Andrew Egger (2:34)

I mean, I guess the, the upshot would be if it worked, if it worked as a threat, right? If, I mean, Trump has at times in the past seemed to succeed by threatening the craziest thing he can think of and then having the other world leaders go, oh, gosh, maybe he's serious, maybe we won't follow through. You saw that, you know, with, I don't know, Kim Jong Un in Trump's first term, stuff like that. The problem is all this stuff has seemingly gone to Trump's head to kind of think that he can do this, play this game, make this move anytime he wants to. I don't know if they think they're going to blink on this. Iran has shown no indication that they are one more threat away from finally saying, okay, you win, Mr. President. You win, Mr. Trump, sir. You know, tell us what you want us to do and we'll do it. And I mean, I did a video for us on Friday night with a shipping expert and we talked a lot about how bad things are economically already right now, how bad they will continue to be if the strait remains closed for any length of time. But that is all just the temporary stuff, right? I mean, if we start hitting Iran's energy infrastructure and Iran starts hitting, you know, more broadly, you know, scaling up its campaign, hitting other energy infrastructure around the region, I mean, the, the economic pain is not going to be concentrated in Iran. There will be a lot of pain there, and there will be a lot of pain everywhere else. It will be like an economic, you know, doomsday scenario in a lot of ways. And so, and so you got to kind of hope the President's bluffing. But, but if he is bluffing and Iran calls the bluff and he just kind of has to decide whether or not to go through with it, I mean, we're in bizarre, bizarre, totally uncharted waters here.

Sam Stein (4:00)

Can I pick up on that? Because a few things. One is this threat is coming amid other statements and reporting of them wanting to wind down the war. It's also common mid Trump saying that the Strait of Hormuz is easy to open and that also it's not our problem. And also that we don't have to open it because we're not dependent on it. So obviously there's some contradictions. There. But the other thing that's, that trips me up all the time is that does he not understand that the oil market and the energy market are global in nature, that we cannot just simply be isolated from what happens in Iran or the Strait itself, that these are all interdependent? I mean, that seems to be evading him a little bit, and I just don't understand why. Or maybe he is bluffing and that is where we're at.

Andrew Egger (4:49)

Well, he said, he said one thing late last week that was, you know, particularly sort of jaw dropping on this particular subject, which was, you know, actually it's fine for us if, you know, the price of oil goes high and stays high because, you know, we're a net oil exporter, we're net energy exporter, and, and, you know, we make a lot of money when the price of oil and the price of natural gas goes up, which is true. The petroleum companies, the energy companies that are producing here make more money under these circumstances. He's got a big consumer side problem. All the rest of us who are paying way more, not just around the world, but paying way more in the United States for all these things. But it's, I mean, like, Trump gets these sorts of, like, little tidbits of, of like, economic good news lodged in his head over this stuff, and then he just pivots back to them over and over again. So it's, it is anybody's guess how much he actually acknowledges and appreciates how bad the economic situation could get. The other thing he said on Friday was I actually don't think the economic pain's been too bad. I kind of expected it to be a lot worse. So, I mean, like, maybe, again, maybe he's bluffing. Maybe he's just sort of putting a brave face on it. And behind the scenes, he's, you know, shaking Pete Hegseth by the lapels and saying, fin us a way out of this thing immediately. I kind of hope he is, but it's possible, too, that he is really actually just sort of sleepwalking us toward a real catastrophe.

Sam Stein (5:58)

Okay, well, here's a, here's like a very small data point to suggest that he knows that the economic stuff is painful and that he needs to get around it. The people they're sending out onto the Sunday shows are not Marco Rubio or Pete Hag, Seth. Right. Or JD Vance, really. And JD's gone very, very quiet. It's Scott Besson now. I also, I'll admit Mike Walls, the UN ambassador, was on of the shows this morning, but Scott Besson has been sort of the primary face of the administration to sell the war. This is a Treasury secretary, no one not in. Not in international relations or the military. And he goes out there and he's talking about, you know, the $200 billion who might need to pay, you know, get in a supplemental for the war, which I guess is economics. He's talking about the straight of Hormuz and oil markets, which is economics, of course, but then he's talking about military escalation and things like that. And he's being pressed on this stuff by Kristen Welker. And you get sound bits like the one we're going to play now.

Scott Bessent (6:50)

Every day we are taking out their missiles, their missile systems and the factories that build those missiles. And now the General Kaine, Secretary Hegseth, are leading a campaign to destroy all the fortifications along the Straits of Hormuz.

Andrew Egger (7:07)

Just to put a fine point on

Sam Stein (7:08)

this, though, is the president in the

Andrew Egger (7:09)

process of winding down this war or escalating?

Scott Bessent (7:12)

Again? They're not mutually exclusive. Sometimes you have to escalate to de. Escalate.

Sam Stein (7:18)

All right, let me just say escalates to. De. Escalates to an Alzheimer. But secondly, this is what tripped me up is like, he's the treasury secretary. Why is he fielding questions about sending troops into Iran?

Andrew Egger (7:29)

Well, I think you see this a lot with this White House is whenever they start to feel the political heat a little bit, and particularly economic heat. I mean, Bessant is sort of the guy that they reach for to go out there and speak in sort of his soothing tones. He's always been sort of like the Wall street whisperer to say, don't worry, everything's gonna be basically fine. So that does indicate something. I mean, the thing about this is there's a total disconnect here between what they are saying the strategy is and what it would actually take to reopen the Strait of Hormuz. I mean, he. He's talking about, we're going in, we're destroying all of their missile capability. That's fine. But Iran is not closing the Strait of Hormuz right now with missiles. The White House has actually done a pretty good job in terms of, you know, taking out Iran's missile stockpiles for the most part. You know, they still have some. But that doesn't mean to do with the Strait. In the Strait, there's. They're stopping traffic by slamming speedboats into the side of these tankers by using drones. I mean, like, it's much further down the sort of Low tech side of things. And that has been sufficient to close the strait. So when he says, you know, while we're destroying all their missiles, you know, give it a little bit more time, that doesn't really mean anything. And it's the same when he's talking about, you know, attacking the fortifications along the Strait. There's only so much that you can do with airstrikes, with, you know, long range missiles here. And one thing that this is one of the kind of crisis points that they're getting to is like, wait a minute, maybe it's not actually going to work to just sort of continue to pound the shit out of them from afar in order to put them in a posture where they can no longer halt shipping. And then they get into a question of, well, are we going to send in ground troops to reopen the Strait? And that's its own whole, whole, you know, can of worms. I think that might be a big part of the reason why Trump is going so, you know, balls to the wall in terms of this threat, in terms of this giant ultimatum, because it's really the last thing he has left is to, is to get them to voluntarily agree to reopen it. Otherwise it's not clear short of ground troops what he could actually do that he's not doing right now. And that's the whole problem.

Sam Stein (9:18)

Well, as I see it, there's three roads to take here. One is to do what he's doing, which is, you know, raise the specter of something horrific taking out their power plants and get them to buckle, which as of now, we don't seeing any indication from the public statements they put out that they're considering that. But that is one. The other is to send in ground troops. And so you escalate, not just with threat, but you actually escalate. We don't know. I mean, it's possible, I suppose. There's plenty of indications that we're prepping for the possibility. And then the third is diplomatic, which is you actually cut a deal with these people, which apparently, I mean, who knows what, what this reporting actually signifies, but there is apparently some appetite for this. And you look at the actual specifics of what's discussed and it's like, yeah, that's kind of like the jcpoa. And it's like, we were there. Why did we not? Why have we taken that path? So anyways, those are the three options, I promise to potpourri, I promise.

Andrew Egger (10:19)

Can I say one last thing on the oil thing? I mean, just. Sorry, I know I'm So tweaky about all this stuff, but, I mean, like, the fact that Trump is threatening right now to go blow up every bit of oil production they have, while just two days ago we, we released sanctions on Iranian oil in order to keep the prices of oil somewhat manageable, while Trump is also saying, actually the price of oil going up is good for us, so the price of oil going up is good. But we're going to, you know, turn our back on decades of economic policy toward Iran because we actually are worried about the price of oil going up further. But apparently we're not worried enough about that that we're not going to threaten to blow up all of their facility. I mean, it's

Sam Stein (11:00)

really hard to make sense of it.

Andrew Egger (11:02)

Yeah, you cannot. You physically cannot. There's no way to make sense of it because it is completely internally contradictory and it changes every 15 minutes and it is the entire world economy kind of hanging in the balance. So it's crazy. Now. Now you can do more popery.

Sam Stein (11:16)

I will say we are going to. Just so people who are watching this, we're going to, we're going to pick up more on the, on the 48 hour threat. I know that Mark Hurtling and Ben Parker are looking to talk about it for another episode of Command Post. And just sort of, what are the actual war laws and war crimes lines here? Like, you know, I know I'm not an expert on this. I'm eager to hear from that. And of course, we're just sort of waiting nervously for what's happened, what will come on Monday evening. Okay, two topics, and then I'm gonna get you out of here. One is what's happening in the airport. So basically everyone's seen incredibly long lines in these airports as of this morning. Donald Trump and the administration have said that they are gonna send ICE to go man some of the airports to help alleviate some of the bottlenecking there. People are not particularly thrilled by this prospect. Now, Tom Holman has said, well, they're just going to look, you know, be in charge of the security stuff. The TSA agents who are still there will be there to, you know, screen people. But also there, there's been talk about actually maybe they will check ID at the airports and help with that. This has, this has real potential to maybe help, but it also has real potential to go sideways.

Andrew Egger (12:31)

Dude, I wish they would. I mean, like, come on. Like, honestly, like, like what? That's what we need, right? That's what we need. We need, we need ICE to get into a position where they are like actively working in a sort of high stress situation, constantly interacting with all these civilians. I mean, I, if it's true that we actually really do need to sort of Drive ICE's approval ratings down into the 1015 range to get some of these changes through, then, then I think that, you know, putting them at the airports is really high visibility thing. Everybody.

Sam Stein (13:01)

Well, they wear masks.

Andrew Egger (13:02)

They haven't been trained. You know, like, just get them in there, just let them work the scanners. That seems, that seems like a recipe for success in my opinion.

Sam Stein (13:09)

Will they wear masks? I. I don't know. I honestly don't know. Do they have any, any understanding of how these processes work? Are they trained at all? I mean, Homan was saying, well, they're just going to do security so they surely can like watch the door. This, this seems bad. You know, there isn't, there's another out here which is they could fund the tsa, which, and then continue quibbling over DHS and ice. That is an option. Now I understand Republicans don't want to do that because then they get just kind of boxed in from a leverage standpoint.

Andrew Egger (13:40)

They get boxed in from a leverage standpoint because they know that Democrats demands are popular on this stuff. They do not want to have the conversation on the merits about whether ICE should be able to wear masks and should be able to go, you know, without id, in unmasked cars with no uniforms and doing wide surveillance and just throwing people into the backs of vans sort of willy nilly based on, you know, whatever tiny little sliver of probable cause they have to think they're an immigrant, which is usually profiling. I mean, like, they don't want to have this conversation on the merits. And that's why this thing is all bottled up. That's why they're trying to turn, you know, DHS funding into the story of tsa. Because that is, you know, most Americans primary point of contact with DHS personnel in general. But, but I think it's, you know, Democrats are smart to be sticking to their guns here. They're smart to be making the case.

Sam Stein (14:27)

Just put a bill up.

Andrew Egger (14:28)

TSA in a heartbeat.

Sam Stein (14:29)

Yeah, put a TSA bill up. Yeah, yeah.

Andrew Egger (14:31)

So we'll see.

Sam Stein (14:32)

We'll see. Are you traveling anytime soon? I have spring break like in a couple weeks and I'm, I'm anxious.

Andrew Egger (14:39)

My parents are supposed to be in town, but supposed to be flying in this upcoming week into D.C. so we'll see how that goes.

Sam Stein (14:44)

Good luck. All right, last one. Save America act this is where all their attention is. Mike Lee. This is Mike Lee's tweet. Now. He's warning about what will happen with the Save America Act. He says, pass, Save America. Bad things could happen if we don't. Horrible things like this downward point. Now, I just. I looked at this for a while and a couple things kind of really jumped out. Glaring problems here. One is Jasmine croning. What is crogning? Do you know what that is? I have no idea. Someone's got to explain that to me. I just confusing me is this AI.

Andrew Egger (15:21)

What are we looking at here?

Sam Stein (15:22)

Now just zoom in on Zoran Mumdani. Can we zoom in a little bit on Zoran? Zoom in. That is not Zoran Maktani.

Andrew Egger (15:31)

Some other guy.

Sam Stein (15:33)

That is not Zorani. No, that's not him. Come on.

Andrew Egger (15:36)

That's not anybody I recognize. That's not like they took some other. Maybe it is, but I don't know who it would be.

Sam Stein (15:42)

Okay, so he's got Ilhano Morris, Secretary of Defense, aocsvp Bernie at hhs. I could see that. You know, a little swan song. Michelle Obama's Secretary of Education or state. State, sorry. Not sure Michelle's going to go for that. But here's the best part. United States of America. What's the year there? 2028, dude. The next administration takes office in 2029. Oh, it's at the top. To scroll all the way to the top. Mikey's Twitter shit is too much sometimes.

Andrew Egger (16:10)

The only thing I have to say about this is that it is. I mean, it's stupid, obviously. It's all extremely stupid. We should not lose sight of the fact that, like, the actual argument is here is we have to pass this act so Democrats can't get electrons. If you were to hold an election today, the Democrats would clean up. Donald Trump's popularity is, you know, lower than it's been. It's getting worse. You know, we're looking over the precipice of this, like, massive, catastrophic, catastrophic war continuing to get out of control. I mean, like, they're not in good shape. And the fact that they are saying, like, please let us pass this one piece of election legislation that will permit us to cling to power is kind of an amazing thing for them to be saying out loud.

Sam Stein (16:49)

That's the only thing that's a much more valid point than making fun of this terrible AI graphic that he put.

Andrew Egger (16:56)

Funny, too.

Sam Stein (16:56)

Don't get me wrong, whoever that is. If. If you recognize that that's you being portrayed as Zoran Mamdani. I want to hear from you. Drop us a line. I have no idea who that is. All right, Andrew, thanks so much man. Appreciate it. To those who watch appreciate this as well. Subscribe to the book. We get great takes like this, buddy. Take care. We'll see you in 30 hours when the 48 hour deadline finishes. Okay? Or I hope to see you at least later.

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