Transcript
Advertiser (0:00)
Foreign.
David Pakman (0:06)
I want to walk through something with you that, I don't know, maybe it sounds a little out there, but the more you line it up, I think it's something we have to seriously consider. And it comes to the real reason that Trump would even consider closing the Strait of Hormuz after saying that having it open is the most important thing and it relates to Venezuelan oil. Let me paint the picture, and then you either tell me, wow, David, you're a conspiratorial nutjob. Please make no more videos ever again. Which some people say every day anyway, by the way, but. Or you might say, oh, actually, I think that at least circumstantially, there might be something there. So let me explain. We've got Trump suddenly moving to block the Strait of Hormuz. This is one of the most critical oil routes anywhere in the United States. So Strait of Hormuz is responsible for a huge chunk of global oil flow. When you disrupt it, even if the United States doesn't use oil that passes through there, when you disrupt that, it tightens supply globally and it's going to send prices up. It's going to mean more volatility. It will leave countries scrambling to figure out, where do we get oil from, but also what do we do about the higher prices as a result of the Strait of Hormuz being closed?
Doordash Grandma (1:22)
Costs.
David Pakman (1:22)
Cool. Now, here is where it gets interesting or dystopian, and we've already sort of explored this in the past, but now with the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, I think it's even more relevant. Trump is not talking about security or Iran or regional stability when he is doing this. He's also talking openly about boosting American oil exports. Trump said to Maria Bartiromo yesterday, listen, we. We don't get a lot of oil from there, and also we've got oil that we can sell people. So even from just what's being admitted by Trump publicly, you have a situation where cutting off that supply route directly bolsters the demand for other supply. Supply from the United States. Now, even if I didn't go any further than that, even if we had no additional information, no additional reason to be suspicious, we, right there, you would say those are some conflicted economic incentives. That's all sounding a little bit weird. But then you layer in what just happened in Venezuela just a couple of months ago. Remember that on Trump's orders, the United States military went in, arrested, slash kidnapped Nicolas Maduro in a case that doesn't really seem like it's Going to be going too far here in the United States for global drug trafficking, I believe, is what they're charging him with. Destabilize the Venezuelan government. But all of a sudden, Trump seized and now controls a bunch of Venezuelan oil. You probably are starting to suspect where this is going. Trump bragged about the volume of oil from Venezuela that is now under American control. Tens of millions of barrels or something like that. Not a small detail. So take a step back and line it all up. You gain access to a major oil supply through Venezuela after arguably illegally kidnapping the president. And almost immediately after, you go into Iran for reasons that keep shifting, nuclear regime change. But, but, but you disrupt one of the biggest competing oil supply routes. You've got the Venezuelan oil. You go in and you disrupt Strait of Hormuz, and at the same time, you've got this oil that, that your cronies are now controlling. And you tell countries, hey, you can buy American oil. And meanwhile, your actions in Iran have spiked the price of oil. Guys, I mean, is it all a coincidence and random? Maybe it is. I. I am. You know, those who have been listening to this show for a while know that I am not conspiratorial by nature. I, you know, you show me motive alone, and I go, motive is not enough for me to believe in this conspiracy. You raise a question we don't yet know the answer to. And I go, listen, just because you don't have all the answers yet doesn't mean that there is a conspiracy here. Like, I am naturally always skeptical of conspiracies. And yet when I look at this, it's really strange how it's all starting to line up. The very resource that Trump just seized from one country is now spiking in value on the open market because of Trump's decisions in another country. I don't know. You tell me if I'm crazy. Now, the administration does have its official explanations. They say, well, you know, there were tensions with Iran that had nothing to do with the Venezuela thing and our control of oil. And we tried negotiations, but they didn't work. And there are security concerns about nuclear. That's all real, at least theoretically. How much Trump understands it or cares, I don't know. But that doesn't cancel out the economic side, especially when the economic side is discussed openly by the same people making the decisions about Iran. And so any, I think, you know, basic human pattern recognition would have you look at the incentives and say, this is a little weird. Restrict global flow, increase prices, redirect demand to the very resource you just took from Venezuela and say, hey, you guys can get it from us. It's not subtle. It's not subtle. And historically, energy has always been kind of a quiet driver behind geopolitical decisions. And right now it seems to be not so quiet. It's rarely the official headline maker for why things are being done, but it's been in the background of American foreign policy for at least 50 years. And here it's not even very quiet. The pieces are all there. Venezuelan oil, Hormuz blockade, buy American oil, which is now worth a lot more. Motive alone doesn't prove a conspiracy. We're looking at a pattern here. And I am struggling to dismiss it as a coincidence when I lay it out, even though I resist being conspiratorial by nature. So I want to hear from you, what are the real priorities here? Is it security? Is it strategy? Is it the energy thing was there. Listen, I also resist the idea that this administration is competent enough to really think ahead in the way where they go. Here's an idea. Let's get Maduro arrested and then take his oil and then two months later we're going to go to war with Iran and then that'll raise the value. I don't even know that they're that competent. I don't know. But it's overlapping so cleanly. So let me know what you think. Am I reading into this something that isn't there? Am I seeing a conspiracy that doesn't exist? If that's the case, just tell me. Tell me in the comments. Send me an email info@david pakman.com but if you think that there might be something to this, if you've thought about it yourself as well, I want to hear from you. Let me know. Let's take a look at the moment that Trump ended himself. Now hold on. I know you're probably thinking, oh, what did he do today? What did he do yesterday? Now I'm going to show you a video of Donald Trump from 2018. And you might say, how did Trump end himself in 2018? We can only understand where we are today with regard to Iran, the mess that we are in today by looking at what Donald Trump did in 2018. Here is the video of Donald Trump announcing that the United States is bailing on the Iran nuclear deal. This was an Iran nuclear deal that wasn't perfect. It didn't do everything we might have wanted, but it was signed under Barack Obama and it did some important things. And importantly, as far as we knew at the time, Iran was not violating the terms of the deal. Now, of course, after the US Backed out of it, Iran did go ahead and start enriching uranium. That was wrong in the sense that the other countries that were signatories to the deal were still part of it. But from a game theory perspective, Iran did the logical thing. If the US Is out, let's start enriching uranium because the enriched uranium gives us leverage for future negotiations. I don't like the regime, I don't like theocratic authoritarian regimes. But they did what made sense. Donald Trump now has failed to secure a new deal. He now says he's shutting down the Strait of Hormuz. And I am going to go back to the moment that was optional, where all of this started. Also important to note, look at how much more articulate and developed Donald Trump's speaking abilities are. This was just years ago. It's a reminder of how bad the decline cognitively has become. Let's take a look.
