Rick Wilson

0:00It's been right in front of you this entire time. The perfect sunny skies, 85 miles of wide open beaches all to yourself, 11 of the most charming waterfront towns you'll ever see. A hidden gem uncrowded and ready to host your best vacation yet. Who knew all you had to do was veer slightly off I-95. It's time to fall in love with a whole new beach destination. Visit crystalcoastincy.com slash booking now. Most people would rather assemble a 300-piece cabinet than search for insurance. That's why the Zebra searches for you comparing over 100 insurance companies to find savings no one else can compared today at the Zebra.com. Good morning, good morning, good morning, happy Friday to everybody. Thank you for joining us as you as you increasingly have been doing in greater and greater numbers every week on behind the numbers. A nerdy show from two guys who like polling that is somehow taking off.

1:00And we love it and thank you all for being here. Somebody said it's 2am here. You really should be sleeping. Yeah, you probably should, but you're with us and thank you for that. Folks, we have a lot to cover this week. Obviously, the biggest of big pictures right now is that we are now in a war of Donald Trump's choosing. It is a war without a strategy. It is a war without a lot of clear objectives. It is a war seemingly, seemingly somehow before they planned this one, they took every expert on the Middle East who's ever lived and got rid of them. It's going to go great. Yeah, I just want to say at the top, I think that those things are all true and this could be incredibly consequential down the line if it drags on. We're looking at a war that costs a billion dollars a day. We're already up to probably six billion dollars by now. And it really could become a situation where we could be in this war for a hundred days.

2:03And the costs could skyrocket. Casualties could keep going up. If the streets of Hormuz stay closed, that's going to have massive impacts on the global economy. And we're already seeing things like gas prices spiking. That's been something that Trump's touting as a major win. Yes, it's practically free everywhere. Right, and we've seen pretty big spikes in gas prices across the country. A jet fuel has tripled overnight. Right, and so that's going to be your travel costs. But what is the summer vacation season, kids? Yeah, it's going to be, I mean, there are really no good outcomes here. And in the polling, it is just devastating for Trump. It was already sort of unpopular. So 60% of Americans, 59% of Americans oppose the military action in Iran. And I think there's a few reasons for this. Number one is the administration went in without really preparing the American people for a war. Correct, you know, think back to the Bush era and the invasion of Iraq.

3:06That was what two and a half years of preparation for the invasion of Iraq. I would say we spent, we spent probably 18 months doing two things. One, building a public case in the U.S. In fact, we can argue about the case all day long, but we did it. And two, we built an international set of alliances that made our participation there more viable, more acceptable to the American people. And in my era, with George H.W. Bush, we spent about six months doing the same thing. We had a slightly faster clock. We had to race in terms of Saddam burning Kuwait to the ground. So we had a slightly faster tick on that. But that also, there was a publicly made case about why we needed to go there and intervene. Right. And it just surprises me, you know, all these administration officials can't give a straight answer on why we're doing it.

4:08You know, I think they probably understand that it's unpopular. And I don't pretend to know how or why it happened, but the thing is that when you don't sell the conflict, people will just come to their own conclusions about it, of which are numerous. And, you know, the other thing is the longer it drags on, it was already unpopular, right? Yeah. Longer we go, the more unpopular it's going to get, the more consequential it is at home. I just don't see, you know, you can't sell objective after the fact, right? Right. Like we've already killed Kamani. And, you know, there were, there are good arguments for killing Kamani, right? Oh, yeah. Listen to what I've said. I'd be happy to see that guy at room temperature every day. Sure. And the administration could have made the argument that, you know, Iran is weak right now. Russia is busy in Ukraine. They're not going to support them. We can go in and do, we can

5:08strike Kamani. And that'll be the end of it. Of course, they knew what the consequences would be, which is the bombing of the Gulf countries. Yeah. They were well aware of that. That's that's pretty clear. I just do not imagine any scenario where this, this is a good outcome. I mean, there's just no, there's no path forward that makes sense. Right. We have a slide that has the sort of summary of all the polling that's out there on the war so far. Do we have that slide? I don't know if we got that slide in, but we have some more polling. We'll, we'll, we'll just go through it. Well, well, let's put this way, folks. Right now, this, I'm going to say the, oh, there we go. We go. Okay. Yeah. So net disapproval across the board, except for this Fox News beacon research poll, which has people 50, 50 against it. This is, this is really unlike past conflicts that we've had where I think the approval for the invasion of Iraq was somewhere in the 70s. Yeah. You know, you start underwater with anything.

6:15It stays underwater. So there's, you know what, that's, that is an old rule of political thumb that it's, it costs you twice as much in terms of effort to buy a negative point back to the positive direction than it does to lose it. Right. So, look, but if you're the administration, how do you, how do you do it? How do you come back from this? What do you do? You know, the only easy day was yesterday. Right. And, and, and, you know, there's going to be an increasing amount of pressure on Trump to cut this out. It'll be coming from Japan. It'll be coming from India, because it's going to come from the Gulf States, Kuwait, the Gulf States, Abu Dhabi. They're, and the Saudis, those people love one thing more than anything else in the universe. That is making money. Yeah. And, and, you know, this has major ramifications for the American economy. You know, America is relatively energy independent. So, the cost of oil is not the big crisis here. Right. It's the fact that the Gulf States make other countries buy oil with the American dollar.

7:20Correct. And, if the Gulf States are not selling oil, the value of the dollar plummets, and that would become a major crisis. I mean, the, the value of the dollars underpinned by these GCC countries. And, if we, if we, you know, if the oil infrastructure, which is being struck, can do it to be struck. And, that stuff does not come back tomorrow. You cannot rebuild a refinery, or, or, or, no, a oil connection in one day. Building a refinery, folks, is a decade-long process. It's complicated. And, and that's a fast build, by the way. Right. This was a refinery being built in Louisiana. It's been under construction since 1999, and it's not done yet. Right. I mean, I, I do not see a way to pivot away from the consequences of this. Even if he decides tomorrow to hang Israel out to dry and say, we're out, the consequences are still still going to manifest. Here's, here's my worry, Andrew. And I think, I think, look,

8:21I'm a huge believer in air power, but air power does not do regime change well. No. If at all, Libya, right, Libya, right, Libya, QED. We got rid of Saddam or Qaddafi, but how'd that work out after? No, there's an open-slave market there now. So, yeah, Graham, it's really not a good situation. I mean, so, so think about this. What happens when, when the IGRC and the, the, the, the Bessiege and the CUDs and the, the, the RTS for, RTF forces all basically break up into local franchise terrorist groups. You get, you get sort of the Balkanization of Iran and, and the, the same situation we have with the Houthis. Yeah. We have to steer away from the coast of Yemen because the Houthis can, can come out of the hills and shoot missiles at ships. Right. And, and, and by the way, folks, these, these missiles and drones, they're shooting. We're spending, and by the way, somebody in the chat was correct. I spoke to a person who is the most knowledgeable defense. This is a very nerdy rabbit hole to go into.

9:25I've known this person since the 80s, late 80s. He's a little older than, actually, he's 10 or 15 years, 15 years older than me now. He's, he's, he's up there. He was in defense procurement and acquisition for 50 years, 50, his whole adult life understands this shit better than any human I know has been an executive at major defense firms. It's been right in front of you this entire time, the perfect sunny skies, 85 miles of wide open beaches all to yourself, 11 of the most charming waterfront towns you'll ever see. A hidden gem uncrowded and ready to host your best vacation yet. Who knew all you had to do was beer slightly off I 95. It's time to fall in love with a whole new beach destination. Visit crystalcoastnc.com slash booking now. Most people would rather assemble a 300-piece cabinet than search for insurance. That's why the zebra searches for you comparing over 100 insurance companies to find savings no one else can

10:30compare today at the zebra.com. He said to me he goes, I did the math, Rick. And the math is that we're not spending a billion dollars a day. If you calculate out both the, the known expenditures of of munitions and the known time we've been in the air running the ships and the aircraft, we're spending two billion dollars, I'm sorry we're spending half a billion dollars an hour. This is on and his other point to me and I wrote about this the other day. We're Trump going out and saying we've got plenty of weapons left is a sign that we don't have plenty of weapons left. Folks, there's a thing in the military where when you're when you're status green on ammo, you've got 90% or more of the ammo you need. When you're status yellow, you've got 80% or more. When you're status red, you're under 50% and your mission starts to get compromised. His argument to me was we're between yellow and red right now. If you go status black,

11:33that means that you're out. The bunker is empty. There ain't no more missiles to shoot. Yeah, well, I mean, what happens when we run out of interceptors? It's chaos. Well, and by the way, they hit two of our thad batteries based on Russian intelligence in the last 24 hours. Folks, Thad, THAD, you could look it up. They're about a billion, two, a piece, not including the missiles that are on the systems. And those were covering a lot of our shorter range stuff that the patriots aren't worth getting. So yeah, yeah, it's a really, and you should probably a dollar patriot pack three missiles to kind of a $20,000 drone the size of a fucking Nissan Altima. Right. And just to get back to the polling for a second, there's sort of this principle in American politics that voters don't care about foreign policy until they do until they do. They don't vote on foreign policy. That's that's almost never their first issue. Right. But we're talking about affordability. That's really the big, the big

12:35watchword this year. Sure. And we're spending billions and billions and billions of dollars every day on this war. And I think at home, people are saying, why are we doing this? What's the reason they haven't been given a good reason? I believe it's a reason. And they're seeing their own economic prospects sort of dwindle. And we'll talk about the jobs numbers in a second. I do not see, I think because this foreign policy decision will have such massive ramifications for the economy, people will be voting, maybe they won't say I'm voting against Republicans for because of the Iran War. But they'll say I'm hurting economically, financially, and the Iran War will be the cause of that pain in part. I think that's exactly on point. I think it's exactly on point. They're going to connect. They're going to connect.

13:38I mean, we saw it with tariffs, right? People realized that tariffs were driving up prices. They knew tariffs were driving up prices. And maybe tariffs weren't their number one issue. It was there. It was the economy. But they knew that the economy was suffering because of tariffs. They will know. They do know clearly that this is essentially flushing money down the toilet. Yep. Brent crude just passed 90. Well, we're going to hit on credit. And that hitting 100 on Brent crude is going to be that's $5 gallon gas at the pump folks. I do not see. It's terrible for the president. That's my back of the envelope math is that $100 Brent crude is going to be $5 gallon. It's $333 right now, national average, up 25 cents in the last five days. And buying the Russian crude oil that the White House is allowing now, doesn't reduce your gas prices at the pump people. No. And it also funds Russia's war machine.

14:44Which is currently providing intelligence to Iran. Yeah. So it's all going great. It's going great. I think we have some more polling on this. Let's take a look here. So this is necessary approval. This conversation has sort of had a sort of come out of the it's sort of dwindled a little bit. People aren't necessarily talking about approval so much as since the work hours vote came and went. You know, we're in it now. Approval is sort of not necessarily irrelevant, but we're there. Yeah. This is congressional approval prior to the strike. And this is, you know, do they need approval? Right. Half of the country said yes. More than 79% of Democrats said yes, 34% of Republicans said yes. But now look at look at these numbers. Neither neither preferable nor necessary. Only 14% of people say it's neither

15:45preferable. That's the Trump position. Right. It's 14% with your position. It's tough. So this is approval by party ID. You can see where it's been doing my brain hurts. Yeah. This is a tough one to read. But if you look at those arrows, that shows you. So we've gone from look at this first line, negative nine, which is the opposition to the strikes. We've gone down to negative 14. Yep. So that's a pretty big progression over five days. I think this is only four days covering four days of the war. Yeah, this is out of the field on the second. So yeah. Okay. So yeah, not covering the whole war. But that is that is a pretty major drop in approval for this conflict over just a few days. And a principle of polling is that these numbers do not move quickly unless something major is happening. You can see Democrats are strongly strongly opposed to this. Independents are not as opposed, but they are getting more opposed.

16:50Republicans are getting in line. Of course they are. Now we're still under 90% which is bad news for Trump. If Republicans on any issue are under 90% approval, not really great for the president. But, you know, Republicans, I think this is to be expected that Republicans will get in line for this war for a period of time. Yeah. Yeah. I think that's right. So this is 56% of people expect Iran strikes to grow into long-term conflict. I think people who are saying that yes, it will grow into a long-term conflict are paying attention because that's what Pete Hagset says. That's what the president says. That's what Marco Rubio says. They say they're going to step this up. It's going to get more and more chaotic. You know, the expectation of a forever war, I think, is pretty devastating for Republican electoral prospects. And I don't want to leave the Democrats out here because there has been a certain hesitation to criticize this war and to criticize the,

17:57you know, the forever war, essentially, we're getting into one. And I think Democrats need to drop that hesitation entirely. Yeah. You know, this will be a winning issue for a lot of candidates if they were opposed to this conflict. And it's not because we're pinkos or communists or we love the Ayatollah because we're throwing money at, we're throwing good money after bad. And it's- And we're going to end up leaving Iran in a much more dangerous posture than we found it. Right. It's- Look, I'm second to nobody in being an OG Neocon. Right. Because I work for Dick fucking Cheney, okay? I am from the wellspring of the Neocon universe. Yeah. Now, I have- I have a lot of lessons in my life over time, but I will tell you something. The Republican framing of you're either with Trump or you'd vote the Ayatollahs. If Democrats don't break out of that rapidly, the successors to guys like me, the things I used to

19:03be able to do to frame those arguments during- during two wars will- will happen to the Democrats. They need to be bold about this and say Donald Trump is- this is built out of corruption. They need to link it back to- to Epstein. They need to link it back to Jared and Whitcoff wanting to cut deals. And the- and the truth of the matter is the Iranians are going to go to Whitcoff and they're going to go to Kushner through somebody in Qatar or somebody in Abu Dhabi or somebody in Saudi and they're going to say, hey, listen man. So we'll give you somebody who's not pro-American but they're not going to be crazy and we won't enrich for five years. And by the way, you know, we might invest in, you know, maybe some stuff for the Trump family. And they'll take the deal. Yeah, I wouldn't be surprised if Trump took a deal. You know, I- now he is increasingly

20:03insane based on his true social posts. Oh, yeah. And he's got a Quattro growing out of his neck. Yeah, he's got some sort of serious issue. And I- you know, they put forward all these different reasonings. And I- some I don't buy, some I necessarily- I think are maybe more believable. The revenge plot, I think is sort of an empty, you know, they try to assassinate you so I'm going to get him first, whatever. That's meaningless. Yeah, we're should. I- I think this- this has a lot to do with a trend we see in unpopular presidents. Yeah. And what do they do in the air? Right. You know, unpopular presidents start wars because they expect a rally around the flag effect. We don't have it. It's just not there. So this is- this is partisan satisfaction with global- with U.S. global position. Here at the Zebra, research shows people would rather teach their kids to drive than search for auto and home insurance. I know what I'm doing. Or attend a corporate team building workshop. Go

21:06team, feel that synergy. Or be regaled by Uncle Frank's conspiracy theories. They're listening to us right now. That's why the Zebra searches for you, comparing over 100 insurance companies to find savings no one else can. Compare today at the Zebra.com, we do the searching, you do the saving. Shhh, they're here. Most people would rather attend a corporate team building workshop than search for auto and home insurance. Go team, feel that synergy. That's why the Zebra searches for you, comparing over 100 insurance companies to find savings no one else can. Compare today at the Zebra.com. Who's ready for the truss fall? Republicans, of course, have spiked in the last year because they're delusional. Independents are pretty low, steady Democrats obviously have taken a massive fall. I think internationally this makes us look really bad. In the past, we haven't strong armed allies into joining us into wars. They have volunteered themselves to join us. We can't

22:08force them in. If we try to force them in, it's going to open a crack in NATO that I don't see Trump having the ability to repair or the desire to repair. Why do you think McCrom this week is out there basically saying, I'm going to expand France's nuclear deterrent capacity. What this does, I think internationally, is make China look more and more like an attractive option to be your friend and ally. Of course, it exposes Taiwan to invasion and attack. I think it's pretty evident that we probably could not win a war against China in the first island chain considering it. We are getting bombed by Iran and we have everything on the table, right there. China's drone technology is orders of magnitude better than Iran's. The other part of this that people aren't fully grasping and that my friend was talking to me about, he said, they have had to pull

23:08everything out of PACOM into CENTCOM. Out of the Pacific region, guys, they've taken all these interceptor missiles and all these other assets out of the region. China is looking at Taiwan like a juicy stake right now. And not to mention North Korea is probably thinking now might be a good time to invade the disaster. And because we are pulling military assets away from these places that we have sworn to protect. Mark my words people, if Taiwan and South Korea want to build nuclear weapons, they have more than the technological infrastructure to do it. They could do it now. Right. And I'm going to predict they're going to do it. Yeah. Because what else deters people? And this creates a very unstable world. I see somebody in the comments asking, how are they ever going to take over Cuba? Cuba, we could not Cuba over in a couple of hours. I mean, it's sort of like Venezuela. The question is what happens when we take Cuba? A million

24:12fucking people cross the 89 miles to get to American shores. And everything that floats in Cuba, including couch cushions, will be in the water heading to America. A million people will be here in a week. I promise you that. Yeah. I mean, and you know, the sort of military adventurism that we've been going through with Trump, he doesn't want to stop. But at the same time, he has to wrap this one first. Yeah. Or else it's sort of just all unravels. And we have pure chaos everywhere. Yeah. Yeah. It's great. So listen, I know we I know we dug it on the war here folks, but there's also great economic new polling. Yeah, really, really looking heartening for the president. So golden age, baby. It's a golden age non-farm jobs numbers down 92,000 in February. And it was expected to be 55, right? Yeah. Yeah. Plus 55. The economy is going down the the circling the drain at this point. And I don't even think this is this is I mean, remember the

25:16war has only been going on for six days. Yeah. Uh, this is pre war economic news. Yeah. Um, and the pre energy spike. Yeah, pre energy spike. Um, I mean, it there's no way to sell this as a good economy. No, um, Republicans who we're going to rely on this as their as their main campaign pillar can no longer do so. Um, you know, and the president will say it's nothing. It's a it's Biden. He'll blame the previous administration for all this. And I don't think it's not going to work. I don't think it cuts. I don't think it cuts. I don't think it works. And we saw, so we looked at polling a few months ago that showed that Americans aren't buying that story anymore. Um, just that Dow Jones is down 40 that down to 47,000. And it's taking up what 900 point dip today. Um, I think that's pretty catastrophic. Uh, it is at, yeah, it's down, uh, as of this moment,

26:18hold on, let me get the screen up. Uh, down 700 right now. Oh, yeah, that's that's pretty bad. And you know, this is a this is a trend, right? Like Trump has these things that he points to as his, you know, we're we're doing great. It's the golden age, all that stuff. He said it during a state of the union gas prices, the stock market. As those things start to unwind, he has less and less to point to as accomplishments. I probably start talking more about his drapes. Um, and, you know, what they're doing at the White House. I, you know, he just has no nothing good to point to at this point, uh, as a win. I mean, and, and this is especially true among the base and the younger maggot crowd and the younger American first crowd. They're really, really disenchanted with the Iran war, the state of the economy, what's going on with all of the deportations. Um, I,

27:18unfortunately was watching a little Nick Flintes because I do for educational purposes. Good lord. Um, he's, he's a nightmare, of course, but he represents a lot of these, you know, those 18 to 30, those 18 to 30, right? And he's furious. He's saying, you know, vote Democrat, you know, they're, they're upset that Trump broke all these campaign promises. Now, surprise, surprise, Trump doesn't tell the truth about anything. And if you thought he was telling the truth about any of this stuff, you're a sucker. Um, and he's lost, he's lost so much of what is foundational about mega. He's broken up his own coalition. That's right. It's just a disaster on every front for him. If you wanted a third term, I don't think he could get one. I don't think he could win another election. I mean, that's a fascinating point, Andrew. And I had not walked through that. Of course, cheated. Um, but, but that's a fascinating point that that might save us in some weird way that he will realize that his numbers are so abysmal that he doesn't

28:22deliver the juice anymore for even his own base. And he doesn't want to go through 2020 again because losing was a shattered Trump in ways that I love. I love 2020 so much. I loved it so much. I would eat it up of the spoon every day. That was so fun to go after him every second of the day to pound the crap out of him and help beat him by beating his own mental infirmities. And by the way, it broke him. We broke his brain. Yep. And he's been cuckoo ever since he was crazy. My favorite, my favorite brain breaking moment in 2020 was we got Brad Pascal fired in the first part of the campaign, which was hilarious. But at the end of the campaign, you know, we were doing things like the covita ad where we're, you know, Donald Trump had to the tune of don't cry for me or Argentina. And we messed with him because he could be messed with. And I think he's entering a phase of that again. Now somebody in the chat has asked Frederick, sorry, Frederick,

29:27has asked, is there a lot of polling about Trump's mental state? Andrew, have you seen that? There is. I think we covered some last week. I don't know the numbers off the top of my head. I'm sorry, but there is. Well, we'll come back to you guys on that. I think it's a fast to be a good dive. I can tell you that Americans are less and less sure that he has the mental and physical wherewithal to be president. Yeah. Yeah, there's been a pretty good amount of polling on that. And we'll do it. We'll do it. We'll do a dive into that. If it wasn't obvious by his speech and demeanor, he's going nuts. It's totally but surely. It's really scary in a lot of ways that this guy has the power that he has. And he can go to war with whomever he wishes. And there won't be pushed back from Congress in a significant way. And it's terrifying. I got to tell you, I'm convinced that one of the things from 2016 that we saw in polling over

30:29and over and over again in 2016 was this idea that Trump always had a plan that he was this mastermind, you know, negotiator, strategist, businessman, you know, that he always had three dimensional chess, 47 dimensional quantum chess being played out. I don't think people see that anymore when he's out there slurring and you know, changing the topic as, oh, look, we're serious war in Iran. American troops are dying. Oh, look at my pretty curtains. Hey, and he's he's continued to say things like, you know, people die in war. And that's just unacceptable from a president for most Americans. It's grotesque. It's grotesque. Now, so somebody's asking the chat, what is one in four Americans are opposed to the strike mean? What it means is one in four, I think they got it wrong because I think it's favorite. Yeah, I'm pretty sure that's right. Yeah. That's, I mean, it's a disaster. He is and what's

31:30what's wild about this to me is he saw Venezuela as this big win. Sure. It was in and out. It was relatively bloodless. We, you know, did it in one night and it was over. Not the case with Iran, not going to be the case with Iran at all. And it just seems like he stepped on a rake. I mean, this was incredibly rash for the president to do this. And, and the position of somebody like Lindsey Graham, for example, which is this sort of like bloodthirsty. We have to destroy Iran in this holy war. Right. It's insane. That's insane. And nobody nobody is on board with it. Nobody. No, there are, I mean, and again, I want to go back to this. Wars never pull better with time. Now, I mean, I, I, I, one of my, one of my many billion, little, little minion tasks during desert storm that aside from all my other minion tasks,

32:37I, I wrote a thing, every couple of days called the recon about polling, like where we are. It's not because we were going to change our policy, but it was important that we able to be able to go to Congress and say, here's what we know. Here's what the American people think about this. Here's perspective for you as you pass supplements and all this other stuff. But right now, what we know is that this war, and I think we talked about this last week. I'm not sure. Or maybe I said on some other podcast, because I'm only on 47. At the end of the Vietnam War in 1973, when the choppers were on the roof of the embassy, 29% of Americans still supported the war. The most grinding, unpopular, horrifying example of American military hubris and mistakes in by far. Yeah, by, and we could, we could honestly get to that level. I mean, I know casualties are low right now. Thank God. Yeah. But this is not over. And if there's a ground invasion,

33:41it is going to be a disaster. Oh, and on our poor, our poor friends, the Kurds who my love dearly, we're going to, we betrayed them in 1992. We betrayed them in 2011. We betrayed them. We are sorry, we betrayed them in 2007. We betrayed them in 2011. We're going to betray them again. And they're going to go and fight bravely there. Some of the bravest fighters in the world. And they're going to die by the by the tens and hundreds of thousands again in this effort. And it is once again going to poison people against us in this region. I mean, these are the conditions that made ISIS for people to remember. Yeah. This is the exact kind of scenario that we had that created ISIS. And I'll cut it in Iraq. Yes. Yeah. I mean, it's, I, it's going to be a disaster. When you, when you, when you, when we took out Saddam, who by the way, folks, Saddam was a,

34:42that was a secular dictatorship. Yeah, this was always a misread by, by a lot of Americans like, Saddam is a radical Muslim. It wasn't a Muslim at all. Hard. No, he ran barely a magazines and, and, but, but when we, when we de-bathified Iraq, government of all the, all the civil government, all the military leadership, what happened to those people? They didn't like quit. They just said, fucking, I'm going to rebrand. Now I'm al-Qaeda in Iraq. Now I'm, you know, and you're going to see, if you defeated every Moa in Iran, there are two million people involved in the security services in Artech, Kudz, IGRC, Basizh, and they're just going to rebrand. Yeah. And it's, I mean, if ish Fahan Islamic State Commandant now instead of, you know, whatever. And I, I really do not see, I do not foresee a scenario in which we can pull out of this quickly and easily, and suddenly this is out of the conversation. Trump loves it when he can have a

35:47news cycle under his 100% control. He decides when it starts, when it ends, and when we start, when we stop talking about it, that is not what we have here. We do not have, but it's so, somebody's asking what happens if they dump arms in Iran and cause a civil war, you don't need to dump arms in Iran. Well, you're on trusty. You're on trusty. You're local manufacturing industry to get arms. Iran's got a domestic weapons production infrastructure that is pretty singular, actually. How many people live in Syria? I think it's like what, 10, 20 million people? 10 or 11, I thought. 10 or 11 million people? 90 million people live in, in Iran. And it's also mountain fortress. I think the, the only person who's ever invaded from the west was Alexander the Great, if I'm not mistaken, who's ever successful. And at that point, he was getting pretty strained out. Yeah. Um, you know, obviously, from the east is a different story, but that's not what we're dealing. We're going to invade from the, and by the way, if they start to retreat into the eastern part of the country, oh, wait, the border with Afghanistan, that'll be good. We were,

36:48you know, folks, Harat right there on the west, on the east or west side of Afghanistan, east side of Iran, that did not work out well for us the last couple of years. I don't remember anything about that. And look, you know, this does go back to Abigate in some ways. Sure. Abigate was this disaster for Biden, he pulled out, which I think was overall a good thing. Um, you know, we were sending good money after bad. Um, it's, you know, a mistake in many ways. We were bleeding slowly. Trump thought that he could have a, he could win in the Middle East and get it done quickly. Yeah. That is never the case. We will have, we will have another Abigate moment where we have to pull out and it's a bloody disaster. And it's probably going to be out of al-udid in, in, in, in Qatar, or it's going to be out of, out of, you know, listen, my, my biggest fear, people don't understand how many Americans live in the Middle East. A lot. About 350,000 Americans

37:49literally in the Middle East. Yeah. There's a, there's about 50,000 Americans around the Haran area in Saudi Arabia at a ramco. Mm-hmm. And what do you, I mean, the administration has no plan to get them out. There is an American town in Saudi Arabia. I said at the Haran, it's an American town. Saudi Ramco is a, is a little American city. It's got a Burger King. It's got us, it's got a Kroger. It's an American city of people who work in the Saudi oil industry. And I, I, I don't want to, I don't want to make it seem like Iran can really beat us in a war. That's not possible. We, we obviously are kicking their ass. But what they can do is make a war of attrition so painful for us that we just can't tolerate it any longer. And they can't wet it in the air. We can't wet it on the ground. They, we can target their infrastructure. They can target the water and oil infrastructure in the Gulf States. And that is, that is a crisis. And there's no, we can't repair these, these, these, this infrastructure so quickly,

38:49that it just sort of all magically comes back and everything's fine. I just, I, Qatar is announced in the next 15 days. They'll shut down production. Yeah. Yeah. I saw this. Welcome to $150. I was at 55 million, 55, 550 million barrels of oil fewer coming out of the, I remember Qatar is also going to shut off the natural gas production. Right. And that's their big juice. I foresee the scenario in which China, Japan, and India all say to Trump that you have to stop it right now or we're going to have to do something because those, those countries are incredibly dependent on oil coming out of the straits over a minute. So your grandfather taught me years ago to watch one indicator in the markets. And that's the VIX, the volatility index. And it's a 9.35% today. And that is a very bad sign for markets. I wonder when the markets, the, the American stock market will actually start to react to this. Yeah. We've been in such a, such a fantasy bubble for so long in this market.

39:53Yeah. They've reached off a million different things. Yeah. There's got to be a breaking point. So I watch, I think what you'll see happen is in the short term, the market's going to convince itself with an energy spike, the Fed will have to cut rates to offset the energy and the inflationary or not the inflation, but the financial damage of the war. The Fed will have to cut that's what the market's going to convince itself of. I don't believe that. No, I don't buy that either. I mean, we'll see how long this goes on. I could see 100 or 200 days of war with Iran. And Iran decides when it's over in many ways now because they can keep shooting missiles and drones. I mean, the, the critique of Iran is real, you know, the fact that they're bombing every other country in, in the Middle East is awful. And they really, it's awful, but it's strategically very smart. It's what they, I mean, if, if, if I was at the helm, I'd probably do the same. We, we wargamed this out a few years ago. Yep. And Iran can win a war of attrition. They can't

40:58win an air war. They can't win. I mean, a ground war maybe, but I think invading Iran with ground troops would be so, so, so insane. The folks just remember this. During the Iran-Araq war, there were times when Iran would send human waves of untrained, young Iraqi soldiers with sticks. Not even with rifles with sticks. Up to 200,000 young men would charge into the Iraqi, or the Iranians would charge into the Iraqis. And that, that is an example of their, they make the Afghans look peaceful. They make the Pashtuns look like, look like men of, men of, of quiet repose and dignity. It will go, and by the way, if Trump does order a ground invasion of Iran by any sort of rebellion, I think you would, I think this country would be on fire. And I think you would have, you would have AOC linking arms with, with, with, you know,

42:02it was messy. Thomas Massey and, and Rand Paul. This would be left and right would come together to burn this place to the fricking ground. We'll see. Well, then again, it could be the rapture because my grandson is sent over the red heifers to Israel so we can, we can usher in and, great. We're all happy about the end times. It's going to be great. Well, let me see here. Hold on. Let me go back over to the director chat so I can get direction. Oh, let's talk about Texas real quick, Andrew. Sure. Let's do that. Holy crap. The Hispanic turnout. Yeah. This is really, Talleriko's strong point. He did great with Hispanic voters. Yeah. So this is Star County. This is a border county, sort of in the, the very southern part of Texas right on the border. So this is a Trump County. He won by nearly 58%. And, I mean, huge numbers of people pull the

43:05Democratic ballot and not the Republican ballot. That is just wild. And so this is Emerson right before the election. Pretty much got the numbers just right. I think Crockett was on the money. Yeah. Yeah. Crockett was one point lower. There was another poll that we were all seeing that was the University of Texas, Texas Tribune poll, which was way off. You were skeptical about that. The day I talked to you about it, you were like, nah. Now it, I mean, the number, the sample size was way too small. I think for a number of reasons, it was not a good survey. I think Talleriko, you know, he made an argument to disaffected Trump voters that worked that, you know, played well in Texas. And, you know, the Talleriko strategy doesn't work everywhere. Just like the Mamdani strategy doesn't work everywhere. But he, you know, made the right technical choices as far as his messaging and succeeded. Now, we don't have a lot of polling on a general election matchup with

44:05either Paxson or Kornin. What we do know is that Kornin is probably favored by a point or two. But that being said, you know, a point or two for somebody like Talleriko, who's already proven himself to be a good campaigner, to be a strong on his messaging and consistent with his messaging and a digital native, which is a huge advantage in this environment. I think one or two points is a, is something he can, these are not insurmountable odds for a candidate like Talleriko. And I think, I think we saw that, that Democratic turnout in early voting folks is a good, that was a very piece of, very strong piece of good news for the fall. And we've got 90 days now where, where Paxson and, and Kornin are going to nuke the shit out of one another. Yeah. And whoever emerges from that GOP primary, I think it's going to be pretty radioactive. Yeah. I mean, you know, I'm hoping for Paxson in some ways, but that would be a very scary

45:06to have Paxson potentially. Yeah. Paxson might juice the Republican base. But then again, Trump has chosen not to endorse Paxson. Trump cucked out and he's, he's followed the lead of Susie Wiles and, and all the swamp advisors in DC. And he's backing never Trump Republican, John Kornin, as I like to say on Twitter. How about that? You know, Trump's terrified that he's going to get impeached again. He's absolutely terrified. Oh, yeah. As he should be. He's again. And he has to play nice with Republicans now because they've not necessarily, but what I did for you, John, look what I, I helped you so much without me, you would not have won. Yeah. Somebody saying Crockett would be great for AG. I would love to see Crockett in the future in as part of the Democratic, you know, cabinet. I think she's a, you know, a communicator. Yes, an excellent communicator. I think the problem for this primary was that she didn't make a play for disaffected Trump voters. And that in Texas is, is, is extremely important.

46:09And folks, you got to, if you, if you, this is a subject for a longer show, but in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas, the Hispanic voters that went for Trump in 24 have flipped back to the Democrats. Right. And flips, you know, more than flip. More, more than. Yeah, more than me. It was a wave towards Tallarico. He, he overperformed with Hispanics in a way that, that pushed him over the line in, in many ways. And Crockett appealed to the base. Democratic party voters do like Crockett. But just, it wasn't enough. What's it? Isn't it also, Andrew? Can't, can't it also be said that Tallarico's fluency about his fate helps with those Hispanic voters in the Rio Grande Valley, more than almost any other issues? I think that's, that's absolutely right. And that's what I'm saying, you know, the Tallarico model works in Texas. Right. And yeah, I think it'll work, I think it'll work generally across the South. I think the, the Democratic preacher method is, is a good, good. You're going

47:09to fall that path. I think it's a good, kind of deep nature. There's a lot of their attacks. It does. And, you know, it's, sure, it doesn't apply to every candidate across the country. But it, it worked for him in a way with these voters in particular because they are more religiously conservative, more socially conservative. Sure. But if you're talking to them in the language of faith, they will understand that and process it better than the sort of culture war, a rile at the base sort of thing that that Crockett did. I just think it was, it was, his messaging was on point and excellent and very, very, very consistent. And that, you know, it was a winning strategy. I think it was. And I, I, I think, I think the lesson there, a lot of Democrats are uncomfortable talking about faith. Yeah. And there are a lot of their own voters, African Americans and Hispanics who are comfortable talking about faith. Who, who, who hold faith is the, you know, one of the pillars of their life. Yeah. You know, and, and you look at Raphael Warnock. I mean, he

48:10does, and he does overperforms. He overperforms with a lot of these more socially conservative religious black voters because he talks to them in the language that they understand. Absolutely. Well, folks, we have run out the clock today. Good, good show today, guys. Thank you, Andrew, as always. Folks, thank you for tuning in. We appreciate you watching. And again, this show keeps getting bigger. We're like, kind of freaked out about it. It's kind of cool. And at some point, we may even bring guest pollsters on to talk with us because, you know, why not? Why not? We need a show about polling. We do. We do. Everyone does. Everyone does. Everyone needs a show about polling by God. I think I think some people dismiss polling as sort of just like numbers that, that only the insider crowd looks at. But it is really important because you have to remember that the president is looking at these numbers. He's very. Oh, yes, he is. And, you know, it's the national pulse, even. Before we go one last point,

49:13the president is moved by two or three things in his life. TV coverage by, by, by, by real traditional media and TV and print coverage by real traditional media, he, by the way, Trump secretly hates Fox. He hates it. It's, it's the ghetto in his mind, okay? He wants the New York Times to love him and to respect him. Those, that's one thing that moves his, his, his, his, and a lot of, by the way, a lot of Republicans who hate the mainstream media want the mainstream media to love them. Right. The second thing that moves him is the markets. When the markets go south, Trump gets very, very nervous because he recognizes that high gas prices and a lowest and lower stock market destroy his narrative of economic prosperity. Yep. And the final thing that moves Trump is, is whether or not he is the goat or the hero in the story. That's why you fired no. Okay. She embarrassed him. We didn't talk about no today. I think that's

50:18just what a, what a terrible oversight. You know, I know, right? Sad to see her go. So sad. RIP Christie. And she cricket up in heaven. Don't shoot your dog, Christy. That's a bad thing. I got to say, I, I don't know if you saw Tillis the other day and you Andrew. Oh, yeah. Andrew grew up with us with, with our bird dogs. And, and Tom Tillis went at her because he's an experienced bird hunter. He's a fessant hunter. And he went at her like, you don't take a god damn puppy into a, into a field stock with fessant. And just like took her to school. I was like, yeah. Yeah. Anyway, folks, thank you for tuning in. As always, we will be back again next Friday with more, more, more optimistic news from the world burning around us. You can catch us on sub stack. I am against all enemies. Andrew writes at Lincoln Square and at Andrew Wilson. You can catch me on Mondays on fast politics. I'm already drunk fast. You can catch me on Tuesdays at the strategy

51:20session here on Lincoln Square. You can catch me on Thursdays on the breakdown. You can catch me here. And Andrew Friday on behind the numbers. And, and you can catch me on sub stack and against all enemies just for the day-to-day writing and, and pictures of the cats. Anyway, folks, thank you so much for joining us today. We appreciate it. Do me a big favor before you go. If you're watching us on YouTube, please do the like, subscribe, hit that bell. We are all slaves to the algorithm. And we must obey it at all times. Anyway, thanks folks. We'll talk to you next week.