The Megyn Kelly Show - Trump's Blockade Threat and Jesus-Like Truth Social Post, with Brandon Weichert, and the TRUTH About Swalwell ｜ Ep. 1294

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00:00:59.260 connexontario.ca. Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, live on Sirius XM Channel 111 every weekday at

00:01:05.700 New East. Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show and happy Monday. Big,

00:01:17.420 big show coming up for you today. There's a lot of news. One of President Trump's biggest critics

00:01:21.500 in Congress forced to drop out of the California gubernatorial race. What's really going on behind

00:01:28.260 the Eric Swalwell drama? But first, the latest in Iran. Vice President J.D. Vance traveled to

00:01:34.540 Pakistan along with Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff over the weekend, where he negotiated

00:01:38.960 with Iranian officials for 21 hours, seeking to formally end the war and make this two-week

00:01:45.760 ceasefire such as it is permanent. As you know, the ceasefire is kind of not a ceasefire because

00:01:52.480 even though we agreed that Lebanon would be part of it, Bibi Netanyahu overruled us and President

00:02:01.200 Trump went along with his overruling and then turned around to Iran and said Lebanon was never

00:02:06.960 part of it. And Iran said, that's not true. That wasn't our deal. That's not the deal that the

00:02:12.400 Pakistani prime minister announced with our agreement after we struck it. And Iran started 1.00

00:02:18.880 fighting back. So there hasn't really been much of a ceasefire. We're doing our part in not

00:02:23.980 continuing to bomb Iran, but our close ally Israel is not doing its part. So we're trying to 0.76

00:02:30.960 get the ceasefire enacted, first of all. And secondly, we're trying to extend the ceasefire

00:02:37.460 such as it is, into a permanent peace. Despite the vice president and our two envoys' best

00:02:44.080 efforts, there was no deal. Here's Vice President Vance explaining what happened. Watch.

00:02:49.200 We've been at it now for 21 hours, and we've had a number of substantive discussions with

00:02:56.380 the Iranians. That's the good news. The bad news is that we have not reached an agreement, 0.99

00:03:01.160 and I think that's bad news for Iran much more than it's bad news for the United States of

00:03:04.480 America. So we go back to the United States having not come to an agreement. We've made very clear

00:03:10.100 what our red lines are, what things we're willing to accommodate them on and what things we're not

00:03:14.660 willing to accommodate them on. And we've made that as clear as we possibly could. And they have

00:03:20.080 chosen not to accept our terms. According to multiple reports, the Iranians refused to concede

00:03:26.600 to the Americans' demands to end uranium enrichment, end it all together, and to remove

00:03:33.680 any enriched uranium already in the country. That's an Israeli demand. It's actually never 0.71

00:03:41.240 going to happen that they are going to agree to not enrich any uranium for all sorts of reasons.

00:03:48.200 That's never been a deal point in all the prior negotiations that the U.S. has had with Iran over

00:03:54.000 this issue, going back several presidents. That's a new requirement, comes from our special ally,

00:03:58.880 Israel that wants zero, zero. It's almost as if somebody intentionally wanted to queer the deal 0.94

00:04:06.760 by insisting that that be put in there. In response to the collapse of the negotiations,

00:04:12.660 President Trump announcing on Truth Social yesterday that the U.S. would soon, quote,

00:04:16.280 begin the process of blockading any and all ships trying to enter or leave the Strait of Hormuz.

00:04:23.220 The president's messaging has been all over the board on the Strait. They can have it.

00:04:28.220 They don't. OK, have it.

00:04:30.620 Or and then what about we'll leave and it'll open up naturally.

00:04:33.700 What happened to that? How come that didn't happen?

00:04:36.180 How come we're no longer there? Then it turned into, OK, they're going to charge a toll.

00:04:39.720 It's going to be a joint venture. It can be a joint venture.

00:04:42.840 Now it's there can be no toll. And by the way, if you go through a toll and you pay a toll,

00:04:47.540 we will track you down on the high seas, high seas.

00:04:50.100 And I don't know what we'll do to you.

00:04:52.480 But he's threatening that our Navy will find any ships to pay the toll and make them pay some sort of a price.

00:05:00.400 What the messaging is all over the board.

00:05:03.940 It is so slapdash.

00:05:07.260 Every day brings a new significant threat, policy change or reversal, especially when it comes to the Strait of Hormuz,

00:05:15.100 which he was told, according to the New York Times by Israel, the Iranians would never be able to take hold of, 0.82

00:05:23.160 that they'd be so weakened by our initial strike, we didn't have to worry about them taking control of the strait.

00:05:28.540 Well, guess what? That was wrong, too.

00:05:31.680 And it's very clear that we are struggling to come up with a coherent policy to get them to cede control of it

00:05:38.900 and to get others to stop trying to use it

00:05:42.200 because right now Iran has let it be open

00:05:44.500 to civilian traffic, but not military

00:05:46.660 because they're making money now off of these ships

00:05:50.140 going through the Strait of Hormuz.

00:05:51.380 They never were before.

00:05:52.760 You never had to pay a toll before we invaded them.

00:05:55.600 But now you do.

00:05:57.220 And obviously President Trump doesn't like it

00:05:59.320 and the Arab nations don't like it.

00:06:01.500 But all these countries that depend upon oil

00:06:04.540 from this area of the world feel they have no choice.

00:06:08.140 So they're they're going to pay it and they're going to use it.

00:06:11.260 And now President Trump is trying to stop that.

00:06:13.160 So what happens next?

00:06:14.080 We have some diplomatic incident.

00:06:16.100 If like China pays the toll and tries to go through the strait.

00:06:21.700 And what are we going to do to its ships?

00:06:24.400 What are we going to have an international domestic diplomatic incident with China?

00:06:28.780 I don't I don't think so.

00:06:30.160 So what do we do?

00:06:30.800 Do we go make a ship from Spain pay if it goes through the toll and pays it?

00:06:36.980 but we don't make the ships from China do that, you see what's happening here, right?

00:06:41.080 You see the dangers?

00:06:43.020 Well, what President Trump said would be total closure of the Strait of Hormuz quickly got

00:06:47.700 updated, too, because our policy does appear to be incoherent at the moment.

00:06:52.340 Shortly thereafter, because Trump said that yesterday, U.S. CENTCOM, the group that our

00:06:56.500 military group that actually oversees the Middle East, clarifying that, no, no, no,

00:07:01.140 this blockade would actually begin at 10 a.m. today and that it would only apply to vessels

00:07:06.480 entering or departing Iranian ports.

00:07:09.780 Okay, so not the entire strait.

00:07:11.060 You can go through the strait, 1.00

00:07:11.940 but you can't leave an Iranian port 0.52

00:07:13.640 or go into an Iranian port and coastal areas.

00:07:17.340 Writing on X, quote,

00:07:18.420 CENTCOM forces will not impede freedom of navigation

00:07:21.260 for vessels transiting the Strait of Hormuz

00:07:23.440 to and from non-Iranian ports.

00:07:28.360 Okay, so, I mean, are you keeping up with this?

00:07:30.800 Like, is it any wonder that oil prices are now spiking

00:07:34.320 back to over $100 a barrel.

00:07:38.880 And our friend, Eric Bolling,

00:07:40.520 who was in the oil business for three decades,

00:07:46.260 it was like several, several years prior to joining Fox News.

00:07:50.940 That's where he made a considerable fortune.

00:07:53.140 It was not off of his Fox News job.

00:07:55.720 So he knows something about the oil and gas industry.

00:07:58.620 And he went on Steve Bannon's show over the weekend

00:08:00.580 and said, it's not going to stop at $100 a barrel.

00:08:04.240 Watch.

00:08:05.140 This is really bad.

00:08:06.780 Vance walked out.

00:08:07.800 I had thought he was going to stay a lot longer

00:08:10.020 and maybe try and negotiate, keep the negotiations going.

00:08:13.460 But he left after 21 hours and headed back here.

00:08:16.840 And I'm trying to figure out why.

00:08:18.100 I mean, this is global oil.

00:08:19.440 This is a global economy at risk.

00:08:22.100 Can I just very quick, I'll tell you,

00:08:23.360 the first thing I did is I called a couple of my friends

00:08:25.140 who were major brokers of international oil.

00:08:28.560 And I said, what do you think?

00:08:29.500 it feels like a lot higher. And they said, yes, I said 110. And the quote was very soon. So we

00:08:35.720 finished Friday at about 96, $97 a barrel. So these people think at least 100, I do too,

00:08:41.940 at least 110. It's not temporary. And we literally removed a president, President Biden,

00:08:47.960 for bringing inflation up. The last inflation number we just saw, Steve, has inflation tripling,

00:08:53.540 energy inflation tripling month over month from February to March. That's one month that we started

00:08:58.700 the month of March very low and worked all the way up through the month. I will tell you,

00:09:03.540 I believe we'll have a 5% inflation, 6% inflation. So oil going up to 110 in all likelihood,

00:09:12.000 he says a barrel and 5% or 6% inflation coming as a result because it's not just

00:09:20.020 oil prices leading to higher gas prices. It affects the entire market. And we'll get to

00:09:25.600 more of that in a minute. Now, Axios this morning reporting that all parties do believe a deal is

00:09:30.660 still possible and that a new round of negotiations could begin before the ceasefire expires in just

00:09:36.640 over one week. Let's hope that's true. Let's hope our good friend and special ally Israel allows it.

00:09:43.500 Or what other tricks do they have up their sleeve to try to prevent it from happening?

00:09:48.180 Meantime, President Trump has picked up a new feud with Pope Leo, the 14th.

00:09:55.560 Seems like a great time to start a feud with a Catholic pope.

00:09:59.760 I will be the first to tell you the pope has been critical of this war.

00:10:04.480 I'm Catholic, obviously.

00:10:06.000 He's been critical of this war.

00:10:07.740 And as he's been critical of it, it occurred to me that it was just a matter of time before

00:10:12.320 President Trump would lash out at him.

00:10:14.160 And he did.

00:10:15.560 So it wasn't great. 0.93

00:10:17.220 It was predictable, and no Catholic loves this, but you could see it coming, and it's

00:10:23.840 hard to say that Trump is completely out of line because whenever he gets attacked, whether

00:10:29.820 it's by a journalist or a talking head or a pope, he punches back, all right?

00:10:36.620 You could definitely question the wisdom of doing this with, you know, President Trump

00:10:43.560 leads a nation of 330 million people. Pope Leo leads about 1.4 billion Catholics across the

00:10:52.220 world. But President Trump doesn't care. And he wouldn't even care if the majority of Americans

00:10:57.840 were Catholic, which they're not. But this is what he does. You know, if he perceives you as

00:11:04.500 coming at him, he will come at you. So he lashed out last night at the pontiff on Truth Social,

00:11:09.960 writing in part, quote, Pope Leo is weak on crime and terrible for foreign policy. I mean,

00:11:15.420 he's not a politician. OK, whatever. I don't want a pope, writes Trump, who criticizes the

00:11:19.540 president of the United States because I'm doing exactly what I was elected in a landslide to do.

00:11:24.600 Are you, Mr. President, were you elected to start another Middle East war? I don't think so.

00:11:30.540 President Trump reiterating his criticism of the pope at Joint Base Andrews last night. Watch.

00:11:35.160 I don't think he's doing a very good job. He likes crime, I guess. He hit us. Think of it.

00:11:42.980 He's worried about fear. What about the fear when the ministers and the priests and all of those great people that were arrested during COVID,

00:11:54.560 and in many cases they're outside 10 feet apart and they were arrested.

00:11:58.700 So we don't like it. We don't like a pope that's going to say that it's OK to have a nuclear weapon.

00:12:05.160 We don't want a pope that says crime is OK in our cities. I don't like it. I'm not a big fan of

00:12:11.120 Pope Leo. He's a very liberal person and he's a man that doesn't believe in stopping crime.

00:12:17.680 He's a man that doesn't think that we should be toying with a country that wants a nuclear

00:12:24.940 weapon so they can blow up the world. I'm not I'm not a fan of Pope Leo.

00:12:30.440 Now, it's not entirely clear what spurred Trump's wrath, but it does appear the president was made

00:12:35.140 aware, in addition, I'm sure, of the recent criticism by the Pope, of a 60 Minutes report

00:12:40.040 last night on the Pope's and the Catholic Church's opposition. First of all, yes to the Iran war,

00:12:46.660 but to war in general? The Catholic Church has been pretty clear on that. No one's tried to

00:12:53.160 sugarcoat the Catholic Church's opposition to war. They're pretty big on Jesus and his teachings,

00:13:00.000 which do not include promotion of war. But here's a sample of what we saw in 60.

00:13:06.740 This past week, he issued a rare condemnation of President Trump's threat to destroy

00:13:12.240 Iranian civilization. The pope called it, quote, truly unacceptable.

00:13:17.980 He also took the unusual step of issuing a call to action.

00:13:22.580 contact the authorities, political leaders, congressmen, to ask them, tell them to work

00:13:30.220 for peace and to reject war always. The Holy Father usually avoids calling out President

00:13:36.640 Trump by name or any member of his administration. But in a Palm Sunday homily, he appeared to

00:13:43.600 reference the religious language Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who is Christian but not Catholic,

00:13:49.880 often uses to frame the war.

00:13:52.780 Blessed be the Lord, my rock, who trains my hands for war and my fingers for battle.

00:13:58.220 Pope Leo warned that Jesus, quote, does not listen to the prayers of those who wage war.

00:14:06.040 Okay, it is a little, it feels off that Pete Hexeth keeps praying at these briefings that

00:14:14.740 he's doing as if it's all in the name of God, the bombing of Iran in which, you know, 170 young

00:14:22.440 girls were killed. That's not in the name of God. Okay. Definitely not in the name of Jesus.

00:14:28.480 I wish you would just check the Jesus talk, the God talk at the Pentagon briefings. All right.

00:14:35.700 It's called the Department of War. I understand he has a job to do. It's not appropriate there.

00:14:40.820 You pray on Sunday, pray every morning on your knees to God.

00:14:45.540 But while you're updating us on the number you've killed, which necessarily has included some civilians, we don't don't don't mention Jesus.

00:14:55.940 Don't talk about God. Don't act like he's sanctioning what you're doing.

00:14:59.740 OK, and that leads me to President Trump's obvious misstep over the weekend.

00:15:06.620 It wasn't the clap back at Pope Leo. I mean, I've been through this before. I was a Catholic back when he was attacking Pope Francis during his first run for office. And now it's Pope Leo. You just knew it was coming.

00:15:20.520 It was like tick tock. You knew it was coming. But what we didn't know was coming was this absolutely absurd, offensive meme, AI generated version of a picture showing Donald Trump as Jesus.

00:15:40.480 He tweeted this out, posted it on True Social.

00:15:44.300 I'm sure you've seen it by now, but if you haven't for the listening audience, it is

00:15:47.440 President Trump as Jesus with his hand on the head of a sick patient in bed and a demon

00:15:55.660 behind him and a light glowing around him.

00:15:57.440 It is obviously him purporting to be God.

00:16:01.760 That is what he's doing.

00:16:03.740 And it is blasphemous by any definition of that word.

00:16:08.760 I actually just looked it up just to just to have it at the ready.

00:16:12.220 I mean, blasphemy is irreverence towards sacred entities.

00:16:14.820 But here's a here's a longer definition.

00:16:16.600 The act of showing great disrespect, contempt or defiance toward God, sacred persons or holy things, insulting, mocking or slandering the divine.

00:16:27.240 That's what he's done.

00:16:28.360 It's completely inappropriate and he knows it.

00:16:31.740 I don't know why the president's getting so desperate for attention that he feels the need to mock one point four billion Catholics.

00:16:37.920 It's enough, okay? 0.95

00:16:39.620 It's enough with this nonsense.

00:16:41.460 I know you love getting a rise out of people.

00:16:43.800 I know you're really enjoying being subversive.

00:16:46.340 You upset all the right people.

00:16:47.660 I get it.

00:16:48.580 But, you know, like, why? 1.00

00:16:50.780 Last week it was Muslims. 1.00

00:16:53.060 Now it's Catholics. 1.00

00:16:54.900 Who's next? 1.00

00:16:55.600 I bet you it's not going to be the Jews. 1.00

00:16:57.900 It's not going to be the Israelis. 1.00

00:16:59.940 I promise you that. 1.00

00:17:01.640 That's not coming.

00:17:03.920 This is completely wrong.

00:17:06.060 The president should take down that meme.

00:17:08.000 He should apologize, which is something he never, ever does.

00:17:11.240 But he doesn't care.

00:17:12.540 He won't.

00:17:13.820 He's not going to apologize because he's not sorry.

00:17:17.540 Now, he must be feeling some sort of blowback because it's literally just breaking now that the president deleted the meme.

00:17:24.400 He must be feeling how much he's misstepped with that particular meme.

00:17:29.020 So somebody got to him and said, take it down.

00:17:33.500 You've offended 1.4 billion Catholics who have done nothing to you.

00:17:38.560 In fact, many of us have done nothing but support you.

00:17:42.640 But support you when you get attacked over and over and over.

00:17:46.140 And we would appreciate not being mocked for our religious beliefs.

00:17:50.480 Something you seem to be increasingly fond of doing across most, but not all, religions.

00:17:57.880 I don't know what he's doing.

00:18:00.320 But the president is spiraling downward.

00:18:02.700 in his poll numbers. He is on a downward spiral now. We'll talk about in a minute what's happening

00:18:09.580 with the white working class. That's Trump's base. And he's now underwater with them. We saw one

00:18:17.400 poll about seven to 10 days ago showing it. And now there's another. There's no question. He's

00:18:23.540 collapsed now with the white working class. My friends, that's it. Other than Fox News boomers, 1.00

00:18:30.200 There's no one left. There's no one left in the original MAGA coalition. White working class. 0.68

00:18:38.280 I really look forward to the people who purport to speak for the white working class, people who have written whole books about the working class and what's important to them, people who have been ripping on the so-called podcast class for being critical of this war and how they're completely irrelevant and no one listens to them.

00:18:54.660 I really look forward to those people updating their reporting to tell us what's actually happening among the Trump base now.

00:19:02.040 Because they want him to focus on the economy, on inflation, not on Iran.

00:19:10.260 That's what they want. 0.96

00:19:12.020 They don't give two shits about the Strait of Hormuz, about Karg Island, about blockades in the Middle East. 0.91

00:19:18.940 They care about their pocketbooks and being able to pay their mortgages and their grocery bills and their car payment without getting that sickening feeling in their stomach. 0.83

00:19:32.020 They don't have unlimited funds.

00:19:35.340 You know, I was watching Tim Dillon over the weekend talking about the Melania piece that we talked about on Friday where she was like, we we had the same social circles and with Jeffrey Epstein in New York and Palm Beach.

00:19:48.940 And he was making the point that, yes, she's trying to tell you she's rich and you're not.

00:19:52.560 He was saying, you go to a party, it's your sister's, he said, your fat sister's retirement party.

00:19:58.540 He was like, only Tim can.

00:20:00.760 Anyway, that's where most of us travel.

00:20:03.740 Those are our circles.

00:20:05.540 And she has a very different social circle, and so does the president.

00:20:08.320 And it would do him very, very well to remember not the people who buy the buildings from him, but the people who build them.

00:20:16.720 That was always Trump's magic gift.

00:20:20.700 It was his special sauce.

00:20:22.820 It was like the thing that made him invincible,

00:20:25.140 is that he came from money,

00:20:26.400 but he could understand and relate to the working class.

00:20:29.160 And they loved him for it.

00:20:30.720 Get back to that for the love of God. 0.99

00:20:34.580 Stop waking up thinking about how you can bomb the Iranians, 1.00

00:20:38.060 send troops in on the ground, 0.77

00:20:40.500 and offend 1.4 billion Christians across the country and the world. 0.66

00:20:45.380 Okay?

00:20:46.060 I just, I don't know what he's doing.

00:20:49.000 I don't know why he's doing this

00:20:51.660 other than he's acting like a cornered animal.

00:20:54.860 You know, when you feel like you're cornered

00:20:58.840 and things are out of control, you lash out.

00:21:01.560 You lash out at your most ardent supporters

00:21:03.860 and treat them like they're the enemy. 0.55

00:21:06.400 You lash out at a bunch of Catholics

00:21:09.980 on and immediately after Easter

00:21:13.360 and also Orthodox Easter.

00:21:16.060 And you continue to ratchet up the rhetoric like saying you're going to do something like bomb Iran's desalinization plants, which he's doing again, raising that as though that would be an acceptable means of upping the ante if he doesn't get what he wants.

00:21:32.700 It's not it's not OK.

00:21:35.280 So the president's on a downward spiral.

00:21:37.900 And I think it's because he listened to the wrong person, Bibi Netanyahu.

00:21:42.740 He believed his lies over the objections of the vice president, the secretary of state, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs.

00:21:48.820 He knows that it's his decision that got us here based on faulty intelligence, which was manipulated by Netanyahu and was tried, who tried to sell it to president after president after president.

00:22:02.060 Trump's just the first one who bought it.

00:22:04.240 And so he's probably feeling embarrassed by that.

00:22:06.860 He doesn't like being attacked by Pope Leo.

00:22:08.900 I get that. But you don't. The answer is not to blaspheme an entire faith. The answer is never

00:22:16.200 really to blaspheme an entire faith or double down on your attacks against Christians.

00:22:21.600 So what happens now? Now we're blockading, which, by the way, military experts will tell you that

00:22:28.160 is the effective equivalent of boots on the ground, like actually sending ships to blockade

00:22:34.620 a body of water, or in this case, Iranian ports, so that they cannot enter or leave

00:22:40.380 that body of water, which has been run by Iran and Oman forever. It's, you know, along their 0.75

00:22:48.100 boundaries. So what happens now? And what happens if a ship coming from China wants to port,

00:22:56.780 you know, make port an Iranian port? What are we going to do? And where is this going? Are we in

00:23:03.960 the middle of Professor Pape's escalation trap. Remember when he told us that? Not long ago.

00:23:10.880 Here to react is Brandon Weikert. He's senior national security editor of 1945.com and host

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00:24:34.240 Great to see you, Brandon. Thanks for coming back. So your take on the collapse of our 21 hours of

00:24:40.040 talks and now the revised blockade, not just of the entire strait, but of the Iranian ports therein.

00:24:47.140 And I'm getting ready to drop a deep dive on the economic situation as well at

00:24:51.840 NatSecGuy at Emerald.tv. It'll be dropping in the next 24 hours. Basically, the entire

00:24:59.360 situation that we are facing is a disaster of our own making. We are now escalating. You were right

00:25:07.760 to bring up Dr. Pape's theory on escalation trap. The United States is choosing rather than

00:25:14.840 de-escalate, we are choosing to escalate. Now, I was initially surprised that the president wanted

00:25:19.800 to do a counter blockade, which is what this is. We're blockading their blockade of the Strait of

00:25:27.080 Hormuz. And the reason I'm surprised he's doing that is, first of all, you're right, it has the

00:25:31.540 same impact as does landing forces on a place like Karg Island in terms of the international legal

00:25:38.240 scenario. It's an act of war under international law. But second of all, and this is very key,

00:25:44.280 blockade is a protracted engagement it basically it's all the worst aspects in terms of the

00:25:51.300 economic and political fallout from saying landing troops or or even doing an even bigger air war

00:25:57.560 but it has none of the immediate uh positive effects there's no positive effects that will

00:26:02.740 come out of this because as you rightly note this thing is going to that now involve us potentially

00:26:08.220 stopping uh the the cargo ships and container ships of other countries uh and uh notably china

00:26:16.720 now i just want to say something right here i don't believe for a second that the united states

00:26:21.860 navy will in fact stop chinese-owned vessels uh from transiting the strait of hormuz from picking

00:26:29.140 up oil that the iranians have produced for china uh and leaving the strait of hormuz i think there's

00:26:35.760 a lot of braggadocio. But just to be

00:26:37.460 perfectly clear, and I'm definitely going to let you

00:26:39.520 finish your point. Yeah, no, please. What Trump said, and I'm

00:26:41.580 quoting, I'm quoting is, I have

00:26:43.660 also instructed our Navy

00:26:45.460 to seek and interdict

00:26:47.220 every vessel in international

00:26:49.360 waters that has paid a toll to

00:26:51.520 Iran. So if you've paid the toll

00:26:53.580 he wants to interdict, and now

00:26:55.500 there's the question of us

00:26:57.280 closing the Iranian port to

00:26:59.360 all, all vessels, any

00:27:01.480 vessel en route

00:27:03.040 to Iran or leaving the Iranian

00:27:05.400 Well, they might be able to stop the vessels from crossing the Strait of Hormuz in terms of just not letting them through. 0.52

00:27:12.460 But I really am suspicious that we're seriously going to board a Japanese vessel. 0.99

00:27:18.760 We know the Japanese paid the toll, right? 0.97

00:27:20.700 I seriously doubt and, you know, past his prologue here, the Americans, when we were doing our blockade of Venezuela in January, there was an opportunity we had to seize a Panama flagged Hong Kong owned container ship.

00:27:39.180 And ultimately, the president told the Navy, don't touch it, because, of course, he's trying to get a deal with Xi Jinping on the larger trade formulation.

00:27:47.920 So ultimately, I have a deep suspicion that when it comes to a country like China or an ally like Japan, I'm very skeptical the president will honestly do that.

00:27:59.500 And if he did that, particularly to China, not only would he lose any ability to get

00:28:04.120 a deal with China on these other outstanding issues, but now we're talking about a real

00:28:09.220 world war potentiality here, because now we're going after truly, directly, Chinese trade

00:28:16.100 with Iran and the greater Middle East, which the Chinese military-

00:28:19.760 Okay, but let me ask you, Brandon, so what we have here, so there's two things.

00:28:23.980 there's president trump well centcom narrowing the blockade that trump announced yesterday

00:28:30.600 trump said the whole straight yeah centcom this morning said no the iranian ports yeah and in

00:28:35.240 clarifying centcom said centcom forces will begin implementing a blockade of all maritime traffic

00:28:42.580 entering and exiting iranian ports the blockade will be enforced impartially against vessels

00:28:49.440 of all nations entering or departing Iranian ports

00:28:53.680 and coastal areas, all of them.

00:28:56.100 So they said, no one's coming in.

00:28:58.200 Like my favorite movie, Willy Wonka.

00:29:00.640 Nobody ever goes in, nobody ever comes out. 0.99

00:29:03.540 That's how it's gonna be at the Iranian ports, okay?

00:29:06.180 And on top of that, you've got the Trump statement

00:29:09.200 that anybody who tries to pay a toll

00:29:12.920 and then leave the Strait of Hormuz

00:29:15.280 has been instructed by our Navy

00:29:16.800 seek and interdict every single vessel

00:29:19.460 that does that in international waters.

00:29:21.920 No one who pays an illegal toll

00:29:23.260 will have safe passage on the high seas,

00:29:25.160 says our president.

00:29:26.000 So there's two things he says

00:29:27.180 are going to happen there.

00:29:28.300 You tell me though,

00:29:29.320 because I agree with you,

00:29:29.980 I'm very skeptical that he would do this to China,

00:29:31.740 who he knows he has to negotiate with

00:29:33.580 and who obviously is our biggest threat.

00:29:36.520 So what does he do?

00:29:37.580 A Chinese ship starts coming in,

00:29:40.540 they start coming down the Strait of Hormuz

00:29:42.240 and they want to port,

00:29:43.980 you know, make port at an Iranian port.

00:29:45.920 pull in i guess i'm not a boater my husband is pull in at an iranian port we're we're not going 0.83

00:29:51.460 to stop them i don't think but we're going to stop like i said we're going to stop what like

00:29:55.900 the spanish ship i don't like any other ship we're just going to start choosing yeah we might

00:29:59.960 start enforcing it on for instance i mean you're already seeing we're having this fallout with

00:30:04.400 spain uh over you know related separate issue though um and uh the president is already going

00:30:11.800 hard after spain telling the chinese don't you dare continue doing trade with spain because of

00:30:17.160 these other issues we're having with them over their support for nato or lack thereof over their

00:30:22.220 support or lack thereof for the iran war and some other trade issues with spain so i could foresee

00:30:28.080 the president to make a point goes after one of our nominal allies like spain stops their ships

00:30:34.460 I would be very surprised if the president actually goes ahead with stopping a Chinese flagged vessel.

00:30:44.700 I really don't think he's going to do that. 0.83

00:30:47.280 I think there'll be he'll let it pass.

00:30:49.560 They'll probably try to cover the incident up, not let it get out publicly that it happened. 0.50

00:30:53.560 But I deeply suspicious because ultimately, let's face it, if the president really does this and he starts stopping up Chinese flows, which, OK,

00:31:03.560 it might have a temporary hit on the Chinese economy. But ultimately, we know that China has

00:31:10.480 had ample time to prepare themselves for such a contingency. So the entire idea that we attacked 0.88

00:31:16.980 Iran to harm Chinese energy access, it hasn't really panned out that way. The Chinese have had

00:31:24.240 time to build up their own strategic reserve. They've had time to diversify their own assets.

00:31:29.760 They're increasing what they're bringing in from nearby Russia.

00:31:33.300 They're getting it from elsewhere, the energy sources.

00:31:35.980 And then what we're finding out is that after 15 or 10 years of developing their alternative energy structure, their infrastructure, it turns out the Chinese are actually well positioned to lead the pivot that the left has always wanted in America.

00:31:50.540 But the Chinese might actually lead the pivot to renewable alternative energy sources because they spent the last decade building up their infrastructure to prepare for this very eventuality where the Americans might try to blockade their access to energy.

00:32:04.080 So I'm skeptical the impact will be the desired impact by Trump, which is to hurt China economically and energy-wise.

00:32:12.520 I don't think that will happen anyway.

00:32:14.240 And I also think, again, the president has to get a deal with China on these other outstanding trade issues.

00:32:20.600 There will be no deal if we start interfering in their flow of goods.

00:32:25.760 Lastly, I'll just—

00:32:26.580 That's just one another—it's yet another problem of this, of the war and the consequences of it. 0.54

00:32:32.580 this is supposed to be an easy takedown of the Iranian regime. We're in, we're out, 0.94

00:32:37.340 mission accomplished, Venezuela style. Now we're talking about blockades of China from getting its 0.67

00:32:43.260 oil. I mean, this is next level and any ship, any ship from any country. So it is part of the

00:32:50.760 escalation trap that we've been talking about from Professor Pape. And we have that queued up. He was

00:32:55.960 on here last week, a week and a half ago, and here's how he phrased it. And that's why I laid

00:33:02.120 out before the war started these stages of escalation that we were going to go through,

00:33:07.500 where stage one would be the smart bombs would hit targets, they would kill leaders, but they

00:33:13.280 would not achieve any meaningful strategic outcome. You wouldn't get the enriched uranium,

00:33:19.780 You wouldn't topple the regime.

00:33:22.360 And that would then lead to stage two, which is where the opponent lashes back.

00:33:27.380 That's the horizontal escalation campaign.

00:33:30.000 And that then leads to them getting Hormuz.

00:33:34.180 And that happened.

00:33:36.300 And again, I'm laying out these stages before the first bomb fell.

00:33:39.600 Now we're at stage three, which is the ground operations are nearing.

00:33:46.120 This is truly the red line, Megan.

00:33:48.240 It gets harder to get out of. And once we cross into the next phase of ground operations, oh, my goodness gracious, Megan.

00:33:56.020 And you've seen already how we reacted when we lost 13 dead in the extraction from Afghanistan and all that motion that was brought out.

00:34:06.900 Imagine you have 100 dead paratroopers coming into CARG or 100 dead Marines going on the beach. 0.52

00:34:14.300 That 36 percent is going to be extremely committed more than ever, because that 36 percent that supports the war, they're going to think in their minds, they're dying for me.

00:34:28.740 Yeah.

00:34:29.980 So right now, Brandon, we don't have boots on the ground, but we are getting closer with this blockade.

00:34:34.780 The only thing I will will say that that gives me a glimmer of hope in this is that clearly whatever the president ordered two weekends ago with the, you know, whatever the supposed rescue of the airmen in the heart of Iran near Isfahan, one of the suspected nuclear weapons sites, whatever happened went so badly that the U.S. military, we were able to get our people out of there.

00:35:00.080 But it was a very tense situation. There seemed to be a moment where the president had a moment of clarity. Like, I can't I can't go forward with this. And he can you elaborate on that? Because there's a question about whether and told the full and just to be that rescue of the two pilots.

00:35:15.220 Yeah. And just to be clear, I have no idea for sure what happened. We live in the most censorious age imaginable. So getting getting the truth out is very difficult. But I believe we probably did save our pilot. And that was this weapons officer from the downed F-15 Strike Eagle.

00:35:32.080 I don't know if we did it on the day that the situation in Isfahan happened.

00:35:36.860 We might have done it before.

00:35:38.060 It might have been done, you know, that plus some kind of uranium hunt in Isfahan. 0.73

00:35:44.940 It was a massive force that we sent in there.

00:35:48.080 We landed C-130.

00:35:50.180 Rand Paul was raising this question online.

00:35:52.040 I know he was.

00:35:52.920 Suggesting we weren't being told the full story behind why those pilots were where they were.

00:35:58.920 and that all these planes there

00:36:01.400 were not all sent just to get a pilot out,

00:36:04.800 our second, the WIZO, whatever.

00:36:06.480 They were sent because it was part of an attempt

00:36:08.680 to get the enriched uranium out of Iran

00:36:11.280 and it didn't go well.

00:36:12.840 This is unconfirmed,

00:36:14.180 but Rand Paul and many military experts

00:36:16.180 have been all over X suggesting

00:36:18.960 that's the real story and it's not being told.

00:36:21.460 That is unconfirmed and is denied by the administration.

00:36:24.240 It is.

00:36:24.660 But if you do look at the way they arrayed those forces

00:36:28.520 and the kind of, you know, the kind of troops we brought in, the numbers of equipment and whatnot,

00:36:33.800 it certainly didn't seem like only a rescue mission.

00:36:36.840 If you were going to do a uranium hunt, you would need to land those transport planes on a site near the suspected WMD site.

00:36:45.400 You would then need to flow in more forces.

00:36:47.960 That's exactly how it played out in two weekends ago outside of Isfahan.

00:36:53.720 Again, my understanding is despite the loss of the equipment, we got everybody out.

00:36:58.140 and it was okay but what i'm getting at here is there was a moment it seemed like where the

00:37:02.900 president kind of came out of his stupor and said oh i can't i can't land guys that's when you had

00:37:08.020 the context of we're going to talk about ceasefire ceasefire obviously didn't go well i thought for

00:37:13.520 sure after the ceasefire collapse trump was going to order troops somewhere into iran but the fact

00:37:19.080 is he pulled the blockade out the counter blockade which is bad but it actually indicates to me that

00:37:25.020 there is a lot of hesitation on his part to actually follow through on deploying troops,

00:37:30.880 I think, because he knows this thing could go upside down fast. So what that means is we're

00:37:35.060 going to have to endure a counter blockade. Yes. And the counter blockade, though.

00:37:38.780 That's one blessing in this whole thing is that every representation that Netanyahu has made to

00:37:42.740 him continues to fall apart. And I think the president is starting to distrust his partner

00:37:47.800 and realize he's been misled and that it's not going to be anywhere near as easy as Netanyahu

00:37:53.100 who suggested it would be and he's starting to get more cautious as he sees how unpopular this

00:37:57.100 war is over here not just with the left but with the right yeah yeah and my hope is that maybe if

00:38:03.200 this i mean the counter blockade is going to do a lot of economic damage to us uh but my hope is 0.93

00:38:08.420 is that in a few weeks the president realizes i can't possibly stop chinese ships without this 0.75

00:38:13.820 becoming a world war possibly it's no benefit to the american people it's certainly no benefit

00:38:19.180 politically for trump and the republicans hopefully at that point there's some kind of an

00:38:23.900 off-ramp uh but i think he's going to go through this counter blockade partly to satisfy you know

00:38:29.840 whatever he's doing with netanyahu to show hey i'm still engaged but ultimately it's not going

00:38:34.880 to have the impact they think it will uh partly because there's i don't see how they're going to

00:38:39.600 enforce this blockade on the chinese and if they do well the chinese are going to do something

00:38:44.700 They're not going to just not do anything. They're going to respond in some way. And I would just also point out, we now know that the Israelis were bombing over a week ago. They were bombing in Iran in their airstrikes, a very key railway that has since been rebuilt, I'm told. But that railway connected Iran to China. It was through their Belt and Road Initiative. That's a key strategic linkage over land to Beijing for Tehran. 0.94

00:39:11.460 It is not inconceivable that if we did really make this blockade serious, the Iranians would likely find a way to transport their energy supplies over land into Central Asia, into China, and the Chinese would continue flowing in their weapons and material to help Iran better resist us. 0.51

00:39:30.640 Okay. Now we're getting too deep in the weeds, but I got it. I got it. But as far as the economic consequences to Americans, we played the one Eric Bolling soundbite on $110 oil, which translates into increased energy prices from gas and diesel and beyond here in America. 0.78

00:39:53.520 He was predicting five to six percent inflation possible.

00:39:56.720 Here's another one from Bowling responding to a Mark Levin claim that, you know, the economic effects on Americans.

00:40:03.100 It's just going to be a short time thing, just short term here.

00:40:06.320 Listen here to SOT6.

00:40:07.520 He is completely wrong on this.

00:40:09.360 And I will tell him this.

00:40:10.140 I'll have this conversation with him or or debate him on the economic effects of what's going on.

00:40:14.740 He wrote it off as the American people are going to feel the price of a gallon of gasoline for a little while.

00:40:20.040 That is frankly B.S., my friend.

00:40:22.060 And everything is fuel related.

00:40:24.320 Everything is petroleum related, products, transportation.

00:40:27.340 And when you have this situation, we're pushing $110 a barrel here, $130 a barrel for Brent,

00:40:32.340 $150 a barrel for Mid-Eastern Crudes.

00:40:35.100 All prices will go up.

00:40:36.340 They have to go up and they'll continue to go up.

00:40:38.140 So a temporary blip is insulting to me.

00:40:41.840 It's frankly insulting.

00:40:42.980 And Mark Levin, I would love to have this conversation with you directly.

00:40:45.780 Here's why.

00:40:46.800 It's not temporary.

00:40:47.820 and we literally removed a president, President Biden, for bringing inflation up. The last

00:40:53.760 inflation number we just saw, Steve, has inflation tripling, energy inflation tripling month over

00:40:59.140 month from February to March. That's one month. Yeah. Yeah. And is that what you're showing too?

00:41:06.680 Yeah, no, I think we're slated for a minimum of 4.5% inflation rate by the summer. I know

00:41:14.460 bullying was saying it's going to be higher it might end up being higher there's going to be a 0.63

00:41:18.700 very um a very awkward moment here for the united states because trump wants to get rid of jerome

00:41:24.520 powell the fed chairman who's very very serious about keeping inflation down uh so he combats

00:41:31.940 that with higher interest rates the president has wanted to replace powell with this guy kevin

00:41:36.600 warsh who's very anti high interest rates i don't like interest rates being high either but the

00:41:42.960 reason you raise interest rates this is basic economics is because you have to bring down

00:41:47.840 inflation inflation is the destroyer of of of any semblance of wealth in the country it's the

00:41:55.220 destroyer of the currency it's a destroyer of the economy long term if you let it run free

00:41:59.580 you get the weimar republic uh from the 1930s germany which of course is not good uh so my 0.97

00:42:05.460 fear is that we are doing this counter blockade which is yet it's going to completely increase 0.57

00:42:10.860 the price of oil which will then increase inflation and it's not going to be a blip

00:42:14.720 it's going to be the rest of the year just as an fyi for the listening audience the u.s inflation

00:42:19.560 rate right now is at 3.3 percent compared to 2.4 percent last month and 2.4 percent last year so

00:42:26.000 you're talking about over four bowling suggesting could be as high as five or six you know under

00:42:32.060 biden we were looking at double digit and and we were still suffering greatly under biden when it

00:42:36.720 got down to nine yeah and people were that that's i think where it was when we evicted him from the

00:42:42.980 office uh but we definitely are going in the wrong direction in the wrong direction and even if it's

00:42:48.200 a temporary blip how supply chains work is it will have cask let me just remember the supply

00:42:54.100 chain disruptions in covid uh you know when we ultimately reopened those supply chain disruptions

00:43:00.140 higher prices higher inflation rates were with us for years after we reopened in 2020 uh from the

00:43:06.940 covid shutdown so this notion that oh yeah it'll be a temporary blip it is even if the price of

00:43:12.720 energy came down those knock-on second and third order effects are still going to be rippling

00:43:17.860 through the entire economy for months and possibly years to come so we're talking about now entering

00:43:24.220 into recessionary uh you know recession possibly coming in the fall i just also want to say kevin

00:43:30.840 warsh this this the guy that might be replacing pal you if you lower interest rates while inflation

00:43:37.260 is increasing to the numbers that i and bowling think that they're going to be at you're actually

00:43:42.060 going to create a longer term economic crisis in the form of stagflation uh which is basically

00:43:48.340 everything's going to be devalued uh and it's going to be a very tough economic times think

00:43:53.660 back to the 1970s during the oil crisis, those people who were alive back then.

00:43:58.000 I'd rather not.

00:43:58.520 Right, right.

00:43:59.600 And so that's where this is headed.

00:44:01.100 But the bottom line is, all of the polls, all of the polls show what the American people

00:44:08.320 want is for the president to focus on affordability on their wallets.

00:44:12.940 That's right.

00:44:13.520 Doing something about the inflation, doing something about healthcare, doing something

00:44:17.360 about the enormous cost that they're facing.

00:44:18.760 And not only is he not, but he's doing something that's going to worsen all of those problems, which brings me to the polling that I mentioned.

00:44:26.860 This one just came out from CBS News slash YouGov, and it shows, first of all, they ask Trump's handling of the situation with Iran.

00:44:36.920 36 percent approve, 64 percent disapprove.

00:44:40.320 Those are not good numbers.

00:44:41.520 One third of the populace approves.

00:44:43.760 Two thirds say they disapprove of how this is going.

00:44:46.600 um they were asked about his a whole civilization will die tonight truth post that trump made how

00:44:53.620 do you like this statement 59 said they dislike it either somewhat or strongly um gas prices have

00:45:01.500 been financial hardship or difficult a majority say yes they have been a financial hardship for

00:45:06.420 me or difficult his overall job approval rating 39 approve 61 disapprove inflation 31 think it's

00:45:16.400 Okay, 69% of the American populace disapproves

00:45:20.040 of where inflation is,

00:45:21.560 the very thing that you and I are discussing right now

00:45:23.560 in Eric Bolling too.

00:45:24.920 Here is more behind the,

00:45:28.060 do you approve of Trump's job?

00:45:30.000 61% saying we disapprove of how he's doing.

00:45:33.560 He's underwater with independents by 42, 42 points.

00:45:37.960 He is underwater with Hispanics by 30 points. 0.99

00:45:40.580 Underwater with blacks by 66 points. 1.00

00:45:43.600 Underwater with whites by 10 points, 1.00

00:45:45.740 who are the ones who put them in office. 0.96

00:45:47.440 Underwater with young people, 18 to 29 by 40 points.

00:45:50.460 Underwater with 30 to 49-year-olds by 30 points. 0.78

00:45:53.880 And underwater with the white working class by four points. 0.89

00:45:56.760 What do I mean by underwater?

00:45:57.860 I mean 52% disapprove, 48% approve.

00:46:01.600 So if you subtract the disapprove from the approve, 0.60

00:46:06.460 you get a minus four number for white working class. 0.63

00:46:09.560 It's minus 42 and so on for the others

00:46:12.280 as I just went through.

00:46:13.220 But that's Trump's base right there.

00:46:14.880 That is Trump's base, down four percentage points with the white working class.

00:46:20.680 That's a 40-point swing since February of 2025.

00:46:27.400 40, 40, Brandon.

00:46:30.440 That is why this made news over the weekend when J.D. Vance had to come to the mics to say no agreement reached.

00:46:37.740 President Trump went to a UFC event and tried to do the hero's entry with Dana White, where normally that's his base.

00:46:47.920 They go crazy when he walks in.

00:46:51.300 This time he walked in.

00:46:53.080 You did hear some applause.

00:46:54.500 What you really hear is they had to crank up the Kid Rock soundtrack to muffle the fact that there weren't that many applause, there weren't that many cheers, people weren't going nuts, and you could hear some boos.

00:47:12.060 And that's the problem.

00:47:14.780 I don't know why we cut it without the music, but that's what happened, trust me.

00:47:18.520 It's not overwhelming boos, it's just the absence of overwhelming people going nuts.

00:47:24.000 It's not working for him. The people in that room know what I'm talking about without me telling you the numbers. They feel it. There's an anger. There's a disapproval about his focus nonstop on Israel instead of Iowa.

00:47:40.100 Yeah, no, I agree.

00:47:41.280 And this is going to have now my my concern is that these prices are baked into the cake.

00:47:46.500 Even if, let's say, the Strattoe Hormuz completely reopens in the next 24 hours, it's not going to.

00:47:51.560 But let's say the best case fantasy scenario is it's completely reopened.

00:47:55.200 Everybody goes back to their neutral corners, happy and squared away.

00:47:59.100 Those disruptions now are already it's the butterfly effect, right?

00:48:03.380 They're already rippling elsewhere.

00:48:05.120 They're already baked into the cake to mix metaphors here.

00:48:07.840 And ultimately, I think that we are now on an irreversible course to a some kind of economic downturn going forward into the midterms, which, of course, will have negative consequences for the president's party, which the president is not necessarily on the ballot, literally, but his policies are.

00:48:29.440 And if he loses the majorities in Congress and the Senate, what will happen is in very short order, the Democrats will move to impeach.

00:48:37.840 And they're not just going to move to impeach against him, which might be more difficult than it sounds. They're going to move to go after people like Pete Hegseth. They're going to claim that he committed. They've already been saying this, that there have been war crimes committed. They're going to, at the very least, completely gut the administration with endless investigations that will slow down their ability to actually focus on things like affordability and to address the concerns of the MAGA base.

00:49:02.420 So that's where this is headed because of the decision to attack Iran, which, again, I'm still, as an analyst, very confused what the logic was, why we had to go in on February 28th the way we did.

00:49:15.960 That argument has never been properly presented to the American people.

00:49:19.880 And I would argue the alleged intelligence that was used was never adequately vetted by our intelligence people.

00:49:26.040 We were simply handed something by Israel.

00:49:28.660 We had opposite intelligence.

00:49:30.180 We had opposite intelligence, which the president ignored, saying Nikki Haley, he doesn't care what she says.

00:49:34.880 Meanwhile, she briefed him that this threat does not exist.

00:49:37.820 It was obliterated in June. And what's happening now is not only are we increasingly I mean, it feels very much like the House is gone.

00:49:46.060 Yeah. But today there was a massive Cook political report moving several states from leans Republican into toss up.

00:49:53.880 So we're getting our position on the Senate is getting weaker by the day.

00:49:57.060 But not just that.

00:49:58.640 Twenty eight is increasingly in danger.

00:50:00.520 Yes.

00:50:01.080 The vice president's numbers are going down precipitously.

00:50:04.140 And for what?

00:50:05.600 He was against this war, but he's been sent now to be the front man on the negotiations.

00:50:11.080 One wonders why that is.

00:50:12.720 And here's what Harry Enten just reported on on how that's going. 0.87

00:50:17.360 Sod 11.

00:50:18.820 J.D. Vance is not doing too hot to trot at this point.

00:50:21.860 Look at this.

00:50:22.440 OK, J.D. Vance's net popularity should actually be a plus.

00:50:26.380 There we go. Plus three points.

00:50:28.700 Then we go to minus 18 points at this point.

00:50:31.580 That is a 21 point swing in the wrong direction.

00:50:37.020 J.D. Vance started off his vice presidency in plus territory, and now he is in negative territory.

00:50:43.940 Down he goes. J.D. Vance getting dragged down along with the president of the United States.

00:50:48.100 Yeah, you look at other vice presidents.

00:50:49.440 look at this, at this point in their vice presidency, historically the worst, worst at

00:50:53.800 this point in a vice presidency. Kamala Harris was at minus 13. Mike Pence was at minus seven.

00:50:58.800 Joe Biden was at plus four. Dick Cheney was at plus 37. This might be part of a longer trend of

00:51:03.460 vice presidents becoming unpopular, but we can say J.D. Vance is historically the least popular

00:51:08.200 vice president at this point in their vice presidency. Go ahead, Brandon. Yeah, I was just

00:51:13.580 going to say that I think there was a reason that they put Vice President Vance as the head of this

00:51:19.300 this ceasefire because i actually think the ceasefire was never a serious commitment by the

00:51:24.440 president i think he was trying to buy time uh to get forces in position either to do a blockade or

00:51:30.080 god help us an invasion uh and i think that he is trying i'm worried that he's sabotaging or his

00:51:36.620 team is trying to sabotage vance who has always been opposed to these these foreign entanglements

00:51:42.120 going back to his days in the senate and i think that that's that was some kind of a poison pill

00:51:46.820 that they gave him, hey, take this negotiation.

00:51:50.100 Okay, and there's evidence of that.

00:51:51.620 There is evidence of that.

00:51:52.920 We'll talk about it on the opposite side of this break.

00:51:55.780 Where did the first hour go?

00:51:56.840 I have no idea.

00:51:57.920 Brandon stays with us.

00:51:58.700 We'll be right back.

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00:53:22.220 Brandon Weikert is back with me now. So where we left off was, why was J.D. Vance picked to go try

00:53:29.800 to negotiate a peace deal that you and many others believe had zero chance of actually being agreed

00:53:36.900 upon? Yeah, I think this is partly to diminish the vice president in the eyes of the world.

00:53:44.560 Um, you know, there's a running joke that, uh, you know, whenever he, he meets with the, you know,

00:53:50.260 the Pope, there's, there's memes about that. There's these memes about how he's basically

00:53:54.640 has the opposite of the Midas touch. And so this is another thing to add to that growing set of

00:54:00.200 memes. It's unfair. I think what they're saying about him, but ultimately perception is power.

00:54:05.860 The president and his team understand that. And I think the, I think there are people around the

00:54:10.460 president maybe the president himself who didn't like that the vice president was um clearly not

00:54:16.640 on board i mean the vice president was dutiful you know he was doing what the the the president

00:54:21.220 asked he wasn't publicly disagreeing etc he was very you know he was he was very almost obsequious

00:54:27.120 to the president in public when it came to the matter of the iran war which we all know he did

00:54:31.520 not support so i think that um basically the president and his team did to jd vance that which

00:54:38.480 president bush and george w bush and his team did to colin powell when they made colin powell who

00:54:43.880 did not support the iraq war go before the u.n and make the case for the iraq war and that has

00:54:50.080 forever been just ask retired colonel lawrence wilkerson who worked as the chief of staff for

00:54:54.980 powell that was something that dogged powell for the remainder of his life was the fact that he

00:54:59.300 or when joe biden took kamala harris and made her the border that's right that's right yes and so

00:55:04.520 this is a common tactic because because brendan what what was impossible about the terms like

00:55:09.560 to me i read the what what nbc news what fox news is reporting were the actual terms that we demanded

00:55:16.580 and i thought my first reaction was of course you're never going to agree to any this is never

00:55:21.120 this is a non-starter they can't enrich uranium at all and i think a lot of our listeners are like

00:55:26.920 well why would we want to allow them to enrich uranium we all know what they're going to do with

00:55:30.760 enriched uranium but that actually is an impossible deal term can you explain why yeah well basically

00:55:36.260 the irani first of all the iranians have escalation dominance they've proven that this entire war the

00:55:41.720 fact that we even decided to talk to them with about a ceasefire or that we we haven't until 0.98

00:55:46.920 the last 48 hours attempted to put our ships into the strait of hormuz indicates that the iranians

00:55:53.300 are not as defeated as the secretary of war has been claiming it's just not the reality they they

00:55:59.680 are able to meet us on every escalation rung and they're able to give as good as they've gotten

00:56:05.580 and uh so the idea that we were going to be able to go in with a set of demands like get rid of

00:56:11.200 uranium enrichment uh was a non-starter especially because for the regime in iran and i don't want

00:56:16.940 them to have nukes either i think this is that's a horrible outcome but it's going to happen now

00:56:21.120 no matter what the iranian regime has wedded itself to the idea that it has to at least possess

00:56:27.600 the capability to enrich to weapons-grade uranium as a sign of deterrence against the U.S. and Israel

00:56:35.240 and also as a symbol of legitimacy. And I would remind everybody that in 2003, there were many

00:56:41.640 people who believed Saddam actually had WMDs, nuclear weapons, because he was telling the world 0.56

00:56:47.300 he had them. And the reason he was saying that was because he didn't want to appear as weak,

00:56:52.300 because if you're weak in that part of the world, you lose legitimacy and you're ripe to be

00:56:56.940 overthrown ironically of course it ended in his overthrow anyway but the point is

00:57:00.880 in Iran something similar there's a similar calculus so unless we're going 0.56

00:57:04.740 to so decisively defeat them in combat which we haven't and we probably won't

00:57:09.000 then that means they're not going to come can you know in a conciliatory

00:57:13.080 manner they're going to come and meet with us as wanting to be seen as equals

00:57:17.880 we cannot demand they give up something like uranium enrichment because it for

00:57:22.380 them is essential to their vision of being seen as legitimate in the region and powerful and having

00:57:28.760 a deterrent against us. Otherwise, you wind up like Gaddafi getting dragged through the streets

00:57:34.100 in Libya because you're no threat. They know you have no nuclear weapon. And the next thing you

00:57:39.700 know, you're getting sodomized and murdered in the street. That's not what they want. And yet 0.96

00:57:46.020 they basically want to suggest they've got the power to go nuclear and you shouldn't mess with

00:57:51.440 them. Officially, they're saying they want the ability to enrich uranium for a nuclear energy

00:57:56.200 program. But there's no way, given the success they've had in dragging this war on, in controlling

00:58:02.620 the strait, in imposing political costs on President Trump, that they're coming in there

00:58:07.500 tailed between the legs, which is how President Trump is describing, you know, what he thinks

00:58:12.280 they ought to be doing. Like he thinks we've won and they should just be surrendering. And you need

00:58:17.560 look no further than his main outlet, his number one favorite broadcaster, Mark Levin,

00:58:22.640 to understand that. Here's a bit of what Levin was saying on Saturday night about how this thing

00:58:29.280 should end. Sat 8. I have in front of me, though, you know, the Potsdam Declaration, July 1945. I

00:58:36.580 wasn't even going to mention this, but I have it. And then we have the instrument of surrender by

00:58:41.380 the Japanese, September 2nd, 1945. And in order to implement the Potsdam Declaration and get them 0.68

00:58:47.800 to surrender to the terms that the Allies wanted, we dropped two atomic bombs. Now, I'm not

00:58:54.540 encouraging it. I'm asking about the law. Is that legal today under the law of the war or not? I

00:59:01.380 think it would be very helpful to go back and read the terms of surrender for the Japanese,

00:59:06.020 for our envoys to read it because the Japanese were dug in, even after the dropping of two

00:59:11.820 atomic bombs. And it took a lot of pressure, even after that, to get them to surrender.

00:59:19.600 Wow. They had an absolute lunatic as their ruler who would, there was no amount of Japanese 0.97

00:59:26.680 sacrifice that would ever have satisfied him. He didn't care. It took two nuclear bombs. And even 0.97

00:59:31.000 then there was a question but that why is he even bringing that up if he's not advocating it well

00:59:36.840 and that's a great question i don't obviously he's implying that this is where it needs to go

00:59:41.460 and just to be clear um there's a lot of debate among real historians today as to whether those

00:59:48.820 two nuclear bomb drops actually ended the war or if it was really the threat of the soviet red army

00:59:57.000 By this point in the war, the Soviet Red Army had defeated the Nazis, and they were repositioning Zhukov's famous forces that defeated Hitler.

01:00:06.260 They were sending them back to the Eastern Front to basically take on the Japanese. 0.81

01:00:10.960 They wanted to invade northern Japan and do to Japan what they did to Germany, split it in half between us and them. 0.71

01:00:17.420 And we dropped the bombs partly to get out ahead of the Soviet invasion.

01:00:21.480 But the real question always was, did Hirohito, the Japanese ruler, did he surrender because of the bomb blasts?

01:00:28.200 Well, he didn't after the first drop.

01:00:29.780 Did he surrender after the second one because of that one? 0.74

01:00:32.160 Or was it because he realized if I don't surrender to the Americans and give everything to them, the Soviets are coming in and I'm more frightened of them than I am of the Americans. 0.67

01:00:40.840 And so there was the one-two punch. 0.52

01:00:42.980 It was the two bombings. 0.73

01:00:44.600 And the real clincher was the threat of Soviet invasion.

01:00:49.380 So, you know, unless... 0.99

01:00:50.460 Now, you tell me whether we are in a position to demand, quote, surrender right now of the Iranians. 0.99

01:00:56.100 No, we are not. Like I said, the Iranians, and I say this as an opponent of the government there, the Iranians have... 1.00

01:01:02.220 Yeah, we both are.

01:01:02.840 Right. Of course, of course, yes. The Iranians have effectively been able to meet us at every turn.

01:01:09.980 This is a professional military. You know, you have to give a little bit of kudos here because everybody, I think, thought that the military was going to be like the Iraqi military,

01:01:19.160 He was going to fold upon first contact, but that has not been the case.

01:01:22.720 This is a very, these guys are cool as cucumbers, and they were ready, and they were prepared for what we were going to throw at them.

01:01:30.100 They anticipated every move so far, which is why you're seeing the president having these outbursts.

01:01:35.760 You know, well, we're going to maybe annihilate the entire civilization.

01:01:39.680 That's not what an American president talks like.

01:01:42.980 he's talking like that because he's frustrated because the iranians are not complying with how

01:01:48.200 he thought things were going to play out and when it comes to the the negotiations the same thing

01:01:52.560 the iranians came in with their set of demands we had our set of demands and the problem the

01:01:57.100 iranians had is they said the americans added the new demands that these were never originally

01:02:01.740 discussed and furthermore the iranians made it clear the only way they were meeting with us was

01:02:06.200 based upon their 10 points not ours and the iranians were surprised that we even met with

01:02:11.400 them because they were not offering to meet meet us and talk about you know enrichment they wanted

01:02:16.180 to talk about their 10 points only we said okay it was never going to work it was this is what i

01:02:22.200 was saying at the time there's no way there's no uh stasis in the in the argument which again

01:02:29.520 makes you wonder why the vice president who is leading all polls right now to be the next

01:02:35.880 Republican nominee for president was sent over there as a person for the negotiations. Yeah. I

01:02:42.220 mean, it doesn't make any sense otherwise. He's yes, he was a detractor on the war. But what we

01:02:48.180 didn't go over there really hoping to end this that not with those points, not with you can't

01:02:52.840 do any uranium enrichment and you have to give us all the previously enriched uranium that's buried

01:03:00.200 deep in those sites that we hit. That's another one of our our must haves. And reportedly,

01:03:05.240 president trump said don't negotiate on anything like these are the points this is what we want

01:03:08.620 total surrender thanks to his friend mark levin so not surprisingly i'm surprised it took 21 hours

01:03:14.500 that's all i i'm surprised i think not surprised i think that that indicates that i think the vice

01:03:19.640 president was very genuine in trying to figure out a way to make it work but he was obviously

01:03:24.220 being overruled by the president and we know that he was talking constantly with the israeli prime

01:03:29.580 minister um which you know on one hand you say well we know that from the israeli prime minister

01:03:34.480 That's right. Who said that J.D. Vance, our vice president, was calling him repeatedly to report to me. Right. He said, as they do every day, his two, you know, what he thinks are his two puppets at the top of the United States government. The way he spoke of our president and our vice president was actually deeply offensive. Yeah. And but but does it reveal a fundamental truth about who's actually calling the shots here?

01:03:57.900 Well, I think it reveals the exposure that the entire Republican Party in particular has to this particular ally. Again, they are partners with us in this war, so on some level there's going to have to be coordination between us and them just because of the nature of the conflict.

01:04:16.100 But the question is, why are we calling every day? Why is it like how they're describing it? That is not the norm. And there does need to be a greater understanding that, yes, we have shared interests right now, but there are real differences in what we're trying to achieve and what they're trying to achieve.

01:04:34.760 Yes. And the fact that we don't partner with somebody in a war, you don't like go in jointly holding hands and pretends one thing to have an ally in a war.

01:04:43.060 It's quite another to launch it jointly and pretend that you're equal partners.

01:04:45.980 Here's exactly what Netanyahu said, quote, J.D. Vance reported to me in detail, as this administration does every day about the development of the negotiations.

01:04:55.480 Well, good for you. But J.D. Vance reportedly called Netanyahu from his plane after leaving Islamabad. And reportedly, J.D. Vance called President Trump multiple times during the negotiations. It wasn't that J.D. was empowered, according to the reports. It was President Trump at every turn saying, no, no, no. He wants what he wants.

01:05:16.960 Wait, I want to keep going here.

01:05:19.340 I got to get to this.

01:05:21.020 So President Trump calls into Maria Bartiromo's show yesterday and once again goes to the we might bomb their desalinization plants.

01:05:31.980 Now, it is one thing, and I've defended the president on this. 0.82

01:05:35.180 If you want to talk about bombing some of the electric plants, if they're dual use, if you can make a good faith argument that they're being used to fuel the military, that you can at least make the argument that this is not civilian infrastructure, that's a war crime.

01:05:49.560 But you cannot say that about water plants that are keeping the Iranian people alive.

01:05:57.380 Not the Iranian government, not the Iranian military, the Iranian people alive. 0.67

01:06:03.300 And yet, once again, he raised it.

01:06:06.520 Here it is in Sat One. 0.92

01:06:08.380 We've wiped out their whole country, essentially.

01:06:11.160 The only thing left, really, is their water, which would be very devastating to hit.

01:06:16.120 I would hate to do it, but it's their water, their desalinization plants, their electric generating plants, which are very easy to hit.

01:06:24.260 We could hit them.

01:06:25.160 We could have them all down. 0.74

01:06:27.400 And I mean down like you couldn't have electricity for 10 years because it takes you 10 years to build those plants from scratch.

01:06:35.680 You'd never probably be able to build them again.

01:06:38.400 And the bridges.

01:06:39.620 So that's really the only thing.

01:06:41.780 We still have some more missile manufacturing plants.

01:06:44.980 We know every one of them.

01:06:45.960 week will do that your thoughts uh well um i remember in 2021 i was asked to uh speak to the

01:06:57.340 seabees the navy's you know engineering group uh and i went out to uh their base out in california

01:07:03.260 and i i actually met with the co at the time of the seabees and and after my speech we were kind

01:07:09.460 of chatting after the event and he started recounting how the seabees in iraq went in

01:07:15.000 and took out falluja's energy grid and water supply uh you know in the run-up to the battle

01:07:20.840 of falluja and he looked at me and he he said you know he and he he said we did good work blah blah

01:07:26.140 blah but he said you know i start to worry about you know what happens when an enemy does that to

01:07:30.800 us and he said would we like that would would it be considered you know fair game and uh it's always

01:07:37.260 stuck with me and when i heard the president on bartiromo's show yesterday i used to do her show

01:07:41.300 occasionally um i could tell she was uncomfortable with what he was saying it seemed like uh and i

01:07:47.000 think that the president um i don't think the president understands that we are not fighting

01:07:51.700 um a bunch of savages in the desert we're fighting a highly skilled enemy and the the iranians have

01:07:59.280 a very robust cyber warfare capability i was told a week or so ago by a friend of mine or a contact

01:08:06.560 of mine uh who is involved with cyber security for the government and he said that the and i

01:08:12.420 think this has since been reported i think in politico in the last week but um basically that

01:08:17.580 we are seeing an uptick in iranian cyber intrusions directed specifically at u.s energy and water

01:08:25.940 supplies and um that we're stopping them but they are getting very deep inside the system before we

01:08:32.540 detect and stop them, increasingly so. So that indicates to me that they are mapping the

01:08:37.540 battlefield, Iran is, getting ready for this next wave of escalation. And it is not a guarantee 0.88

01:08:43.840 anymore, I don't think, that Iran will only keep their ire focused on the Arab states and Israel.

01:08:50.300 They might try to kick something off here if we go after key civilian infrastructure in Iran,

01:08:55.860 which is, again, matching us as we escalate. Every time we escalate, the Iranians are right 1.00

01:09:00.360 there with their own you know match so i would encourage the president to not go down that path 1.00

01:09:05.620 it's a very dark road it will affect our arab partners definitely we know the iranians will

01:09:10.700 assuredly knock out the arab states desalinization plants they'll probably target israeli ones as

01:09:16.300 well but what will stop them from potentially doing that here in the united states and i can

01:09:21.720 guarantee you all that will be catastrophic for this country especially at a time when we're

01:09:27.760 already economically hurting and all these other things are going on it will be absolutely

01:09:31.980 catastrophic our infrastructure is not ready to handle what happens after a massive cyber attack

01:09:38.700 on our electrical grid on our water supplies well and let's not forget you know their their ally is 1.00

01:09:46.000 the chinese which has got superior abilities in that department and that's already been quietly 0.99

01:09:51.720 helping them in the ways that it feels comfortable well so that's another threat and if i can just 0.99

01:09:56.660 add there as well, Megan, I just saw the comments from the Chinese Emerald that you were referencing

01:10:02.380 at the start. It sounds to me like if we did try to interdict any of these Chinese ships in our

01:10:08.980 counter blockade, they will escalate in some other way. And I think you're right. They might 0.99

01:10:13.800 use their very powerful cyber warfare capabilities to hit us somewhere in our infrastructure that

01:10:19.720 will be catastrophic. Remember, the transformers that make up the physical power grid here in the

01:10:24.960 United States, 80 to 90% of them come from one company in Tianjin, China. And so if those systems

01:10:32.080 are taken offline or if they're physically damaged, which is very possible because they're a fifth

01:10:36.680 columnist here in the United States, if those systems are taken offline in abundance, we're 0.97

01:10:42.120 going to have to hope the Chinese are kind enough to give us the replacements because we don't have

01:10:46.340 the replacements on hand here in the United States. So this is a real slow rolling disaster 0.97

01:10:52.620 if we really do go after China in the counter-blockade. 0.71

01:10:56.960 That is chilling.

01:10:58.240 That is a chilling warning.

01:11:00.440 Meantime, you've got, you know,

01:11:03.040 our close ally and partner Israel, 1.00

01:11:05.700 which at every turn has been trying to get us into this war, 1.00

01:11:08.640 trying to foil our chances to get out of this war

01:11:11.260 temporarily or more permanently.

01:11:13.720 And now still there is a faction on the right,

01:11:18.120 the neocon right,

01:11:19.420 that continues to try to diminish any doubters about the war

01:11:23.740 or those of us who would like to be honest

01:11:26.980 about Israel's role in pushing us into it

01:11:29.480 as anti-Semites, conspiracy theorists, and so on.

01:11:34.580 Here's a taste of that with Jackie Henrich,

01:11:37.740 who I believe was in for Shannon Bream on Fox News Sunday,

01:11:41.920 and Ben Shapiro yesterday.

01:11:44.980 The issue, I do think that there is a wing

01:11:46.540 of the conservative base

01:11:48.380 that has become essentially the Grievance Party,

01:11:50.580 mirroring a lot of the concerns of the left,

01:11:52.820 seeing politics through the same

01:11:54.060 grievance-based conspiratorial lens,

01:11:56.140 suggesting, for example, 0.95

01:11:57.460 as Candace Owens did over the weekend,

01:11:59.020 that the president is a slave to Israel

01:12:00.720 or that Israel is manipulating this president.

01:12:02.980 The president, as anyone who has watched him

01:12:04.800 for the last decade knows,

01:12:06.360 makes his own decisions. 0.99

01:12:07.720 And the conspiratorial horse crap 0.99

01:12:09.460 that is being promoted by Tucker Carlson 0.99

01:12:11.380 or Megyn Kelly or Candace Owens or Alex Jones,

01:12:13.960 that the president is acting at the behest

01:12:15.920 of a foreign nation is nonsense.

01:12:17.980 The president knows it's nonsense. So does the Republican base. 0.96

01:12:20.980 So much of that gains traction on social media.

01:12:24.560 What do you do to stop terrible narratives like that from taking hold and changing people's minds and informing their thought about things?

01:12:34.280 I mean, obviously, I think that the algorithmic disconnect is quite real.

01:12:37.360 You see it particularly on X, but you also see it on TikTok and other social media.

01:12:41.500 People need to touch grass.

01:12:42.480 what do you do to stop these terrible narratives that form in people's thoughts that's a fox news

01:12:53.020 anchors question by the way i was corrected by by ep that's her own show that's i guess what gets

01:12:58.980 you uh your own individual show these days at fox news the questions of how do you stop terrible

01:13:04.420 narratives like this war was done at the behest of israel that gets into people's thoughts as

01:13:11.700 they're forming something that ben shapiro had no problem with he didn't recoil he yeah that is a

01:13:18.180 real problem thanks to the internet algorithm brandon how do you stop things like that from

01:13:24.300 happening well i told you we're living in the most censorious age i think in the history of

01:13:28.580 the united states maybe world war ii was more censorious but again that was a world war uh and

01:13:34.040 we were thrust into that conflict we were not thrust in i mean we were thrust into this conflict

01:13:38.020 in the sense that we followed Israel's lead, but we're not in a declared state of war.

01:13:43.900 We are in a conflict right now, not of our own making, but the idea that we're going

01:13:51.200 to censor people online, I always tell people who push back on me, I say, look, find where

01:13:57.020 I'm wrong.

01:13:57.840 Find the evidence that refutes the claim.

01:14:00.560 I can back up what I'm saying.

01:14:02.560 Let's talk about that.

01:14:03.860 Okay, let's just talk about that.

01:14:04.820 I just pulled a couple of the headlines.

01:14:06.340 We've been talking about this for weeks.

01:14:08.020 March 2nd, The Guardian, U.S. strikes on Iran triggered by Israel's plan to launch attack, Rubio says.

01:14:13.640 We all remember the Secretary of State and the Speaker of the House saying we did it because of Israel.

01:14:18.160 OK, April 7th. And their defenders would say the timing of it was because of Israel, the timing of it.

01:14:24.540 It was well beyond the timing. Benjamin Netanyahu went to the White House seven times this past year to try to convince President Trump that this was the right move.

01:14:32.800 There was an in-depth April 7th piece in The New York Times, how Trump took the U.S. to war with Iran.

01:14:38.020 In the Situation Room on February 11th, Mr. Netanyahu made a hard sell, suggesting that Iran was ripe for regime change going on from there.

01:14:46.960 March 3rd, Axios exclusive, the Trump-Netanyahu call that changed the Middle East.

01:14:52.260 Last Monday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called President Trump with a stunning tip.

01:14:56.520 Iran's supreme leader and his top advisers were all set to meet at one location in Tehran on Saturday morning.

01:15:02.380 It answers the question that lawmakers, MAGA skeptics, and world leaders have all been asking since Saturday.

01:15:07.400 Why now? They go on from there. March 20th, Washington Post, Netanyahu's months-long campaign to convince Trump to attack Iran, and so on and so forth.

01:15:16.720 We could be here all day doing the headlines of how it was indeed at Israel's behest, Ben, and literally no one other than crazed neocons who are Israel firsters are even questioning that at this point.

01:15:32.760 No, it's true. And again, you're right to point out Rubio's comments on Capitol Hill right after the war began. I mean, he said that's what we did. Remember, Trump has said repeatedly over the last three weeks, or I guess more than that now, he's said repeatedly that, you know, if I didn't act, there would be no Israel, which clearly that's again, the Israeli line is that they are one heartbeat away from an Iranian nuclear holocaust.

01:15:57.740 And again, I can understand where the Israelis are coming from, but I don't think it's that dire yet.

01:16:02.920 And I think there was plenty of time for us to do something other than starting a catastrophic war that neither we nor the Israelis are now winning.

01:16:12.020 You know, there was a thousand other things that we could have done and tried before going into war, not just negotiations. 0.61

01:16:18.260 We could have enhanced the Abraham Accords.

01:16:20.840 We could have brought the Israelis closer together with the Arab states and told them we are not starting a war. 0.85

01:16:25.460 We're going to do a containment strategy like we did to the Soviet Union.

01:16:28.660 There are dozens and dozens of alternatives that would have been less costly and less damaging to the United States than what we're doing now. 0.84

01:16:36.700 And what you're what you're highlighting here, Megan, is the truth. 0.55

01:16:40.200 And they don't like the truth, which is, yes, we did this because we were helping Israel.

01:16:45.240 But ultimately, it's not helping Israel any more than it's helping us.

01:16:49.160 In fact, Israel is now seeing severe economic damage.

01:16:52.940 They're seeing severe political fallout.

01:16:54.960 The first day of the courts in Israel resuming normal functions was a week ago or last week.

01:17:01.480 And the first thing they did was continue the indictment and investigation into Netanyahu for corruption charges.

01:17:06.800 So this is not benefiting anybody in Israel.

01:17:10.520 So even even the idea that we had to do this for Israel, it's clearly not panning out for any of the neocons who supported it.

01:17:17.820 This is a terrible, disastrous conflict, and it needs to end now, like right now.

01:17:24.960 And here's what's happening at home.

01:17:26.380 Not only are we seeing the inflated prices of gasoline and diesel fuel, but the actual prices will follow, as they always do.

01:17:35.080 And you heard our discussion at the beginning of the hour, and Eric Bolling's predictions could be up to 5%, 6% by the summer.

01:17:41.680 But we're losing politically, which is what had yours truly up in arms when this thing first started, because I saw it, I knew it, I understood.

01:17:50.940 We were already precariously perched to lose the House and possibly, possibly to keep an eye on the Senate.

01:17:58.280 And now it's getting worse by the day.

01:18:00.060 Just today, Cook Political Report has moved three races closer to the Dems in the Senate races.

01:18:08.900 OK, so here's the story.

01:18:10.300 The Democrats have to keep Michigan, Georgia and New Hampshire and also flip one other House, one other Senate seat in order to take control of the Senate.

01:18:18.880 They need four net seats in the Senate, which is a tall order and still is not the best outcome to bet on.

01:18:25.520 If you're putting money on it, you'd still have to vote on the Republicans keeping the Senate.

01:18:28.860 But it's less likely by the day.

01:18:32.060 So they need to keep Michigan, Georgia and New Hampshire and then flip one additional seat.

01:18:41.960 Could be Maine, could be Ohio, could be North Carolina, could even be Alaska.

01:18:47.100 Those are the ones.

01:18:47.660 All right. So think about those those first states that I said, Michigan, Georgia, New Hampshire, that the Democrats have to keep. Georgia was a toss up. Now it leans dem. North Carolina was a toss up. Now today it leans dem.

01:19:10.160 Okay, so that's bad. That's at least two of the ones that the Democrats have to keep that are now going more and more Democrat. They're looking more and more Democrat and like the Republicans cannot flip them. And Ohio was, leans R, now it's toss up. North Carolina was toss up, now it leans D.

01:19:32.220 um all these alaska was solid red now it leans are uh nebraska is now potentially in play um it

01:19:43.920 too was moved from solidly red uh over to leans are every single movement in all of some seven

01:19:51.260 senate races that we're watching every single one has been moved closer to the the democrats

01:19:57.220 winning it, Brandon. I mean, this is, if any of this actually winds up manifesting in November,

01:20:02.200 it will be catastrophic for the future of the Republican party. If you look at the lineup of

01:20:07.260 states that are up in 28 for Republicans, it's, it's far worse. Like Republicans are projected

01:20:13.580 to lose more seats in 28, far more than they are. They have more risk in 28 than they do in 26.

01:20:18.880 So 26 should be a year in which they lose maybe one, you know, God forbid two, but you're talking

01:20:24.420 about four now they've lost control of the senate and then it doesn't get better two years later

01:20:29.700 right and now we're diminishing the heir apparent jd vance with these failed negotiations and

01:20:35.000 there's a lot of political fallback from that so we're already damaging the the the likely next

01:20:40.160 heir apparent as well for 28 i would just say i live in florida there were two special elections

01:20:44.940 in the last month uh one of which for the mar-a-lago district uh the republicans were

01:20:49.940 supposed to win that they lost significantly and the reason they lost it had nothing to do with

01:20:55.140 you know anything other than the fact that there are double the amount of republican or just about

01:21:00.600 double the amount of republican registered voters here than there are democrats in the state of

01:21:05.320 florida and yet the democrats outvoted the republicans they're having presidential

01:21:10.860 turnout levels in their primaries in their special elections so far and the republicans are i think

01:21:18.820 the republicans are heartbroken right now i think the republicans really are hurt emotionally they

01:21:25.820 are trying to process psychologically and that is having a dispiriting effect on demoralizing

01:21:32.100 the vote and that's why you're not seeing the turnout even in solidly red states like my own

01:21:36.720 state of florida uh megan they're and this is going to keep playing out the longer the economy 0.91

01:21:42.020 collapses and the harder things get for average americans because a lot of maga voters are looking

01:21:46.980 around going, what did we do it all for? And not only that, you have the fact that this MAGA movement

01:21:52.740 has been with us for 10 years. So it's been a decade since Trump first came down the golden

01:21:57.520 escalator and was the guy for the Republican Party. So there's already the movement getting

01:22:03.380 a little long in the tooth. You've got to constantly reinvigorate it. We're not reinvigorating it. You

01:22:08.780 mentioned the youth vote. Last year at this time, we were talking about how the youth vote was

01:22:14.720 pivoting away from the democrats at least a sizable portion were and come coming on with

01:22:19.640 the republican party now it looks like those numbers have completely reversed because if

01:22:24.100 you're a young person in america it's very hard for you to make it it's it's darn nearly near

01:22:29.700 impossible and that's if you're even with you're doing everything you're supposed to be doing

01:22:33.820 having a job putting your money you know in where you're supposed to and playing the game the way

01:22:38.140 that your parents and grandparents did um unfortunately it no longer passes muster

01:22:43.120 anymore you can't get ahead so all of these things are compounding and you throw in the war which is

01:22:48.080 causing all of these dislocations throughout the economy it's not going to translate to a win for

01:22:53.940 the republicans at this point in november and if they don't win again i think that's the end of the

01:22:59.240 trump presidency whether he's removed from office or not that's the end he's going to become a lame

01:23:03.600 duck overnight yes he will uh that's how i feel extremely disappointed i'm i'm really genuinely

01:23:11.280 sad about it i like i kind of can't believe he did it i can't believe yeah the betrayal of starting

01:23:18.600 a middle east war like the one thing you really believed he would never do and he did it and now

01:23:24.600 we're stuck in it and the escalation trap manifests bit by bit because among other reasons we have this

01:23:31.000 partner who won't let us out continues to bomb lebanon to the point where iran isn't willing to

01:23:37.800 settle, create new terms where we have to have zero uranium enrichment, which was never a thing.

01:23:44.640 And we now, OK, now we're going to take over the Strait of Hormuz or at least the Iranian

01:23:49.280 ports in it. And what does that mean for us and our other allies of ours, you know, who now we're

01:23:53.880 going to be confronting on the high seas or at the ports? It's just every day it's more bad news.

01:23:59.680 And the electoral chances that we're hoping for as people who lean right get diminished and

01:24:06.580 dwindled, the American people, the base. I mean, that white working class number is just so 0.95

01:24:10.840 alarming. But Brandon, I feel as they do. Like, I love the President Trump agenda domestically. 1.00

01:24:17.400 I want him to come back and do it. I want him to be focused on us. I don't hate President Trump.

01:24:23.740 I haven't really turned on President Trump. I'm very against this war. And I hate the way it's

01:24:29.300 being conducted. And I don't like the way he's talking. I don't like the way he's, like I said,

01:24:34.900 like a cornered animal lashing out at like possibly striking the desalinization plants, 1.00

01:24:41.080 wiping out civilization in Iran tonight. That stuff's crazy. The depiction of himself as God, 0.96

01:24:47.140 which is what his detractors are already saying about him. He's not God and he can't act like God

01:24:52.020 and to stop trying to pretend he is God. And guess what just happens? I mean, he did something he

01:24:56.520 never does. He deleted that post of himself clearly as Jesus. And Brandon, he's now spinning

01:25:04.560 that that's not what it was.

01:25:06.640 This just happened while you and I were on the air.

01:25:08.560 Look at this, look at this soundbite of him

01:25:09.940 trying to claim he, for listening audience,

01:25:13.180 he imposed a demon behind him in this picture.

01:25:17.440 He took it from an artist online who does these often

01:25:20.680 and he changed what was a soldier in the sky behind him

01:25:23.940 into a demon, into a Satan figure

01:25:26.080 and put himself in the main role.

01:25:29.600 There's a woman praying at like his altar, his right hand,

01:25:33.480 and he's got the glowing white light in the left hand

01:25:36.700 and there's a glowing light all around him.

01:25:39.100 He's very clearly trying to paint himself as Jesus.

01:25:42.100 And now he's claiming he was just trying to paint himself

01:25:45.180 as a doctor.

01:25:48.080 Listen.

01:25:48.980 Did you post that picture of yourself

01:25:51.020 depicted as Jesus Christ?

01:25:52.880 Well, it wasn't a picture.

01:25:54.100 It was me.

01:25:55.280 I did post it and I thought it was me as a doctor

01:25:58.000 and had to do with the Red Cross

01:26:00.260 as a Red Cross worker there, which we support.

01:26:02.400 and uh only the fake news could come up with that one so i i had uh i just heard about it

01:26:09.960 and i said how did they come up with that it's supposed to be me as a doctor making people

01:26:15.600 better and i do make people better i make people a lot better as an example uh the 11 000 i

01:26:22.440 understand your husband's going through treatment yes sir yes sir he's going through some very

01:26:27.620 serious cancer treatment. So this goes a long way. Yes, sir. It sure does.

01:26:33.880 Okay. That's just, okay. By the way, Trump didn't personally do the artwork. He posted it. He

01:26:39.740 reposted somebody else's handiwork. Why did we have to have a Satan behind you if you were a

01:26:46.020 doctor? Why is someone praying at your right wrist? Why is there a glowing white light in

01:26:51.140 your left hand. Why do you have the robes of a Jesus-like figure and not a doctor's coat on?

01:26:58.160 It's just, I'm sorry, Brent. This is the stuff I can't stand. And then we get lied to about it.

01:27:03.380 It's an obvious, obvious lie. I'm just glad he took it down,

01:27:07.220 to be honest with you. Because it was very offensive in more than one way.

01:27:13.520 But I can't comment on what he was thinking. I don't know how you could think that was a

01:27:19.000 first aid worker but you know and then the demon i didn't see i didn't notice that when i saw the

01:27:24.180 picture so um it could be that it was ai that it looks like that's an ai generated image maybe he

01:27:29.660 tweaked it in i don't know uh but but the point is i don't care that he tweaked it i just care

01:27:34.520 that he tweeted it out at the same time he's attacking no i agree the pope you know it's

01:27:39.760 very obvious and he's under criticism by many saying who do you think you are you think you're

01:27:43.440 god and this is trump's way of being like you know what yeah how you like me now well that's

01:27:48.120 certainly his personality. My hope is that Russ Vaught, who is, you know, in the administration,

01:27:52.920 I know him to be a believer. My hope is that maybe he's the one that kind of quietly asked

01:27:57.840 the president. I don't know. I have no inside information, but I, you know, I do know he's a

01:28:02.000 believer. And so I hope that maybe this could, this could lead to some ministering, uh, getting

01:28:07.420 the, getting the proper word in front of the president rather than Paula White's word. Um,

01:28:11.720 but, uh, you know, we'll see. She's a crazy ass advisor of his that she's a lunatic. 1.00

01:28:16.180 Well, she's definitely, I would argue she's heretical, that's for sure. 0.99

01:28:20.600 I don't think there's any truth biblically there, and I'll pray for her as well. 0.79

01:28:25.080 But, you know, I do think the president is, as the kids say, spiraling, and I think he's doing that because I think he realizes he's in a pickle.

01:28:35.720 And, again, it's a disaster of his own making, but there is an off-ramp still.

01:28:41.220 The president can still say, okay, so he's going to do the blockade.

01:28:46.180 I think he's going to follow through on some level in terms of putting the ships out there

01:28:50.420 and threatening everybody. But he could, at the end of the day, he could say, okay,

01:28:54.180 I've done the blockade for a week. I'm good. We're good. We're going to, we're going to deescalate

01:28:57.960 now. He basically can still deescalate and tell the, the local parties, Israel and the Arab States,

01:29:04.460 you guys are going to have to figure it out. Now we've done everything we can to stymie and

01:29:09.980 contain the Iranians. And we're going to have to work out a new deal. If I were him again, 1.00

01:29:14.780 I would pivot. I would try to get the Russians who are partners with the Iranians, but also want to do business deals with the United States. There is a chance here he could go to Moscow and flip the whole script and say, I'm going to use the Russians to get a deal on the Iranian problem. I'm going to use the Russians to get a deal on the European problem. I'm going to use the Russians to get a deal on the problems with North Korea and China.

01:29:38.760 There is still a pathway forward. It doesn't seem clear, but it's there. But he's got to feel his way out of this. And if he at the end of the blockade, the counter blockade, if he is convinced to land troops, then it's all over. Then we're truly in, you know, we're not in a regional war. We're probably in the very, very deep, you know, World War Three, because it's going to suck the oxygen out of everything. It's going to become all consuming.

01:30:04.920 So my hope is that the president, he's obviously going to do the counter blockade for a period of time.

01:30:10.060 My hope is he doesn't really do it seriously.

01:30:12.580 And then he just says, OK, I'm going to Moscow.

01:30:14.920 I'm going to work with Putin.

01:30:16.500 We're going to figure out a way out of this.

01:30:18.320 I'm going to work with with whoever I need to to mitigate this thing and ratchet it down.

01:30:23.080 It's not going to feel good.

01:30:24.560 It's not going to be as cathartic as blowing up things and looking like the big man.

01:30:28.760 But I think, you know, there is a way forward still.

01:30:31.660 But he's got to be the hero and take it.

01:30:34.340 As much as I'd love to see that happen, this is just crossing the wire. 0.65

01:30:39.720 Via the New York Times, speaking of the possibility of using Russia,

01:30:44.300 I'm thinking this next thing is not going to make them happy

01:30:47.180 or put them in a mood to help us out on the Iran situation.

01:30:51.400 Trump, talking to reporters at the White House, reiterated his threats

01:30:54.320 to take military action against Cuba, calling it a failing nation.

01:30:59.320 Quote, we may stop by Cuba after we're finished with this,

01:31:02.920 He said outside the Oval Office, referring to the U.S.-Israeli war against Iran.

01:31:07.820 That's not a thing that the Russians want or are likely to facilitate in any way, shape or form.

01:31:15.520 And it doesn't sound like, I mean, a possibility.

01:31:21.280 Like, how could he?

01:31:22.300 There's no political goodwill left for Cuba.

01:31:27.580 None.

01:31:28.180 Yeah.

01:31:28.340 That was something Marco Rubio if you wanted it done it needed to be done before

01:31:33.260 This yeah, there's no goodwill. The only thing I would say is the Russians want a world 0.61

01:31:40.800 Multipolar world in which there are various spheres of influence and the Russians have consistently said

01:31:46.240 They envision a world where we have a sphere of influence in our part of the world

01:31:50.100 The Russians have a sphere of influence and there's the Chinese etc, etc, etc

01:31:53.740 etc. And the only thing I would say is the Russians might be willing to let the Cuban 0.99

01:31:59.880 thing slide if they know they're really going to get a deal out of us on these connected issues in

01:32:06.360 Eurasia, Ukraine, Iran, and dealing with China. And again, here there's the Western Hemispheric

01:32:13.100 Defense Strategy. This is what the president's team outlined in the national... You're saying

01:32:17.560 It's not the 1962 Communist Party.

01:32:21.200 Well, I think in terms of Cuba, I think the Russians would be willing to let that go the way we want it to go or the way Trump wants it to go if he can seriously sit down with them and be genuine about, yes, I'm going to work with you to get a deal to end all of these crises across Eurasia very quickly.

01:32:41.360 uh cuba is seen as peripheral to russia i think and therefore i don't believe that the russians

01:32:48.860 would use cuba as anything other than a cat's paw to give us headaches because we're giving them

01:32:53.420 headaches so if we could kind of mutually de-escalate i think the russians would say

01:32:57.960 okay the western hemisphere is your sphere we're going to have our sphere and you know in our part 0.95

01:33:02.740 of the world and we're going to let the chinese carve out some sphere for themselves and this is 0.95

01:33:07.220 new world order going forward one of of spheres of influence where we mind our own backyards more 0.98

01:33:12.660 than we mind the backyards and front yards of others the don roe the don roe doctrine and this

01:33:17.860 is something you know i was very loud and proud about that i thought this is where we were going

01:33:22.340 which is why i was so angry about the middle east excursion because it's become more than

01:33:26.660 an excursion obviously it's it's real it's it's a quagmire and um so i do think there is a pathway

01:33:33.300 forward even with the cuban issue but if we continue to escalate in iran like i'm fearful

01:33:39.580 of doing then yes the russians the turks are now sending a nuclear ship to give energy nuclear power

01:33:46.600 to cuba which is directly against what the united states wants turkey's a nato ally the reason

01:33:52.680 they're doing this i think is because they want israel to be reined in and we won't rein israel

01:33:58.200 in and so they're sending this ship to cuba to try to complicate our lives and say hey if you

01:34:03.800 don't take care of this problem in our backyard we're going to mess around with problems in your

01:34:07.800 backyard and so this is all leverage getting to try to get us to do what probably should be the

01:34:13.680 right thing which is we de-escalate in these other parts of the world which is what trump said he

01:34:17.780 wanted to do when he was elected the second time around he wanted to focus on the the don row

01:34:22.500 doctrine. No one cares about the Straits of Hormuz. I certainly don't. People are worried

01:34:27.960 about themselves. This should be somebody else's problem. Brandon, thank you so much. It's always

01:34:33.580 great to get your POV. We'd love talking to you. Brandon Weikert, everybody. Yeah, we'll do it

01:34:37.840 again soon. There's a lot more going on in the news today. You know, it's like every time you

01:34:42.200 think you're going to talk about other stuff besides Iran, it dominates the headlines because

01:34:46.540 it's a war. It's a war that we've involved ourselves with. We've launched and we are

01:34:51.260 involved in, and we can't seem to think of a great way to get ourselves out of it. It's not

01:34:56.060 going to be, quote, surrender by the Iranians. It's not. They haven't lost. Surrender is what

01:35:02.260 you do when you've lost. They haven't. Just because there are navies at the bottom of the

01:35:06.940 ocean, which Trump keeps mentioning, he's very proud of the fact that 156 ships or however many

01:35:10.920 it was, that's not. They've figured out, thanks to this war, that they have a weapon far more

01:35:17.420 powerful than ships or planes. They have control over the Strait of Hormuz. And it's a massive

01:35:24.160 economic weapon that has effectively brought us to our knees. We haven't been able to figure out

01:35:29.600 how to take that weapon away from them. Now we're at the point of having to send these destroyers

01:35:34.200 over into the strait and threaten our allies. You better not come into these ports or else

01:35:39.280 if you pay the toll, you're going to get it. Why are we threatening our allies? I thought this was

01:35:43.880 about Iran. They've managed to spread it beyond just them, which is a win for them. They have 0.86

01:35:50.620 leverage, not a whole of it. We were still the strongest, powerful, most powerful military in

01:35:55.940 the world. I'm sure ultimately they would like to negotiate a stopping to the bombing, but we don't

01:36:03.540 have all the cards like Trump is pretending we do. And we cannot go over there and effectively

01:36:08.200 demand the equivalent of, quote, surrender, no uranium enrichment, period, and go down in the

01:36:15.060 bottom of these three sites we bombed to smithereens in June and find the enriched uranium

01:36:20.240 and turn it over to us, something Trump himself told us was not really possible about two weeks

01:36:25.220 ago, that we'd see it via satellite, that it's all buried. This is another Israeli dream. 0.96

01:36:32.440 Now, the stuff about, hey, you know, you need to stop interfering with Israel and other allies in the region. 0.94

01:36:40.000 Yeah, we can get we can get them to agree to that.

01:36:42.540 I'm sure we can.

01:36:43.740 And you need to cede control of the straight.

01:36:45.920 I don't know.

01:36:47.460 I don't know.

01:36:48.120 Hopefully we can.

01:36:49.280 That's it.

01:36:50.520 But if we can't, you know, and we leave it to be somebody else's problem.

01:36:53.580 OK, I'm OK with that, too.

01:36:54.960 I want to get us out of there.

01:36:56.340 I don't want to do anything escalatory at this point. 1.00

01:36:58.300 that cook political report was dark people it was dark i mean kamala harris is announcing 0.74

01:37:07.420 she's thinking about running again and we laughed about it on morning update am update 1.00

01:37:12.980 because it is kind of laughable are you kidding me that idiot she's going to come back she thinks 0.98

01:37:17.520 she's going to do better this time around but my friends if these if these numbers hold the 0.99

01:37:22.860 approval numbers for Trump, the numbers for JD, who doesn't deserve this blowback. This was not

01:37:28.660 his decision. Anything's possible. And we will not be laughing if we have a Kamala Harris presidency

01:37:37.060 in three years. We will not be laughing. We'll be crying in our soup. She actually,

01:37:45.540 who she's the front runner right now on team blue. Uh, like you can't rule it out. Like she's like,

01:37:53.260 there's no way she can do it. So we need to take this very seriously. We need to find a way out of

01:37:58.320 this Trump. I really hope he, he finds a way to wrap it up and to take himself off the scene for

01:38:06.020 a while and do nothing other than focus like a laser on the domestic situation. That would be

01:38:10.800 great because let me tell you something other than this wall well situation, which clearly was

01:38:14.620 generated, I think, by Democrats to narrow the Democrat field so that they could get one Democrat

01:38:20.380 in the top. You know, that California gubernatorial election, the top two out of this wide primary

01:38:25.940 field will go on to the general election, irrespective of party. And right now there's

01:38:30.220 a Republican in first and third and Swalwell is in second. So it's not that they want both of the

01:38:36.280 Republicans to win. It's that they want support to consolidate behind a Democrat. And he was the most

01:38:43.160 vulnerable. So now you've got Steyer and you've got Porter who are next positioned. So I don't

01:38:50.160 know which one they want to push over the edge, but clearly they wanted to divide the Democrat

01:38:53.520 support so that it would foster behind at least one of them, driving at least one of them into

01:38:58.840 the final two. That's my own theory on what's happening there. But other than that snafu and

01:39:04.840 that story, they've been very disciplined about not interfering with the Republicans as they hurt

01:39:10.560 themselves. They've been amazingly disciplined these past six weeks and just letting the Trump

01:39:17.440 poll numbers dwindle, letting the Republican Party submit to the infighting, which was naturally

01:39:24.480 going to happen. The Democrats have not been leading the charge against this war. They're

01:39:28.240 just they're too weak. And by the way, they're too owned by a pack. We're going to talk about the

01:39:35.520 the Swalwell situation next. First, we're going to take a break. We'll be right back.

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01:41:28.980 Hey, everyone. It's me, Megan Kelly. I've got some exciting news.

01:41:33.260 I now have my very own channel on Sirius XM.

01:41:36.420 It's called the Megan Kelly Channel, and it is where you will hear the truth unfiltered, with no agenda, and no apologies.

01:41:42.580 Along with the Megan Kelly Show, you're going to hear from people like Mark Halperin, Link Lauren, Maureen Callahan, Emily Jashinsky, Jesse Kelly, Real Clear Politics, and many more.

01:41:51.540 It's bold, no BS news, only on the Megan Kelly Channel, Sirius XM 111, and on the Sirius XM app.

01:41:58.980 okay we've got to get into this walwell situation this is i mean boy he was quickly dispatched of

01:42:10.220 i mean it was like they decided he needed to go and he went it was just a pile on from all corners

01:42:19.220 and of course queen pelosi said he had to go and that was the end of him boy when she turns on you

01:42:24.120 You're done. Stick a fork in you. Here's what happened. He was in the second position. Steve Hilton, our old pal from Fox News, 14.7 percent. He's been leading. Swalwell right behind him, 13.7. This guy, Chad Bianco, in 13. So right behind Swalwell. 0.97

01:42:40.380 So really, like two of the top three in California for this gubernatorial race are Republicans, which is extraordinary.

01:42:46.480 But that doesn't mean they're going to win because there are one, two, three of the top five, three are Democrats and all have double digit support.

01:43:00.940 So if you look at it, that's, you know, some 35 percent supporting Democrats and some 25 percent supporting Republicans of this of this electorate.

01:43:14.060 And then I don't know where the other percentages are, I guess, just divvied up amongst the smaller, lesser candidates who have no chance.

01:43:20.460 So two of those are going to move on to the general election.

01:43:23.180 And when it's a head to head Republican to Democrat, I think we all know what the state of California is going to do.

01:43:28.580 unfortunately. I'd love to see Steve Hilton win this thing, would absolutely love, but

01:43:33.580 they have no Republicans in national office in California. So what's the reason for that?

01:43:42.200 They vote blue there. They do it just as soon as they breathe the air, they vote blue. But I guess

01:43:47.960 they decided they didn't want to take any chances that the top two, because the runoff will be

01:43:53.300 between the top two, no matter who they are, even if they're both Republicans. They wanted to make

01:43:58.220 sure that it was a Democrat that was in there. So that means somebody's got to go. And it looked

01:44:03.400 like Swalwell was the most vulnerable. And I guess now they want all the support to go either

01:44:07.400 to Steyer or Katie Porter. Word on the street is it's Steyer who they want. Katie's got her own

01:44:14.340 issues. Get the fuck out of the shot. She doesn't control her temper well. Personally, I'd like to 1.00

01:44:23.880 see her get it. If it has to be somebody other than a Republican, I'm for Katie Porter. I would

01:44:29.360 like to cover that for four years. I bet she'd give us a lot of content, but that's just the

01:44:33.940 news person in me talking. Okay. So let's just talk about how they took him down. It's actually

01:44:40.400 fascinating. Like clearly this guy's disgusting and very creepy, really gross. But whether he 0.98

01:44:49.540 actually raped a woman is a different question entirely. So it looks like there are about four

01:44:56.020 accusers, but there could be much, much more. I have no idea. There's like, it seems to be women

01:45:00.160 coming out of the woodwork right now. He is married. He's 38 years old. Is he 38 now? Or

01:45:05.380 was that when he allegedly raped the woman? Um, okay. When he allegedly raped this woman, 0.99

01:45:11.640 it was 2019. So what, six, seven years ago? Okay, he's 45 now. By the way, today's April 13th, 0.87

01:45:22.300 2026, and it is Strudwick's birthday. Just as an aside, happy birthday, Strud. He's finally

01:45:28.780 becoming the old dog we really hoped he would be. No evidence of that aging or mellowing,

01:45:35.540 really, in our daily routine. Pretty sure yesterday he ate some sort of an animal

01:45:39.560 and was on some natural high as a result of it,

01:45:41.960 a squirrel maybe, I don't know, a bird,

01:45:44.240 possibly a rabbit because we let him outside for a while

01:45:46.600 and he came in like he had like cocaine bear.

01:45:49.800 He was so ramped up.

01:45:52.580 Not sure what happened there,

01:45:53.780 but the high has not subsided.

01:45:55.960 So he's super happy on his birthday.

01:45:57.520 Okay, but I digress. 0.85

01:45:58.480 Back to Swalwell, another kind of animal.

01:46:01.380 This guy had two pieces drop on him,

01:46:05.480 one in the San Francisco Chronicle

01:46:07.220 and then another which had clearly been ready to go 1.00

01:46:09.180 at CNN because they already had these women like on the record. And in one case in shadow on camera

01:46:16.040 telling their stories, the same woman is at the heart of both pieces. The CNN piece has three

01:46:21.800 other women who back it up with also gross accounts, but not as disturbing as woman number 1.00

01:46:27.100 one. And she's the star of the San Francisco Chronicle piece as well. So this woman, um,

01:46:33.680 says, hold on, I want to get, I'm going to get into the specifics with you. Standby. She says 0.94

01:46:42.160 that, okay, here it is. She's a former junior staffer on his team. You know, he's a House of

01:46:54.280 Representatives member that she was a junior staffer working for him. And she was just 21

01:46:59.580 years old in 2019 and he was 38 and he was married and he's got kids too. And she claims that they

01:47:07.160 had at least two physical interludes. It sounds like there may have been more, but two that she

01:47:13.000 is deeming non-consensual. It sounds like due to extreme intoxication on her part in which she was

01:47:19.480 unable to provide consent. Now in both her allegations and those of another woman, there's

01:47:25.840 like a strong implication, though nothing explicit about, you know, maybe a possible date rape

01:47:31.680 situation, like a drug. They talk about how they were drinking with him, and then suddenly they

01:47:36.800 blacked out and don't remember anything until the next day. But they both admit to being heavily

01:47:41.980 intoxicated, so it's not clear. And they certainly don't explicitly say, I think I was given, you

01:47:48.420 know, slipped a mickey by this guy. So it's just, to me, in reading the reports, and I think to many

01:47:53.100 others. There was like, are they trying to suggest that? I unclear. I think not, not explicitly, but

01:47:58.660 keep an open mind to that coming out as an allegation later because the foundation has

01:48:04.400 been laid. She says that the two began messaging each other on Snapchat when she was working for

01:48:11.720 him. He began, she says he was the first to make sexual comments and he sent her photos of his

01:48:19.280 penis and of him shirtless, as one does when one is the boss of young 21-year-old girls 0.96

01:48:26.160 in one's congressional office. He also asked her to send him photos of herself, including nudes,

01:48:32.380 which she did, as one does when one is a junior staffer working for a congressman and he asks you

01:48:38.440 for nudes. Of course, you strip down and send them. No one behaved well here. She said she 0.66

01:48:46.020 found his attention flattering and she also felt nervous because he was her boss. Yes, which would

01:48:53.160 lead most people to try to get out of the awkward situation deftly, politely, laughing it off, but

01:49:00.940 not to take off one's clothes and send the nudes. So this gal has got a lot of explaining to do and 0.95

01:49:06.580 just really a lot of self-reflection on her own behavior. Her mother told CNN that her daughter

01:49:12.320 told the mother some months later that Swalwell had been communicating with her over Snapchat,

01:49:17.840 and the mother and her husband found that inappropriate, but she did not tell her parents

01:49:22.780 at the time that the messages were sexual because the messages on Snapchat were automatically

01:49:27.200 deleted. She has no screenshots of the exchanges. Now, I'm just going to say that is a little

01:49:33.540 suspicious because I'm going to say if you are a young person on Snapchat and your boss, 0.99

01:49:39.200 who's a U.S. congressman, sends you a dick pic. You get a friend to like photograph it over your 0.94

01:49:46.480 shoulder, but it's possible you didn't have that at the ready when the picture came in,

01:49:51.700 when the Snapchat came in. I don't, I don't know. I'm kind of wondering why there's no evidence of

01:49:57.900 it, but he's disgusting and this seems to be a pattern for him. So I give her the benefit of

01:50:02.420 a doubt, not him. So CNN does an on-camera interview with this accuser, this junior staffer

01:50:10.440 who was 21 at the time they began these nude pictures. And she explains the first exchange

01:50:20.560 that they had that led No Place Good. She says she was driving to an event. That was her job

01:50:28.660 to drive him around and here's where it went from there. Take a listen. It was in 2019. I was again

01:50:34.840 driving him to an event. This was my job and you were 21 years old and I was 21 years old. We see

01:50:39.440 some sort of parking lot and he says to pull over. He pulls out his penis and instructs me to give him 1.00

01:50:46.080 oral sex. And I started to, again, I felt incredibly uncomfortable and I stopped and I 1.00

01:50:55.280 said to him, this feels really uncomfortable and anyone could see us right now. And he said to me,

01:51:02.820 you're right. It's probably not good for a congressman to be caught with his pants down.

01:51:06.220 Did he ask you to send him lewd photos? Yes. And did he ever send lewd photos? Yes. He would send

01:51:12.320 short Snapchat videos of him rubbing his penis through his pants while on the airplane. 0.99

01:51:20.920 The staffer says she liked Swalwell's attention at first and nervously went along with it, which included sending back nude photos of herself. 0.99

01:51:30.940 OK, so what do we have here so far?

01:51:33.760 It's obviously technically sexual harassment because she was a subordinate to him in his office and he was taking advantage of his power over her and asking her to submit to a sexual relationship.

01:51:49.380 Could she have said no?

01:51:50.560 Yes, she could have. 0.95

01:51:51.440 But there are a lot of women who feel disempowered in that situation, not excusing her saying 1.00

01:51:56.300 yes or going along with this. 0.98

01:51:57.680 I'm just saying technically, in the eyes of the law, this could amount to sexual harassment

01:52:01.420 given the power differential between them. 0.98

01:52:03.780 It's definitely cheating on one's wife and disgusting. 0.98

01:52:08.440 So he's gross and you shouldn't vote for Eric Swalwell. 0.97

01:52:12.200 And he was right to bow out of the California gubernatorial race. 0.97

01:52:16.820 and you know he's got some amends to make for behaving this way like a disgusting cat it's not

01:52:24.940 like he was 39 and she was 39 you know she was a lot younger a lot younger almost 20 years younger

01:52:32.400 and a junior staffer I mean think about it come on what what guy that you know would take a girl

01:52:37.980 who was 20 years his junior who was barely old enough to drink legally and ask her to give him 0.99

01:52:46.020 a blow job and for nudes while he sent pictures of himself rubbing his unit. I mean, he's a 0.99

01:52:51.400 disgusting pig pervert. He denies the charges. If one word of this is true, he's a disgusting pig 1.00

01:52:59.080 pervert. But there is a lesson in here for young women too, which is like, even when no does not 0.99

01:53:06.580 feel like an option, it is. It is. And like, she shouldn't have done it. And the thing is,

01:53:14.900 this woman's story is complicated because she continues to talk about how flattered she was

01:53:19.180 that he was into her. And she seems to have had stars in her eyes for him. And she played the

01:53:25.020 game. You know, she did. I mean, you can understand the guy's confusion when she willingly sent him

01:53:31.100 nudes. And I'm sure that there were some messages on her part too, encouraging this guy. So as a

01:53:37.380 man's, you know, headspace goes, you can understand why he felt encouraged and thought she might want 0.99

01:53:42.500 to perform the oral sex when he asked for it. So the whole thing is just fraught. And it's like, 0.98

01:53:47.100 I kept thinking when I was hearing the story about Heather McDonald, who talks about sort of

01:53:52.780 regulating sex, desire, love, whatever you want to call it in the professional space,

01:54:00.600 and how men are sort of built to pursue. And this is a fraught, tricky business.

01:54:06.200 And it's, you know, controversial view, and it's directly opposite to the one that was birthed in

01:54:12.100 the Me Too movement, which is, no, finally we're holding them to account. Can't do this. Power

01:54:17.540 differential. The power differential is everything. It's all that matters. And I think the truth is

01:54:23.500 someplace in the middle. It does matter, the power differential. It is relevant, and it does turn it

01:54:30.000 into sexual harassment if it's unwanted on the young woman's part. If she wanted it, then it's 0.99

01:54:34.640 just an office affair. But too often what we see is the woman did want it. She felt hot. She felt 0.99

01:54:41.140 special. She felt loved. He was so powerful. And then he does something later to upset her like

01:54:47.920 dumps her or doesn't give her the promotion or starts dating somebody else. And then she reviews

01:54:54.760 the behavior in a less favorable light and suddenly turns what was completely consensual

01:54:59.620 and happened irrespective of the power difference. Like she felt empowered

01:55:04.320 and turns it into something that was non-consensual. And that's not okay.

01:55:09.160 You know, sexual harassment requires that the woman, that it be, quote, unwanted. 1.00

01:55:16.780 It requires that it be unwanted. 1.00

01:55:19.180 There are plenty of scheming young women for whom it is wanted.

01:55:22.840 And that is at the heart of figuring out some of these allegations, right?

01:55:26.080 So it's like you cannot just go with 20-year age difference and he's the superior in the workplace setting without asking that other question, was it unwanted?

01:55:34.620 Now, she's saying it was.

01:55:36.660 So again, because he's got a pattern of this, apparently,

01:55:39.440 like I give her the benefit of the doubt,

01:55:40.800 but it's just given the excesses of the Me Too era,

01:55:44.220 it's important that we keep these other questions in mind.

01:55:47.140 The days of just burning men at the stake

01:55:50.160 are hopefully behind us.

01:55:51.960 That was a period of excess that went too far

01:55:54.640 and we learned from it

01:55:55.720 and we should keep those lessons in mind, 0.96

01:55:57.760 even if it's a disgusting man like Eric Swalwell, 0.85

01:56:00.540 who none of us likes.

01:56:02.160 Like I literally almost never talk about Eric Swalwell,

01:56:04.100 almost never because I find him so abhorrent and always have. I'll talk about AOC. I'll talk about

01:56:09.860 Rashida Tlaib. There are certain people in Congress who I find just so disgusting. I almost never talk 1.00

01:56:15.120 about them. And he's been one of them. But he's been in the news lately. We've been reporting to

01:56:19.720 you, especially on AM Update, that this was likely to come. Like we had heard in some trusted circles

01:56:26.480 that this was coming his way. And sure enough, we were right. And if you listen to AM Update,

01:56:31.340 you were smart and smarter than most. When this dropped, you knew that this was coming.

01:56:35.260 So she goes on to then describe a 2019 encounter with him after a night of heavy drinking, which

01:56:42.140 is the theme of this woman's story. She's apparently a very heavy drinker, or at least was

01:56:46.960 during all the time she was with him. And that is another thing for which she needs to take

01:56:51.860 responsibility. She needs to take responsibility. Don't put yourself in this position. And my

01:56:58.040 friends she did it twice she went back to a night of heavy drinking with him after this interlude

01:57:03.980 in which she claimed she blacked out they had sex and by definition it was non-consensual because

01:57:09.980 she remembers none of it here's her describing that to cnn the five of us were having some drinks

01:57:17.500 at some point it was time to go home i got in an uber i was um taken to the aloft dublin

01:57:26.100 Pleasanton where he was staying and I don't remember what happened that night but I know

01:57:34.680 that we there was sexual contact because when I woke up in the morning I could feel that there was

01:57:41.700 and um he said as much too what did he say he that last night was great um it didn't feel

01:57:53.960 great to me because I didn't remember it. And so you blacked out and you end up in his hotel room

01:57:58.760 and wake up with him. Yes. Okay. So if she had sex with him when she was blacked out,

01:58:05.020 that's non-consensual and it would legally constitute rape. Men, you should know that.

01:58:11.160 If you are about to have sex with a woman who's completely passed out, blacked out drunk, 0.94

01:58:15.120 there's no consent. You're a rapist. Don't do that. Absolutely do not do that. If the woman 1.00

01:58:21.080 later complains and can prove she was blacked out, you're effed. So that's what she's claiming. But

01:58:25.940 her behavior after the fact wasn't, wasn't really supportive of believing she was somebody who 0.72

01:58:35.380 thought she'd been raped by this terrible man. The reporting is that later on Snapchat, she did say

01:58:41.320 to him after he said to her how nice their sexual encounter was, I said to him, I really don't

01:58:49.480 remember it at all, she claims. And he was like, well, next time we have to make sure you remember

01:58:53.940 it. She then moved to a new job in Swalwell's Washington DC office. So she did not quit. She

01:59:01.400 did not say, oh my God, he raped me. She did not go to the police. She stayed working for him for 0.95

01:59:06.260 another year and then did go on to take another job, but they stayed in touch recommending her

01:59:12.780 for jobs, messaging with her from time to time. She said she tried to stay in touch with him

01:59:18.800 because of his status as a congressman.

01:59:21.580 This can happen.

01:59:23.200 You don't want to ruin your career.

01:59:24.580 He's your only recommendation.

01:59:25.960 He's your first job.

01:59:27.160 You need him to say good things about you.

01:59:29.360 But you can also make the case

01:59:31.600 that it's not the behavior of somebody

01:59:34.100 who had felt raped by this man against her will

01:59:38.220 while passed out and unconscious, right? 0.73

01:59:42.360 That it was more a case of maybe Sunday morning regrets

01:59:45.180 than it was of a sexual assault victim.

01:59:48.320 I don't know what the truth is, people. I have no idea. He's gross. That's the minimum. Just trying not to get ahead of my skis because he's a Democrat we can't stand.

02:00:00.720 Okay, so let's fast forward to 2024. They stayed in touch over the years. He was giving her recommendations. They continued with the texting. Don't know the nature of it.

02:00:09.160 But here comes 2024 in April when the former staffer is now 25 and Swalwell was invited to speak at a gala in New York City that she attended.

02:00:19.500 The woman said she decided to get drinks with Swalwell because he was a powerful person in her field.

02:00:25.500 Now, I'm just going to say if I felt raped by somebody, I wouldn't go for drinks with them.

02:00:30.640 So I think there's an implicit admission here that that first encounter did not amount to rape in her head.

02:00:36.200 She thought maybe things got out of hand.

02:00:38.220 clearly she had moved past it because she went for drinks with him. And not just did she go for

02:00:43.200 drinks with him, she made it happen. She says that, uh, the two got drinks at Swalwell's hotel

02:00:50.300 and a nearby ball bar and Swalwell was totally professional. Okay. So they got drinks at his

02:00:56.540 hotel and a nearby bar. He was totally professional. And then she says she had sent Swalwell a

02:01:04.620 Snapchat message inviting him to get another drink. So I'm not sure the sequence of the events

02:01:10.480 that night, but clearly she reached out to him and asked him to have drinks with her after he

02:01:16.240 had been totally professional around her. This is after the alleged night of being blacked out drunk

02:01:22.380 where he took advantage of her, according to her. I'm sorry, but like, that's a devastating fact.

02:01:28.280 If you were to bring this case into a court of law, um, they, they did go out for another drink

02:01:35.600 and I guess he came and picked her up in a car. He put his hand on her leg. I said, no funny

02:01:41.760 business. Like, that's not what this is. She remembered. And he was like, okay, but then over

02:01:46.620 drinks, he told the former staffer, he'd been obsessed with her. He'd never cheated on his

02:01:51.300 wife except with her. Oh my God, this poor girl, she's young. She doesn't look like that is such 1.00

02:01:55.820 an obvious lie. And now we know that it's a lie. This was 2024. All these women coming out saying

02:02:01.260 2021. He was doing this shit with them. It's 2024. I'm like, I'm sorry for the wife, but it 1.00

02:02:06.840 appears he is a serial prolific cheater. He denies the allegations. And this poor young girl. Oh my

02:02:14.500 God. You're my first. My wife doesn't understand me. Ladies, do not believe that bullshit, no

02:02:20.840 matter who spins it to you. These are what we call lies that you should resist. Okay. So you're just 1.00

02:02:28.540 so hot. You're so hot. And you're the only one I've ever cheated on. Then she says again, I guess

02:02:34.120 I liked the attention. This is a dynamic that continues to pop up in this young woman's life.

02:02:40.180 She likes the attention and she drinks far too much. And that my friend is a dangerous combination 0.97

02:02:45.260 in a young woman. It definitely does not allow you to later go back and say something was 1.00

02:02:49.580 non-consensual when it was consensual, and I really hope that's not what she's doing here.

02:02:55.380 But you have to control your own drinking when this appears to be a pattern for you. You,

02:03:01.520 you are responsible for your drinking. Now, if there's a possibility of a date rape drug, 0.97

02:03:09.900 that's a different story. Again, unclear. She says, as the night progressed,

02:03:16.020 the two went to another bar. I don't know how many bars they went to together and continued drinking.

02:03:22.760 She said she was, quote, heavily intoxicated and doesn't remember leaving the bar. The next thing

02:03:29.220 the former staffer remembered, she was in bed with Swalwell in his hotel room and he was having sex 0.92

02:03:35.100 with her, she said. She said she remembers flashes of that evening, of him on top of me, of me pushing 0.73

02:03:42.060 him off of him grabbing me. I was pushing him off saying no, she said. He didn't stop. Now it's very

02:03:50.700 convenient that she doesn't remember a thing except for the one sliver in time in which she

02:03:55.860 said no and pushed him off and he wouldn't. I mean, like that's very convenient. She doesn't

02:04:03.800 remember a thing, doesn't remember leaving the bar, doesn't remember the actual sex, but does

02:04:08.000 remember saying no. That's what she claims. Pushing him off of me, saying no. He didn't

02:04:15.280 stop. Sorry, Deb, do we have this described in Assad? Let's listen. I decided to ask him to meet

02:04:22.560 me for a drink. And I did this because I was so far removed from what had happened in 2019.

02:04:29.380 I felt safe because I was established. I had a partner. I felt more secure that I could have a

02:04:41.860 strictly professional relationship with this person. After that bar closed, we went to another.

02:04:46.680 I went to the bathroom and I don't remember anything after that. You don't remember anything?

02:04:52.320 I remember the next day, I can see flashes of that evening of him on top of me, me pushing him off, him grabbing me.

02:05:04.680 It was a lot more aggressive. It was aggressive.

02:05:11.280 Did you say no?

02:05:12.860 Yes, I said no. In my flash that I can recall, I was pushing him off of me saying no.

02:05:22.320 And what did he do?

02:05:23.940 He didn't stop.

02:05:25.100 He didn't stop.

02:05:26.720 And you woke up the next morning?

02:05:29.160 I woke up the next morning naked, alone, in his hotel room.

02:05:33.940 I, for a moment, didn't even know I was in his hotel room.

02:05:39.740 That's how intoxicated I was.

02:05:43.200 I'm sorry.

02:05:44.340 She says she thought she could keep it strictly professional,

02:05:47.040 but she got falled down drunk with him and then went back to his hotel.

02:05:50.540 This is like, I mean, I'm not trying to defend Eric Swalwell, trust me, but ladies, we need to be responsible for our own decisions.

02:06:03.560 Strictly professional does not include going to multiple bars with someone you've already gotten fall-down, blackout drunk with who took advantage of you, according to you, when you were 21 and he was your boss.

02:06:16.920 That's not strictly professional.

02:06:19.280 Strictly professional is I'm not going to drink with you because we work together and there's a massive age difference and a history.

02:06:27.480 Strictly professional is I'm not going in a car alone with you.

02:06:31.140 When I have a partner, which she also reveals to CNN, that by this point she's got a boyfriend.

02:06:37.960 OK, like it's not a great idea to go alone in the car of somebody with whom you've already had sex in the past, whose behavior you don't trust while you're fall down, blackout drunk.

02:06:52.000 I don't think my partner would appreciate me behaving that way.

02:06:54.600 And I wouldn't. 1.00

02:06:56.840 I'm just like women, the days of just being able to make terrible decisions one after the other and then blame everything that happens after you make them on a man are over.

02:07:07.580 This is not okay. 0.98

02:07:08.620 Like, she doesn't even seem to have shame in recounting her half of this.

02:07:14.820 Again, if he then took advantage of her while she was fall down drunk or, God forbid, gave her a rape drug, he's to blame.

02:07:22.540 But she should never have put herself in this situation.

02:07:25.300 I feel very strongly about this.

02:07:27.900 I hope you'll email me with your opinions.

02:07:29.980 You can do that, megan at megankelly.com.

02:07:33.000 So she says she wakes up the next day, has no memories except for her of her saying stop and pushing him off.

02:07:39.980 She says she quickly called her mother who confirmed the account in an interview with CNN.

02:07:43.740 She says she knew that she had had sex because she was supposedly bleeding out of her wherever.

02:07:49.980 I don't know.

02:07:50.460 I mean, like that happens to women once a month and sometimes in the interim.

02:07:53.920 But I'm not sure what she's referring to.

02:07:56.000 It was like he hurt her.

02:07:57.660 But she does go on to say she had cuts and bruises on her body.

02:08:01.320 She could see bruises where his hand had been on her ribcage, on her legs, and near my thighs.

02:08:05.680 I would like to know where the pictures are of that, because I guarantee you any woman who woke up after an interlude with a congressman who had already allegedly sexually assaulted them and suddenly finds bruises all over her, like in a handprint, would 100% photograph that.

02:08:23.000 100%.

02:08:23.520 This is 2024, and she's 25 years old.

02:08:25.920 She's obsessed with her phone.

02:08:28.080 Obsessed.

02:08:29.260 She's all over Snapchat. 1.00

02:08:30.440 You know that.

02:08:30.940 Like, where are the pictures of that?

02:08:33.480 There is zero chance they don't exist

02:08:35.520 if this happened to her.

02:08:37.520 Zero.

02:08:39.120 Did CNN see them?

02:08:42.340 She says he messaged her later on Snapchat that day,

02:08:47.000 said the previous night was great.

02:08:48.420 He hoped she remembered it this time

02:08:49.820 and told her not to tell anyone.

02:08:51.400 She did tell her partner that Swalwell had assaulted her.

02:08:55.140 I'm getting Pete Hegseth vibes here.

02:08:58.140 Was this turned into an alleged sexual assault

02:09:00.520 because you have a partner. 1.00

02:09:01.760 I don't know what's happening with this woman. 1.00

02:09:03.700 I'm just saying her behavior is not great. 0.97

02:09:07.560 When she returned home that day,

02:09:09.100 her partner confirmed that in an interview with CNN

02:09:11.500 saying she was just so distraught, quote unquote.

02:09:14.820 Well, I'm sure in speaking to the partner,

02:09:16.300 she was for a multitude of reasons.

02:09:18.660 She also told two other friends

02:09:20.020 about being assaulted by Swalwell over the following days,

02:09:22.400 according to screenshots of text messages

02:09:24.580 she shared with CNN.

02:09:26.460 Several days later, she went to a health clinic

02:09:28.580 and got an STD test providing screenshots

02:09:31.980 that showed the appointment to CNN.

02:09:33.880 She says she told her medical provider

02:09:35.240 that she had been assaulted by a congressman

02:09:36.960 and the provider referred to her as a survivor

02:09:39.500 in an online message about her test results,

02:09:42.040 a screenshot shows.

02:09:43.340 That proves she told the provider something, that's all.

02:09:46.480 She said she never confronted Swalwell directly

02:09:49.040 about the assault.

02:09:51.140 She never confronted him

02:09:52.640 and she never reported it to the police,

02:09:55.460 in part because she believed him

02:09:57.340 when he told her he hadn't made sexual advances toward other women.

02:10:02.720 So she thought this was not a pattern and therefore didn't come forward.

02:10:08.380 Okay.

02:10:10.660 I need to know more.

02:10:16.540 Okay.

02:10:17.540 Keep going here.

02:10:18.820 Let's see.

02:10:19.720 This is, I think, the same.

02:10:22.800 Yeah.

02:10:23.400 Now, here she is complaining to CNN that nobody protected her in this process, which is interesting.

02:10:32.100 Listen.

02:10:33.100 I kept figuring out ways to blame myself.

02:10:35.760 I shouldn't have reached out to him at all.

02:10:38.320 I should have left.

02:10:39.320 I should have done this. 0.98

02:10:40.820 Well, Eric shouldn't have raped me. 0.99

02:10:43.420 There is another me out there. 0.93

02:10:44.660 there is another young girl who dreams of working in this field and believes in him

02:10:51.380 and could fall into this trap. And that's why you're speaking out. Yeah. You want to protect

02:10:56.740 others like you when you were young. No one protected me. Sorry. Oh my God. No one protected

02:11:04.580 me and I don't want someone else to suffer because I know what I know.

02:11:14.660 Okay. I mean, I think many women have been very young and sexually harassed by a boss. It's not

02:11:24.140 right. It's deeply wrong. It threatens your whole career. You think your whole career is flashing

02:11:28.640 before your eyes. But many, many women, most I would venture to say, find a way to say no. They 0.99

02:11:35.420 don't send nude pictures of themselves. They don't send flirty, naughty texts. They don't go back to

02:11:41.120 the hotel room. They don't get completely inebriated with the man. They don't, after

02:11:44.920 getting completely inebriated and being allegedly sexually assaulted, call the man up and ask to see

02:11:50.280 him again, then get inebriated again, go from bar to bar, get in his car, go back to a hotel room

02:11:56.320 with him. They don't do those things. You, at some point, need to protect yourself by making

02:12:04.020 good judgments about how not to place yourself in danger. I'm sorry. Like I, as you guys know,

02:12:12.500 I am very empathetic to women who complain about being me too. And I famously have had that

02:12:19.960 situation happen to me. And I will tell you, my boss had complete control over my entire future

02:12:26.200 and was literally the most powerful man in news. Eric Swalwell was not the most powerful man in

02:12:31.880 Congress, but he would have felt powerful to a 21-year-old staffer for him, I grant you.

02:12:36.420 But my point is simply, when this happened to me, I said no. I said no. I understood that no

02:12:42.740 was an option, and I took it. And they're like, ladies, you have to say no. And at a minimum, 1.00

02:12:53.220 at a minimum, you don't repeatedly put yourself in danger by making terrible decisions one after

02:12:59.240 the other. I'm sorry that this woman now feels used and assaulted and all the rest of it, but

02:13:06.680 to cover this story as the media is by just painting her as this terrible victimized woman 0.97

02:13:13.640 and him as this disgusting serial rapist ignores the facts of the story. Not defending him, not 0.99

02:13:22.880 saying he's not a creep. There are other women coming out of the woodwork talking about how

02:13:26.240 gross he was with the dick pics and so on, but it's 2026 and we've learned a thing or two from 0.99

02:13:31.300 the me too overages. Okay. And that's just the way it is. Okay. Another accuser comes forward. 0.99

02:13:38.680 She's age unknown. She had an interest in Democrat politics. She said she began messaging with him 0.96

02:13:43.960 online in 2025 and responded to one of his Instagram stories. A couple of days later,

02:13:50.160 he followed her and encouraged her to get involved in politics. He later sent her his phone number.

02:13:54.640 They began texting over several weeks, screenshots of messages that she shared with CNN.

02:13:59.820 In the spring of 2025, he and she met for dinner and drinks at a steakhouse.

02:14:05.920 Okay, we all know where it's going now.

02:14:07.820 She said she told her mother about the meeting and Swalwell, with Swalwell in advance.

02:14:12.860 Her mother confirmed that in an interview with CNN.

02:14:15.240 Because that's two moms now who knew their daughter was contacting a married lawmaker. 1.00

02:14:19.560 Not great. 0.98

02:14:20.760 Hopefully, the mom said, not a good idea.

02:14:24.280 You know, don't go for a dinner.

02:14:28.000 Maybe you meet over lunch for coffee, something like that. 0.64

02:14:31.720 Swalwell took the woman to another bar 0.56

02:14:33.440 where they sat in a back booth.

02:14:35.660 He was sitting against me,

02:14:37.020 so I kind of moved away from him.

02:14:38.700 And every time I would move away from him,

02:14:40.380 he would get closer to me.

02:14:41.720 He touched her leg and ordered a drink for her.

02:14:43.960 Bad move.

02:14:45.120 The woman said she tried to turn the conversation 0.73

02:14:47.240 to her partner.

02:14:48.060 She too had a partner.

02:14:48.780 And Swalwell's wife and children,

02:14:50.640 but Swalwell continued to touch her.

02:14:52.820 That's when you get up and you walk out.

02:14:55.980 That's when you get up and you walk out.

02:14:57.640 I repeat, that's when you get up and you walk out.

02:15:00.400 She began to get more intoxicated and felt really dizzy, really fuzzy.

02:15:04.420 Again, don't get intoxicated.

02:15:07.900 How many drinks did you have?

02:15:09.320 That's a bad idea.

02:15:10.600 If you really have a partner and want to be faithful to him,

02:15:13.400 don't keep drinking with the man who's touching your leg in the back bar booth

02:15:17.440 and won't talk about his wife and children when you raise them.

02:15:20.120 Get up and walk out.

02:15:22.960 Claim you don't feel well if you don't want to offend him.

02:15:25.840 Claim you got a phone call.

02:15:26.920 There's been an emergency.

02:15:28.160 Get out.

02:15:30.580 After she returned to the booth, he kissed her.

02:15:33.160 She said she told him it was wrong and didn't want to burn a bridge,

02:15:35.720 but didn't want to burn a bridge with a prominent congressman.

02:15:38.400 So she stayed at the bar even though she was getting more and more intoxicated.

02:15:43.300 Sensing a pattern here?

02:15:45.480 The woman said she then ended up in his hotel room without any memory of how she got there.

02:15:51.020 So, again, are they implying date rape drug or is this just a pattern of women making terrible decisions of getting blackout drunk and then going back to this guy's hotel rooms?

02:15:59.880 She said her memory of what happened in his hotel room is a blur.

02:16:03.520 She wound up leaving the hotel at 541 a.m., according to a screenshot of an Uber receipt.

02:16:08.500 The next day, Swalwell sent her disappearing iPhone voice messages saying he wanted to ensure that his wife did not find out.

02:16:15.900 She felt emotionally vulnerable, distraught in the following weeks, telling her mom about a month after what had happened, later telling two close friends.

02:16:25.620 All three confirmed that to CNN.

02:16:27.720 She said she told Swalwell that she felt really disgusted and ashamed about what had happened, but he continued contacting her, including offering to use his position to help her renew her passport or saying he could write her a letter of recommendation for her law school applications.

02:16:43.080 i'd like to see her responses to those did you take the application did you ask him for them

02:16:51.160 did you did you take the help renewing your passport like i just don't think you can have

02:17:00.040 it both ways you just i i was i had my partner and i loved him and i didn't want to be in that

02:17:06.380 bar and the only reason i didn't leave was because it was awkward and i really just wanted to talk

02:17:10.820 about his wife and children. But after our alleged encounter, which I have no memory of,

02:17:16.040 but definitely wasn't consensual because I was blacked out, I got his help with passports and

02:17:20.400 law school applications and definitely stayed in touch with him via text. I just like,

02:17:24.160 these are not great facts. A few days before he announced his gubernatorial bid in November,

02:17:29.200 he asked her, he texted her asking how she was. Obviously he's getting nervous. She's going to

02:17:33.560 come forward. According to screenshots she provided, um, she responded, all you did was

02:17:38.980 harm me, she says. He writes back, I won't bother you again. Sorry. The woman said she then continued

02:17:44.760 to stay in touch with him after that, exchanging some friendly messages in what she likened to

02:17:50.140 Stockholm syndrome. In the cease and desist letter to the woman, Swalwell's lawyer argued that some

02:17:57.740 of these text messages, including one in which she said, you would be an amazing governor,

02:18:03.060 raised doubt about her account. Indeed. We can't keep doing this, just running to,

02:18:11.660 he's gross, we want the Democrat out, and therefore we accept everything without questioning 0.97

02:18:17.000 whether it actually was a rape, a non-consensual sexual encounter, 0.99

02:18:24.480 a Me Too sexual harassment situation. Number three is an unnamed accuser who works in marketing,

02:18:33.060 says Swalwell first reached out to her on Twitter in April of 2021. Remember when he was only

02:18:38.580 cheating with the one girl when she was in her late twenties after she liked several of his

02:18:43.660 tweets. Then they began messaging on Snapchat. Conversation became flirty and sexual. After

02:18:49.220 about a month, he often requested swimsuit or nude photos of the woman, which she sometimes sent.

02:18:55.940 I mean, I've never sent a nude photo in my life, nor would I, upon request, even from my husband.

02:19:04.300 Okay, like, this is not a good idea, but she sent them. 0.99

02:19:08.820 He sent her several videos of his penis, which she did not ask for. 0.98

02:19:12.920 Well, I'm a little less offended than the headlines would have led me to be, 0.99

02:19:16.900 because you sent nudes of yourself, sister. 0.99

02:19:19.900 Like, if you're sending nude photos to him, he can send you a dick pic, solicited or not. 0.99

02:19:25.940 And it changes the context entirely. 0.99

02:19:28.680 In one flirty exchange reviewed by CNN,

02:19:30.580 he complimented her on a swimsuit photo

02:19:32.120 she'd shared on Insta,

02:19:34.140 said it'd been too long since they last messaged.

02:19:36.180 According to screenshots, he wrote, 1.00

02:19:37.800 that swimsuit, fuck. 1.00

02:19:39.600 You like it, she responded. 1.00

02:19:41.040 Yes, very much like, he wrote.

02:19:42.640 Obviously she's flirting with him.

02:19:44.600 You like it?

02:19:47.140 CNN spoke with two friends who said the woman told them 1.00

02:19:49.240 about Swawa sending her images of his penis 0.99

02:19:51.340 and sexually explicit messages. 0.99

02:19:53.020 I wonder if CNN asked them if she told them

02:19:55.180 she had sent him nudes. The woman says she felt embarrassed and kind of exchanged, ashamed about

02:20:00.960 her exchanges with him. When you're getting unsolicited dick videos sent to you, it just 0.99

02:20:05.100 makes you feel like I'm lesser than a person. I just wish I'd never answered him. You sent him 0.98

02:20:10.620 nudes. It's relevant. It's really relevant. Like they make it sound in the headlines like he just

02:20:21.920 sent her an unsolicited dick pic, which she might have done. Okay, there's another story coming. 0.99

02:20:27.180 But this report by CNN says she sent him nudes. Okay. Number four, this gal goes on the record,

02:20:37.660 Ali Samarco, social media creator, age 24, back in 2021, when he was only cheating with the first

02:20:44.020 girl on his wife. She said she first connected with him after messaging him on Twitter that he

02:20:49.240 was using social media to connect with 21 year olds what a sick disgusting pervert fucking loser 1.00

02:20:54.860 cheater terrible person who shouldn't be the governor or a congressman he's too disgusting 1.00

02:21:00.020 conceited um 2021 asking him about his history of growing up i guess he was from a republican 0.97

02:21:09.020 family he sent her republic he sent her friendly messages on twitter screenshots provided cnn show

02:21:15.660 starting in September 21,

02:21:17.720 they started exchanging messages every day on Snapchat.

02:21:21.200 He became very inappropriate,

02:21:22.740 like saying about how hot he thought I was,

02:21:25.180 insinuating we should get together and hook up.

02:21:27.180 He was always like drunk texting me saying,

02:21:29.820 oh, I'm having a drink, what are you doing?

02:21:31.860 And I'm like, I'm out with my friends, like I'm 24.

02:21:34.940 The congressman sent her selfies of himself in bed 0.99

02:21:37.940 or shirtless, as well as unsolicited photos of his penis, 0.99

02:21:42.780 which he seems really proud of. 0.99

02:21:44.480 That's me editorializing.

02:21:46.160 Swalwell asked her where she lived,

02:21:48.760 then ran by her apartment building several times,

02:21:50.880 stopping by to say hi, giving her hugs,

02:21:52.780 but not coming inside.

02:21:54.700 Their contacts fizzled out when she met her boyfriend,

02:21:57.720 now her husband, in December of 21.

02:21:59.760 He tried multiple times to message her on Snapchat,

02:22:02.720 and I just like won't respond.

02:22:05.100 So what happened there?

02:22:06.400 They maintained some contact in the subsequent years. 0.98

02:22:08.700 again why like why he's sending you unsolicited dick pics it's a no it's over the chapter closes 0.83

02:22:22.640 as does the book you move on um i don't like i i just got so much more to say about it but you get 0.95

02:22:29.860 the you get the gist and now he comes out with a denial of the most egregious stuff he he basically

02:22:37.200 is saying there was never anything non-consensual the other shits between me and my wife and on that 0.99

02:22:43.380 my friends he may be right however if he's lying about the non-consensual stuff he's up shit's 0.98

02:22:50.820 creek without a paddle here's his denial a lot has been said about me today through anonymous

02:22:55.120 allegations i thought it was important that you see and hear from me directly these allegations

02:23:01.500 of sexual assault are flat false. They are absolutely false. They did not happen. They

02:23:07.560 have never happened, and I will fight them with everything that I have. They also come on the eve

02:23:13.320 of an election where I have been the front-runner candidate for governor in California. I do not

02:23:18.580 suggest to you in any way that I'm perfect or that I'm a saint. I have certainly made mistakes

02:23:24.380 in judgment in my past, but those mistakes are between me and my wife, and to her I apologize

02:23:29.960 deeply for putting her in this position. I also apologize to you if in any way you have doubted

02:23:36.780 your support for me. But I think you know who I am. For over 20 years, I have served the public

02:23:43.780 as a city councilman, as a member of Congress, and as a prosecutor who went to court on behalf

02:23:50.960 of victims, particularly on behalf of sexual assault victims. That's who I am and have always

02:23:57.280 been all right he's this disgusting pervert that seems clear um but here's what's interesting so 0.95

02:24:06.000 first of all i think there's more coming um there do you remember martin screlly the guy who 0.95

02:24:11.200 got accused and i think convicted of um fraud when it comes to like medical stocks steve correct me

02:24:18.820 if i'm wrong i don't want to say he's been convicted of fraud when he hasn't been but

02:24:21.140 pretty sure he got convicted and went to prison. He tweeted out the photo of what he says is

02:24:29.860 Swalwell. Multiple people are in it, not a photo, a video of him grabbing this woman who is

02:24:37.440 reportedly in the sex worker trade on a video. This is while he's married, reportedly. He's

02:24:45.440 kissing her. She's sort of frolicky with him. She doesn't seem upset. There are others in the room 0.84

02:24:50.620 you can see like they're not alone. There are multiple people here. And this is kind of shocking

02:24:56.380 to see with his shirt way too unbuttoned. And on top of that, you've got Nick Shirley, you know,

02:25:01.760 Nick Shirley who broke the Minnesota Somali fraud story wide open with his videos. Here is what he

02:25:08.760 posted. Hi, Representative Swalwell. This is over the weekend. I wonder what will happen if I soon

02:25:13.560 publish a recording of you admitting to illegally pushing to subpoena Ivanka Trump because she's 1.00

02:25:20.340 quote, hot as fuck, end quote, 1.00

02:25:22.560 letting lobbyists get you drunk off your ass 1.00

02:25:24.980 at a D.C. restaurant, 1.00

02:25:26.460 and then you asking them to help you find a woman

02:25:29.060 to cheat on your wife with

02:25:30.800 because you, quote, only F-10s,

02:25:34.220 meaning, you know, one out of 10, a 10s, end quote.

02:25:37.180 Will it help or hurt your members in California?

02:25:39.460 Are the voters as deviant like you are?

02:25:42.240 We may find out in a few days

02:25:43.560 if you are still in the race and haven't dropped out.

02:25:46.240 And then he did drop out.

02:25:48.280 So that was posted by Nick Shirley.

02:25:51.120 Nick has not released that video,

02:25:52.920 but late last night,

02:25:53.920 Eric Swalwell did drop out of the race.

02:25:56.520 All those allegations by Nick Shirley,

02:25:58.100 unconfirmed, presumably denied.

02:26:01.660 But it's a threat by Nick Shirley,

02:26:03.780 who's been a very celebrated journalist this year

02:26:07.140 of what he allegedly has of Swalwell on tape.

02:26:10.940 And we'll see now

02:26:13.320 whether there are other women who come forward

02:26:14.880 as we've seen in so many of these cases.

02:26:16.900 No comment from his wife. 0.99

02:26:19.460 That poor woman. 0.95

02:26:20.800 I mean, I certainly hope she didn't know.

02:26:22.940 I mean, she's married to Eric Swalwell,

02:26:24.180 so it's already really bad.

02:26:26.220 And then she finds out this. 1.00

02:26:27.600 At least if you're going to marry to this disgusting guy, 0.99

02:26:29.980 you hope he's going to be faithful. 0.99

02:26:31.480 I mean, that's a bare minimum you could ask 0.99

02:26:33.000 for somebody this disgusting. 0.98

02:26:34.500 Just in general, outside of this sex stuff, 0.99

02:26:36.860 he's just been the worst. 0.71

02:26:38.340 Oh, and by the way, by the way,

02:26:41.160 not a bigger proponent of believe all women.

02:26:44.740 Listen to him during the Kavanaugh confirmation hearings.

02:26:47.520 Listen to this.

02:26:48.100 I think it's 20. It's very easy to isolate one incident and, you know, shine inaccuracies or inconsistencies on that case.

02:26:57.660 But the more and more cases that are separate and independent that look the same, pretty soon a prosecutor starts to say to a jury.

02:27:04.960 And this is not a jury, but it's a it's allegations that the arrows are pointing in the same direction.

02:27:09.840 And what are the chances that three or four women independently who never met each other would have similar experiences with one person?

02:27:18.100 So either, Ari, this person committed these horrific acts or he is the single unluckiest person in the world.

02:27:25.460 Oh, OK. Forget everything I said. Let's hold him to that exact same standard. 0.79

02:27:31.260 Guilty. That's how it works. Right, Representative?

02:27:35.820 Great. What's good for Kavanaugh is good for you. Fine.

02:27:39.780 How can there be this many women and it not be true? 1.00

02:27:42.460 What are the chances several women would have the same stories? 0.97

02:27:44.980 You tell me, sir. What are the chances?

02:27:47.900 And why is he still in Congress?

02:27:50.180 Clearly, this was oppo research that was lurking out there

02:27:53.220 because as soon as San Francisco Chronicle dropped this,

02:27:55.760 and by the way, that gubernatorial race is June 2nd,

02:27:58.240 but the early voting starts, I think, May 5th.

02:28:00.480 So we are now two weeks away, two to three,

02:28:03.820 from voting starting in that gubernatorial race.

02:28:06.160 They needed to kneecap this guy.

02:28:07.940 They knew if this came out in a general

02:28:10.040 in which it was Swalwell versus Hilton, they'd be effed.

02:28:13.700 So they clearly knifed him before that point.

02:28:16.820 This is my speculation, but it's obvious. So who which one did it? Who did it? Who knew and kept it quiet? Because all this time they've known, in my humble opinion, allegedly, reportedly, he's been a U.S. congressman. Why is he fit to be a U.S. congressman, but not the California governor? Would any would someone like to let me know? Because these alleged sins were all committed in that role.

02:28:41.260 And by the way, it's just breaking now that there will be an ethics probe by the House Committee on Ethics over these accusations.

02:28:47.360 The committee has begun an investigation and will gather additional information regarding the allegations that he violated the code of official conduct or any law, announced the panel just moments ago.

02:28:58.660 So why can he be a congressman? Because he hasn't resigned from that, but not the governor of California. Seriously.

02:29:04.260 Why are you ethical enough to be a congressman, but not the governor?

02:29:07.720 So clearly, I believe this was released on him to get him out of that gubernatorial race because he was likely to be the top dem and they couldn't have it and they couldn't have this come out after it was a one on one against him between him and probably Hilton.

02:29:23.720 And so I'd love to know exactly how this went down and who knew and why they didn't say anything, because their hands are dirty, too.

02:29:29.580 I mean, when did you know? Did you know in 2024? Because that's when woman number one says the second sexual assault happened.

02:29:35.040 Why didn't you come forward before that?

02:29:37.280 You could have saved that woman.

02:29:38.560 The other woman, she was more recent too.

02:29:40.760 I think she said 2025, the woman who went on the record.

02:29:42.960 Why didn't you save her?

02:29:44.580 Why did you keep it quiet and up your sleeve,

02:29:47.400 whoever it is in the Democrat cabal who had this information?

02:29:51.600 When did CNN find out?

02:29:53.340 When did the San Francisco Chronicle find out?

02:29:56.080 Why does CNN have that whole report ready to go

02:29:58.140 like seconds after the San Francisco Chronicle dropped it?

02:30:01.340 Like, when did they do all those interviews?

02:30:03.080 I'd love to know more.

02:30:04.740 How many people have been running cover for this guy? 0.98

02:30:07.640 Because whether he committed a sexual assault or not, he's been, he's obviously behaved like a disgusting pervert who has no business whatsoever being U.S. congressman, never mind governor. 0.94

02:30:16.660 So who knew and how long and why didn't they tell us?

02:30:21.280 There are questions about his pal Ruben Gallego, who is with him in some of these videos of him online as a friend, as a supporter, like to know what he knew and when.

02:30:33.240 The ethics probe should go beyond just Swalwell

02:30:35.960 to find out who knew and why they didn't come forward. 1.00

02:30:41.020 Not the women themselves, but the media and Democrat elites. 0.97

02:30:45.160 Nancy, Nancy, when did you find out? 0.82

02:30:48.660 You got your finger on the pulse.

02:30:51.040 Why didn't you come forward immediately?

02:30:53.120 I'm really curious.

02:30:54.000 How about you, Hakeem?

02:30:55.680 What about you?

02:30:56.560 How about Adam Schiff?

02:30:57.480 He's got his finger on the pulse too in California politics.

02:30:59.540 What did you know and when did you know it?

02:31:01.420 love to have those questions answered. We'll see whether we get it. That's it for now. This story

02:31:09.900 is not done. It's just beginning and it does affect the California race. We'll see how. Love

02:31:16.100 to get Steve Hilton's reaction, which we will because we know him and we love him and we will

02:31:20.280 reach out. For that, you'll have to wait because we've got to say goodbye. We're wrapping it up

02:31:24.480 on SiriusXM and wrapping it up on our pod and YouTube back tomorrow with much, much more.

02:31:28.980 and thank you for all of you for listening and watching uh back with ruthless and the fellas

02:31:34.800 this time tomorrow until then

02:31:36.820 thanks for listening to the megan kelly show no bs no agenda and no fear

The Megyn Kelly Show - April 13, 2026

Trump's Blockade Threat and Jesus-Like Truth Social Post, with Brandon Weichert, and the TRUTH About Swalwell ｜ Ep. 1294

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