Trump Pledges Help After Meeting with Whitmer

0:00Making it through the rain, these are kind of like the spring showers a little early, but everything's been a little early, including the tornado activity. And here's hoping and praying that's not a sign of things to come. Meanwhile we have war underway, call it whatever you want, with Peter Meyer, former congressman and Army veteran is here to weigh in on the latest in Iran. Peter, it's always a pleasure. How do you think we're doing based on your time as a congressman and what you've learned and as an Army veteran in what you learned in that position? How are we doing? Well, thank you for having me on, Paul. And I will say one thing that when I was in the military, I also was in the unit of supporting some planning for what the Iranian response would be in just this type of scenario. Now granted, so my understandings are maybe about a decade out of date, but this is an area

1:04where I've spent a significant amount of time and where we are right now in terms of what we've been able to inflict and what has been inflicted upon us and our allies is what we've inflicted has been significantly more successful than I would have expected. If we had this conversation trying to forecast out two weeks back and then where what Iran has been able to do in terms of attacks, it's certainly been more widespread than I would have expected. I'm surprised that they have launched ballistic missiles that countries that were allied with them and that had open and supportive relations. That to me has been a bit bewildering, but the fact that oil is still hovering at $90 or the barrel give or take still 40 percent below the price that it had been in the immediate aftermath of Russia's invasion of Ukraine in 2022, the fact that this has not ground the world economy to a start yet and yet the Iranian military has been decimated, I would strongly

2:09agree with the President's comments that this has been overwhelmingly successful from a military standpoint. And the biggest question is going to become what happens on the political and diplomatic front, does the regime capitulate, does this fall into the decapitating delegates strategy like Venezuela, and that is what is very difficult to predict at the moment? Well, because we can't control what the institutional media will do and we know they want to get rid of Trump and show him in the poorest light they possibly can otherwise, they would have put on the front page today everywhere and all of three networks would have been talking about it and none of them have that oil prices plunged by more than 11 percent Tuesday, yesterday, the steepest percentage drop of any session since 2022 and that's amazing because they just when it was reverse of that, they couldn't it went up 50 cents this week, it's never going up 50 cents. Well, because it was never that low before where it had room to go up 50 cents and by the way,

3:11it was still under what gas prices were when Joe Biden was president in 2022. So it's sad and it's astonishing that the average American person, if they just let the institutional media guide them, they're going to be misguided, sadly. The only thing that's not agree more or go ahead, well, no, listen, if you want to agree with me, you can say it again, I love that, it's perfect. What did you say? I'm sorry, Peter. What did you say? You're absolutely right. And one of the things that to me has been surprising is that whatever Donald Trump does, you know, whatever policy he's implementing, their approval is just going to be about the same as his approval. The approval rate for the war in Iran is the same as Donald Trump's approval rate writ large. The approval rate for the war in the, I shouldn't even say war, the incredible operation to arrest, you know, Nicolas Maduro in Venezuela has the same approval rating in the US as Donald Trump has. Now, if you ask the Venezuelans, that operation is pulling 40 points higher in Venezuela,

4:1373%, 74% of Venezuelans agree in support and now think the country's heading in the right direction and in the US, it's 40 points lower for the folks who are not even impacted by it. Unbelievable. When that's based on the way the whole thing is being played, it's based on night after night after night of the supposedly late night entertainment shows that are not entertaining anymore, their whole monologue is to attack the president and give out, by the way, incorrect, faulty information, shame on Jimmy Kimmel and the others. But meanwhile, I am worried when the president says if they hit ships in the straits of her moves, the straight of her moves, then there's going to be hellfire like they've never seen before. Well, they've hit a few ships and he's going to find himself in the Obama situation where you draw a red line and then you don't do anything when they cross the red line. He's got to do something now and now he's moved that

5:14threat to if they mine the area. But I mean, they were already hitting ships. And we're already bombing just about everything we can bomb. I mean, we've, you know, launched a tremendous amount of munitions on Iran, you know, their military capability has been severely weakened, which doesn't mean that they don't pose a threat, doesn't mean that they can't send shaheed drones, doesn't mean there aren't plenty of other, you know, things that the Iranians can do to escalate and continue to inflict damage on the U.S. and on our allies. But this, I guess I'm not super worried about Donald Trump drawn red lines because, you know, while there's plenty of areas where I wish he was more ideologically consistent and or, you know, follow through on things that he said or was more clear, when you're dealing with a negotiation, when you're dealing with a scenario that you have to be able to rapidly adapt to the scenario that you are facing to changes that are occurring on the ground, to other, you know, external factors and variables that are weighing in. It is really helpful to not have to, you know, feel beholden to things that you said before and to be able to

6:19discard that when the moment rises in order to strike the best deal at the best moment, you know, for your natural interests. Peter Mayer with us. Not super concerned. Okay, that's good. That makes me feel better. Peter Mayer, former Congressman Army veteran here, do you think that Iran miscalculated? Because I mean, there, there are hundreds of years behind us in many ways. Did they miscalculate and did they think by striking there what used to be friendly neighbors, it's going to anger the neighbors and that eventually that anger will be aimed at the United States for quote-unquote causing this in the first place? I think that was certainly their intent and it may have been, you know, this is maybe a slightly generational reference, but a little bit of a Leroy Jenkins strategy, you know, you just become the wild card, you throw everything at the kitchen, you know, they throw the kitchen sink at the problem, you know, hope that if you don't see a way of controlling it, you might as well just make it more chaotic because you benefit from the chaos and maybe something will rebound to your benefit. I do not think that's been the case

7:22so far. Yes, there's some frustrations in the Gulf over, you know, what this is inflicted to the economy of the region, but the Iranians have certainly done no favors to their relations with the Qataris, with the Almani's, with the Azerbaijan, it's just insane their approach. And if anything, it's helping to reorient, solidify opinions in the Middle East and to also validate a lot of the fears and a lot of the threat that the U.S. was alleging Iran posed, they have all quite confirmed that through the recklessness of their actions and attacks on not just uninvolved countries, but also civilian infrastructure throughout the region in a very just astonishing way. We'll put Peter, it's one of the reasons we call upon you. You've got strong and I think pretty good opinions on all of these things based on your experience as a former congressman and Army veteran and a guy who supported some of the planning of the Iranian

8:22response many years ago. Peter Meyer, we thank you for your expertise and for joining us again. Thank you, sir. Always a pleasure. Thank you both. Our pleasure, indeed. Paul W. Smith in focus at WJR at 1243.