Speaker 1: Welcome to today's podcast sponsored by Hillsdale College All Things
Speaker 1: Hillsdale Hillsdale dot ed or I encourage you to take
Speaker 1: advantage of the many free online courses there, and of
Speaker 1: course I'll listen to the Hillsdale dialogues, all of them
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Speaker 1: iTunes and Hillsdale Morning Glory and even Grace America. Welcome
Speaker 1: to the Big Weekend Pod. And what a week it was.
Speaker 1: I have talked about pretty much everything, at least a
Speaker 1: little bit during the week, but I would guess out
Speaker 1: of the seventy five segments that make up every week
Speaker 1: of the U Hewitt Show, I devoted sixty at least
Speaker 1: to the fact that we're on the verge of a
Speaker 1: major battle with Iran, one that could be quite dangerous
Speaker 1: to American troops, soldiers, sailors, airman all throughout the region,
Speaker 1: could be very dangerous to Israel, to our allies. Therefore,
Speaker 1: President Trump is surging all sorts of force into the region.
Speaker 1: The second aircraft carrier is not going as we thought
Speaker 1: on Thursday. By Friday morning, we were sure that George H. W.
Speaker 1: Bush was not being dispatched. It's one carrier group, bunches
Speaker 1: of destroyers, lots of Aegis class cruisers, They have air
Speaker 1: defense systems, they have knockdown missiles. I don't really want
Speaker 1: to try to see how great the missile defense is.
Speaker 1: That's not why we're doing this. I think President Trump
Speaker 1: is doing this because he has a red line and
Speaker 1: he can't walk it back, and he doesn't want to
Speaker 1: walk it back. If he does, he'll be in the
Speaker 1: same position as President's Biden and Obama. If you draw
Speaker 1: a red line, you got to enforce it. I think
Speaker 1: Donald Trump will enforce it. But I believe he's going
Speaker 1: to make sure that the risk two American troops allies,
Speaker 1: especially Israel, is not any higher than it has to be,
Speaker 1: and there's always risk, as Ambassador Michael urn for Israeli
Speaker 1: Ambassador the United States noted on Thursday's program, the Sheffield
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty two was a Royal Navy HMS Sheffield destroyer
Speaker 1: and it was in part of the armada that went
Speaker 1: to the Falklands and a couple of Argentinian Exo set
Speaker 1: were fired from fighter jets margit one got it. Twenty
Speaker 1: sailors were killed on the twenty three seriously wounded, and
Speaker 1: the Sheffield eventually sunk. Even though it didn't sink immediately,
Speaker 1: they couldn't get it back to any place that could
Speaker 1: be repaired in time before it sunk. So there is
Speaker 1: real risk. There is real danger to your prayers for
Speaker 1: the members of the military in there. But I don't
Speaker 1: know that we can go backwards. And certainly the West
Speaker 1: has a moral authority to say you may not slaughter
Speaker 1: thirty thousand of your people and expect the West to
Speaker 1: turn away. But preparing to do it as safely and
Speaker 1: as quickly as possible makes a lot of sense. Negotiations
Speaker 1: broke down on Friday. The Iranians are saying they didn't
Speaker 1: break down. Obviously, they broke down. There's nothing to talk about.
Speaker 1: They say it's only the nuclear art so but they
Speaker 1: have no nuclear program. It was obliterated by President Trump.
Speaker 1: So I'm hoping, really hoping that by the end of
Speaker 1: this half year, by the end of June, the Islamic
Speaker 1: Republic of Iran is no more and there's a new
Speaker 1: regime there. Don't know what it's going to look like.
Speaker 1: Just cannot have a fanatic at the top of it.
Speaker 1: So that's mostly what I talked about. Today with all
Speaker 1: of our regular guests for the weekend review show, Matt Knee,
Speaker 1: Ben Dominic, Eli Lake, of course John Ellis from News Items,
Speaker 1: so enjoy, sit back and catch up on whatever you
Speaker 1: may have missed concerning our looming battle with Iran's America.
Speaker 1: Good weekend pod to you all. Good weekend broadcast to
Speaker 1: you all. I'm beginning the weekend review as I do
Speaker 1: every weekend with John Ellis, editor in chief and founder
Speaker 1: of News Items, the one newsletter you need every morning
Speaker 1: to cover the waterfront. Hello John, good weekend to you.
Speaker 1: I hope you were going to enjoy the Super Bowl.
Speaker 1: I pray You're not a New England fan.
Speaker 2: I'm not. I'm a Denver Broncos fan. So I'm disappointed
Speaker 2: by last week or two weeks ago.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't think I can handle another Patriots when John,
Speaker 1: at this hour, the Dow Jones industrial averages crossed the
Speaker 1: fifty thousand mark. It's going to maybe close for the
Speaker 1: first time about fifty thousand. That's after a terrible week,
Speaker 1: and after bit coin dived and silver dove and gold
Speaker 1: kind of I think your word with steady ish, what
Speaker 1: do we make of all this?
Speaker 2: Well, the markets had a skittish week. Obviously, this week
Speaker 2: we had three big things. One anthropic, the AI company
Speaker 2: released the latest version of its claud program, and the
Speaker 2: take from that was that since Claude could write any
Speaker 2: software that you wanted, software companies were no longer as
Speaker 2: valuable as everybody thought they were. So there was this
Speaker 2: huge sell off of software companies and that was its
Speaker 2: own little piece of panic on Wall Street. Second was
Speaker 2: the price of bitcoin just collapsed on the course of the
Speaker 2: last five days. It rebounded a little bit today. Bitcoin
Speaker 2: had been sort of marketed as a store of value
Speaker 2: that you didn't have to worry about international crisis or
Speaker 2: deficits because it was its own ecosystem and as long
Speaker 2: as is everybody agreed that it was worth x, and
Speaker 2: it was worth x. That that came undone with with,
Speaker 2: you know, what was going on in the markets, and
Speaker 2: that was sort of terrifying for people who had thought
Speaker 2: that cryptocurrencies were here to stay, let's put it that way.
Speaker 2: And then the third major development was the same development,
Speaker 2: which was the major tech companies were spending vast sums
Speaker 2: of money on the buildout of data centers and the
Speaker 2: power stations to power those data centers, and you know,
Speaker 2: Amazon is going to spend one hundred and eighty billion
Speaker 2: dollars next year on Capex. That created the you know,
Speaker 2: yet again the narrative that there's a huge AI bubble
Speaker 2: and that it's going to burst. There's no doubt that
Speaker 2: there is some sort of bubble in AI, but it's
Speaker 2: also a revolution that's taking place, and so if you
Speaker 2: believe in the revolution, you probably want to stick with John.
Speaker 1: Amazon's David Bonson explained to me sometime ago that when
Speaker 1: the dot com bubble blew up in two thousand, didn't
Speaker 1: mean that every dot com company did not return value
Speaker 1: over a long period of time, just meant that a
Speaker 1: lot of them crashed and some of them survived. Do
Speaker 1: you think that's going to be the model here, that
Speaker 1: some of the AI companies will thrive and survive and
Speaker 1: others will just be wiped out.
Speaker 2: We'd be huge consolidation in the same way that there's
Speaker 2: huge consolidation in the entertainment industry right now, right, I mean,
Speaker 2: Rupert sold Fox News entertainment assets to Disney. You know
Speaker 2: Disney's in trouble now, will they be bought by a
Speaker 2: big tech company? I mean, eventually you know, twelve companies
Speaker 2: become seven companies become three or four companies, And that's
Speaker 2: that's likely to happen in the AR space because you know,
Speaker 2: the cost of building out all this stuff is so
Speaker 2: vast and the revenue at the moment is so thin that,
Speaker 2: you know, start up AI companies, unless they're really focused,
Speaker 2: I just can't make it.
Speaker 1: It's just not going to happen. Yeah, I've been meaning
Speaker 1: to ask you for a year or so, John Ellison,
Speaker 1: I've never met Rupert Murdoch. I've never talked to him,
Speaker 1: but it sure does seem to me over many decades
Speaker 1: he has been among the most nimble of investors and
Speaker 1: far sighted of entrepreneurs. Does anyone compare with them in
Speaker 1: your book?
Speaker 2: Oh, there are a lot of great investors, but Rupert,
Speaker 2: you know, in the entertainment space or the media space
Speaker 2: is partly is probably you know, one of the most
Speaker 2: if not the most successful. What sort of distinguished Rupert was?
Speaker 2: I mean, you look at what he did with Fox News.
Speaker 2: People forget that Fox News lost money for ten years
Speaker 2: at the beginning. Rupert had to pay the cable companies
Speaker 2: had to pay. For instance, cable vision here in New
Speaker 2: York ten dollars per subscriber. So you know, there were
Speaker 2: three million subscribers to cable vision, and Rupert had a
Speaker 2: wady a check every year for thirty million to be
Speaker 2: on the cablevision system, right, and the table vision system.
Speaker 2: And he wasn't on channel four, channel seven of the system.
Speaker 2: He was on channel like one on nine or something.
Speaker 2: But he stuck with it because he believed that fifty
Speaker 2: percent of the American television audience was quote underserved, and
Speaker 2: he invested, and he probably invested two or three billion
Speaker 2: dollars when it was all said and done. And eventually
Speaker 2: I turned the corner, and now is you know what
Speaker 2: accounts for roughly ninety percent of the Box Corporation's pre
Speaker 2: tech profit.
Speaker 1: Visionary is a word I don't use often, but that
Speaker 1: was visionary. Let me talk to you about what I
Speaker 1: think is a visionary story. You sent me out of China.
Speaker 1: They're no longer going to award well, they're not going
Speaker 1: to stop awarding PhDs for research, but they're going to
Speaker 1: start awarding them for actual breakthroughs and invention. I think
Speaker 1: that's brilliant. Where did you learn about that?
Speaker 3: Well?
Speaker 2: I read about it in one of the you know
Speaker 2: the Asian newspapers, and I was done by it because
Speaker 2: it seemed to me such a simple idea. They're calling
Speaker 2: it practical PhDs, right, so instead of you know, getting
Speaker 2: a PhD and you know whatever, you get your PhD
Speaker 2: in building how to build a better highway, right, And
Speaker 2: that seemed to me like there's so many inventive people
Speaker 2: all around the world, but also in the US, where
Speaker 2: if you offered them a PhD in doing something practical,
Speaker 2: there would be huge take up on that, and I
Speaker 2: think it would lead to an explosion of innovations.
Speaker 1: So it's a great idea. Machine copy it. Let's go
Speaker 1: to story number three bad news and maybe two grim
Speaker 1: you put it. Al Qaeda has a network of affiliates
Speaker 1: and they together have more than fifty times the number
Speaker 1: of recruits they had at nine to eleven. That's the
Speaker 1: kind of exponential growth we don't need to see. John Ellis, Yes,
Speaker 1: it's it's it's it's.
Speaker 2: You know Africa, which you know at the time of
Speaker 2: nine to eleven, al Kaina had no presence in Africa.
Speaker 2: Now it has a significant presence there, it has a
Speaker 2: significant president across South Asia, obviously India. Paka, I mean
Speaker 2: Pakistan and Afghanistan, and then the various you know, quote
Speaker 2: subsidiaries in quote in European countries and here in the US.
Speaker 2: It's it's it's a ticking time bomb.
Speaker 1: It is, especially when you compare it with your fourth story.
Speaker 1: The United States economy is not prepared to scale on
Speaker 1: defense related things like munitions, and China has already scaled.
Speaker 1: If al Qaeda is growing exponentially and China's growing It's navy,
Speaker 1: for example, by leaps and bounds every month, producing more
Speaker 1: ships than we do in a year, how long does
Speaker 1: it take for us to actually get back in the game,
Speaker 1: do you think?
Speaker 2: I mean, we've covered this story of We think one
Speaker 2: of the major stories of our time is the force
Speaker 2: rating us of the US military, and what we've built
Speaker 2: since the end of the Cold War is an unbelievably
Speaker 2: efficient consumer economy at the expense of having the resources
Speaker 2: to do some sustain production of military hardware of all
Speaker 2: types to enable US to wage war or fight wars
Speaker 2: in any number of theaters. So you have a challenge
Speaker 2: from the Middle East, Iran, you have a challenge from
Speaker 2: Russia and Ukraine. You have a challenge from China and Taiwan,
Speaker 2: and you have a challenge in Africa from al Qaeda.
Speaker 2: You know, we need a lot of guns to be competitive,
Speaker 2: if you will, in those theaters. And what we found
Speaker 2: is that our capacity to produce the weapons to you know,
Speaker 2: to be able to sustain longer term campaigns isn't there.
Speaker 2: And so it's a huge challenge for a Secretary accept
Speaker 2: and his team at the Defense Department to whip that
Speaker 2: into shape because you know, conflict are coming. It's not
Speaker 2: it's not if it's when.
Speaker 1: I recommend everyone read Arthur Hermann's Freedom Fortune and what
Speaker 1: we can do if we choose to do. Last story
Speaker 1: is about the opioid empandemic, and I was kind of
Speaker 1: stunned to learn it's one of the major drivers of
Speaker 1: realignment in the United States over the past sixteen twenty years,
Speaker 1: moving people from a ten year at the Republican That's remarkable.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: After the twenty twenty four election, I participated in a
Speaker 2: couple of roundtables, and you know, I was why did
Speaker 2: Trump win? And everybody said the same thing, which was,
Speaker 2: you know, inflation and immigration and nobody like Biden. But
Speaker 2: I made the point without evidence that I thought the
Speaker 2: thing that supercharged the immigration issue was the fentanyl crisis,
Speaker 2: and lo and behold there comes this academic study which
Speaker 2: shows that where the fentyl crisis was most acute, those
Speaker 2: congressional districts, those states, those state senate districts, et cetera
Speaker 2: progressively voted Republican and that I think has to do
Speaker 2: with the fact that Democratic policy was to let as
Speaker 2: money and as possible, and voters didn't like that.
Speaker 3: Out.
Speaker 1: Yeah, fentanyl deaths are a law and order issue. Behind
Speaker 1: the tragedy and the great that's the law and order issue.
Speaker 1: John Ellis follow him on Exit Ellis Items. Find news
Speaker 1: items that by googling news items and John Ellis, and
Speaker 1: thank you for your weekly contribution. John. I'll be right
Speaker 1: back America. Eli Laynett on the UK. Chack Borger Back America.
Speaker 1: I'm Eli lake Is with the Free Press. He's also
Speaker 1: the host of the Breaking History podcast there as well
Speaker 1: as a contributor. I've been following the story about our
Speaker 1: looming battle with Iran extensively. Eli, welcome. My assessment after
Speaker 1: the meeting broke up in oman early hours of this
Speaker 1: Friday morning is that Iran is going to go full Alamo.
Speaker 1: That's my assessment.
Speaker 4: Do you agree yes, and I think in some ways
Speaker 4: it's baked into the ideology of the regime. They are
Speaker 4: an apocalyptic kind of cult of a regime, and this
Speaker 4: you can see it from how they've purged dissenters in
Speaker 4: the past, and you can see it from the rhetoric
Speaker 4: of Kamenae, and that's what's going to I think you're right.
Speaker 1: Full Alimo means that there won't be anyone left in
Speaker 1: the regime at the end of any conflict, but there
Speaker 1: will be quite a few casualties on the other side
Speaker 1: along the way. Santa Ana's army did not come out unscathed,
Speaker 1: and I think they were defeated in a subsequent battle.
Speaker 1: Do you think that Iran has the ability to inflict
Speaker 1: significant casualties on the United States?
Speaker 4: Not on the United States. But I just want to
Speaker 4: go back to what you said. I think Kameney is
Speaker 4: willing to kind of drive his country into the Abyss,
Speaker 4: and we didn't need this confrontation.
Speaker 1: To know that.
Speaker 4: I do think if comedy has taken out, there will
Speaker 4: be a battle internally for who would be the next
Speaker 4: supreme leader who takes over. And if you can combine
Speaker 4: that with as Israel did in the twelve date war,
Speaker 4: taking out some of the top echelon of the military
Speaker 4: IRGC leadership, there is an opportunity that then you make
Speaker 4: the choice very real, and I think there's enough corruption.
Speaker 4: Your great interview with Kareem Sagriport made the point that
Speaker 4: it started off twenty percent Charlatan, eighty percent true believer,
Speaker 4: and now it's eighty percent Charlatan twenty percent true believer.
Speaker 4: My hope is that you maybe avoid some bloodshed if
Speaker 4: you take out a couple of Charlatans and true believers
Speaker 4: and you sort of put the choice again to the Charlatan, saying,
Speaker 4: you know, you can go the easy way or the
Speaker 4: hard way, as they say.
Speaker 1: Eli. I've read twice or listened to twice in the
Speaker 1: last week Empire of Terror by Mark Selenski. I don't
Speaker 1: know if you've read it, but it's about the IRG.
Speaker 1: No I haven't. I'll put that on my list. It's
Speaker 1: about six years old, but as of six years ago,
Speaker 1: the IRGC is about one hundred and fifty thousand, the
Speaker 1: regular Iranian Army is another four hundred thousand, And that
Speaker 1: took away a lot of my hope for the quick
Speaker 1: exit for the regime, because that one hundred and fifty
Speaker 1: thousand will be killed by the Iranian citizen re after
Speaker 1: they murdered at least thirty thousand people. There will be revenge.
Speaker 1: There will not be a coalition of amnesty granting people
Speaker 1: they're angry. Doesn't that decrease the likelihood of anything other
Speaker 1: than full Alamo?
Speaker 4: Well, if rez Apolovy, who I wrote about this week,
Speaker 4: can unify the opposition and implement a transition plan, he
Speaker 4: has spoken about amnesty for lower and mid level folks.
Speaker 5: I don't know that you're going to.
Speaker 4: See that level of it, but I should say it's
Speaker 4: certainly there, and it reminds me many years ago, almost
Speaker 4: twenty years ago, I interviewed Iatol Fomani's grandson and one
Speaker 4: of that's I was at the time very much taken
Speaker 4: in by the kind of idea of nonviolent resistance or
Speaker 4: people power Gene Sharp and when I put it to him,
Speaker 4: he said, there's such a blood dead at this point
Speaker 4: that people will extract a heavy price once once the
Speaker 4: Mulla's topple. And that's coming from you know, the bloodline
Speaker 4: of the founder of the revolution.
Speaker 1: Well, Yashar Ali, with whom I don't often agree is
Speaker 1: right about the fact that as the internet connectivity is restored,
Speaker 1: we will see more and more of what we saw
Speaker 1: a few of this just absolutely horrific videos, trucks running
Speaker 1: through through entire crowds, machete to a young lady, the horrible,
Speaker 1: horrible videos. And I the trauma that Israel went through
Speaker 1: on ten to seven has now been visited by their
Speaker 1: own government on the people of Iran, doesn't that. I
Speaker 1: just think it creates conditions that we've not seen before.
Speaker 4: There will certainly be some vengeance. However, there I think
Speaker 4: is an opportunity for leadership again, you know, keeping an
Speaker 4: eye on the prize. I do think that there's an
Speaker 4: opportunity at least and maybe that this is a role
Speaker 4: for the United States and our intelligence services to effectively
Speaker 4: try to buy people off and coerce them. And you
Speaker 4: can do that by killing some of the prominent leaders
Speaker 4: and then saying do you want the same faith, do
Speaker 4: you want to be on the same kill list, or
Speaker 4: do you want to face the people? And that so
Speaker 4: there isn't maybe an opportunity to step aside. My concern
Speaker 4: would be that if there was a quick fall of
Speaker 4: the regime, there was something in the interim that there
Speaker 4: would be an opportunity for a kind of insurgency that
Speaker 4: would be filled by the ranks of these killers you
Speaker 4: know at the top right now, which is a similar
Speaker 4: dynamic of what we saw in Iraq.
Speaker 1: Well, you know, I want to know if you agree
Speaker 1: as well, and feel free to tell me no, you're stupid.
Speaker 1: Prior to the nineteen ninety one Gulf War One, the
Speaker 1: casualty estimates that the American public was made ready for
Speaker 1: was in six figures. Same thing happened twenty years later
Speaker 1: in two thousand and three. Be prepared for big casualties
Speaker 1: in both wars. It was under one hundred and fifty
Speaker 1: in the initial invasion and in two thousand and three.
Speaker 1: Of course it went into the thousands over the long
Speaker 1: term war, but it was a less than one hundred
Speaker 1: and fifty in Iraq in two thousand and three, less
Speaker 1: than one hundred and fifty, which is a huge number
Speaker 1: for America, but never let less than what we were expecting.
Speaker 1: In nineteen ninety one, Ambassador Orrin came on form Israeli
Speaker 1: Ambassador United States WEWICS this week to say, remember the Sheffield,
Speaker 1: Remember the Sheffield, Remember the Sheffield, the Royal Navy destroyer
Speaker 1: that was hit by an EXO set from an Argentinian
Speaker 1: jet fighter in nineteen eighty two, killing twenty sailors, and
Speaker 1: they could get off a lot of lucky shots. Has
Speaker 1: anyone talked about to the American people about to be
Speaker 1: prepared for casualties.
Speaker 4: No one's talked about that. I do think that is
Speaker 4: a realistic thing in terms of the potential to hit
Speaker 4: the bases. As I wrote this week, we have an
Speaker 4: interceptor shortage for our missile defense systems, which are very
Speaker 4: good but very expensive, and so the math game right
Speaker 4: now favors the aggressors of the people who can build cheap,
Speaker 4: realistic missiles like Russia against Ukraine or Iran against Israel
Speaker 4: as we saw in the Twelve Day War, and there
Speaker 4: is a potential for that. My understanding is a lot
Speaker 4: of the military planning and including with Israel, is trying
Speaker 4: to figure out if you can have a first wave
Speaker 4: of attack that overwhelms and pretty much dismantles Iran's missile capability.
Speaker 1: I don't know the answer to that, but.
Speaker 4: You know, I trust the Israeli intelligence, and I trust
Speaker 4: the American hardware.
Speaker 1: I trust the discombobulator. I don't know if you heard
Speaker 1: President Truy I.
Speaker 4: Trust the discard that would be great, right, exactly right?
Speaker 1: Do you think?
Speaker 3: No?
Speaker 1: I think so.
Speaker 4: This is one of these situations where as a journalist
Speaker 4: who's done reporting on it, but I'm not yet ready
Speaker 4: to publish it. But I'll just tell you in general
Speaker 4: terms what I've heard. The Israelis figured out both a
Speaker 4: protocol and a technology that allowed them to blind the
Speaker 4: not just the air defense system, but the command and
Speaker 4: control of their adversary. And you first saw that against Hezbollah,
Speaker 4: then you saw it against Iran in the Twelve Day War,
Speaker 4: and even before another strikes it against Iran, and that
Speaker 4: that know how, because it's not just the tech, it's
Speaker 4: also how you do it. This is I'm again, has
Speaker 4: been shared with the United States. I think that might
Speaker 4: be the decent discombobulator. But again that's just sort of
Speaker 4: an inference on my part because i'd heard that before
Speaker 4: the President talked about that it's a combobulator who.
Speaker 1: I will be watching the Free Press this weekend for
Speaker 1: updates from Eli Lake. Follow him on x at Eli Lake,
Speaker 1: subscribe to the Free Press. He wrote a great piece
Speaker 1: on Crown Prince Pavlabi. He also wrote a great piece
Speaker 1: on the munitions and a great piece on the negotiations.
Speaker 1: You on top of this, like very few people are.
Speaker 1: And if Iran is going to go full Alamo, you'll
Speaker 1: find out about it from Eli First. Thank you, Eli Lake.
Speaker 1: I'll be right back America. Stay tuned. Welcome back, America.
Speaker 1: I'm joined by Matt Connetty, head of Domestic Policy Studies
Speaker 1: at AEI, columnists for the Wall Street Journal. Hello Matt,
Speaker 1: and before we get into the very serious stuff that
Speaker 1: you wrote about for the Journal on Friday, I have
Speaker 1: to begin with I'm developing a new theory. Have you
Speaker 1: been married a long time?
Speaker 5: I guess it all depends on the meaning of the
Speaker 5: word long. But yeah, we're about to.
Speaker 6: Celebrate our anniversary and it will be fourteen years.
Speaker 1: All right, so that's good enough. Do you remember the
Speaker 1: same movies as missus, Continetti remembers.
Speaker 6: Yes, we're of the same generation, we don't, you know,
Speaker 6: Being a man and woman, we like different types of films,
Speaker 6: you know.
Speaker 1: So this is what I'm texting.
Speaker 6: I tried to have her watch The Godfather with me, Hugh,
Speaker 6: and that lasted all about forty five minutes, So you know,
Speaker 6: vice versa. She likes the rom coms and the Hallmark Channel,
Speaker 6: and of course I'm usually in another room watching a
Speaker 6: live sporting event.
Speaker 1: Well, last night I was talked into watching Nodding Hill
Speaker 1: again for the first time in twenty seven years, and
Speaker 1: the fetching missus Hewett knows the dialogue because apparently women
Speaker 1: get fed these little clips. I'm just a girl standing
Speaker 1: in front of Justice Boy, and I didn't remember anything
Speaker 1: of it. I didn't remember horses and Hounds, which is very,
Speaker 1: very fun. Do you remember anything about Notting Hill. It's
Speaker 1: before you were married.
Speaker 5: I know, in fact, if my wife made me watch
Speaker 5: Nodding Hill, it would be the first time I would
Speaker 5: have seen that film.
Speaker 6: There's a whole universe there that I leave to her,
Speaker 6: and then of course she leaves all the Star Trek
Speaker 6: movies and the die hard stuff to me.
Speaker 1: I will just make a recommendation. You will, as a
Speaker 1: fine writer that you are, you will like the writing
Speaker 1: in notting Hill. Now I'm going to go full serious
Speaker 1: on you. Do you think Karan is going to go
Speaker 1: full Alamo?
Speaker 5: Well, you know, it would be.
Speaker 6: A first if it did that, If the regime did that,
Speaker 6: this regime has been very cautious over the decades. I mean,
Speaker 6: let's not forget when it fired rockets at Israel in
Speaker 6: two thousand and four. That was the first direct attack
Speaker 6: Iran had ever launched at the state of Israel since
Speaker 6: the Islamic Revolution happened in nineteen seventy nine. So then,
Speaker 6: even after Operation Midnight Hammer in twenty twenty five, you know,
Speaker 6: the spectacular destruction of the Ranian nuclear program by US forces,
Speaker 6: iron had the very performative assault on our base in
Speaker 6: Dohak Hutter telegraphing it beforehand.
Speaker 5: There were no US casualties.
Speaker 6: So I think for the full Alamo, you would really
Speaker 6: have to have the Mollahs believe this is it, this
Speaker 6: is do or die. They're facing extinction as a regime,
Speaker 6: and I don't think we're there yet.
Speaker 1: Well, I put this to Eli Lake, and I'll put
Speaker 1: it to you. They murdered at least thirty thousands of
Speaker 1: their citizens, which means there are hundreds of thousands of grieving,
Speaker 1: revenge seeking Iranians. They already burned down a bunch of
Speaker 1: mosques and mullah's houses. I don't think anyone from the
Speaker 1: IRGC or the molocracy is going to walk away if
Speaker 1: there is regime change, do.
Speaker 6: You certainly not from the IRGC or the besiege You know,
Speaker 6: there of course whole political echelons that are part of this,
Speaker 6: and there's the regular army, you know.
Speaker 5: I think one of.
Speaker 6: Our goals should be in order to create space between
Speaker 6: the regular army and then the revolutionary cadres, the IRGC,
Speaker 6: which foments terrorism abroad, and the beasiege militias, which are
Speaker 6: kind of the enforcers of the Mulla's room at home.
Speaker 5: It's a very complicated country.
Speaker 6: I mean, it's hugely populated, it's sprawling, and so whatever
Speaker 6: happens next with the fall of this regime is going
Speaker 6: to be is going to be messy.
Speaker 1: I'm going to say for after the break what you
Speaker 1: wrote in the vertical today at the Wall Street Journal,
Speaker 1: your column for the week. Before we do that, before
Speaker 1: we go to the break and talk to me, would
Speaker 1: you explain to people what the Free Expression vertical is
Speaker 1: over at the Wall Street Journal.
Speaker 5: I'm happy to.
Speaker 6: I'm very excited too. It's a new project launched by
Speaker 6: Wall Street Journal Opinion. Free Expression is a daily newsletter
Speaker 6: that you get either over email or sub stack. You
Speaker 6: can sign up at the Wall Street Journal, and it's
Speaker 6: a lot of stuff, topics that are usually not covered
Speaker 6: by the opinion pages, more cultural, more youthful, kind of
Speaker 6: directed about a lot on gen Z what's up with
Speaker 6: the kids, so to speak. And then they have you know,
Speaker 6: the old the Old Fogy Continetti there at the end
Speaker 6: of each week, where I weigh in on politics and
Speaker 6: foreign policy. But it's a great mix so far, and
Speaker 6: we're off to a great start and I'm very excited
Speaker 6: to be a part of it.
Speaker 1: You know, if you're the old Fogy, Matt, that makes
Speaker 1: me the ancient Mariner. So I'm not really into that description.
Speaker 6: You're the oracle, You're the oracle of the Relief Factor studio.
Speaker 1: I talked to the oracle of every studio this week,
Speaker 1: brit Hume down in South Florida where he's seeking refuge
Speaker 1: from the new Virginia government. I'm going to talk to
Speaker 1: you about that during the break, and then come back
Speaker 1: after the break and talk with Matt Continetti about his
Speaker 1: column this week and about whether or not President Trump
Speaker 1: is doing what he needs to do to prepare America
Speaker 1: for a serious battle. Stay tuned, Welcome back in America.
Speaker 1: I'm with Matt Continetti Calm for The Wall Street Journal,
Speaker 1: head of Domestic Policy Studies at AI. In the break
Speaker 1: between our segments, which will be on the podcast, Matt,
Speaker 1: in this break, I got to go back to the
Speaker 1: Beltway on Sunday. I'm not looking forward to that because
Speaker 1: it's Sunday in seventy five in California, where I spend
Speaker 1: a couple of weeks every winter, a couple of months,
Speaker 1: and now I got to go back to the Beltway
Speaker 1: where it's freezing, but even worse and good old Virginia.
Speaker 1: The Democrats have taken control with a vengeance. They are
Speaker 1: really proposing California's solutions to every problem. Is this just
Speaker 1: talk or is it real?
Speaker 5: I think it's real, Hugh.
Speaker 6: I think it's what happens when the one party gains
Speaker 6: control of the state government, animated by this progressive reaction
Speaker 6: to Trump, as we're seeing in Virginia. The elections did
Speaker 6: not go well for Virginia Republicans last November. And on
Speaker 6: top of that, Governor Spanberger, who said practice nothing during
Speaker 6: the campaign other than she stood with law enforcement and
Speaker 6: cared about kids, has revealed herself to be nothing but
Speaker 6: a signing machine for the progressive machine. And so one
Speaker 6: of the first things she signed into law is this
Speaker 6: proposal to have a new congressional map, which would reduce
Speaker 6: the Republican representation in Congress to two or even one seat.
Speaker 6: And this goes from a you know, Republicans haven't won
Speaker 6: Virginia since two thousand and four in a presidential election,
Speaker 6: but they still get about forty five percent of the vote.
Speaker 6: But of course we'd be reduced to almost nothing, no
Speaker 6: congressional representation.
Speaker 5: That's her first priority.
Speaker 6: Nothing about the affordability that she campaigned on. They're also
Speaker 6: looking at course, joining the Blue State Climate Compact, which
Speaker 6: will mean higher energy costs for Virginian You're looking at
Speaker 6: now a push to end cooperation with ICE so that
Speaker 6: violent illegal criminals are released back onto the streets without
Speaker 6: having local law enforcement working with ICE to pick them
Speaker 6: up right there to remove them from the streets. And
Speaker 6: then of course there's a slew of gun regulations that
Speaker 6: Spamburger will be asked to sign and will and then
Speaker 6: there're also tax increases. It's a disaster on a policy level,
Speaker 6: and it's a Native Virginia I'm just I'm torn up
Speaker 6: about it.
Speaker 1: It's the Californication of Virginia the commonwealth, and people left California.
Speaker 1: They still live in California. I left California to move
Speaker 1: to Virginia, and we could have gone anywhere. I thought
Speaker 1: Virginia was a nice balance between red and blue. And
Speaker 1: at five and a half percent state taxes, it's not outrageous.
Speaker 1: It's not Florida, it's not Tennessee, it's not Texas. But
Speaker 1: it's not outrageous. They want to go outrageous, Matt, do
Speaker 1: you think there will be an exodus from old Virginia.
Speaker 6: I think it's already starting, just anecdotally. You talk to
Speaker 6: people who are thinking about Tennessee, who are thinking about Florida,
Speaker 6: North Carolina, South Carolina. West Virginia may actually be the
Speaker 6: biggest beneficiary. In truth, it's still drivable, you know, don't
Speaker 6: We don't have normal commute times in the DC area.
Speaker 6: So even that the two hours it would take to
Speaker 6: come from West Virginia seems reasonable to us if in
Speaker 6: exchange for that commute you have a reasonable government with
Speaker 6: low taxes, low less regulation, better business climate, and of
Speaker 6: course more personal freedoms as well.
Speaker 1: Okay, so I think already we've got to go on
Speaker 1: the Relief Factor Network stand by Welcome back America to
Speaker 1: the Sale New Channel Sale and Radio Network, our affiliate
Speaker 1: time Hugh Hewitt with Matt Continetti AI and The Wall
Speaker 1: Street Journal. You missed a good discussion with Matt during
Speaker 1: the break about politics in Virginia. It'll be on the
Speaker 1: Big Weekend Pod. Matt. I want to read the opening
Speaker 1: of your column Friday in The Wall Street Journal. Because
Speaker 1: President Trump must choose to enforce the red lines he
Speaker 1: has drawn against the Iranian regime or entangle himself in
Speaker 1: pointless negotiations that legitimize the sworn enemy. He needs to
Speaker 1: demand Iranian concessions as a precondition for future talks, or
Speaker 1: be prepared to walk away. His credibility is on the line.
Speaker 1: America's deterrent and the future of the Middle East are too.
Speaker 1: That's how I see it. That's how everyone I talk
Speaker 1: to see it. But are we neo Khans locked in
Speaker 1: a neo Khan conference room, or are we Reagan Conservatives
Speaker 1: who understand the value of deterns.
Speaker 6: That's peace through strength and look, I think President Trump
Speaker 6: understands this. He's drawn two red lines with Iran over
Speaker 6: the course of the past year. The first red line
Speaker 6: is no nuclear enrichment, not pausing the enrichment, not winding
Speaker 6: it down to a certain level. No nuclear enrichment, and
Speaker 6: that needs to be verified. And the second red line
Speaker 6: that he drew just in recent weeks is that there
Speaker 6: should be no killing of protesters. There should be no
Speaker 6: murder of your own population. Iran has violated both red lines.
Speaker 6: When it violated the no enrichment red line in twenty
Speaker 6: twenty five, we were having negotiations like we're having now.
Speaker 6: President Trump took action. Operation mid Night Hammer destroyed the
Speaker 6: Iranian nuclear program. Now that highly enriched uranium is under
Speaker 6: rubble or hidden away somewhere.
Speaker 1: Do you the question is do you think that he
Speaker 1: would launch an attack during the Olympics or Ramadan, which
Speaker 1: overlapped the Olympics.
Speaker 6: I think the Olympics probably not. Ramadan is a different story.
Speaker 6: There are many many military operations that have taken place
Speaker 6: during the month of Ramadan. I don't think that would
Speaker 6: prevent Trump from launching an attack.
Speaker 1: Okay, Now what I read is going to have to
Speaker 1: act you Okay, yes, I agree with you. Otherwise we'll
Speaker 1: be back to after the Afghanistan debacle. And you can't.
Speaker 1: You have to rebuild credibility every time you spend it
Speaker 1: down by letting a red line be violated, and he's
Speaker 1: already rebuilt it. It would be a disaster to let
Speaker 1: it go down. However, the first President Bush, before the
Speaker 1: Golf War one, made sure the American people knew that
Speaker 1: we might suffer more than one hundred thousand casualties. We
Speaker 1: were ready for chemical weapons and everything. The second Golf
Speaker 1: War with the second President Bush, same drill. The American
Speaker 1: people were ready for a lot of casualties, were warned,
Speaker 1: and we were a pit in our stomach. And both
Speaker 1: times it was less than one hundred and fifty killed
Speaker 1: in the initial invasion, and the entire desert storm eventually
Speaker 1: became thousands in Iraq over years. Do you think President
Speaker 1: Trump has done what he needs to do with him
Speaker 1: American people to prepare them against mash casualties in any
Speaker 1: kind of conflict with Iran.
Speaker 6: He hasn't talked about mass casualties. He hasn't talked about
Speaker 6: the downsides of a potential conflict.
Speaker 5: But we need to understand.
Speaker 6: I don't think any operation against Iran would look like
Speaker 6: either Gulf War. In both Gulf Wars, of course, we
Speaker 6: had massive armies that we assembled on the perimeter of
Speaker 6: Iraq that went into battle in the First Gulf War
Speaker 6: to eject Saddam from Kuwait in the Second Gulf War
Speaker 6: to end Saddam's rule. That's not what's happening here. Hugh
Speaker 6: Trump has these two red lines, no enrichment, no killing
Speaker 6: of protesters. Iran has violated them both. What that means
Speaker 6: is justice he's done in his first term, whether it
Speaker 6: was Costan Solimani in his second term, Midnight Hammer or
Speaker 6: Operation Absolute Resolve with Maduro.
Speaker 5: He has to punish the aggressors.
Speaker 6: And so what I expect to happen is an attack
Speaker 6: on the apparatus of repression, that is these militias and
Speaker 6: the IRGC terrorists, and also an attack on the remaining
Speaker 6: nuclear sites. What we know from intelligence and the missiles
Speaker 6: right the ballistic missiles that threat.
Speaker 5: In the region.
Speaker 6: That's not a ground invasion with the aim of toppling
Speaker 6: the government and occupying Iran. That's a very Trumpian attack
Speaker 6: in order to coerce the regime into doing what he wants.
Speaker 6: That's what I expect, and I think what now is
Speaker 6: we're waiting for the timing, and the timing has a
Speaker 6: lot to do with the military preparations, not only for
Speaker 6: the offensive, but in expectation of a potential counter attack
Speaker 6: by Iran and our ability to defend against it, not
Speaker 6: only our own forces, but also of course the state
Speaker 6: of Israel.
Speaker 1: Former is really Ambassador Michael Lauren called into the program
Speaker 1: this week twice to remind people about the HMS Sheffield
Speaker 1: in the Falklands, where the Brits Royal Navy and Argentinian
Speaker 1: fighter jet got off an exo set that killed twenty
Speaker 1: British sailors, wounded another twenty five, and sunk a destroyer
Speaker 1: before it could get towed to repair. I don't think
Speaker 1: anyone has said anything yet about how many troops or
Speaker 1: what our vulnerability is, and the Navy is quite confidence
Speaker 1: of ability, but I think there ought to be a
Speaker 1: little bit of preparation, at least by the President and
Speaker 1: others in the Department of Defense about what might happen.
Speaker 1: Do you agree or disagree with that?
Speaker 6: No, I think we need more explanation. The explanation is
Speaker 6: a good thing that leads to persuasion. It gets the
Speaker 6: people on your side. It's not really how President Trump works.
Speaker 6: President Trump wants to work through surprise and unpredictability, and
Speaker 6: so he's not going to be really laying the groundwork
Speaker 6: for any operation UH where He's going to continue his rhetoric.
Speaker 6: He's going to continue to say, we need something from Iran.
Speaker 6: They better they better obey these red lines that I've
Speaker 6: set down or else they're going to face punishment. They're
Speaker 6: going to face a reprisal. But he's not going to
Speaker 6: get into the nitty gritty. And of course we know
Speaker 6: from President Trump he does not want to risk American lives.
Speaker 6: He is very he's very understanding that the American people,
Speaker 6: UH may react negatively to casualties to an operation gone wrong.
Speaker 6: He's rolled the dice quite a few times. Midnight Hammer,
Speaker 6: we hit our target, absol Resolve, incredible, just taking Maduro
Speaker 6: right before the vault was about to close and protect
Speaker 6: him right and now he's in New York jail. What's
Speaker 6: the the question here is what is the roll of
Speaker 6: the dice in Iran? What is that going to look like?
Speaker 6: And I think right now there's a lot of military
Speaker 6: planning happening.
Speaker 5: What is the type of spectacular.
Speaker 6: Dramatic attack that will both punish the Iranian regime and
Speaker 6: telegraph to elements within the within the regime, and in
Speaker 6: the Iranian people at large. You need to make massive
Speaker 6: changes in behavior. The iotota needs to go or else
Speaker 6: more will come.
Speaker 1: I think you're over the target, Matt, and I hope
Speaker 1: we are as well in a readable period of time,
Speaker 1: because it can't. Let the redline be arranged. Matt Kaney,
Speaker 1: thank you. Follow him on exit continety, read the Free
Speaker 1: Expressions Vertical and Matt's column at the Wall Street Journal,
Speaker 1: and I will talk to him again next week. State
Speaker 1: tuned in America, I'm hi, it's you, Hewitt. You've heard me
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Speaker 1: forget my code is Hugh. Join now by Ben Dominic,
Speaker 1: host of The Big Ben Podcast on the Fox podcast
Speaker 1: Network Friends of the program as well. Ben, do you
Speaker 1: agree with the general in me that it looks like
Speaker 1: Iran is about to go full Alamo and we ought
Speaker 1: to welcome that.
Speaker 3: Well, I think it's been a long time coming, Hugh.
Speaker 3: And sorry to be a little a little tardy. I'm
Speaker 3: that's the second time. I'm not going to keep blaming it, and.
Speaker 1: If you have a newborn, you have you get complete.
Speaker 3: There's just a handoffs that. So anyway, I think that
Speaker 3: this is a situation where you know that the regime
Speaker 3: has clearly been signaling that this was the direction that
Speaker 3: it was headed for a while. And I think we've
Speaker 3: heard that from a lot of smart commentators, including the
Speaker 3: General Uh and including yourself. I think that that's just
Speaker 3: an inevitability, and at a certain point you have to
Speaker 3: accept that. You can't just you know, sort of. I mean,
Speaker 3: we spent so many years living in the Obama Biden
Speaker 3: fantasy land under you know, Ben Roads and all of
Speaker 3: the idiots that we're running policy back. Then we have
Speaker 3: to accept for the world for as it is, and
Speaker 3: I think that this Trump administration has done a very
Speaker 3: good job of.
Speaker 1: Doing that now. Ben, I think the idea that the
Speaker 1: vice president is a restrainer is overstated. But he's in
Speaker 1: Milan for the Olympics, and Secretary Rubio is here, and
Speaker 1: Lindsey Graham is channeling your late father in law every
Speaker 1: minute he gets a chance to. I don't see anyone
Speaker 1: saying go soft on Iran right now, at least not
Speaker 1: on our team.
Speaker 3: I certainly don't. And look, you know, this is something
Speaker 3: that I've said before, and I know that JD's team
Speaker 3: is not particularly happy when I pointed out, but he
Speaker 3: does have a way of kind of of navigating this
Speaker 3: where he kind of removes himself from some of these situations.
Speaker 3: We you know, it was obviously notable that he wasn't
Speaker 3: in any of the pictures regarding you know, the Maduro raid.
Speaker 3: I wasn't the only one to notice that, of course,
Speaker 3: And I think that that is a decision that could
Speaker 3: be one that he is making purposefully. I don't know
Speaker 3: that it is. I'm just saying that it could be.
Speaker 3: And I think that in this instance, you know, certainly
Speaker 3: the Secretary of State has made clear what he thinks
Speaker 3: about this during his longtime career in the Senate, and
Speaker 3: I don't I don't think there's going to be anybody
Speaker 3: in the room, certainly not anybody who's going to have
Speaker 3: the president's ear on this to overwhelm a decision that
Speaker 3: I think is pretty obvious in a long time coming.
Speaker 1: So Ben, I don't fault the president for anything. The
Speaker 1: left is trying to make him responsible for getting people
Speaker 1: out in the streets. They were out in the streets before.
Speaker 1: I think he was trying to deter the Iranian regime
Speaker 1: from doing what they did, which is murder at least
Speaker 1: thirty thousand people. And now I think he's got to
Speaker 1: build up our forces because he can't allow American forces
Speaker 1: to be killed in great numbers, if any, you know.
Speaker 1: And so it's going to be a while, or it's
Speaker 1: going to be as long as it takes. My question is,
Speaker 1: do you think anyone has done what they need to
Speaker 1: do from the administration side to prepare the American public
Speaker 1: for any casualties. I remember before. You might not be
Speaker 1: old enough to remember Golf War One, but we were
Speaker 1: expecting six figure casualties and.
Speaker 3: No, I remember it, and somewhere I actually still have
Speaker 3: my notebook that I took. I used to follow it
Speaker 3: and track it as a kid.
Speaker 1: So do you think that the ground work for readying
Speaker 1: the American public for casualties, because that's why the Afghanistan
Speaker 1: withdrawal went so badly for Team Biden. We didn't expect
Speaker 1: any casualties and lost thirteen.
Speaker 3: I do not believe that they have. I do not
Speaker 3: believe that they have. And look, the President has been
Speaker 3: and I should say It's one thing to say fortunate,
Speaker 3: but it's actually, you know, really incredible what he's been
Speaker 3: able to pull off without American casualties in terms of
Speaker 3: his approach that he's used to this point. When it
Speaker 3: comes to our security and foreign policy around the globe,
Speaker 3: you can't keep rolling those dice and expecting them to
Speaker 3: always go your way. And I think that in this instance,
Speaker 3: very little work has been done, if at all, to
Speaker 3: show the American people one that this is something that
Speaker 3: they need to understand comes with a lot more risk
Speaker 3: than exultrating a you know, a corrupt, you know leader
Speaker 3: in Venezuela. A lot more risk to American lives and
Speaker 3: a lot more potential for American cat And I just
Speaker 3: don't think that I have not seen Republicans in particular,
Speaker 3: who have been supportive of this policy in the past,
Speaker 3: going out there and being willing to say that to this.
Speaker 1: Point, I tell people I've been listening to twice now
Speaker 1: the book Empire of Terror by Mark Zelenski about the
Speaker 1: Islamic Revolutionary Guard Court. It's one hundred and fifty thousand
Speaker 1: fanatics and now they've got blood on their hands and
Speaker 1: they've got to be Iran's got to be at least
Speaker 1: as traumatized as Israel was on ten to seven thirty
Speaker 1: thousand people is a lot to be murdered in forty
Speaker 1: eight hours, and there won't be any amnesty for the IRGC.
Speaker 1: If there's a regime swap, well there.
Speaker 3: Of course no, of course not. And I think that
Speaker 3: this is a situation where they're I mean, this is
Speaker 3: going to be an existential fight. And again I don't
Speaker 3: think that this is something that you are reading that book.
Speaker 3: I've you know, certainly read plenty on this, and also
Speaker 3: I would recommend to people if they have not listened
Speaker 3: to it Eli Lake's podcast that he did a couple
Speaker 3: of months back, just guiding you through a kind of
Speaker 3: the Shah and everything that went down with the Red
Speaker 3: Green Revolution and everything associated with it. It's a good
Speaker 3: explainer packed in a small package break history. But I
Speaker 3: think that this is incredible in terms of what we're
Speaker 3: seeing play out in front of us. But unfortunately, the
Speaker 3: American people, I think, really again have not had the
Speaker 3: type of work done in a dance. People are tired
Speaker 3: of Middle Eastern wars that they see as pointless and
Speaker 3: they see as long term and risky and fully sort
Speaker 3: of dragging down America's resources and leading to the loss
Speaker 3: of life. And if the President goes into this, I
Speaker 3: think without making a strong case for it and having
Speaker 3: his supporters stand with him on it, then that's a
Speaker 3: very risky maneuver. But the President is, as you know,
Speaker 3: is willing to take risks.
Speaker 1: Have you heard the argument from anyone this regime showed
Speaker 1: us who they are. Believe them, they will kill thirty
Speaker 1: thousand of their own people. We should expect them to
Speaker 1: want to kill every American and every Israeli if and
Speaker 1: when they can ben no'll turn to the Shoni. I
Speaker 1: haven't heard that argument yet.
Speaker 3: No, I haven't, and that's certainly not you know, from
Speaker 3: the people who matter in this and who I think
Speaker 3: folks need to listen to. And look, a lot of
Speaker 3: that I think is distraction and reluctance to be the
Speaker 3: first one out of the gate to say this. But
Speaker 3: if the President has made clear and look, this is
Speaker 3: a long standing Republican policy and not just of hawks
Speaker 3: that you know, we know the effect of Iran around
Speaker 3: the world. We know the hinge point that it represents
Speaker 3: with other world powers. We know what in Iran that
Speaker 3: looked different today that looked more like what it's people
Speaker 3: actually want it to be would mean potentially for the
Speaker 3: region and for and for people around the world. And
Speaker 3: they are at their weakest point as a regime that
Speaker 3: they have been in my lifetime. And so it's one
Speaker 3: of these situations where, unfortunately, I think that lack of education,
Speaker 3: that lack of making the case for something before you
Speaker 3: do it, is something that could come back to bite
Speaker 3: the president if things do not go well.
Speaker 1: You had a notebook on the first Iraq War.
Speaker 3: Yes, so that was actually I was home school, Hugh,
Speaker 3: and so that was an assignment. We tracked it. I
Speaker 3: you know what. We would watch the nightly news, we
Speaker 3: would watch Peter Jennings, we would pay attention to the
Speaker 3: updates and read the Washington Post back when it was
Speaker 3: a good paper.
Speaker 1: We're going to talk about that during the break because
Speaker 1: that we have to. But I'm just I'm just very
Speaker 1: happy that someone can remember nineteen ninety one. Besides Britt
Speaker 1: Hume and I were talking about it.
Speaker 3: It was just like right there on page one.
Speaker 1: You weren't around though for the first Iranian Revolution, right,
Speaker 1: You weren't there in seventy eight and seventy nine, So
Speaker 1: you can't.
Speaker 3: It was not.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Britt Hume and I were doing memory Lane on
Speaker 1: that this week. Don't Go Anywhere, America. I'll be right
Speaker 1: back with Ben Dominic during the break, which will be
Speaker 1: on the Big Weekend Pod as well, and then he'll
Speaker 1: be back. I got to do my quiz with him
Speaker 1: that I gave him that continenty early as well. Don't
Speaker 1: Go Anywhere. Stay tuned on Super Bowl Weekend on Due Gowett.
Speaker 1: The HU huge show coming to you from the Relief
Speaker 1: Actor Studio is brought to you by Reliefactor dot Com.
Speaker 1: I'm back with Ben Dominic. Ben. It's my policy never
Speaker 1: to talk about someone for whom i've worked, So I
Speaker 1: worked for the Washington Post for a decade or eight years,
Speaker 1: I can't remember. I read a lot of columns for him,
Speaker 1: and I'm not gonna say anything at all about them.
Speaker 1: But what you said about the sports section at the
Speaker 1: end of the Big Ben Pod is objective. If you
Speaker 1: don't have a sports section, you're not trying to sell
Speaker 1: newspapers to Americans, are you.
Speaker 3: No? No, And look, this is what people care about
Speaker 3: when they go to their newspaper. And it's also, by
Speaker 3: the way, the thing that sparks debate that sparks. You
Speaker 3: know that you would have situations where someone write a
Speaker 3: column and you debate it on local sports talk radio,
Speaker 3: You argue about it in the local bars. You go
Speaker 3: back and forth on who's right about the you know,
Speaker 3: the team or the player or what you know, the
Speaker 3: way things are going, what needs to happen, who needs
Speaker 3: to be fired. And that's the kind of thing that
Speaker 3: makes for a community and actually a unifying element within
Speaker 3: that community where you have people with very different political beliefs.
Speaker 3: I mean I was talking to, you know, a friend
Speaker 3: across across the way, Uh, just this just today about
Speaker 3: Sonny Jurgensen and uh tweet him and everything else like that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean auto versus.
Speaker 3: Yeah, quite quite a different pairing. Auto put Sonny on
Speaker 3: a lettuce diet, by the way, that was what sparked
Speaker 3: that common But the but the you know, the truth is,
Speaker 3: I know, for a fact he's just a neighborhood friend,
Speaker 3: uh that I see occasionally at a restaurant, and he
Speaker 3: I know that he has complete opposite politics than me.
Speaker 3: He's about ten years older than me. You know, Washington
Speaker 3: bureaucrat lived in the place forever. We all we both
Speaker 3: love the same teams, and so we both care when
Speaker 3: someone like Sonny Jurgenson dies, and it would be great
Speaker 3: to have a sports section that has someone who could
Speaker 3: write about how great he was as opposed to what
Speaker 3: you know, Today's Washington Post would probably go through all
Speaker 3: the problematic things that Sonny Jurgens.
Speaker 1: Is Billy kill alive from the great QB controversy.
Speaker 3: Of twenty Not only is he still alive, I just
Speaker 3: heard him doing an interview, uh this afternoon on local
Speaker 3: sports talk radio and he actually had uh had lunch
Speaker 3: with Sonny. He said, just a couple of weeks ago.
Speaker 1: Well, but Mickey Lolich died this week, like people I
Speaker 1: grew up with are dying this week. But but the
Speaker 1: Billy Kilmer, Sonny Jergens, I'm a Cleveland dot com guy.
Speaker 1: I spend lots of money on Cleveland dot Com. I
Speaker 1: can't imagine the Post not having like five pages on Sunday.
Speaker 3: This is And you know, of course the problem with
Speaker 3: that as well is that no no media entity was
Speaker 3: a bigger cheerleader against the Redskins name than the Washington Post,
Speaker 3: which made millions, you know, sold millions of newspapers on
Speaker 3: the bandwagon with Tony Kornheiser on the ninety one team.
Speaker 3: You know that that made so much money because people
Speaker 3: wanted to read their coverage of their favorite team, and unfortunately,
Speaker 3: it just got to a point where, look, there was
Speaker 3: glowing coverage. You will not find a negative article about
Speaker 3: uh may Can rap Ito in the Washington Post, Okay,
Speaker 3: but you will find more criticism of that name uh,
Speaker 3: you know, and more pushes to change it. And finally,
Speaker 3: when you know, in the wake of George Floyd, they
Speaker 3: finally were able to do it. And look, whatever you
Speaker 3: think about that, it's just that it just speaks to
Speaker 3: the fact that this was a newspaper that became entirely
Speaker 3: possessed of politics. In every section. You know, the people
Speaker 3: were handing around the article rows.
Speaker 1: But that's all I'm gonna say about the Post. I'm
Speaker 1: going to come back with Ben on the other side,
Speaker 1: give him my test. Stay tuned in America, Welcome back
Speaker 1: to America. I'm here here with Ben Dominicch, host of
Speaker 1: the Big Ben Podcast, which is raw a being good
Speaker 1: fun this week because it talks a lot about gambling
Speaker 1: and stuff I didn't know about it, and I learned
Speaker 1: a lot from it this week, So I would encourage
Speaker 1: you to go and listen to it before I go there, Ben, though,
Speaker 1: I want to run my test. Have you ever heard
Speaker 1: of the screenwriter Richard Curtis.
Speaker 3: That does ring a bell?
Speaker 1: He wrote, He's the King of the wrong Coms? Right?
Speaker 1: He wrote Four Weddings and Funeral Love.
Speaker 3: Actually funeral is what I was thinking, yes, Nodding Hill.
Speaker 1: So last night I was sucking into watching Nodding Hill
Speaker 1: again by my wonderful wife of forty four years. I
Speaker 1: haven't seen it in twenty seven years. So how long
Speaker 1: have you been married?
Speaker 3: I'm well at sixty. I think about things in terms
Speaker 3: of when I met my wife. We are eight years
Speaker 3: this we will be eight years this year.
Speaker 1: So you don't have a chance yet to forget any
Speaker 1: movies that you saw together. And so I didn't remember anything.
Speaker 1: But my theory is now that women remember every line
Speaker 1: and scene in a rom com and men. Don't you
Speaker 1: agree with me?
Speaker 3: Oh no, I have to disagree with you. And the
Speaker 3: reason is, well, wait a minute, okay, I think it
Speaker 3: depends on your definition of romantic comedy.
Speaker 1: Well, Nodding Hill Love, actually four weddings at a funeral?
Speaker 1: They're like all.
Speaker 3: Rom coms I know, But I think my wife is
Speaker 3: a bit more of like a Princess Bride era kind
Speaker 3: of person of something like that is more in her speed,
Speaker 3: like the thing that is. I mean, you have to
Speaker 3: keep in mind you're talking to someone from like the
Speaker 3: American pie generation.
Speaker 1: Yeah, comedy.
Speaker 3: The things that we actually quote back and forth to
Speaker 3: each other most of the time are usually stuffed from
Speaker 3: like Destin show.
Speaker 1: Now, and I took my boys to see Team America
Speaker 1: when I thought it was actually a fun movie, and
Speaker 1: I was I'm still having that down.
Speaker 3: But badness, it's a fun movie.
Speaker 1: It was a fun movie, but it wasn't for them
Speaker 1: at that age.
Speaker 3: It was I think, I think that what you're you're
Speaker 3: you're unfortunately speaking to someone who's whose wife's favorite genre
Speaker 3: is horror films. Oh, exactly the same thing.
Speaker 1: All right. Now, let me go to the gambling. I
Speaker 1: had no idea not and you know, the the Guardians
Speaker 1: of Lost class a forever he gambled. Apparently, it's alleged
Speaker 1: forty eight different games over a couple of seasons. Luis
Speaker 1: Ortiza out of the game now too, so that the
Speaker 1: Guardians Indians have been crushed by this. Now I find
Speaker 1: out you could have made. It's not a prop bet. Really,
Speaker 1: I don't even know how you described that market on
Speaker 1: what someone's going to say on the Colbert Show that's nuts.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So this these prediction markets have gotten more attention
Speaker 3: because obviously they advertise a ton calshee and and people
Speaker 3: have probably seen you know, stuff about poly market on
Speaker 3: you know online. Yeah, And the prediction markets that usually
Speaker 3: get talked about are ones that are about significant events.
Speaker 3: You know, they're they're you know, what is the fed
Speaker 3: rate gonna be? There's you know, I literally heard an
Speaker 3: ad for something you know on the way over that
Speaker 3: was about you know, you know, do you want to
Speaker 3: pick for I can't remember which one of them, but
Speaker 3: do you want to predict the the Academy Award for
Speaker 3: the next you know, Oscar winner, that kind of thing.
Speaker 3: But what people don't talk about in this is that
Speaker 3: they're so unregulated that in the instance of that Chris
Speaker 3: Hayes of MMS I guess it's MS now now it
Speaker 3: talked about he was there was a market for something
Speaker 3: he had already done. He had done the Colbert Show,
Speaker 3: which they tape typically at around five o'clock, and then
Speaker 3: there was a market that had opened about things that
Speaker 3: he would say on the program, which creates a horrible
Speaker 3: situation where you're predicting something that has already happened, and
Speaker 3: that stuff is perfectly okay according to these prediction markets,
Speaker 3: which by the way, California does not allow sports gambling.
Speaker 3: But you will be able if you are in the stands,
Speaker 3: you know, in San Francisco for the Super Bowl, you
Speaker 3: could you could, you know, do the kind of prediction
Speaker 3: market play that is a swap or a contract considered
Speaker 3: different from a sports gambling that doesn't have to go
Speaker 3: through a sports book. And I think that that's a
Speaker 3: real problem, and I think the Congress is waking up
Speaker 3: to it. But it's there's a lot of people who are,
Speaker 3: I think, blowing a lot of money on me.
Speaker 1: So what what that raised for me? After I listened
Speaker 1: to it With the backgrounds of the Guardian, players being
Speaker 1: banned from baseball effectively for the rest of their careers,
Speaker 1: whether or not they're convicted. I don't know. Do you
Speaker 1: think baseball has the regulatory structure or the NBA or
Speaker 1: anyone to stop prediction market gambling by players versus gambling gambling.
Speaker 3: I think that they do not, especially because the and
Speaker 3: I didn't really get into this on the show, but
Speaker 3: I think you're catching on to something there, which is
Speaker 3: that the adiction markets are technically you know, they're governed
Speaker 3: by the FEDS. They're governed under the CFTC, and they
Speaker 3: do not have the kind of state regulations and things
Speaker 3: like that. And they also, you know, obviously are involving
Speaker 3: contracts and swaps that are considered different than you know,
Speaker 3: legally than sports gambling, even though if you look at
Speaker 3: the actual makeup of their markets, the majority nearly the majority,
Speaker 3: I should say, the vast plurality, I should say, of
Speaker 3: these prediction markets. The money that is moving around is
Speaker 3: about sports, so it's just a substitute for sports gambling
Speaker 3: in states that haven't allowed it.
Speaker 1: I think the commissioners have got to wake up to this,
Speaker 1: which brings me a course to the Super Bowl. In
Speaker 1: my last guest that I can ask this, I'm going
Speaker 1: to be flying, which is very good because I'm torn.
Speaker 1: Mike Rabel's an Ohio state guy. But I can't imagine
Speaker 1: having to live with the Patriots fans during the summer
Speaker 1: if they win another ring. And I don't care about
Speaker 1: the Seahawks, so I'm not going to care about anything
Speaker 1: except what the reaction to Bad Bunny is going to be.
Speaker 1: What has Roger Goodell made a momentous error or is
Speaker 1: it in fact something that will be forgotten by next week.
Speaker 3: I think this is an error, but I also think
Speaker 3: it's gonna be something that's forgotten by next week because
Speaker 3: I think one thing that Bad Bunny is is he's
Speaker 3: actually not that bad. He's pretty corporate and the bad
Speaker 3: in the in the you know, likely the buck sort
Speaker 3: of the the expectations of the most powerful sports league
Speaker 3: in America. I don't think that's gonna happen, and I
Speaker 3: think that that's going to be something that probably, you know,
Speaker 3: some leftist guts get worked up about, who want him to,
Speaker 3: you know, show up and have some anti ice display
Speaker 3: or something like that. It's possible that he does that,
Speaker 3: but I think on a certain level, if you do that,
Speaker 3: then that's a toxic moment that will follow you the
Speaker 3: rest of your career and eliminates the whole bunch of people.
Speaker 3: And again, Republicans buy shoes too, So it's one of
Speaker 3: these things that I think ultimately will probably be forgotten.
Speaker 3: As for the game, I just have to say, can
Speaker 3: we can we just applaud Sam Darnolds. Yeah, the guy
Speaker 3: just such a rough career, got chewed up in New York,
Speaker 3: blamed for everything, cast off by everybody in can Vikings.
Speaker 1: Let him go yea yeah, and he's in the super
Speaker 1: Bowl now. I got to get a word from you though.
Speaker 1: On Mahea and Malanowski in New Jersey. I was on
Speaker 1: Fox today talking about Maheah. I think Apak sent a message,
Speaker 1: which is you can't be on the fence about Israel.
Speaker 1: To mister Malanowski and every other Democrat. You can. You
Speaker 1: might be a far left wacko and hate Israel, but
Speaker 1: you can't be on the fence.
Speaker 3: What do you think, Ben, I think I think that
Speaker 3: they did. And I think the part of that is,
Speaker 3: you know, the assumption, uh, you know what is what
Speaker 3: is the what is the line from uh one of
Speaker 3: Paul's epistles? You know, because you were neither hot nor cold?
Speaker 3: I hask you out of my mouth. You know.
Speaker 1: I think that's actually revelation, isn't it.
Speaker 3: It's I think I thought it was Lilly Pizzles. But
Speaker 3: it's one of the things that I think is is
Speaker 3: true of this nature now for apac which says we
Speaker 3: are not going to tolerate this type of wavering neutrality
Speaker 3: because we're gonn assume that you're going to be you know,
Speaker 3: at the whim of the trends. We need to know
Speaker 3: where you stand.
Speaker 1: I think that's where it was, and I think message
Speaker 1: received for every Democrat. Ben Dominich, back to parenting. I
Speaker 1: have a great weekend. Enjoyed the Super Bowl as much
Speaker 1: as as possible with a baby in two toddlers and
Speaker 1: enjoy I got.
Speaker 3: A permission to go to a party. To you, it's
Speaker 3: a big deal.
Speaker 1: You're going to a party. Yes with toddlers?
Speaker 3: No, No, myself. Good evening off?
Speaker 1: Oh you gotta coupon you won. I salute your wife.
Speaker 1: That's amazing. Thank you, Ben for joining us. We'll talkt
Speaker 1: you again next week. Don't go anywhere America. Coming back,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna talk a little bit more about this New
Speaker 1: Jersey primary after the break. Oh, I thought we were
Speaker 1: because we threw up the picture of something other. But
Speaker 1: here's the deal coming up after the break. There's a
Speaker 1: runoff in New Jersey a primary New Jersey last night.
Speaker 1: There are two candidates who are within six hundred five
Speaker 1: hundred both to each other. In Mahea and fellow, and
Speaker 1: I will talk to you about her and him after
Speaker 1: the break, as I did this morning on Fox.
Speaker 3: They can