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- [00:05]
A
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- [01:08]
B
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- [02:15]
C
Hello and welcome to the rest is Politics.
- [02:17]
A
Us with me, Katie K. And I'm Anthony Scaramucci. Good morning, caddy.
- [02:22]
C
Good morning, Anthony. It is very nice to have you back on the program. We missed you last week when you were being a movie star, but I'm glad you had time with your son.
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A
Got my new shirt. Do you recognize this Battleship?
- [02:32]
C
I used to love that game.
- [02:33]
A
Okay, there you go. See, my kids were like, what the hell is that, dad? As they were leaving for school.
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C
We're too old. There we go. Okay.
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A
You sunk my battleship.
- [02:41]
C
Catty K, where can I hide my destroyer? That was so fun.
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A
Although if I'm part of the Iranian navy, you only sunk some of my battleships. You didn't quite sink all of them. Unlike what the President saying, the ones
- [02:54]
C
that were hidden may not have been sunken. In fact, they took them off the board. Anthony, you know how you have them on the board with the pegs? The Iranians took them off the board and put them on a board somewhere or else.
- [03:04]
A
Good idea. I'm going to try that when I teach my kids how to play this game. All right, what do you want to talk about?
- [03:09]
C
Let's talk about Trump's hold over the gop. I mean, we've been talking about the polls and the crises that Trump is facing with the general American population and electorate, and it's not looking good. But you've clearly got a kind of bifurcation because whilst the general public is not happy with Trump, Trump's base and his grip over the base is ironclad. So we're going to be looking at the primary. The most exp. House primary ever in American history takes place tomorrow in the great state of Kentucky, and that is Thomas Massie, who has been maligned by Mr. Trump and has crossed Mr. Trump and is now facing the costs of having done so. And on Saturday, we had a sitting senator, Bill Cassidy, Republican, who was defeated in his primary. First time Donald Trump has managed to oust a senator from his own party as well. So it looks like Trump's grip on the party is alive and well. So we're gonna look at. And then in the second half of the program, we are going to look at the looming oil crisis caused by the closure of the Strait of Hormuz. Experts are kind of ringing quite loud alarm bells that stockpiles are depleting and we really haven't seen the worst of the price rises yet. So what is that going to mean for American politics as well? And we'll dig into that a little bit more. But first of all, let's just talk a bit about what's going to happen in Kentucky tomorrow. So 6am Tomorrow morning, polls open in the Kentucky Republican primary for the Kentucky's 4th district, currently held by one Thomas Massie. You've heard us talk about Thomas Massie before. He's a 55 year old. He's a seven term House member, an engineer, an inventor. He was born in West Virginia, near Kentucky and Ohio. He has voted against Trump's tax and spending cuts bills. He co authored the legislation that compelled the Justice Department to release the Epstein files. He sought to revive revoke tariffs on Canada and he has sided with Democrats in rejecting the war on Iran. This has put him in Donald Trump's crosshairs. And Trump has spent the weekend lambasting Massie on social media. By my count, he mentioned Massie six times in his Truth social post during the course of Sunday. He's called him a fool, he's called him a loser, and Trump is going for three for three here. So we were told you about last month when he managed to get rid of the legislators in Indiana who had opposed redistricting. He weighed in on their races, got rid of them over the weekend. He got rid of Bill Cassidy, the sitting Senator from Louisiana, who had, who had voted to impeach him and who had also had got in Trump's crosshairs. And now he wants to get rid of Massie. And he sees this as the big scalp and will prove how much control he still has over the Republican Party. So what do you make of Massey's chances? The polling is interesting because they had actually been pretty neck and neck, although in the last few days Massey's opponent, who is a Trump backed individual, had pulled ahead in the polls a little bit. So tell me what you see in Kentucky and why it's important.
- [06:30]
A
I think it all comes down to turnout and of course the President is backing Ed Galrain, who is a former Navy SEAL. I'm going to say if the turnout's below 100,000, Massey will survive. But the scandal is really the swing variable here. Meaning there's a lot of soft Massey voters that I think want to see the Epstein files. You see what I mean? And it's a question of whether or not they want to come out and vote for him. Well, obviously we'll know by tomorrow night. But I think the thing that's resounding to me is Massie has done every single thing that was in the 2024 campaign platform. So if you and I went back to the Republican convention and said, okay, what's in the platform, the MAGA platform for the Republicans, Massie has executed on every single one of those the President has gone in a complete opposite direction forever wars, withholding the files, withholding the Kennedy assassination files, all the different things.
- [07:33]
C
He's anti big government, doesn't want big government spending, he's trying to reduce the
- [07:37]
A
deficit, voted with Trump 97 or 98% of the time. And you know you've got the AIPAC. Katty, tell our viewers who AIPAC is. Most of them know but tell them who it is. And AIPAC has pummeled money into this thing. I mean, they put 2.6 million into backing Ed Gal Rhine. You've got Miriam Adelson, Paul Singer, big AIPAC supporters separately going against Massie. So tell us what that is.
- [08:06]
C
So I think that's been one of the more interesting things of this campaign. One is the Epstein scandals. And how much heat is there still in the Epstein files? How much of a push? This is going to be a test, I think, of how much of a desire there still is in the MAGA world to get those files released? Or are MAGA voters, have they kind of moved on from Epstein? Are they satisfied with what they've seen seen so far? Are they now convinced there's no Trump involvement? And they're not very interested in pushing for other figures to be revealed from those files? Because it has died down. The whole Epstein story has died down. I think if this primary was being held at the height of the kind of Epstein fervor this election could, would be much more likely to go Massey's way. The Israel stuff is interesting. Aipac, of course, is the American Israeli political action group. They funnel money to members of Congress. Democrat and Republicans have traditionally taken money. AIPAC is playing a super interesting role in this primary season because of the war on Gaza and because of Israel's falling approval ratings in America. AIPAC is actually funding money in some states through kind of cutouts. But in this race, they're putting money directly in and they're talking about it. And that is because Masi is actually very opposed to America giving aid to Israel, financial and military aid. He always has been. He's particular opposed to it now, and he's very outspoken about it, which puts him out of step with quite a lot of Republicans, and particularly with MAGA Republicans, and puts him out of step with Donald Trump. So I think those are the two big tests of this. And along with that, it's going to be how much do primary voters. And remember, primary voters are always the more fervent. You don't go out and vote in a primary campaign for a House seat unless you are a pretty dedicated member of the public. Now, Massey says I've got a lot of dedicated Massey supporters who want to show the White House that you can be independent from the White House. But Trump is very good at rallying his base. He's sending Pete Hegseth there today. A lot of questions I have about why the Secretary of Defense is taking a day out from running a war to going to campaign and whether that is actually the way it should be. But you've had a lot of big figures weigh in this race and a lot of big money weigh in on this race. And I think Trump still has clout. If you're looking at Indiana and if you're looking at what happened in Louisiana over this weekend, you have to think that Massey's on thin ice with this one, right?
- [10:39]
A
Let's say he loses, okay? Because if you look at the poly markets, it's 58 versus 43.
- [10:45]
C
The poly markets are much further out on this than the polls are. That's interesting because the polls put it much closer than the poly markets.
- [10:51]
A
I mean, the polymarkets are probably betting on the Trump machinery bringing in out the turnout, which will knock Massey out of the race. And I think also those markets did move after the Bill Cassidy situation on Saturday night. But, Katie, I want you to talk about this, because this is the thing that when I look at this, I say, okay, I get it. I'm Donald Trump. I'm the enforcer. What I say goes. And if I say A and then I come into office and now we're going with Z, you keep your mouth shut. You drop A and you go to Z. And Massie's very different from somebody like Liz Cheney, who was attacking Trump's character. He's really talking about things like libertarianism and small government. And he's even saying that Trump is probably not that implicated in the Epstein files. It's the whole coterie of people. But Trump doesn't care. You've gone after me. This is my thing also with Trump. I said one thing he didn't like. That was it. Now we're in a holy war. And I get it. And he probably will win these two, and that will fortify his ability to control the Congress in the second half of his term that are Republicans. But hear me out for two seconds. He's spending finite political capital on these intramural flights. Okay? Every dollar that goes into this from aipac, Singer, Paulson, Adelson is a dollar not spent defending vulnerable Republicans in swing districts next November, which is actually what,
- [12:22]
C
of course, they need to keep the House.
- [12:23]
A
Of course. He just blew $14 million to replace a safe seat seat with a safe seat Republican. Right? Am I. Am I right?
- [12:31]
C
Yeah, you're right.
- [12:33]
A
Okay. And so now Massie, who's this MIT Harvard engineer, has won eight terms. He's out. The replacement is going to be weaker, meaning the replacement's going to have less seniority, less pull in The Congress, less knowledge of how Washington works. I would say that would be the same thing for Cassidy's replacement. So analyze that for me, okay? Be a Trump MAGA person. Hey, Donald Trump, rah, rah. But aren't you not being a smart, real politics sort of a person and letting a few things go? Bill Cassidy is voting with you, Massie, generally voting with you. And you could be spending this money and resources elsewhere. Okay? And I think this speaks to Trump's narcissism, of course. And I'll get to why he doesn't give a shit whether they win or not. And this is more evidence of that, frankly.
- [13:25]
C
Massie is running ads, late campaign ads, tying himself to Donald Trump. I mean, basically highlighting how much he has voted with and agreed with Donald Trump. So he is trying to kind of paper over the big differences between them at the end of his campaign. I suspect that is because his internal polling is showing that he has problems and that Trump voters want Trump voters. I mean, this is the cult of personality argument that it's all about Donald Trump. It's not about the Republican Party and what is good for the Republican Party, because if it was, he'd be saving that money to spend somewhere else. And there is this irony that just as Trump is losing support nationally, there's a new CBS poll that shows him again at record low approval ratings. And it's not just one poll. We've had a slew of them that we've told you about over the last couple of weeks. Right. There are all these polls coming out showing that Trump is at record low approval ratings with the country, with average Americans, with independent Americans, with swing voting Americans, with Hispanic Americans, with young Americans. The people that the coalition that drove him into office in 2024, he's lost that coalition for the moment. But in ruby red places like Kentucky's 4th district, Indiana, Louisiana, he still has this iron grip on the party, and he also has a ton of campaign money. So the message from this election to the candidates running for 2028 is you will not be able to run by putting daylight between yourself and Donald Trump. The chances, I think that the real importance of this Tuesday's primary in Kentucky is that it gives us a window into the 2028 election and which candidate can be viable for the Republican primary voters? Because Donald Trump will have so much money and he'll be sitting there in Mar a Lago determined to play kingmaker.
- [15:23]
A
It's a really good point. And the question is, it's two years from now, will he still have this influence.
- [15:28]
C
He'll still have the money. He'll still have the money.
- [15:30]
A
Okay. We, we've moved on from role playing. Okay. We're now into the game show phase of the rest of politics. You ask, and so I'm going to read something to you and you're going to say, yes, that works, or no, that really doesn't work. Okay.
- [15:44]
C
Do I get points or something? I mean, is there like, what's the, what's the bonus? I need an incentive structure here.
- [15:50]
A
We'll have a product gift certificate at the end of this.
- [15:52]
C
Excellent. Okay.
- [15:53]
A
Okay. All right, you ready? So this is the Massey campaign. Okay. And this is in the final, let's say 96 hours. This is the closing arguments. And I want you to say this works. Ah, medium or this does not work. Okay, you ready? Billionaires are trying to buy my seat. He went on Stephanopoulos on Sunday and he named everybody, including aipac. He says, this is out of state. Billionaires buying your Congressman Kyo 4. And you say, yeah, that doesn't work so well. All right. Doesn't work. You're so British. For those of you listening and not watching YouTube, she put up the middle thumb.
- [16:36]
C
The middle thumb.
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A
OK. Which is like sideway thumb. But she really knows it doesn't work. So I'm giving two thumbs down on that.
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C
Everybody knows there's tons of out of state money coming into these races.
- [16:47]
A
Okay, Be a little less British when you answer the next question.
- [16:50]
C
All right?
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A
This is for the Prada gift card.
- [16:55]
C
You know how to win me over.
- [16:57]
A
Weaponizing Trump's attacks for fundraising. Every time he tweets about me, it's good for me. There's some money coming in. We're converting Trump's truth social posts into small dollar hauls in real time. You really believe that ban? Okay, yeah, that's not working either. Congressman Massie. Okay, let's go to the next one. Okay. He's introducing the AIPAC act and he's saying this mid race that he would like AIPAC to have to register as a foreign agent. And I just wanna point out that these are US citizens, mostly Jewish citizens, but frankly, some people that donate to AIPAC are non Jews, but they're US citizens in an American political action committee. But he says since they're supporting a foreign country, he wants them to register as a foreign agent. Okay. And this is his middle finger against them, frankly. And they're trying to silence me. Is that working on the 776,000?
- [18:02]
C
It may work if he was running in the great state of Michigan. However, he is running in Kentucky and so I'm going to give that a thumbs down too. So he's not doing too well, Mr. Massie.
- [18:12]
A
Okay, we got two more catety kids, surrogate strategy. He's got Rand Paul and the podcast. Right. And they're coming in state as validators. And he's also was hosted by Tucker Carlson and he's got Mike Cernovich and other what I would call broader maga. Broader traditional maga. Marjorie Taylor Greene, maga.
- [18:41]
C
This is not going to help him because these people are already labeled as anti Trump. That's the problem if he's trying to broaden his appeal. So who is he trying to get? What's going to make the difference for him? The difference for him is going to be whether a few Trump supporters decide to jump ship. Well, that's kind of unlikely to happen, I guess. Or he can get out more Massey supporters. Right. He's actually got to drive more of his own people to the polls. He's not going to win over Trump supporters. I don't think at this stage. They know who he is. They know that Trump hates him. So he's got to drive up his supporters. I don't know that he does that by going on Tucker Carlson, and I don't think that's going to help very much.
- [19:26]
A
All right, well, you've given a couple thumbs down, a couple of neutrals, but no thumbs up of discernible. I didn't see any of these. Katy, Katie, none of the thumbs up. Okay. And so he really wants to win. What did he need to do? He needed to soften his stance on the Epstein files, which he's not doing. He needed to soften his criticism of the Iran war and the connection into Israel, which he's not doing. He also needed to go have a rapprochement with Donald Trump, which he's not doing. Now he is running as a fiscal hawk and anti interventionist and all that other stuff, which sounds good, but the people are tied to Donald Trump caddy and we have to accept that.
- [20:13]
C
Yeah, but let's take the alternative route which is driving up his supporters. Right. He's got to get out more Massey voters and more people who are skeptical of Donald Trump. So I'm not sure that going to, to have a rapprochement with Donald Trump would help that particularly.
- [20:27]
A
Well, it's too, obviously it's too late for that, but I'm saying it's too late for that. I'm saying six, eight months ago. Knock, knock. Tom Massey Listen, Trump's gonna be gone in two years. You could be here for another 20. Go break bread with Donald Trump. Okay, he did not do that. But there's lessons here. Just want to say these two quick things. The full on narcissist. Donald Trump doesn't care about the power structure in the Congress. He cares about his personal power over those Republican congressmen. Because a smart president would be like, all right, this guy disagrees with me, I'm going to help him anyway. Bill Cassidy, I'm going to help Massie anyway. Okay? Because they are good Republican citizens. Right? The Epstein files, Haha. I control the Department of Injustice and they're not coming out. And anything I did that was untoward in the Epstein files. No one's ever going to see the day, light of day anyway. Tom Massie. So you're barking up the wrong tree. But you're a good Republican. I'm going to let you back into Congress. No, no, no. I'm a supreme narcissist and this does not bode well for the Republicans. And if I was Gavin Newsom listening it in, I'd be saying, okay, we got these guys if we can. If I can just figure out a way to consolidate the Democrats and get them to stop bickering with each other. If it's not Newsom, you pick the
- [21:51]
C
person caddy, because Trump is making it all very personal.
- [21:54]
A
Exactly.
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C
This is not about actually the health of the person.
- [21:57]
A
That's hopefully where the Democrats will look at it and say, this is where I got to lock on the target. One other thing, which is more evidence to the weakness of what Trump is doing. He knocks Tillis out. This is the senator from North Carolina. He knocks him out. So he's not going to run anymore. He picks Michael Whatley to replace him. Whatley wins the primary, but he's now facing Roy Cooper, a very popular Democratic governor, in November. So this is a race that the Republicans could absolutely lose. Whereas Tillis would have been the resounding favored to win in, in November. So much so that Cooper may not have even ran. So I just want to point out some of the externalities of what Trump is doing that is actually hurting the party.
- [22:49]
C
I think it's actually hurting the party beyond that, because even when these Republicans win, as in the case of Louisiana, the woman who is running against Bill Cassidy, she'll go on and win that. Because Louisiana Republicans always win those Senate seats. But what he is doing by doing this is he's prolonging the Trumpism of the Republican Party.
- [23:11]
A
Exactly.
- [23:12]
C
So even once Trump is gone from office in 2028, he has set in place a system in places like Indiana and places like Kentucky, in places like Louisiana, in places like South Carolina, where the quality and nature and politics of the Republican Party is going to be far more Trumpian than it would have been if he hadn't got personally involved. Before we go to a break, there's one Republican I would like everybody to take a look at. It's an article that David French wrote in the New York Times. Republican columnist in the New York Times, not a great fan of Donald Trump's, but it's really worth a read. We'll put it in the newsletter for you guys. But he is telling the story of the Republican majority leader of the South Carolina Senate, Shane Massie, who stood before his colleagues and gave a speech which is brilliant, a brilliant defense of America's democratic principles and founding ideals and why this whole redistricting thing. And he's a very conservative Republican, and he will lose his seat because of this, because Donald Trump will do to Shane Massie what he has done to Bill Cassidy and what he has done to Thomas Massie in Kentucky, and he will go after him and there is no way he'll be able to hang on to. He will be like those Indiana Republicans. But it's worth a listen. It's worth 10 minutes of your time just to listen to this speech about how America needs to defend its actual ideals of democracy and giving people a real choice in their votes. So if you want something a little uplifting, read that or listen to that. Listen to. It is even better because it comes with that lovely South Carolina accent, y', all, which I can't do.
- [24:46]
A
Well, unfortunately, I can only do one accent, Gaddy, and that's just, that's long guy land. Long guy land. That's my only.
- [24:54]
C
We're going to take a. We're going to take a break and come back and talk about oil prices.
- [25:03]
A
Welcome back to the Rest is Politics. US Catty tickets are on sale now. You go to the rest is politicsus.com we're going on tour in October. What are some of the cities we're visiting?
- [25:15]
C
Katty we are going to Chicago, Minneapolis, Atlanta, Boston, New York, Washington, D.C. and heading up to Canada to go to Toronto as well. Please come and see us. We'd love to meet you guys. We haven't really done a proper North American tour, so this is a bit of a first for us. And we would love to see you and get you guys all to chat to each Other and throw us some questions too. So we're looking forward to it and we'd love to see you there. Please do buy some tickets.
- [25:42]
A
So, Caddy, I have a question.
- [25:43]
C
Go on.
- [25:44]
A
And I want you to answer this question because you're incredibly smart person. I did a little bit of math over the weekend, talked to my economic analysts at SkyBridge, and we're going through the damage. Okay. And I want to step back and say that the U.S. has spent, you know, they're lowballing the number. It's not probably a billion dollars a day, but they probably spent $50 billion to $60 billion prosecuting the war. It turns out the damage that was done to our bases in the area are now being estimated because you look at satellite imagery, the bases look wiped out. Five to eight billion dollars worth of damage, Caddy, to the bases, then you've got damage done to the Gulf states. We're talking about 30 ish billion dollars worth of damage there. And it looks like we have about $600 billion of damage to the global economy, meaning the economy has grinded down and growth has gone down globally as a result of this. And so I'm rounding numbers to say this is a $700 billion economic catastrophe. No Democrat that I've heard of has framed it from that perspective. Nobody has said, hey, I'm just letting you know we had the JCPOA and we were in the process of removing their nuclear threat and seeing if we could reintegrate this nation back into the family of nations. But we ripped that up and we've dropped these bombs on them now, and we now have $700 billion worth of damage. And again, we're probably not gonna even get the deal that we once had. And of course you guys talked about Robert Kagan last week, but go ahead. So why is nobody talking about that if you're in opposition of Donald Trump? You know the President, by the way? Cuz I know his personality. If anybody framed it like that, whatever hair is left on his head. Cuz if you saw that picture of him in China where the hair was blowing all over the place, whatever hair is left on his head, he would burn off the top of his head if anybody framed it like that.
- [27:56]
C
I think the challenge for Democrats or for anybody is to frame this in numbers that mean something to somebody.
- [28:02]
A
By the way, before you answer that, I also want to point out that this is a calculation we're making. These figures obviously could be in dispute, meaning, you know, the Pentagon would say differently and maybe the President Trump himself would say differently. I'm just doing this back of the envelope economic analysis. But go ahead, Katie. Just want to make sure I put that buffer in there.
- [28:22]
C
There's another set of numbers that's just come out. Brown University's Watson School of International and Public affairs has just estimated the conflicts hit to American consumers just in terms of higher petrol and diesel prices. And they came up with this weekend the number of $41 billion per consumer per American household. That's $316. And I think that's actually the way to make these numbers break through. Because if you say, well, the war has cost the global economy 700 billion, the average American voter in my household, I don't really know what that means. That's a lot of numbers with a lot of zeros at the end of it. If you go and you say to consumers, it's cost your household $316 so far, just in terms of higher gas prices, that is something that people can actually understand. But here is what the FT did over the weekend that I thought was really interesting. They did a comparison of what could have have been done with that $41 billion of extra oil, petrol and diesel prices. They said it could have restored America's bridge programs. It could have completely redone the US Air traffic control system. That would have been a mere $31 billion. It could have fully funded the now defunct $18 billion Federal Electric Vehicle charging and electrification programs. So I think that is the way to make this have meaning for Americans. This is what it's costing your household. And this is what this war. That has not got rid of Iran's nuclear program, that has not had regime change, that has not destroyed Iran's missile program. This is what we could have done with just one small slice of the money. We could have repaired America's bridges. We could have redone America's air traffic control systems. You know what it's like to fly in and out of airports. There are far too many crashes happening at the moment in America's airports. It needs overhauling. We could have used that money to do that. We could have used the money to actually install electric vehicle chargers, which would make us less vulnerable to fossil fuel shocks around the world. I think that is the way that a smart Democrat needs to start framing this. But the question I had for you, Anthony, is you've been tweeting me, texting me over the last couple of days saying the oil situation is about to get a lot worse. The squeeze is bad for Americans, but it's about to get More intense. I feel like over the last couple of months, sort of since the Straits of Hormuz were shut, that I've seen covers of the Economist or big articles and headlines in the FT and the Wall Street Journal saying oil prices are unnaturally low. They could have been much higher. But the energy shock is really about to hit. There is a real crisis coming. So which is it? Is there a real crisis coming? Or have we somehow managed to weather this in a way that most oil analysts didn't expect at the beginning?
- [31:12]
A
So a big shout out to my friends that were celebrating the 45th anniversary of the Goldman Sachs merger with J. Aaron, which is a commodities firm. Of course my old boss Lloyd Bankfind was at J. Aaron and moved over to Goldman. And so, so I have a ton of my friends that are in the oil markets. My next door neighbor actually out here on Long island is a former oil trader and I would tell you guys that the shortages were there even prior to the conflict starting. Everybody has some emergency reserves, but the shortages were there. They were then alleviated by the way by unsanctioning some of the Russian and Iranian oil. That was the irony of that. They unsanctioned the oil which gave both of those countries more money. And then of course we alongside of Europe released strategic petroleum reserves to try to reduce the prices in the overall market. Okay, so that to us on Wall street is a one time problem solver, okay. It brought down the spare supply in the marketplace and it actually has hid the deficit that's out there. Okay, so if we can manage to reopen the Strait of Hormuz by early June, probably going to be okay guys, we'll probably be able to skate around this if it's a month later.
- [32:39]
C
Why is the difference? Because my understanding was that all of the inventory that had been out there before and that a lot of Gulf states had realized that tensions were rising and so they had actually shipped out even more. And you had quite a lot floating at sea too. But you've had the sea buffer has gone because those ships have now landed in port. The inventories have been drawn down. I thought we had shocks hitting at one point. So how do we get through till June that we can manage this?
- [33:06]
A
So this is a great question. So what ends up happening is you get what oil traders would call some demand destruction.
- [33:14]
C
Yeah, which we've seen in Asia already, we're starting to see in Europe.
- [33:17]
A
Right. Everything you're saying is being offset by some demand destruction. Again, these are rough estimates. This is me over the weekend Talking to three or four different oil traders trying to get a sense for what they're saying. If the Strait of Hormuz could reopen by early June, we can probably skate our way out of this. And again, economic damage has already been done, which I think pointed out, loss of GDP, et cetera. But if we go another 28 day cycle, let's say we're in the middle of July, the strait is still not open, I think you're going to have much higher prices.
- [33:54]
C
Why? What's in that 28 days? What's the difference?
- [33:58]
A
Just the full depletion of reserves. And then the US government and others have to make a calculation. Hey, if we go into a full on kinetic global war, I need this oil. I can't give up this oil right now.
- [34:12]
C
So America might ban exports, for example.
- [34:15]
A
Yeah. Remember, remember, there's consumption based uses for oil and then there's national defense based uses for oil. The first leg of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve in Europe and the US is for consumption. Let's keep everybody happy. But that second leg has got to be additional conservation caddy because of a national security concern.
- [34:35]
C
But am I right also in thinking that even if it open the beginning of June, production and transport doesn't get back to normal for three or four months after that?
- [34:45]
A
Right.
- [34:45]
C
Because those ships that have now sailed off to California carrying oil, they've got to get back to, they've got to finish their journey, come back to the Strait of Hormuz, you've got to ramp up production again. You've got to do all of the safety checks that have been missed while production was not happening. It's going to take a few months for, for the system to get smooth again, the movement of oil around the world.
- [35:05]
A
Right, yeah, yeah. Listen, again, it's a problem, but I believe that it's a manageable problem so
- [35:12]
C
long as the strait is open by early June.
- [35:14]
A
I believe so.
- [35:15]
C
So that's three weeks.
- [35:16]
A
Yep. I want to give you these stats. Okay. There was on February 18, US Government Strategic Petroleum Reserve, 415.4 million barrels. This is as of February 18, 2026. Maximum drawdown capacity was 4.4 million barrels a day. Okay. And then of course it takes about two weeks for that oil to actually reach the markets after the President signs its release. And so you're right, but if I knew that the strait was open, I could release more oil.
- [35:50]
C
So long as you were sure that the straits wouldn't be shut again.
- [35:53]
A
Right. Well then you'd have to make sure. Exactly right. You could Use the SPR as a bandage, okay. To help us cross over. But again, you've got a problem in diesel, you've got a problem in jet fuel, you've got a problem in fertilizer.
- [36:08]
C
Helium.
- [36:09]
A
Helium for chips. Pakistan has told people, hey, man, if you're going to watch cricket, watch it at home. We already know there are shortages in Thailand. South Korea has announced a five month restriction on the export of Nafa. Okay. And Asia demand is already down by almost 2 million barrels a day, which is you pointed out. So. So we've got a lot going on and it's going to either resolve itself or explode in the middle of the summer. And I said this to you a few weeks ago. I want you to imagine the MAGA person with the hat on and they're grilling hot dogs and in their backyard and they're paying seven, eight dollars a gallon for gas, the fuel that Ford Raptor pickup truck, not going to be a happy group of people, right?
- [36:56]
C
No. And they've already canceled their July 4th road trip plans and any other driving plans they may have. Well, that puts us on a three week timetable and I don't know. We are hearing out of the White House today that Trump's team are looking at resuming kinetic activity against Iran. He has warned today that the clock is ticking for Iran to accept a deal to end the conflict. They're done. There doesn't seem to be much indication that the Iranians are keen on some kind of a diplomatic solution. That all seems to have gone fairly quiet over the last week. So I don't know where that leaves us. And I don't see a plan at the moment for us to have resolved this in the timeframe that you're talking about, which is three weeks. But maybe I'm wrong and maybe something will happen.
- [37:44]
A
No, no, that's why I think it's important to bring it up, because it's important. Look, the stock market's doing well, so this group of people in a K shape, economy doing well, billionaires are having a field day. But the average person is really struggling right now. And my buddy Scott Galloway said it better than me. So I'm going to paraphrase from him. He says, not that the people are out of work, they're out of work, but they can't afford things. Imagine the anger of that. Right?
- [38:10]
C
You're working, but you can't afford things.
- [38:11]
A
Well, I'm a working poor, cash. And this is the thing that's really got people upset.
- [38:16]
C
I had to book a ticket from Portland, Maine to Newark, a one way ticket. It's an hour and a half flight. The ticket price is $760. And that's insane for American travel. That is insane. No wonder people are unhappy.
- [38:32]
A
And again, Americans are used to lower, much lower prices than the rest of the world. I mean, it's basically the benefit of the, the petrodollar situation. But I think we've now exposed the petrodollar as conditional. Right. I mean, people are looking to do renminbi denominated oil contracts. They've gotten more attractive overnight, by the way. I think everybody knows that inflation is back. The numbers are staggering. Caddy, the Fed is trapped.
- [38:59]
C
We have a new Fed chair, Kevin Walsh, who was sworn in last week and he will not be able to bring down interest rates as we had thought he would this summer.
- [39:07]
A
Yeah, he's in an impossible situation now as a result of all this. So one quick other point, because I was on the phone with Department of Defense, I was never going to call it the Department of War. A buddy of mine, known him forever, he said, you know, if you want to go kinetic in Iran, the strategy would have been to mow the lawn. You know, the mow the lawn strategy will degrade their capability for 10, 20 years to get the bomb. And we'll do the same thing that we did last June. And the strait would have stayed open, they would have been pissed off about it, but they wouldn't have done anything more because they were looking to get sanctions relief ultimately. But by going full kinetic, we tripped the switch into doing what Brzezinski had said and others. They'll close the straight. Once they close the strait, there'll be a set of consequences that we really can't get ourselves out of. And so this will be. And I want you to push back on me if I'm wrong, but I predict this will be Trump's legacy.
- [40:03]
C
Yeah, I think you're right.
- [40:04]
A
This will be Trump's legacy. That he got us into a quagmire. He was a populist leader who campaigned on ending forever Middle Eastern wars. Americans have been running wars in the Middle east for the last quarter century. And he promised us that he wasn't going to do that, but he's now got us into an unspeakable quagmire. If I'm wrong on that Gatti pushback.
- [40:28]
C
No, I think you're right. I think his legacy is three things. He launched a tariff war, as I said last week when we were talking about China, he launched a tariff war. He alienated America's key allies in Europe by threatening to take Greenland. And he launched an unwinnable war in Iran. And all of those things are hurting him. And because Donald Trump is is surrounded by incredibly wealthy people and friends and family who are making an awful lot of money both out of the market and on their trades on what he's doing, he is out of touch and increasingly shows himself to be out of touch by saying things like I don't care about Americans financial situation. And when he's asked about it by Brett Baer on Fox just at the end of last week, asked again about it, he said, what does his response? Well, the stock market is booming. That is how he sees it. That's the people he's surrounding himself with. So I think he doesn't understand quite how much Americans are hurting because of this war. We're going to leave it there. Don't forget to go and look@therestispoliticsus.com there you can become a founding member. We'll be talking this week in our Founding members episode about America and whether it's veering to Christian nationalism after the big revivalists prayer service on the National Mall. Who is paying for Trump's Ballroom? Is Trump's Ballroom going to happen? I have a theory about that. And of course, you can also use that site, thereestispoliticsus.com to buy your tickets to our North America tour. Thanks, guys. Thanks for listening.
- [41:54]
A
See you later in the week, guys.