00:02:33.720Because the briefing today, and I thought the general was fantastic, I think there's some confusion.
00:02:40.280And maybe I'm confused and you're going to help me out here.
00:02:43.120But we've got a blockade with now three carrier strike groups.
00:02:48.460And that blockade, you don't go in or out unless you've got essentially the permission of the United States Navy and the commander in chief.
00:02:58.080And we know that they've done a full blockade from Iranian ports.
00:03:02.040And as Eric Bolling said, hang on, there are all types of things that are trying to slip and slip away, but we're doing that.
00:03:09.000But the traffic coming out of the Persian Gulf is still down, when you look at all the publicly available sites, it's still down 80%.
00:03:17.980So the pirates do have a stranglehold on Hormuz itself, sir.0.85
00:03:25.060Yeah, there's no question that Iran is through what I would consider to be this,0.86
00:03:33.060you know, cognitive warfare by the discussion of mines after we announced the blockade,0.91
00:03:40.240and then this issue with what they did this last weekend when they, or a couple of days
00:03:45.480ago when they seized these two Mediterranean shipping company large container ships, and
00:07:35.620So this week, in this next, at some point, and that's why they had to pull this old 30-year-old ship out of mothballs to go up there and offload oil production.
00:07:45.920So the Iranians are definitely feeling this.
00:07:49.240Otherwise, they wouldn't pull that ship out.1.00
00:07:51.340Hang on, hang on. Slow down. I want to make sure people understand this.
00:07:54.580You're saying they took it, this 30-year-old ship took the current production, they're going to Karg Island to basically put it into storage, correct?
00:08:02.960because they can't get it out because the American Navy is on the other side.
00:08:06.380OK. That ship was in mothballs, was not used.
00:08:10.920It's something that they probably don't want to use because it's 30 years old.
00:08:14.420So they got risk there. But the other alternative, this is to start shutting down their production facilities.
00:08:22.140And that will cause the Chinese Communist Party gets some.0.79
00:08:27.700They got to deal with Iran to take as much as they can get.
00:08:30.240But they've also got deals with Saudi. They got a 20 year output deal with Saudi Arabia.
00:08:35.600Why strategically are we allowing Saudi, UAE and Qatar vessels to come out when some of that, not all of it, but some portion of that is going to the Chinese Communist Party?
00:08:47.100And you agree with me that it's principle to principle here. The more heat we put on the CCP, the better situation we're going to have here to get a culmination of this done, principle to principle, and for what the issues we have in the Taiwan Straits, sir.
00:09:05.440Yeah, I agree with you. We want to put pressure on China. And I would submit to you that that pressure is, in fact, happening, even if we consider that there may be one or two tankers that are getting out through these other Gulf states.
00:09:21.560But again, as you said in your morning show, you know, 80 percent of the traffic is cut down, is reduced.
00:09:30.200So China is being dramatically affected. And the proof of that is what happened this week when Xi Jinping came out in the PRC press.
00:09:42.180He's been silent for 50 days, hasn't said a word.
00:09:45.960You know, the paramount leader of the People's Republic of China has not said anything about this war.
00:09:52.300He's led his foreign ministry and his surrogates and the Global Times and others say things about how they feel about it.
00:09:58.680But Xi had never said anything until a few days ago.
00:10:01.900And he came out and said, I think this is something that needs to be resolved.
00:10:06.880And we should open and have normal passage of all shipping through the Strait of Hormuz.
00:10:13.520That is an evidence that this is having an impact on the People's Republic of China.
00:10:19.480And there's other evidence, too, as Eric Bolling mentioned in your morning show.
00:10:23.960Your recommendation, we've got a couple of minutes here, your recommendation to Admiral Cooper, General Cain, and the Secretary of War Pete Hexeth on this situation at Hormuz with this, whatever, it's Revolutionary Guard, group of pirates.
00:10:42.860people that think they control this right now, what would be your recommendation of how to deal
00:10:47.580with that or not deal with it? They need to take the president's orders that he gave yesterday in
00:10:53.460the Oval Office and say, we're going to start smacking these mosquito ships. So CENTCOM has0.99
00:11:00.240the capacity to do that. They probably didn't do it in the first period of the kinetic operations
00:11:06.660because they had so many other targets to get after.
00:11:09.060Now these ships are, since they've used them to attack international shipping,
00:11:15.880we are going to start leaning in on that.1.00
00:11:18.440And we have a variety of platforms that can decimate those mosquito boats.1.00
00:11:23.320And there will be, you know, A-10 warthogs.1.00
00:11:27.820We will have helicopters off of our carriers and our amphibious ships.
00:11:31.480We will have all sorts of platforms that will be able to go after and zap these things as they start moving around in the straits.
00:11:39.840So I would expect what we're going to hear over the next 48, 96 hours, we're going to start seeing some action against that.0.96
00:11:48.100And we'll then have to watch for the counterpunch from Iran because they will counterpunch.
00:11:52.920Do you agree with me that this thing about Islamabad and you've got this foreign minister going, he's going to Islamabad, that's all nonsense until you deal with this?
00:12:04.340And your recommendation is that, hey, I'd like to have it some other way, but it looks like you're going to have to go kinetic, at least at some level up the escalatory ladder on these guys, sir?
00:12:14.360yeah it's certainly yeah i agree the diplomatic stuff in my opinion is just uh part of a process
00:12:22.180that doesn't really lead to the final solution and right now that if if the international community
00:12:27.760in europe and everybody else is up in arms about in asia about the strait being closed then we need0.95
00:12:33.080to go in and we can zap these little mosquito boats we can do we've already sent two destroyers1.00
00:12:39.240through the straight to prove that there's no mines. But we can do some nominal mine clearance1.00
00:12:44.140with robotics and other platforms. And then we need to start putting pressure on the international
00:12:49.520shipping community to move. And I will tell you, because I follow these things, the international
00:12:55.900shipping community, the shipping community writ large, they don't want to take any risk.
00:13:01.220They don't want to take any risk. And my pushback to them would be, you did so in the tanker wars
00:13:07.160in the 80s and you have to do it again today to prove to the world that this is not happening
00:13:12.860i got it's going to cost a lot but it's going to cost a lot more if you bottle this up indefinitely
00:13:18.820so we can show them that it's open we can show them it's clear but they're going to have to1.00
00:13:24.600take the first step uh we got a minute left am i unfair when i'm calling out the arabs and not0.99
00:13:31.080doing enough here because it's their oil that's really getting out and getting monetized that
00:13:35.060their special forces, their navies have got to get engaged here. I haven't seen any Arabs out0.99
00:13:39.960chasing mosquito boats. I haven't seen any Arab fighters going over there. And I certainly haven't
00:13:45.400seen any special forces. Am I unfair in that calling those guys out? No, I think that's a
00:13:52.540fair call, just like it is with the European Union. We need to have more platforms available
00:13:57.680to support the lion's share of the work that we've done. And, you know, we've got three aircraft
00:14:03.400carrier strike groups there now, the Lincoln, the Ford, and now the Bush. And there's nine
00:14:09.140destroyers that are with those three strike groups. So we have the platforms to do nominal
00:14:15.480opening and starting some of this escort ops, but we need our Arab allies and we need the European0.99
00:14:21.840Union to get off their ass. Jim Fennell, thank you so much, sir. Appreciate you. Want to have0.99
00:14:28.200be back, talk about not just this, but how it interconnects with the main thing. As Jim
00:14:33.440Fennell always tells us, keep the main thing the main thing. That is the competition and
00:14:38.160the actual war, Cold War, with the Chinese Communist Party. Captain Fennell, thank you
00:14:43.560so much for helping us out here. Appreciate you. We're going to go to the Commonwealth
00:14:49.680of Virginia and to the great state of Florida next. Another war, the Reditional Wars here1.00
00:19:56.980Well, the fact that they counted—you have to have two intervening elections,
00:20:00.880I'm sorry, two intervening elections, as your guests have explained on past shows,
00:20:06.080and they tried to count the early vote period from 2025 as an intervening election.
00:20:11.740The election was already underway. A million ballots have been cast.
00:20:15.280The reason that two intervening elections requirement in the Constitution of Virginia is so important is so people can think it through.
00:20:23.360They can understand who the representatives are, what they're voting for.
00:20:27.240This was so rushed that we just found a 70,000 vote ballot difference in the final results from Tuesday night.
00:20:35.720So the Department of Elections will take the 45 days of early voting, the results there, they're unofficial, they're not certified yet, but they're a solid number.
00:20:45.240They roll that into the election night votes as well.
00:20:49.000So they take that one third of the early vote, the 45 days of early vote, roll that into the summary data from the election night voting and give you a result.
00:20:57.180And we found a 70,000 vote difference.
00:21:00.300The votes were up by 70,000 from early voting that we never saw.
00:21:04.840I mean, we monitor the 45 days every day.
00:22:15.780Yeah. Here's what I make about as well is we got to get a right count on this thing.
00:22:20.100I tell you what I'm doing. I have my producer.
00:22:21.880I want to talk to you about coming on our Saturday show because this needs a full couple of segments because, you know, from the Seth Kessels of the world,
00:22:28.400So many people were coming to me and saying, hey, there's something screwed up about this, and we've got to sort this out because there's a tight grace.
00:22:38.040It's the sheer fact that this election was rushed, and this is why I get back to the two intervening elections rule in the Constitution because this gives people a chance to prepare on the big question of whether you want to change your Constitution.
00:22:51.960Instead, this was kind of rushed out, and the data is rushed into here, and it's a lot of data to keep track of.
00:22:58.640And if I could just add, Steve, to what your last guest got, or I think it was Matt Kittle, we work with a lot of grassroots.
00:23:06.000So full disclosure, we're nonpartisan.
00:23:07.600We take all comers for our analysis service, and we've built software, a bunch of volunteers, and we're grassroots.
00:23:13.220We've built software to do this unique view, high propensity, low propensity, lean left, lean right, lean Republican, lean Democrat.
00:23:21.960But the biggest complaint we hear from the grassroots is that the Republican Party or the RPV, I guess, or the GOP data, whatever they call it, they need to do a better job with helping the grassroots get that data.
00:23:34.620Because right now it's basically a big six-figure cost to get the kind of intense data analysis that you need for elections these days, and that's what all the consultants get.
00:23:45.480the grassroots needs to get better. And that's what we hear a lot. And that's why a lot of people
00:23:51.820come to work with us and partner with us on the data analysis that we do. And we're blessed to
00:23:57.820have some very talented people who founded this nonprofit. We also did it because we could see a
00:24:03.860need that nobody is really following this data in a way that needs to be followed. 70,000 votes
00:24:09.880were in the count election night that did not belong there. And the media just reports it like,
00:24:14.680OK, there's the numbers. So I just wanted to point that out because your guess was spot on about the frustration among the grassroots.
00:24:21.940This is why we wanted to have you on. We heard this from the grassroots across the state Commonwealth.
00:24:27.640Where do people go right now to go to your site to check out this data? Where do they go?
00:24:33.380I would start with EPIC. That's EPEC, Electoral Process Education Corporation.
00:24:38.620We're the little nonprofit with the big name and big data and some big brains behind it, I would add.
00:24:43.420uh epec.info that's us we're on substack epic.substack uh epic team is our x account we're
00:24:50.340on getter we uh we need to go and fire up our account there but we do have a getter account
00:24:55.120and uh truth social but um but starting epic if you want to be a volunteer we'll walk you through
00:25:00.740the process we're happy to work with people and we explain and we help educate people on what this
00:25:05.020data is about and how elections are so technologically um driven and how we need to
00:25:11.460keep an eye on it so um but just to just to update chesterfield they did correct so they took the
00:25:17.04070 000 double votes out and so now the early voting data for 45 days is now matching the
00:25:23.980yeah but it throws the whole thing in the question oh the 70 000 but they got corrected
00:25:28.060anyway uh one more time social media where they go your sub stack where they go to get the the
00:25:33.740facts as you lay them out we are digital poll watchers.org that's our uh executive director
00:26:09.420We've got another mess in the Commonwealth.
00:26:11.240I mean, and they're saying the data, you know, they don't get data support.
00:26:14.640The grassroots doesn't get data support.
00:26:16.740I'm going to take you to break, but I've got to just give me your idea about the Commonwealth of Virginia right now as we go to court on Monday.
00:26:24.860You know, I had some people, since I came on yesterday, push back on me a little bit, saying that they are more confident that the Supreme Court will end up doing the right thing.
00:26:32.580I still remain skeptical, but I would say I'm less doomsday than I was yesterday.
00:26:36.980And so but again, this is going to be up to those those judges there to make this decision.
00:26:41.680And so I I I really hope they do the right thing.
00:26:52.200But like, you know, they have a militant psychotic attorney general there and a Supreme Court that gets reelected by the legislature.
00:26:58.840You were very starry eyed when you came out of Auburn, but you're one of the most cynical people, given your battle scars over the years in politics.
00:27:07.420How can you possibly think the Supreme Court of the Commonwealth of Virginia or all the Democrats are going to sit there and go, oh, yeah, I see it.
00:27:14.660Not not a problem. When you got the lead story in Axios this morning, it's how the Democrats already have a massive operation going through how they're going to impeach President Trump,
00:27:23.880how they're going to impeach members of his cabinet, how they're going to put his family in prison.
00:27:27.200how do you think what changed your mind we got about 30 seconds what changed your mind overnight
00:27:32.700on that oh man i mean nothing's changed my mind on that i'm still fairly doomsday don't get me
00:27:38.660wrong but there was like a glimmer of optimism that i was being convinced of but i will say i'm
00:27:42.980very much for right now richard mccormick is leading the make dc square again that's what
00:27:47.160we should do fight fire with fire screw it make dc president trump can do it by executive order
00:27:51.540and take over arlington and alexandria put them in the district of colombia let them be represented
00:27:56.280You're breaking up my you're breaking up my beloved Commonwealth of Virginia.
00:28:07.980Cortez is about the about the Southern Poverty Law Center.
00:28:12.860Speaking of the Commonwealth, the the protest in Unite the Right in the in Charlottesville, Virginia, Southern Poverty Law Center underwrote that.
00:28:23.340Fellow patriots, the Federal Reserve has betrayed America for over a century, printing fiat, inflating away your savings, serving globalist masters.
00:34:20.460We passed one bill. What are you guys doing? It's unbelievable to me.
00:34:26.020What give us a heads up? What should we be looking for? We got we got the arguments in Virginia on Monday.
00:34:31.920OK, we've got I think of the appellate court. Then we've got the then we've got Florida's about to kick in, I think, next week.
00:34:39.920Also, what should we be looking for in Florida? Make us smarter about this.
00:34:44.380In Florida, the governor is supposed to propose a map.
00:34:48.180Nobody's seen it yet, and he will, to the Florida legislature, and they'll debate it in a special session that's going to start next week.
00:34:54.380And so the map will add anywhere between, this is what people think, one in five new districts that people think could be Republican-leaning.
00:35:02.600But it's important to note that this is in Florida.
00:35:04.600It is not about partisan politics as to why in Virginia that's what this was.
00:35:20.960And with the population shifts, the map has to shift.
00:35:24.540Otherwise, you're underrepresenting millions of Floridians who deserve their representation based on today's population, not yesterday's census.
00:35:31.820And so I think the goal of this special session should be to align these districts with where millions of new residents have settled in Florida and correct imbalances caused by the fastest growth rates in the nation.
00:35:41.940If you wait until the 2030 census, then the census happens.
00:35:46.160It takes two years for that to come out. Then you're looking at 2032 and then you go into a session.
00:35:50.920We will lose. You will have four upcoming elections in Florida based off of maps that are so massively outdated due to the population boom that came to Florida after COVID from 2020 till now and is still increasing.
00:36:03.940And so I think that they have to get this done. DeSantis will be leading the charge here.
00:36:08.940I'm very hopeful that he's able to get this done. He's been a very savvy, you know, operator.
00:36:14.420him and the legislature do not get along well but my god this this is very important and this is
00:36:19.000also doing what is right for the state and you agree with me the stakes couldn't be higher given
00:36:25.320axios confirmed today the the massive uh machinery in back of the destruction of president trump his
00:36:32.400family in the mega movement ma'am yeah oh absolutely the stakes couldn't be higher but
00:36:37.180for me it's less about they impeach him again fine actually i think it'll backfire on them and
00:36:41.620doesn't, the Senate won't actually do the vote either. But, but for me, it's more about the top,
00:36:46.740like I've, you know, I've worked in and around President Trump since 2016. I've put my entire
00:36:51.220life into this for 10 years and we're now, we're here. He's in, we have the Senate, we have the
00:36:56.320House and it's like, do something for the love of God. Like, and it is just so frustrating.
00:37:01.300And President Trump is moving a million miles a minute, but it's just the, the legislature,
00:37:05.360the Congress cannot or will not keep up with him. The Republicans just obstruct him at every chance
00:37:11.020that they get it is so frustrating and so right now like we have to just be in this fight for
00:37:16.100president trump for his agenda which is what we have all worked for for the last 10 years
00:37:21.200caroline wren where do people follow you ma'am on social media it is at caroline wren on x
00:37:30.100and getter and truth social thank you ma'am appreciate you look forward to having you back
00:37:35.700next week. Cortez, you were the surrogate for President Trump that we made sure was put on
00:37:44.760kind of the mainstream media. You did the duty in the in the open fire range of CNN. Is that
00:37:50.820correct for a couple of years? That is right. So essentially, that's Scott Jennings seat. That
00:37:55.380was the Steve Cortez seat back in 2018, 2019. But now they play softball with Jennings that you're
00:40:01.820Because every night they would be rubbing.
00:40:04.200This is and Biden goes up and does a speech in Philadelphia.
00:40:07.720The rise in white nationalism, the rise in white everywhere in the military.
00:40:13.280Every this was the railhead of the lie that they used to smear not just President Trump, but the entire MAGA movement, sir.
00:40:22.540Yes, exactly. And that's an important point. I'm glad you made it. It wasn't just about President Trump. It was that Trump and his tens of millions of followers and supporters, every single voter in the America First movement, was a racist retrograde.
00:40:36.940And you're exactly correct. As my late friend Scott Adams used to say, this was the tentpole hoax. It was the foundation on which all of the other lies were really based.
00:40:48.040But this was, to them, the nuclear weapon. This was the dirty bomb against President Trump and his movement.
00:40:54.800Of course, it was entirely based on a lie, as is clear if you look at the actual transcripts and the actual full videos unedited of what President Trump said in that very contentious presser after the Charlottesville events.
00:41:08.620I was pretty effective at debunking this lie, and I made a PragerU video that went super viral with a lot of help from President Trump.
00:41:16.000And because of that, CNN said, hey, Cortez, we're going to take you off the field.
00:41:20.480And here's what they did, which is even worse.
00:41:43.760So they literally paid me to be sidelined.
00:41:46.300That's how important this issue was to them, this myth, this hoax that President Trump had praised racists
00:41:53.060when, in fact, the exact opposite is true from the transcript.
00:41:56.340He expressly condemned the neo-Nazis who were there.
00:41:59.760Well, now the new news, of course, is the indictment of the Southern Poverty Law Center.
00:42:05.460And this indictment reveals that the underlying event itself, so not only was the hoax a grand lie,
00:42:11.460But the underlying event itself, it was staged. It was financed and organized by the SPLC, by the leftists from that NGO, from that advocacy group, the SPLC.
00:42:25.720They're now indicted for it because that is a fraud. And specifically, they paid $270,000.
00:42:31.940We're talking real money, $270,000 to the guy who organized that very Charlottesville event.
00:42:39.220So think of that. The event itself is staged by the left. They then are able to generate out of that event, because some really unfortunate violence ensued that they organized, they are then able to concoct this myth, this hoax, which was constantly promulgated by the corporate media.
00:42:56.440Remember in those days, too, 10 years ago, corporate media had way more power than it does now.
00:43:01.820Thankfully, they don't have the platforms they once did, but they repeated it ad nauseum, this lie, over and over.
00:43:07.620They were also protected by big tech because when people like me try to diffuse the lie, we were constantly censored.
00:43:14.340For example, that video I made, YouTube took it down for a while.
00:43:18.280Took it down. Hang on, Cortez, hang on. I'm going to hold you to the break.
00:43:21.500The Southern Poverty Law Center, this indictment and what will follow is so important to make sure that we can break up the deep state and the color revolution, destroying this republic.0.64
00:50:34.580We heard the other day that the UAE and now Scott Besson told us, I guess, in testimony, many people in the Gulf are looking for these credit lines.
00:50:43.020What's your sense of the capital markets through this entire shift to the war and the center of gravity of the war being now the Persian Gulf in the Strait of Hormuz, sir?
00:50:54.160Well, we're in a very precarious place, and you don't have to take my word for it.
00:50:57.220I mean, the financial markets are proving that.
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