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- [00:00]
A
Foreign. You're listening to American Power. I'm your host, Nat Town, political speechwriter, other kind of writer, stand up comedian and most likely to be brought up and held against me in the future, podcast host. I'm joined as always by my panel of experts. Our expert on foreign policy and the military, Chad Scott. Chad, how's it going?
- [00:31]
B
Going really great. Glad to have Mr. Global back from his vacation. Had a good time here in Vegas. Telling me, bragging about all the money he won. It's ridiculous. The luckiest son of a on the face of the earth. I don't know how this.
- [00:46]
A
Which brings me to the second member of our panel back after a full episode absence. You know, Ms. Mr. Global, Matt Randolph. Matt, how is your post Nevada life?
- [00:56]
C
Oh, it's great. I'm still doing body shots of chloraseptic, but other than that, fantastic.
- [01:04]
A
A little bit counteract the body oils. It feels like kind of a neutral
- [01:09]
B
act, whatever happens in Vegas.
- [01:13]
A
So we are gonna violate that rule today by interviewing him and making him tell us everything that happened in Vegas. But also we are presenting a slightly different special episode today where we're going to take a couple deep dives into topics we've been asked about by listeners, our producers, other people in our orbit and take a minute to go a little deeper into our discussion less tied to the headlines than we normally would. In the first half of our episode, we're going to talk about the U.S. munitions stockpile. Is it dwindling? Is there any validity to these concerns of our dwindling munitions stockpile? And in the second half of our episode, we are going to get into the way that Trump and other elites have been manipulating the oil markets. We've talked about this in previous episodes, but we want to cut a little closer into the issue, provide some receipts and talk about specifically what's been happening with numbers. So let's start with our first topic of the day. We are going to talk about the US Munition stockpile. I'm going to start with Chad. I've got some questions. Trump is denying that the U.S. munitions stockpile is dwindling. I'm seeing a lot of headlines about how our dwindling munition stockpile is a threat to us. I am seeing them mostly from conservative news sources. I haven't seen a lot of, I saw, I've read a BBC report, but other than that, I've seen a lot of cnn, Fox News. So I'm curious as to what the angle is, especially considering that Trump seems to be in denial mode about this. What's the reality of this story and why? As a follow up question that I'm already asking Chad, why is this suddenly so prevalent in the discourse?
- [02:38]
B
Yeah, so there is real problems. But I want to come out up front and say it's not that the United States cannot defend itself. It's not that the United States is suddenly we're just weak and pathetic and we need to be concerned for our own safety. The United States is still probably the most uninvadeable country in the entire world, period, End of story. What the problem is is because we have an expeditionary military, meaning we deploy our military other places, we don't really need to defend our homeland so much. So our military goes other places. And we have bases all over the world. We have the most bases of any country all over the world. And the problem though is when you have bases all over the world, you are in often potentially hostile regions. One of those being the Middle east right now obviously because of this, once again, I'll say it, this foolish war that Trump has started. And so Iran has this capability to launch missiles at various bases within the footprint of what would be the Central Command area of operations. Places like Kuwait where we have Ali Al Saleem and other bases. You have Jordan which has been a big one with the soldiers that were killed there recently, Saudi Arabia, etc, many, many places including Israel. And the way we defend our troops there is a series of concentric defenses and those include things like our Patriot missile batteries and our Thaad batteries. That's where the big focus is right now. We've depleted our Patriot missile batteries so much that we only have about 800 left. Not batteries, sorry, Patriot missiles. Batteries are different. Batteries are what fire the missiles. So we have only 800 to 850 of those missiles. Now this is data that was, is about a week old by the way. So I don't know where that it could be even less as we continue to have to defend ourselves from Iranian missiles and drones. We also have another system called Thaad. Thaad is a terminal high altitude area defense. It's a similar system but it's a bit more exquisite in its capability. Often this is the one we would be used to counter ballistic missiles in a, in like a nuclear capacity. It's one of our defenses. It's in the line of defenses along with things like Aegis and stuff like that. But ages a different system anyways because
- [04:56]
A
forgive me, is that ground to air or air to air?
- [04:59]
B
All of these are all the, the patients, they're all Ground to air. They're missile batteries that sit on the ground or in the ocean. We have big platforms that will detect launches and often the intercept. These interceptors are incredible. They're very good. They're the best in the world, and we do very well with them. These are designed. These are not the same thing like the Iron Dome that Israel has. Israel's Iron Dome is designed to hit much slower rockets and things like that. These are designed to hit very fast ballistic missiles. The problem is, is they really were originally designed to counter much more dangerous foes. China, Russia, those countries that pose extreme danger to the United States in their respective regions, whether it's the South China Sea, East China Sea, or in Europe, when it comes to Russia, because we've reduced the Patriots to such a level that we only have 800, 850 of them. And the Thaad level is even more shockingly low. We're talking somewhere around 50 to 80 of these. And the fact that they're extraordinarily expensive to replace, a Thaad missile is like $8 million. A Patriot missile is like $2 million. These are not cheap items to just be firing at drones. Now, we don't just use them against drones, but nonetheless, it becomes a last line of defense if we need to just stop something. And part of the reason why Trump has stopped this, the aggression, he won't admit it, is because his generals are telling him, hey, the retaliatory strikes are starting to get through because of our lack of munitions. And the Iranians recognize this, and they say they'll tell their proxies, the Houthis and Hezbollah expand this war, expand it, so that the United States has to defend a bigger area. If we count the Houthis, Hezbollah, and Iran proper, the United. Having to defend an area that is 2.2 million square miles, and to try and do that with 800 Patriot missiles is nearly impossible. And so what happens is we have a real issue with our defensive capability. We have lots of offensive capability. We can still go into Iran and strike them with dumb bombs because we own the air for the most part. We can go in and strike the. The proxies in Iraq, similarly, because there's just no air defenses. Where we have problems is when the retaliatory strikes come. And now we're having to defend against ballistic missiles that end up killing U.S. troops. And that's very politically toxic. So the. The headlines are real. But I just want to say it's not that we are out of munitions entirely. It's the ones that Defend us on the ground, in, in critical areas.
- [07:35]
A
So it's these specific munitions. And correct me if I'm wrong, but what you're describing here is kind of a disproportionate response as in we are using very expensive munitions to defend in a way that may be overkill for drones. Like you're saying these are designed to stop fast moving ballistic missiles and therefore we are, we're using something that could stop a much larger threat on these drone strikes and thus exhausting our stockpile. Is that, is that how, that's, of those specific munitions? Is that the correct summarization?
- [08:05]
B
Yeah, it's part of it. So part of it is of that point. I mean, yes, we are, we are using them on occasion to strike a drone as like, almost like a, we have nothing else in theater and by theater I mean nothing else in the area to strike it with. So yes, we're going to take it out with that because the math on it is they would rather use that $2 million missile to defend against say a $50,000 drone because that $50,000 drone could take out like a $20 million aircraft. So that's what the justification is. Now we, now we have other assets like a coyote. The coyote is an anti drone weapon that we have. It's very cheap. The problem is, is we don't have these distributed everywhere. And so the, the ability to stop everything at all times is becoming very difficult. So often we're having to rely on expensive weapons to strike or to intercept an Iranian missile. And it's even when you look at Iran firing their ballistic missiles, their ballistic missiles are cheaper than ours because they don't ever necessarily have to hit a target. If they're en route to the proximity of a base that the US Is occupying, the US Is going to intercept it regardless of whether it's going to do damage or not, just out of an abundance of caution. And Iran knows that. So if they can just fill the sky with ballistic missiles, they know that the United States is going to attempt to intercept them. And because of that we're going to deplete our stocks and then eventually they can start sneaking missiles through in other places that we weren't necessarily accounting for, which is where that Jordan situation came in. We weren't necessarily accounting for Jordan. We had air defenses and, and the capability there. But there are other ways to defend. It's just the ability of Iran to, to provide mass of not necessarily exquisite capability. But just anything to fill the skies makes it so our capabilities become, become overwhelmed and that's the problem we're facing, and that's the calculus that the Pentagon and the Department of Defense have to have to really think about with moving forward in this war.
- [10:09]
A
But they are really exhausting our defensive stockpile by like a broad attack in many ways, not just drones, but by forcing us to respond over and over again. One related question I want to ask is what about Tomahawk missiles? I believe I read that we fired about a thousand of them in this war. What's our stockpile looking like there? And does that really affect the calculus here?
- [10:31]
B
Yeah, so we are drawing down Tomahawk missiles. Tomahawk missiles, interestingly, are. They're very capable. They're an extraordinary missile. They're a cruise missile, though. So when you think about the ability to fight what we would call a near pure foe, a near pure foe is someone that carries the same technological capabilities as us, someone who is, who could do real damage if we had to fight them. We're talking about countries like China or Russia, specifically in these, in these capabilities. Tomahawks aren't as great because they have the same defenses. They can shoot a Tomahawk down. Everything from a gun on the, on the ground that, like we have the Phalanx gun, which is a Gatling gun on a radar that shoots things out of the sky that can shoot a Tomahawk down, we have, they have this. They have similar things on their ships. So Tomahawks are great for places like Iran. They're not so great for places like Russia or China unless we have depleted their air defenses to such a level that we can sneak them through. They are great because they are a bit more stealthy. But the, the idea is that both China and Russia have the capability to counter them. So I'm not as concerned about offensive weapons such as the Tomahawk. We have other alternate capabilities like smart bombs, things like the Jasms, which is a, it's a smart bomb that is launched from stealth aircraft. And those things are, are where we would have the offensive capability. My concern is traditionally the United States has always been very casualty averse. And so what happens? Well, not always since Vietnam, really. I mean, we were very honed in on the casualties numbers with Iraq and Afghanistan, and we built these defensive mechanisms. And so what happens is countries like China and Russia, they see us drawing down our defensive capability, not necessarily our offensive capability, but they see the political will of the United States dwindling because people ask, why are these people dying? We're the most powerful country. We should have the Defensive capability to make sure our people aren't dying while they are. Our enemies are. Our people are. And that's where I think the leverage comes in for countries like China and Russia to apply pressure on us. They look at our munitions and go, they can still hurt us. But if we can hurt them even a fraction, their people are going to give up on this war and demand that stops. And I think that's what Iran is doing as well. They see that they can inflict minimal casualties relative to what we're inflicting on them. But the Ayatollah, the Islamic Republic, they're more willing, and frankly, Russia, and so is China, they're more willing to sacrifice people than the United States is. And it becomes a political test of wills, so to speak.
- [13:11]
A
And this is something we talked about in one of our early Iran episodes, that, you know, this isn't to condemn the people of Iran in any way. No, no, it is. And rather to say that they've been extremely resilient over the past century. But Americans are experiencing a decreasing level of comfort. And some of that comfort is, you know, quality of life. And some of that comfort is being able to deny the realities of war because we're not facing casualties a lot of the time. We have a pretty high standard of comfort globally, and I think other countries do understand that. Americans, while our government is punishing and hurting its people, arguably more than, if not ever before, then you know, hurting people en masse of its own citizenship, of its own citizenry in ways that are unprecedented and especially unprecedented in the past century. While that is happening, we are still, as citizens, really protected from the realities of war. I mean, we don't. After Vietnam, when body bags were aired on tv, our government realized that the people knew too much, you know, that that was too strong an image for civilians to see. And we really get protected from that kind of thing. So I. I think you. Just to back up what you're saying, we are very averse to civilian casualties, which I do think is a good thing, but I don't think that we should think of civilization, Civilian casualties in any other country as any less of a tragedy than American civilian casualties. But culturally, we are. We're very protected from the idea that that can happen in a war while we're causing destruction elsewhere. And not only that, but, you know, people rioted over the cost of eggs here. You know, we. I mean, they didn't riot, but people. People rearrange their entire political philosophies over the price of groceries for people who aren't going to lower the price of their groceries. So yeah, we are, we are very comfort focused society. And I do think that other global cultures understand that their populace is more trained to enduring the suffering inflicted by their government than ours is.
- [14:59]
B
I think I will say that it's, it's actually the policy of Vladimir Putin right now. He just is trying to outlast the United States's wish to support Ukraine. And China's doctrine is that they see the United States military as powerful in a way that they will never be able to contest the US Military globally. So what they need to do is find a way to inflict enough casualties in their region around Taiwan, in the South China Sea, near Japan, wherever is China's aspirational goals of running their region and make, make it so the United States isn't necessarily experiencing military defeats, but becomes what they're calling politically interruptible. Meaning China looks at Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, the inconsistent intervention we had in Syria, and they learn from places like that, including Iran, that if you just put enough pain on the US that Americans become uncomfortable, they won't see the long term impacts of losing Taiwan's semiconductor industry to China. They won't care, they'll want, they'll demand to be done with this war now. And that's China's goal. They don't have to defeat the United States militarily. They only need to have a local advantage for a limited period of time to make it painful on the average Americans for a year maybe. And then at that point we'll just give up. And we've done it time and time again. And I get tired of hearing people say we, we, our military is weak. We haven't lost wars because our military is weak. We've won damn near every battle for the last 50 years. We lose wars because we lose the political will. Because as you said, the American people, they're, they're very comfortable. They don't like when gas prices go up. They don't like when they see bodies, bags. They don't like when food and things get more expensive. And to a more of an extent, even though it doesn't seem like it, the American people are averse to the types of warfare that sometimes other countries are willing to do, like bombing schools and stuff. We, we bombed a school in Iran. And that was atrocious. And there was a pretty strong level of distaste that came out. And you wouldn't have seen that in Russia or China. So, and rightfully so, that was atrocious.
- [17:17]
A
It is. And it's Interesting, because I think, you know, we bombed every school in Gaza, right? And like, where was that response when that happened? And there's no universities standing left in Gaza, right? They've all been destroyed. I think that's true with elementary schools as well at this point. But I do think, you know, it took sickeningly long for the American people to break out of the denial cycle when it comes to the most recent, you know, atrocities in Gaza and Israel's occupation of, of Gaza, you know, over decades. But I think it's interesting because you do, I think you saw the establishment and the democratic establishment making a huge miscalculation about how badly Americans want that comfort.
- [17:56]
C
Right?
- [17:56]
A
Because I think to the, we are willfully participants in our own ignorance. A lot of the time there were atrocities in war going on when I was a child. I didn't have to know about them. Social media didn't exist. There are all sorts of conflicts happening around the world throughout US History that Americans have really willfully not been terribly aware of. And especially after Vietnam, when they start ending up in brown countries or, or, you know, in South America, in Latin America, a lot of Americans are, you know, willing to turn a blind eye because this isn't a conflict with Europeans that look like us. It's not a complicated. And so I think they made this calculation of like, oh, people will be willing to ignore this if we tell them to out of comfort. But I think part of it is just like the, you know, the, the gag order, the media control has slipped in recent years. They can no longer prevent us from seeing images of war and atrocities. But I do think that fits right in, which is like, it took way too long. And the Israel propaganda in the US is so deeply ingrained that I feel like it took at least two years to really chisel, you know, into that wall, get a crack at all. But now what you're seeing is over and over again these apac supported politicians are getting rejected. Because I think you're right, Americans, really, it was years of denialism regarding Gaza, but ultimately, at our core, we're revolted by those things. We're revolted by bombing schools and hospitals and atrocities and, you know, leaving babies in incubators to die and rot and, you know, executing doctors, you know, like all these, I don't have to remind you of all the horrible things that happened, but like, I think our establishment made a huge miscalculation there and thinking that they could essentially hide, not a war, they could hide a genocide from us. And I think a testament to the American people that were sickened by that kind of thing.
- [19:39]
B
Yeah, absolutely. And I want to. I want to get Matt's thoughts on this, because there is. We, we are, and I don't want to say soft, because it's a good thing that we are.
- [19:49]
A
Are
- [19:52]
B
so averse to war when it becomes uncomfortable. I mean, because China didn't even have to. We started ramping up the rhetoric and things started heating up between us and China. Not necessarily. Not even remotely close to what I call the kinetic action of, of actual bullets and missiles flying. But the minute we started getting crappy with them in any way, with tariffs, they just said, how you like them, rare earth minerals and all, they. And the minute they threatened that and held that over our head, we backed off immediately. And I, I mean, that's something that if we, if we back away from our convictions on certain issues with regard to, like the Uyghurs in China or they're stealing our intellectual property that quickly because of our reliance on them, I don't, I can't imagine what flexing they could do when it comes to a war. I will say, before I ask Matt what he thinks about this, I will say, though there is. There is a tipping point. Democracies such as us, Canada, Europe, all of all the NATO countries, there is a tipping point that if you push us too far, democracies have an incredible capability of muscle movement that eventually those, those countries that have pushed us, for instance, the Japan In World War II, Germany, they come to regret very quickly. And that's. That is still applies today. If we will be uncomfortable and be upset and averse to any kind of risk or not wanting to fight a war and why are we doing this a thousand miles away until it becomes a catastrophic mistake where they've actually sunk one of our ships or they've done something so terrible that we have to address it. And in that case, that's when the United States and its allies can absolutely bring that force to bear, and it will be devastating. So I want to be clear that that is the capability that still is there. It just takes a long time, and it has to be really painful for the American people to actually do that. And thoughts on that, Matt? Thoughts on them leveraging their. Their minerals and their capability against us because we're so dumb and letting them do it.
- [22:00]
C
Yeah. I think generally speaking, anytime you fight a war that is preemptive in nature, you set yourself up to. To lose, it's because it, like, I mean, basically what Chad is saying here, if you attack Us, we're gonna you up. But a lot of the wars we fought in recent decades were preemptive. And, and when you do that, the entire war is debated. Like the, the reason for it's debated should we be doing it? And, and once that occurs, the little, you know, a little bit of discomfort, four dollar gas. And suddenly people like, you know, maybe we shouldn't be doing this. So it's like you're starting this whole thing from, from a position of, I don't want to say weakness, but it's not a strong position to start a war from because you're having to convince people that you're doing the right thing. And I find it hard to believe that people that truly believe we were under this threat of a nuclear attack from Iran aren't willing to pay $4 for gas to eliminate that. Like, even, even with that threat being sort of, you know, what was sold to us, people don't believe it enough to, and worry about it enough to let it make their lives uncomfortable and more difficult. Does that make sense? Like, if Iran had attacked us, we would all be all in for this war, just like Chad's talking about. Like, we would, we would just, we would all be gangbusters. There would be a time where we would get tired of it and get fatigued. But I think a lot of it has to do with the preemptive stuff because you're trying to sell someone an idea from the beginning, and that's a really hard sell when you're talking about war and, and the fog of war and everything that happens in war. And I think that's what makes it so difficult is, is this, this preemptive stuff? And I'm not saying we shouldn't fight wars preemptively. We should absolutely prevent terrible things from happening. But it feels like often. What do they call that? Nat Wag the dog or whatever. It feels like for other reasons other than what we're actually told, because there's so many reasons for a distraction, you know?
- [24:14]
A
Well, and yeah, you're totally right. It's the tail wagon. Sorry, I didn't mean. Did you have more to say there? I didn't mean to cut you off.
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C
No, I was just, I was trying to close that out and make sense.
- [24:23]
A
Sorry, Zoom delay. But no, I, I just wanted to say I think you're totally right because, you know, to go one step beyond what you're saying, preventative is a justification that we're often presented with. It's one thing if there's, you know, a real There's a threat that is real. There's evidence. Or that, like, we are preventing a civil war that could destabilize a country and hurt human rights. Like, there are instances in which those things happen, are and are important. But we've also been told that, oh, well, this country just, you know, went communist and nationalized their oil industry. So that's an imminent threat. So we need to be preventative by invading them. And it's like, that's not preventative. That's you wanting to protect capital. Like, that's not. You can convince us that event, you can claim that eventually those communists are going to threaten the U.S. i don't know, maybe by being literate or something and reading all our books. But, sorry, guys, Cuba's got a really high literacy rate. But, you know, all of these. All of this, like, Latin American wars that we waged, all these invasions of. Of these, you know, socialist and communist countries, we were sold on those as being preventative, or at least we were. You know, that was the pitch. But I think even saying that at this point is generous. I mean, that's just the US Protecting its, you know, its business interests internationally. So, lo and behold, you'll still get defenders for those wars because you're going to get people who buy the propaganda, you know, talking points for every generation, or you're going to get the people for whom propaganda talking points are just an easier way of saying, you know, rah rah us, jingoism, we're always right. Which is obviously not true, but you're still gonna get those defenders. But I think, you know, in the long run, there's no one being like, I mean, there's not a lot of people going, well, you know, Vietnam was a great idea. You know, we did. We. We were totally in the right in all these Latin American wars where we let dictators take over and torture civilians. You know, I think. I think with time, we've realized that so much of what we would have even called preventative is, you know, hokum. It's just a sales pitch.
- [26:24]
B
Yeah. And I will say that the recent wars that we fought, because there's a difference between the preemptive strikes and preemptive war, the preventative war, and then a war of choice. And everything we have had recently has been a war of choice. And so they will use those terms. They will say like, well, this was preventative. What are we preventing? Because we get sold. Yeah, the nuclear thing, like Matt was saying, and there was never really a threat there. There was not a threat to the United States or its interests, especially after Midnight Hammer, then the, that Iran was going to get a nuclear weapon.
- [27:02]
A
Right.
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B
And so they, that was considerable. This was a preventative strike. It was really preemptive because it wasn't really preventing. They used an excuse to quote, unquote, prevent something from happening. But they manifested that excuse out of thin air when it wasn't reality. It's the weapons of mass destruction in Iraq all over again. And so what ends up happening is we instead, the true term is we just have these wars of choice. And so really the last times we've done anything truly in relation to a, like preventative, preventing terrible things was in the, what was broadly the Yugoslav wars, the Kosovo's in Serbia when there was the Serbian genocide. And we were trying to prevent that type of stuff. Those. Fair enough, that's, that's one of those things where, yeah, that's the design of warfare. But no one on the face of the earth, China, Russia included, is stupid enough to try and go toe to toe with the United States. So to say that any country on earth, let alone even even North Korea, Iran, is an imminent threat to our existence is silly. It is a silly message that you pull on the, on the heartstrings and the fears of the American people. And that's exactly what they did with Iran. They said they're going to build a nuclear weapon, they're going to destroy Israel. They even brought up, they brought it back to biblical times. They said this is going to be the end times. And which always blew me away because I was like, well then if you start a war there, doesn't it mean you're bringing it about yourself?
- [28:34]
A
So, yeah, why are you going back to where the Bible takes place if you don't want to set out the end times?
- [28:38]
B
Exactly. So that's the thing is, and the, the, the countries around the world, China, Russias of the world, who are what I would call consider our most dangerous foes. And I say Russia with a significant amount of skepticism. They can't even handle Ukraine with a modicum of backing from Western nations. China's a real threat. I think we could still handle them. But the thing is those countries aren't interested in fighting a war with the United States. So they're not gonna, China's going to deal in messaging. They're not going to deal in fighting. They're going to hit us politically first. They're going to, and they can, they can parse that messaging into like to the political left. It's going to Say, they'll say oh well, your intervention is just another level of imperialism. Imperialism to the political right. They'll say Taiwan is a foreign country just taking American money. They'll tell American businesses Taiwan is going to, it's going to destroy the economy. So they will, they will pinpoint these messages whether they're true or not. They, that's what they do. And they don't want to fight a war against the US with weapons because they, they largely will lose. But they know that they don't even have to get there. We'll probably give up before then. And that's, that's exactly what I think they're learned that we've just retaught everyone in the world that that's exactly what happens with Iran because we're just give, we're giving up and rightfully so because we out kicked our coverage with it to use a silly ass sports reference. But we've, we, we have a, our plan seems to me and maybe Matt has a better idea. This plan that Trump put forward was bo them and then just hope for the best. And that's kind of where we ended up. And we just continue to do that. Bomb them again and hope for the best. And so yeah, the, the Chinese, they learned the lesson that as long as they can outlast us politically without tipping us over the edge of okay, this really does hurt Americans, then they're going to, they're going to likely be able to inflict serious damage against us in any future endeavor. They, they so choose other countries.
- [30:38]
A
We really handed them the playbook to exhausting us. Sorry.
- [30:42]
B
No, you're right. That's exactly what that we did. We will, we, they can, they will be able to get on our social media and it doesn't matter if you're an isolationist, if you're a war hawk, they will find a way to get that message directly into your eyeballs and then you're going to doubt what the US can do. And that's exactly what they want to do.
- [31:00]
A
And Trump in some ways is just a propagandist right heart on his sleeve. It's like you can provoke this guy so easily. No one is able is capable of ignor him. He's got the most media penetration in the world and he's reactive. He's so reactive. Like if you're a propagandist he's exactly what you want in a, in a dictator. You know, you want a guy who's going to be egotistical and hurt.
- [31:20]
B
Shut the fuck up. Just shut the Fuck up. I mean, like, like people commented and complained that Obama wasn't telling everyone on earth about what was going on in Syria. There's a reason for it. Yeah, there's a bit of discretion here. But Trump, it's not just, it's not that Trump is just not shutting the up. It's that he's just lying and their lies are just, even the average person can see it. So.
- [31:43]
A
Yeah. Matt, do you have any other perspective you want to throw into this?
- [31:46]
C
I, I made the comment the other day that I think one of the easiest jobs in the world is to be an intelligence official for any country that is building a psychological profile on Donald Trump. Because between Donald Trump and our media, we literally give them, we hand them the entire psychological profile on the president. And, and I think maybe, and Chad can probably speak to this much better than I can, but I know most all countries build these, these profiles of our leaders. Right. And, and it's, it's how they interact this with us. It's how they, you know, it's how they counteract with us. Right. And for a country like Iran, you know, all they got to do is watch the news or, or listen to Donald Trump. Like, they don't, they don't have to get into a whole lot of spy type stuff to figure out Donald Trump. Like, it's literally served to them on a plat by WhiteHouse.gov or the White House Facebook channel and two, by all of the American media who, while we're all laughing at all the stupid, he says it's got to be the easiest job.
- [32:48]
A
Social. Yeah. If you don't have time to wait for the news to report on it, you can find out his immediate, immediate reaction sometimes. So, but they might even be more direct.
- [32:56]
C
That's, that's what's so enraging to me is Donald Trump doesn't realize that every time he gets and runs his mouth and just says all the stupid, he says it's not, he's, he does that for his voters. But the entire world is listening, that Iran is listening. Right. Russia's listening. They're listening to all of it. And then they're, they're taking notes and they're documenting it. And like, it is, it is just an unbelievable level of, of, of naivety and unprofessionalism. Like, he has no idea the damage he does with his own words on a daily basis.
- [33:30]
A
I mean, that's what happens when you don't hear the word no until age 65. So I don't think exactly you know, I don't think he's, he's trained that in himself.
- [33:39]
B
Yeah. And you're and the one final thing I will say in and I just don't want this to be all doom and gloom is traditionally the United States has always been kind of the last react. We're always kind of the him and Hars. We're always like just our allies tend to snap us out of that. And it's, that's an I just want to once again say that that's why the alliances are important. Japan in a China situation will be the first to come to us with a sobering description. And Japan is a country that we very much trust and have since obviously World War II. And so that those types of allies, the, the Canadas, the and I know our relationship with them is, is frayed, but I've listened increasingly more and more to not what John Donald Trump says, but what more Republican senators and and congressmen are saying. And I'm finding that the, the Trump burn everything down, that's very, very minimal. I they are enabling him because they're scared of losing primaries. But when you hear in back channels they're like NATO is a good thing. We're not going to let that fall apart Chime do honestly irreparable damage, but it's still going to be there. And so our, our allies are always the ones in World War II was the British. They snapped us out of it got us finally up and running in when it comes to a potential situation. In, in with Russia, it would be probably Poland, which Trump has a lot of respect for. Poland. When it comes to China, it would be Japan and South Korea. So those are our allies. They do play a part. The United States isn't some unwavering, stubborn, never changing our minds monolith of doing whatever we want. We can be swayed by allies and traditionally that's what's gotten us going. And, and that's what's probably going to be necessary in the situation where if China or Russia do something that is, well, more egregious than what Russia's already done or if China does actually decide to move in the South China Sea. So I would just say don't give up on the US we'll, we'll snap out of it.
- [35:49]
A
We're trying.
- [35:50]
B
We're trying.
- [35:51]
A
If you're listening, I do want to move to our second, our second topic for the episode. I wanted to touch on one last thing. What we were just talking about though, with the munition stockpile, which is as you're discussing exhausting, you know, Iran figuring out how to exhaust us and handing that playbook to pretty much everyone else. I think it's also just worth. You know, it should be obvious to the average listener, but I want to touch this point one more time. Every time we talk about the cost of these things, which is that these are $2 million missiles, minimum. Some of them are 8 million dollar missiles. The National Endowment for the Arts budget is $165 million, and it's 5% of our GDP. It's one of the only things we still export, and yet we are spending as much on 15 missiles as we are on arts for our country in a year. So when we talk about exhausting our munition stockpile and replenishing it, I just want to remind people that that money doesn't come from nowhere. It's not just a strategic mistake. It's also strangling American livelihood. And those of you who voted, you know, on affordability issues should probably be able to make that connection by now.
- [36:58]
C
Yeah.
- [36:59]
B
What? One final stat that's scary that we can pivot. We only make. We can only make 50 Patriots per month, and we can only make two THAAD missiles per month.
- [37:07]
A
Really?
- [37:08]
B
In one single attack. Iran launched more than 50 missiles at one point during this. So we could have. If we were using all Patriots, we would have expended it in one one month's worth of our capability to build. Now, granted, we are ramping that up, but right now that's a big problem. So I just wanted.
- [37:25]
A
And at what cost? Of course.
- [37:26]
B
Yeah. And then it takes away from education and other.
- [37:29]
A
Yeah. And all the other things that we need to improve quality of life, which is.
- [37:32]
C
Well, I remind you guys, the point
- [37:34]
A
of having a government.
- [37:36]
C
Can I do a stat since you guys did a stat?
- [37:38]
A
Go for it. Stop me.
- [37:39]
B
Yeah,
- [37:41]
C
we're losing a word to a country whose defense budget is $7 billion a year when ours is like $900 billion.
- [37:50]
B
It's like 120 times less than ours. Something.
- [37:53]
C
You didn't know that, did you, Nat? I can tell by.
- [37:55]
A
I did not know that. That is very low, comparatively. That's like a. That's like the net for one Marvel movie, you know? Right, Exactly.
- [38:03]
C
That's Avatar.
- [38:04]
A
Yeah, yeah, that's Avatar. Net profit right there. Yeah. Wow. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, we are making incredible strategic errors. So, speaking of the incredible minds at the helm of our country, I want to talk in the second half of our episode here a little bit about oil prices, gas prices, the market Specifically, and how our, our president, but how our government in general and elites have been manipulating that so that we don't experience a realistic impact, at least in the short term, in prices. We have talked about this a number of times in previous episodes, but we decided it would be good to go slightly deeper into this. Matt, would you be willing to start this section for us? Well, you are the one who's talked about this the most on our show, and you are often pointing out how Trump will manipulate oil prices by making, let's say, like announcements on Truth Social the moment before markets open. Right. And artificially inflating investor confidence or things like that. I am doing my best to repeat what you have described to me. Could you get more into detail about what Trump is actually doing and why?
- [39:13]
C
Sure. And so, first of all, you know, today Donald Trump came out and demanded that the oil companies return their profits to the people. Totally. Like overnight, he became the very communist that republic.
- [39:28]
A
Yeah, Comrade Donald.
- [39:30]
C
But the, the great part about that was Iran's response to that was to talk about how they've documented all of his market manipulation. They are alleging he's doing it through Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner. And they literally documented the dates and the amount of money and the times. Like, you know, on March 23, $600 billion of oil shorts, 10 min. An announcement of a fake ceasefire. And they literally just went right down the line. And they estimated that they had made somewhere north of around $9 billion over a five week period. And I would like to point out that oil company profits are quarterly. So the $9 billion would be more than any oil company made over a five week period, if that is actually how much they made. But yeah, this, this war is, and I don't want to say that the war is a grift for them, but they're definitely using it as a grift for them. Iran is claiming it's Witkoff and Kushner. Iran is claiming that they've warned J.D. vance about this in the past and J.D. vance blew him off. That's what Iran is claiming. And since I don't want to spread Iranian propaganda, I want to say Americans said it first.
- [40:50]
A
Okay?
- [40:50]
C
Every oil analyst, every commodities market expert, every oil expert has all said this before Iran said it. So I'm not spreading Iranian propaganda. Iran is actually repeating what Americans are saying when they say this. And that's key.
- [41:07]
B
So you said it, you've been saying for a while now.
- [41:11]
C
Yeah. And they're all saying, even saying on
- [41:13]
A
this podcast, but everyone Also, it's not propaganda if it's, you know, investigative reporting, unfortunately. Well like if they're showing up with receipts, it's, it's still politically motivated but you know. Yeah, it's not, it's not nonsense.
- [41:26]
C
On, on May6, over a billion dollars short was placed on the oil markets minutes before an announcement. People may not know this, but placing a huge oil short is a, is an unbelievably risky, unbelievably risky stock market play. It's like one of the most riskiest things there is. So for someone to have the confidence to say, hey, I'm to put down one and a half billion dollars that oil prices are going to fall at 5:30 in the morning, by the way, and then it happens 10 minutes later. Yeah, if, if it, if it looks like a duck and it walks like a duck and it wags the tail of the dog like the dog as we talked about earlier, then, then it's a duck, dog or whatever. But I'm just saying the markets are being manipulated.
- [42:13]
A
No, I, I like completely tracked.
- [42:14]
B
Continue.
- [42:15]
A
No, no, no,
- [42:18]
C
you're, you're a, I love it when people say no notes. My favorite thing.
- [42:21]
A
You're a poet. I understood everything. I think. Okay, so, so wait, I'm sorry, fill me in on that note. Is that anonymous? Like how do we, we don't know who placed a 11 1/2 billion dollar short.
- [42:33]
C
They know. We don't know.
- [42:35]
A
You and I don't know. Yeah, I see.
- [42:37]
C
Any trade that is made is known. There's a record, you know, there, there's a record. Now like the five. What you have to think about is someone says well who does that at 5:30 in the morning? And I said before, it's not 5:30 in the morning in London.
- [42:55]
A
Right.
- [42:55]
C
It's not 5:30 in the Morning in Singapore. And like these trading houses are all over the world. So it's not really the time that matters because no one's making a trade at 5:30 in the morning in the United States, but they're doing it somewhere. So.
- [43:10]
A
And is it being, do you think it's being done at those less common to the US hours Because like to occlude what's going on from the markets or you say is it sneaky that it's happening earlier? Or you're saying that's not evidence of anything domestic.
- [43:24]
C
So the reason you make a trade at 5:30 in the morning US time, even though it may be later in the day in London, is because that's when the Market is the most ill liquid. That's when the least amount of money is flowing into and out of it and that's when it has the biggest impact. So if, if you placed a billion dollar bet at 5:30 in the morning, say Central Standard time, that has a much larger impact than if you did it at 2:00 in the afternoon, Central Standard Time.
- [43:47]
A
Because there's times, because the US Market's so big and it's all right because
- [43:50]
B
during our market time.
- [43:52]
C
Yeah, the US Market, just because we're
- [43:54]
A
trading so much during those hour, day hours, then like you're sort of preempting that by going 5:30 in the U.S. yes. That's the period of hours in which most money is moving around.
- [44:03]
C
And all of these massive trades, all of them happen during the most illiquid times of the day in US trading when it has the most impact possible.
- [44:13]
A
Possible. Interesting.
- [44:16]
C
It's very interesting. Yeah. Someone's making a lot of money and we're going to find out. I mean we'll probably have to, it'll probably be under the next administration, but we are absolutely going to find out. There's no getting around this.
- [44:27]
B
Yeah. Because the data's out there. Yeah, it's definitely out there.
- [44:31]
C
Yeah. I'm honestly surprised we haven't already found out so well.
- [44:34]
B
It's interesting because I didn't even know Iran published it. I really didn't because I did my own investigation into exactly what this escalation, de escalation cycle has looked like. And it has happened seven times, seven times since the war started in late February, that there's been an escalation by the Trump administration in this war and then a de escalation and the oil markets reflected that. And I have all of the, the receipts on that that I mean, and that I can run through real quick or I.
- [45:07]
A
Let's do it. This is a special episode. I want facts.
- [45:09]
B
All right. So as you know, obviously the war started back in late February and since the war started, oil steadily rose. And I don't, I personally don't think they had really recognized that there was a potential for manipulation. That I do think that they were starting the war because for foolish reason they thought it was, as we've said in the past, that it was a pluck the dictator Venezuela situation. They were wrong, clearly. March 23, Trump decides to postpone further attacks. Oil falls 11%. This is when I think people start learning something about how to manipulate this. And Matt was talking about some of these dates and he has in previous Episodes. But I've kind of started to steal some of his stats here and also generate some of mine. But four days after that, March 27, Trump starts to cast doubt on any kind of ceasefire. Oil rises 5%. April 2, Trump promises to intensify tax and threatens to take Iran back to the stone age. Oil rises 11%. Five days later, Trump announces a ceasef. Oil falls by 16%. April 17, Trump announces progress with the reopening of the strait. Oil falls another 11% from there. But then April 20, the ceasefire falls apart due to mutual strikes. Oil rises 7%. Three days later, Trump once again threatens Iran. Oil jumps another 5%. May 6, oil falls 7% because Trump announces a potential peace agreement. Five days later, on May 11, the ceasefire. Trump says the ceasefire is on life support. Oil rises 3%. June 4. Therefore, in a potential hopes for an agreement to push oil down, or. He announces that there is hopes for an agreement and it pushes oil down 5%. Trump then announces that an agreement has been signed, even though it had not. On June 15, oil falls to its lowest level, dropping some 19%. Two days later, he says, wait, an agreement is not final and it has not even been signed. And oil rises 7%. And then the fighting starts back up after the 4th of July, mind you, because you don't want oil going up and down during the Fourth of July. That causes problems politically. June 7th, it rises generator. Yeah, exactly. So, and so what happens is. And then six days later, you have the sweeping naval blockade gets reimposed. Oil rises 10%. July 26 was just last week, I believe. Trump stops the bombing campaign, as I said in the last segment, largely because of munitions, but oil falls 15%. And then three days later, he's like, massive strikes coming. Oil jumps 8%. Then we come to today, Trump cancels the plan attack. Oil falls 6%. And this latest one is the most egregious. Like, he. He just said things that Iran's like when he said, we were going to make negotiation, we're gonna have these negotiations. Iran was like, there's no one even here to negotiate with. What are you talking about?
- [47:54]
A
This is completely just a claim.
- [47:56]
B
Yeah, seven times. And just to back up what. What Matt was saying when. When the money being made here was unreal. On March 23, more than 500 million was bet against the oil market. As he said, 10 to 15 minutes before Trump postponed the. The threatened attacks. Then oil fell 15%. Those may. Those bets, among others, investing in the. In airlines and things like that that rely on energy. People who bet against all of that made $2.2 billion in the spam of a morning. April 7th.
- [48:30]
A
Roughly just that one instance. Not overall.
- [48:33]
B
One instance.
- [48:33]
A
Wow.
- [48:34]
C
Yeah.
- [48:34]
B
Oh no. The overall is much bigger. So then on April 7, 950 million was bet on falling oil prices. Just an hour before Trump announced the ceasefire. Oil dropped 15%. That one trade alone made $2.12 billion. April 17, 760.
- [48:51]
A
More than twice Iran's national defense budget.
- [48:53]
B
Exactly.
- [48:54]
A
Let's point out.
- [48:55]
B
But April 17, $760 million was bet against oil roughly 20 minutes before Trump talked about the Strait of Hormuz reopening. Then it fell by 11%, making that one a little under $1.9 billion. This April 21st. August, August 1st, all of this is continues to happen. It's like in our face and it's so in our face that they did it with other companies. They're just now recopying it. It like you look at SpaceX, they just had their IPO. Elon Musk. Musk flexed his campaign donations, the hundreds of millions that he said in a manner that Trump went to the NASDAQ to change their rules, their listing rules, to allow large new public companies to enter the NASDAQ 100 they weren't supposed to enter the NASDAQ 100 but Trump said let them do it. And so they bent there or broke their own rules and the in. And that means that they were included in every single index fund across the country because most index funds and they made massive amounts of money. And because of that boost, the, the stock shot to incredible levels way higher than what it was worth. And now it's crashing down. But who cares? They made their money already. Problem is, is the little guys in their 401ks, they're the ones that are gonna, are losing money on this. And what it has taught me once again is that the rules are arbitrary if you have enough money. And so that's, I mean, just to piggyback on Matt's research on the, on where this oil stuff it's been happening. It's happened seven times and it's not even the only case. We see it with Musk's companies. We see it in other munitions and weapons development with the, the, the big four, what we call them like the Lockheed, the Boeing, the biggest weapons. So this is a. Yeah, the investigation, if we have a change in administration is going to be real interesting. Tv.
- [50:43]
A
Is this unprecedented? I mean, obviously we've had governments of either party or multiple parties give out government contracts to, you know, Favored investors and this and that. Military contracts are one thing. And trading on oil shorts based on alleged and maybe imaginary military action or military treaties seems like a level of cronyism that is beyond just, you know, dispensing government contracts to Halliburton to pay for, you know, to build things for a war that you created. Obviously, we've had that kind of thing in the past. But is this level of market manipulation unprecedented in the US
- [51:26]
C
Is, Is there a word bigger than unprecedented? Is that the biggest word?
- [51:32]
A
I'll work on that for a little while.
- [51:33]
C
It is. It is a thousand percent unprecedented. And it's also whatever the big it is, whatever the bigger descriptor is. And I would also like to point out that in this latest, in this last one, where Donald Trump's talking, you know, hey, we're talking to Iran and all that, and the market falls and all the shorts, even Donald Trump's own officials are saying, yeah, we're not, we're not talking to Iran.
- [51:56]
A
Yeah, there was no, there was no reporting of any ambassadors talking to anyone. Right. That was just completely made up. Right.
- [52:03]
C
And Iran has come out and said, said, yeah, we're talking to Oman. And, and then they had the ridiculous. The last thing we offered Iran was so ridiculous, it blew my mind, is that we were going to allow them to control all of the inbound traffic and Aman would control the outbound traffic. And I'm like, well, there's only one way in and out of the Persian Gulf. And that's, you know, it's like, so whoever controls the inbound controls the outbound too, because you can't get out once you get in. So that was a ridiculous thing that Iran turned down. And for them to turn that down, that tells you there's their leverage and their strength and where they are negotiating from, if they are, in fact ever negotiating again, an enormous position of strength against the United States that they would turn that down.
- [52:50]
A
You know, it's interesting sometimes when people ask me if I can take a step back, people ask me about this podcast and, you know, oh, American power, what's that about? And obviously we have the sort of double entendre of power in our title. And I say, you know, one of our experts is focuses on the military and foreign policy. One of them focuses on energy. And to some people, they go, oh, that's a general, you know, swath of politics I'm interested in. And some people have asked me, what's the connection there? And obviously our energy markets are very much related to military Action and vice versa. But why those two things? Why do they comprise American power? And the answer I usually give people, and this is a layperson's answer, is I just like to say those are the most expensive things. These are the, these are the, by orders of magnitude most profitable things in the world. And especially that our country trades on so, so much of our structure of power, and this is what I always say to people is how we exert power internationally, internally, how we structure our power internally is directly related to those two markets and those two industries and those two cultures. So I think what we're seeing right now is perhaps the most perfect example of that. I mean, I say perfect in a, the most negative way that can be, but like the, the dead center of that Venn diagram of, you know, when we say these are the, these are the most valuable things and thus American power is based on them, this is the end result of that. Like, this is the goal is this, this is, this is a perfect example of how the profit motive of both oil and war has resulted in a fake war to manipulate oil market. I mean, not fake. It's really happening. There's real atrocities happening. The motivation for it was nonsense, was fictional, even more so than in previous years. But, yeah, what we're seeing is this confluence of those two extremely expensive items controlling not just, you know, our country's actions, but global politics now. And that's, you know, that's what I, that's what we mean when we say American power.
- [54:47]
C
Yeah, and a lot of people don't realize that, that military power and energy power are like, I don't know, brother and sister. Like, they're literally like, it's the two things you need to dominate the world. And you can have all the military power in the world. If you don't have any energy, you're not going to dominate the world. And you can have all the energy and no military, you're not going to dominate. But if you have both, you are dominating the world. And that's what Donald Trump is all about. He talks about world domination, energy domination, military. Dom, he talks about that all the time.
- [55:16]
A
Time.
- [55:16]
C
When you have both of those things, you're it, you're the alpha, you're the omega, whatever, however you want to say it. And, and that's why those two things go together hand in hand, like they're very closely related and stitched together.
- [55:31]
A
Well, like I always say, for all of our national security lovers, let's convert to a renewable energy so that we don't have an energy Disadvantage on all of our, on all our enemies. Like, well, yeah, okay, energy gives you power. We have rolling brownouts in most of our cities this week. Like, like, maybe that's a live issue from the past, but at this point, if you believe that your country needs, you know, energy dominance in order to dominate globally. China's building solar, they're also building nuclear. They're building everything. But, you know, we're not building at that rate. You know, if the military is your, you know, if military power or global power in general and dominance is your goal, you have to look at it from that angle and recognize that we are being defeated on an international level when it comes to energy development and modernization.
- [56:17]
C
Yeah, but conservatives, the, the, they say they don't like renewable energy because they say it doesn't work. The reason they don't like renewable energy is because you can't use it as a weapon and exert power over other countries with it. When you control another country's oil supply, you control that country, you have leverage over them. You have. And, and that's why they really don't like renewable energy, because nobody's importing solar power. Right, right.
- [56:41]
A
And the fact theoretically other countries could independence from us as well.
- [56:44]
C
That's what I'm saying, though the fact that renewable energy would make us so powerful at home doesn't matter to them. They want to be able to exert power and exert it against other countries, and that's why they have the love affair with oil and gas.
- [56:59]
A
And like I said four minutes ago, that's what we mean when we say American power.
- [57:03]
B
Sounds like a, Sounds like a future episode. Energy.
- [57:06]
A
Absolutely. I think we should definitely talk about. Yeah. How energy is used as a weapon internationally and I mean, and, and on a more local. But like, how we use that. That as a weapon in war and to exert power internationally. I think we should definitely have a longer discussion about that before we move on. Does anyone have any closing thoughts about these particular instances of market manipulation that we've gone more into detail than we ever have on this before? I think this has been a really fascinating look, and I don't think I had all those numbers in front of me. Is there anything else you think our listeners should know as we wrap this discussion up?
- [57:41]
C
So the market manipulation has been recognized widely and it's driven so many investors out of the market. That is why it is really hard for oil prices to shoot back up to levels people were predicting because they basically chased all the good money off. People are scared to death to Invest in the oil markets because it's a rug pull a week or a rug pull every two weeks. And they're like, you know what? I can take this money and I can go over here and invest it in pharmaceuticals or healthcare. I can invest it in whatever I'm getting away from the oil market. And we've seen the largest drop in money taken out of the oil markets than we've ever seen in history because of the manipulation that's happening. No one wants to play there anymore. No one wants to invest there anymore. And a lot of this money is like Chad brought up earlier, is people's retirement plans, their pensions, their 401ks. That's what people don't understand. When you're manipulating the oil market, you're impacting someone's future retirement. You're impacting their, their 401k, like in their pension. And so a lot of these hedge funds and you know, that invest in this, they are responsible for these other people's money, their 401ks, their retirements, their pensions. And that's why they're, they're, you know, the big institutional investors are getting away from it because they are responsible for other people's future and they're not going to bet it with this president manipulating the market.
- [59:08]
B
And just my final thought on this, and kind of to circle back to your question on this being potentially unprecedented. Now, the manipulations themselves are not unprecedented. I mean, we all remember Enron during the California energy crisis. Enron was basically creating artificial scarcity to drive up prices. And they, because of that, Californians were dealing with rolling blackouts and skyrocketing utility bills until federal regulators came. And we all remember what happened to Enron. Enron was that big scandal. We also know about Halliburton, this in Iraq, Afghanistan, that there was this argument of war profiteering with Dick Cheney because he was the CEO of Halliburton. He had actually at that time, though I'm not saying he didn't have ties,
- [59:55]
A
but he at least had technically divested, right?
- [59:58]
B
Yeah, he divested and he had quit as the CEO. He was no longer involved in what Halliburton was doing. That what makes this different and so unprecedented is that we have the President of the United States directly involved now. Whereas back then, you could, you could potentially vilify Dick Cheney for all of his terribleness and his ties to Halliburton at one point, but there's really no even circumstantial evidence that we can leverage to say that he was personally profiting from these wars. In fact, he died before one of the wars even ended. That. And I'm not, I'm not a dictionary whatsoever. No, no, yeah. I'm not, I'm not a Dick Cheney fan in the slightest. I'm just trying to give you kind of. If we're looking at how it's so
- [60:38]
A
much more direct than that, how God
- [60:41]
B
awful it is now, we can look back at Dick Cheney and go, well, that was a better time. And say. And say, yeah, at least he, at least. I mean, as the Vice President, he wasn't directly profiting. And that's what's exactly happening when you look at the Kushner brothers, who we just saw Josh Kushner, who's Jared Kushner's brother, try to, to buy off FIFA. And that's a whole different thing. But the. And so. Or buy off the World Cup. But anyway, so the. So you see his family's mitts all over this. We've never. That's the unprecedented part. That's the part where it's so disgusting that when we saw Enron, it was federal regulators, the US Government, who we put out there to be our defender, they did their job and went after Enron. We had. When it came to Cheney, he did what you were supposed to do. Whether there was some shadow money, I don't know. But overtly he was like, I'm not part of this. When it's Donald Trump, he's like, my son's in charge of this and it's just out and open and no one cares. When SpaceX is saying we're going to donate $500 million to all these campaigns and then suddenly SpaceX gets listed on the NASDAQ 100. There's just no way around that. And so that's where we're at right now. The unprecedented part is the. How disgusting the federal government has become in being complicit in all of this. What I would say is fraudulent behavior and that that's. We've had frauds and we've had people try to take advantage of the American people in the past. But our defenders, the. The American or the federal. What used to be the federal government's job, it's just not there anymore. It's now the enabler.
- [62:13]
A
Well, I appreciate that you both have some optimism about this being investigated and prosecuted by a further administration. I hope the Obama that the Obama administration was going to prosecute Cheney and Bush for war crimes. But as you mentioned, this is significantly, at least in this particular category, above and beyond. And more direct, more obvious than anything we've ever seen. You know, I say that about Trump every four seconds and he gets away with whatever the thing he's doing is. So I don't have enormous amount of confidence in our political media and governmental apparatus in punishing him, as they never have succeeded doing so in the past. Past. But like you said, it is more blatant than it's ever been in the past. And I can only hope that more of this comes to light and actually affects things at some point. Unless anyone has anything else they'd like to add to this, I think that's a good place to end our discussion. And we'll be back on Wednesday with our next regular episode. For Chad Scott and Matt Randolph, I'm your host, Nat Town. You've been listening to American Power from Find Out Media. And remember, power corrupts, but American power corrupts American.