Jonathan Vlass (3:08)

Well, I mean, the good news is the Iranian nuclear threat was already completely and totally obliterated.

Tim Miller (3:13)

So that's a good point.

Jonathan Vlass (3:14)

These short term prices will go down any minute. The bad news is that because it can go from completely obliterated to imminent in five months, even if we eliminate it totally again. I mean, who can say what could happen five months from now, Tim? And they could just spin it right back up. It's. I don't know. I, I want this. I want this more than I've wanted anything, maybe in my entire life, Tim.

Tim Miller (3:43)

I guess for people.

Jonathan Vlass (3:45)

Yes. Yes.

Tim Miller (3:47)

Yeah. Okay, great.

Jonathan Vlass (3:49)

This is like avian flu driving the price of eggs up to up to $9 a dozen or something. Except it's like that. If Trump had said, I want to make an avian flu. Can you do an avian flu for me?

Tim Miller (4:04)

If Trump had given the flu, if Trump was patient zero of the avian

Jonathan Vlass (4:08)

flu, he said to rfk, I want you a make a flu. I want the eggs to be priced a million. And I this is what America wanted. This is what America voted for. Now because it's me, the way my life works is I'm sure that we will get America looking at this and then just going, yeah, in the way that again, because the price of eggs went up, America decided we should try giving the presidency back to the guy who attempted a coup because eggs are so expensive. It's the most important thing ever. And I just think that, I mean, who knows what people might be willing to do looking at a chart like this because it's a real kitchen table issue.

Tim Miller (4:55)

I disagree with you. I think that Trump is in a world of hurt right now and I think his panic, I think his panic bleed emphasizes that. Chris Wright, his energy secretary, said on Fox today that these prices are a small price to pay to get a world where energy Prices are returned back to where they were. And I'm talking weeks. He's talking weeks, not months. I don't. I. We're setting a pretty high bar for Trump. Back in the Trump statement. I'm just going to read it. He once again, he said it's a small price to pay for USA World and USA and world safety and peace. Is world peace the object our objective right now? I thought that we weren't going to be the world's police. I was sure we were not.

Jonathan Vlass (5:37)

I don't care about that anymore.

Tim Miller (5:39)

Yeah, it doesn't do us any good. So now we're be the world's policeman. And in exchange for that, a small price to pay. Let's go back to the chart. Let's see. I like to see the little chart go up. Little guy, whoop, whoop. Little pencil deck, pop, we're straight up. I mean, it's, it's truly an astonishing amount. As I said at the top. Like what the just kind of contextualize this. Are you. Are you a watcher of the show Landman? I don't believe you are. You're not.

Jonathan Vlass (6:08)

I am not. I'm sorry. I don't do series television, Timothy.

Tim Miller (6:11)

I know you don't. Land and Landman, they're oil. They're oil people. And the main character. What's the fucking main character's name? It's a Sunday night. I was about to call him Tommy Lee Jones. Three names. Billy Bob, actress Billy Bob Thornton is telling the young lawyer who's cutting her teeth, you know, about the oil business. And he says to her, you know, 60 to 90, that's our sweet spot because at 90 bucks we're still making money. People are starting to feel a little bit of pain. If you go up over 90, if you get up into the 100s, that means the cost, everything goes up. Not just gas prices, but food prices go up because guess what? We transport the food on trucks, plastics, like, everything starts to go up. Everybody starts to feel pain. And then even the oil guys start to feel pain because consumers buy less, et cetera, et cetera. Adam Smith, you know, supply and demand. So the, the number there is not great at 105. And we're already seeing prices at the pump go up a little bit, but it's going to keep going. Nate Silver, not a big, you know, not a big apologist for Trump or not. Excuse me. Not a big part of the Democrats. Rather Freudian slip. He said this never started a bombing campaign that will completely halt the Strait of Hormuz is a classic blunder. But when he gets into the math, he says that gas prices are up about 40% and he thinks it's going to get worse for weeks. Now he does this big newsletter analysis of it where it's like, you can't just turn this stuff back on. They've increased about 50%, or, excuse me, 50 cents since we went to war with Iran. But they're expected to spike much, much further. You know, we're looking at gas, according to his chart, up at. Up close to five bucks again a gallon.

Jonathan Vlass (8:04)

Yeah, I think that's where we're headed. Important to underscore this, the reason prices are up is because you have a massive logistical disruption, right? You can't. The normal flow of petroleum from one place to another has been disrupted. And because of that, you then have refineries that are stopping producing and everything gets backed up then because they don't have anywhere to put the oil. Once you block up the supply chain like this, it doesn't wreck it for forever. But even if the Strait of Hormuz was totally opened tomorrow, it would take some amount of time for everything to unwork itself, right? For the system to unkink itself. And so you would be feeling this for some days or weeks. The longer it goes on, the longer you'll feel the effects of the supply chain disruption even once it stops. And I mean, I got a Catherine Rampel and I talked about this on Friday. Tim, this is the stupidest thing I think I've ever seen from an American president. So that he planned this war. And the assumption was we won't have to worry about oil prices because we can prevent the Iranians from mining the Strait of Hormuz. So the idea was like, we know that our guns can stop them from getting their navy out and mining the strait, which means traffic will be fine. And nobody in this operation said, actually, sir, excuse me, sir. You see, all of these companies that send large ships through, they need what's called maritime insurance because the ships themselves are very expensive. And then the cargoes they're holding are really, you know, quite precious. And. And they can't assume that sort of risk without being insured. And then the insurers are reinsured. And so if insurers decide that they can't shoulder that risk, then it might as well be mined. Nobody said, I just. Right, Tim is the dumbest fucking thing I've ever seen in my life.

Tim Miller (10:19)

We're gonna get back to being the dumbest thing you've ever seen in your Life. We're gonna put a pin in that for a second because I just want to talk a little bit more about the brass tax here in addition to what you just said. Even if he's quit or even if they somehow secured the strait of hormones tomorrow or he quit the whatever like they cut some deal tomorrow, you know, he won it still. It still would take weeks, as you said. But that's like not what's happening. I mean it was. It's raining oil in Iran today because the Israelis hit I guess 30 different targets related to oil production and containment, etc. In Iran. There's Naxia story tonight about how about how the Trump guys were like you didn't get our approval for that bad. Sorry. Yeah, maybe a little partner.

Jonathan Vlass (11:06)

And who's the senior partner in this war?

Tim Miller (11:08)

Tim Seems like the senior partner to me is Israel. But you know, and I, and I probably, I have a pretty good sense for kind of who's the top and who's the bottom in a very. In a situation like this. And so there's that. So I mean again, Iranian production that doesn't really affect us because we're not taking Iranian oil. But as far as the global oil is concerned, that now is going to take a really long time. The Iranians are like Kuwait's. They've hit, you know, Kuwait is not. And Qatar, Qatar rather. Excuse me, Qatar not Kuwait is not their natural gas, you know, has been hit. You know, they've been hitting targets in Saudi, UAE and so like you know, I the it is liable to get actually much worse. Not, not not get secured tomorrow.

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Jonathan Vlass (12:53)

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Tim Miller (13:33)

Yeah, put it up. Yeah.

Jonathan Vlass (13:34)

Okay. So, you know, we have an Iranian revolution, which people who are older than, you know, 40 might remember. People in line for gas, everything went crazy. 5 million barrels, 5.6 million barrels per day of production was lost. Now global production is higher because global demand is higher. It's not really apples to apples, but we're now looking at like 20 million barrels per day shut off. And I, you know, I see people saying, well, it doesn't matter because America is energy independent. We, we pump all the oil we need. It is a global commodities market. Do you motherfuckers not understand how these things work? If you are an American oil producer and the. The price of oil is $106per barrel everywhere else, you are not going to say, well, we'll only sell it to American customers for $60 per barrel.

Tim Miller (14:29)

Right?

Jonathan Vlass (14:30)

You. That's how commodities prices work.

Tim Miller (14:33)

Right? The other thing to flag on this, like this history just showing you like the impact that Iran in particular has here. The second largest one is Iranian revolution. Then we have the fifth one is Iran Iraq War. Right. You know, this is, it's because they

Jonathan Vlass (14:51)

sit on the straight, Tim. It's the transit. Like this is. Again, it's just, it's geography. And so for the people who sat there, well, you know, they only do about 4% of the global total production. As if the only thing that matters is production. It is the most. We're playing checkers while everybody else plays chess thing I've ever said, not even doing that checkers and Hegseth and Trump are just like sitting around eating the pieces. It's. Yeah, it's insane. The most incompetent governance I've ever seen in my life.

Tim Miller (15:22)

On SNL last night.

Jonathan Vlass (15:23)

Except for maybe how the President handled the COVID response. Like, if you now think about two of the worst failures of the federal government many of us have ever seen, both under Trump. Great.

Tim Miller (15:38)

The hag Seth on SNL last night said, you guys are playing chess, we're playing Grand Theft Auto, which I thought that was pretty good. Can we pull back up the chart? I want to pull back the gas prices chart one more time and take us back out. I want to show us a week and then show us 10 years to give everybody a little bit of perspective. So here's a week.

Jonathan Vlass (15:55)

It seems like once we started that war, things didn't go so good, huh?

Tim Miller (15:59)

So, yeah, prices were going up immediately with this huge jump today. Now, just to give us a broader context, let's go back 10, let's look at the 10 year here. Yeah, click on the 10 year. Thank you. Okay, so now what, like five years basically of going the right direction? Just completely wiped out in one hour tonight, prices were going down, down, down, basically up and down, but down basically for the last half decade. And it spikes up entirely in one hour. If you see that other spike there, 2022, the only point where it's higher than it is right now, that is the post Covid inflation and the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Those are happening simultaneously. And so we're having some supply chain issues in addition to geopolitical issues. And jvl, to your point, politically, that last spike, quite damaging for Joe Biden. So I know you're skeptical that this could hurt Trump, but it seems like a bad strategy to do something that would make the charts go right back to the area that caused a lot of political problems for your predecessor.

Jonathan Vlass (17:16)

And Trump chose this. This is again, like, this is a thing that nobody, except for Bibi Netanyahu asked for. Nobody, really. Right. And I, well, there are a couple

Tim Miller (17:28)

of, you know, pro Israel, pro Israel advocates in America.

Jonathan Vlass (17:33)

Were they asking for, like, war right now? Like, I just, you know, like, look, I'm all for, you know, opposing the Iranian regime in some ways at the moment. I, I have questions for you, though, because what I don't understand, and Trump is surprising me a little bit here, same.

Tim Miller (17:52)

That's what I want to talk about.

Jonathan Vlass (17:53)

I would assume, based on the way tariffs went, where the tariffs were always, they're on, they're huge. And then a day and a half later, they're off or they're delayed or, you know, like everything was, you know, one of the reasons inflation from tariffs was less than people expected was because the tariffs, almost like only a fifth of the tariffs went into effect or something. Bloomberg did a big count on this, yeah. But a very small minority of proposed tariffs were ever actually put in place. I would have thought that Trump would see this and just say, great news, we won. It was the strongest victory anybody has ever, has ever achieved. Many people said it couldn't be done, it was historic, but we now have complete and total peace everywhere. And blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. It's over and just walks away. I'm shocked. He is not only not doing that, but he seems to. He seems like he's doubling down on stuff in ways that, again, likening it to tariffs are not the way he approached bad outcomes.

Tim Miller (19:01)

I'm also surprised. We talked about this a little bit with Derek Thompson on Thursday's show, and he was comparing him to kind of a hot gambler. Like he thinks that, like he's on tilt, was the phrase, the gambling phrase, you know, where he's just like, you know, he went all in on the poker table a few times and he kept winning. And so now he's, now he's just like throwing chips around. That's as good of a guess as any. Because I have to tell you, our friend over at Ponzi of America, Jon Favreau, put it this way. Let's get this right. He just tweeted this right before he came on. Seven dead Americans, Hundred bucks a barrel. Oil. Billions of dollars a day being spent on a massive war that so far replaced an 86 year old tyrant with his son. And that's a good summary. And I looked at that and I was like, I gotta tell you, one of the favorite things for people to comment on pot shows, like this is, how could you be surprised by this? Everybody likes to say, I saw this coming. Why are you guys surprised? I'm like, I'm not usually surprised. And sometimes the nature of way things happen are surprising, like the details. But the general thrust of what we've seen from the Trump administration in Trump 2.0, maybe I'm an outlier on this, but it's been like a hair better than I expected. I, like, I was in, I have Trump derangement syndrome. I was in catastrophic territory. Like I assumed. I assumed that they would have been able to jail one of their political foes by now, for starters. Right? Like, like this, the bad stuff that's happened, the tariffs, guys in mass shooting, people on the streets, they're horrible. But like, that was all in my kind of personal. Yeah, that was like my mental threat profile. This is, this is fucking stupider than even I expected. Like, I have tds. I, I think that Trump is a moron. Like, I think that he is one of the stupidest people that I've ever encountered, that his judgment is horrible. I assumed that the administration was going to be a shit show, and yet he's managed to do something that is, like, below what, like the TDS line. Like, below what my expectations for. I don't get it. I really don't. And then. And the people. Sometimes what you hear from people is what they'll say is like, well, this is an Epstein distraction. It's like, there's literally nothing in the Epstein files that could possibly be worse than what he's doing right now. Like, literally, if he was a serial rape. Politically. Politically, yeah, politically. If he was a serial rapist of 13 year olds, I think that his poll numbers would end up being higher than if gas goes to 150 and people keep dying in the Middle East. Like, I just. I think that it's a. It's extreme, Extremely politically stupid and risky. And. And I'm, like, kind of blown away by how dumb it is. Like, it's truly unbelievable.

Jonathan Vlass (21:45)

All right, so let me. Let me play devil's atom.

Tim Miller (21:48)

Please do.

Jonathan Vlass (21:48)

I think I agree with you. So I'm. I'm proposing this only for the sake of argument.

Tim Miller (21:53)

Yeah, sure. That's where you should hash it out. Right.

Jonathan Vlass (21:56)

The midterms look catastrophically bad for Republicans from what we can tell right now.

Tim Miller (22:03)

Yeah. Just all.

Jonathan Vlass (22:04)

All of the signs that you see, like the tremors that come before the earthquake with retirements and special elections and whatnot. It looks. It looks very, very bad. Having a hostile Congress does slightly endanger Trump in terms of accountability. It doesn't stop him from things he can do because that he wants. Because he doesn't need or want Congress for passing anything. He's not a legislator. What if this is all part and parcel with establishing preconditions for an emergency?

Tim Miller (22:41)

Yeah.

Jonathan Vlass (22:43)

In order to try to blunt the right, like, hey, like, how much worse could it get for me in November if I was already going to lose 60 seats in the house? Who cares if I lose 75? Maybe if I shake up the Etch A Sketch like this and we put in some emergency provisions and we try to do this or that, who knows? Maybe we can draw to an inside straight and hold on to the Senate and have the House be much more manageable.

Tim Miller (23:15)

It's a theory worth discussing because that's at least rational. I mean, it's crazy, but it's rational. From the perspective of Donald Trump. Right.

Jonathan Vlass (23:23)

That's something I could see Stephen Miller coming up with not Trump.

Tim Miller (23:27)

Okay, but like, again, I just think that if you're gonna try to create an emergency that would give you a pretext to fuck with the elections. The list of things I would try, I mean, what about for them to start bombing people? Like, what about bombing Mexican gangs on the border or something? You know what I mean? Like, that would at least not to give them any ideas. But, like, I could come up with some other things that would be more politically interest salient, possibly at least perceivably popular. This is, this is to me just absolutely like, it's madness. It's the actions of a madman.

Jonathan Vlass (24:07)

Are you surprised that they tried to do Iran before Cuba? Yeah, I am too. I thought, well, why not just go to Cuba next and then, like, have Iran be the capstone?

Tim Miller (24:19)

Well, this is, this is, this is what goes back to being the junior partner, right? And like, what this comes down to is that Bibi basically said, hey, we know where the Ayatollah is on Saturday. And like that, that the. The most credible reporting. By credible, I mean the reporters that have the best sources inside this White House. That's what they say. And basically that's the report. Like, BB is like, hey, let's roll on Saturday because we know where Hermanias and he's going to be with his other top guys and shock and awe and it yolo, let's be legends. I, I just, I think that that's what happened.

Jonathan Vlass (24:51)

There is weirdness. So Trump hates, hates other people getting rich off of him, right? Like, this was the Christine home sin. This was Brad what's his face, who got exiled. Right? You know, if you go out and start getting rich without giving him a taste, that's when he loses his shit. That's kind of what the Israelis have done here. Like, they have come in and they've used Trump to accomplish their aims. And I don't know, has Israel given him a $300 billion. A $300 million jet?

Tim Miller (25:27)

No, he's getting way more out of Qatar in uae. And, and I.

Jonathan Vlass (25:31)

It is weird to me that Trump doesn't seem to have any. Like, he's just ride or die with Netanyahu in ways that I don't fully understand. I mean, I'm not trying to be coy here. Like, I'm.

Tim Miller (25:46)

No, I'm not.

Jonathan Vlass (25:47)

I'm trying to apply that. I, you know.

Tim Miller (25:49)

Well, you know, because. No, I don't. I don't think that that's what's happening. I think that he's Been made for

Jonathan Vlass (25:56)

a mark 107 44. Look at that.

Tim Miller (26:00)

For people who come onto the live stream late, JBL is the one. Maybe you tell us in the comments if he's not the only one. The one probably person in America cheering the gas price.

Jonathan Vlass (26:09)

I'm the joker. I'm the joker here with the. With the big pile of money, and I just want to set it on fire and I want to rub America's nose in it. And I. Because the only way anybody.

Tim Miller (26:21)

You also don't really leave the house that much. You know, you keep things close to the home ranch, so, you know, you're

Jonathan Vlass (26:27)

gonna drive kids to practices and stuff. Like, I'm gonna pay for the gas. I just don't give a. Like, it's a small price to pay in order to get the mouth breathers who made this happen to America to experience some consequences. Do you think he pulls the plug and just, like walks away Because. Because that would. Israel. That's the problem, right? Like him just leaving mid war.

Tim Miller (26:56)

I don't know. I. No, I don't think so. Here's the other thing. Here's the thing, okay. We're looking at this through kind of ironically, the America first lens. Like, we're looking at this through a political lens, through an economic lens. What is the impact of this on our people? If you look at this through like a video game lens, I'm playing a military video game, right? We're crushing them. It's been. If you're grading this just on video game.

Jonathan Vlass (27:28)

On explosion maxing.

Tim Miller (27:29)

Yeah, we're crushing them on explosion maxing. And you know, the. And I think that what is in Axios again, I just have to keep going to the people that seem to have the best sources, is that they are looking at that island in the Persian Gulf, what's called Ghent or whatever. They're looking at potentially seizing that and trying to secure it and then. And then seizing some of the oil assets inside. I think that before ducking tail, they're gonna try to take control of the street. Let me. Let me give you one more piece of evidence on that. Charlie Gasparino. You know that guy? Yeah, he's a total hack over at Fox Business. But they. People talk to him, say this all the time. It's like Men in Black. You got to read the tabloids. That's where the news is. Okay, here's Gasparino Commodity coming up on 108.

Jonathan Vlass (28:26)

Tim.

Tim Miller (28:26)

Okay, Gasparino says don't care. Commodity traders are imbeciles. They trade off Headlines totally myopic. Short term thinking. They always screw up. Never seeing around corners. You like to see around corners. It was the case in the run up to 2008 when there was more than a few market rallies before the whole thing blew up. This oil price spike has the same feel to it. It's not considering that within days we will 100% control the supply of oil coming out of the Straits of Harmony. Hermuz spelled wrong or that Iran will be 100 decapitated. Typo doesn't know what decapitated means as a military force and financier of terror. There'll be peace dividend to all of that. Meanwhile, buckle up as the Karens who control oil prices have their say. At least for now. That's Gasparino. I think that's what they think though.

Jonathan Vlass (29:16)

Suburban white women control oil prices.

Tim Miller (29:20)

I don't know. But we're not dealing with rational actors and I think that right now they think, okay, our military guys have been great. Let's try to take over the. Let's try to take control of the Persian Gulf in the strait and we'll use American troops to protect the tankers as they come through. I think that's what they're going to try before they try leaving. I think it's hard to predict because this is all so stupid, but that's where I'm at.

Jonathan Vlass (29:50)

Did, did anybody pay attention to what happened when the Ukrainians sunk the, the flagship of the Russian Black Sea fleet? Right, it was the, the Muska Muskva, I think it was. And they did it with a drone. You know, they, they sunk this very expensive, heavy with something that costs a few thousand dollars. That's the, the problem is the asymmetry here, which is that the Iranians don't need to, to drop sea mines, capital ships. They just need to create enough of a threat with drones to make it not economically viable for individuals who own these ships or own the cargo to take the risk. Like I, I mean again, it's just right.

Tim Miller (30:39)

It, it's just a great point.

Jonathan Vlass (30:41)

It's just economics.

Tim Miller (30:42)

Well, it's also just military. It's also just like where we're at, like militarily. But again, it's, it's not. They don't sure we are doing great on the scoreboard of like missiles taken out, you know, like we have taken out a lot of their ballistic missiles. It seems like, you know, if you're looking at the, the awesome, you know, you're reading the, you know, the military dork, social media feeds and blogs like we've taken out of the missiles. But as Ukraine as Ukraine showed in this day and age, you know, like these small drones can do a ton of damage.

Jonathan Vlass (31:21)

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Tim Miller (31:44)

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Jonathan Vlass (32:21)

So here, here's my again I just go back to it, right? So it is the case that America does have a great deal of leverage over the Iranian regime and if Trump were to go to Iran and give them something like something of real material benefit to them, for instance in 8 to 10 months we will begin easing sanctions on etc. Etc. Etc. On oil or something or we'll find a pathway to you for you to enrich uranium for and we'll just say it's all for energy, energy production. If he were to give the Iranians something, I think a new new regime there with a new ayatollah would probably be pretty will pretty willing to let him save face and to say, you know, we're seeking ceasefire. He can say it's a tremendous victory. We got, they gave us everything we wanted even if that's not the case. Right. I just don't understand why he wouldn't do that. Because that's the Trumpian way to do it, right.

Tim Miller (33:27)

That is, that is typically because he doesn't actually care about the Iranian people. So you don't need to make sure, you don't need to find somebody that.

Jonathan Vlass (33:36)

Yeah. And so that's the weirdest thing about this, which is that every hour this war goes on. The only reason it's going on is because he wants it to or because Israel wants it to.

Tim Miller (33:47)

Pick.

Jonathan Vlass (33:48)

Pick one. I mean when we say war of choice, like he really does have the power to probably just to shut the thing down whenever he want wants to. And it's just wild to me.

Tim Miller (34:00)

Yeah. Well if you think that we're just a bunch of tds Adle damby Pambies, you know, kind of panicking. We're panickins out here. Here's the Wall Street Journal just popped. The long feared Persian Gulf oil squeeze is upon us. Traffic through the Strait of Hormuz has ground to a virtual halt, unleashing the most severe energy crisis since the 1970s of threatening the global economy. Me.

Jonathan Vlass (34:23)

Yeah, well they must be stupid over there too with their tds. I, you know, this is again, I just want to find all the silver linings here, Tim.

Tim Miller (34:33)

Sure.

Jonathan Vlass (34:34)

Wouldn't it be funny if the misadventure in Iran made it so that Marco never got to do regime change in Cuba? If this so sideways and the fallout from this was so bad that Trump was like yeah, it. We're not doing that again while we're doing Charlotte Cuba. Which his entire life. Marco gave up his entire life because he decided I'm going to play the long game. This is. And. And we're going to get free Cuba. Love it.

Tim Miller (35:11)

I've got a different type of into my veins schadenfreude. J.D. vance, the Vice president. I mean it's gonna be pretty tough for him to make the case that he was the. He was the nationalist, he was the America first one in there. You know, he. What do you do? He is in a massive bind and this is honestly a worst case scenario for him. I think politically speaking for protecting his brand and like that. He's been pretty deft at navigating the MAGA nationalist corporate repub Republican divide. Very tough for him. He's been nowhere. You might notice that he was supposed to have a CBS town hall. I believe next week, this coming week

Jonathan Vlass (35:54)

with Barry's gonna let him be heard.

Tim Miller (35:56)

Well, she was going to, but that was canceled. And I was thinking my mind, I was like who do we think canceled that? Barry. Because she doesn't want anyone on the network that is not a full Iran war propagandist or JD because he couldn't defend his own administration's war. Either way, kind of delicious.

Jonathan Vlass (36:12)

So coming up on 10850. Fingers crossed. I will say this about JD I think he's in a stronger position than maybe you're suggesting here.

Tim Miller (36:22)

Okay.

Jonathan Vlass (36:23)

Because he is Personally close to the most likely true America first challengers.

Tim Miller (36:31)

Right?

Jonathan Vlass (36:31)

I mean he and Tucker are like this. And I am sure that JD is repping to all of the America first people in their signal chat that guys, you got no idea how bad it is. I'm in there fighting every minute of every day to try to get Lindsey Graham out of here and try to turn the old man around. And you have no idea how bad it would be if I wasn't in.

Tim Miller (36:57)

That's a tough sell to the podcast bros, though. That's going to be a tough sell to the bait,

Jonathan Vlass (37:05)

but not the type of podcasters who are going to determine the next nominee maybe, right? If you're jd, all you really care about is who holds the nomination because you want to control the party. Whether you become president or not is immaterial. Now I do wonder, do you think any of this augurs more towards Trump feeling like he needs to demand a third term?

Tim Miller (37:25)

Hannity said it. Hannity said it this weekend.

Jonathan Vlass (37:29)

Who else has been saying it? Tim? Who else has been saying it for six years? This guy.

Tim Miller (37:35)

Okay, we'll go through for folks who miss. We'll take your, your comments, your questions if you're on YouTube, your super chats and but substack folks comment us as well if you're here. Me and JBL popped on because I've never really seen a chart like that. Like you might, if you're not a chart reader. You might think this straight up line there was like denoting, you know, something like maybe where the day began or something. That. That's. No, that's the price of oil in like one minute as soon as futures open today. An unbelievable spike up there. And so Jamie, also we wanted to chat about it a little bit.

Jonathan Vlass (38:12)

Can I tell you one more before you move on? Can I throw you one more idea? Just, just while we're spitballing, what if the real responsibility for this goes to the Nobel committee and had they only given him the stupid prize, he wouldn't have felt the need to do it. But what if all of this is him acting out after being denied his Nobel Peace Prize? If we had simply all just given him what he demanded in the same way, like, you know, he wouldn't have had to do a coup if he had just been re elected and he wouldn't have had to to. He could have been reelected if we'd all just let him do all the.

Tim Miller (38:48)

The Norway. Yeah, there's something about that. There's something else like your child. Like, you know, sometimes it's kind of. I have different parenting strategies with my husband. You know, when she's having a tantrum, sometimes I'm like, just give it. Just who cares? Let's just give her what she wants so we can move on and enjoy our dinner. He is more on the spite and principle side of things, which is correct, by the way. He's his. His way is correct. But if the Norwegians had acted a little more like me, maybe we wouldn't be here. It's a good point. One actually had one other thing I forgot to mention before we get to your your chats and questions and comments. The there's one other news item tonight which is out of Saudi Things are bad everywhere. I guess there was a bomb threat at the Kansas City airport. At every other airport, they're very long lines because we're still in a DHS shutdown. So in addition to things going bad here, there's also a terrorist effort, I guess, an attempted terrorist attack, I guess you'd say, outside of Gracie Mansion in New York. So the homeland threats are spiking. In addition to that, New York Times reporting that American employees at the US Embassy in Saudi Arabia have been told to leave the country under mandatory departure orders issued by the State Department, I guess because they don't think that they can protect the embassy, which has already been a target from Iran. So not great. Saudi, I guess, supposed to be our ally there. Not great that they're so in danger in Saudi Arabia that we have, you know, it's mandatory. You must leave if you work there.

Jonathan Vlass (40:24)

You want nightmare fuel.

Tim Miller (40:25)

Yeah.

Jonathan Vlass (40:26)

Think about what happens if there is a domestic terror attack here. Yeah. In the near future.

Rakuten Ad Voice (40:31)

Well, or else.

Tim Miller (40:32)

Or us. Like I was. So I got myself so mad today I almost sent us a, a tweet. But I, I listened to the inner JVL and I just, you know, went up, moved on. But I was like, think about all the people in this administration in support of this administration who kept being like, old man Biden's doing World War III because he's giving Ukraine some defensive weapons. What we have done in the last week. I'm not the one here to be like, world War III is imminent. But if you had to have a threat meter for likelihood of World War iii, the needles moved up quite a bit more in the last week than it did when Joe Biden gave defensive weapons to Ukraine. Anyway, fuck these people to the question. Shambolic ask and the bullwork sells him. I did that Trump Vance sticker so I can cover the Biden ones At the gas station. Somebody should.

Jonathan Vlass (41:19)

Oh, yes, they are actually already on sale. I've seen them on Etsy and ebay and I am not encouraging vandalism in any way. So I hope they are easily peel offable stickers.

Tim Miller (41:30)

Me too. But Robert Ward offered another theory. Could Trump be doing this to save Putin's cash flow again? It's so stupid. I'm open to kind of like what he's doing is so stupid. I'm open to totally crazy theories. I did note that when Suzy Wiles was like, hey, we need to do something to help with gas prices this week, the very first thing they did was ease sanctions on Russia. It's like, that's idea one.

Jonathan Vlass (41:53)

Well, we gotta help them out so that maybe Russia will stop giving targeting intelligence to the Iranians and helping them kill American soldiers.

Tim Miller (41:59)

Jbl, will this force Trump or anyone else's in his regime to rethink renewables? That's a, that's a. That's an optimistic take. Mama lawyer.

Jonathan Vlass (42:08)

No,

Tim Miller (42:11)

Jason agrees with jbl. He's waiting for all Americans needed to. Oh, no, I'm waiting for all Americans need to tighten their belts for freedom Spiel. That's the spiel he wants come. Freedom from what? It's a good question. I don't know, Karen.

Jonathan Vlass (42:23)

Be like, you know, like they don't need 18 dolls. A little girl needs like one doll, two dolls, you know, you need a gallon of gas. What do you need a full tank for?

Tim Miller (42:34)

Karen Fletcher, trust me, my name is Karen and I have no control over oil prices. Thank you, Karen. I'm saving this. The next one I have, I'm saving it for very last. It's gonna be like a little dessert for jbl. Ty, Let me just tell you, Ty, the question you asked is very JVL bait. Therese spelled like my mother's trees. Not a lot of people spelled like that. T H E R E S E. So if that's you, mom, hey, Trump is more maniacal by the day. Will he dismiss the market reaction or taco? That's all we've been talking about historically. The signs have point to taco, but I don't think so right now. I don't think he's going to soon. That's my take over here onto substack, folks. Jeff wants to know if we're great again yet not Melish. Leica wants to know how many in Congress are invested in oil futures. It's the only way to be making money in the market right now. If you're invested in oil futures so it is something to look into. Alf brings up. So all of this is just return to energy prices where they were not cheaper, like $60 oil barrels. And that's why we showed you the 10 year. And it's taking oil prices back basically where we were during the 2022 inflation spike. It's much higher than kind of, basically

Jonathan Vlass (43:44)

it'll work itself out. That's the other thing, like should be a short term thing because again, there is no structural problem here. This is a man made catastrophe. Trump literally did this. It isn't like, oh, there's a new war happening and we can't make Putin stop attacking Ukraine and that's messing up the pipeline. This is just. Trump could declare victory tomorrow and four weeks or two months later everything would be back to normal because we'd work through the supply chain jam ups. It's just by choice.

Tim Miller (44:17)

Yeah, yeah. Well, I guess I would caveat that, that he could try that. And in theory things could get back to normal in about a month. But Iran would have a say in it, you know.

Jonathan Vlass (44:30)

Yeah, we'd have to bribe them. Yeah, right, right. I mean he'd have to offer Iran and Iran would have to. Iran would then exit. And this is sort of what I have thought and the. All right, can I just have 30

Tim Miller (44:41)

seconds here, Tim, you got 30 seconds and then we're going to go to you for the final comment.

Jonathan Vlass (44:44)

Okay, So I believe that this war was likely to happen starting like the day I first got a text from my buddy who said, hey, I'm down in Tennessee and a bunch of my friends who are Air National Guard are just getting called up. And what they do is they do long range refueling and they're being told to be prepared to be away for some time. That says to me, Iran. And I think I put this in slack. I said to you guys, hey guys, it's like early war. And the reason I thought it was likely it would go is because all three parties to this were incentivized to fight. Israel had something it wants to do. Trump has something he wants to do because he now thinks that he is the king of the world and just reach in and change things. And the Iranians, from their perspective, believed that they could absorb a bunch of body blows, but that in the short term to medium term, Trump would be so incentivized to get out that he'd be willing to cut a deal with them, which is kind of what happened after the 12 Day War. Right. You remember that. And, and so they felt like they were in a bad position negotiation wise and that they could be in a better position by absorbing some pain.

Tim Miller (46:02)

Yeah.

Jonathan Vlass (46:02)

And I mean, I got to say that looks about right to me and I think they are still likely they if you're Iran, you're more likely to exit this in a stronger position than you went in. You'll have absorbed a bunch of pain, you have lost a bunch of munitions, etc. Etc. But you will have a framework of something that will, that will make the regime stronger.

Tim Miller (46:23)

Well, that's exciting. The final comment question is from Ty. Tai and JV and I were talking about this in the green room or you know, getting a live stream set up for everybody and he was just on one about this and I wouldn't have expected it to come up the comments, because we're not talking about Venezuela, but here it is. We'll close with this question from Ty to Jonathan Vila asked where is Machado these days?

Jonathan Vlass (46:48)

Oh, you know, it's such a great question, Ty. The Wall Street Journal had a piece about her this weekend and she is trying to get back into Venezuela. Having some trouble getting back into Venezuela. She is for people who don't know.

Tim Miller (47:00)

Could you just remind people the players here.

Jonathan Vlass (47:02)

Maria Machado is the Venezuelan democracy avatar who, who bravely stood against the Maduro regime and really was pushing on Trump and the neocons in his administration to do something about Maduro. And then after Maduro got kidnapped and Delsey Rodriguez got put in, she went to the White House and gave her nobe Peace Prize to Donald Trump while in a frame with testimony about Simon Bolivar and and the great, this amazing man Donald Trump will be a hero to Venezuela forever. And Donald Trump yoinked her Nobel Peace Prize from her and gave her a little, literally a little gift bag with his name on it and sent her out the door and has had nothing to do with her ever since. And she has been made completely and totally irrelevant. And it is very clear that this administration views her as nothing but a liability and an annoyance. They are very happy with jealousy Rodriguez who has decided to trade her hold on power for doing whatever errands the Trump administration needs her to do.

Tim Miller (48:07)

And how does that make you feel?

Jonathan Vlass (48:09)

It makes me feel so good. I love it. It makes me feel like I need a cigarette. Tim and let me tell you why. I understand that when you are attempting to lead a movement or you are a head of state or an aspiring head of you often have to deal with unsavory people and you have to say things which otherwise you might not be willing to say or want to say. You are doing a lot of taking one for the team. I get that. We see Volodymyr Zelensky when he comes to America. He often says nice things about Trump that you can tell he are killing him to do. But he feels like I have to say this and humiliate myself for my people. I understand that. All I ask is that you live not by lies in what. What this woman, Maria Machado did was come into America and lie to Americans about their president and attempt to make this man who was in the process of having American citizens shot in the street by his masked secret police, trying to present him to Americans as a great lover of freedom and democracy. You know what, Maria Machado, fuck off. Go back to Venezuela. Enjoy irrelevance. And I hope nothing bad happens to you while you're there. But to come in and to try to aid Donald Trump's authoritarian project in America in the hopes that he will help you end the Maduro and Chavismo authoritarian project in Venezuela, having it turn out that authoritarians are going to authoritarian is delicious. I love it. Live not by lies. Baby boom.

Tim Miller (50:00)

Well, that's wonderful. All right, we'll take us out. So one more time for you. This is the gas price chart, the oil price chart which obviously relate to the gas prices. You'll see that in the pump. Big spike up. It's kind of around even. It's going up a little more and back now. We'll see how it goes in the morning. Can we see just for counter what does the Dow futures look that seems to be going the other way feels like oil prices that just says buy the dip.

Jonathan Vlass (50:25)

Buy the dip.

Tim Miller (50:25)

Buy the dip.

Jonathan Vlass (50:28)

It just means you're getting a discount.

Tim Miller (50:29)

Tim, we do seem to be below. It's hard for me to see how my old teleprompter there we seem to be quite a bit below about 50,000. So the good news is amazing. Yeah, we can care about the Epstein files though, which is nice.

Jonathan Vlass (50:41)

Wouldn't it be amazing if Pam Bondi called the top of the market? It's too much to hope for. I understand it's too much to hope for. But if it turns out that she was calling the top

Tim Miller (50:55)

calling BB.

Jonathan Vlass (50:59)

Oh, I see.

Tim Miller (50:59)

We'll leave it there. That's JBL. I'll be back tomorrow. Go to the block.com sign up for his newsletter, give us a like. Tell your friends and good luck. I go get gas right now. Probably as soon as this. As soon as this feed is over. Go to your local gas station, fill up the tank because it's going to cost more tomorrow. We'll see you all later.

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Tim Miller (51:55)

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