When War Breaks the Rules And the Markets

speechwriter, many other kinds of writer and, again, most importantly and most nobly podcast

“host. I'm joined as always. By my panel of experts up first, our military expert, Chad”

Say hello. Hey, everyone. Former US Army officer with more than 16 years of experience, 11, which was active duty in combat, command, multinational military planning with the plums to Iraq, Korea, Europe, and I have two master'saries from Maryland, one from Hopkins. Super glad to be here. That's two more than I have. Also, with me is our energy expert. You know him as Mr. Global. Please welcome Matt Randolph. Hey, Nat. Yeah. I am the energy expert

and Forbes contributor. That's that's me, Mr. Global. Everyone knows him. We don't have them without mention. He knows. No, I just kind of forgot who you are. I was doing that thing

where I was trying to introduce you guys to each other. So you'd say each other. Have you

made my wife? Yeah, exactly. You know, picking up on the cue. I'm like trying to make eye contact with Chad, but over the zoom, it's not quite working. Yeah. Oh, I guess I could

“confuse with Mr. worldwide. So I followed them both on TikTok. It's confusing. Who”

is that? Mr. Apple? Oh, that's Pitbull. Yeah. He's kind of like you're a lot of people ask me if I knew who Mr. worldwide was and I have no idea who he, I didn't know it was Pitbull. I don't know Pitbull either or Mr. worldwide. Okay. Well, I feel like we haven't helped. That mecing and Spanish isn't going to help. I don't think either, but you have an exciting Google ahead of you. Yeah. To know who you've been compared to these many

years. Okay. So we are recording this at an evening of April 6th. We are recording this

in the evening of April 6th. A lot has happened since we recorded our last episode. And by that, I mean, we appeared on the find out podcast and everyone on America's talking about it. But also, a lot's happened in global news and in American political news. And I want to start with you, Chad, if we could talk a little bit about what's going on in Iran and

“with the Trump administration right now. Yeah. So one of the biggest things that came out”

was his speech that he had on Wednesday and the subsequent tweets. I don't know if you saw him through social just an unhinged post where he's threatening Iran with what is essentially war crimes. And to be absolutely clear, Trump's statements that he's going to order strikes on civilian infrastructure, including power plants. If he actually carries it out, it's going, those are considered war crimes, period and of story. Now, there's this question as to whether

he would actually go through with it, since he's kicked the can down the road a couple times before. And Trump's deadline being Tuesday and this not coming on until Wednesday, who knows? Maybe he will. I mean, it's going to be Tuesday, so maybe we'll get that taco Tuesday. Anyone actually won't actually do it. But if he does, Trump is violating the law period, I thought we were going to talk about new stuff. No, and it's just kind

of funny because it was not funny at all because there's a lot of confusion surrounding this because we signed and ratified treaties pertaining to the Geneva conventions, which designate what is allowed under the law of armed conflict. Now, the supremacy clause in the United States says that when a treaty is ratified as we ratified those, it becomes federal law. So not only would this be in an international crime, it would also be a US federal

crime. And I'm not just talking about Trump's period. And that's the thing is, is thanks to the Supreme Court, it might not matter. But the crux of what I'm talking about isn't necessarily for Trump because we know he can find a way to fining a lot of this. It's those that would be carrying out the orders. They are subject to the same scrutiny. And the I was just following orders bit does not work. Now, there has been some claims that striking

things like power plants is considered dual-use, meaning they support military efforts, also being used by civilians. But there's a constant, there's a big constraint here that is called proportionality. Within the law of armed conflict proportionality, it's used to determine the civilian, if this civilian harm is excessive compared to the military game from that strike. And if that harm is excessive, the strike is not legal. And so argument

I keep seeing is, well, these are dual-use, yes, power plants are dual-use, fuel systems are usually dual-use transportation, but in while the military uses, and so do millions of civilians. Meaning, you don't get broad, cart blanche blank check to just destroy them because there's some military benefit. By that law, by that logic, we would be fire bombing farms because they feed troops or destroying hospitals because troops can be rehabilitated and sent back to

the front line by them. So pretty much anything becomes a target in that logic. And it overrides

I think, unfortunately, you've seen so much of what paved way for that in terms of consent manufacturing

“is backing Israel's actions in Gaza. Both sides of the political aisle, if you want to look”

at it as two sides, both major political parties in America fully supported that. And whether or not you agree with every country in the world other than the U.S. and Israel, that that was a genocide and is a genocide, or you agree with the U.S. and Israel that it isn't. And I personally tend to agree with the rest of the world. And my knowledge from history, what a genocide is. But I think when you look at the way that we built a mechanism there, whether or not you agree

with them, it is very clear that our opposition party drew the line as to, we will not be we will be resisting the protesters, more strongly than we will be resisting this policy. In fact, it's probably any dissent towards this policy, any suggestion that these are war crimes that bombing hospitals, executing doctors, whether arms tie behind their back, that anything like that could be considered a war crime, was completely squashed. We had all citizen protests against

that, you know, have the military turns against it for that matter. So I feel like it's, you know, I hate to say like, "Oh, what is Trump care about federal crimes?" But what are the American

“people care about war crimes? Is the whole question I find myself asking?”

Yeah, and that's the thing is, we're not supposed to be able to inflict suffering for suffering sake. That's something that was a core value of the United States. We're supposed to be one of the pinnacles of human rights. And I'm worried that we're going down a rabbit hole that is very bad because we're allowing things like Trump to say we're going to bomb them back to the stoneators, send them to hell. So these are admissions. And he's saying he said it wasn't a war crime because

they were animals. That was the most recent one. Yeah. And yeah. So, and I just, it's just something that is we are facing down essentially kind of a ghost of our future. If we start going down this route, we are going to be much worse off. And I'm not just talking from a standpoint of our own morals and values. Obviously, this is going to have implications for other things, economics, etc. What about impeachment? Not, do we try that already? No. I mean, you know, midterms coming up if war crimes are

committed and impeachment. That would, is that a thing? It would be extraordinarily difficult. I mean, and I've heard the 25th Amendment situation come up where it's just because it requires two thirds of both the house and two thirds of the Senate. I just don't think we'll get there. Yeah, there's a good shot. There's almost a definitive shot we win the house has Democrats, but and there's a better, the slightly better 50% chance we win the Senate, but that's not two thirds.

And I don't, they're never going to remove them. I just, they'll, they just don't want another

feather in their hat when they're going after them for impeachment, even though it's not going to work. You know, I mean, the thing that I keep coming back to is not to be conspiratorial. I mean, I don't think it's in spirit of sororials to say that, you know, a lot of the Democrats who would have to be involved in impeachment hearing are still taking money from APAC still need those things to not be categorized, you know, attacking aid workers, things like that to not be

categorized as war crimes because they've dropped up their entire political identity on that narrative over the past two, two and a half years. And for them to turn and say, hey, you know, that double tap, that attacking the aid workers, that, you know, attacking food supplies to civilians, evacuate bombing the place that you evacuated, you told civilians to evacuate to, that getting publicly drawn out and categorized as war crimes is going to force a lot of

these Democrats into the light to say, well, yeah, of course, I knew that was happening in Gaza. You know, teenagers with a cell phone could see that that was happening in Gaza, you know, like,

they lost the information war on like, you know, we would never bomb a hospital. All these

things that turned out to not be true. And now they kind of have to maintain this narrative of, well, ultimately, all these things are justified, reflecting harm is justified, you know, if you are, if you're perceived threat, I suppose, which is like, you know, a completely illogical argument, but I don't see them, you know, I don't see them publicly airing the definition of war crimes anytime soon when that's still still whether what's funding their campaigns. They wouldn't even care.

But that's the thing, and I wanted to ask Matt this is does, I mean, is any of this going to matter

“for Trump? Because he's so, so hyper-focused on the markets and stuff. I think he's trying to do this”

to inflate to kind of create some impact on the markets positively. Does this actually stabilize the energy markets? It seems like things are getting crazier and crazier. I mean, what do you think on that before we get right into? Can we talk about where we are at the energy markets right now? Yeah. Yeah. Not good. Not good. Period. End of podcast. Thanks. Yeah. To catch up. Sure, that's a book. Yeah. To catch some of the folks up that may not have heard

on your phone, that's the future market. That's the paper market when we call it. There's also

a physical market. What it actually cost to purchase the actual oil. And like I said, when you look

“up oil prices on your phone, you're looking at the paper market, the futures market. That's why”

it's so easy to be manipulated by the administration or anyone else trying to profit off of this war. Typically, the physical market is within a dollar or two of the paper market. So if oil's 100, typically physical oil is 100 and 1 or 102. Well, today West Texas intermediate, which is US oil, was trading $40 above the futures market. And what that means is that buyers mostly in the Middle East because a lot of people may not realize this, but the Middle East does produce a lot of

Arab light oil, which is very similar and comparable to West Texas intermediate. A lot of people think

they just produce heavy crude. That's not true. They produce a lot of light crude. It's just like ours. So today it was trading on the physical market at $40 above the futures market, which means US oil was selling for around $150 a barrel. The physical market is what actually sets gas prices. Now, we normally just use the futures market one because it's free access on all of our phones.

“You have to actually pay to see the, you know, you got to pay like plaats or SPC global to see”

the physical markets. But if this continues because last week we saw that happen with Brent and it came back down this week, but now US oil is trading over $14050 a barrel physically. If that sustains for any amount of time, gas prices in the United States are going to easily surpass the record that was set in 2022. This is all about time, just like everything else with this war. If this is a really quick little blip on the radar, it'll give us some bumping gas prices,

but if this lasts for like two, three, four weeks, gas prices are going to go nuts. They're going to go bonkers like so I'm not predicting a top, but I will predict if it stays here. We'll surpass the national average record in 2022 easily. And what does that do with US oil producers? Are they going to start exporting more rapidly or like you're going that yeah. So they saw this coming actually and it was starting to happen a little

bit last week, but it wasn't enough to really talk about. So in March, we exported a record amount of oil that we've ever exported out of the country. Mostly because there's a lot of shortages around

the world in April, we will beat that because the first thing producers are going to do in the oil

they have in storage, in the oil they have anywhere, they're going to try to get it out to the international market as quick as possible. And that's going to drastically reduce our inventories in the United States. So this is kind of a double-life sword because our oil is going to be trading at 150, the physical oil, not the futures, but the physical plus our inventories are going to be rapidly shrinking because these oil companies are setting on millions of barrels of oil that was

worth, you know, $100 a couple weeks ago, not worth 150. So the only constraint to that will be logistics, how many tankers can they get there? It wouldn't surprise me at all. If in the next two, three, four days, there's a headline record number of tankers headed to the United States.

“We saw this in 2022. So that's what I would be looking out for. That's my gas price warning”

for the week. So spell it out for me a little bit. What does that mean then? What's the potential consequence of U.S. oil stores getting depleted? Like our local supplies as exporters or as producers hustle to export this now more valuable to them oil? What if suddenly our oil supplies our oil, you know, backup is suddenly depleted or suddenly significantly less than it was before? What potential consequences do we have there? So this is just going to be a gas price thing.

We won't get ourselves into a situation where we're having shortages. They're not going to sell all of our oil. Like they'll leave some. We're not going to experience it because shortages would be devastating even for them, right? So but there will be a big up-up tick in exports. They're going to capture as much of that profit as possible. That's why companies exist to pay those shareholders. And we're going to pay for it. And it's yet to be seen how we're going to pay

for it. But we are going to pay for it. I mean, we're already paying for it. But we're about to pay even more. At the pump, you're saying. At the pump. Yeah. Speaking of profit hearing off of the global oil shortage and the war in Iran now, I'm curious, Chad, given the situation that we've

militarily right now, is there a profit motive to extending this war for other world powers? Now, is it now that the U.S. is less stable or for other reasons? Is there a strategic advantage for, say, China to hope to this war or help this war continue? Absolutely. There's outside of the Russia making money from high gas prices. China has insulated themselves very well on the oil front. They have a massive reserve. So they are going to, and Matt probably knows

better than I do, but they have well over 120 days of reserves that they can survive this for the long-term. Well past what is probably going to be political, eviable for Trump to survive it because of the pain that's going to be felt here in the United States as Matt was just talking about. The incentives for them to keep going, though, are encouraging Iran to keep going, go beyond that, though. What they're seeing now is a complete undermining of the U.S. led world order. The U.S. is spending a bunch of

“money there, distracted from what is things that are important to China and Russia such as Ukraine,”

specifically. We are having to prioritize equipment that may have gone to Ukraine. Now it's going to be used by us. We are redeploying assets from the South China Sea and the East China Sea that traditionally would have been our, like, find out, like, common China, let's see what you got. Now, we don't have those assets. They're being moved to deal with this Iran situation. That was self-inflicted. But a broader point is Iran itself has an incentive to keep this going.

This is what the leadership of Iran is thinking right now. Time is really no longer an enemy to Iran. They see it as a weapon that they can use against the United States. The regime survived this opening shock. Sure, the IITOLO was killed, but the IRGC replaced them relatively quickly.

The regime did not collapse and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

They're still intact. Their oil is moving, especially to China, both the public reporting out of places like Reuters and stuff. And the U.S. government is saying that Iran likely still retains meaningful missile and drone capabilities, even after taking heavy losses from the United States. And that means Iran has every reason to believe that the longer this drags on the more pressure of this war will shift on to the Trump administration, on to Washington, and that economic

pain is going to spread, which is going to build that political pressure. And I've been thinking about this. It's almost like an UNO reverse situation where the Iranian regime may actually end up outlasting the Trump administration because of how much of a quagmar this is becoming. And Iran correctly calculated they don't need to beat the U.S. militarily. They just need to stay standing long enough that the costs start mounting and they outweigh the gains for the U.S.

Plus, Iran now has a change in their equation. If the straight is at risk, if they can keep the straight of harm moves at risk, all of those global markets are going to stay nervous

and it shows that the United States is not powerful enough. They're no longer strong enough

to fully restore the old status quo. And that means they realize that we have a lot more leverage than we thought. So this is benefiting, Tehran. It's benefiting Russia because of the distractions because U.S. is spending a lot of money focused on Iran and all of that exquisite weaponry that we would have, all of the high end missiles, the jazzams, which is the joint

“air strike missile or something. I can't remember if I'm a hit but the jazzams, the Tomahawks,”

all of those high and missiles, China's really loving that we're using all those up because those were supposed to be for them. So those three, what we would have traditionally called this part of this axis of evil, they're really loving this. And unfortunately, it's leaving us strategically weakened over the long term. And that is why we don't have universal single payer health care. So, every one of those missiles, a lifetime of health care. Okay, let me ask you this, when you say

that the Iranian regime could outlast the Trump administration, are you saying that American democracy entirely will collapse or are you saying that you think that Trump will be voted out before the Iranian regime has a has an actual regime change. And if so, are you saying going on records saying that you believe we will have another presidential election? Yeah, so I am, I am, I'm a neutral on this

prediction. I'm just asking. Yeah, no, I am amenently optimistic about you know, I have always been

“optimistic about the United States. We are at a dark period. I truly believe we've been in darker”

periods before. We've fought a civil war. We've had college kids shot on campuses. We've been in places. This is not great. But I think we are still somewhat resilient in that when I talk about

we were talking about earlier, which is not out of the question quite frankly, it could happen. We could see so much pain being applied to the United States because I foolish, not just this is, but everything, the tariffs, whatever, all compounding that Republicans start going, okay, we need to shift this and fix this. After the midterms, that's possible, but absolutely after

“2028, there will be a changing of the guard that I believe the Trump administration will be removed”

through our normal processes. That being said, the Iranian regime is going to stay and they're going to be in a better, more powerful place as a regime. The country of Iran will not, unfortunately, they're just going to suffer a lot over the next few years. But the regime and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the besiege, all of them will rebound from this and it's likely we're going to have to be dealing with this for quite a long time. And it's because we just are not willing

to take the full measure of what would be required to destroy them, thankfully, because I believe that would end up being a full invasion, which would be quite a different scenario that I just, I don't think, that's just a bit of an episode if you haven't listened to it. Yeah, for sure. Yeah, well, I hope that you're correct, and that this is a dark period in America and not

the end result of everything that America has always been boiling to the surface and coming to

“fruition. And I certainly hope that it's something, I think something that gives me hope in the”

idea that some degree of that idea does still exist and that this is an aberration versus again, the end results of things we chose to ignore for a long time. In many ways, the ugly manifestation of the original sin of America has come to fruition and are allowing someone like Trump to hold power, being a pure spite, anti-acquality. And it's something that we never manage as a country to fully put together. But I would say that one of the things, or fully

balance, right, is these beliefs. But I think one thing that does give me hope towards that is that a lot of Americans in ways that you didn't see in recent years seem to be if not going across party lines becoming increasingly aware of, you know, I'm not joking when I say this could be universal healthcare. I think a lot of Americans are becoming increasingly aware of where is this money being spent, how are countries, other countries receiving funding

that we're not receiving. Well, hold on, hold on, hold on. Why is all my money going to Israel? Hell, look at MTG. Yeah, and don't give me wrong. I think that it is an absolute failure of the democratic party that they're getting scooped on criticism of Israel by anti-Semitic far-right conspiracy theorists. It's like that is a very dangerous territory to be in. And, you know, I don't think MTG is coming after Israel in good faith, right? But it's also a failure of the

“inability to criticize that, that's why, you know, right, when you're so able to slip in there.”

But I'm not speaking specifically with this, where I think even, you know, you're seeing, you're talking about results that people are going to have in the midterm, I think prices going up, the groceries didn't get cheaper, all these things. I don't want to be overly optimistic,

but I think Americans are finally figuring out that corporatism doesn't have their best interests

in mind. And I'm curious what you think, Mr. Global, about, you know, how far, how far, what's the impact on the American consumer going to be if this war continues? And truly, like, how much can the American consumer tolerate beyond what's already happening? Yeah, I'm actually curious as Jen X perspective on that same question you just asked me, too. Like, is he as optimistic? Because millennials, we're generally more optimistic. What is the, what is the Jen X

thing? Is it just, who my, it might too flowery? No, look, I, Americans are rebellious bunch of people. And we like to really test our boundaries. And, you know, during this time in our history, we decided to test the boundaries of democracy. It's just another thing quirky thing that Americans do. But as far as, you know, prices, it's going to be bad. Like, I mean, we've lost 30% of our fertilizer, food prices are going to go up. We have inflation predictions

that are just sort of roofed. Like, people are already getting $1,000 electric bills. They're home. They're health insurance. I mean, I'm about you guys, but mine's like two grand a month now, like it is insane how people are expected to survive. And all of this is just going to exacerbate that even more. And to your point chat about China, having 120 days or the oil, um, that would be if they got zero imports. Yeah, correct. Yeah. So it's important to note that they really have like

over a year. They have over a billion barrels. And the only reason we know that is because we can see

it was satellite imagery because they won't tell us like they don't want telling us stuff because we tend to use it against them. But, um, the whole move for China to stop their exports wasn't necessarily

down on this war and saying we can make this even worse by cutting off our exports to, you know,

“Southeast Asia and Australia and causing gas shortages across that part of the world. So China's”

heavily involved in the war. We don't talk about it much, but it's absolutely true because they don't need to stop their exports. They're still getting their oil from Iran. They're still getting their oil from Russia in other places. They're still getting the oil from Venezuela. I know all the mega crowd thinks that we took Venezuela as oil and its ours, but a big shocker, they're still selling oil to China. Um, they're just doing it through Donald Trump.

So it's going to be bad. That it's, it's going to get worse. And it's frustrations. Russia's

taking measures too. They, it's almost like a double-edged where we're being hit from both sides.

So whereas China's able to economically thumb their nose at us, Russia is providing that intelligence directly to the Iranians. They're taking Iranians Shahid drones and they're configuring them in a, in a better way. And it's so that they are more effective and then giving them back to Iran to use against us. And I fully believe, and now there's more intelligence reporting coming out that that shoot down of that F-15 where we got back to the pilot and the weapons, the weapon

system officer. That was based on Russian intelligence. And the frustrating things were doing nothing about it still. And you'll let's be in a little bit because we haven't actually talked about that

and happens since the last episode. Yeah. So Trump is doing nothing to counter Russia's and frankly

China's, China's economic efforts to undermine our efforts in Iran. He's not doing anything to counter Russia's efforts to undermine our military efforts because Russia is sharing not only equipment, but also upgraded Iranian equipment back to them, also sharing intelligence. And all of it is specifically designed to kill Americans. And I get the fact that this war was started by the United States. This is our war to own. But when Russia is seen as being complicit in

providing the assets and the ability to kill Americans, traditionally the Americans would move against them. The administration would move against them. Whether it was in Vietnam, when it was the Soviets in the Chinese, whether it was when we saw during Iraq, when the Iranians were providing those explosively-formed projectiles, we did something, sanctions, anything. We are not doing anything. And it's like Donald Trump, what if for whatever reason has such an infatuation with Vladimir Putin,

that he is unwilling to punish the Russians at all, even though their direct action, likely shot a pilot shot down over enemy territory. I have a stat on this. Yeah, go for it. Can we call this the stat of the week? Now, yeah. Can you do that voice you do? Where you

“sound like the guy from EA Sports and who's stat of the week? Stat of the week? Stat of the week?”

Stat of the week, sorry. Okay. Our wrong success rate, launching missiles was 3%. Right? At the beginning of the war, they're launching all these missiles 3%. Since they started getting intelligence from Russia, it's up to 27%. That's the stat of the week. And we do just a little bow on what Chad just said. It has, it has, now I'm no mathematician, but I would say it has cubed in a week. Yes, that's it. You can't say cubed. I can't say cubed.

Just say it went up a lot. I guess it's a percentage. And what happens when we decide we are actually going to start doing something in the Suez more kinetic and Russian Russian intelligence has not been addressed by the US administration. It just it baffles me why we are not only removing sanctions from Iran, but also assisting ignoring the fact that Russia is providing intelligence and weaponry that's going to end

up killing Americans. And what would this war have been like if Iran had a charismatic dictator rather than a religious autocrat who Trump doesn't really get along with? You know, so much of this

“seems to be as you mentioned emotionally motivated by his admiration for Vladimir Putin. I think it's”

it's really surreal, the degree to which I want to, oh yeah, what if this country had a white dictator who Trump liked? What if what if this country had a leader who was just wacky enough to be Trump's kind of, you know, strongman, unfortunately they do not. I don't, I don't think Iran needs a charismatic leader because that, you know, Lego movie propaganda game they got going on is

headset one. That was wild. Yeah. Why? Okay. It's actually you're talking about, but you sound insane. Tell the

“you sound like you. And then this respect to this gets a variety of community are having an”

episode. What are you talking about? Tell the people at home because I've seen this, but I'd love to hear a even being articulate. Have you not seen it? No, I have, but you're talking to a listener now. Yeah, it's a rainy and propaganda and I've seen multiple videos and they look like the Lego movie, you know, and the last one I saw was the one Chad brought up. It's this rap. I don't know who that is rapping, but it is, I mean, I'm shocked to come all day. I'm trying it. It looks to be,

but I don't know if it was just, I mean, I can't even hardly describe it. Like they are dropping

for like a bit of word bombs with their propaganda. Like I've never, it's, imagine propaganda

that's designed to entertain young people. Yeah. That is exactly what it is. The kids and the younger folks in this country will watch that and they'll get a kick out of it because they don't absorb a

“lot of the language in the words, but just the music it's put to and the storytelling they do.”

Like it's literally like entertainment. This is like, and they're putting it out. Yeah, rap videos, ptx, this track we're talking about. It's so long. It just goes on and on. Like it, it puts Kendrick Lamar and Drake to shame. Like that was if they get him and him. We're fun. It's a little bit like if they get him and him. Quick. Let's not put Kendrick Lamar and Drake on the same pedestal. I told us, Drake to shame. I'm not gonna sign off on that. First of all, that was

an un one-sided fight for the big getting. So yeah, it puts it puts Biggie Smalls and my nephew who wraps to shame, you know. But then we got our guy on our side tweeting out swearing and threatening to bring hell and destroy energy and stuff. That's not going to be the same praise a lot in a recent social. On Easter. On Easter. I don't entirely entertain the imaginative Barack Obama had done the thing that trumped it because who cares and there's nothing. Yeah, we have double standards. Big

big. But that was one that truly I had to just, well, any other president saying praise Allah on Easter would have been a story. I came up with the perfect excuse for Donald Trump saying,

“do you know what Jesus called God? Tell me. What language did he speak?”

Well, he's both depends on whether you trust Jim Kavizil. Well, I mean, a lot of his story and say that when Jesus said the word God, he would have said a lot. Right. Because he's not going to a lot of the imaginative pieces off a lot of people, but Donald Trump could have used that as an excuse. But hey, this is what Jesus said. A lot of people were saying he's trolling to. I'm like that's such

a level of cope. I mean, he's always trolling, but he's not like, oh, let me think about what.

Like it's just sort of he's got a sociopathic personality designed to have been engineered to get attention for 70 years. Like it's not like he's like, oh, I know what's going to get under there. Get their skin. It's just all attention to them. Well, and the thing is, is like, what he's saying? He was Christ like in that moment. Yeah. You know what? It's totally what he's technically. What do you say canceled episode two? Only technically. Literally. I'm just saying that one day.

So on on top of this whole thing though, what he's suggesting is it doesn't work strategically. There's just it doesn't work in flicking civilian suffering by a means of forcing the regime capitulation. It just doesn't work. It hasn't worked throughout history. Authoritarian regimes, especially Iran are built to absorb this type of pain and redirect the blame. So when you when we go in and we start knocking out power and water, people are not going to sit there and just do

the mental math on the political theory of why this is happening. They're going to be like, they bombed my power plant. I now hate them. I have no water because of the Americans. And this creates that rally around the flag effect. Even among people who already didn't like the regime, which there aren't many, but they're going to sit there and go, well, who can best fix this in the immediate? And they're going to say, well, I guess the the new Iatola and the Islamic Republic.

So when we hit nuclear sites and when we hit military targets, those people, they may still have some support as anti-aging pockets. They might still support the United States. But if you start making them suffer, they're going to focus on whoever can normalize the situation. And this means that you're not weakening the Islamic Republic. You're actually hardening it and you're handing

them exactly what is they need to unify. They're going to leverage the Islamic Revolutionary

Guard Corps. Consolidate control can crush any pro-Western descent and justify all of that

can't don't have water and power and cook your food. Historically, this hasn't worked. I mean,

“when you look at the blitz, not the blitz, there's a difference. The blitz, where Nazi Germany went”

and started a bombing campaign against the British, the intent by the Nazis was they were going to be like, we're going to cause so much pain and suffering that they're not going to support Winston Churchill. And they're going to back down and let's do whatever we want. The opposite happened. Operation Rolling Thunder was supposed to force North Vietnam to submit instead of strength and narrative that Ho Chi Minh was saying where he was like, we're resisting foreign aggression.

And then obviously, one of the most pointed examples we have right now is Russia. Russia is doing this. They're striking infrastructure, power, water in Ukraine, but the Ukrainians have shown that they're

extraordinarily resilient and they've rallied around Kiev. And if we think that Iran's going to

be any different, if the history is going to be any different on that, we are sadly mistaken. And I hate to the fact that I have to say, the Russians are doing this and we're considering it.

“Never do we really want to be the type that are like, hey, if the Russians are doing it,”

maybe that'll work for us. And also, not only that, but our history in the Middle East over the past 30 years has been, you know, where are these terrorist getting radicalized? Just because we blew up their homes. Why isn't that a eight-year-old who watched his brother died front of him on the street from an American bomb? Understand that that was actually freeing him from a greater global circumstance. You know, we wonder why there's destabilization and anti-American sentiment in these

pockets when our response to 9/11 was to be like, oh, let's kill more of them. Let's just like just for a couple of decades, we'll just constantly be, you'll just see the American flag and our military uniforms, just near death all the time for the span of entire person's life from zero to 18. Why does that guy hate America? I can't, it doesn't he understand that this was because of something that happened before he was born, it's person good. And so we're, you know, we're creating

“these circumstances where it's like, like you're saying, it's completely not only in terms of”

radicalizing terrorists, but just in terms of fomenting anti-American sentiment, like why would you be, you know, this Donald Trump is, if we can tell that he's emotionally motivated, it's not hard for other people, but why would you even bother to consider context if you're, if you're a tire-home or access to food and water is being destabilized, like of course we're creating enemies. You don't ever want to fight, like if I got into a fight with someone, I wouldn't want to get into a

fight with someone who's dream, it was to like die and a fight against me, like that's like we're going to war against countries and the people who live in those countries believe that they get to heaven by dying in war against us. Like that's literally the worst people to go fight. Well, you can understand that those war crimes are just one of those quirky things that Americans do, man. Yeah. Much like some overthrow democracy. People, they don't understand our quarks abroad,

is the thing. We may have this isolated authoritarian regime temporarily, but you all need to get over it, let us work it out. Yeah, but this idea that hitting power plants, it's like these people literally want to die in a war with us so they can go be with their God. Like they're probably over there like the power plants. Why don't you hit a subdivision? Like we're trying to make this happen. You know what I mean? Like they're these people in the Middle East, this is part of their religion

and we get caught up in these religion religious wars and we can't figure out why we can't beat them. It's because there's nothing they won't sacrifice to win. I mean, even if that's not true,

again, like we will be American oppression is always the presence in your life. You don't need to

be religious to see that as an enemy. Yeah, but I mean, this is the toughest opponent. Like you you cannot beat someone who's willing to die beating you. Yeah, during the during, I mean, and this is the same, they have the same mentality after the 1979 Revolution. I mean, you have the Iranah rock war. They were 14 year olds were being brought up given a weapon and told the fight. And that's, this is the level that's going to happen. There's a, if you ever get a chance

and I don't know, foresee anybody ever doing this, but if you ever get a chance to go to Baghdad, one of the palaces that, yeah, they can keep her hood. Yeah, that's it. Don't make a little trick for it. If you're nearby, I'm going to look up on travel velocity. Here's what we got. We got any specials. No, they banned Airbnb. It's a lot harder to stay there. They realized that Airbnb was bad for the local renter economy and people were hoarding housing and they had

it. Yeah, so all of a sudden it's like, it's hotels or nothing. But we, I like what's funny. We're joking. We're about to tell a really gory, terrible stat right after this. But so they have, if you ever look at the arches, you know, if you ever see the, you ever see the arches where the sword and it's supposed to be cast out of Saddam Hussein's hand underneath that is a path. And when you walk that path, you're like, oh, this is this cobblestone? No, it is the helmets of Iranian fighters

we are dealing with in this fundamental realm. They, the Iranian regime doesn't care what happens to anyone, so long as the Iranian regime survives. And that means we are going to be, if we want to inflict the type of pain on Iran that is necessary to get them to capitulate, I think it's a situation where we have to, and I don't want to do this. We have to compromise ourselves and we don't want to do that. We have to do things. It's almost like in Vietnam when we started age and origin

jungles and firebomb. It's the whole firebombing dresden thing. Are we willing to do that? And if not, we need to, Trump needs to take a step back and find a diplomatic way out of this with our allies.

“And that's the only way I think this is going to become some sort of end game is either we become”

evil and terrible as Americans more so than what we have previously done in some of the other situations.

Or we do what we've always done and say, hey, allies, come with us and work with us to,

and we maybe we can work this out with Iran, give and take some, they get something we get something to open this up. The thing is, I don't think that's in Trump's lexica. I don't think that is in he is a win it all costs and I don't care. And I'm worried that it's going to fundamentally change the structure of our fabric within the United States. Well, let's go back for a moment on that note and talk about the speech last week, because I think last week talked, we were speculating,

what's he going to come out and say? Because at the time, they were trying to find out podcasts. They were claiming that they, we talked a little bit on our own podcasts, but then on the find out podcast,

“it was even closer to the event and we were talking about would he claim victory and I think”

you guys successfully predicted that he would have some kind of mission accomplished, you know, some sort of success report or would he claim, you know, or would he announce an all that invasion? And I'm curious what you think of what he actually chose to talk about and how that affects what you were just talking about, which is, you know, our standing in the world or our perception, you know, of will potential allies help us see an end to this or is he taking steps in the

complete opposite direction? Like start starting with that speech, I feel like that's the lot. The most recent very public statement he's made about it.

The speech was basically a collage of his tweets for the last two weeks. Like there was

absolutely nothing in that speech that was of any substance or value and that was reflected in markets because oil went to like $115 a barrel as soon as the speech was over. Like he didn't say anything. I don't even know why he gave a speech. I still don't understand that, but it was just a repeat of everything he's already said, most of it lies. And really nothing new, like no forward-looking,

“you know, all the same old stuff. Yeah, I agree. I think we kind of nailed it. When we talked”

about what it was going to be, it was going to be a hodgepodge of I'm awesome. My one this war, maybe kicking the candy on he said two to three weeks. He, I mean, he talked about what he was going to do when it comes to the future destruction. But interestingly, he's becoming more and more

contradictory. First and foremost, this speech should have happened at the beginning of the war.

It's maybe it's not our requirement, but it is traditionally been the president that comes out and says, this is why lays out the case to the American people. This is why this is what is of immediate need for us to send our sons and daughters to spend our treasure and potentially our blood fighting this war. And he didn't do that. And so he kind of tried to come in and say, well, it was everything's working out great and everything's awesome as kind of a making up for the fact

that he didn't come out and make the case. Because I don't think anyone was going to look at the case he was going to make and buy it. And so because of that, he is now trying to sell this war backwards when we're all feeling the pain. And it's not it's not working. So he's he has this rhetoric where he's talking about how during the speech, he's like, the straight is going to naturally open. It's going to be when this is over, the fighting is over, the straight is going to naturally open.

And I'm like, well, then what the fuck are we doing here? Like, what are we doing? Why are we even doing? Let's just let's just finish the bombing campaign on the missiles and the drones and whatever. We know we're not going to get the regime overthrown. So let's just high five and move on and then the straight will naturally open. Well, the reason is that's not how the real world works.

realizations, understanding that even if the US just up and leaves, they now, the the total

“system and that maybe you can talk about this is they have a total system now and they're charging”

both something like $2 million a boat or something. That's not going away in my opinion,

but yeah, I saw that part of the speech and I'm like, what a bunch of nonsense, where it's like the whole speech is pretty much nonsense. But what a bunch of nonsense to say that the not the straight is naturally like, all right, cool, bro, we just killed your eye at all, we bombed a bunch of your people, destroyed your middle to your navy, your air force, we cool, all right, later, and that's where everything's going back. Yeah, so that's okay.

That's case scenario, we get ticket master to take over the toll booth that we cut. I don't think America's going to benefit too much otherwise. Yeah. So, you know, Matt, let me ask you this. It's now would now be a good time to have invested massively in renewable energy

15 to 25 years ago. Would now be a good time to have done that? What would I mean, we, I mean,

we really did, you know, not enough, but we have, we've spent a lot of money on renewable energy. It, it, no matter how much we would have invested, you know, we would still need a lot of oil and this would still be impacting us, but it would like to be a lot less. I would certainly agree that the impact would be less. The impact on the global economy, though, would probably still be the same. But yeah, the, I get asked this question a little bit. It was just a

oil from Iran. Yeah. You know, does this mean we're going to speed up renewables? And unfortunately, it doesn't feel like to me that it will. You know what I mean? People were already going to invest in that regardless of this. And I just, now you, the one thing I would suspect to see an increase in is a part of EVs. But when you talk about renewable energy in general, you know, when solar, I don't see that trajectory changing any, but I, I wouldn't be shocked at all. Well, especially as we've

high, I've discussed already that administration is actively fighting it. So yeah, the people who are going to invest are going to invest, making the calculation that they've made, not like, oh my god, all sudden to stuff is valuable. It's more that those investors are already there and in the past two years have had that business sort of reshuffled. Since, I mean, since Trump removed all those regulations for oil, when you say EVs, though, are we looking at, obviously, the price at the pump, but also just,

do you think that we'll see more people in general looking at their energy consumption as a way, as a way of, you know, cutting costs, you know, at home, or, you know, close to the consumer rather than at the source, you know, in addition to EVs, you know, there's a, there's a big balcony solar

“bill in, I think 32 states have balcony solar now, New York's trying to pass it right now. And,”

you know, balcony solar, I think is, I think, could offset 15 or so percent of the, I got to

get the actual statistics there, so don't, don't quote me on that, but somewhere between 10 to 20 percent

of the, the energy for home, but the point being, like, you know, I think you're seeing these little things cropped up. I'm curious, what do you think about, like, are we going to see more consumers finding consumer level ways of cutting those energy costs or oil costs? Oh, yeah, but, I mean, that's not really going to be related to Iran. That's related to the fact that our utility bills are insane in the United States. So, like the balcony solar,

things you were talking about, that was already occurring. And I expect that to grow significantly. Oh, the predates this past month, obviously. Yeah, a lot of jobs. I just curious, it's like, as we are now starting to look at, like, oh, no, the cost of driving a car might suddenly skyrocket. That's an overall increase in cost of living. Yeah, if I had a man, if I had a dollar for everyone that asked me if they should get solar,

like, I wouldn't even know who I am. I'd be on an island somewhere. But I feel like there's a button you get set up on TikTok for that. You're saying that, like, it's fantastical. Like, if someone would pay me for energy advice, like, that's kind of your whole thing, man. I'm pretty sure we could work that out. I mean, I'm trying to get ready to give it. The thing is, I can't tell someone if they should get solar or not. You know? I can tell them to look at, you know,

because everyone's situation is different. You're home. Do you have an efficient home? What's what are the utilities like where you live? Like, everyone has 50 things that they have to consider

“when making a purchase like solar because it's still very expensive. Now, I believe in the future,”

solar is going to be built into everything. You know, your landscape is going to have you're going to have fake trees that are giant tree looking solar panels in the future. That's just going to power everything. You're not even going to see the solar. You know, we already have solar roofs where you have normal looking shingles that are actually solar panels. So like, solar is going to take over everything eventually. But I think with EVs, there's a lot of fatigue. You know, if you go back,

you know, Bush, Obama. And then we had, you know, Trump. And by, like, it seems like every

gas prices. And those tended last a long time. And then, you know, occasionally, we get a year

“to a fairly comfortable gas prices. And then here comes the fatigue again for $455. I think that”

wears people down. And, and I do think a lot of people will really get this fatigue and just start looking at EVs, you know, a little more seriously now. And we're talking about full EVs, not just like a hybrid, uh, Honda situation. You're talking, you're talking, you're talking fully tripled. It could be, you know, a lot of people that have anxiety about EVs by the hybrids and sort of a

first step like a baby step. And then sometimes after that, you know, they're next purchase is the

full EVs. So that's all a matter of personal choice. One of them drives fatigue. Like, do you think his policies and his efforts have kind of backlashed EVs a bit? And you used to be kind of the lefty stance. Oh, we all drive EVs. And then suddenly there was this, and a lot of the Tesla owners. And I've seen the stickers where it's like, I don't support you on my spot about this before

“you went crazy. Type stuff. So are we, is that part of the fatigue? I think is, that's the”

movement just for you right now is ironic Tesla bumper stickers. Yeah, that could be the thing to save our economy if we can get those printed in America because the paper tariffs are going to kill us.

Otherwise, yeah. Well, they're, they're taking their Tesla emblems off their Teslas as if people won't

know it's still a Tesla. Like, I'm going to put these in the spot. Like, this is a site here. It was just the dumbest. That's probably like a golf. Is that a golf? Is that a golf? Is that a golf? I don't remember what's that called? A lot of them are replacing them with emblems that are the university they went to. So where you see a Tesla emblem on the back of a Tesla, it'll be like an Arizona state emblem instead. Oh, like, I think you're smart. Nice try, buddy. Oh, you wasted money on

private college and a Tesla. Yeah, I mean, yeah, Tesla, Chad. No, you got a Tesla? Oh, I drive a Nissan frontier. A nice one, though, a new one. It's not like, there's no nice Nissan frontiers. I say

that just makes myself feel good. And I'm not less impressed with you as a person. Oh, yeah,

“it goes from point A to point B. I think, yeah, I mean, at this funny that Musk was this kind of like”

enigma that liberals really embraced for a long time. And, you know, that was, especially sort of 90s into early 2000s, liberal environmentalist, you know, imagination. That was, you know, the climate movement or, you know, environmentalism is probably what have been called at the time that would have been more similar in Brella was looking at, yeah, EVs as being this big, and you know, him being a guy who was making it cool, which is in retrospect so funny to me,

because I can't, I've struggled to think of a less cool person in 2026 than Elon Musk. A person who's like, personality is less toxic to a brand than him. I like to single handedly be so adolescent and overwhelmingly repugnant that you can actually harm the cause of climate change is almost impressive to have a personality that bad. A lot of people don't connect the dots of what Donald Trump did for Elon Musk. Uh, you mean, how many American car makers have quit building EVs

since the public office? And who's left? Yeah, they gave them massive, massive breaks in subsidies and when he was when he was, when he was, you know, dealing with all that inefficiency over it, we saved us 50 grand or something over it. Do you mean while how many cuts did he get the same week? Well, I mean, Elon Musk has said for years, get rid of the subsidies, because he knew that, you know, US automakers were still in their developmental years of EVs

and they needed the subsidies and he had passed that. And if they got rid of the subsidies, he didn't need him to sell his cars. They needed him to sell theirs. Well, now they're gone and most US automakers have completely abandoned EVs, which means the soon to be true, you know, uh, it's going to make even more money because of Donald Trump. Well, it's not like he's already gotten, uh, like a full order of magnitude richer in the past 10 to 15 years. Is it? They all have

wait, hold on, come again. I'm just getting this. I'm just getting this. What happened in the 18 months before the pandemic until mid 2021? I'm sorry. I'm I'm sorry. I'm actually getting a largest upward transfer of wealth in the history of America or money as a concept. Oh, no. Oh, that's terrible. Oh, that's the most money that's ever been transferred to the wealthy ever. Okay, sorry. I wasn't mistaken about that. Turns out things are very bad. We're in trouble.

I hope that this war ends soon and that this increase in the price of physical oil last enough you were no longer than two days. Otherwise, we could be seeing a pretty severe impact on American life as we know it. But again, uh, completely falling into disarray and changing the fun,

paint a door is just one of those quirky American things that we do. You're going to feel

using that word. I feel like working word. I feel like I think Americans are quirky though. I think you hit on something there. Well, we like, well, yeah, I woke up today and the president said, praise all of and then he said more people to concentration camps. We're just like, all right, if we go, if we hit their infrastructure like Trump says and they close Bob Elman, Deb, that physical price for US oil is going to go parabolic above where it is now because the

“reason it's high is because the Saudi Arab light oil is hard to get out and the only way it's”

getting out right now is to the Red Sea. If they close Bob Elman Deb in response, hitting that

infrastructure, uh, that physical price in the United States is going to go to places I've never

seen or heard before. So we'll just see what happens. Well, and you want to, you want to have your next episode podcast, just wait till Iran retaliates against the energy oil and decolonization of infrastructure in other countries. It would be absolute unadulterated chaos, unbelievable amount of, of just economic human suffering. And that's like a whole 30-minute die trap. So I was all void that I was actually going to say leaning into your suggestion from last week, not maybe after

all this doom and gloom. I liked the least worst story of the week. All right, let's do what's the least or is it our upshot? Like what's the least least bad this can end up? Was that the idea? Yeah,

“no, it's the least worst story of the week I think. I mean, I'm going to launch into our, our,”

our, our, what was it? When do we say least worst story of the least worst story of the week? Yeah, least worst part of the week, least worst story of the week, uh, Maddie, do you, uh, feel, ready to jump it on this one too if you want? Sure. I mean, I hadn't thought of one, but I know, Chad might have seen something I put on X about Iran strategy of allowing a rock to, to give them passage through the straightaway moves. Um, so this will allow Iraq to, and everyone's

focusing on the oil prices and, you know, so Iraq's going to get to start exporting oil again. The last month their exports were down by 99%. Everyone's focused on the oil. I think this is military strategy strategy. In case there's a ground war, uh, Iran is establishing diplomacy, relationship and influence with the rock by allowing them passage through the straight. It's going to give them some influence over what Iraq does. If the US request, you know,

passageway or use of bases and it'll also help them with the militias in Iraq. I saw that whole move as a really good military strategy. Well, everyone else was looking at oil prices, but Chad's the military guy. You know, and I posted that on X. I was like, man, I hope Chad sees this. I don't know how to tag people on X. I barely use it. I don't know how it works. But what do you think, Chad? Do you think that that's a really good military strategy or do you think it's just about the oil? Because

I don't think it's about the oil at all. Everything we do in the middle of the Middle East at this

point has to deal with influence, which is always a military strategy. So if we are definitely

giving contracts or allowing something to happen because we have this vast power and influence, it is always going to be quick pro quo. We are always going to, we're going to look at a rock and be like, all right, we were super cool and are allowing you guys to do this thing. Now let us build up up along the border up near where what we used to be, fob cober up there back when I was deployed to Iraq. And we can and fob is forward operating base for those that don't know. But yeah, so they'll

“build up on there and it probably is so. But it is, I think it is good that because that does help”

the Iraqi economy and they desperately need it for sure. Yeah. All right Matt, that story does officially qualify as not the worst story I've heard all week according to Chad. So that's a good one. What is your least worst part of this week? Well, outside of Artemis 2, I'm a huge space nerd. So that was that was so cool. Just to see that, we're going back to the moon. I just saw today, we broke the record. I say, we humans have been from afar. Yeah, far as every any humans that was cool. But I will say,

and this is this, this is because I am a huge supporter of Ukraine. Ukraine has emerged as a global drone superpower. They have become so proficient and good at developing drones that they are now being sought after by other countries, including Saudi Arabia, other Middle Eastern countries because of their capability to defend against and also deploy forward offensive drones and be so effective against the Russians that they're finding ways to do trade deals with other countries and they're

not necessarily having to rely on the United States as much. And I think that's going to be such a

sought after future technology. And even the United States has somewhat woken up and we've

requested some of their assistance in encountering Iranian drones. And I think it's going to end up being mutually beneficial. I think what we're going to see is if not the Trump administration certainly Congress is going to recognize the benefit that Ukraine provides in this realm. And it's

going to allow us to, hey, let's work this out. We'll give you guys some of those interceptors and

“stuff that you need to protect your cities. You teach us how you've been doing this with these drones”

because they've created standoff distances that have been unheard of. They're using these drones where they're killing one of the Ukrainian commanders said that he had one guy who is killed 100

separate Russian troops. So we're seeing anywhere between 100 to 400 to one casualty ratios from

their drone units. And it's unheard of. And that is something that, you know, me, I'm a big proponent

“of Ukraine. I think not only from the fact that they are doing well on a battlefield with these”

drones, but also the international implications for them joining the Western Order as a beneficial player in drone technology and drone tactics. I think that's going to be such a huge development for all of us who want to counter what is going to be a very deadly weapon in the future. And while I wish a as rapid as possible cessation to the Russian hostilities in Ukraine, of course,

“I will agree that that is not the worst thing that I've heard all week. So chat. Thank you for the”

other least worst thing that I've heard this week. You both succeeded in the challenge. And I thank you for bringing up Artemis because I do think it's, I don't want to brush past it. There's a nerd inside of me and outside of me and is the current me who's a very excited about space travel. And I think it is important that we take a moment to have that amount of wonder. And I like to imagine that if the astronauts on Artemis farther away from Earth than anyone ever has been before

any human being in the history of our species, ever has been we're able to look down and look at Earth and maybe realize that in spite of all these conflicts that we're experiencing right now, you know, just how insignificant we really are. But that America is a little less insignificant than everyone else. For Chad Scott and Matt Randolph Mr. Global, I'm Nat Tausin and this has been American power from Findout Media.