gulf kingdoms don't all fall into sand in the next few years. I am curious to see if those like sort of deeper tensions uh among you know between them resume."

"FD now reporting that even without the energy shocks there's a pretty good chance that the closure of Hormuz will pop the air bubble that will lead to a stock market crash. The longer the Strait of Hormuz remains closed the deeper the fall will be. One-fifth of the world's oil and LNG ship through the water. The conflict lingers ship prices will steepen as manufacturers ration and compete for tighter supplies. Eventually production could seize up in the US. Elevated energy costs would make present and future data centers less viable. One thing that is clear to me from looking at the events, there is always a chain reaction and that's because we have through American military dominance, through American imperialism, designed a global system that is actually infinitely more fragile than we thought it was. You don't have to do a 9/11 or strike directly at the heart of empire to be able to make the empire suffer because the empire is everywhere. And when the empire is everywhere, when capitalism is everywhere, you can actually strike the profit centers that are, you know, closest to you in your immediate vicinity. And when that happens, all of a sudden, everybody is screaming. The markets are screaming. This to me is the the greatest indication that like the the previous way of waging war is is is totally gone."

"The the one thing I will say is that like in this chain like this looks like a very neat linear chain of events, right? But like there's a reason that like they have to qualify with stuff like could. And that's not just because obviously like they're they're responsible journalists. They're not making predictions that you can't you know they're not they're not writing checks they can't cash. But I do think that for example the question about elevated energy costs. like when this that segment that that passage was getting passed around I saw some people note that there's not necessarily a way to you know we don't know what energy costs are necessarily going to do in the US because also the US paradoxically as a specific country is partly one of the beneficiaries of this war because of the demand for because we are a fossil fuel exporter and people need fossil fuels and on top of that on top of that and I brought this up in the beginning I'm not the biggest like I'm not going to sit here and act like I'm the understander of how like heavy crude versus uh, you know that sweet light shale works, right? Obviously that's what we have through fracking. But we now sit on top of the world's largest heavy crude supply. And the thing is, even if we were to to build the refineries up to to become like almost one of the largest exporters around the planet of oil in general, I think that that is like a part of that calculation because previously if the as long as the Gulf States were intact, it would disrupt the profitability of the American exporters. If we just started uh refining heavy crude from Venezuela, the price of the barrel would go down too much and then the uh the smaller oil businesses in Texas and places like that would actually collapse."

"Correct. Now, however, with the price going up, there's a a massive need for it. Now, do we actually uh reroute all of the infrastructure to come to the United States of America and we become the the sole exporter to China and all the Asian markets because uh, you know, we have LNG, we have uh we now have like massive amounts of supply that would create stability in the in the energy markets as long as they're rerouted from the United States of America. This creates a tremendous upper hand for the United States of America against China. This creates leverage because China can no longer if the Gulf blows up, if they escalate so much that Iran just says they blow up the entire Gulf, okay, and it's no longer workable for like the next decade, all of a sudden China has to rely on oil from Russia more and more and also the United States of America."

"Correct. And then you now can go toe-to-toe with the Chinese export controls. If China ever turns back and says we're no longer giving you any rare earth minerals, then America can say we are no longer allowing you to get oil from us. I think one one other thing that like is a part of this is that there is like a there's been a lot of people I know who've wondered if like that was perhaps the point that if like the actual goal of all of this conflict was to essentially reassert the US monopoly on the distribution of oil which arguably was like one of the great strategic advantages that it possessed for its you know side of the its share of the globe during the global cold war. I don't know. I like this is where we're in the territory of like it's this is just pure speculation."

"This is complete nonsense. By the way, it requires you to believe that there's a huge amount of unsold Iranian oil. 140 million barrels according to Bessant just sitting in tankers at sea waiting for buyers. Almost by definition with the oil in a tanker, it's because there already has a buyer. Oil in a tanker in the shipping part of the process, it'd be absurd to ship something without a buyer. Uh, all the more given how expensive a tanker voyage is these days. Also, the very notion that Iran would be selling oil when it couldn't access the money defies logic. Why on earth would they do that? They've been selling oil almost exclusively to China precisely because China is one of the very few countries both willing and able to pay them despite the US banking sanctions. And therein also lies Bess's key contradiction. It makes zero sense to lift sanctions on Iranian oil and at the same time have banking sanctions remain in place. It means that you can freely buy the oil but not pay for it. So it's still an impossible transaction. This, by the way, was confirmed by Iran's oil ministry, who said the best in statements on the subject were a psychological game by the US Treasury Department aimed solely at ingraining hope into buyers and controlling market psychology when the reality is that Iran currently has virtually no oil in tankers at sea and no surplus to supply the international markets. This is after Scott Bassant said that he's jujitsu-ing the Iranians, the decision to lift the sanctions is actually good."

"Scott should go back to decorating homes with his husband. Multiple countries are now actively working to mediate a deal between the US and Iran as impacts of the war reverberate across the world. Five sources told us."

"Oh my god, that's sorry. This is now we're getting into the territory of just like it's just about like part of what annoys me at least with this like framing. I'm sure that these reporters are doing their, you know, they're doing their job, but it's just like is it like that countries are trying to do this? Is it that countries like being in the press as being associated with moves toward diplomacy? Or is it, as Jeremy Schill uh put it, in a way that I think is way more convincing. The US is using every country in the rolodex that it can think of to try and communicate messages to Iran. And they're doing that, by the way, as we saw with that other report, by they're showing up to Pakistan to talk, to do diplomacy without even knowing whether the Iranians are going to be there."

"Yeah. No, no. It's a it it also goes along with like last week's reporting on Marco Rubio's ambition to try to to to muster diplomatic pressure against Iran, knowing full well that like Iran does want to have continued conversations with countries in Europe, right? and and they think that if uh, you know, France and Germany and the UK are a part of the coalition forces all of a sudden there's like much more international pressure against Iran and they think they can like uh cause them to to bend to their will. Ironically enough, Europe, in spite of their vasalized uh attitude, has demonstrated some restraint in in abiding by American uh principles, and even if they were to to lean into pressure against Iran, it doesn't really amount to much as long as Iran continues to control the Strait of Hormuz. Yeah. And that I think is what is most extraordinary about this post that we've gotten from the president. Until now, uh, we did not understand that the US and Iran were speaking at all over the course of this now, uh, three-week long conflict. Now, the president says that these conversations are underway. And so, you can start to see and start to envision how potentially uh there is a diplomatic route to deescalation that we did not know of until, you know, 10 minutes ago before the president was posting this. And I'll read you a little bit of what he said. He said he's pleased to report that the United States, the country of Iran, have had over the last two days very good and productive conversations regarding a complete and total resolution of our hostilities in the Middle East. The president goes on to say, you know what I think?"

"I think Trump is just like uh trying to delay the market pain to the best of his ability until he just goes and and commits the troops. On the one hand, I think in his sober moments, he realizes that uh the situation is looking bad. So he's trying to like feed as much positive information that the the markets want to hear. On the other hand, he keeps amounting more and more troops. He keeps like sending more marine expeditionary units like that. Just wait until Friday. No, there's a couple more weeks. No, no, no, no. Uh I I'm saying like he might strike Iran. He probably will strike Iran again on Friday after market close, right? He is so clearly operating. He is the most like markets focused president of all time. He's very clearly operating with that in mind. But what I'm saying is overall in the negotiations process, especially because Iran is not even remotely interested in in coming to table with a cessation of hostilities when they hold all the cards is going to keep is going to keep punishing America and and saying we're not interested in the we're not interested in in deal at this point. And I think eventually Trump is just like trying to create uh uh, you know, military presence enough military presence that they can just like do boots on the ground. Maybe a limited operation. I don't think it's going to be."

"Car I don't think." "They've been signaling Car and like Trump is apparently part of why they talk about it is because Trump has had some decades-long fixation on it. But I I think that the I think that the ground troop stuff is like that's like brave that's that's where a new new territory thing. Like even if it's a limited contingent, just the psychological effect of that, the way that the American media is going to have to digest that, the social media tenor. I mean, what do you think Nick Quentis is going to say? You know, like he'll he'll have to like he'll have to like probably like light himself on fire on stream, you know, God willing. But that like I think that there's no to me there's just not like uh like like the the conversation there's not really another option aside from Trump trying to just hit them again in you know on the weekend or maybe even during the week or whatever and just to see what he can shake loose before they come to some kind of deal in which he's not going I I just don't know how he can save face at this point. That's what that's where I'm getting tripped up."

"Yeah. I um the the two the two competing interests here are like uh Trump's unlimited narcissism and his his reluctance to to do an about face or or to to deescalate but then also the very obvious impact that this is having on uh on the markets which he cares about quite a bit. Like he's getting boss calls." "Oh, this is fun. This is really funny."

"Man, I feel bad for the Iranians who trust the US not to [ __ ] this up spectacularly. It was pretty common Iranian to ask for opinion a few weeks ago that this would turn out well. Unless that was all a sciop. No. Unless that was all a scop. That's crazy." "That's crazy." "Yeah. No, no, no." "No. This time it was different. This time it was so different. Like it it just it would have it was so different this time. Every other time where we're like."

"Also you know who I are the necessary reasons for American military intervention and then and then we go oopsie. Turns out it was actually an incredibly bloody affair and they had no interest in like liberating the people." "You know who I have always trusted when it comes to knowing what's going on inside of Iran? The Iranian diaspora." "Yeah." "It's just it's the it's you know my first thought always. The same thing with the Cubans too." "It's just like like contra points has just become Hillary Clinton points. Like that's it. It's just Clinton points. I know it's Hosbbor points we've said, but like all all all of her takes are just like, well, the Democrats would have done this better, right?"