49 posts from Saturday, August 15, 2026

So, basically, constraining the regime on the budgetary side post-fighting while adding on the blockade basically allows you to weaponize the dollar in a way that you have done damage, particularly to the above-ground solid-propellant ballistic missile production in Iran. And if you squeeze the resources at a time when they otherwise have budgetary issues, they have subsidy issues, it was a failed state pre-war, it was a failed state even pre-protest. Anyway, when you look at the macroeconomic indicators sliding this way, like inflation, for example, in the Islamic Republic, you maximize that, which means you maximize the damage that was done by the kinetics in the previous round of fighting. And if Iran's philosophy is, you mentioned partisan politics, if it's build back better as quickly as possible, some of you may know that bill. Are you saying that the Arabs just hear a bunch of Democrats? I'll let you say that. But if their philosophy is to build back better or to build back faster or to race us to build, these are the tools that actually put time on our side. Because if you marry this powerful financial architecture with what the blockade was able to do-- I mean, just look at the oil exports from February, I think, to May, 2.1 million barrels per day, 1.15 million barrels per day, 900,000 million barrels per day. And then by the time you got to the full month of the blockade after about a half-month of the ceasefire, you had only 64,000 barrels per day. Only four ships got past the US that month before we got into the month that led to the negotiations that got into the MOU. So this will be effective.

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Obama cut the nuclear deal and then delivered to Iran an enormous amount of cash and turned a blind eye basically to the proxies and the missiles and drones. So if you think of Iran's defense posture as being a triad of the nuclear program proxies and disruptive military capabilities, we got in one leg of the triad we got temporary and reversible restrictions and then a complete green light to the Iranians to develop everything else. So that was I think a huge mistake in American strategy and Donald Trump has reversed that and he has returned deterrence and the credible threat of military force to the equation. And for that alone I give him an A. I give him an A+ for that. It's absolutely necessary. You can hear a lot of arguments especially when talking to our European friends, they say that the Strait of Hormuz was open before the war, now it's closed, the problem hasn't been solved, it's just been worsened and so on. And my answer to that very simply is what was your plan to stop Iran from developing a nuclear weapon? What was your plan from stopping Iran from putting its nuclear program behind a wall of missiles and drones that was going to exact that if allowed to continue to develop was going to exact such a high price from the United States if it attacked them that we would never be able to use them, we wouldn't have the military option. So I think that what Donald Trump did was absolutely necessary if he hadn't done it, what the Americans and the Israelis together did was absolutely necessary, if he hadn't done it then every American base in the region was under threat and we were going to have a nuclear armed Iran in very short order, the price of doing anything about it was going to become prohibitive and we also had an Iran that could be the proxy of China in the event that we were to go, that China was to make a play for Taiwan, it would be able to close the Strait of Hormuz and the Baba Mandeb and so on. So I think we need to also see it in that global level. So I give him very very high marks for taking this on and expending the political capital that it took to do it.

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Host of my view, Laura Trump joins us now. Laura, so let's start with that question. They're obviously the democratic socialists, the communist wing of the party. They're having a great summer. Will this be something that they'll be celebrating in the fall or will most of these democrat socialists who won in these primaries lose in the general? - Well, that is the real question, Rachel. November will be very telling for the future of the democrat party. They have a huge problem though. They have an enthusiasm problem, and they have had that for quite some time. They used all of their capital for four years to try to hype people up about Joe Biden. And when their voters realized they'd been lied to about this guy, they said, "Well, we're not really excited to vote for this party anymore. They don't really have any great rising stars. They're a party in debt and no one is excited about them." And so now what have they done? They decided to lean into where there was a little bit of enthusiasm and a little bit of energy in their party. Unfortunately, it was socialists, not democrats, who had that energy. But if they are able, come November, to actually see these people take seats in our House or our Senate, I think the democrat party we've always known is dead and gone, and I think their future will be of socialists and communists. And that is a really scary thing for every American. It should scare democrats. The establishment is terrified of these people, whether or not they've been willing to admit it, but it should be scary to every person in our country because once you go down that path, Rachel, you don't come back. - Yeah, you know, Laura, I don't think they're terrified of the ideas that the democrat socialists have. They're just terrified of losing power, that these primaries are not gonna work for them in the general. I thought this was an interesting thing for you to look at here. This is the Hill influencers most followed members of Congress on the democrat side. So the most followed are Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in the House, among republicans it's Ted Cruz, Rand Paul, and Jim Jordan. So what does this tell you? It looks like we could use some young people on the republican side as well. Your thoughts? - Yeah, absolutely. It's become cool to be a republican and Donald Trump was able to make that a thing, right? I don't know why they're following Elizabeth Warren, quite frankly, unless they wanna see her pop beers every now and again and take a swig. But yeah, look, we have an opportunity here where Donald Trump gave us an opening and he really did open up this party. We have to embrace that and we have to lean into that and we especially need to be continuing to talk like our friend Charlie Kirk did to young Americans, to people in college and even kids in high school and talk to them about why our system works far better than the democrat system, especially now, Rachel, that we're comparing a capitalist system and our system we've had in America for 250 years to something that we know destroys countries like socialism and communism. We have to continue to educate people and yeah, we could use some help from the younger members of congress to do that, absolutely. So let's keep communicating, let's keep talking to the kids out there and every American, again, as we head towards November because this really is an election that I think is as important as 2024. If you've liked what Donald Trump has been able to do for the first two years of his second term and you wanna see that continue, we have to win these midterms. - Last week in the primary in Wisconsin, my son-in-law who won his primary, if he's elected in the general, he will become the youngest member of congress and he will also be the first one born in this century. So there is some, and by the way, at his election party, half of the room were young people and half the other half were older. So the message matters, but so do the messengers and I think that's what you're saying. Let's talk about the messengers on your show today because you have, go ahead, why don't you tell us who you have today? - Yeah, we have James Blair, of course, from the White House. We have Florida Attorney General James Uthmeyer who is doing a lot right now. He's talked about holding Fauci accountable, which we would absolutely love to see. Avi Loeb is in charge of UAPs for the White House. That used to be called UFOs. Rachel, people wanna tune in to hear what he's gotta say. It's so fascinating. I went to visit him at Harvard in his office and we talked about all kinds of things that he's seen and what he thinks we could see. You have to tune in tonight. Willie Robertson and Corey Robertson, they have a new movie that they're part of coming out now that is family friendly and it's a great way to end the summer. So nine o'clock tonight, I will see everybody there. I never miss it, Laura. Thanks for joining us.

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