06-23-25 - *FULL SHOW* US Strikes Iran; Jen Griffin; MG Bill Enyart; Fred Smith RIP

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
We get producer Dragon back today. We get Mandy Connell
back today. They're both back from the trip they were
on together with a bunch of KOA listeners to Korea.
In Japan, Dragon left a package of Japanese ramen on
my desk. We don't know if it's spicy. There's no
English writing on it, so we are going to have

(00:21):
some ramen at some point. But I'm so happy to
have them back. And obviously we're going to spend most
of our time today talking or not most much of
the time today talking about what's going on in the
Middle East. But if I might, since I like to
warm up a little bit slowly on a Monday, just
give me, just give me a few seconds here to
tell you why it is that I had such a

(00:43):
good start to my day. So my younger kid is seventeen,
and this means that his primary mode of communication when
it comes to his parents is a grunt. You ask
him a question, sometimes hard to tell if it means
yes or it means no, very hard to tell. He

(01:04):
does apparently know how to speak, because every once in
a while I hear him speaking with other people, with
friends and so on. But with us, it's and this
morning I was up very early. I'm always up early
on workdays, even not on work days, and I had
pretty much the show laid out the way I wanted
it to. I had done a lot of my work already,

(01:26):
and my kid happened to be awake. And this was
around six in the morning. Let's say I had been
up for an hour plus already, and I had asked
him if I asked him, Hey, do you want to
go out to lunch with me later? He said, may not,
I don't know, And I said, well, he said, I'm
really hungry. I said, how about if we go out
to breakfast right now? And so my kid and I

(01:48):
at six point thirty this morning went over to the
original pancake house and had some breakfast, and we actually
had a really nice conversation. We talked about a lot
of we talked about college stuff, and we talked about
trading cryptocurrencies, and it was it was really nice. You know,
it was probably just half an hour of hanging out
with my kit, but it was the first time I

(02:10):
would say I've had a half hour of decent conversation
with my kit in quite some time. And so and so,
I really enjoyed that. So that was a very good
start to my day. All right, one just very tangential thing.
And then we'll jump in a little bit to Operation
Midnight Hammer, and that is I would like you to

(02:31):
know that this morning, the stock market is up and
oil prices are down. Now, last night it was the opposite.
Not big though, right, not big even even at let's
say five or six pm last night, shortly after American
stock index futures opened, they were only down a little
bit less than half a percent, very small move down.

(02:52):
Oil was up two percent to and a half percent,
not a very big move considering what's going on, Considering
where this stuff is going on. Oil has run up
already because there's a war there. Oil has gone from
let's say the mid sixties to the mid seventies. So
there's probably a fifteen percent premium in the price of
oil already. So it depends how this plays out. Like

(03:14):
if if the war were to stop tomorrow, I would
think the price of oil would drop almost ten dollars
pretty fast. If the straits of horn Moves get closed,
or there's some other massive disruption to oil flows, then
you can imagine the price of oil going up another
twenty dollars, thirty dollars, forty dollars, depending on how big
the disruption is and how long it were to last.

(03:36):
And that's why the market is kind of trading where
it is. I'm not trading oil. But to note now
that over the weekend we had US involvement in this war,
and well, yeah, we had US involvement in this war
and on you know, lots of Iranian threats and YadA, YadA, YadA.
To see the market open higher this morning is a

(03:56):
very interesting, very interesting thing. So I probably don't need
to spend a lot of time on the headlines, right,
I think everybody kind of knows the headlines. The US
sent B two bombers two Iran with a fabulous bit
of deception, by the way, where they they launched what
I think it was nine B twos, but sent two

(04:18):
of them west towards Guamp, towards Hawaii and Guam and
all that. And it was funny. Somebody mentioned to me, like,
B two is going to Guam, and I said, that
doesn't make any sense at all, and and and it didn't.
But it was a diversion. And so they sent they
sent those and then they kind of snuck the other
ones off, and they just flew east for like eighteen

(04:40):
hours or something and did what they did and then
flew home. And I'll tell you what if you had
a chance to catch the press conference that Pete Hagsath
and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, his name is
Kine C A I N E. His call sign is
Raisin raising Kine. He Trump loves that nickname, by the way,

(05:01):
absolutely loves that nickname. It was a remarkable press conference
and just the quality of execution of this mission was incredible. Now,
of course it's true that Iran has not a lot
left in the way of air defense, but they probably
have more than zero. And of course they knew that
Florida would have been a primary target, so you would

(05:22):
think that whatever air defenses they did have would be
a raid to try to defend that place in particular.
And yet it appears that not a single shot was
fired at Americans.

Speaker 2 (05:31):
Right.

Speaker 1 (05:32):
There wasn't an Iranian fighter aircraft that got off the
ground to try to intercept. There wasn't a surface to
air missile that got fired at them. Nothing, nothing. I
didn't even know if they were painted by radar. NB
two's are so stealthy. I mean, this is the purpose
of them. It was just an incredible exercise and demonstration
in American capability. And there's a lot of politics to

(05:55):
talk about. There's a lot of domestic politics to talk about,
there's a lot of international politics talk about with all this,
But I just want to take a minute or so
to do something that I don't get to do very often,
but I have a little bit more recently when we've
come to this Iran and Israel stuff, and that is

(06:15):
I want to say an enormous thank you to President
Donald Trump for recognizing the enemy and recognizing that it's
an enemy that never has and never will, negotiating good faith,
and for doing what needed to be done. I mean,
this needed to be done a long time ago, right.
Iran killed a few hundred Americans in nineteen eighty three

(06:40):
in a couple of separate attacks. And by the way,
if you don't know much about that history, go buy
Jack Carr's first non fiction book called Targeted Bay Route.
It's an incredibly well researched book and with lots of
interviews he did of people who were there, it's an
incredible story. Targeted Bay Route by Jack Carr. In any case,

(07:01):
I would argue that one of the biggest failures of
the Ronald Reagan presidency was he turned tail and ran
and he never made Iran pay a price for that,
which was a shocking and terrible thing. Considering that you
will remember, either because you lived through it or because
you remember your history, that during the Islamic Revolution in Iran,

(07:23):
four hundred and forty four Americans were taken hostage. The
Jimmy Carter administration tried and failed to rescue them, and
on the day of Ronald Reagan's inauguration as president, they
were released because the leaders in Iran at that time
Iotola Hoomany, were afraid of Ronald Pardon, did I can't

(07:47):
hear you? Did I say something wrong? You said? Four
hundred and forty four Americans, sixty six Americans for four
hundred and forty four days. My bad, sorry, four hundred
and forty four days they were kept as hostage, were
released on the day that Reagan was inaugurated because they
were afraid of Reagan, who had correctly talked about peace
through strength but then didn't actually do it when it

(08:08):
came to Iran. He did do it. Reagan did do
it when he came to the Soviet Union, and that's
you know, with Gorbachev, tear down this wall and so on,
and he is responsible for the end of the Soviet Union,
although it didn't happen until George H. W. Bush was president.
Reagan really did it. But when it comes to Iran,
Reagan failed, and every president since Reagan failed until now.

(08:29):
Until now, this is the most evil regime in the world.
And that's saying something. The biggest state sponsors of terrorism
in the world. I didn't know until today, and I
only learned about it because Iran, because Israel attacked it today.
That in Tehran there is a giant digital countdown clock
that is called the Destruction of Israel clock, and it

(08:50):
counts down to someday in twenty forty, in the year
twenty forty, where the current Iatola Kameni said that Israel
will be destroyed. So they created this and it's the
it's the beating heart of Iranian regime propaganda. And Israel
destroyed it today. But that shows you what that regime
is about. They have been killing Americans. They've been killing

(09:12):
Americans for forty years. They've been killing allies of Americans,
for forty years. They've been attacking you know, Jewish centers
and synagogues and wherever they can for as long as
they've been around. And this regime needs to go. But
the people are the ones who need to take out
the regime. We should try to set the conditions. We
shouldn't try to take out come any ourselves, but as

(09:35):
Israel should, and I don't mind if we help where
Israel doesn't have a capability, take out Iran's capability or
potential capability for nuclear weapons. That's what we did over
the weekend. It was exactly the right call by President Trump,
and I'm very grateful for it. We have an immense
amount of stuff to do today. I'm going to be

(09:56):
coming back and forth during each hour to talk about
the stuff in Iran, Israel US. I've got guests coming
up in the at ten thirty and eleven thirty about it.
Feel free to text me questions that you've got about it.
I don't guarantee that I can answer them, but I'll
do my best. I will do my best on that.
So let me just do something that's really kind of

(10:17):
out of out of left field, although that's more of
a baseball and out metaphor, and I should be using
a football metaphor, so you know. University of Colorado's football
star Travis Hunter second overall pick in the NFL Draft.
He was taken by the Jacksonville Jaguars, and I just
wanted to share this story with you. This is from

(10:37):
NFL dot Com. The Jacksonville Jaguars have signed Travis Hunter
to his rookie contract, the team announced yesterday. Check this out, Channon.
How old do you think this dude is? What is
he like? Twenty two to twenty three somewhere in that area.
All right? Did you read? Did you know the details?
I know you don't care that much about football, but

(10:58):
you go to every you go to every CU home
game and most and away game you go to? Do
you go to every CU game over the course of
the year, home and away? Yes, okay, this is a
four year deal valued at Check this out, Channon, because
it's even more than you make forty six million, six
hundred and forty nine thousand, one hundred and fourteen dollars.

(11:20):
And I wonder why that last one hundred and fourteen,
but it's all right. I'd take it to forty six million,
six hundred and forty nine thousand, one hundred and fourteen deals,
of which Channon thirty million, five hundred and sixty six thousand,
six hundred and twenty eight dollars is a signing bonus. Wow. Wow.

(11:41):
And they actually do have him listed playing both offense
and defense, which basically never happens, and he is. There's
only two other first round picks who have not signed
contracts yet, and one of them is Jodday Barron, who's
an back signed by the Broncos. So anyway, there you go.

(12:02):
Congrat seriously, congratulations to Travis Hunter. And what an incredible
thing get a forty six year old contract. I mean,
let's say the dude, let's say the dude is twenty
three years old. That means his contract is paying him
two million dollars for every year he's been alive. I
know it's a stupid way to look at it, but anyway,

(12:23):
so there you go. All Right. The other story that
I wanted to mention to you, and I'm pretty sure
Mandy's going to talk about this as well, because I
saw her post something on x formerly Twitter about her
her own blog. By the way, my blog is at
Rosskominsky dot com. You can see my guests and the
stuff I'm going to talk about on the show. It's
at Rosskominsky dot com.

Speaker 2 (12:43):
I do.

Speaker 1 (12:44):
I put a lot of stuff up there, and I
hope to make it a thing that you will find
potentially a useful either add on or replacement to taking
your time to check out the news in the morning.
A lot of information there about not only important things,
but interesting things as well. And then free advertising for
my friend Mandy. She does the same with her blog,

(13:04):
which you can get to at mandy'sblog dot com. All right, so,
headline from the Denver Post Barry Morphew indicted in murder
of wife Suzanne, more than three years after the original
charges were dropped to the body of Suzanne Morphew, who
vanished in twenty twenty, was found in twenty twenty three
in a shallow grave near Moffatt. If you ever hear

(13:26):
what's his name? Brain Crampschannon the comedian with the moth joke,
Norm who was in studio with me and dropped the
F bomb twice with me in studio. Norm MacDonald nor
McDonald has a really funny story slash joke In typical
Norm McDonald's story slash joke way about shallow graves. It's
pretty funny anyway. Anyway, Barry Morphew has now been charged

(13:50):
for the second time in the death of his wife.
It's almost always the husband who did it, right. I'm
not saying they'll prove that he did it, but if
I had to bet on who did it, I would
bet that he did it. And this is just one
of those sort of sensational stories that's great for the media.

(14:10):
Of course, it's a terrible story. You know, I didn't
know Susanne Morphew, but seems like a perfectly nice woman's
you know, dead found in a shallow grave, as they say.
The original case was dismissed in part because it seemed
like the investigators and the prosecutors and everybody involved in
on the government side did a really bad job the

(14:31):
first time, and also probably there wasn't enough evidence maybe
to convict him, but heerl quote from the Denver Post.
All charges against him were dropped in twenty twenty two
after prosecutors mishandled the case and were sanctioned for discovery violations,
misconduct so egregious and ultimately led to the disbardment of

(14:53):
the Eleventh Judicial district district attorney Linda Stanley. So in
any case, the the twelfth district, the attorney the DA
there now a gal named Ann Kelly has taken over
this case, and you might ask, well, how could it
go to a different district. So I believe the eleventh

(15:13):
is where the more Fews lived, but the twelfth is
where the body was found. So I believe that is
why it can move to this other district. I do
not have a prediction on how this case will come out.
I guess I will just offer something that's a little
more philosophical, and that is, if he did it, I
hope they get it. Good morning, I'm Ross, Thanks thanks

(15:36):
for being here. Interesting obviously interesting to see what happened
over the weekend with Donald Trump doing what he did.
And let's just talk about the politics of it for
a minute. So President Trump. I have frequently praised President
Trump as being the most anti war president in my lifetime,

(15:58):
and I'm truly grateful for that. And I want to
make something really clear that I think some of his
strongest supporters are struggling with right now, and I'm not
criticizing those supporters for this. I just want to talk
about it briefly, a lot of people voted for Donald Trump.
In part there are a lot of reasons, right, people

(16:20):
vote for a lot of reasons, the economy and you know,
price of groceries and crime in the border. One of
the things, though many of his supporters voted voted for him,
is because he has always and by always, I mean
in his first presidential campaign end in this presidential campaign,
campaigned against war, getting America out of wars and not

(16:42):
starting new wars and so on. And if you were
looking at Twitter this weekend or X this weekend, you
will see a lot of people saying, this isn't what
I voted for, the attack on Iran, And you will
see other people putting up poll questions is this what

(17:02):
you voted for? And again, I'm not criticizing anybody who
votes for a presidential candidate because that candidate wants to
keep us out of war. I admire that, and I

(17:22):
I want to talk with those folks just for a minute,
those folks who are thinking to themselves, I didn't vote
for this, I don't want this. This is a bad idea.
Some folks even seem to be looking at it as
something of a betrayal and I let me put it

(17:47):
this way. Iran is a very different situation from anything
this country has faced in a long long time. And
some folks online have been talking about it similar to
Iraq with the WMD stuff. Right, Oh, Iraq has weapons
of mass destruction, therefore we must invade them. This is

(18:07):
really different. I know, on the surface it might seem
the same. It's a country right next to Iraq. It's
a country that's spelled almost the same as Iraq. It's
a country that denies having a nuclear weapons program. But
the differences are actually bigger than the similarities. Let's just
dispense with Iraq quickly. First. Okay, First, Iraq did not

(18:31):
directly threaten the United States. Nor did Iraq threaten to
destroy Israel, like every day of the week threaten to
destroy Israel. So Iraq wasn't really posing that kind of threat.
The other thing that's rather interesting, and again I'm gonna
be a little careful with this, but there was this
WMD stuff, and there was all this intelligence, quote unquote

(18:53):
intelligence about Iraq having weapons of mass destruction. And one
of the interesting things of that situation, and again it's
not worth spending too much time on because Saddam Hussein
is gone. You will recall that Iraq and Iran had
a very big, bloody war that basically ended in a stalemate.

(19:16):
And after Saddam Hussein was toppled and then captured, before
he was executed, obviously, before he was executed, he did
an interview with a guy whose last name is Piro, Pi,
ro O, or Pino, one of those. I think he's Piro.

(19:37):
I think he is an FBI agent, but he didn't
tell Saddam he's an FBI agent. And they had a conversation,
and this is an official conversation, and so this guy's
you know, taking notes and writing this stuff down, preserving
it for posterity. And one of the things that came
out in that was that Saddam, who I'm saying, had

(20:02):
sort of denied having weapons of mass destruction, but not
really and not in a very convincing way. And then
he went out of his way to kick out inspectors
who wanted to come inspect four weapons of mass destruction.
And what he told, what Saddam Hussein told this is

(20:23):
just a bit of interesting history, right. What he told
this interviewer was that he wanted that ambiguity in the
question of whether or not he had WMDs, because he
was hoping that Iran, not the US, that Iran would

(20:46):
have enough fear that Saddam might have WMDs that they
wouldn't attack again. And so he left it kind of
hanging do I have WMDs or do I not? And
his behavior was an this is key, and again it
doesn't really apply to Iran, but it's an interesting enough
story that I wanted to share it with you. Saddam

(21:07):
Hussein's behavior was intentionally designed by Saddam Hussein to make
it seem like maybe he has them, because he thought
of that as a deterrent against Iran. It ended up
obviously backfiring on him spectacularly, in addition to the fact
that not just US intelligence but British intelligence and others

(21:28):
as well got it wrong. But they got it wrong
in part because Saddam wanted them to think, wanted the
world to think maybe I have them, Which is interesting.

Speaker 2 (21:38):
Now.

Speaker 1 (21:38):
Iran, as I mentioned earlier in the show, had until
this morning, a giant countdown clock that's called the Destruction
of Israel Clock. Israel destroyed it earlier today. And Iran
is a nation that, unlike Iraq. What unlike Iraq before

(22:02):
we went into Iraq, at least Iran has the blood
of at least hundreds, maybe thousands of Americans on their hands,
starting back in nineteen eighty three with the attacks on
Marines in Lebanon done by an Iranian proxy force. Iran
says every single day that they want to destroy Israel,

(22:25):
to kill every Jew, and remember just to they don't
talk about the US as much, although when they have
those you know, government funded astro turf rallies in the
Central Square in Tehran, you got people yelling death to
death Israel and death to America. But remember, just from
the government's perspective, Israel is the little Satan and America

(22:48):
is the big Satan. So if your goal for the
little Satan is to nuke them and kill every one
of them, what do you think your goal for the
big Satan is? So I get very frustrated, have been
very frustrated over the past hours when looking at Twitter
and seeing people who should know better or stupid people

(23:09):
like Representative Marjorie Taylor Green, who no reason she should
know better except that she's in Congress, But she doesn't
even have two brain cells to rub together these people
talking along the lines of it's not our fight, Iran's
not our enemy. Let Israel handle it, It's not our problem.
Of course it is. Of course it is. Iran has

(23:33):
killed way more Americans than they've killed israelis not due
to lack of trying, although I suppose if it's actually
I should take that back. Prior to October seventh, Iran
had killed a lot more Americans than israelis. Okay, October
seventh changed that, and now the number is probably pretty close.

(23:56):
And Iran is an implacable and intractable enemy, not just
of Israel but of the United States. And what's being
done to Iran now is massively in the national interest
of the United States of America. And anybody who tells
you that this is Donald Trump acting as Netan Yahoo's

(24:22):
b word, I saw that this morning. They're either idiots
or they're anti Semites, or both. I mean, anti Semites
are by definition idiots, but they're We got to keep
this really in mind. It is our fight. And there
has never been a time, at least since the end

(24:47):
of Reagan's presidency when the Iranian capabilities have been more
vulnerable than they are right now, And so there's never
been a better time to attack, and there's never been
and a more important time to attack because Iran is
certainly on the path to a nuclear weapon. Let me

(25:12):
talk about another thing. There's way too much conversation about
the intelligence. And this is a thing I meant to
mention in a moment ago. You got all this talk about, well,
the intelligence on Iraq's WMD was wrong, and we went
to war over that. What if this intelligence is wrong too.
The only thing that could be wrong about this intelligence,

(25:35):
and it may be that bb netanyah who intentionally exaggerated,
or maybe they found some new information in the last
couple of months. Either one of those is about likely,
about equally likely. The only question is have they decided
all ready to build a bomb or have they only
decided to put all the placed, all the pieces in

(25:57):
place that they could build bomb really quickly once they
make that decision. And is there any actual difference between
the two. I don't think so. Some people are saying, well,
we don't have the intelligence, and Telsea Gabbard said, you
know back in March that the American intelligence community has
not assessed that the Iranian regime is actually trying to

(26:20):
make a bomb right now, and I would suggest to
you that it doesn't matter because they're doing everything else. Imagine,
and I'm gonna use this stupid analogy because I'm president
of the Bad Analogy Club. Imagine that you are let's see,
I'm gonna make this up as I go along. Imagine
that you've got a history of drunk driving and you've

(26:42):
killed people while driving, and so you are never allowed
to own a car again. And suddenly you start buying
auto parts and you're you're putting together all of the
parts that you need to build a car that you
are not allowed to own. And you start assembling all
the well, you start putting some of the parts together

(27:03):
in little assemblies. Even you put together the front of
the car, and you install the headlights and whatever you
call that part of the car. And you and you
put together the chassis of the car, and you install
the seats. You haven't dropped the engine in yet, but
you've got thousands of parts. And then you start assembling
the thousands of parts into a few dozen different assemblies

(27:26):
that at some point you could if you wanted to
put them together to make a car. Now you're not
allowed to have that car, and you're hiding all of
this so that people can't go see what you're doing.
And when people ask why did you buy that relay
that is a car part, you say, oh, no, nothing,

(27:46):
I'm really not I'm really not making a car. It's
just a coincidence. Don't worry about it. But you're known
to be a killer when you are in possession of
a car, because you've killed people drunk driving more than once.
At that point, wouldn't it be reasonable for the government
to come in and say, no, you can't have this again.

(28:07):
I know questions of constitutionality and all that when it
comes to American law, but just go with me on this,
on the on the on the concept you can't have
all this. No, it's not a car. I realize it's
not a car, but it could be a car in
a week and nobody would be doing what you're doing.

(28:28):
If the intention wasn't to actually turn it into a car.
You can't have that, and therefore you either have to
let us in to take away all that stuff, or
we want to blow it up. Those are your choices.

(28:49):
That's a fairly bad analogy, although I hope I've had worse.
And that's what's going on here. That's what's going on here,
and it is our fight. One other thing I want
to mention and keep in mind Twitter or ex there's
some interesting conversations there. There's some fine people there, but

(29:11):
also the worst people in the world are definitely there.
And one of the things I saw yesterday coming from
many people, but including Donald Trump's former national security advisor,
General Michael Flynn, who is, as far as I can tell,
a borderline trader and a very very bad person. He

(29:39):
posted a picture satellite pictures of Fourdoh before the US
attack and after the US attack, and the differences in
the pictures are not very big, and he's he says, oh,
can you tell the difference? And his implication, in which

(30:01):
is just sheer Iranian propaganda, is that the US didn't
actually accomplish anything with those attacks because the pictures don't
look very different. So what I did, and I'm sure
General Flynn knows this already. If he doesn't, he's an
even bigger moron than I think. And if he does,

(30:22):
he's an immense liar and should be considered a trader
short of the death penalty. But that in that direction,
and that is this I just went to. You know
the name of the bomb, right, It's called a MOP
massive ordinance penetrator. By the way, do not confuse it
with the MOAB, the Mother of All bombs. These are
not the same. The Mother of All bombs detonates at

(30:45):
or just above the ground. It's an air burst thing
that is designed, for example, to be used to attack
cave systems. So it blows up before the ground, in
front of the cave openings and over presses all these
caves and destroys everything inside. It is not the same
as the massive ordinance penetrator, which goes a couple hundred

(31:08):
feet into the ground before detonating. So what I did,
and that's all, that all seemed pretty obvious to me.
So I just went onto chat GPT and I asked,
will a massive ordnance penetrator cause significant damage on the
ground above? And chat GPT's answer, and I'm not reading it,

(31:29):
but I'm I'm remembering chat GPT's answer is these bombs
are specifically designed not to cause very much damage on
the ground above. They go in, they blow up, they
destroy things underneath, and on the surface you will see
very little, not nothing, but not much but not Yeah, right,

(31:54):
maybe a little sinking if it created some kind of
crater underneath, and some stuff sinks in a little bit.
But it's not the kind of thing you would see
with a conventional weapon, with what Israel is striking now,
you know Tehran, with with these bombs that hit the
ground and blow up right on the ground. It's not
like that. And General Flynn has to know it. And
I just want you all to just please be very

(32:15):
aware that there are people out there who should know better,
who should be better, who are spreading Iranian propaganda, and
this thing is out there. You had all these people
showing these pictures and saying, oh, it looks like we
really didn't accomplish anything. Oh one last quick thing on that.
You know what, this reminds me of it? So they
said in the press conference they were targeting the air

(32:36):
vents into into four to oh that were looking to
drop the missile into the air vent. Okay, I'm not
even going to tell you what my answer is in
my brain, but when I heard that, it reminded me
of a very particular thing. What do you think that
reminded me of? Or what does that remind you of?
Don't say it out loud. Shannon you can just tell
me in my ear if you've got an idea. But
what does that remind you of? With the US targeting

(32:59):
this air vents so that the missile can get in
exactly exactly where they wanted to go in rather than
just hitting any old place on this particular target, a
very specific thing came to my mind. That's exactly right. Okay,
I want to do something else with you for a moment.
And in fact, hold on, where did I where did

(33:20):
I put this?

Speaker 2 (33:21):
All?

Speaker 1 (33:21):
Right? Here? Let's let's start with. Let's start with this.

Speaker 2 (33:24):
Federal Express absolutely positively has to be there overnight.

Speaker 1 (33:29):
That great. You remember that Federal Express is FedEx now
right like Kentucky Fried Chicken is KFC now officially officially,
not just what we call it, Federal Express when it
absolutely positively has to be there overnight. I want to
say rest in peace to one of the truly great
businessmen in modern American history, Fred Smith. Fred Smith founded FedEx.

(33:55):
The legend has it that when he was in college,
I think it was Yale, he he had a business plan,
and the business plan was basically the concept of FedEx
more or less, and he got a bad grade. Jane,
were you saying you got to see or yeah, he
got some kind of bad grade on the project, and
the professor said, like, that's incredibly impractical, and what are

(34:17):
you ever going to do with that? Now? Fred Smith
came from money. His dad made a ton of money,
and fred Smith inherited some millions of dollars and he
put four million dollars that he had gotten from his
own inheritance along with ninety one million dollars that he
raised through venture capital financing, which was an immense amount

(34:40):
of money at the time, and founded Federal Express with
ninety five million dollars. Again, that was a lot of
money in nineteen seventy one. That's not big money. Now.
In nineteen seventy one, it was a very big money
and it lost money for the first three or four years,
and final he had turned to profit and we know

(35:01):
what FedEx is now. Fred Smith died at the age
of eighty. Don't know how. I haven't seen a report
that says how he died. He served in the Marines.
He was injured in battle. And I'm going to quote here,
I'm gonna go to the very end of this piece
of business Insider dot com or near the very end
hold on, where did this go? I lost it? Smith

(35:24):
said his time in the Marine Corps gave him a
high tolerance for risk. Business decisions felt light compared to
the life and death choices he had made in Vietnam.
At one point in the early days, FedEx had just
five thousand dollars left. Smith took the money, flew to
Las Vegas, turned it into twenty seven thousand dollars playing blackjack,

(35:45):
and used the profit to pay fuel suppliers for the
FedEx airplanes. How about that? Yeah? Fred Smith is really
a remarkable guy. He's from Memphis. Yeah, Memphis, Tennessee, that's

(36:06):
where FedEx still is. And a true American great and also,
I will note, a big champion of free trade. Of
course he would be given given what he does for
a living. But a guy who turned an idea that
a college professor poop pood into one of the great
American businesses. Rest in peace, Fred Smith. Based on my

(36:27):
bad analogy earlier of building a car one piece at
a time. Two quick corrections. I think I called Jad
a baron a running back. He's cornerback. We were talking
about Travis Hunter getting a forty six million dollar rookie
contract and there being only two remaining first round draft
picks in the NFL who haven't signed a contract yet,
and one of them is Jaded A Barron with the

(36:47):
Broncos cornerback. I said, running back, that's wrong. The other
correction is I said earlier that Representative Marjorie Taylor Green
of Texas has maybe two brand cells, and a listener
corrected me, said, Ross, you're wrong. At last count, she
had over two dozen brain cells.

Speaker 2 (37:07):
Uh.

Speaker 1 (37:08):
And I said, that's that's fine, but there are reports
of mass suicide in that particular location, mass suicide of
brain cells. Dragon. Welcome back, Hi there, It's good to
see you, you too, buddy. How was the trip?

Speaker 3 (37:21):
Tell us?

Speaker 1 (37:21):
This tell us anything and well for people who don't
even know the big picture. Where did you go and why?
And with whom? We went?

Speaker 4 (37:28):
The Mandy trip to South Korea and Japan. It was
a beautiful cruise that we took, hit half a dozen
different ports in Japan and had a fantastic time.

Speaker 1 (37:38):
Were you did you Did you sleep on the boat
every night or did you have nights in hotels on land?

Speaker 4 (37:44):
Well, the first night in Korea in Seoul right, and
then throughout on the on the ship the entire entirety
of the rest of the trip.

Speaker 1 (37:52):
Was there a I'm gonna ask you questions over the
course of the show, So let's dive. Let's start with Korea.
If you had to pick a highlight of Korea other
than the food, which is my favorite food, what's the
first thing that comes to mind.

Speaker 4 (38:04):
We went to j Ju Island that has a volcano
there that we actually hiked up, and it was active volcano.
It hadn't been that, it hadn't done anything about five
thousand years, okay, but it was just seeing the precipice
and seeing the bowl and everything was wow, just fascinating
for us.

Speaker 3 (38:20):
Was it a difficult hike? You walking on sand? That's
it wasn't really say it was. It was carved in
the rock and everything. So it wasn't a relatively difficult hype.
But it was not fun, you know, but it was.
It was good.

Speaker 4 (38:31):
It was once you got to the top and you
sat there for a few minutes, you start looking around.

Speaker 1 (38:34):
You're like, this is amazing. I'm not sure if you're
even aware of this man he might have told you,
but when you were at maybe your first or second
day in Japan, I did h I interviewed her. Oh
and she yeah, and so she talked about of course,
she said the weather was really bad at first. Yeah,
it was very rainy and very yeah, and then well

(38:57):
we'll get to Japan later, but it's it's good to
have you. Thanks for the ramen. We will share the ramen.

Speaker 4 (39:03):
I don't know how many packs it, so if there's
like a dozen packs, you're only getting like one.

Speaker 1 (39:07):
It feels to me like there's three or four packs
in there, so so we'll figure that out. And on
the picture, it doesn't look like it's very spicy, but
I bet it's very delicious.

Speaker 4 (39:15):
But yeah, I believe you had texted me prior to
leaving that you need to needed to have some Jju
pork or black pork ramen or something, all those kind
of lines.

Speaker 1 (39:24):
Oh that was a Korean Yeah, TG pulgogi spicy pork
is kind of yeah, I used.

Speaker 4 (39:31):
The little translator app. I was in one of the shops.

Speaker 1 (39:33):
Yeah, so did you buy that in Japan or Korea?
This is Korea? Yeah? Oh nice? All right? And did
did missus Redbeard enjoy the trip as much as you did? Most? Definitely? Yes? Okay,
all right, and how is it traveling with Mandy. Is
she awesome? Yeah, yeah, it was. It was a cruise.

Speaker 4 (39:51):
We all did our own different our own excursions and everything,
so you know, we we saw them, you know, a
dozen or so different times throughout and the had our
own vacation, unlike the Ruskinski trip, which was still fabulous.

Speaker 1 (40:03):
Yeah, we did every week and everything together together. Yeah,
very interesting. I'm I'm quite sad to have to tell
you that we have basically not had a Miller Moth season. Well,
in a way, I'm happy to tell you because the
one year that you actually leave Colorado is the one
year we don't get any moths. It's kind of like
it's kind of like it'll it'll it'll rain if you

(40:26):
don't take an umbrella, and it won't rain if you do.
So if Dragon's here, we get the moths, and if
Dragon leaves, we don't.

Speaker 4 (40:32):
We did not take an umbrella to Japan, so.

Speaker 1 (40:34):
It rained all the time, all the time. Did I say, Mark,
what did I say about Texas? Gosh, I'd all right.
If I said Marjorie Taylor Green is from Texas, then
that was a serious brain cramp because she's from Northern
Georgia and I don't know what I would have been
thinking about there if I said that. Anyway, lot, there's

(40:56):
a lot going on. I want to make sure you know.
Coming up less than twenty three minutes for now, we're
gonna have Jennifer Griffin from Fox News, who I think
is the single best national security reporter in the country.
And then an hour after that, eleven thirty three, we
are going to have a retired major general a Bill
Enyert on the show to talk about his take on
this war. All right, so, Dragon, before you joined us

(41:21):
just now, I was talking about the satellite photos of
the sites that Afordo, in particular, that the US targeted
with these massive ordinance penetrators. And you've got Iran and
pro Iran propagandists like General Michael Flynn who used to
work for who used to work for Donald Trump until

(41:41):
he lost his freaking mind, posting these pictures where the
before and after picture of the attack look quite similar.
And the reason is that they used these massive ordnance
penetrators that tunnel into the ground a couple hundred feet
before they blow up, and they're not supposed to cause
a lot of damage on the surface. They're supposed to

(42:01):
cause damage underneath, and that's what they do. And so
you have these propaganda saying, oh, look, the US didn't
accomplish anything because the before and after pictures there's only
modest surface damage. There's only supposed to be modest surface damage.
And then I said, it was interesting to hear during
some of the reporting and the press conference that what
the targets were doing is they were aiming for the
air vents, the ventilation shafts to because any big underground installation,

(42:25):
you're gonna have to have a way to get old,
stale air out and get new air in, right, So
they've got these ventilation shafts, and so they were aiming
for those. And when I heard that, it reminded me
of a particular thing right away, and so I asked listeners,
what does that remind you of? And you know what's interesting,
dragon Most people who responded said the thing that I

(42:46):
was thinking of, but a bunch of other people said
another thing. So what's the first thing that comes to
your mind when I give you, you know, paint this picture
of needing to hit basically like a tunnel to destroy
a huge target.

Speaker 4 (42:59):
It's been out for what a year, year and a
half now, but you and I saw a special screening,
advanced screening of Top Gun Maverick, and that's exactly what
they needed to do. They needed to blow open event
and then send the bombs down in that event.

Speaker 1 (43:12):
So you know what's interesting is that is not what
I was thinking of. That is the other one that
lots of other people thought of. Okay, is there another
one that comes to mind? Oh? Star Wars. Yeah, that's
the one that because I'm older than you, I'm not
that much older than you. The one is much is newer,
and we did see it together. Yeah, I thought of
Star Wars. I thought of taking out the Death Star,

(43:35):
and you know, Andy, Andy texted in saying, Ross, I
heard this morning that the mop can be is so
accurate that it can hit the top of a soda
can after being dropped from a plane of fifty thousand
feet possible. I don't know, I don't know, but just

(43:55):
quite quite a remarkable thing, and imagine the level of technology.
I do think that there is a message here, not
just to Iran obviously, which is the main recipients of
the message, but also to Russia and China and anybody
else who wants to test our country's military capability and
the will of this particular president, and that's part of

(44:17):
the reason that I support what he did. Made a
mistake as incredibly stupid as saying that Marjorie Taylor Green
was from Texas when she's from North Georgia, and I
just figured it out. I just figured it out. So
in that segment or I was thinking about John A. Baron,
the cornerback who I mistakenly called running back, who is

(44:40):
from Texas, And as I started talking about Marjorie Taylor Green,
I had the webpage open in front of me. It's
got Jadday Baron's picture on it with his jersey that
says Texas on it, And it must have just gone
right into my brain and right out of my mouth.

Speaker 4 (44:56):
You're not even an hour half into the show on.

Speaker 1 (45:00):
Just pack up and go home now, I mean, what
have I done? What have I done? Without you? Dragon?
It's true, It's true. You know I did have what
was it juneteenth? You weren't here, Yeah, but June teenth
was an hour and a half shoe because of an
early Rockies game. Man, that's a fabulous length of time

(45:20):
to be on the radio, isn't it. You're wrapping up
almost now now, And it was so it was so easy.
It was much less than half the work of doing
a regular show, right, it was. It was wonderful, It
was really, really wonderful. I wish I had a job, Actually, seriously,
I say this all the time. I wish I had
a job where I could work four longer days instead

(45:43):
of five days of however many I probably worked eight
or nine hours a day right now, four tens or whatever. Yeah,
I would much rather work four tens or four elevens.
But in this particular gig, you just can't. You know,
we can get away with it. Dragon, And you were
in this world for a while. Rock and roll hosts,
not morning shows, not morning shows, but the afternoon show.
They do a thing called tracking, right, which basically means

(46:04):
not all the time. Is it a secret? No? Not really?
All right, Let's just say a lot of your afternoon
house where it sounds like they're talking to you. They
actually recorded it in advance. And I'm a little jealous.
I wish I could do that. You can do almost
a whole week in a few hours, yeah, right, a
music host can. Yeah, It's it's an amazing thing. Let's
just do a local story here because there's obviously a
lot of national international stuff going on, and I am

(46:27):
still trying to get a guest from the Colorado State government,
from the kind of economics people for the legislature about
their prediction that next year is going to be pretty
rough for the Colorado budget and a fifty percent chance
of recession in the state and that sort of thing.
But the governor released this last Tuesday, a thing that
it's called a dashboard, right, and this dashboard is supposed

(46:50):
to keep track of federal funding cuts or federal spending
cuts that would reduce funding to the state of Colorado.
Quoting from our news partners at kadivr as If Tuesday night,
the dashboard said that the state had successfully defended over
two hundred and eighty two million dollars in reinstated federal funds,
but faces another fifty six million dollars in funds that

(47:12):
are at risk and another seventy six million that have
been terminated or not renewed. Colorado's third and fourth congressional districts,
located in southern Colorado, are facing the well. The fourth
congressional district, it doesn't is way more than just Southern
Colorado anyway, and the third is Western Colorado too. I
didn't write that, so don't yell at me about it.

(47:33):
Are facing the biggest enacted proposed cuts. Now, this is
what I wanted to share with you, just briefly, and
this is Governor Poulas in a press release last week.
The Trump administration is trying to rip away state and
local funding that supports cybersecurity and public safety, helps Colorado's
access or charge low cost electric vehicles, helps people access
food and more. And so I just I know this

(47:56):
is going to sound heartless, right, but why is any
of that the federal government's responsibility? Why is it the
federal government's job to pay for Coloradin's and usually like
upper middle class Coloradens, to charge their electric vehicles. Now,

(48:17):
cybersecurity is potentially a true national issue, and to the
extent that it's part of an overall federal plan, maybe
it's reasonable to have some kind of federal funding there.
But again, why should the federal government be paying to
charge people's cars or even to access food. And I'm

(48:38):
not making light of people who might have an issue
acquiring food, but why is it the federal government's responsibility
rather than the state or nonprofits. And here's the problem
with all this. When the state does this stuff themselves,
they have to do it within the context of a
balanced budget. When the federal government does this stuff, they

(49:01):
don't because they can borrow money. And this is the problem.
And this is why almost everything the federal government does
outside of the Department of Defense, it shouldn't do, and
it shouldn't be allowed to do. And all of this
stuff that redistributes money to states for their own state programs,
including all the scammy stuff around Medicaid, this all has

(49:22):
to stop because as it is, it causes state governments
and many voters to feel like it's free money, when
in fact they are just bankrupting our children. And so
when I read this story saying that they have successfully
defended two hundred and eighty two million dollars in reinstated
federal funds, I have to say that just makes me sad.
I'm so pleased to welcome back to the show my

(49:43):
friend Jen Griffin. Jen is chief national security correspondent for
Fox News. Prior to the Pentagon job, she reported from
war zones around the world, lived in Israel for several years,
covering things like the Second Intifada, and she is the
best national security correspondent working in the country today. And
welcome back to the show. It's good to have you.
Thank you so much.

Speaker 2 (50:03):
Rov.

Speaker 1 (50:03):
I don't want to spend a lot of time on
the overall headlines. I think people know them. I want
to start by asking you what is something interesting you
have learned since you started work this morning.

Speaker 5 (50:12):
Well, I think the most significant thing is in the
last hour, we've learned that there's significant intelligence warnings focused
on Cutter right now. Of course, Cutter is where the
US has its largest air base in the Middle East.
Ten thousand US troops are normally based there, Lots and
lots of warplanes normally hangared there, and it's just a

(50:34):
few minute flight from Iran. And we understand that there's
significant warnings, intelligence warnings that Iran is moving into position
possible short range and medium range crews and ballistic missiles
that could be targeting that base or other American targets
in Cutter. The airspace over Aludeid has been closed. Cutter

(50:55):
announced that just moments ago, as well as embassy personnel
at the US embassy and other embassies in Dohak Cutter
have been told to shelter in place. Many had been
sent home. Many of the family members of US embassy
staff and airman had been sent home earlier last week.
And we did have some satellite images from last week

(51:15):
that showed that the US had moved many of its
unhangared aircraft out of Vali Deeds so as not to
be a target for the Iranians. But very very significant
warnings right now. And we also just saw that the
Iranian president issued an alert saying that the strikes over
this weekend that the US carried out on those three

(51:36):
nuclear targets in Iran will not go unanswered.

Speaker 1 (51:39):
Ross Well, okay, one comments and one question. First, Obviously,
we have a huge basin Cutter and Iran. If they
decide to attack, Americans would consider that. But Cutter is
an interesting choice in that, you know, if Iran misses
Cutter and hits something in Cutter, Cutter has been the
most pro Islamo fascist regime of the Gulf Arab states,

(52:00):
So that's an interesting choice. You can respond to that, well,
do you want to stay anything about that?

Speaker 5 (52:05):
Well, what I would say is I agree with you.
It is unusual you would think that Cutter is probably
one of the it's been serving a mediating role between
Iran and Iranian proxies and the Israelis as well as
with the US, so it is significant. But we also
understand that airspace over UAE, the United Arab Emirates, where
the US also has a very very large base where

(52:27):
a lot of its warflight fighting planes, the F twenty
twos and F sixteens and others are based, that is
now closed. So it is obvious that to me that
the US military was always expecting a response from Iran,
and that those bases we've been warning, those two in
Cutter as well as UAE, as well as Bahrain. Don't

(52:49):
forget Bahrain, which is home to the US Navy's Fifth League.
Those are prime targets. You'll remember, after custom Sulamani was
killed when President Trump was in twenty twenty, the US
military took out their top general when he was visiting Iraq,
and shortly after that it took about ten days for
an Iranian response. This time, we expect the respond response

(53:12):
to come a lot sooner. But the Iranians fired dozens
of ballistic missiles at US bases in Iraq, and it
was only through the grace of God that American airmen
and troops were not killed in that strike. I believe
there were a number of traumatic brain injuries as a
result of the concussive issues with those ballistic missiles. So

(53:36):
the US knows that Iran is going to respond, and
it is important that Iran, from the Iranian regime's point
of view, that it be something very big and spectacular
to show that its population that they still are in
business and to keep their sort of dignity intact. So
I don't think that it'll be as long as ten days.

(53:57):
In fact, right now, it really feels, based on sources
that I'm talking to, that it could be imminent in
even this evening.

Speaker 1 (54:05):
Okay, I know you have a ton to do and
you got other places to go, so I'm gone ask
you just one last question, and it relates to what
you were just talking about. So I would argue that
the Iranian regime has been trained since Reagan and unfortunately
including Reagan, that the US simply won't react, at least

(54:25):
not in a major way, to any any damage that
the Uranians cause. And in a way, I don't blame
them for figuring that forty years of history would continue.
But then they challenged the wrong guy, and Donald Trump reacted, Yeah,
you have to go.

Speaker 5 (54:39):
Interrupt because there are posts occurring that their explosions heard.

Speaker 6 (54:43):
Oh boy, utter capital of Doha.

Speaker 1 (54:44):
So we're going to have to get.

Speaker 5 (54:45):
Back to reporting. But okay, I think everyone should probably
watch and it's a pretty serious development.

Speaker 1 (54:52):
Okay, I've got Fox on in my studio right now.
Thanks jen All right, that's Jennifer Griffin, chief National security
correspondent for Fox News, and great to get our even
for five minutes. I was gonna have her earlier and
then they said they can't, so she kind of snuck
in a few minutes with us today, for which I'm
I'm very very grateful. Let's see, I'm going to just
try to keep in fact. You know, Rob Dawson had

(55:13):
sent me something just you know, twenty minutes ago about
the alert, and the alert has been on TV a
fair bit this morning. But I'll just read this. Rob
Dawson sent it to me a few minutes ago. Fox
News is reporting what's being called an imminent threat to
the US airbase in Cutter, and official from Cutter has
told the network the airspace in the country has been closed.
There's no official statement from the Pentagon. There are about

(55:36):
ten thousand American military personnel here. The airbase is about
one hundred ninety miles from the Iranian border. It's a
major US military hub in the Middle East and a
key location for military operations in the region. All right,
So that's what Rob Dawson sent me. Let me just
talk about a couple other things I have no idea
I have. And this, actually, this is probably the reason

(55:57):
that in the last half an hour or so, oh
that this rumor has been going on, that the Dow
Jones has gone from being up fifty to being down
one hundred and twenty five, and the S and P
has gone from being up twenty to being down seven.
Not massive moves, but clearly the market's looking at something here.
And in fact, let me just see if I can
get this. While I'm talking to you, I'm going to

(56:21):
see if I can find oil futures prices, because oil
prices were down this morning and still down, not down
as much as they were, but still still down, which
is quite an interesting thing. So let's talk about this
a little bit. This is what I was gonna get
to with Jen, but she had to go. So you

(56:45):
have to believe that Donald Trump is going to back
up what he says. He's done it with Iran and Israel.
He has proven to Iran that unlike every president prior
to Trump, since the advent of the Islamic Republic Republic
of Iran in nineteen seventy nine, every previous president, including

(57:05):
as I said before, unfortunately Ronald Reagan too right. Ronald
Reagan was strong against Russia, but not against Iran. They've
come to learn that we're a paper tiger and that
we don't do anything, and we just flap our gums
and then let them get away with killing hundreds of
Americans or thousands. And Donald Trump said, We're not playing

(57:27):
that game anymore. And Donald Trump came to believe correctly
that the Iranian regime does not negotiat in good faith
and that they couldn't be trusted. And Trump said to them, look,
I'll make my decision within two weeks. And when we
had Admiral Stabritas on the show last Friday, it was funny. Actually,

(57:50):
I don't know if you happen to be listening to that.
I said, Admiral, I wonder if you agree or disagree
with me that two weeks is too long and at
first actually had uh Stevrita said, I agree with you,
but he said he agreed with me because he actually
heard me wrong, and he thought I said it's not
long enough. He thought I said we should give Iran
longer than two weeks. And his argument was Uran's not

(58:13):
gonna be able to rebuild, and Iran's not gonna be
able to do anything significant in three weeks or four
weeks or five weeks or six weeks, and we should
give a little longer for diplomacy. And I almost never disagree,
almost never disagree with st Rita's but I did on that.
I thought, not only did I think two weeks was

(58:33):
too long to give Iran, I also thought, and I
said on the air, that we won't actually give them
two weeks. And some people were talking about what Trump said,
as if he said I'm gonna give Iran two weeks
to decide, But it's not what he said. He said,
I'm gonna make my decision within two weeks. That's what

(58:56):
he said. I'm gonna make my decision within two weeks.
All right, So let me give you an analogy again.
As president of the Bad Analogy Club, I'm going to
make my decision within two weeks whether I want to
buy my wife a birthday present this year. Oh, I

(59:17):
just made the decision. I just made it right there,
five seconds after I said that to you. But that
doesn't mean what I said was a lie. I told
you I was going to make the decision within two weeks,
and I did. That's what Trump did. Trump was already leaning,
I think based on reporting. And there's Jennifer Griffin on
TV right now, and in fact, you know what can

(59:38):
you Dragon? Can you get Fox? Do you have it already?
Let's have a listen to what she's reporting at the
moment towards Cutter.

Speaker 7 (59:45):
As you know, as we discussed, the Alidd based, largest
US base in the Middle East, is about forty miles
from the capital of Cutter from Doha. You can see
the night skies over Doha right now and their explosions
in the air. Some of those may be air defense
missiles Patriot missiles trying to intercept those ballistic missiles. We
have no indications of impact at this point. As you

(01:00:08):
and I discussed before, there were satellite images from last
week of Aludid, where the US normally has a large
number of transport planes refueling planes. That those tarmacs had
been emptied of those warplanes, but Aludid normally would have
ten thousand US troops based there. There had been warnings
to US embassy staff to shelter in place and at

(01:00:31):
other embassies across Doha. We also now are learning that
the airspace over UAE, the United Arab Memorates where the
United States had the military has a large another large
military base, that that airspace has been closed. And we
also understand there should could be an imminent threat to
US troops and personnel at bases in Iraq that if

(01:00:53):
you remember just four years ago, five years ago, Iran
fired ballistic missiles of them at US troops in the
wake of Cosum Sulamani's killing. So a lot of intelligence warnings.
We brought it to you on air just a little
while ago, and now it seems that those explosions are
being heard over the capitol of cutter All right.

Speaker 1 (01:01:13):
Let's leave that there. That's kind of cool to have
her on like like literally seconds before she goes and
does that report on Fox News. Jen Griffin is the
best national security correspondent in the country, and so I'm
looking at Twitter right now X and somebody I don't
know but posted a short video saying a friend of

(01:01:34):
his had sent it to him from cutter and it's
it's a very short video, but what you can see
is some little specs of light going upward from the ground.
So those would those would likely be something like Patriot missiles,
something designed to take out incoming incoming missiles. So let's

(01:01:56):
talk about this a little bit more. By the way,
that the now is now around flat. You know, like
literally one minute ago, I said to you it's down
one hundred and twenty. Now now it's now it's about flat.
The market's very very vulnerable right now. Oil is still down,
which is which is quite interesting. Oil is still down,
And I wonder why oil is going lower when Iran

(01:02:20):
is getting more aggressive. And the only thing I can
think of off the top of my head is that the
market is thinking that Iran is signaling that the way
they're going to retaliate is by going after American military
basis and not necessarily by closing the Strait of Hormos.
I also think that there were a ton of people
who crowded into this oil trade last week looking for

(01:02:44):
something very bad to come out of this war very
bad for oil. Okay to come out of this war,
and if Iran is not going to try to restrict
oil flow through the Strait of Hormuz, then a lot
of these folks who bought this stuff just betting you know,
it's going to get up regarding oil, are now, you know,
kind of being forced out. That's just that's just my guess.

(01:03:06):
I'll note one other thing with oil. So around twenty
percent of the world's oil supply comes through that Strait
of Hormus, most Iranian oil, but also much oil from
these golf Arab countries like Bahrain and Oman and Uae,
that kind of thing. Now, the US is almost self
sufficient in oil, but that doesn't mean oil prices and

(01:03:29):
then gasoline prices in the US wouldn't go up massively.
If there is a global shortage of oil, our prices
would in fact go up massively, and you could see
the price of gasoline go up twenty five cents fifty
cents a dollar for a period of time. Here's if
Uran doesn't go down that road. I think there are
two main reasons. Number one, if Uran were to close

(01:03:53):
the Strait of horm moves, it would massively reduce their
own revenue. Now they sell oil pretty cheap because they're
sanctioned and all this stuff, so they can't really get
the global price of oil, but they get a lot
of money from oil. And if they were to do this,
they would close off their own ability to earn at

(01:04:13):
least half of their normal sources of national income. Also,
if they were trying to close if they were to
try to close the Strait of Hormuz, either with just
blockading it with their own navy or mining it, putting
mines in so that other ships couldn't come through, two
things will happen. The United States Navy will destroy the

(01:04:34):
Iranian navy and that would take somewhere in the neighborhood
of one day. And also, we have very good mind
sweeping capabilities, so if the Iranians try to mine the
Strait of Hormones, we would come clean it up and
destroy their navy and they wouldn't be able to sell oil.
And then here's another thing that probably not that many

(01:04:55):
people are talking about. In boy, this market is just
bouncing around like crazy. China buys a lot of oil
from Iran, and they also buy a lot of oil
from Russia. They don't care who they buy from. They're
happy to buy oil from these sanctioned nations because it
gets them oil at a huge discount. And obviously China

(01:05:16):
uses a lot of energy. They are a big country,
a big economy, a big manufacturing economy, and they want
this cheap oil. So it would not surprise me if
China told Iran you better not mess with the strait
of hormones. That's a guess. I'm only guessing. I don't
know if we will ever know. I really don't. So

(01:05:38):
now we've got all these stories, these headlines of the
looks like an attack on an American military base in
Doha Cutter, We'll see how it plays out. President Trump
has said to Iran, if you think that was bad,
what we just did to you, that's nothing compared to

(01:06:02):
what will happen to you if you attacked any if
any American is hurt by an Iranian attack, then what
we just did to you is going to look like
a little amuse boush not even an appetizer compared to
the main course. And this is an incredibly dangerous and
desperate thing for the Iranian regime to do. Now, to

(01:06:25):
give a little credit in a sense toward those folks
who have expressed deep reservations and in fact opposition to
the United States getting involved in this war. What they've
said is they don't want the United States to get
into another war. And the Trump administration's hope clearly was

(01:06:48):
that by demonstrating this level of capability and will, and
that's what war is about, right, War is about capability
and will, and that's basically all it's about. Trump demonstrated
that we have both. Trump demonstrated, as he did in

(01:07:08):
his first presidency, his first term when he warned Syria
not to do a particular thing and they did it,
and then he loved a bunch of Tomahawk missiles at him.
Trump demonstrated that he will back up those red lines.
And I will add one other little psychological thing here.
And this has been more about trade policy than about war.

(01:07:32):
But I think Trump was really upset when he heard
about this new meme Taco and really again, taco Trump
always chickens out. And it has been primarily used to
talk about how Trump would threaten tariffs and then back
off when it became clear that the economic harm from

(01:07:53):
them was going to be bad and he didn't want
to deal with that blowback. But I think that a
certain part of Trump's psycholic now is they're questioning whether
I check it out generally, whether I back down, and
I'm going to prove to them that I don't. And
in party wants to prove it to him because he
likes looking strong. But another part of him wants to

(01:08:15):
prove it for a much better reason, and that is,
if you want to have peace through strength, you better
demonstrate that you're willing to use the strength if you
need to. And Trump demonstrated that. So now he has
said to Iran, you better not attack any American interests
or personnel or there will be hell to pay. And

(01:08:37):
what we just did to Fordoh and is Fahan and Natans,
that's going to be small compared to what we do
next if you attack Americans. But it looks like Iran
is attacking Americans. And so if that is actually what
is happening, you've got to think that the US that

(01:08:57):
Trump will feel that he must retelli further against Iran. Now,
you know what, I have so much more to say
about this. I don't want to be late on this break.
I have so much more to say about this. Just
keep it here and we'll keep the conversation going on KOA.
Normally I don't do this much of a show on
one topic, but clearly the US is at war now.

(01:09:18):
I didn't finish, so all right, let me give you
a couple headlines, and then I want to finish this
thing I was saying about before, talking about before, regarding
folks who have been very reticent for the US to
get involved. A lot of Donald Trump's base in fact
a little bit upset. They felt like Donald Trump campaigned
on not getting US into any more wars than he
is now, and YadA, YadA, YadA. So we're gonna talk

(01:09:40):
about that in a second. Let me just share with
you just you know, you really kind of got to
look at Twitter these days x these days to get
the fastest news reports. We are aware that there have
been explosions heard in the sky, don't yet know if
anything has hit the ground over Doha in Cutter. There
are also reports of air sirens, you know, warning sirens

(01:10:04):
going off in bah Rain, and Open Source Intel, a
pretty good Twitter account that seems to have a lot
of good information, says well, actually they're quoting the Israeli military.
The Israeli military says that it has conducted multiple strikes
on missile and drone storage facilities in western Iran, which

(01:10:26):
are potentially missiles and drones that would be used to
launch at United States military bases in those Gulf Arab states,
like Cutter and like bah Rain and so on. So
Israel is going after the sites in Iran that would
seem to be the most likely sources of weapons that

(01:10:46):
Iran would use. Now, Rob Dawson, the KOA News team
actually have just posted on Twitter Iranian State And by
the way, you can follow us at KOA Colorado. All right,
KOA Colorado on X, and you can follow me at
ross Puten ro ossp u ti n on X. And
that has been my online handle for many, many many years.

(01:11:09):
It has nothing to do with Vladimir Putin anyway. KOA
posted Iranian State TV reports the Iranian Revolutionary Guard has
begun military operations with military with missiles firing toward Cutter,
home to a large US Air Force base. So let
me go back, because I didn't properly finish my thought before.

(01:11:30):
There are a lot of folks, conspicuously many people in
Donald Trump's base, but not only there, who have been
looking to Donald Trump as the president to not get
us into any more wars. Now, when the Trump administration
did what they did attacking the nuclear facilities at Ford

(01:11:51):
oh Isfahan and the Tans and especially fourd Oh with
the mop MP bombs, which which go a couple hundred
feet into the ground before they explode. And that's why
they don't appear to make a lot of damage on
the surface, because they cause an emens immense amount of
damage under the surface. You know, some of these some

(01:12:13):
of these folks said that, well, let me let me
back up. I think that the Trump administration hoped I'm
not saying they expected, but I'm sure they hoped that
demonstrating the combination of capability and will would cause the
Iranian regime to realize, we better back off, we better

(01:12:36):
stop attacking the US, or no, we better not attack
the US, and we should probably back off in some
of our attacks, at least on Israeli civilians. But they
have done none of the above. So why have they
done none of the above? I think the reason they
have done none of the above is two reasons. One,

(01:12:57):
the Iranian regime I'm talking about the is so called
Islamic Republic, and the key part of their military. That's
called the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corp. Which is not all
of their military, but it's a lot of their military,
and it's the most important part of their military. There
are two reasons. One, they are true believers. They really

(01:13:19):
really want to kill Americans and to destroy Israel and
to kill Jews. This is what they honestly believe is
their mission, and so they are fanatics. And now that
it's on, now that it's game on, it's game on.

(01:13:39):
The other thing is that from a domestic political perspective,
this is the only reason they have to exist. Now,
much of the nation there in Iran does not want this.
And keep in mind, I think my listeners know this already,
but I'm going to reiterate just in case. Historically, other

(01:14:04):
than Israel, Iran has been the best educated, most intellectual,
most economically developed country in the Middle East other than Israel. Now,
a lot of these Gulf Arab states have caught up
in a certain way, right. They have an immense amount

(01:14:25):
of money from all their oil, and they build these beautiful,
gleaming cities with the tallest building in the world, and
just all kinds of incredible fancy stuff. I mean an
indoor ski resort on an island in the Middle East
where daytime temperatures might be one hundred and twenty degrees,

(01:14:45):
but you can ski because they have so much money.
But historically they're kind of a backwater and an intellectual backwater.
They are the Middle Eastern equivalent, or the global equivalent
really of the nuvou riche right new money, which is

(01:15:08):
to say, people who have lots of money but no
clue how to spend it, no class. That's how the
Persians have always looked at the Arabs, whether or not
the Arabs had money. And Iran is a country that
prior to the Islamic Revolution. And by the way, I
was in Iran briefly as a kid prior to the

(01:15:29):
Islamic Revolution. I can't say I remember it very well,
but I'm probably one of the few Americans who's been
to Iran and Afghanistan. Did it when I was a kid.
My parents took us. There were when I say we,
when my parents were transferred from Guam to southern California,
and instead of just flying east with a stop in

(01:15:49):
Hawaii and going to California, they went west. My parents
had four kids under the age of nine and took
all four kids to Hong Kong, Bangkok, Nepal, India, Afghanistan, Israel, Iran, Turkey,
and then London and then on to the US. Imagine
that trip with four kids under the age of ten.

(01:16:12):
Iran was a country full of doctors and engineers and
brilliant scientists and a really intelligent and intellectual place until
it gets taken over by Islam, which is a religion
that since then, well maybe forever, is a religion that,

(01:16:33):
while it does produce some good art, tends to not
produce too much good of anything else because it is
an anti intellectual religion. I'm sorry if I'm offending anybody
with that. But countries in the Arab world that were
very advanced in science and math and astronomy and all

(01:16:54):
this stuff instead just turned into black holes of nothing
import and are interesting being done except for, as I say,
some pretty art. Once Islam arrived, and once Islam arrived
in a serious way, right, fundamental Islam. I don't mean

(01:17:15):
just any Islam, but fundamental Islam. Once that arrived in Iran,
it basically destroyed the place. And the doctors left, and
the engineers left, and the brain drain out of Islam
out of Iran was really significant, kind of like the
brain drain out of South Africa when the African National

(01:17:35):
Congress took over and became and I realized or why
they were mad. South Africa had a racist government, anti
black government for many, many decades, and when the Blacks
took over, they were mad, and they deserve to be mad.
But in any case, they had a massive brain drain
from there as well. And that's turning out to be
a problem for them. But now you've got a government

(01:17:59):
who's the only reason for being is Islamo fascism. How
is that going to play out? If their only reason
for existence is to serve the small minority of the
country that wants to destroy Israel and the US, they
can't back down. So they're in this position where they

(01:18:21):
cannot attack US interests, but they also cannot not attack
US interests. And so here we are. And again to
give a little credit to those folks who have been
very hesitant to support Donald Trump on this, and I
mean eat Trump supporters who've been hesitant to support Donald
Trump on this because Trump opponents they have a much

(01:18:42):
harder time supporting anything. They have been afraid of getting
dragged into a bigger war, a more regional war at least,
and right now it looks like that might be happening.
So let's lighten it up for a minute, because we've
been talking about war a lot, and obviously there's news
breaking all around us right now. And when you know,

(01:19:03):
Iranian State TV says they are attacking US bases in
the Middle East. We'll have to see how President Trump reacts.
It wouldn't surprise me if by the time I talk
with you again tomorrow there has been some kind of
American retaliation. But I want to just take them in
here and do something else because we do have a
guest on the war in the next segment, So I
want to say again, welcome back Dragon. Hi there. It's

(01:19:26):
very good to have you back. And I asked you
before if you had a highlight in Korea, I want
to ask you now. Japan was a bigger part of
the trip with tell us one or two highlights from Japan.

Speaker 4 (01:19:37):
I really enjoyed the Golden Pavilion in Kyoto that was
very beautiful, as well as Mountain Fuji. It's the starting
of the rainy season there, so it was very cloudy
as we discussed earlier that it's.

Speaker 1 (01:19:49):
Pretty missed close. Were you to the mountain?

Speaker 4 (01:19:53):
I don't know exactly what we were near at some observatories. Yeah,
and sure as we got there, the clouds parted just
enough to will we got see the peak. So it
was and it was kind of it was funny because
we really couldn't see it until you saw it, and
it smacked you in the face because we're looking, oh,

(01:20:13):
mountain range, mountain range.

Speaker 1 (01:20:14):
I wonder where nope is right there to just look up.
You must have been closer than I was when I
was there, but I had otherwise the same experience. So
we stayed in a little place that was kind of
like a like a hot springs resort, and but I
think we were quite a bit further away from the
mountain than you were. But it was cloudy the whole time.
And there was one time where we're sitting there looking

(01:20:37):
in that direction and the clouds parted, and there is
just something about the shape of that mountain that is
so magical, and it's it's it's alone. It's the only
thing there that's that message. Yeah, that's that's pretty cool.
And I love Kyoto too. Kyoto is a fabulous, a
really great city. What was your favorite food on the trip?
I did a whole bunch of ramen.

Speaker 4 (01:20:57):
I'm not a fish guy, so I didn't We visited
a whole bunch of fish markets and everything, but I
didn't know.

Speaker 1 (01:21:04):
Okay, this is a long shot. Yeah, and it's probably
going to describe a lot of places. So when I
was in Kyoto, I went to this ramen restaurant that
you you you walk in and it's it's really skinny,
and on the left side there's a machine where you
kind of order on the machine and put in some
coins and you kind of buy a ticket for your food.

Speaker 4 (01:21:24):
Huh.

Speaker 1 (01:21:25):
And then you go sit in this skinny restaurant that
I want to say, has like seats at a like
the bar sort of on the left and a few
small tables on the right. Does that sound like a
restaurant you were in.

Speaker 4 (01:21:36):
Like looked like the lanterns hanging in there the Yeah,
I think so, I think you might have been a
nice machine restaurant. But yeah, we put coins in a
little vending machine. They give us a ticket, and then
we walked over to a counter. What our number was called. Yeah, yeah,
I got some meat on a stick. I don't know
what the meat was, but it was meat on a stick.
Fabulous so hunh yes, absolutely fabulous.

Speaker 1 (01:21:58):
Wow, that's great. I'm I'm I'm glad you and missus
Redbeard got to go on that trip. I don't know,
you know how the Japanese and Koreans would have done
pronouncing Mephistopheles.

Speaker 4 (01:22:09):
I saw that Andy did find. Why didn't you tell
you the coffee house?

Speaker 2 (01:22:13):
Yes?

Speaker 1 (01:22:14):
Yeah, so there's a.

Speaker 4 (01:22:15):
Coffee house that Mandy found Mephistopheles coffee or something.

Speaker 1 (01:22:19):
So was that Japan of Korea? Do you remember? I
don't recall. I don't recall either. That's pretty funny. Who
knew there was a coffee house name for you in
uh An East Age? Oh well, it's very good to
have you back. Yeah, it's fun to be It's very
And Dragon's wearing his Bronco shirt today. It's getting right
getting right into the mood, all right. Obviously, what's going
on today in the Middle East is a very, very

(01:22:40):
big deal. Fox News is reporting that Iranian state TV
is saying that they are attacking US bases in the
Middle East. Other people are reporting that Israel is attacking
Iranian bases in the western part of Iran, which is
where you would expect those attacks on Iranian ass on
American assets to come from. So Iran is trying to
support us in this. Meanwhile, the stock market is all

(01:23:01):
over the place. In fact, so eight minutes ago I
told you the DOO had gone from up one hundred
and twenty to down one hundred and twenty. It's up
one hundred and twenty again, as it is being reported
right now that air defenses successfully intercepted the missile attack
targeting the airbase. And one of the things I wonder about,
just going to say as quickly because we're going to

(01:23:22):
have a guest in the next segment. One of the
things I wonder about is if Iran is intentionally making
an attack that they understand will be ineffective so they
can tell their people we're attacking the US. But maybe
they hope they won't attract the most aggressive United States
retaliation because Trump said, if you hurt anybody, we will

(01:23:44):
crush you. But it doesn't look like they actually hurt anybody,
because it looks like we shot down all their missiles.
Maybe they're trying to have it both ways. They have
done that before, all right, one quick comment before I
get to my special guest. These days, and not just
regarding this war, so much of our politics has become

(01:24:07):
so tribal that often what you have is that where
there's anything involving Donald Trump or a decision that Donald
Trump made, you end up seeing, especially on TV and
on Twitter and all this sort of thing, where there's
some financial motivations involved in how people comment. But you
will find people who are either massively wildly effusively praising

(01:24:34):
the president with no real qualms or questions, and then
the exact other side, massively aggressively criticizing the president with
no real conversation about the potential upside. And some of
the conversation about the war has been a little higher

(01:24:55):
quality than that, but not that much. And so I
think you all know because one of my most frequent
show guests is my friend Leland Vittert, who hosts on
Balance on NewsNation week nights at seven pm. And so
I watch a lot of NewsNation these days. I watch

(01:25:17):
it more than any other cable news network. It's not
even close, really, And I was watching it yesterday and
I heard a guest on I saw and heard one
of their guests who I thought, of all the military
folks in particular who I heard talking about the American

(01:25:39):
strikes on the Iranian nuclear facilities, I thought he was
the most well to coin a phrase fair and balanced,
the positives, the negatives, just a really sober assessment, and
I thought, I want this guy on my show. So
joining us right now is Major General Bill enyart So.
Bill served active duty in the US Air Force and

(01:25:59):
then nearly third years in the Army National Guard. He
was an Adjutant General of the Illinois National Guard, and
he was a member of Congress from southern Illinois. Bill,
thanks so much for making time to be with us
here on Kowa.

Speaker 2 (01:26:15):
Great to be with you. And I hope the weather's
cooler in Denver than it is here and southern Illinois,
but I doubt that it is.

Speaker 1 (01:26:20):
It wasn't yesterday, but it is now. It's seventy something
and lovely today. So you can be a little jealous.

Speaker 2 (01:26:27):
I'm very jealous. Ninety five here.

Speaker 1 (01:26:30):
Yeah, that's what we had. That's what we had yesterday.
So let me just before we get into sort of
macro stuff, I want to start with a micro thing,
just because of what's going on. I'm sure you're following
the news, and there were these warnings and then apparently
I'm a missile barrage aimed aimed at the US military
base in Cutter but it looks like nothing landed and

(01:26:52):
they were all taken out in the air. And I
also I thought it was interesting that the Iranian government
announced they were doing this right, And I'm wondering if
you think this could be Iran trying to have it
both ways, which is to say, we're going to say
we're attacking for domestic consumption, so that it looks like
we're not just sitting here getting beaten up, but we're

(01:27:13):
not really going to attack enough to attract a massive retaliation.

Speaker 2 (01:27:16):
Is that possible, Well, you know, a lot of folks
are speculating that it is. I think that's certainly a possibility.
You know, the Iranians have launched two hundred missiles at
a time against Israel, so I think it's entirely possible.
This strike evidentally was only ten and it sounds like

(01:27:39):
one at one of our bases in Iraq, So that
could well be that they're attempting to dial back, that
they're attempting to dial back the tensions here and of course,
the the rallies are continuing to pound Iran. Could well

(01:28:01):
be that are in all the US topite one war
at a time.

Speaker 1 (01:28:05):
Okay, So I'm gonna give you my sort of thesis
about this big picture thesis, and then I'd love to
know where you agree, where you disagree, and your big
picture thesis about this. So again, really macro from my perspective.
So I am old enough. I am old enough to
remember the mass murder of American marines and other personnel
in Lebanon in nineteen eighty three. I am old enough

(01:28:30):
to remember one of Ronald Reagan's few true failures, which
was to turntail and run and essentially not do anything,
not retaliate. And the Iranians have been trained for forty
years that the US is a paper tiger, and I'm
not all that surprised that we thought they thought we
might still be. So they challenged Donald Trump and they

(01:28:52):
realized he's a different guy. I I supported Trump's strikes
on the nuclear facilities, but I supported them while saying
this is not a no risk or maybe even not
a low risk proposition, although perhaps the lowest risk it's

(01:29:13):
ever been. That doesn't mean it's very low risk. I'll
stop there and let you respond to any of that
and add anything you want. You know.

Speaker 2 (01:29:24):
This, this is really such a complex situation and and
of course there are points to be made on either side.
Here's what concerns me the what is our long term
strategic goal here? You know, in terms of a tactical operation,

(01:29:45):
this was absolutely brilliant, unquestioned the synchronization, the planning that
went into this, the the this is this ran better
than a switch watch, the Swiss watch. Okay it was.
It was just unquestionably brilliant. But that's at the tactical level.
Where are we in terms of grand strategy, if you will?

(01:30:08):
How does this play into our long term strategy for
the Middle East? How does it play into our our
long term strategy with Russia?

Speaker 1 (01:30:18):
How long does it?

Speaker 2 (01:30:19):
How does it play into our long term strategy with
the world? And so I haven't heard a long term
strategic plan. Uh. You know that Donald Trump is infamous
for changing his mind from day to day, week to week,
let alone months to month. So uh, the what troubles

(01:30:41):
me is where where is this hit?

Speaker 1 (01:30:45):
You know?

Speaker 2 (01:30:45):
Sun Sus said something along the lines that the the
best battle is the battle, not fought, so you know
the uh, I think, uh, there well may have been
better ways to take out a Ram's nuclear capability than
than US bombing them. I've got a lot of confidence

(01:31:06):
in the Israelis. You know, their their operation with the
pagers brilliant, Their their intelligence, their military top notch. Now
do they have the GVU fifty seven bunker busters or
V two's to deliverum. No, but remember they managed to
get a virus into the Uranians introfusions a few years
ago and completely destroyed them. So uh, you know, I

(01:31:30):
could well have been that na who has played Donald
Trump perfectly here and gotten the Americans involved, which is
to hispin. You know. Another thing that's crossing my mind
this morning and then really just for the last half
hours while I've been paying attention to what's going on
over there, the leaders in each one of these nations,

(01:31:52):
whether you're you're talking about the Ayatola or you're talking
about that Yahoo, are you talking about Trump? Every one
of these leaders is upside down in public opinion poll
of their people. Uh, none of them are are popular.
And this war, whether you're talking about the Iranians getting
pummeled by the Israelis or the Israelis getting Uh what's

(01:32:12):
going on in Gaza? Uh? In Trump's numbers are upside down.
So that's an interesting situation where you have every single
leader involved here and putin of course, it would be
upside down if they gain a legitimate poll in Russia.

Speaker 1 (01:32:26):
So are you suggesting a sort of wag the dog
kind of effect where somebody starts a war to improve
their domestic political positions?

Speaker 2 (01:32:36):
You know, does that does come to mind? Doesn't it?
I mean, look, look, he he he can't afford to
end the war in Ukraine because if he does, he
admits defeat.

Speaker 1 (01:32:47):
Uh.

Speaker 2 (01:32:48):
The Ayatola certainly had to strike back against us. To
do otherwise would be to a defeat.

Speaker 3 (01:32:55):
Uh.

Speaker 2 (01:32:56):
And uh, Donald try his big beautiful bill. Is Is
that mean anywhere in the US Congress, which is of
course controlled by the Republicans, and you know, the National
Guard in California, in Los Angeles is and all of
a sudden dropped off the radar. All the oxygen in
the room is being consumed by these attacks and counterattacks

(01:33:19):
in the Middle East, and all while that's going on,
What we do, what are we doing in the Pacific?
You know what are we doing with China? What happened
to talk about tariffs?

Speaker 1 (01:33:28):
You know, it's all gone interesting. Yeah, So I will
slightly disagree, I think. I mean, I think Netan Yaho
is in a lot more or was maybe in a
lot more political trouble than Trump. As far as Trump goes,
he's upside down, but just barely. And I think Trump
feels like he's doing fine in the polling because especially
because he doesn't believe it anyway, uh net and Yahoo,
you know, before before the strike on Iran, if there

(01:33:51):
were an election in Israel, he almost certainly would have
lost his job. Now, I don't know, but I also
think NETANYAHUO was made for this moment, and his entire
political life has been built around trying to stop Iran.
So I don't think it's quite fair to attribute a tribute,
uh you know, domestic political polling as there as being
their their motive. Let me let me go with you

(01:34:11):
to the to the strategic question. Isn't it a reasonable
strategic gain for the United States of America, not just
for Israel, for Iran not to have, or at least
not to have soon the capacity to build a nuclear weapon.
Does I think that advances our interest in a lot

(01:34:33):
of ways. I won't get into all the ways.

Speaker 2 (01:34:37):
Oh, clearly, uh Iran not having a nuclear weapon is
in our best interests. It's existential for Israel. It's not
existential today for us, and it wouldn't be existential for
US for a decade or longer. Uh Iran doesn't have
delivery capability to get to us other than put the

(01:34:58):
shoe box and the malet an X.

Speaker 5 (01:35:02):
But the.

Speaker 2 (01:35:05):
It is an existential question for for Israel clearly. The
you know, but I think I think the question is
is larger just than the question of Iran having nuclear capability.
The rivalries in the Middle East go back not years

(01:35:31):
or decades, but centuries, and the Arab nations are standing
by very quietly while all this goes on, and and
clearly the governments that the leadership of those Arab nations
very much want to see Iran taken down more than
a peg or two here, uh, the the Iranians have

(01:35:52):
been fomenting trouble for everyone, not just the israelis, not
just the US, but indeed for for everyone in the
Middle East.

Speaker 1 (01:35:59):
For yeah, they attacked Saudi oil fields, remember.

Speaker 2 (01:36:02):
That absolutely, So you know, no one Uh. No one
in the Middle East fields sorry for Iran in this situation,
which is why I think that the the ideal here
would be to see the Israelis and the and the
Saudis uh uh get into a peace treaty and then

(01:36:29):
Iran would would just be completely uh boxed out of
out of any scenario, right, and you know, the Putin's
Putin's talking and uh and then Trump's tweet about Medvedev
talking about giving nukes to uh Iran, uh you know,
and then of course Trump turns around and threatens threatens

(01:36:51):
Russia with nuclear Socimur submarine. So uh, you know, this
whole thing could could easily a spiral out of control,
and I think I think people need to stop beating
their chests so a little bit here. Yeah, Russia, Russia
has not been able to defeat a country a third
its size with with tiny military capabilities compared to Russia.

(01:37:15):
Russia has turned out very much to be a paper
tiger in the Ukraine situation. So what what influence they
could have with Iran to me is questionable.

Speaker 1 (01:37:25):
All right, And Russia is not going to give Iran
a nuclear weapon. There's there's a zero percent chance of
that you know Russia, Putin is particularly Medvedev as well,
is Putin's little little puppet, their professional propagandas this is,
this is what they do. And I don't take them
too seriously. It doesn't mean they pose no risk, but

(01:37:46):
it just means I don't care what they say.

Speaker 2 (01:37:49):
Yeah, I don't you know, I don't think that they
would that Russia would give Iran nuclear weapon. After all,
Iran and Russia sure a substantial border and and uh
Iranian missiles could reach well within Russia. But I wouldn't
put it at zero percent. I would put it pretty
close to zero.

Speaker 1 (01:38:10):
Very good. All right, General, I have to I have
to leave it there. Bill Inyert was the Adjutant General
of Illinois for the National Guard there who was also
a congressman in representing southern Illinois. Thanks so much for
your time, very interesting conversation. Look forward to having you back.

Speaker 2 (01:38:27):
Terrific being with you today.

Speaker 1 (01:38:28):
All right, thank you, General. All right, Luku just uh huh.

Speaker 8 (01:38:34):
I'm going to normalize singing our greetings now, because that's
how they did Knea. That's how they say hello, at
that's how they say thank you.

Speaker 6 (01:38:42):
I loved it. It was so festive.

Speaker 1 (01:38:44):
Look at you.

Speaker 8 (01:38:45):
I know, I'll come back so exhausted right now.

Speaker 1 (01:38:49):
I bet how much?

Speaker 6 (01:38:53):
How much sleep did you get last night?

Speaker 1 (01:38:55):
I did last night pretty much.

Speaker 3 (01:38:58):
You guys loved that.

Speaker 1 (01:38:59):
Yesterday. Yeah, we got at noon.

Speaker 6 (01:39:00):
So we got back on Thursday.

Speaker 8 (01:39:03):
I made it until four thirty and I fell asleep
from my chair till six, went to bed, slept till
like six o'clock the next morning, and I was like,
I got this.

Speaker 1 (01:39:11):
You did it.

Speaker 6 (01:39:11):
Oh, oh, it's fine.

Speaker 1 (01:39:12):
Yeah, that was a dirty lie, right.

Speaker 6 (01:39:15):
I have slept through the night since then.

Speaker 1 (01:39:17):
I've been up at least for us right now randomly.
Oh my gosh, have some toast.

Speaker 6 (01:39:24):
The older I get the worst, the jet lag gets me.
I mean, that's that's just a fact.

Speaker 1 (01:39:29):
So your listeners really enjoyed the interview you and I
did by Zoom where yeah, you know, a third of
the way through your trip. But I haven't talked to
you since then, correct, So just I know you're going
to talk about a lot on your show. Would just
give us like one highlight of the trip from after
the time you and I talked.

Speaker 8 (01:39:47):
I thoroughly, absolutely, my favorite part of the whole trip
was exploring a culture that I knew almost nothing about right,
just just learning about the history and learning about the
mindset of the Japanese people, which is very interesting because
Japan just canceled a meeting with Donald Trump because he
wants them to up their defense spending, and Japan's like, sorry,
we're not interested in war. The entire country is a

(01:40:09):
pacifist country.

Speaker 6 (01:40:10):
And love that.

Speaker 8 (01:40:11):
Love the orderliness of Japan, like everyone does what they're
supposed to do in a no litter because there's no
trash can is a trash can.

Speaker 6 (01:40:22):
There's just you know it was. I loved it.

Speaker 8 (01:40:24):
I would one hundred percent go back. I will never
go back in.

Speaker 4 (01:40:27):
The summer ever, would say, do you miss the paper
towels in the bathroom?

Speaker 8 (01:40:32):
Well, I wish that we had been told that there
are no paper towels anywhere in any bathroom really, And
the Japanese people I saw these will they sell these
little microfiber cloths and everybody just buys and carries it
with them.

Speaker 1 (01:40:45):
Oh.

Speaker 6 (01:40:46):
Now, of course, the toilets.

Speaker 8 (01:40:47):
Will blow dry your butt because you're all super fancy
bidet toilets. Even in like the parks and stuff. You
sit down, really, you can push the little button to
make noise, so no one hears.

Speaker 6 (01:40:55):
You do your business delightful.

Speaker 8 (01:40:57):
Put no paper towels or even trying things to dry
your hands, which is just I don't even whatever Japan
you do you I was.

Speaker 1 (01:41:05):
In Kyoto in the summer and I felt like I
was gonna melt.

Speaker 8 (01:41:09):
I made a terrible error in Kyoto. We decided to
go to the monkey park.

Speaker 6 (01:41:14):
Now, it would have.

Speaker 8 (01:41:15):
Been fine if it had just been knee chuck and cbe,
but we had a couple guys with us that were
a little bit older. The monkey park, where there are
just monkeys running around, is at the top of.

Speaker 6 (01:41:24):
A mountain ross.

Speaker 8 (01:41:25):
So it says, oh, this is there's two hundred steps
to get to the monkey park. I'm like, oh, they
can handle two hundred steps. There's two hundred steps and
then another six hundred feet of elevation of switchbacks.

Speaker 1 (01:41:35):
Oh boy.

Speaker 8 (01:41:36):
So by the time we got up to the monkey
park in the rain, wearing a rain jacket, I was like,
I'm cutting weight for wrestling right now. I mean I
could wrestle in a smaller weight class right now. Because
it was just you're just soaked. And I know I
grew up in it in Florida, I have to turn
in my Floridian card because I can't do it anymore.

Speaker 1 (01:41:55):
That was the worst part.

Speaker 6 (01:41:56):
Was just the heat and the humidity nearly did me in.

Speaker 1 (01:42:02):
What's the worst thing you ate on the trip?

Speaker 8 (01:42:04):
Gosh, I don't think I ate anything that I wouldn't
eat again.

Speaker 1 (01:42:08):
Wow.

Speaker 6 (01:42:09):
And I ate a lot of weird stuff that I
a couple of things. I still have no idea what
it was.

Speaker 3 (01:42:13):
Uh huh.

Speaker 6 (01:42:13):
Like I was like, that looks good on that grill
over there that that guy's got. I'll have one of those.

Speaker 1 (01:42:17):
In our prior conversation, you mentioned a snail thing.

Speaker 8 (01:42:20):
Oh, I like the snail Oh that was the snail
cream with the double spicy pork that you wrapped up
into the leaves and shoved it.

Speaker 6 (01:42:28):
All in your mouth hole.

Speaker 1 (01:42:29):
Sounds awesome.

Speaker 6 (01:42:30):
They don't do two bikes in Korea. What they don't
do two bikees?

Speaker 1 (01:42:33):
What does that mean?

Speaker 6 (01:42:33):
They have a lot of.

Speaker 8 (01:42:34):
Dishes where you'll like get a little piece of lettuce
and you put some rice in there, You put the
pork in there, you put the snail sauce in there,
and then you wrap it up one bite ross really
a plan while you're wrapping that thing up because you're
you're supposed to shove it all in your mouth at
one time. Wow, So if you if you go big,
you're gonna be miserable.

Speaker 1 (01:42:52):
So you've done lots and lots of listener trips, right
kind of where would you put this in the in
the hierarchy? Real top three?

Speaker 8 (01:43:00):
There of all an amazing group of listeners, amazing group
of listeners, like the nicest people you'd ever meet in
your life, which is usually the case.

Speaker 6 (01:43:07):
But I loved.

Speaker 8 (01:43:08):
This trip, firstly because there was so much to it.
But I am not gonna lie by the end of it.
I was absolutely exhausted. All the time we got to
Mount Fuji. I was like, look, there's gonna be clouds.
I don't give a crap about Mountfuji. I'm not doing anything.
And I did nothing in Mount Fuji. I was like, look,
we're not gonna be able to see it anyway, and
then I heard dragons say, yes, we did see it.

Speaker 1 (01:43:27):
I'm like, screw you dragon, huh huh. I don't care.

Speaker 8 (01:43:30):
And I was just I was whipped. But it was phenomenal.
I loved everything about it. And let me just say,
this celebrity cruise lines, this ship is one of their smaller,
older ships, so I was trying to manage my expectation.
The service on this ship was almost invasively good. Like
you think to yourself, can I have a piece of chocolate?
And someone would come around the corner chocolate. I mean,

(01:43:51):
it was like the weirdest, weirdest high.

Speaker 6 (01:43:54):
Level of service I've ever spared. What else can I.

Speaker 8 (01:44:00):
Wipe your face? I mean, it was insanely good. I
loved everything about it except the jet lag and the weather.
So I would go back in the fall, when the
leaves are changing. That's when I would go for sure.

Speaker 1 (01:44:10):
Everybody stick around for Mandy's fabulous show. She'll tell you
more about her trip, plus everything else going on in
the world right now. Very good to have Mandy and
Dragon both back. I'll talk with you tomorrow.