10/26/26: Obama Rips Trump, Bibi Accused Of Treason, Oil Market On The Brink, Pentagon Doomsday Warning

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0:21 Good morning and welcome to Breaking Points. Calamitous problems with the studio this morning. Crystal is on her way into it to see if it can work for at least half of us. When she does get in here, we're going to have a lot of midterm updates. The early vote is in. Spoiler, it is absolutely cataclysmic for Republicans.

0:41 We're also going to be joined after that by Brett Erickson, who's going to talk to us about the surge in oil prices lately. He's in oil and gas. Analyst's latest updates on AI +. An unbelievable comeback from Lula da Silva in Brazil. In the second round and second and final round in the Brazilian elections there, he came back and trounced. Well, he didn't trounce Bolsonaro, but he was way behind, surged to a victory there. We'll talk about why and what happened there. Afterwards, we'll be joined by Manny Hassan, who will be talking to us about his new or Zateo's new documentary on AIPAC. Finally, of course, we don't want to let a day go by without talking about the marquee Michigan Senate race. A lot of

1:29 new Mike Rogers news. He made the mistake of doing a few interviews over the weekend. We'll talk about those in his attempts to to answer the question of whether or not he is a MAGA Republican. Now, let's check in with Crystal in the studio.

1:45 Hey, guys. It's been a little bit of a rough start to the morning here. I guess, Ryan, you were saying that not enough people signed up, so we weren't able to fully get our technical issues in the studio resolved. So, really, it's on you guys, to be honest.

1:55 Yeah.

1:55 A few weeks ago, we did say that if enough people signed up, we would fix the lighting in the studio. So, if you go to breakingpoints.com, get the free month trial. I think the problem is the free part. Everybody's doing the free month, and I guess too many of you are remembering to cancel free And so.

2:12 We haven't been able to buy those light bulbs yet.

2:14 But literally half the studio is blanketed in darkness as we speak. It's not actually the studio's fault. I think we can kind of own that one. We will figure out where to get light bulbs. and get this sorted out by tomorrow though.

2:27 Indeed.

2:28 And also just for a note, I had a cold over the weekend. You can probably hear my voice is still struggling. So hoping that it lasts for the show, but we will see how it goes. It's going to be a little touch and go. So I'm going to defer to Ryan here quite a bit today so he can dominate the conversation. It's not a misogynistic thing. It's just literally my voice is struggling. But let's go ahead and get to the latest with the midterm elections. We had dueling rallies with Barack Obama in Ohio and Michigan, and then Trump also following in his footsteps going to Michigan as well. Obama, Ryan, really proving he's still got the it factor on the campaign trail. Let's take a listen to a little bit of what he had to say.

3:03 You hear people say this is somehow radical. What is radical about that? Wanting everybody to have health care?

3:11 How's that radical?

3:15 Wanting everybody to have a place to live that they can afford?

3:18 How is that radical?

3:19 I don't know if you've noticed, but he seems very focused on home renovations. He should be on HGTV. Guys building a ballroom that's bigger than the White House. It's paved over the Rose Garden, put a helicopter pad on the South Lawn, and there's gold everywhere. What's up with the gold? Everything, more gold. He's got the White House looking like Saddam Hussein opened a cheesecake factory. Just gold everywhere.

3:57 You already got a pretty good senator right here. Imagine the power duo of Abdul and Alyssa. You've got a Muslim man. You've got a Jewish woman fighting for you in the United States Senate. That's something, Michigan, you can be proud of. There's a decency that we should expect. out of our public officials. And I don't know what's happened where the standards of behavior have gotten so low that somebody can run an ad like that. There's got to be something inside you where you just say, you know, no office is worth stooping that low. Because you know what?

4:44 Character matters.

4:46 It's easy to forget, Ryan, how talented he is. Also, what did you make of the whole Cheesecake Factory discourse?

4:53 That has really picked up on Twitter.com for people who are not following that. And to me, it's kind of a Rorschach test into how comfortable you are in your skin. You have some people who are out saying, oh, how dare he criticize?

5:09 He's such an elite.

5:10 How dare he come after The glory is Cheesecake Factory, which so many working class Americans revere and do their birthday dinners there. And it's like, no, you can you can say like, look, yeah, a lot of people think that Cheesecake Factory is good and have their birthday dinners there. But those same people would not want the White House to look like a Cheesecake Factory. And also, it is OK to make fun of the Cheesecake Factory. Their menus are 175 pages long.

5:36 That's absurd. I also, I have four kids. You know what it takes?

5:41 You know what it costs for me to go to Cheesecake Factory, especially if my mother-in-law's there too?

5:47 Like it's absolutely insane.

5:50 So yes, like this is like an over the top, like there's gold everywhere. It's like, it's ridiculous. It's called the Cheesecake Factory. It's OK to make fun of it. That doesn't make you an elite. Working people make fun of it, too. Nobody wants the White House to look like Cheesecake Factory. Crystal, what was your reaction to how the kind of spiral there?

6:10 Yeah, well, I mean, on the Cheesecake Factory thing, my favorite addition to the discourse was someone crunched the numbers and it's like, actually, there's vastly more Cheesecake Factories in Kamala one counties than there are in Trump one counties. But Putting that aside, I mean, I do think it's a sort of like condescending, LARPing, working class attitude of like, how dare you? Working class people couldn't possibly understand that the White House or imagine anything better for the White House than like Cheesecake Factory. But the other piece that is really significant there that I know you probably picked up on is Obama really actually, for the first time to my knowledge, embraced Medicare for all. And this is

6:46 Abdul's framing of Medicare for all is it's a continuation of the work that was done with the Affordable Care Act, not as a rejection of that. And it seems like Obama is embracing that framing. You know, his trajectory post-presidency, you know, of course, I have all kinds of complaints about the way that he was in office and then post-presidency.

7:04 Most of all, he's popped up politically in order to thwart the ambitions of the left and protect his legacy. It seems like this cycle between the outreach to Zoran, backing Abdul, backing Angie Nixon, he has started to embrace and understand the direction that the party is going in. And I think that's an incredibly important development as we look towards this midterms and beyond.

7:29 Yes, that really was to me what was so kind of startling in a way about the way that Obama approached this. Abdul had been very smart in reminding people that Obama talked about the Affordable Care Act as a starter home, and.

7:44 After a starter home, you hope to move up.

7:48 And Obama kind of then was embracing that language and saying, yes, what's so radical about everybody getting health care? And what Obama's doing there is saying, what I always wanted is the same thing that he always wanted. He's kind of reshaping his reform as, okay, that's what was possible then, more is possible now, and therefore I am for that, which, like you said, is a significant difference from what he's been doing in the past, which is kind of rallying the establishment to consolidate its power against the Bernie-Abdul kind of wing of the party and.

8:29 Keep them back, but now he sees it coming.

8:32 It came out the same day, I don't know if you saw this video of Mayor Mamdani going around New York City with Governor Kathy Hochul.

8:40 It was incredible.

8:41 If you go back and rewatch that, look at Kathy Hochul the entire time.

8:47 She's not used to adulation.

8:50 She's not used to people being glad to see her, being excited, wanting to take pictures with her. And it appears that basically nobody even knows that the governor of New York is there. And they're just losing their minds for Mamdani. And Mamdani keeps pulling her into the picture. Let's get the governor too. Let's get the governor too.

9:11 And I think that's going to be a moment that she remembers, that she feels, and that she.

9:17 Tells all of her allies about.

9:19 Like, guys, set the polling aside, even though the polling is, you know, sending us a blaring signal.

9:26 Like, people are energized by this guy.

9:29 So the combination of that, seeing how how much people are kind of loving the work that Mamdani is doing in New York, plus now Obama saying, you know, this is at least a way. If it's not the way, it's a way. It really does feel like a new phase for this Democratic Party.

9:46 Yeah.

9:47 And Hochul Terekradet has been pretty savvy. She recognized the power of Zoran's movement and shifted, I would say, pretty quickly. Someone who is not excited about this movement is Donald Trump, who is so jealous of Obama in general. I mean, I really think that this goes sort of deep to his insecure core. Let's put this up on the screen.

10:06 Maybe Ryan, you can read a little bit of this true social for us.

10:09 Donald Trump, Obama was a grossly incompetent president. He paid off Iran with billions and gave them a road to a nuclear weapon He said that crooked Hillary Clinton was going to win. He campaigned hard for her, and she lost in all directions and ways. He then campaigned full out for Kamala, and likewise, she lost. Now he's campaigning for a Muslim Brotherhood jihadist who hates Jews and blacks and Americans and Trump, and he is going to lose also.

10:35 He's a fake doctor who runs what is considered to be the worst clinic in America.

10:41 I won Michigan big.

10:43 Have brought back the car industry, the Air Force base, and everything else. Also, more jobs than ever before. Michigan doesn't want an arrogant, open borders, fake Dr. Jihadist whose reputation will only get worse as more information is revealed. And there's plenty. Vote for Mike Rogers. He will never let you down, President Donald J.

11:04 Trump.

11:05 So, yes, Trump, you know, Mike, we'll talk about this later in the program, but Mike Rogers was asked over the weekend, would you define yourself as a MAGA Republican? And just absolutely refused to answer, was offended by the question. Like, this is kind of the kind of gotcha stuff that the liberal media wants to do. It's like, wow, like you can't even embrace MAGA at this point. So I think Abdul Alsaid is happy anytime Trump wants to weigh in on the Michigan Senate primary.

11:35 Well, and Trump was in Michigan to rally for Mike Rogers. Not sure that Mike Rogers would be super excited about that, but they do need to do some base turnout. So perhaps it will help him. Let's take a listen to a little bit of Trump.

11:46 What are you.

11:47 Hearing is the top issue for most voters? Well, first of all, I hear that we've turned the whole thing around. And, you know, for whatever reason, presidents don't win, almost never, the midterms. And I think we've really turned it around. And, you know, I think the rallies have turned it, frankly, just to be honest. And every senator feels the same way.

12:08 Bringing people in from all these terrible places, Somalia. You know, 98% of the people that we have here now in Somalia They don't really have to work because they steal so much. They all have a Mercedes Benz. Can you believe low IQ and they live better than you do? I don't know what's going on. Maybe they're not as low as we think.

12:30 So some unsurprising but still horrifying blatant racism there, par for the course for this president.

12:35 You hear him finish, though, say maybe they're not as low IQ as we think since they're ripping us off so effectively.

12:40 Yeah.

12:41 A little Trump praise for the Somali community there.

12:45 Yeah, well, he does respect fraudsters. It's sort of a core to his ideology, for sure. He also weighed in on another issue where his policy is deeply unpopular, which is on data centers. Let's listen to that.

12:57 So I say, let him come in. Like in Memphis, I think it's Elon. He's building some in Memphis. I could give him plenty of other locations, but he's building them in Memphis. We just talked about it. They need the jobs. And they're fighting him. And if you offered them... A few bucks, I guarantee you this, they'd love it.

13:17 But you should really be cool on data centers because you can make a fortune with the data centers. You can make a fortune.

13:23 And Ryan, there's very few people who put data centers as their top political issue. However, it does seem like it may be depressing. The data center issue may be depressing some of the Republican turnout in rural Texas and other places across the country.

13:37 There was that really instructive survey that found that the closer you live to a data center, the more likely you are to be voting for Democrats in the midterms, which is counterintuitive since they're mostly in rural areas. They're obviously almost all in rural areas, and those are most likely to be Republican voters. So there's a real kind of kryptonite effect that they're having.

14:04 There's so many of them.

14:05 It's like they have hyperscaled this to a level where it actually can move the needle.

14:11 There's a consequential.

14:13 number of people who live very close to these either actual operating data centers or proposed data centers. And yeah, it's it's one of the biggest kind of political loser issues in decades.

14:27 Another political loser issue is gas prices. And I took note that in particular, I mean, obviously, last week, the price of barrel went up dramatically. We're back to near the peaks that we were at during the heat of the Iran war. The heat so far of the Iran war that is likely to get passed through to consumers at the pump. The timing could not possibly be worse.

14:49 CNN took a look at some of the specific regional impacts. Let's watch that.

14:53 Two days ago, the average in Michigan was $ 4.

14:56 44 a gallon.

14:57 Not cheap, but look where we are now.

14:59 $ 4. 77 a gallon.

15:00 So that is a 33 cent increase.

15:05 You go weeks or months with that without that kind of an increase. But we got that in just the last 48 hours.

15:12 And it's not just Michigan.

15:14 When you look at other states in the region, Wisconsin, Indiana, Ohio and Illinois, all of them moving sharply higher, all of them in the last two days. And look at Ohio in particular, another major battleground state. We're looking at a thirty nine cent increase in the last two days. Look, Michigan was already experiencing the biggest 12-month increase in gas prices of any state in the country. Prices there up $ 1. 67 over the last 12 months, more than any other state, more than even what's been experienced in California. The consumers in Michigan are paying an extra $ 2. 6 billion more since the Iran war started.

15:58 That's just on gasoline.

15:59 It doesn't count diesel. It doesn't count interest rates. This is costing the typical household almost $ 650.

16:06 And Ryan, if.

16:08 I had to pick any metric, I would actually pick the gas price increase and where they stand over the polls as being predictive of what's likely to happen in the midterms.

16:18 And it's not just the the raw absolute number, although that is infuriating. But when you drive past the gas station on Wednesday and you're like, I should fill up.

16:29 I don't have time. You don't do it.

16:32 You come back on Friday and it's 30 cents higher. You want to like bludgeon somebody. Like you want to smash somebody's face into the curb. Like it's just so absolutely infuriating. And that's what you're... That's what you're seeing, I think, in all of this early voting data is just raw, absolute, complete rage.

16:58 Actually, we could put up a six here.

17:01 And so this data Republican who worked for the Pentagon, right, under Hegseth, and was like, why is everybody so worked up about the fact that I'm a special government employee under the Pentagon? But it was a well-respected kind of Republican number cruncher. She writes here, I've been asked about early voting analysis.

17:21 This is on Twitter. is going to be a fight.

17:50 That last line makes me wonder if she had AI write this, because she didn't change the grammar of the you must turn out, and she says their friends instead of your friends. If you were writing that yourself, you'd say your friends. But anyway, aside from that, think about what she's saying about how she needs to create a safe space on X, that if she tells her audience on X, you know, what the actual numbers are. This is not her take. This is not her prognostication. We're not talking about her forecasts. We're talking about what she's seeing.

18:27 We can put up A9 because it turns out you can leave the Everything app and you can actually go to datarepublican.com. Here we got Florida 2026 general early vote. If you look at this, you're looking at significant surge in the early vote for Democrats. And what in particular finding is that people who haven't voted before are turning out in a kind of significant way. People who haven't voted in the last four elections are turning out pretty dramatically this time. And Democrats who haven't voted in the past are turning out much more substantially.

19:11 Than Republicans.

19:12 We can just do A7 real quick. This is a tweet from a polling analyst, G. Elliot Morris, where he says, we don't know if the early vote will be predictive because all Republicans could just be waiting to vote until Election Day. What this means in practice is that to win, the GOP will have to have the most successful Election Day mobilization operation in modern history.

19:40 And that it's completely stealth.

19:43 And so in other words, with the president at somewhere between a 30 and 35 percent approval rating, with gas prices surging, you'd have to have this kind of secret enthusiasm for Republicans that is not emerging in the early vote, that comes out in a way that Trump didn't see in 2024, that Trump didn't get even in 2016.

20:12 That that nobody has ever seen from either party.

20:15 Like that's what it would take at this point for for Republicans to stop some of this bleeding. Crystal, were there any any of the early voting data over the weekend that really.

20:28 Jumped out at you?

20:30 Lots of it. But I just was thinking about the early vote and what you can tell from it and what you can't. You can kind of get a rough sense of the relative enthusiasm of the two parties because you're just looking at, OK, are you registered Democrat? You're registered Republican. You're assuming that those people are voting in a partisan way. That's really all you can get from this.

20:48 So we're getting a sense that Democratic enthusiasm is much higher than Republicans based on what's come in so far. The other two pieces we don't know are what percent of independence will go to for Democrats versus Republicans. So persuasion of independence. We don't know that part. And will there be any significant Republican defectors? So just because you registered as a Republican or you voted Republican in the last primary doesn't necessarily mean you're still voting Republican. So those are the two pieces that really remain outstanding question marks and I think will determine whether it's just a good night for Democrats or whether it's something that is truly historic.

21:23 Right, because there are a lot of reasons to think at this point, as strange as it may sound, that the polls have been underestimating Democrats. pollsters have been very frightened over the past many cycles because they kept screwing it up and overestimating Democrats and missing out on Trump voters who weren't answering the polls or whatever the explanations were.

21:48 And so they're adopting this kind of Trump era mindset to a post, not post-Trump era, but to an anti-Trump era. Like the country is united in frustration and anger at Trump right now. His supporters will acknowledge that he probably shouldn't have gone to war in Iran, even if the mullahs need to be stopped from having a.

22:14 Nuclear weapon or whatever.

22:15 They will even acknowledge that, yeah, it's not going exactly as planned. It's not going the way that Trump said that it would. That's his supporters. The people that have always hated him hate him with an even greater passion at this point And so what pollsters are doing is they're taking the normal kind of registered voter panel that they get in and then they're doing the Trump tweak to it where they're saying, well, this can't be exactly right.

22:43 We've got to turn the knob a little bit over here for these kind of secret Trump-loving Republicans. And so you get this bizarre situation where their likely vote screen, that they call it, is actually friendlier to Republicans than the registered vote screen when normally it's the other way around.

23:00 But that's just their guess.

23:02 And the pollsters are saying that all of the early voting data that's coming in is suggesting that their likely vote screens were wrong and were too friendly to Republicans because there's no evidence that Republicans are turning out. That the only Republicans that you're seeing turn out are the ones that vote all the time. There was even some data I saw out of Florida that they can look at what's called cannibalization.

23:27 So in other words, if you voted.

23:29 in the general election on election day in 2024, but already you've voted early, then you're basically cannibalizing the vote on election day. Because if you already voted early, you can't vote on election day. So they looked at cannibalization on both parties. About 80,000 Democrats who voted on election day have early voted already. So they've cannibalized 80,000 of their votes.

23:55 But with Republicans, it was 120,000.

23:56 So- More Republicans, even though there's fewer Republicans turning out, more Republicans who were voted on Election Day have now voted early, which means that those are votes that Republicans don't have on Election Day. So that that means that Democrats could even be even more competitive on Election Day itself than people think. So, yeah, this could be a just assuming the Internet holds together for another week.

24:22 Right. Which we'll talk about in a bit.

24:24 And we count the votes.

24:27 This could be a historic wipeout of like 94 and 446 level.

24:33 Yeah. Well, in Brazil, the poll miss that you described just happened where the pollsters were so afraid of underestimating Bolsonaro that they juiced his numbers too much and they were inaccurate and underestimated Lula's support. If you look at past midterm elections, they have not overestimated Democratic support. In fact, in 2022 and then in this most recent special election, they underestimated Democratic support. So, you know, it does seem to be very different when Trump is not specifically on the ballot than when he is. With that being said, let's go ahead and turn to one of the main factors that is leading to so much disgust among the broad American public, which is the war in Iran.

25:18 With oil prices surging around the globe and with an election scheduled in Israel on Tuesday, There is a full-blown political crisis going on with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pressuring the Israeli military into some type of attack on Iran. It is unclear precisely what order Netanyahu gave to the Israeli military, but the Israeli military has responded by effectively refusing and making public his order. This is from Israeli media.

25:49 An unprecedented confrontation between the chief of staff and the prime minister that reached its peak or low point in the last day. The issue in the background, the Iranian matter, and fears of Zamir, this is the chief of staff, that Netanyahu and the political echelon might lead to a scenario of miscalculation against Iran just before the elections.

26:08 All of this, by the way, was cleared by the Israeli censors.

26:12 A security source says, this is an action that could lead to a sudden confrontation with Iran itself. at a sensitive and dramatic timing and create a miscalculation. Sources with knowledge of the details say, quote, peers of the military echelon from an attempt to exploit the Iranian issue for political momentum, a claim that political figures deny and argue is an outright lie. Be that as it may, two sources tell me that it reached a level where today during the visit to Pamasheem, the atmosphere in the discussion was extremely tense in the last few days. Zamir received some directive from the political echelon, but requested an in-depth discussion before execution. He also requested legal authorizations signed by

26:56 the political echelon for the move. Senior security official says, history will not forget the role Zamir played here in the last few days. The bottom line, an exceptional confrontation in its deviation between Zamir and Netanyahu around the issue in Iran just before the election date. Now, Avigdor Lieberman, if you can put up this next element, has now come out and said that he wants to pursue charges of treason against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. He writes, This morning I appealed to the Attorney General demanding the opening of a criminal investigation against Netanyahu for the charge of treason.

27:32 In the past month, Israel's Prime Minister has been pressuring the heads of the security establishment to take steps that could create a miscalculation vis-a-vis Iran. The attempt to drag the state of Israel into war on the eve of elections, together with the willingness to sacrifice IDF soldiers solely due to fear of losing the elections, constitutes treason against the state, its security, and the IDF soldiers. And so this comes as, at Dropsite, we had been reporting that it was, our reporting was suggesting that Netanyahu was indeed trying to relaunch the war on Iran ahead of the election because polls were showing that if the election goes off, he is going to fall short of a majority. And if the

28:25 opposition party joins with the Palestinian parties who are expected to get to roughly 15 seats, they would have enough for a majority to be able to form a government and kick Netanyahu out. The The thinking for a long time had been that it would be too politically disadvantageous for Netanyahu to launch a war right before the election.

28:46 But with the polls showing him losing, you can see him with his back up against the wall and saying, you know what, I don't have much else to lose, Crystal. Donald Trump actually weighed in on this very briefly. Let's play that and then let's react. Let's put up before. This is Trump asked about an attack on Iran.

29:08 The answer is no.

29:10 There will not be a strike today.

29:13 So no, there will not be a strike today.

29:18 One thing that had persuaded me that strikes before the midterms were quite on the table was that Trump kept explicitly saying, we will not attack. until after the midterms. It's not something that he normally does. Normally, he'll say, I'd be a fool to tell you what I'm going to do. I got to keep the element of surprise.

29:38 You know, I can't, I can't, I can't tell you, but he kept, he keeps explicitly saying there will not be an attack until after the midterms.

29:47 There's a, like, oh, Yes.

29:49 Yeah.

29:50 It's very concerning. And there's a report in Haaretz this morning that the IDF chief also warned his U.S. counterpart that striking Iran would disrupt Israel's election, which is, of course, the entire point, apparently, of what Netanyahu is trying to do here. And my understanding, Ryan, is that this IDF chief of staff, this guy was seen as a yes man for Netanyahu. So for him to pull the fire alarm is really something really quite extraordinary when Netanyahu is getting too wild for his own handpicked IDF chief of staff.

30:21 But I also was recalling that just recently. there was this huge show of force from the Israelis where they were sort of trying to provoke Iran with these flyovers very close to the Iranian border. And the theory at the time, as posited by Barack Ravid over at Axios, of course, very well sourced within the highest echelons of both the U.S. and the Israeli government, was that Netanyahu was hoping to provoke Iran into some sort of an attack so that he would then have a justification to go all the way in.

30:51 Yes, and Trump just recently endorsed Netanyahu Netanyahu, we all saw that awkward phone call where Netanyahu put him on speakerphone, but apparently behind the scenes, Netanyahu has been complaining a lot that Trump hasn't more vocally supported him. If you watch Netanyahu campaigning or you watch any of his ads, he just keeps saying, Trump wants you to vote for me, so therefore vote for me. That wouldn't work for any Republican candidate here at this point in the United States, but in Israel, he still remains a popular figure.

31:26 And Trump just today.

31:28 Or maybe in the last 12 hours or so, put out a new statement talking about how wonderful Netanyahu is. So that could be part of the kind of apology for not letting him go forward with his relaunch of the war right now. There's also been some leaks coming out of the White House that White House officials consider Netanyahu to be desperate and annoying and and they're kind of losing confidence in him. So that isn't, those aren't the anonymous comments that I think Netanyahu wants at this moment.

32:01 He wants more kind of celebratory stuff like he got on Truth Social, but what he really wants is the bullets and the bombs to start flying again so that at least if you postpone the election, you know, the thinking is he would still lose a couple months from now, but You live to fight another day. You know, he and Trump both are very much of that political survivor mentality.

32:27 I mean, it's worked for him. Can't say it hasn't worked for both of them.

32:30 Yeah.

32:31 One of the great I mean, Netanyahu is one of the greatest political survivors in all of human history. And after the complete debacle of October 7th and the mass security failures both leading up to it and on that day. that he's managed to hang on to power and hang on to any sort of there's been a pushing off of any sort of reckoning or analysis within Israel of those exact failures. That's exactly how he operates. It's always, OK, what war can I start? Who can I bomb to avoid, whether it's a political reckoning or whether it's a legal reckoning with his corruption trials as well? So certainly par for the course. There was another interesting moment with Trump where he was getting asked about what he would do

33:08 with Iran. I want you to pay close attention, guys, to what he says here about the intelligence he's getting. This is B5.

33:15 B5.

33:15 Let's listen.

33:16 Did that strike you as very different from what you'd read on Iran before?

33:21 They're two very different sets of intelligence reports. I have them both, but they're very different.

33:28 Two very different sets of intelligence, Ryan. Where do you think that these two different sets of intelligence are coming from?

33:34 Yeah, exactly.

33:36 He's got his good friends in Israel who have one set of ideas.

33:40 One set of intelligence, quote unquote.

33:42 Intelligence.

33:44 And then he's got his own intelligence community, which he has tried to revamp pretty substantially, but still considers them to be part of the deep state.

33:56 I think there is You know, I think.

34:01 It is reasonable to say that he has more trust in what he hears from Israel because he believes that the American intelligence officials are.

34:10 Out to get him.

34:11 They also tell him what he wants to hear, too. Right. which is that there's a solution to this, and it just requires more bombs. Whereas what anyone else would say to him who was grounded in reality would be, you're going to have to take an L here one way or another, and there is no military solution. He wants to hear there is a solution to your problems. You're going to be victorious. Mission accomplished is just around the corner.

34:34 So that makes him very inclined towards that set of intelligence.

34:39 Yeah, I've been told by administration sources that even War Secretary Pete Hegseth at this point is pessimistic about another attack on Iran. Now, partly I think that's because he sees the writing on the wall that he's going.

34:51 Out, he's going to get booted.

34:53 He's about to be the scapegoat.

34:55 He's going to be the scapegoat.

34:56 And there's this reporting that he wants to take Marsha Blackburn's Tennessee Senate seat if Marsha Blackburn wins the governor's race. She's currently a senator in Tennessee. So he's looking for his way out. But he doesn't see another round of attacks Even with his back against the wall, you can imagine him saying, okay, well, I'm about to be scapegoated.

35:16 I'm hoping to go to the Senate. Might as well take one more crack at Iran.

35:21 Even he doesn't seem to think that there's any reason to have optimism that that's going to go better this time around than it went last time.

35:30 And Netanyahu probably doesn't think that either.

35:32 But what Netanyahu thinks is I'm going to lose and might even go to prison if we don't do that. So whether it works or not, if it keeps me alive for another day, then it's better than me.

35:47 Losing an election.

35:48 Mm-hmm, exactly right. Of course, the fallout of this is vast and continues to impact people's pocketbooks right here at Homeless, but be one up on the screen just so we can see where the current oil prices are. The price of a barrel of crude really skyrocketed last week, and now we've got, you know, continuing to have quite high gas prices, and diesel still sits, I believe, around $ 6.

36:11 30.

36:11 This, Trump made yet another orion. unbelievable comment. It really does feel like this guy wants to lose. Like he's just testing how far he can go, how much ridiculous, like condescending, how much can he say that is just completely unacceptable? How clear can he make it to the American people that he does not give a shit about you whatsoever? So we've got a new entry into the increasingly long list of Trumpian comments in that regard. This is B2. Let's take a listen.

36:46 We're making hundreds and hundreds of billions, trillions of dollars. But my people said, please don't mention that, sir, because people are paying a little higher. That number is going to come way down. But what we've done for this country, we're making money like this country has never made before.

37:04 So I said, let me say it very gingerly, very softly, because somebody would say the fake news. He's bragging about making money while people are suffering at the you know, because You know, you're still paying lower than Biden and Obama. And they don't have nuclear weapons. But they're going to be coming. No, I could just see the fake headlines.

37:27 President Trump is talking about all the money they're making while people are suffering at the pump. That'll be the headline. But I said, I don't give a damn. I'm going to say it. We'll make it a freaking fortune.

37:38 And I guess, Ryan, it is our role now to say exactly the thing he's predicted. He's bragging about making a lot of money while gas prices are high and people are suffering. And he says, I don't give a damn. I'm going to say it anyway.

37:48 I think if you compare it to shooting someone on Fifth Avenue, it's almost more aggressive because you shoot somebody on Fifth Avenue. People are going to have a moral and an ethical problem with that. But the chances are they don't know the person that was shot on Fifth Avenue. They regret that the person was shot. But, you know, it's between Trump and that person and, you know, they can rationalize their way out of it. He's talking about raising your gas prices and the cost of everything and saying it's good because they're making hundreds of billions, trillions of dollars.

38:21 And who is the they there? The oil executives, exactly. And the shareholders, that's who's making this money.

38:26 It's like, I mean, yeah, at that point, like, you never want to close the possibility for more submissions into the category because Trump has an ability and an imagination and a way to come up with depths that you never thought could even be plumbed and you couldn't even imagine. So I don't want to close off the possibility, but this one's pretty incredible. I will raise your gas prices.

38:56 I will lie to you about them being more than Biden, Obama. I will claim that something great happened, which is that they don't have a nuclear weapon when they didn't have one before.

39:05 And are more likely to get one now than they were previously.

39:07 And are more likely to get one now.

39:09 Yes.

39:09 You got out of the deal and you showed them that they really need to march towards one.

39:15 But my friends are making.

39:17 A lot of money.

39:19 I mean, just spelling it out for you, who this administration is really out there to serve, which is primarily themselves, but also oligarchs of all sorts and flavors, a diverse array of of oligarchs across the nation and the world.

39:32 I think, and if you assume that Trump has complete and total contempt for everyone in the country, obviously, if you didn't vote at all, he's probably indifferent to you. If you voted against him, He hates you and wants you to suffer pain and wants you to feel revenge, wants revenge against you. If you voted for him, he thinks you're a mark. He has contempt for you. Yeah, that's right. And if you accept that as true, everything that he's doing actually starts to make sense.

40:04 Yeah, it reminds me of the other day when he said, I could say the dumbest thing and you people would clap and get, what did they do? They laughed and they clapped.

40:11 So why would you not, if you're him, why would you not have contempt for those people? So I think he has a real contempt for his own supporters and he is okay with them. And actually it's a feature that they're suffering and humiliated because it's that much more satisfying to him to be able to then garner the attention and the praise because it's like the Michael Jordan of narcissism. Like a lot of people, a lot of politicians, they get adoration by doing good things. That's boring. He wants adoration doing bad things to people You see, you know, this is not a new phenomenon. You see it a lot in relationships, too. But I think, yeah, we're seeing it on the on a grand stage here.

40:57 Yeah. All right.

40:58 Well, for more on where the oil market is today and where it's likely to be headed, let's go ahead and bring in our guest.

41:06 OK, well, let's now bring in Brett Erickson, oil and gas analyst with Obsidian Risk Advisors.

41:12 Brett, thanks so much for being here. Absolutely.

41:14 Appreciate you guys having me here today.

41:16 Of course.

41:17 So guys, if we could put up this Wall Street Journal article, it would be three. So the U.S., Brett, is trying to crack down on what they're calling these overland trade routes that Iran has been using to get oil out as the Strait of Hormuz has been effectively and significantly closed off to them. What percentage would you say of the kind of oil trade in general or what kind of volume are we talking about? And what ability does the United States have to effectuate a ban like this?

41:51 Yeah, so this is definitely a way for Iran to move both oil as well as refined products, and in particular, refined products, because that's where the greatest profit margin is going to be, through these overland routes into these neighboring countries. And While closing border crossings will absolutely have an impact, of course, it can always be rerouted and it's going to be impossible to crack down in full. But every time that disruptions are made to Iran's ability to move oil or refined products, that increases the expenses, increases the cost, and therefore increases forces Iran to charge higher prices domestically as a result of greater expense. So it's going to be marginal in the grand scheme of things. But every

42:52 disruption to the supply chain and to exports will add costs and, as a result, will hurt the Iranian economy. It's just a matter of how much are.

43:03 We talking here.

43:04 Yeah, so let's talk a little bit about that. How effective has the blockade by the U.S. been in hurting the Iranian economy? And I had seen somewhere that they were coming close to selling all of the oil that they had on the water. So are we at a point now where the blockade is going to begin to bite more than it had previously?

43:23 This is a great question and I think is really important to look at. So when the White House mentions Iran is losing $ 500 million per day from the US blockade. That's an entirely fabricated number. The original number came from the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, which cited losing 435 million per day, of which 139 million was from Iranian oil exports. In Iran's year 1405 budget bill, they account for exporting 1.7 million barrels per day at $ 55 per barrel. Now, throughout the entire war, while the U.S. blockade has been very successful in halting Iran's ability to export through the Strait of Hormuz, that's basically the wrong number to have been looking at this whole time because they had 160

44:16 million barrels at the beginning of the war. That came down significantly. But then during the MOU, Iran exported an additional 72 million barrels that was previously trapped inside. So taking advantage of the extreme increased price. Again, Iran is accounting for $ 55 a barrel. Now they're selling it at about $ 100 per barrel. So Iran really hasn't begun to feel any pain on their oil throughout the course of this entire war up until now, where again, they are, like you say, are running out of oil at sea.

44:54 So they will start to feel that additional $ 139 million, give or take, that they were previously accounting for. But we're only really now starting to see that eight months into the war. And again, we just aren't seeing the macroeconomic devastation of Iran. Their inflation sucks. The Rialto USD FX rate sucks. It's always been bad. That's nothing new.

45:21 So they will feel additional pain. but we're eight months into the war. So it's kind of a little bit too little too late, it seems like.

45:29 And how much can clamping down on the land routes hurt, though?

45:33 So clamping down on the land routes will marginally hurt, but they're going to reroute. They're going to smuggle. They're going to move into other countries. And yes, as they smuggle, that will increase the cost. That will increase expenses. They may need to, if they have a lower available pool of buyers willing to risk purchasing this, They will have to sell it at steeper discounts. But we're not talking all or nothing here. We're talking about maybe getting 80% of the market value to now 70%, where really your only loss is about 10% of the otherwise revenues. So it does matter. But this is not going to be game-changing for collapsing the Iranian economy in the next two weeks.

46:23 A few months ago, you had Trump saying that within two weeks, the refineries were all going to explode because, you know, he was explaining all of the physics and the chemistry to the public. What did he miss about that? And is there some risk now that, you know, they're not able to load new ships, they're restricting land overrides?

46:46 Is that threat that he made months ago now at least reasonable? And why was he so far off?

46:52 So to say that President Trump was explaining it might be a little bit of a stretch. When he went on the Hugh Hewitt show, he said that in two weeks, Iran's oil infrastructure will explode due to something having to do with nature. So he didn't have any idea what he was talking about. He just ran with it. And this oil well shut-ins, again, comes from Miat Malachi, the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, And this is something him and I went back and forth on a lot in the Washington Post and Bloomberg and Reuters, everywhere. That's just not how it works. Iran, their national oil company has twice shut in their oil wells, once during COVID as well.

47:37 And they were able to bring that production back online without any notable hurdles. The premise that their oil infrastructure would explode is absurd and just not the way that any of this works. Robin Mills over at Columbia has a great piece on the physics and mechanics of this. But Iran has lowered their production to be equivalent to their domestic consumption, plus what they are exporting via land routes or other means. So They've just lowered their production, so they don't need to shut in nearly as much.

48:15 And even if they do, they've proven the capability to be able to bring that back online. So this was always a very absurd theory that is just completely incompatible with the actual mechanics of these oil wells.

48:29 Yeah.

48:30 I mean, I relate to Trump a little bit. I am a little also lost and searching my way around talking about some of this too. I'm trying to learn as fast as I can. But so the Iranian oil wells are not going to explode because of something in nature. But what about the global economy? What can we say about where we are right now and why we haven't had the $ 200 a barrel oil catastrophe that had initially been predicted?

48:56 Yeah, I mean, there's several parts to this that are significant, not least of which is the incredible decrease in Chinese imports of oil that was at 1.5 million barrels per day that they were not importing from their historical norm. But it also should be noted, and I will give credit to CENTCOM, although I completely disagree with the entire strategy, so credit is maybe a stretch, but they have certainly moved a lot of oil along the Omani route. I think it comes at exorbitantly high costs, which raises kind of the floor. Essentially, if you're, you know, having to charge an additional $ 35 per barrel, which is roughly what it is for the increased shipping risk and risk premium, you can still move some out. But, you know, that

49:51 essentially sets your floor at $ 95 to $ 100 per barrel, which is essentially what we're seeing. So we've been able to extend the timeline. And there are a lot of questions. It's worth noting in a U.S. Treasury Office of Foreign Assets Control press release, OFAC acknowledged that Hormuz Safe, which is the formalization of the Tehran toll booth, had received payments into it. And they acknowledged that publicly. So we do know Iran is getting paid something by someone in some amount. And I think that very much raises questions about, okay, we are moving a lot through, and that is buying a lot of time. And that has kept a lid on the global energy markets. But is there backdoor deals happening?

50:40 What do those look like? And at the end of the day, Brent said greater than 110 per barrel. It reached 117.40. Diesel is in the mid-sixes. Gasoline is 429 a gallon. This isn't good. This isn't a win in any way.

50:52 Yeah.

50:59 And China, at the beginning of this conflict, kept prices significantly low by massively reducing the amount of oil that it was bringing in.

51:08 What are we seeing them do at this point?

51:11 So with China, their imports are significantly coming back online. And I think what's also notable is when CENTCOM and the Trump administration were like to claim that 90% of pre-conflict flows are moving through the Strait of Hormuz, which is very cherry-picked. But still, they're excluding Iranian exports in a lot of that data, which is anywhere from 1.7 to 2.1 million barrels per day, which are actually, believe it or not, very real barrels of oil. So when China, who would import about 90% to 95% of Iranian oil due to US sanctions, that oil is now gone. So just to make up that ground alone, they have to now import 2 million additional barrels from other sources from the global markets, which then will raise the global energy prices.

52:08 So in a lot of ways, yes, it is a win for the economic warfare perspective of the United States to cut off Iranian oil outside of the US blockade line. And at the same time, that's now an additional 2 million barrels that have to be made up elsewhere. And that is going to be problematic. And we haven't even resumed the war. And we're at $ 117, $ 115 per barrel.

52:30 So again, like what happens when this kicks off again? Where do we go to? I mean, the SPRs are greatly depleted. We're very much in uncharted territory now.

52:39 Absolutely.

52:40 Well, Brett, thank you so much for your analysis. We've really relied on it both today and through your Twitter posting. So appreciate that very much.

52:48 Absolutely appreciate you guys having me.

52:52 All right, let's play a little game here. I'm going to read you a bit of a news article, and you just tell me how this makes you feel right now. In this moment, put C1 up on the screen. This is from Fox News. They say, Fortress, the Pentagon, is preparing every major U.S. military base to survive 90 days without outside support. No civilian power grid, no global supply chains, no outside fuel or water. The initiative envisions portable nuclear reactors, massive battery storage, and microgrids that can disconnect installations from civilian electricity entirely. Strategic reserves of munitions, fuel, critical minerals, and medical supplies would be stockpiled based on wartime consumption rates.

53:32 Civilian factories are being pre-identified to shift to defense production during a crisis. So, Ryan, given the fact that we have, you know, an ongoing war with Iran and a number of spiraling and overlapping conflicts, we also are in this proxy war with Russia, nuclear superpower. Given the fact that separate apart from that, We have this rogue AI hacking meltdown, cybersecurity meltdown that is being described as Black October. And then out of nowhere, the U.S. military is like, you know, we probably better be able to survive off the grid completely with no supply chains and no electricity for 90 days.

54:13 And we're going to prioritize getting that done right now. You could be forgiven for being a little bit nervous about this development.

54:19 Yeah, the revelations that people are calling Black October, all of these zero-day exploits being discovered and really foundational elements of the internet, coupled with the Pentagon going prepper, yeah, it's.

54:33 A little bit disturbing. And I think people who.

54:38 Have themselves been kind of on the fence are like, oh, wow, maybe it's time for me to start stocking up as well. Because I'm petty, one of the first thoughts I had was, One of the first things that the Trump administration did was gut the Inflation Reduction Act, which over the next decade was going to put trillions of dollars into energy security here in the United States. Battery power, renewables, clean energy, also dirty energy. It was agnostic as to where it was coming from. But because Democrats did it and because Trump didn't like it and he promised the oil industry that if they put a billion dollars into him and his friends that he would.

55:23 Do whatever they wanted, they got rid of this.

55:26 And now they're running up against a massive problem with power supply. China is adding more clean energy to its grid on an annual basis than we require for huge amounts of of of our own you know industrial production and so yeah we we really just cut off our nose just to spite our face and now they're like gonna be hoarding all the battery power all right great.

55:53 Awesome Yeah, I mean, one thing we've certainly all learned the hard way with the Iran war is it doesn't matter if you're a net oil producer, exporter. It's a global market. So you are still subject to the whims of the global oil market. So here in the U.S., they're looking out for the military first and foremost. Over across the pond in the U.K., the prime minister there is calling on people to stockpile food and water. Let's take a listen to that.

56:19 It's just about being prepared for and having a sensible amount of supplies in the home. If you were down in Cornwall today, Matt, you'd be glad if you had a bit of extra bottled water in the house, a bit of extra food that you've got in the cupboard, and other supplies that you might need, because these events, sadly, in the world that we're in, are becoming more likely.

56:45 I'll stick to the basics, I think, Matt. I do like my beans, so there are plenty of those in the cupboard and soup. I think those are the kind of things that I would recommend.

56:55 So, Ryan, I was a little bit reluctant, excuse me, about doing this segment simply because I don't want to like I don't want to fear monger. I don't want people to panic. But I do look at the landscape and look at the fact that we have this one exploit in particular that the PHP one that impacts 70 percent of all Web sites. And then you now have superhuman hacking capabilities in the hands of literally any schmuck around the world. How can you not be a little bit concerned about what that may mean in the near term?

57:28 And in terms of our government, they're completely asleep at the switch. They're not doing anything to protect us from any of this. It's just off to the races on the whole AI development. And they're increasing number of people from within the frontier labs who are sounding the alarm about what this is going to mean in the immediate future.

57:45 Yeah, and the top security official over at CrowdStrike, which is responsible for cyber security, was out sounding the alarm on CNBC. Now you could say he's talking his book there because he wants you to beef up your cyber security. And certainly the last year or two has been tremendous for the valuations of cyber security companies. But with that grain of salt added, let's get a flavor of C3.

58:12 George, walk us through, not to doomsday, but what are some downside scenarios or examples of things that could go wrong? Well, what can go wrong is a lot of what you've already seen and reported on. You know, you've got data breaches.

58:25 You've got ransomware.

58:26 You've got the ability to steal trade secrets.

58:29 You've got disruption.

58:31 All of the things that you have been reporting on, we've been talking about, you know, myself on your network for many years.

58:38 That is now all possible.

58:39 But with AI, it's actually just democratizing who can do this. We wrote a report on this, and we're seeing many different adversary groups with very low skill now able to conduct nation-state level attacks for basically the cost of tokens and a prompt. And that's the scary part.

59:00 That's what you like to hear, that basically anybody can launch a nation-state level attack. We've set ourselves up for an interesting couple of months and years. The internet was really built in earnest over the past 30 years, more than that, but it really started taking off the last 30 years.

59:22 Just layer on top of layer on top of layer.

59:24 A lot of amateurs contributing, not built with any long-term intentionality about cybersecurity connected to the potential advent of, you know, nation-state level hackers being in the hands of everybody. Even if you shut it all off now, there are, you know, you can run an LLM on your laptop now that, you know, you could prep with, you know, a solar panel, a generator, water, some beans, and an LLM on your laptop, which could keep hacking.

59:55 Like, you know, even.

59:57 in a post-apocalyptic scenario. So yeah, I agree with you that I don't like to try to, I don't want to cause panic among people for no reason. On the other hand, this is where we are.

1:00:11 Yeah.

1:00:11 No, I think it's a good idea to take whatever cybersecurity precautions you can. The OnePass app is a good idea in terms of password security, two-factor authentication, just have decent Hygiene, not that that's necessarily going to save you, but at least it makes you, as you were saying last week, Ryan, not an easy mark. Having some food and some water and some basic supplies at your home, that seems like a good idea, too. And just to bring this around full circle, you know, where the AI threat meets the Iran war threat. We're so used to here in the U.S. really being protected by our geography.

1:00:45 You know, we've got Canada in the north. We've got Mexico to the south. Like, we're, you know, at least before Trump, we were pretty much good with them. And so because of these vast oceans, we really felt safe. We feel invulnerable. And I think if nothing else, you can see from these military preparations, they no longer feel that way. I believe this is accurate to double check, but I think anthropic and open AI are attempting to cut off Iran from access to their products. But I mean, first of all, I don't think that that's foolproof. Second of all, the Chinese open source models are nearly as effective.

1:01:18 And Iran has promised to up the ante in terms of the type of targets that they would attack, whether with conventional warfare or cyber warfare, if there is a renewed escalation in the war. So, look, it's not hard to imagine these things. Is your bank account safe? Is the electrical grid safe? Are the local utility companies safe?

1:01:43 Many of whom are running completely outdated. It's not state of the art that you're talking about here with a lot of these municipal systems. So it is definitely something to be very concerned about in the near term since we have just, without really a lot of thought of the consequences, shipped to the world the ability to have nation state level hacking in the hands of anyone with some basic knowledge. The PHP exploit that was identified, it literally came from someone putting in the prompt, like, find any vulnerabilities in PHP. That's it. That's all it took.

1:02:17 And it's like, okay, here it is. And for people who haven't watched our previous coverage, it was a known problem, but that had previously been considered not exploitable because it was too complex. Well, that is no longer the case. now with these tools. So that's where we are.

1:02:36 Yeah, great. Well, I'm looking forward to seeing where this goes and what kind of world we develop on the other side of it. That's for sure. Going to be interesting.