In this episode, we discuss the latest Iranian missile strike on a Saudi Arabia air base, as well as the massive protests across the country in support of the No Kings movement and the No King in America rally in New York City.
00:00:30.000We can achieve. We are achieving all those objectives. We are ahead of schedule on most of
00:00:34.140them, and we can achieve them without any ground troops, without any. Now, in terms of why there's
00:00:39.400deployments, number one, the president has to be prepared for multiple contingencies,
00:00:45.000which I'm not going to discuss immediately. And again, I refer you to the Department of War,
00:00:48.720who will probably tell you the exact same thing. But we can achieve all of our objectives with
00:00:52.940our ground troops, but we are always going to be prepared to give the president maximum
00:00:56.700optionality and maximum opportunity to adjust to contingencies should they emerge so we don't
00:01:03.500have the exact number of servicemen or women who were actually injured during this attack but i was
00:01:10.420just told by a source moments ago that two of the service members did have shrapnel wounds but they
00:01:19.060were clear to say that these were non-life-threatening wounds. I'm also told that
00:01:25.020aircrafts, at least one aircraft was damaged in this strike, but it's not something that's going
00:01:30.920to totally take out their capabilities on that air base. Now, in terms of the shrapnel wounds,
00:01:36.220in terms of the wounds overall, the injuries overall, we do not have clarity on how many
00:01:41.320service members, men and women, were actually injured. We do not have clarity on what those
00:01:48.080injuries were other than the at least two servicemen and women who were injured with a
00:01:53.500shrapnel injury. Now, of course, all of this is going to further complicate what is supposed to
00:01:58.940be happening behind the scenes right now and what we are told is happening, which is this quest for
00:02:04.060diplomacy, these ongoing negotiations. And I will say we heard from the secretary of state earlier
00:02:09.460today who said that they were waiting to hear from Iran on that 15 point plan and that they
00:02:14.540still didn't know who they were supposed to be talking to and what they were supposed to be
00:02:18.500talking about. And the reason why that's so critical, that 15 point plan, I mean, that's
00:02:24.660supposed to be the basis of these negotiations. So if Iran doesn't accept that, what are they
00:02:29.680actually going to talk about if the two sides sit down together either late this weekend or early
00:02:35.600next week? But when it comes to what happened in Saudi Arabia, I mean, this was this information
00:02:39.780is still very fluid. It is coming in. It does sound like the injuries that we know of were
00:02:46.720non-life threatening. But again, this is still a very fluid situation after this Iranian missile
00:02:52.800strike. Now, one other thing. Troops on the ground. He said no troops on the ground.
00:02:59.880I don't remember that in any campaign speech either. But why would we need troops on the
00:03:04.920ground well there's a lot of reasons and we wouldn't need 300,000 of them it's
00:03:11.600this uranium too we've got to get the uranium if it cannot be destroyed if it
00:03:20.280cannot be altered we got to get it for the reason I just said you can make
00:03:26.460dirty bombs and over time you can still make sophisticated missiles so you need
00:03:33.780to get to the uranium. That's why I'm reading in the paper, we're talking about the 82nd Airborne,
00:03:40.480we're talking about these very special forces and the various military services and so forth.
00:03:45.420He's not talking about sending regular army and infantry in by the hundreds of thousands.
00:03:51.660All day long, through rain or shine, massive crowds poured into the streets in big cities
00:03:57.180and small towns alike, all with a unifying message. There are no kings in America.
00:04:02.680And Justin, the No Kings Coalition, which is made up of organizers of rallies nationwide, tells MSNOW that an estimated 8 million people showed up to today's demonstrations, making it the largest single-day nonviolent protest in modern American history.
00:04:20.180Organizers in Chicago estimated that about 200,000 people turned up there alone.
00:04:25.140And here in New York City, organizers told me that an estimated 350,000 people showed up.
00:04:31.980For reference, the first No Kings Day last June drew an estimated 5 million people.
00:04:37.260The second one, held in October, an estimated 7 million.
00:04:41.000The flagship No Kings rally was held today in Minneapolis,
00:04:44.540which has, of course, become the site of some of the Trump administration's most glaring examples of overreach.
00:04:51.140Every morning when I get up, I reach for my phone to look at the headlines of the day.
00:04:55.580And for some time now, I start every morning depressed about the latest outrage from our
00:05:01.240would-be king. I mean, it's amazing. Every f***ing day, there's something new and crazy.
00:05:07.860But it's different on this day, because all over the country, in cities and towns and factories
00:05:14.040and on farms, north, south, east, west, millions of us are coming together to declare no kings.
00:05:21.540It is indeed a beautiful, hopeful day in the United States of America.
00:05:27.540And you, Minnesota, are at the epicenter.
00:05:30.540It is your courage and your commitment that have inspired all of us.
00:05:34.540You have shown the power of nonviolent protests.
00:05:37.540You have shown bravery in the face of armed attack by government thugs.
00:05:42.540And you stood together and ran them out of town.
00:05:45.540Toast yourselves, pat yourselves on the back, take a bow, but don't take a break.
00:05:50.540because today and everything that has gone before
00:05:53.580is just a start, a rehearsal for the big show that's coming.
00:05:58.820You know the arrogant would-be king is absolutely scared to death
00:06:02.160about losing his power and will do everything he can to hold on to it
00:06:06.100without regard to legality, morality, humanity, nothing.
00:06:10.080We will face greater challenges down the road.
00:12:13.880Gas prices have certainly gone up because of what's going on in the Middle East, but they're going to come down, right?
00:12:19.080This is a very, very temporary reaction to what is going to ultimately be a short-term conflict.
00:12:24.760I think the president's been very clear about this, that we're not interested in being in Iran a year down the road, two years down the road.
00:12:32.560We're taking care of business. We're going to be out of there soon, and gas prices are going to come back down.
00:12:37.640I've never seen – I know that people turned against the Iraq war after a period of time.
00:12:42.520They turned against Afghanistan after a period of time. The Democrats did. But I never seen a war where the Democrats turned against the war on day one and are rooting for defeat.
00:12:53.280You know, there are people in this country who hate Donald Trump more than they hate the Iranian regime that just massacred 32000 people in their streets.
00:13:01.800You know, they were all very upset about about what was happening in Gaza, but 32000 people massacred.
00:13:08.800And then Donald Trump comes in to wipe out the genocidal regime that actually was committing genocide against its own people, massacring them in the streets like that.
00:13:17.360And Donald because it's Donald Trump, we have to play it down.
00:13:20.500We have to say it's a defeat. We have to say we're losing and they're all going to have egg on their face because we got we're about halfway through this thing.
00:13:26.360And when this is all over, this is going to go down in history as possibly the greatest military campaign the United States has waged since the American Revolution.
00:13:39.580Come, mothers and fathers, throughout the land, and don't criticize what you don't understand.
00:13:50.220Minneapolis, Minnesota is beyond your command.
00:13:56.360Your old road is rapidly aging, so get the f**k out the way if you can't lend a hand.
00:18:32.520Well, first, Steve, let me speak to Palm Sunday in Jerusalem.
00:18:35.860I know Cardinal Pizzaballa. He actually contacted me after the Gaza debacle started, and he said the Holy Father had instructed him to get involved, and he asked me to make a plan to build a whole refugee camp to take care of the Gazan civilians, and was blocked by the Biden administration.
00:18:56.860But imagine for the first time in centuries since the Ottoman rule, hundreds and hundreds of years ago, Christians are denied to have mass at the Church of the Holy Sepulcher.
00:19:43.900Second, we now live in a world of truth.
00:19:48.300Hang on one second. Before we go to number two, I want to go back to number one.
00:19:54.620My understanding after this story broke and with my inquiries, and that's we're trying to get Ben
00:19:59.840up from Rome in the second hour, is was there any, to your knowledge, was there anything
00:20:05.620transmitted to the church through official channels to tell them, because this is unprecedented
00:20:11.060For hundreds of years, since the Ottomans controlled Jerusalem, was anything communicated through official channels to the church that this might happen, sir, to your knowledge?
00:20:25.220Not that I know of. In fact, the cardinal in his statement even said that he has been adhering to every request and security stricture.
00:20:34.540stricture he was not going with some grand procession even he was going privately with
00:20:38.860another clergy to the the church to say mass on palm sunday and barred so it's when you if you
00:20:48.420give a gun and a badge you get a bigger one and uh perhaps that's the case of some security uh
00:20:56.400apparatchik uh in jerusalem that doesn't care that it's a cardinal has no respect uh for christendom
00:21:02.800This is a really, really bad look for – look, it starts to take away any understanding about – or I guess it adds to understanding of even Muslims that are angry at their access to Al-Aqsa Mosque and, again, a completely unforced stupid error by Israeli security forces today.
00:21:32.800eric go on your your bullet point number two bullet point two stave uh we live in a very in a
00:21:42.680in a world of transparent battlefields if you get within 30 40 kilometers of the front line
00:21:48.580in era in ukraine you are completely at risk because of the amount of surveillance uh and
00:21:56.680drones sensors. The idea that you're going to hide an amphibious ready group, or MU, with
00:22:04.560an LHA, that's probably a, what, 800 or 900 foot ship, weighs 40 or 50,000 tons.
00:22:13.260Believe me, there's multiple countries in the world that own the means to track that in real
00:22:19.640time. And so if you, by doctrine, if you try to get that entire amphibious group within a range
00:22:29.560of them starting to discharge their troops, they're going to be heavily and highly targeted
00:22:34.520for the same reason that they pulled the carrier air wing back mysteriously after the laundry fire
00:22:45.680on board the uss ford so uh highly dangerous to put amphibious troops uh into that area because
00:22:54.080of their so many precision missiles and obviously there's no surprise left uh if they somehow
00:22:59.840manage to get all those marines off and move them somewhere else to launch an amphibious operation
00:23:06.400to try to force open the straits of hormuz maybe but um hard to do deception now and second they
00:23:14.000truly don't have maritime superiority when the iranians can launch as many missiles drones
00:23:19.600uh and suicide um suicide vessels against them as they can
00:23:24.540could you um could you actually um do a uh without active arab support could you actually take
00:23:35.180karg island from um the um could you actually go to karg island unless you got the lhas unless
00:23:42.800you got the amphibious ready group at least part of the uh contingent into the persian gulf or
00:23:48.380would you do it stand off and and and station the helicopters and the uh and the osprey i guess
00:23:54.940it's some you know up in qatar uh you know to the to that point you know up i think i think i think
00:24:02.280the mu has in iran in iran iraq i mean is that as i recall that that mu would have a maximum of 10
00:24:09.340v-22s on board um and so you're not going to move more than 20 or 30 troops per lift
00:24:15.140so yeah your initial assault to the karg island is going to be mighty thin because those aircraft
00:24:20.240have to cycle and that's assuming you don't have any losses for maintenance or for missiles um
00:24:25.760uh do you do a mass drop of the 82nd on the karg island again that's uh that's pretty sporty um
00:24:34.140and an airborne invasion in a place that has thousands and thousands of missiles,
00:24:42.180not to mention the Iranians have been learning.
00:24:45.040They've certainly been paying attention to modern drone warfare
00:24:48.600and have certainly implemented FPVs down to the squad level.
00:24:53.600I mean, you see videos of the Israelis in southern Lebanon losing tanks,
00:25:00.000losing armored personnel carriers to the same FPVs that the Russians have been using with great
00:25:04.900effect in Ukraine. So it is, again, a fight against Iran, they're not Arabs. They're Aryans.
00:25:15.380They are highly intelligent, highly skilled warfighters. And it would not be the pushover
00:25:24.280by comparison that you see of the Iraqi army that worked.
00:25:30.820The other thing the Iranians have done, seeing what the U.S. military did to Iraq in 2003
00:25:38.060and 2004, where they decapitated all the military command structure, is they decentralized the
00:25:43.320decision-making into 31 military districts with a standing order to make war, as much
00:25:50.920and the only person that can countermand that is the supreme leader not their minister of defense
00:25:56.280or their chief of the armed forces or their president only the supreme leader so it's um
00:26:03.800at that point even hard to uh to negotiate with any of the other people that come to uh to meet
00:26:09.880jd vance or whatever um and i think we just killed the uh the head of the parliament who was the
00:26:15.320other guy that was supposed to come and negotiate with with jd vant so um i'm not sure that u.s
00:26:22.200interests are even in parallel at all to israeli interests because they seem they seem to be
00:26:27.080whacking a lot more of the leaders um taking those names off the board people that are supposed to
00:26:33.500be negotiating peace with look clearly president trump i keep saying and and rubio picked it up
00:26:41.720optionality he he needs optionality needs a range of alternatives and you're never going to give
00:26:46.280your strategy how that being said the national security advisor marco ruby and the vice president
00:26:52.440were pretty adamant to go back to the military objectives president trump doesn't even refer
00:26:56.280to it as a warning more it's a military operation you've got those four or five objectives of you
00:27:01.720know de-industrialize them taking out the navy taking out the air force their their their defense
00:27:07.160capabilities air capabilities we have air supremacy now at least air superiority um you know
00:27:13.820and marco was adamant or pretty adamant and repeated many times we're not going to need
00:27:17.900combat troops for this is is is the combat troops we have in another 10 000 being prepped
00:27:25.200is that so president trump has another option is it for leverage against these guys or how real
00:27:31.960how real do you feel right now moving in to take uh to make sure they take that those those couple
00:27:37.340islands down by straight or whore moves than carg island and you're thinking this through and
00:27:42.760putting in that logistics base or that logistics premise a predicate uh how real do you think we're
00:27:49.480moving on uh with the cheerleading of mark levin and teeson and all these other you know the lindsey
00:27:53.840grahams of the world how realistic do you think it looks like combat troops well unlike the
00:27:59.940chattering classes in Washington, Steve, I've actually sailed through the Straits of Hormuz
00:28:03.480on a sailboat, oddly enough, with a huge Blackwater logo on the sail doing a race,
00:28:09.320the Dubai to Muscat race. It's narrow. And those two islands on the north side,
00:28:16.380one is Keshem and one is Larrick. Keshem is the size of Okinawa. Larrick is the size of Iwo Jima.
00:28:22.520Anybody that knows anything of American maritime amphibious history knows those names and how many
00:28:28.420thousands and thousands of soldiers were killed by a very dug-in enemy. Now, those islands are
00:28:35.960generally flat. So even if you put guys over the beach and you take them, the bunkers,
00:28:44.040prepared fortifications, which I would imagine are there. Worse than that, on the mainland Iran,
00:28:51.980There are mountains very, very close by, which are also laced with caves, tunnels, and survivability from which can be launched rockets, missiles, and drones, making both of those islands that you're trying to put, potentially putting Marines ashore as one large beaten zone.
00:29:12.520And I think it's important to think of other military history of a grand amphibious operation planned by the British in World War II at Gallipoli, which is to try to take the Dardanelles and take out Turkey from the war.
00:29:28.980And it ended very badly because they never seized the highlands.
00:29:32.280And so seizing those highlands is ugly.
00:32:52.860so ben harnwell has gotten us uh the times of israel uh is reporting now about the incident
00:33:00.500uh eric with uh the cardinal uh and italy is furious about this i think they've called the
00:33:06.360ambassador over maloney is is taking this personally for action so we'll have more on
00:33:11.460that ben harnwell jack basopic in the next hour uh before i get back to gallipoli or
00:33:16.660to uh to uh um the great one alexander the great um and his uh his trial and tribulations in the
00:33:27.740same part of the world uh where we have our navy and we're sending uh potentially sending young
00:33:32.820american uh men and women um give me a second on the cardinal you know him personally uh what type
00:33:40.560a guy is he he's a very no-nonsense guy um in um certainly was a candidate to be uh to be the pope
00:33:50.360uh but a serious guy not a crazy um not a crazy person and so again keeping with his obligation
00:34:01.700um and joy to celebrate mass on palm sunday to be blocked is is just ridiculous and i'm and he
00:34:09.720Knowing that guy, he did not do that as some provocation, but an expectation, as his forefathers did, as his predecessors did for centuries, even during other wars, World War I, World War II, other clashes in the Middle East, mass was always open for business, but not apparently under the IDF now.
00:34:33.740yeah there we're gonna get more into that by the way so you were talking about gallipoli
00:34:40.140right and and this is from the landmark uh arian the great historian of alexander the great's
00:34:47.340campaign on his retreat back from india where i guess uh eric his generals they had a council of
00:34:54.960war they got too far in india after they'd gone through the the kyber pass and fought their way
00:35:00.160what 8 000 miles they said hey maybe we ought to just go back to baghdad or babylon and regroup
00:35:05.940that's the coast you're talking about if that camera can be pulled in
00:35:09.920and if you read this uh history as you know eric it was absolutely brutal in fact it was such a
00:35:16.920brutal retreat uh or march back up country that he put half of his army with one of his generals
00:35:23.740on on a fleet that went through Hormuz when people say it's 21 miles wide the channel itself
00:35:31.020I think it's like two miles they say five but having I didn't have the pleasure of going on
00:35:36.400Eric's Blackwater excursion I actually did it on a Navy combatant but you're right it's not a
00:35:43.160it's a very dangerous sea detail and that's under the best circumstances right just with so much
00:35:49.760traffic and these little dows going around it's kind of like going into hong kong in the old days
00:35:53.920um but eric you brought up gallipoli talk about this second see this is very in hospital you got
00:36:00.240right when you go through hermuz you got those cliffs in fact i don't even think that the the
00:36:04.940tribes down there i believe are not even persian i think it down there they get some arab tribes
00:36:10.300that think it's their territory they're very territorial these are kind of like the the houthis
00:36:16.020these are tough kind of mountain people the very tough uh you know ornery uh and we try to take
00:36:23.820them out with uh with the what the 2 000 pound bombs um and uh you know these guys are uh these
00:36:30.040guys are fighters but why do you why do you do the comparison to gallipoli well that was a planned
00:36:36.660massive amphibious operation planned by the british against the turkey at the turks in world
00:36:41.540War I, and it went terribly. 60,000 dead, 250,000 casualties, dozens of vessels lost,
00:36:51.860again, assaulting up difficult terrain. Those islands, like I talked about in the Gulf,
00:37:00.720are fairly flat, but they're immediately backed by steep terrain, which contains lots and lots
00:37:07.740and lots of fortifications. Again, 15-point plan, whatever. I want, trust me, I want America to
00:37:15.320succeed. I want this to be done. I don't believe this was in our strategic interest in the first
00:37:22.140place. So I would like to extricate the United States as quickly and as painlessly as possible.
00:37:28.000But smashing in with an amphibious operation in the front door is an exceedingly dangerous
00:37:37.480course of action, especially if we think, again, the mantra in Washington is, oh, we've serviced
00:37:50.840all these targets, and there's only a few left, and it's great. We did that already, supposedly,
00:37:55.740to the Houthis, who had been shut down the southern end of the Red Sea, another choke
00:38:02.360point waterway called the babu mandab um pouring billions of dollars worth of precision weapons
00:38:08.980supposedly into those houthi positions now the houthis compared to the irgc are a ragtag bunch
00:38:15.600of guys and yet over that year and a half two years never affected their ability to choke off
00:38:22.420that waterway and so now if we think we're going to force our way in yeah to hormuz just for for
00:38:30.120For our audience on a Sunday morning, just for people that have been over there and had to deal with this, you've got the Houthis, you've got guys in Afghanistan.
00:38:38.960This is kind of, I'd say, the equivalent of the Scotch-Irish in Appalachia.
00:41:37.780We're dominating them, but we're not getting that appreciation. So what we hear is, well, we're going to get a non sequitur about the Dardanelles and Gallipoli, as if we didn't ever study history ourselves.
00:41:49.040We're getting a lot of negativism where we should be asking ourselves, what is the impact of four weeks of daily strikes by the United States and Israel?
00:42:01.660And when then you listen to the leadership, the president, the secretary of war, the national security advisor, the vice president, all saying we're there to neuter Iranian military capability, they're not saying they're invading anything.
00:42:16.920They're talking about getting rid of the gun from the Iranian regime.
00:42:22.880Does that mean every pistol will be destroyed?
00:42:25.380Does that mean every guy in a cave will be destroyed?
00:42:27.580No. But what it means is the massive buildup that they've had for 50 years, funded by the United States, funded by Russia, funded by China, that's all being destroyed systematically.
00:42:41.140And that is the mission that the president said.
00:42:43.960And I think what's happened over since Vietnam, since I was a young man and watched the Vietnam War and watched Walter Cronkite, we have seen the politicization of our military analysts, our military personnel, our admirals and our generals, and the people that report on it.
00:43:01.540So now when we talk about war, we want to talk about, you know, go in four weeks right to some kind of what is the political outcome?
00:43:11.400As opposed to saying we're going after a nation that spent 47 years arming itself as one of the most armed nations on the planet, and we're systematically destroying it.
00:43:23.680And that this idea that we're going to want to have immediate results, you know, instant gratification without addressing if we're if we're if we're if we're if we're if we're if we're just hang on, hang on, hang on, hang on, because I feel like I'm getting I feel like I'm getting Robert McNamara's report during Vietnam.
00:43:44.360If this is the case, you made a very compelling case, and you're saying, hang on, hang on.
00:43:51.800You give me the moral equivalent of a body count.
00:44:05.560They've shifted the center of gravity.
00:44:06.960You do agree the center of gravity of this war is not Tehran.
00:44:09.660The center of gravity of this war is the Persian Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz, sir?
00:44:14.360the center of gravity is the iranian regime and their ability to threaten and inflict harm
00:44:22.080on united states and i just ask you in that region then then then you don't then you don't
00:44:27.040then you don't understand where the center of gravity this battle has been for three weeks
00:44:30.660since the since the since the israelis bombed the uh the gas field the center the center the center
00:44:37.880no no no not important the center of gravity of this battle if you think the center of gravity
00:44:42.820of the battle is tehran you're not understanding what's going on here the center of gravity this
00:44:48.020battle has been now for two weeks the persian gulf and the strait of hormuz that's obvious
00:44:53.360how do you control the strait of hormuz
00:44:57.300you should go you control the strait of hormuz
00:45:00.700and not important we've got to get the military to destroy their capability
00:45:07.560hang on then why then hang on when we were there in night hang on when we were there in 1979 1980
00:45:18.940we controlled the straighter hermuz we sent combatants up there to do early warning for
00:45:23.640russian aircraft so we controlled it then we don't control it now the united states navy has
00:45:28.200not gone near there has it sir or am i missing yeah that's my point we're being we don't have
00:45:35.420You've shut down, you've shut down, you're in the process of destroying the world's economy.
00:45:43.320My point is the center of gravity is there.
00:45:46.060Don't get me wrong, for a limited military operation, which we are doing against the regime, and I think doing magnificently, that's what's happening.
00:45:54.300But that's the moral equivalent of the body count of continuing to chop up.
00:46:03.520Well, the facts are there hasn't been a mine in the strait.
00:46:09.100The United Kingdom Maritime Trade Office and their joint maritime information reports are consistently saying there is no confirmed mines in the strait.
00:46:19.120Secondly, hang on, hang on, hang on, hang on, hang on.
00:46:27.160But you do agree that the Revolutionary Guard has set up a toll booth?
00:46:32.340For the first time, they have a toll booth and they let in who they want.
00:46:35.800I think they let out 10 ships over the last couple of days, of which they take a toll to go to their partners, of which I think we allow them to monetize their role.
00:46:44.140Anyway, Captain Finnell, Eric Prince, all of it next.
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00:48:08.020so eric i'm gonna go right back to captain finnell but jump in any any uh any observations
00:48:14.800and please no non-secretaries like gallipoli again sir look they had to they had to drive
00:48:22.300a MU over from the Pacific area, and they had to launch another MU urgently all the way from
00:48:29.980California because I don't think they really figured they were going to close the Straits
00:48:34.800of Hormuz. Yeah, the Straits of Hormuz are the center of gravity. And the question is,
00:48:39.320it will remain closed and it will remain under the control or influence of the IRGC for a long,
00:48:45.680long time, their ability to inflict pain on any vessel transiting there will remain extremely high.
00:48:53.480Even if you take the first 50 or 100 miles of the Straits of Hormuz, they can still launch
00:48:59.700and smash commercial vessels. There haven't been any commercial vessels attacked or mines,
00:49:07.520apparently. Yeah, because they haven't been trying to transit. Any vessels that are transiting are
00:49:13.660now being forced through a narrow channel, not through the normal shipping channel, but through
00:49:19.020the toll gate erected by the Iranians going between Larik and Keshem Islands. So you're right.
00:49:25.520The center of gravity is the Straits of Hormuz. That is basically the pulled grenade pin they
00:49:31.640have against the rest of the world economy. When you have all of East Asia's economies
00:49:36.480going on severe fuel rationing now, 30% of the world's fertilizer supply, 22% of the gas,
00:49:44.72020% of the crude that's supposed to pass through the Straits of Hormuz largely is not, other than
00:49:49.860the ones solely authorized by the IRGC, like to their friends, the Chinese Communist Party.
00:49:56.860This is not, or the first thing you're supposed to learn when you join the U.S. Navy is power
00:50:02.980projection, choke point control. We now, the U.S. Navy does not control two choke points in the
00:50:08.440world. This is bad. The other choke point being the gated tiers down there at the Red Sea,
00:50:16.180off where the Hurtis are? The Babel Mandaab. Hang on one second, Eric, hang around. Captain
00:50:22.760Fennell, your assessment of this situation in the Strait of Hormuz and all the way up to
00:50:29.060Carg Island, your assessment? Well, there's no question. It is an important, the point
00:50:37.040that you've all said, and I'm not disagreeing with that fundamentally. The question is,
00:50:41.300how do you open it? And the answer has to be to continue the plan that we're working on.
00:50:47.120And don't rush in there before you're ready. And so, yes, it costs, the price of gas has gone up
00:50:53.000a dollar. It's still under what it was when Joe Biden was president. The point is, is that you
00:50:57.540have to make the battlefield ready and clear that. And I would say the indicators are that it's
00:51:04.100becoming more and more ready to be transited by warships that are escorting and providing these
00:51:10.960escorts for these tankers in and out. Yes, they're running a towboat through Keshem and Larek. We've
00:51:16.720seen that. But there are other ships that are not squawking AIS that are coming through.
00:51:22.040Very small numbers, less than a dozen, but this is happening.
00:52:10.420and it's going to be repaired and probably come back to the gun line.
00:52:13.940The USS George Bush is now leaving the East Coast and heading over to the fight as well.
00:52:19.520So we are not backing off on the campaign to vaporize, essentially, their missiles, their drones, their mine layers, their fast attack speedboats.
00:52:31.540The fact that we're flying over the strait all the time and nobody is shot at it, despite what Eric mentioned, that the head of the IRGC with their down echelon command structure ordered their down echelon commanders to make war and make as much as you can.
00:52:48.340That order was given four weeks ago. So where are the results of those orders? If that's all they can produce, then I'm trying to get across that maybe the Iranians are hurting more than we're appreciating. And that the fact that they get off a missile here and there does not mean they're controlling the tempo or the timing or this operation. That's not my point.
00:53:10.000They are not in control of this. We are. And we have to be able to appreciate what the cumulative effect of 11,000 targets being struck and many, many more to be struck are having on that regime, especially after you take out layers and layers and layers of leaders and their ability to communicate.
00:53:28.820If the Russians and the Chinese are providing the Iranians with such exquisite, and as the Financial Times reported, real-time targeting, then where are the results of that real-time targeting combined with the orders to make war and do as much as you can?
00:53:45.220The rhetoric is not matching the Iranians' output while our output is being underappreciated.
00:54:45.540I hope to God we're not letting the cash go back to the moolahs.
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