the you can get it later and it will be a big part of your day. Kerry Lucas who is with us all morning. You gave us a testimonial earlier about how great the podcast is. Yeah, I love it. Perfect in the car anytime. Kerry Lucas, the grand poobah over at independent women. Is that did I give you a masculine title or is it just a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of mask mask mask mask mask That's like a big promotion. Yeah, and Grand Poo back. Yeah, I'm going with it. Perhaps, Grand Poo best. I just, I'm trying to commentize it. We'll stick with the mail. Joining us right now, Lieutenant Colonel Tony Schaefer, retired from the United States Army. He's a CI trained intelligence officer and asked him to come on and give us his perspective on what's going on with this ceasefire in Iran. By the way, he's also president of Project Sentinel. Tony, good morning, thanks for joining us. Good morning, Larry. Always great to be here with you. So, by the way, the president just put out a post on true social, saying, a country supplying military weapons to Iran will be immediately tariffed on any and all goods sold to the United States of America, 50%. Effective immediately, there will be no exclusions or exemptions, President DJT. He probably should have just written that in Mandarin, because clearly that is aimed at China here during the ceasefire. Because one of the concerns is during the ceasefire, Iran will be able to re-equip. What do you make of what's happening here and what are the dangers of this ceasefire at this time? Yeah, so there's been equipment going in, Larry, via the land route. I mean, believe it or not, you can move things from both Russia and China via land in Iran. And that's what's been going on. This is one of the reasons they probably were able to obtain the technology used to take down the I-15 Eagle, the I-15E to take down, because there was a new surface-to-air missile system that popped up on the battlefield out of blue. Just, oh, there it was. So it came from somewhere. And we believe it did come from either China or Russia. My bet is China is providing them a lot of just general support. But I think the Russians are actually giving them more specific surface-to-air technology, because that's what they've been trying to do. But yeah, I think that's what's been happening. With regard to China, that's kind of a dangerous little game, considering there's a summit between Trump and Xi Jinping coming up in mid-May, number one. Number two, even if they are supplying weapons or whatever, China is supplying to Iran, it sure looks like none of it worked, because it seemed pretty easy from where I'm sitting in my cushy studio in DC for our military to sort of overwhelm all those Chinese weapons pretty quickly in this engagement. So yes and no. I mean, to give full credit to Pete, Hexeth, and the team over in the Pentagon, and all the central command, the Special Operations Command, is because it's like a duck on the water, Larry. Just because a duck seems to be gliding across the water, they're paddling like hell underneath. So there's a spectrum of things that are going on any given time. You've got massive amounts of counter deception, deception operations trying to make the Iranians look one place and we could do something somewhere else. So that was part of the success of the rescue of the aviators, that we made them look somewhere else while we were doing something. Secondly, just the electronic warfare space. The atmosphere that's required, all the stuff that goes into it, the immensely complicated computers which launch all these codes and signals to counter missiles in the air. So that's another area. And of course, just the physical going in and doing things. 13,000 sorties, Larry. I don't think people can comprehend that because we don't see them all. But that's a lot of very complicated motion by all of our military every day. So I know it may look easy, but it's not. And Pete is making it look easy and God bless him for doing that. As we go into, I'm sure that these first days of a ceasefire are incredibly critical and tenuous. What are you looking for today? How will we know if things are going well or if things are quickly falling apart? Yeah, Kerry, I think that's a question. So yesterday a 10 point plan came back to answer the 15 point plan. We gave them, the Iranians came back with 10 points. And those 10 points are the beginning of the negotiation. And the negotiation, I believe, the big issue was not the points. It was the fact that finally, there appeared to be someone we were negotiating with in good faith. I think that's what really stopped it. Now, more than just the content is like, okay, we know someone's paying attention because they changed substantially those 10 points. So that was, I think, the predicate. Not so much the content, but the fact that something changed on their side. So I believe we're dealing with their leadership. The problem is the IRGC, Kerry, is like, hey, they may have finally found the right people who have the ability to actually negotiate and change positions. But what if the IRGC doesn't go along the biol accounts? There's been several violations already. So- Yeah, I wanted to ask you about that, Tony, because almost within an hour of the announcement of the ceasefire, we saw a volley of missiles heading toward Kuwait and Bahrain and to Israel. So what the hell is going on there? I haven't seen any response from there. Although, to be fair, Secretary of War, Pete Hegseth just started a press conference. I'm not sure you might be addressing that right now while we're live. Yeah, so I don't know if he is or not, but I know that this is what's going on. Again, the IRGC has a vote and they may not want to negotiate. So this is gonna be the challenge of the Iranian government to get control of the very, you know, a radical group who's been doing all the radical stuff before. And let me point out something that's obvious to us as rational people, but not so much to the people, the left there in DC. Every time the Iranians fire a missile towards Tel Aviv, that's a war crime, because they're firing high explosives indiscriminately into a city that's highly populated. So anytime you hear some left to say war crime, point back at them and say, you're talking about the Iranians, right? Because they do it constantly. And to this point of the ceasefire, right now they're firing towards, duh, civilian infrastructure in these other countries. So I just don't, I'm just tired of the left line constantly about what's going on. Me too. And it's hard to make heads or tails of it as we're sort of wading through this. And you're right, the number of sorties in such a short amount of time. And by the way, let's not forget, and President Trump mentioned this in his statement yesterday that we'll be hanging around the area during these two weeks of negotiation. What that means is all of our ships are still there, two carrier groups. And I think two muses from the Marine Corps, which is about 5,000 or 7,500. And then another mu is on its way, I'm told from Camp Pendleton. So it's gonna be a whole lot of Marines. Those Marines wear boots and they're meant to be on the ground. They don't like being on ships, in fact. They wanna be on the ground, those Marines. No, they do. Yeah, well, this is where the key terrain comes into it. So one of the threats, and I know it because I've been a planner participating in these plans since I was a lieutenant in the 80s, Larry just saying, that we've had plans forever to go in and seize the key terrain, Karg Island and Straits. We can hold them. We can go in and hold them. You're not gonna take an entire country with five to 7,000 people, but you can hold those pieces of the country which are most valued. So that is the plan. Ultimately though, they have the secret weapon of I think they're talking about dropping Bruce Springstreet and Antifa Ron as a man of the mass destruction. That'll be a game changer. Bill Crystal will be opening for him, actually. That'll be really something else. He'll be on Karg Island. We'll put Bill Crystal on Karg Island. I think he needs his son. Human shield, yeah. Tony Schaefer, thank you for joining us, young man. Always good to talk to you. You're welcome. Thanks Larry. It is 815. Next roll with Vernon Davis, the transformative journeys of athletes, artists and entrepreneurs. Ladies and gentlemen, lights out Sean Merriman. I wanna be the biggest and the best of what I do. And so whatever it takes, I'll get it done in business and everything else. All I do is know how to fight and earn what I want. My man, Malik asks, what actor, comedian would you wanna collaborate with? Me, Jamie Foxley, Kevin Hart in a movie. We said it on Vernon Davis podcast then. So we'll circle back and be like, yep, it's gonna clear. Next roll with Vernon Davis. Follow and listen on your favorite platform. As we just mentioned, Secretary Warpete Hegceth is delivering remarks from the Pentagon as we speak and let's do a little news on the fly, shall we? Kerry Lucas, here he is. Hegceth just moments ago. And almost completely ineffective. Iran shot hundreds and hundreds of missiles and attack, one-way attack drones at our aircraft carrier. They were obsessed with it. And they never got even close. Every single one of those shots easily shot down miles and miles away from the Abe Lincoln. They were blowing ammo into fantasy land. Contrast that with most significantly, in last night's wave of more than 800 strikes, we finished completely destroying Iran's defense industrial base, a core pillar of our mission objective. What little they have left buried in bunkers is all they will have. They can still shoot, we know that. Their command and control is so decimated they can't really talk and coordinate. So they still may shoot here and there, but that would be very, very unwise. But they can no longer build missiles, build rockets, build launchers, or build UAVs. Their factories have been raised to the ground, set back in historic fashion. You see, had Iran refused our terms, the next targets would have been their power plants, their bridges, and oil and energy infrastructure. Targets they could not defend and could not realistically rebuild, it would have taken them decades, and we were locked and loaded. All right, so he lays out exactly how depleted the Iran military is, so then the question is why last night did we take our boot off the neck? Why didn't we keep pressing to try to get our will? A lot of it, I'm sure, has to do with the Strait of Hormuz and the impasse there. He addressed why the president chose the ceasefire last night, cut 11. President Trump had the power to cripple Iran's entire economy in minutes, but he chose mercy. He spared those targets because Iran accepted the ceasefire under overwhelming pressure. The new Iranian regime understood that a deal was far better than the fate that awaited them. This new regime just happened to look at what happened to their predecessors. Their top leadership was systematically eliminated. The previous Iranian Supreme Leader, dead. The Supreme National Security Council Secretary, dead. The Supreme Leader Office Advisor, dead. The Supreme Leader Military Office Chief, dead. The Defense Minister, no longer with us. The IRGC commander, dead. The Armed Forces General Staff Commander, dead. The Intelligence Minister, dead. The IRGC Navy Commander, no longer here. The IRGC Intel Chief, dead. I skipped over a bunch and I could go on and on and on to include the new so-called new Supreme Leader wounded and disfigured. This new regime was out of options and out of time, so they cut a deal. They know this agreement means that they will never, ever possess a nuclear weapon. Under the terms, any nuclear material they should have will be removed. And a material, excuse me, they should not have will be removed. Right now their dust is deeply buried and watched 24-7 overhead. The President has been clear from the beginning there will be no Iranian nuclear weapons. Period, full stop. Other presidents said it. President Trump did it. All right, so there's your answer, according to the Secretary of War, it was mercy. We've reached all of our military objectives. The last item was the Strait of Hormuz. And if they agreed to open the Strait of Hormuz, then they would call off the dogs here on the military engagement. So now taking that into account, Kerry Lucas, also what we heard from Tony Schaefer there, and I think it's actually very interesting speculation. He's pretty well sourced in the intel community that a lot of this exercise was to validate that the people they were talking to actually had the power to do anything and had control. And then the last thing before you can remark on this, Kerry, is the fact that that seems to have borne out and they know that the political people they're talking to do have some level of control. And yet the IRGC still seems to be going rogue and they went ahead and launched after the ceasefire was announced. That was inexplicable, that was done on purpose. So there's a lot going on inside in Iran right now in terms of the struggle for power. So this is a big moving object right now, isn't it? Many moving objects. Well, absolutely. And it is interesting if you think that the president's latest statement on the embargo or the consequences for anybody who tries to rearm around, that is, you know, it's great to have the internal military capacities and infrastructure damaged, but we all know that if you can get something in there that's coming from China or Russia or any of those, the bad guy allies, that that could be, that's just as devastating. So this really does have to have a lot of different parts all working at the same time to really make this workable for the long term. Yeah, and I mean, listen, if you look at the 10 points and objectives that Iran has and the 15 points that the U.S. has and you realize that there is a forget about a gulf between, that's the Pacific Ocean from where Iran wants to be and where the U.S. is demanding. They've got two weeks to sit down and talk it through. There seems to be international players involved, Pakistan, Turkey, Oman, et cetera. I'm guessing they're gonna know pretty quickly whether there's any interest in reaching some sort of arrangement and some sort of deal. And for everybody who says that Trump's a mad man and he's lost his capacity and he needs, you know, needs to be removed from office and face a Nuremberg trial or whatever, you know, you gotta give it to him. He is trying desperately to reach some sort of nonviolent arrangement here in deal. And this appears to be an 11th hour attempt to do just that. But like I said, we're gonna know pretty quickly and we haven't stood down. We've just taken our foot off the gas, but we're still there and we're ready at any given moment if we have to. Yeah, and it's a big footprint that's there. You know, this is just an incredible amount of, Iran is surrounded. The question is, how committed are they to going down with the ship? I think it's also noteworthy that the final news reports before the ceasefire was announced in the final hours, the thing that stuck out to me was that it was reported that China had gotten involved and that China was making calls to Iran saying, guys, you gotta do something here. That, I think that's significant. Yeah, absolutely. That is encouraging. And we'll see. Well, we should know soon whether or not the streets are truly open. That's right. That's right. We should know what we should know now and the markets will be opening in an hour. Take an eye and keep an eye on that. It's 823. Now on 105.9 FM and streaming worldwide on the WMAL app, O'Connor and Company. WMAL. 837, O'Connor and Company 30 minutes from now, we're gonna hand it off to Chris Plant for the Chris Plant show. Make sure you stay tuned for that. It's Larry O'Connor with Carrie Lucas. Good morning, Carrie. Good morning. Just a regular Northern Virginia mom, Carrie Lucas, trying to get things going with the kids there in school and well, and also the president of Independent Women. So you're kind of busy as well. And that's why when there's an unannounced, unscheduled, unplanned day off thrust upon you by the Fairfax School Board, that sort of upsets the apple cart sometimes with all your plans and everything you're trying to get done. Yeah, absolutely. And I'm actually really lucky because our office is virtual, so I work from home, and so it's not such a big deal for me if the schools changed last minute, but that's not the case for a lot of families out there can be incredibly disruptive. And the schedule is already full of so many days off and so many half days, and then of course they had to take so many snow days with the snow this year. They were already pushing back the end of school well into the late days of June and parents were frustrated by all of it. And now here we go with this one. Are you ready? They've just announced that next, two Tuesdays from yesterday, April 21st, they will be shutting down the schools in Fairfax County. And because of that, other counties in Northern Virginia are following suit. The reason? Well, because of the statewide constitutional amendment special election on Tuesday, the 21st. Now, a cynic would look at that and say, oh, I see. So all the teachers can have the day off so the teachers can all vote. So you can get the teachers union out to support this sort of thing. And I think most cynics would be right. But the excuse, the fig leaf that they're putting over this thing is that the schools will have to be used as polling places and that would be disruptive. And so we have to have the day off. I'm not buying this. They've known about this special election for a couple of months now. Why suddenly now? And I'll tell you why, because I think they're worried about turnout. They're worried about turnout and they're trying to juice turnout. And so they're giving everybody the day off from the school systems so that they can get that turnout increased just that little more. Yeah, and it is one of those things. And if you think about just the costs of this, what this means for the state, obviously this was something that was extra constitutional from this, or not supposed to be something that the state was doing and using taxpayer funds to create this special election. And here it is, we're losing more hours of student learning in an already depleted school schedule. It's costly and it's stupid. Yeah, the reason for shutting down here, all of Fairfax County Schools by Michelle Reed, the superintendent was A, to maintain the safety and security for all students and staff. So, but it's unsafe to have people coming to vote in the school facilities with children. And this isn't going to be, this isn't the presidential election where there would be lines and a lot of, this is not going to be a high turnout election, presumably. And it's just crazy. It just once again, kids come last. Number two, to avoid disruptions caused by restricted access to key areas such as cafeterias, gyms and parking lots. Again, this is not the first rodeo. We have been using public schools as polling places for over a hundred years. But now suddenly we have to shut down on election day to accommodate the mixed use of those spaces just for one day. It's snowflake attitude. And frankly, again, it sounds like a fig leaf and excuse. Finally, to ensure our facilities are fully accessible and prepared for voters. What's involved in this really? I know. Seriously, use the teachers lounge, okay? All you need is one room. Yeah, it is. Again, it's this, you know, our schools are used for everything or everything's a priority other than, let's get the kids in there and make sure that they're actually learning and catching up for all the time off they've had this year. By the way, I think the real tell here is on the final paragraph. Elections are an important part of civic life and this closure provides an opportunity for families to discuss the importance of voting and public participation. And if you're eligible, I encourage you to take part in the election. This is a get out the vote scam. By the way, I really appreciate her saying if you're eligible. How about be clear here, if you're a citizen and a registered voter, all right. So there's that. And that's again, gonna start taking off and look for other schools to follow suit in Virginia. Fairfax County families in general are getting sick and tired of this schedule. I mean, you have to live with this. You have to deal with it. The number of days off for the teachers purposes and some of the, it's like half the school weeks right now have less than a five day full school week. And a lot of it is because of just sort of trying to accommodate every single religion and every single possible holiday. Although they still refuse to call Christmas break, Christmas break, but that's a whole other thing. You know, Larry, this week, there was no school on Monday. That's following a week off for spring break. And this Friday, they were closed again and it's for basically like a teacher planning day or whatever that is. So it's not even, I don't even think it's a religious holiday. A teacher planning day. Yeah. Exactly. And again, that's something negotiated by the collective bargaining agreement and spearheaded by the, so. Now that's what's going on in Northern Virginia. Over in Maryland, the State Board of Education have given some school systems a reprieve because of the snow days that have caused so many days off there. They have to have at least 180 days without intervention from the State Board. The Montgomery Prince George's and Hartford Counties would have had to push the school into the week of June 22nd to make up for those lost times. But now the State Board of Education has allowed for those schools to close on June 18th so that they won't get the mandatory number of days. So I mean, honestly, what's the point of having a mandatory day if when you have infringements on it, you go, and again, they didn't take away all of the various holidays that they've instituted over the last couple of years or the teacher planning days. They're just taking off the days at the back end of the school year to accommodate summer vacations. And I appreciate that. Let children go have fun with their families and enjoy their summer vacation. But don't pretend like you're, you know, actually following your law and following the regulations that you're supposed to be following. And the big thing is, is why are these regulations in place? Like why is there the expectation of 180 school days? Because presumably we think that that's what it's gonna take for kids to get the knowledge they need to go to the next year. The more we just, you know, it's just obvious this is checking a box and trying to, you know, look like you're following the rules. It's performative. And then you wait, it's completely performative. And by the way, just so you know, if kids in Baltimore County schools only get 170 days and 180 days, well then we got a problem because then they won't be proficient in math or reading. Oh, they're already not proficient in math or reading. So I guess it's really not gonna make an impact. It's 844. Hi, I'm Joe Saul Seahe, I host of the Stacking Vegamins 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 like 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. I don't feel like that. Stacking Vegamins, follow and listen on your favorite platform. Absolutely. Artemis II update now as our brave astronauts are making their way back to Earth. Here's a fascinating opinion piece. What's the publication for this? The Guardian. Of course, it's The Guardian. Let's stop going into space. There's nothing to see and no one to talk to. This is from columnist Zoe Williams. Guardian, that's British, right? So do that. Hey, just so you know, Zoe, The Guardian isn't going to space. You Brits haven't done anything up there. We're doing it all. I have nothing against astronauts and scientific innovation. But what's the point of Artemis II? Just so you know, if you're challenging the point of Artemis II, then you do have something against astronauts and scientific innovation. Is this a female thing? Do women not get it about space? No, no. Women may not be obsessed with it, but you look at these pictures and feel the magic. I mean, this is just incredible stuff. Yeah, Katie Miller, wife of Stephen Miller and podcaster, she quoted this article and said, liberal women make all women look bad. So it's certain kinds of women, I suppose. It's, by the way, Waffle House. You know, Waffle House has a social media account. They retweeted the astronauts at the moment they broke the record for being, you know, the furthest away in outer space than any other human had been. And they said, nobody's been this far from a Waffle House before. That's true, I guess that's true. It's good stuff, yeah. Yes, there's Waffle Houses everywhere. Have you seen some of the pictures though? It actually has been stunning to see. Yeah, absolutely. We were actually on spring break last week and on the beach in Florida and we watched the launch. Oh, I didn't know that, you got to see the launch? We got to see it. Oh, I'm so jealous, that's amazing. It really was just, you know, and I had my three school-aged kids watching that and there's no way you can be anything but just amazed and proud to be an American. It's really something. There was an incredible shot of an earth rise from the backside of the moon, seeing the earth sort of emerge from behind the moon. But I think the one that really got me was the eclipse. It was basically an eclipse with the moon passing in front of the sun. I mean, let's face it, when you're in outer space, there's an eclipse, you know, if you're positioned right, you know, every day, right? As the moon circumnavigates the earth and it was just an incredible picture. If you haven't seen it, go seek it out. Basically a natural eclipse going on right there. Also, Reed Weissman, I think he's the commander of the vessel. He's commanding the Artemis too. Back in 2017, he got a fortune cookie and he posted it. February 10th, 2017, he posted this fortune cookie on his Twitter account. It said, a visit to a strange place will bring you renewed perspective. That's Reed Weissman dated February 2017. Amazing. And he actually posted it and said, I choose to believe this fortune I received tonight, perhaps the moon or a journey to Mars. And well, he's got one down. Let's see if he can move it for the other one. Incredible. It's eight fifty two. Next roll with Vernon Davis, the transformative journeys of athletes, artists, and entrepreneurs. Ladies and gentlemen, lights out, Sean Merriman. I want to be the biggest and the best when I do. And so whatever it takes, I'll get it done in business and everything else. All I do is know how to fight and earn what I want. My man, Malik S. What actor, comedian, would you want to collaborate with? Me, Jamie Foxley, Kevin Hart in a movie. We said it on Vernon Davis podcast. So we'll circle back and be like, yep, it's gonna clear. Next roll with Vernon Davis. Follow and listen on your favorite platform.
