! 7-0-5, Nashville's Morning News on Super Talk 3097 WTN headline from CNN, U.S. military, the blockade has completely halted Iran's C-Trade, and that is going to cost them millions and billions of dollars. Brian Wilson joins us here on Super Talk 3097 for Wednesdays with Wilson. Brian, it sounds like you and I agree that the blockade to block the blockade has actually been a really smart idea by President Trump. Isn't it interesting, you know, so they go to negotiations with the Iranians, it becomes very clear that the Iranians have figured out that their real power in the world is controlling the Strait of Hormuz, not necessarily having nuclear weapons. So they go in and say, well, we want to continue to control the Strait of Hormuz in these negotiations, and Trump then says, okay, no, we're out, sorry. And everybody walks away, and then Trump takes away that one thing from them by setting up a blockade. Iran is losing $400 million a day and maybe as much as $13 billion a month in revenue, so this really hits them hard. And the brilliance behind the whole thing, again, this is Trump playing chess while everybody else is playing checkers. It just crushes the economy of China. Absolutely. From a geopolitical standpoint, Trump is taking out Iran. Where's the loss here? I don't see it. I mean, it's just a win-win-win at all. I mean, it's all in our, again, in our national security interest. Iran is in our national security interest. We can China is in our national security interest. And the Chinese are hacked off, apparently. So I would say everybody else has got really upset, blockading. It was brilliant. Oh, yeah, it's not. It won't last very long. They can't afford for it to last very long. That's the thing. So now Trump is talking about, you know, there could be some negotiations happening within a couple of days. And I think it's clear that the Iranians are going to have quite the different attitude when they go into the negotiations here in the next couple of days. Do you think, though, Brian, people are pointing out, of course, and it is true that this is causing the cost of gasoline. Ultimately, it will continue to rise. But the point is that President Trump is throwing down the hammer so that this will end quickly, as opposed to, you know, letting Iran just sort of elongate this thing for, you know, days and weeks and months. And once Trump is going in and he's saying, nope, this is what we're going to do to shorten the conflict. And I think it's smart because now Iran, they're just going to have to go in and have to come in and cut a deal. So do you think their attitude is going to be really different coming into the negotiations in the next couple of days? Well, they seem to have the ability to grab defeat from the jaws of victory, the Iranians do. So, I mean, I don't know if they're going to be smart enough to understand their position in the real world. If they can't figure that out, then I don't know what to tell you. You know, the thing about it is, is that the leadership is probably truly in chaos after having, you know, five levels of leadership decimated in one moment. No, not decimated, obliterated in one moment. And so, you know, I think probably if they're smart, they'll come to the table, they'll cut a deal and we'll move on. And you know, it's entirely possible. Trump, we don't have any hatred for the Iranian people. We just had a hatred over the idea that they wanted to have nuclear weapons. And once you take that away from them, I think we are poised to be able to have a good relationship with Iran. And we certainly could help that country, which is, you know, in so much financial straits right now. But it'll be interesting to see whether they're smart enough to understand that or not. I just have real concerns about, you know, the bluster not going away anytime soon. No. And of course, the big question is, all right, so we have this situation going on with Iran, oil prices, gasoline prices are up. Well, they're coming down slightly a little bit this morning. I mean, oil is at, I forgot, 92 dollars a barrel, West Texas Intermediate crew, that's well below its high, which was well over 100. Brent is at 88. So, I mean, the markets seem to be slowly stabilizing. Of course, that's still a lot higher than we would like it to be. Well, it is, but this is to be expected. And so at some point, it's going to come down, obviously, the big question is, we've got all of that, we've got all of that oil infrastructure in the Middle East that has been damaged, not only in Iran, but in some of these other Gulf states as well. So the question is, okay, so how high will gasoline prices continue to be heading into the midterm elections? Because from a political standpoint, that's a big issue. I remember this thing, I remember, Storman Norman Swartzkoff, the general, the very famous general, doing a chalk talk one time and I was covering it. And he talked about how things that are linear, you can take them out, but they're not going to stay taken out very long. You're talking about a bridge, well, they can rebuild a bridge, a road, yeah, they can rebuild a road, runways, yeah, they can rebuild runways, train tracks, yeah, they can rebuild. It's the same, it's true with pipelines. Now, you hit a refining facility and that's a bit different, that takes a while. But repairing a pipeline can be done in relative short order. So if those are the issues, then they should be able to recover fairly quickly and we'll see how it all plays out. But I will tell you this, the price that we're paying for gas right now, yeah. Hi, I'm Joe Salci, I host of the Stack In Bedouin's podcast. Most economists agree small amount of inflation is actually good. 2% is what you're going for. Why is everybody freaking out? Oh, because it's the fallout. People don't track their budget. You have this slow slipping that happens every month. Until all of a sudden you go, man, I don't have any money. The reason is now two people go to a restaurant, the bill is 60 bucks for two. Two guys walking to a restaurant. They start screaming. Get the hell out of here. $60. Stacking Benjamin's, follow and listen on your favorite platform. Eric Swalwell speaking of trainwrecks. Oh my gosh. We are now up to five victims of alleged victims of Eric Swalwell. You've got all these women saying that, you know, alleging flat out saying that he date-raped, drugged them, raped them, you know, all these horrible things. I mean, it goes well beyond, you know, simple sexual harassment. I mean, this is now escalated to rape. And so, I mean, obviously he's no longer running for California governor. He's decided that he has resigned from Congress. But I think that following the story now, it's who in the Democrat Party actually knew that this was going on because a lot of people, it seems to me, did know. Yeah, you know, look, it seemed to be an open secret in Washington is what I'm being told now among Democrats they knew. And the thing that is so repulsive about this whole thing is that the Democrats only care about these kinds of allegations when it's politically expedient for them to care about them. And right now it's politically expedient to do something about the California governor's race. I mean, if he had become the nominee and this stuff had come out, you know, that we would have a Republican governor and they came to realize not only that they were going to lose the governor's hip if they weren't careful and that's what this is really all about. So it's political expediency and it's really ugly. And, you know, I just the Democrats apparently said, Yeah, he's a creep, but he's our creep until we no longer want him. And they decided they no longer want him. Well, yeah. And in California, they've got that jungle primary going on as well. And so there were worries that right, they would end up with a Republican governor. So moving on from there, because I think Swalwell, I think now we just need to figure out who knew what when and, you know, what kind of consequences will those people face as they stood by while Eric Swalwell continued to victimize women. Well, and not only that, while he was victimizing women, he was accusing Brett Kavanaugh of the same thing. Brett Kavanaugh, Donald Trump, he was spreading about the Epstein file. So, yeah, you know, what makes this story so particularly number one egregious, but number two, just, you know, from just from a talk show standpoint as a guy who has covered Eric Swalwell and you know, certainly as well, both of us for years covering this guy is that he's such a he's such a jerk. And he's he's said such horrible things about Republicans and Donald Trump that it's great to see somebody, you know, you hate to hear about the victims and the allegations. But, you know, for somebody like Eric Swalwell is just like, well, you know what, I hope that he gets everything that he deserves because he has been a righteous jerk over the years. And so we'll continue to cover the whole Eric Swalwell saga. Now coming up, I was surprised to see this, Brian, the Stop Nick Shirley Act in California. All right, so Brian, the Stop Nick Shirley Act, a proposed bill in California that aims to criminalize investigative journalism by protecting immigrant service providers from online harassment. So don't we have a right to a free press in this country? Like is this unconstitutional? And I really love, you know, citizen journalism. I really do. I think it's great when when your media is is as corrupt as it has become over the years. Why not empower citizens to go out there and do their own investigations? Why should that have any different standard than, you know, traditional news organizations going out? I think that citizen journalists are protected by the First Amendment and this bill, I'm reading a quote here, would empower organizations providing services to migrants to demand the removal of video evidence of misconduct, supposedly to protect them from threats of violence. The law also threatens journalists with large financial penalties, dissuading them from reporting on public interest stories. It would, according to the person in the Assemblyman who's putting it forward, prevent criticism of any organization, nominally tasked with providing aid and support to migrants, hindering investigative reporting into potential wrongdoing. In other words, they care more about protecting the fraud, the waste and abuse than ferreting it out, which ought to be their real goal here. And if they get a little help from a citizen journalist like Nick Shirley, you know, pointing out the fraud, waste and abuse that everybody else seems to be willing to ignore, then we're going to come down on those citizen journalists like a ton of bricks. This would never hold up to constitutional scrutiny, I don't think. But it just tells you exactly where the Democrats are. We care more about protecting the fraud and the waste and the abuse than we do, and actually making sure that your tax dollars are well spent. Well, and here we are, Brian. You and I talking about this on Tax Day. Yeah. Well, that's right. Today is Tax Day. Today is Tax Day. How can I ever forget? That's right. Yeah. And so I was talking earlier about, you know, on today of all days, and it's also payday. So you look at your paycheck and you realize how much money you pay in taxes, and then you realize how much fraud there is in places like Minnesota with the Somalians and in California with all of the Medicare fraud and all of that fraud. And Nick Shirley is a guy who was out there shining a spotlight on it. Right. And that's why they want to... Well, nobody else will. That's right. Yeah, the media won't do it, and now California is trying to institute laws, implement laws. I'll tell you what's the real reason that media news organizations are no longer doing much investigative reporting. I mean, they just say basically they go out and they cover press conferences. That's all the news media do. Well, they're reading press releases. And they don't go out and do investigative reporting to a large degree because they don't want lawyers involved. I mean, you know, when you get sued by somebody, even if it's a nuisance suit and has no merit, you're going to put up a lot of money to defend that lawsuit. And the environment we're in right now in the media, you know, media companies are not as rich as they once were. And they really...some of them are really struggling because their audiences have dwindled, their advertising revenue has dwindled. And so they really don't want...the last thing they want is a lawsuit. And so they will just kill off any real hard-hitting investigative journalists for fear of being sued. And so, you know, I really think that when you have citizen journalists who are willing to say, hell with it, I'm going to go out there and do this. They ought to have that First Amendment protection that other journalists have. Absolutely. All right, Brian, we've got like one minute left. Anything else you got that you want to talk about? Yeah, quickly, the story about Biden wanting Gretchen Whitmer instead of Kamala Harris is pretty interesting. Apparently, he really wanted the big grudge. Not sure she would have been much better. But apparently, because of the Black Lives Matter protest that were going on at the time, he felt really pressured to pick Kamala Harris as his running mate. And I think in a perfect world, he probably regrets that. I also saw the other day where Kamala says, well, she's thinking about running. Oh, she's running. And I say, give me more of that. Give me all the Kamala Harris that you want to give me, because she ain't much of a threat. How do you think Gretchen Whitmer would do if she decided to run for president as well? Like, I think Whitmer, I think that I'm not no big fan of Gretchen Whitmer. But when you look at Kamala Harris, the cackle, the loopy laugh, and when she just goes off into Kamala land, when she's talking, I think Whitmer is actually a bigger threat to Republicans than a Kamala Harris would be. How do you think they would go head to head in a primary? Well, I don't think she's that great a retail politician. And I know from, you know, I have family from Minnesota and they don't care for her at all. And I don't know, that's not surprising that, of course, you find go anywhere, you find somebody who doesn't like a certain politician. I'm telling you, I don't think she's all that in a bag of chips. She would be probably slightly better than Kamala Harris, but not much in my estimation. You know, she's certainly going to be very much obviously on the left and very progressive. I think that she would be somebody who is a better speaker than Kamala Harris. Yeah, there's no doubt about that. Kamala brings so much baggage, doesn't she? Yeah, I mean, she's just such an awkward individual. And again, remember in presidential elections, you and I care about policy. There are Democrats who care about policy, but there is this huge percentage of America who makes a decision about that based on, you know, how they feel about the individual. Is it somebody I would sit down and I would lie? Do I find them likeable? Just the real question. And Kamala Harris is just inherently unlikable. It's just very hard to like her and it has nothing to do with race. It just has to come with, she's just sort of an odd duck. Alright, speaking of, speaking of- I think Gretchen may be sort of like that. Alright, speaking of- I have to get this in. Speaking of odd ducks, Gavin Newsom's wife. You and I have not spoken about Jennifer Siebel Newsom yet. Do me a favor, go and find her online. She says some of the most bizarre things. And so I definitely, let's try to remember this time next week to talk about whether or not she is a political liability, the wife of Gavin Newsom. And with that, Brian, appreciate it. Brought to you by the Wellness Institute of Nashville. We'll talk to you next week at the same time or if news breaks. And all right, very good. Joan, we have some audio. I've got some audio and video gentlemen from Donald Trump and his appearance on Fox News. And I have not heard this audio as of yet, but they are on the interwebs. And so I'm just going to go ahead and play some of this and have a little fun with audio, if you will. So one of the things that the president, he had an interview with Maria Bartiromo a little bit earlier today. And he put this on true social first. He says, China is very happy that I am permanently opening the Strait of Hormuz. I am doing it for them also and the world. This situation will never happen again. They have agreed not to send weapons to Iran. President Xi, this is so Trump, President Xi will give me a big fat hug when I get there in a few weeks. We are working together smartly and very well. Doesn't that beat fighting? But remember, he says, we are very good at fighting if we have to, far better than anyone else. President DJ T. So this is what he told Maria Bartiromo earlier today. I had a divert because if I didn't do that, right now you would have Iran with a nuclear weapon. And if they had a nuclear weapon, you would be calling everybody over there, sir. And you don't want to do that. Well, you keep saying what? 26 NFL draft presented by Bud Light April 23rd to the 25th, register for free entry at NFL.com slash draft access. Vince Colnays is redefining news talk with the Vince show. It is a reflection of your response to this program that we get to take this thing to the next level. These gigantic shows. This is going to be so much fun. It's unbelievable in depth interviews, live caller interactions and a front row seat to the most important conversations of the day. I've got updates. I've got big stories will sort through the truth of what's really going on to buckle up. Here it comes. The Vince show following listen on your favorite platform. Is this war over? I think it's close to over. Yeah, I mean, I view it as very close to over. You know what? If I pulled up stakes right now, it would take them 20 years to rebuild that country. And we're not finished. We'll see what happens. I think they want to make a deal very badly. Well, I think that they they do want to make it a deal very badly. Also, you know, I think Trump's being a little facetious on the whole China thing, but he's actually right. I mean, what we need to do with this rate of Hormuz is ensure that Iran cannot politicize the Strait of Hormuz and they can't abscond with the world's oil, which is effectively what they were doing before Donald Trump took it took it over. Now, CNN is talking about how President Trump and I haven't seen the audio yet. Maybe you have, Joan, but where he says that the economy is going to take a hit, you know, heading into the midterm elections, he knows that. But for the president, I suppose it is a calculated risk. He sees an opportunity to do this and he needs to do it. He understands that Iran wants a nuclear weapon. There's actually a story out there today. I haven't had a chance to even cover it yet, but there's a story where Iran is now trying to, I guess, dig up some missile launchers. Have you seen that, Joan? In the middle of the desert, they've got some missile launchers and they're trying to grab those missile launchers and dig them up. And so that is part of even CNN is reporting on that. So for the president, I thought that it was a really good and the sound bites are coming in fast and furious. And so I'm just kind of playing them as they come in. The great thing about it is I know that there's not going to be any cursing, although these days you never know, because I've been burned by that. This is the president talking about his disappointment with NATO. NATO was not there for us. And what it means, if they're not there for us here, they're not going to be there for us. So why are we, why are we spending hundreds of billions of dollars a year on NATO if they're not going to be with us? If they're not going to be with us on Iran, they're not going to be with us on a much bigger subject than Iran. I mean, I listen, I agree with the president on that. And I do though understand when NATO will come out and they'll say, well, yeah, but he started this war and this isn't a war, if you will, that impacts the European countries. But it actually does, especially when you look at Iran taking over and blocking the Strait of Hormuz, because that's where Europe gets a lot of their oil. So I understand exactly what Donald Trump is saying. And here's the other part of that is that when the United States, we're the ones that are effectively footing a massive part of the bill related to NATO. And so when we need help, when we're asking for help, well, then you know what, they ought to say, okay, you know, we say jump, they say how high, we ask for help, they say, how much help do you need? That's what should happen with NATO. Let's see here, the president also, he says now that the conflict in Iran is going to end very quickly, which, you know, here's the deal. And I was going to say, I'm a little cynical on that, just because the president has been saying this so many different times. But everyone is reporting that we could have even more meetings in the next couple of days. And that is because Iran, and we're talking about this with Brian, we've been mentioning this all morning long, because Iran, they're now dealing with a blockade of their blockade, which means that they can use the Strait of Hormuz, and they are losing a ton of money. This is Donald Trump earlier today. This whole thing about it was is really about no nuclear, they cannot have a nuclear weapon. And if they're going to have a new nuclear weapon, we'll be living with them for a little while. But I don't know how much longer they can survive. I don't know how much longer they can go. Yeah. And I would agree, you know, and I understand that there's people all over. I'm watching him on social media, and I'm watching them, of course, on the Supertext Line and on CNN, that, you know, the global oil prices are going to continue to go up because of this blockade. But I think that the president throws down the hammer, and he says, all right, so they won't negotiate with us? All right, well, then you know what we're going to do? We're going to block their blockade, and it makes perfect sense. And I love the fact that he had a plan already in place, so that when Iran walked away from these negotiations and everybody knew that they would, then the president gave them the opportunity to stop this. They chose not to stop it. And then he had a plan in place. And, you know, as Brian said, and I don't always like to use this term, Joan, because I think that it is overused. But I do believe that this is an instance where, you know, Trump was playing chess while everybody else was playing checkers. I do believe that that does apply to this situation with blocking the blockade that Iran had on the Strait of Hormuz. And I thought that this, I don't know if you've seen a lot of these soundbites, Joan, but I think that the president did have a pretty good interview with Maria Bartiromo. This is the headline from Daily Mail. Trump gives Iran a new two-day ultimatum as ceasefire holds steady amid blockade, and he surges more U.S. troops to the Middle East. Donald Trump imposed a 48-hour deadline to bring the war with Iran to a head as the Pentagon moves to surge thousands of troops into the Middle East. He says that he's not thinking about extending the ceasefire because he does not believe it will necessary, he does not believe that it'll be necessary according to journalist Jonathan Carl. Here's the quote from Jonathan Carl. I think you're going to be watching an amazing two days ahead. Trump said it could end either way, but I think a deal is preferable because then they can rebuild. They really do have a different regime now, no matter what. We took out the radicals, they're gone no longer with us. He says if I weren't the president, the world would be torn to pieces. So this goes right back to what I've been saying all along, which is the president needs a way to claim victory. If he can claim victory, and I think that he could claim victory right now, and it goes back to what I've been talking about. How would you define victory in Iran? The president today literally could declare victory if he wanted to. No, I don't believe that it would necessarily be a legitimate claim. I think it's too early to talk about mission accomplished, but we have destroyed their military. We blew up a lot of things. We blew up a ton of things, and that's good. We took out a lot of their infrastructure. We took out a lot of their nuclear infrastructure. We took out a lot of their military infrastructure as well. We are good at blowing up big things. They're not coming after us. Joan, have you heard anything about their speedboats coming after our ships in the Strait of Hormuz? Nope. Okay, so here's what I wonder. Do those things really exist? Hmm. You ever wonder, like, okay, so their speedboats apparently have been legendary, but either one of two things is going on. Either they don't want their speedboats to get blown up or they're non-existent. And people have been saying about Iran for a long time. Iran is a paper tiger. In essence, they don't have what they have long said that they have. Now, you could say, okay, well, then did they or do they really have all of this enriched uranium at 60% where 90% is effective for a nuclear bomb? Iran said that they had enough material for 11 nuclear bombs, so we are just taking them at their word. But anyway, the bottom line is, you know, with the president saying, you know, we've destroyed a lot of their military and they really do. And I think this is important. When the president said that this could end either way, but I think a deal is preferable because they can rebuild, they really do have a different regime now. No matter what, we took out the radicals, they're gone no longer with us. So that is the president, at least to me, setting the table for claiming victory in the war with Iran, because their military is effectively gone. A lot of that nuclear apparatus, the missiles, all of that is gone as well. And their regime, the previous regime full of the radicals as Donald Trump says, they're gone as well. Now, he says, but here's the thing, the military is still there. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard, they are still there. And so as long as they are there, then they're the ones that are running the country. So it's not quite mission accomplished. The president has enough to claim mission accomplished, but we are not quite there yet. We'll have to see where it goes. And by the way, I would say that any deal that hands the Strait of Hormuz back to Iran is not a good deal. We have to be the ones ultimately that and maybe NATO is involved as well, but we have to be the ones that control the Strait of Hormuz. We can't give it back to Iran because simply put, they cannot Hi, I'm Joe Salci. I hosted the Stacking Benjamin's podcast. You know what? A lot of us get taxes wrong. Filing your taxes is basically data entry. There's been this trend of people going, oh, it's so cool to file my taxes in August. It's so awesome. Don't worry, I have an extension. It'll be fine. I'd like to totally do it later. Stop. Do your frigging taxes now. That was a really good fashion voice. Did you like it? You do that more frequently, please. Yes, every show for now. Stacking Benjamin's. Follow and listen on your favorite platform.
