Episode 871: So Long, Spirit

spirit airline says goodbye and will we reopen the straight of hormuz we'll discuss all this and more on this edition of the editors i'm rich larry i'm joined as always by the right honorable charles cw cook the good neighbor noah rothman and the sage of authenticity woods jim garrity you are, of course, listening to a national podcast. Our sponsors this episode are Made In, Red Flags Press, and Vare, more about all of them. And, of course, if for some reason you're not already following us on a streaming service, by the way, you can find us everywhere, from Spotify to Apple Podcasts. And if you like what you hear, please consider giving us a glowing five-star view wherever you listen to your podcast. If you don't like what you hear, please forget I said anything. So, Jim Garrity, we had the sad news that Spirit Airlines is no longer with us, being liquidated after declaring bankruptcy twice, I think in 24 and 25, and just couldn't escape. But there's been a lot of focus on this attempted merger with JetBlue that was blocked by the antitrust zealots in the Biden administration. Basically, there's no merger these people ever saw that they liked. And for no good reason, it might not have been a great deal for JetBlue at the end of the day, but it certainly put the kibosh on Spirit Airlines. What do you make of it? So all weekend long, I saw on the Sunday shows and places like that, you know, social media, people arguing, you know, it's Trump's fault that these 17,000 people are losing their jobs because the Iran war raised oil prices and Republicans saying, no, it was the Biden administration blocking the merger. That's what, you know. And so I decided like, okay, for Monday's morning jolt, I'm going to really go through all this. And both of those arguments are part of the story. I think they kind of missed the big picture in total. Spirit Airlines got through COVID okay. And then people may remember the phenomenon of what they call revenge tourism. Everybody who couldn't travel in 2020 and the early part of 2021 started traveling more in 2021, 2022, 2023. Spirit Airlines begins to expand a great deal during that time. And I believe as late as 2023, they were the fifth largest airline in the United States. Problem is that post-COVID revenge tourism boom, like if that had remained forever, Spirit Airlines probably would have been fine. Bad news is it did not. And they had expanded to a whole bunch of new routes. And among those new routes, kind of curiously, they weren't cities where they had flights every day. So imagine, you know, I'm going to do my vacation to, you know, Charlie's Wonderland of Florida or somewhere in the Caribbean. and you'll find out that they don't have a return flight on the day that you want. So maybe you'll fly some other airline or something like that. But it's one of those things where like, basically they expanded too fast and demand started shrinking. So then they start trying to do this merger. The metaphor I used yesterday, the denial of the merger is like a diagnosis of stage four cancer, right? They're in trouble and now we're going to take away this merger with JetBlue that was going to give you more airline, more routes, more cities. airlines have the advantages of economies of scale. Life is easier when you are a big airline than if you are a smaller airline. Jump of fuel prices, that's like putting it into a coma. But the part that really got obscured is that there was this plan. Are there any other distressing and medical analogies you're going to make? Yes, absolutely. I'm still going. That there was a proposal for a bailout, which by the way, I didn't like one bit. And I thought this country hated bailouts. but it was a proposal on the Trump administration. We're going to give you a $500 million loan in exchange. The federal government gets 90% ownership of the company. And the creditors did not like that one bit. So that is pulling the plug on the respirator. That is what ultimately killed Spirit Airlines. But it made some bad decisions a couple of years ago. Really couldn't figure out a way to make up ground. First half of yesterday's jolt, I go through all the different financial challenges that you face if you're an airline. So, you know, it's one of those things where it's very sad, but this is, you know, that's saying, like, you know, there was no one thing that sunk the Titanic. It was like 10 particular decisions that led up to it. This is somewhat comparable to that. And it's kind of annoying to see the blame game. Oh, it was only this or, oh, it was only that. Having said that, Elizabeth Warren has a lot of egg on her face and I'll let Charlie take it away from there. Yeah. So it was a brilliant model initially. Just have this real basic fee, rock bottom fee. and then you charge people for everything else that they might expect from their airline, whether it's a soda or bring a bag on board or whatever it is. But another of the problems is the big four just caught up, and they had basic economy, and they could give better service. We've all seen the videos of fights outside the Spirit Airlines, ticket counters, or a guy just throwing luggage out the door of the back. But, Noah, on the antitrust thing and just the perversity here, As I looked into this a little bit more yesterday, I was learning about it and learned a lot through Jim's morning jolt. But another aspect of this was JetBlue wanted to have a partnership several years ago with American to get more slots in New York and a better loyalty program and all that. And the Biden administration put the kibosh on that because it said that JetBlue is this discount airline. You need to maintain its total independence or be terrible for consumers. And then they turn around on this one and say, oh, JetBlue is a potential monopolist. You know, they can't take over Spirit Airlines, even though they still would have been smaller than the big four. I mean, it's a little bit like worrying about thrifty rental car is going to establish a monopoly when it's the fifth largest rental car concern. And another aspect of this is JetBlue only wanted the merger with Spirit because it thought it would need more planes and whatnot, more resources, because it was going to have this deal with American. Then the American deal gets killed. And then JetBlue is like, well, we can't really back out of the Spirit thing. And then that gets killed as well, in part based on the argument that Spirit is this ultra low cost carrier. So having it go away and get merged into JetBlue is going to hurt consumers. But you know what hurts them just as much or more? Having Spirit totally go out of business. Yes. Maybe I'm confused, Rich. But when I hear the word monopolists, plural, used to describe a commercial landscape in a particular industry defined by multiple competing enterprises, I just think you're using the word wrong. This is not a monopolistic environment, the competing airlines. And the logic for this Biden era effort to block this merger seems really stupid in retrospect, right? I mean, it was designed to prevent anti-competitive practices. Consumers need choices, its advocates continually insisted. And look back now, how many choices do they have? They have one fewer. and then they pivot after that looks really silly to well this is how the market works isn't it aren't you guys the creative construction destruction types and capitalism uber alice this is what it looks like right no that's this is not the market at work this was the government because mergers are for the free market too this is the government putting the kibosh on what private enterprise wanted to do to remain competitive to remain in this landscape and it just got pushed out and then we hear the last most frustrating argument that this is why we need more regulation that the regulation of the airlines is absolutely necessary hyper regulation of the airlines to prevent um this kind of collapse um that's necessary to maintain the creative landscape you know the the remedy for the ills of regulation is more regulation no one remembers what the pre 1978 flying regime looked like. It was far fewer air parts, far fewer routes. Airlines couldn't compete on price, so they competed on services. So you get all these lovely pictures that mesmerize the internet of, you know, leg space and five course dinners while you're flying in a flying resort. But prices were three times higher, at least for tickets than they were today. And they were harder to get because there were fewer routes. Americans have vastly more choices at much lower prices than they did in the regulatory regime that prevailed before 1978. And that just seems intuitive based on what we're watching. We're seeing how government intervened in order to protect consumers from the pernicious influence of rapacious capitalists. And what do they get? They get less. They don't get more. They get less and they get more. What's left is more expensive. That sort of argument makes really intuitive sense. And I think it translates on an elementary level to voters. So it has to be larded up with all this theory and all this nonsense that's designed to get you to believe that the only reason why this. Oh, and also, I forgot to add, that in order to leverage general hostility to the Iran war and apprehension over gas prices, then they introduce that as well and say, well, this thing would have collapsed. It collapsed as a result of the gas price shock, as though the merger wouldn't have created some more insulation for a JetBlue Spirit airline that could have absorbed that kind of input shock. All of these arguments I don't find particularly compelling because I don't think they are arguments. I think there's just – there's an inclination among some to regulate for the sake of regulation, to prevent industries from gaining market share. Because they don't like market share. They don't like industry. They don't like enterprise. They like the public sector. They don't like the private sector. And so their arguments shift and mold in order to advance the political objective, which is more government power, not more consumer choice. So Charlie, as Jim alluded to, you wrote a piece expressing your extreme dissatisfaction with the senator from Massachusetts, Elizabeth Warren, who tweeted when this merger was killed by an idiotic judge, I have to say. I think he was a Reagan appointee, but this is not impressive work. But she tweeted, oh, what a win for flyers. Thank you, Biden administration. And then Spirit goes out of business and she tweets, oh, this is so terrible. There's no competition for the big four, which dominates 75% of air travel. yeah so rich imagine you have the bubonic plague and a spear through your eye i'm just trying to one up jim the key point is the one noah made which is that those who are in favor of antitrust tend to be so reflexively they're a little bit like people who want us to build trains when you ask them why they want trains they say because we need trains well why do we need trains because we need trains it starts with the desire to build trains and everything else flows and in most cases in the modern era the desire to enforce antitrust is the desire to enforce antitrust. The Spirit case is complicated, but the claims that have been made by the Elizabeth Warrens of the world are false. It's complicated because the rise in fuel costs did kill Spirit, and the rise in fuel costs are the result of our foray into Iran. But something was going to kill Spirit, and quite soon, which is why Spirit wanted to merge with JetBlue. Spirit understood that it was in a precarious position. It had been bankrupt twice. Its roots had been diminished. Its fleet had been diminished. It knew that it could not sustain a shock. It was massively in debt. Its prospects were slim. And I am of the view that those who run companies, while of course imperfect, are better able to determine what is in their interests than is the federal government, absent egregious circumstances. And these circumstances were simply not egregious. The first claim that is made by the Elizabeth Warrens of the world is that the Spirit JetBlue merger needed to be blocked to protect competition. But of course, this is ridiculous. As she herself subsequently tweeted, there are four airlines that control 75% of the market. The notion that this would have created anything close to a monopoly or anything close to a competition-killing behemoth is silly. If anything, we're now left with less competition. the second thing that elizabeth warrens of the world say is that this decision was made by a reagan judge and that therefore he was merely enforcing the rule of law so if you oppose that decision then you oppose the rule of law but the problem with that is that it treats the courts as if they offer advisory opinions as if they step in wherever they see a potential violation of the law and fix it. But this wasn't a constitutional case at the Supreme Court in which the judiciary was expected to reflect upon the proper meaning of an established text. First off, this case only ever got in front of Judge Young because the Biden administration's Department of Justice decided to sue. That was the precipitating fact. Had that not happened, it would never have gone to a court. The Biden administration decided to block this. And in fact, not only did the Biden administration use the Department of Justice to try to enforce the Clayton Act, the Department of Transportation also got involved. And the Biden administration put out press release after press release, sent their principals out onto television and Twitter to boast about doing this. This was, in other words, a policy. This was a political act. Yes, it was subsequently reviewed by a judge, but the judge was only there because of the Biden administration's choice. And the judge in the case, I agree with you, the opinion's not particularly good. But how can it be when the Clayton Act is so vague? Most of our progressive era antitrust law is hollow. It's close to being a series of enabling acts. If you read the Sherman Act or the Clayton Act, you will find that the details are to be filled in later, and they have been by the courts, not by Congress. And so the judge didn't really have a shot. He could have said anything. It's so vague. And in those circumstances, what judges are expected to do is defer to the executive branch on the facts of the case. And the facts of the case were presented by the Biden administration. So this was an act that was taken by the executive branch while Joe Biden was president, which then created what was not a rubber stamp, but what was not up to the usual standards of judicial review. And I think the Biden administration ought to take some blame. Now, I don't know what would have happened to Spirit Airlines if it had been able to merge with JetBlue What I do know is that the case for the government intervention here was weak that private actors usually know better what is good for the long prospects of their company than the government does And the premature celebration of this being good for flyers is just typical of a particular worldview that is narrow and arrogant and leads to poor outcomes. So I think those who didn't allow Spirit a chance to survive and to merge ought to feel pretty ashamed of themselves. That is not inconsistent with acknowledging that, yes, it was the spike in gas prices, which is a man-made spike as a result of our decision to go into Iran that finally did in Spirit Airlines. So Jim Gary asks a question to you. Did you ever fly Spirit Airlines? No, I did fly Breeze Airlines. And I mentioned earlier about the difficulty of starting up a new airline. Breeze Airways didn't exist until 2021, I believe. And I think they're like the 10th largest airline in the country already. So you can start up. Competition does exist. You are seeing smaller airlines start to rise up and take more routes. But it just takes time. It's a capital intensive business. That's something I didn't realize until I read your jolt, was just how important the credit card companies are to yes you could argue yeah that's another thing elizabeth warren wants to go after these people are obsessed with back-end credit card deals which they think are responsible for all sorts of evils in our society barack obama was obsessed with credit card points which he thought should be taxable you want to put more airlines out of business you go down that road yeah no did you ever fly a spirit no i don't think i did I think the only discount airline I've ever flown is Frontier. And I tend to avoid them if I have to fly. And I try to fly as infrequently as possible. Service isn't great. Yeah, I mean, like, it is just a glorified bus. But I'm kind of brand loyal to United only because it's reasonably comfortable and reliable. And I get I have points on that. But I fly so infrequently that I don't really bargain hunt, you know. Yeah, apparently in the glory days when they're really growing, they would never be on time just because they didn't care about that at all. And they assume people didn't care about it. Now there's the whole thing about inflating times, right? Where they tell you that your plane arrives a half hour later than it actually does. And there's a reason for that, which is another thing I guess progressives can regulate. Charlie? No, I was going to, but then I decided to walk instead because I thought it'd be more comfortable. so i think that there's a spirit ticket one of these times you drove halfway around the country i've never been on spirit but i will say that there are two tiers of budget airlines and in the top tier you have jet blue and breeze both of which are excellent i've flown those a lot breeze in particular is a lovely airline to fly they don't have enough flights as far as i'm concerned and they fly to strange places they fly these unusual routes but they're very useful for me in jacksonville then below that you have spirit and i think frontier and those are really budget airlines and i've never had a reason to fly them i don't think they even fly out of where i live so i wasn't on those yeah i i never flew spirit i like jet blue though i especially like the live tv which is which is very useful in following sports games when you're in the air so with that let's go to our first sponsor this episode made in if you're considering the pros and cons of different cookware brands, you should know that Made In has more of the pros. 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For full details, visit madeincookware.com. That's M-A-D-E-I-N, cookware.com. So, Noah, we have this operation that started yesterday in the straight-of-war moves. Just like the blockade, initially a little confusion about what it was because Trump, I got breaking news, is not always very precise in how he describes these things. So it kind of sounded like it might be an escort mission. It's less than that. And we are going to, I was listening to Aaron McLean on his School of War podcast. He had a couple of maritime guys. And they likened it to a zone defense in football where you're not going to escort every single ship through, but you're going to try to provide some security bubble. And we're pointing out to people where there is an assured mine-free channel through the Strait of Hormuz. We got a couple of U.S. ships through yesterday, but we also took a lot of fire. These two destroyers that transited the strait as well. What do you make of it? Yeah. So for the past four weeks, we've been talking about how nothing has happened in the strait. And we've just kind of been rehashing the same sequence of events. The last 48 hours have been especially lively. Beginning in Sunday morning, there were reports that some of these vessels stranded in the Strait of Hormuz came under attack, likely by IRGC assets, small boats, projectiles. It was conspicuous because not hours later, the president announced this Project Freedom initiative, which, as you said, which was reported as being more than it was, but also less than it was. Initially, the Wall Street Journal reported that it was essentially a program that they had been banding about last week, which was little more than an information sharing regime, which would communicate with shipping interests, insurers, what have you, and provide them information. It wouldn't have an armed component. That was not true. It does have an armed component. And subsequently, the United States transited the strait for the first time since the blockade with two guided missile destroyers and successfully exfiltrated these two ships. And yes, they did come under fire. No indication that any of that fire hit its targets. But the IRGC, and we have some indication that the IRGC is pretty rogue on this one. There's some reports that I think are pretty credible that the political class inside the regime with remains of it is very frustrated by how they behaved yesterday, how the IRGC commanders behaved, because what they did was very much to violate the ceasefire. They opened up ballistic missile assaults on, as they did throughout the war, because they can't actually They hit us. They strike the UAE and they strike Oman and dropped about a dozen ballistic missiles, as well as a lot of drones and cruise missiles on the UAE and a few that hit Oman, as well as a strike on this South Korean tanker. So the sequence of events demonstrates, in my view, that we're getting close to the restoration of the kinetic phase of this campaign. And I thought that we've had no choice but to do that anyway. There would be no durable solution to this that would preserve our strategic interests, even if Iran placidly agreed to reopen the strait. We needed to do this by force. We needed to demonstrate that it could be done by force and that the U.S. remains the sole guarantor of free maritime navigation rights. and subsequently dan kane has said yesterday in a call with reporters and this morning during a briefing that the operation has cleared mines in the strait has opened up a two-way lane that will transit traffic to and from the strait via the omani side and that it's going to be defended by this as you said bubble um which does not necessarily involve escort missions but maybe he's putting a happy face on it but regardless kane says that the assets that are deployed here are just as robust as any escort mission and demonstrate demonstrated the the case when he said that we came under attack yesterday by about six small boats which is all the iranian navy has left and they're all gone we destroyed them um they all say that we this is not necessarily the breakdown of the ceasefire and they say that because the president is the person who will determine whether or not we return to kinetic operations and i don't think he wants to but if he did and we began to clear the strait in a way that created the conditions in which commercial interests around the world could regard the strait as they do the horn of africa or the strait of malacca where there is no such thing as zero risk but that doesn't mean that transit is impossible and it's navigated by an international and policed by an international coalition and navigated by international interests i think that if this the strait is is as clear as it can get for commercial traffic with the U.S. guaranteeing it, and that would require some kinetic operations against IRGC targets and efforts to compel the IRGC to back down in this way, that it would subsequently achieve the objectives that the president wants. He's all over media now saying we need the highly enriched uranium. We need that dust, 60% enriched uranium, about a thousand pounds of it. So by the way, is it actually dust or what does he call it dust? I believe it is dust. I believe the form that it takes is is just, you know, dust before it can be enriched into the refining process to turn it into weapons grade material. It's so funny. It's such a funny Trump formulation, right? It's just he has ways of referring to the stuff that no one else does. Yeah. And it makes him sound like he has no idea what he's talking about, which is part of a big part of the problem. But regardless, I don't know what the president knows. I don't have access to his intelligence. And we have these reports from places like Reuters, which are saying nothing has been done to the Iranian nuclear program. They're essentially nine to 12 months out from a bomb. Very little has been achieved over the course of these two strikes, two sequence of strikes on Iranian nuclear targets. And I just don't understand where that's coming from. I'm no expert in this, but I don't know what capacity they have to spin up centrifuges and get from 60 percent to 90 percent in order to get weapons grade material. What refining capacity for uranium metals do they have left? All that stuff was hit. And it's visible from space. Like we can see it. All those delicate operations, you know, so much blown up like one of these strikes. maybe it was the 12-day war one, it's just if you create a tremor in the mountain, you destroy the centrifuges. I assume we've done a lot more than that. But Charlie- Well, we know that the stuff is buried under Fordo and Isfahan, and we see it from space. And if they try to excavate it and move it, I don't know why we wouldn't mow the lawn, as it were. I have more tolerance for those sort of operations, I suppose, than a lot of people who regard them as forever wars. But it seems to me like we don't need to take control of this stuff in order to control where it is and who's using it. So Charlie, I understand why Trump is saying that they haven't broken the ceasefire, but of course they've broken the ceasefire. They were breaking the ceasefire from the beginning. The initial ceasefire was there supposed to reopen the strait and they didn't, and they haven't. And the idea that they can fire at our ships and hit the UAE and it's not a violation of the ceasefire, it just seems crazy. So maybe he's going to hit back in fairly short order here but it also goes to he doesn't seem to have a huge appetite for a big air campaign again well he's completely stuck you have how do i put this you have the military case as to what we should do and can do and no one makes it well. We found ourselves in a difficult situation and we have the money, the people, skills, equipment, the ordinance to do it. And then you have the political reality and the human being at the top of the executive branch. and these two things are not the same Trump is as you say down playing the degree to which the Iranians are violating the deal because it makes him look weak if he acknowledges that they're doing so with impunity I suspect he regrets starting this again that's a separate question from whether or not it's morally virtuous I suspect he understands that he is in a tough place politically. And I suspect he knows that many of the claims that he has made about the situation are false. Now, I hope now that we do everything we can to clear the strait and bring Iran and this administration to its knees, because we did make that initial decision. But I'm afraid this is turning into a perfect example of why you should not enter into a conflict that you are not prepared to decisively win. i see him as being completely stuck i it's a bit like the surge you know if you go back to iraq of course it's on a much smaller scale but there were people who had been skeptical of the original incursion into iraq who supported the surge because they said well we're there now we have changed the status quo I suppose that's what we need but I have really shifted from my optimistic position you're no longer on the fence well I just I think that you have to take into account what you're willing to do if you're going to start a war and we're just not willing to do what it takes and maybe i'm wrong maybe in two or three days we've done something miraculous but we're not as far as i can see in your estimation charlie i think and please i'm just no no no it's a fair question and please understand that i'm not a military expert in any way but the brutal answer to the question is i think quite a few american deaths i think if in what mission though like Look at ground operation in Tehran. That's one option. I think creating a sustainably open strait would cost American lives. I think probably going in and getting the dust would cost American lives. We have... That happens. You don't? I don't see how that happens. No, I can't. I can't. I mean, when people describe the HEU exfiltration operation, we're basically establishing a small military base inside Iran for the foreseeable future. You're saying we couldn't do it. No, that's not plausible. I don't know if it's plausible. I don't know. It sounds science fictional to me. Opening up the strait, I don't see as science fictional. We have a roadmap to follow from the 1980s. But do you agree with me now that opening up the strait, if done properly, would probably cost some American lives? most likely and you can't you certainly can't rule it out but we have capabilities are much different from they were in the 80s and and iran has plenty of autonomous vehicles that they can mobilize but so are ours our defensive defensive capabilities are pretty impressive um so it's not there's no such thing as a bloodless operation you can't and taking out the regime as we could so that it is gone would cost American lives too, right? Quite possibly. I mean listen yes I mean most likely you can concede that And I think the president should be honest about this sort of thing He very scared of domestic public reaction But he just not behaving in the way that his critics said he would He did not use the ceasefire to wiggle out of the war No, I agree with that. He's conducting the war by other means, and he's now recommitting to the war. So, I mean, we should reevaluate what his risk tolerance level is. Fair enough. But when you wiggle out of something, you are no longer stuck. And I'm saying he's stuck. Yeah, I think there's been amazing, Jim, let's throw it to you, amazing stick-to-itiveness from Trump. I don't think he's eager to start the air campaign, but I might have thought he would have tackled his way out of this somehow. But I think it's hard on the other side of the coin. It's hard with the Strait of Hormuz. Now, I think this operation is great in that it shows impatience on the part of Trump. He wants to reopen the strait. This is what we have the Fifth Fleet for. It's really kind of a national embarrassment that this is happening. But this operation just doesn't seem big enough to get it done. And the problem is you can say, oh, look, we got destroyers through the Strait of Hormuz. Yeah, these are heavily fortified, heavily armed, state-of-the-art military vessels. So a tanker is not going to take much comfort from that. OK, this destroyer got fired upon and got through, and we're going to try the same thing. That just doesn't compute. so all of us are to one degree or another iran hawks we are not eager not fans of the old iran deal and when trump both with the strikes on the nuclear program last year and earlier you know february 28th march 1st the action against iran like ah finally we have the president we've been waiting for who recognizes there is no path to peaceful coexistence with this regime recognizing the Iranian mullahs have broken every promise, they violate every treaty, there's no deal on paper that they're ever going to live up to, and who finally recognizes the only way to eliminate the threat is to destroy it. Now, you are correct that Trump has not yet tacoed and said, you know what, we've got this great deal, look at this. We have seen quite a few rounds of Vance going to Pakistan and, you know, not Lutnik, Kushner and Witkov going off and meeting with the Iranians. And lo and behold, the Iranians are always saying, oh, your deal isn't good enough. We demand more concessions, even though their, you know, their economy is destroyed and they've militarily lost the war. Then it's one of those things where you can see Trump is not taco, but that doesn't mean he doesn't periodically come out and say, great news. Iran has opened up the Strait of Hormuz. And then within a day or two, they start shooting again. He wants to believe he's reached some amazing great deal with the Iranians. And he also apparently seems to, he doesn't seem to recognize any damage or any consequence of saying, fantastic, fabulous, I got the best deal ever. And then recognizing within two days, the Iranians are going to start shooting again. Oh, by the way, the latest spin from the Iranians is like, look, we didn't know those guys were going to shoot those guns at you. We had no idea. They're rogue. don't blame us for what they're doing, which then raises the question. If you are, if the Iranian mullahs and the representatives you're negotiating with can't control their forces, what is the value of negotiating with them? Let's talk to the guy who can. There's a question of whether that's real or not. That could just be a negotiation. That's also for a question of, if it's real, you know, maybe you're the president and you finally say, I need the conventional army, the guys with guns to, to stop the, these bad guys with guns. And, you know, you can get some sort of self self coup or, something like that. Very speculative, of course. Just one last thing. Obviously, we all kind of can recognize there's going to be domestic political. I had thought when it hit around a national average of about $4, $4.10, $4.15 a gallon, okay, it seemed to slow down a bit. I was like, all right, this stinks. Well, this morning, according to AAA, it's $4.48. We're probably going to have $5 a gallon gas in the summer across most of the country. God knows what it's going to be on the West Coast. God help you listeners out there in California. So this is really going to be bad for the administration heading into the summer and fall in the midterms. So Noah Rothman, exit question to you. What is your letter grade from A to F for U.S. energy policy, broadly speaking, over the last 15 years? We've seen this spread between West Texas intermediate crude and Brent crude, where our oil, West Texas intermediate, has been cheaper. It's been really marked in terms of the liquefied natural gas. I mean, this is literally insane. 20% of the natural gas is like offline, can't get through the strait. And the price has declined in the United States during the war. And in West Texas, they have more than they can do anything with. The pipelines are all full. There's a negative price for some of this. They're paying people to come take it away. So what's your letter grade US energy policy? And by the way, I should mention UAE is out of OPEC. Right. Yeah. I mean, momentous events. I guess if I had to average out American performance over the last 15 years, I'm going to give it a B plus. And the only reason why we're downgrading that is because when Democrats get into office, they attempt to reverse everything that the Trump administration has done over the course of that decade to advance America's capacity to export, in particular, LNG, liquid natural gas, but also increase our capacity to develop domestic sources of energy, not just LNG, but also with fracking, but also crude supplies and what have you. The fracking revolution, which began in 2007, is what allows us now to exercise our will in the Middle East. There would be nothing remotely like the war that we're engaging with Iran now if we didn't have the domestic energy capacity that we do to absorb the shock that the rest of the world is experiencing right now. It's given us a lot of latitude. It's given us the ability to lean closer into our alliance with Israel, which has been immensely productive from a tactical perspective in the Middle East. And when Democrats get into office, they try to arrest all this progress and only then realize halfway through this enterprise that they're cutting off their own nose. So you had Jennifer Granholm and the Biden administration waging a war against energy producers only by 2023 to go hat in hand to American energy producers and beg them to produce more oil, despite begging them not to just, you know, years later. So the incoherence, when Democrats get into office, puts a little bit of downward pressure on my otherwise sterling grade for American energy policy under the Trump administration. Charlie? I'm giving it an A. I think it's a remarkable policy achievement. I think it's a remarkable conservative policy achievement. Remember, we're told conservatism never achieves anything. That's false. I understand Noah's concern, but if you look at the reaction to the higher gas prices as a result of our Iran policy, the Democrats are attacking it from the right. Even Tom Steyer, the environmentalist in California, is attacking it from the right. In that sense, it reminds me of how comprehensively Republicans have won on taxes. This is an astonishing achievement. It is an achievement that has not been echoed anywhere else. In fact, Europe has committed energy suicide over the same period. The only thing that tempts me to give it an A- rather than a flat A is that during the Biden administration, when inflation struck, he emptied the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to try to do better in the midterms. and then it wasn't refilled even when gas prices were low and that latter failure is a bipartisan failure but that aside it has been monumental and it's one of the reasons that i'm bullish on the u.s long term jim girty i'm going to give it a b plus or a minus uh i agree with pretty much everything charlie and noah have said but i'm going to one point on nuclear energy uh for the better part of four decades, we basically have not been allowed to build a nuclear plant in this country, a new nuclear plant in this country, because Jane Fonda made a scary movie about it in the 1970s. And of course, the only three people, most people, if you ask people to name a nuclear reactor, they could name three. Three Mile Island, Fukushima, and Chernobyl. Of course, those are the threes that had disasters. National Review, folks on the right have been arguing, we need to bring back nuclear power for a really long time. We have the technology to do it safely. If it wasn't for Harry Reid, we could store the waste in Yuka Mountain. And we couldn't get anywhere. And then like that, all of a sudden, big tech said, we need more energy for our data centers. And Microsoft gets Three Mile Island reopened. Amazon gets small modular reactions. Google gets one. Left, right, and center. Everybody, it's okay. And you know who's eager to do it? Democrats like Jennifer Granholm and Mark Warner and all these folks. It's funny, but kind of infuriating that you can be right on the facts, right on the policy forever. But until you're a big tech guy, all of a sudden, government's ready to bend over backwards to give you what you want. I give it an A. I think it's been utterly transformative. It hasn't been perfect. Nothing's perfect. But this has been such a huge win for our country. And even when the federal government was pursuing idiotic policies, you had the private sector just innovating and transforming the energy sector. such that drill baby drill is now really outdated. I mean, we don't need more drilling. We need more infrastructure. And that's why I wouldn't give it an A+. We need more refineries, more pipelines, more export terminals, et cetera. So with that, let's go to our second sponsor of this episode, Red Flags Press. Red Flags Press is a new educational nonprofit that's created a ton of unique anti-socialist content. They've just released 17 free papers. And also, Socialism Says, a small illustrated book that visually summarizes 10 of their detailed articles. All this new content is founded on hundreds of damning quotes from celebrated socialists. It's the flaws of socialism straight from the horse's mouth. Even if you know a good deal about socialism, Red Flags Press materials will surprise you with new facts. New facts that not only show socialism is exceedingly dangerous, but also that it's based on misleading marketing and absurd premises. Please check out Red Flags Press and their new anti-socialist materials at redflagspress.org. Flags is plural, redflagspress.org. Please check it out. So Charlie, we had this conversation generating report in Politico about Republicans wanting to woo John Fetterman over to their side. Donald Trump is very big on this, promises he'll support him to the hilt and give him all sorts of money. You have Fetterman has made friends with a couple key Republican senators, Katie Britt from down in Alabama and McCormick from his state of Pennsylvania. What do you make of it? Do you want an R next to Fetterman's name? I think the core problem here is that John Fetterman is not a Republican. John Fetterman is heterodox. He has proven willing to break with his own party, which is unusual in this day and age. He does so in a brusque manner that is guaranteed, perhaps designed to garner attention. He is immune to one of the creepiest elements of modern progressivism, which is the instant downloading of the latest groupthink, subsequently to be presented as if it is long-standing conviction. I'm thinking here of the overnight presumption that all gas stoves should be banned, which was then sold as if it had been a 50-year project, when in fact it had been mentioned last Friday. He doesn't do it. as a result he's become pretty unpopular with democrats and pretty popular with republicans but that doesn't change who he is or what he believes he's not a republican he is a democrat an eccentric democrat perhaps but a democrat and i don't think that that's likely to change so the fact that he has lots of friends in the republican party politico named dave mcormack his fellow senator from Pennsylvania, and Katie Britt, who's a senator from Alabama, is nice. And the fact that he spends more time with Republicans and Democrats is not only nice, but understandable. But he is not going to vote in the Senate in the way that Republicans do most of the time. And senators are there to vote. So when it comes to key questions, Supreme Court justices fiscal policy, religious liberty, and so forth, he's going to disappoint the right. I think where John Fetterman could be interesting, and I say this aware that he may not be renominated in 2028, he may not run again in 2028, and if he does, he may lose, is when it comes to the seemingly inevitable radicalism of the next democratic trifecta. James Carville said recently that Democrats should abolish the filibuster, pack the Supreme Court, add new states, and so forth. It seems unlikely to me that John Fetterman would be interested in that, partly dispositionally, partly because he's from Pennsylvania, swing state, and partly because he has friends in the Senate who seem well-placed to be able to make the case to him that he should protect the institution. So I think it's highly unlikely that Fetterman is going to become a Republican. I think it is slightly more likely, albeit still unlikely, that he's going to become an independent, as both Kyrsten Sinema and Joe Manchin did. But I think it is likely that if he can stay in the Senate, that he will be a Boark against the sort of radicalism James Carville was pointing to, which is in a sense, a attempt to abolish politics. So if I were Republicans, I would stay friendly with him, stay on the same terms, but I wouldn't try to bring him into the fold. I'd try to turn him into an institutionalist who can be relied upon not to break the constitution when his team gets back into power. Yeah. So Jim, this is a great report by my old friend, Jonathan Martin, who worked here literally for three months back in the day. And this is so extensive and so detailed. And usually, as you know, when you write something, you report something, you know much more than you've actually written. So he really reported this one down to the ground. But one thing that it brings out is that these people, they're just people, right? So Fetterman is kind of just moping around outside the Senate chamber. Everyone's ignoring him. He doesn't have any friends at the lunch table. And Katie Britt just does the human thing, like, well, let's start having meals together. And who knows? I doubt it's going to happen, but he's more favorable to Republicans than he would be otherwise, at least at the margins. Well, one thing is, is that, you know, those anecdotes sure do make Senate Republicans seem like nicer people and better human beings than Senate Democrats are. And so that is bizarre, particularly when you know, the guy checked himself into Walter Reed and was trying to recover from a stroke and all that stuff. But yesterday in the corner, Charlie and I had something of a mind meld. And if you ever thought oh do National Review writers get together and coordinate what they writing Obviously not because Charlie and I posted you know about Fetterman within about a minute of each other The only thing I would just kind of add is that you look at the votes of 2025. Fetterman voted with the Trump administration's position 26% of the time. That means that he's voting against the Trump administration's position 74% of the time. Now, you know, this makes him technically the most Trump senator, most Trump Democratic senator in the chamber. But the comparison for every other Republican senator, including the, you know, so-called rhino squishes like Susan Collins, it was like something like 93 percent is the least of any of them. Remember, Susan Collins is all that stands between us and Senator Panser. I'm sorry, Plattner. But it's one of those things like, oh, you know, like if you're griping about Murkowski or, oh, these rhino squishes, but you're okay with Fetterman joining the Republican caucus, you have very inconsistent standards. So to me, it makes sense to switch parties when you agree with a party half or more than half the time. If you agree with a party a quarter of the time, that doesn't make much sense. Yes, he's going to have a whole bunch of challengers in the Democratic Senate primary in two years. But I'd also point out that if he's got five or six progressive challengers, he's going to win that primary. His fear is that they unify around one progressive challenger, and then he could conceivably lose that primary. So it doesn't make sense. It's not logical. For what it's worth, the Martin article, he says adamantly, I'm not doing this. I'm a Democrat. And it's one of those things like we've seen politicians change their minds on stuff like this. But this, to me, I'm surprised that there's this much buzz and hype around this because it doesn't make sense on a bunch of levels. Yeah, no, it's something that Fetterman raised with Martin is, look, if I become a Republican, I'm immediately disloyal to Donald Trump. I'm going to cross him on a lot of stuff. And that doesn't end well for anyone. You know, ancestral Republican that doesn't turn out well. So why wouldn't he just blast me out of the water as soon as I've crossed the aisle? Two observations on this one. First, it's another data point in all the indications that we have that the Democratic Party is going through a Tea Party style revolution internally and doing it on a speed run. Back in the Tea Party years, the activist class was really annoyed at the kayfabe of it all. The fact that political representatives and senators would engage in pugilism on the stage and then go back and behind the curtain be all chummy chummy. That kind of collegiality was considered to be inauthentic because they were engaged in political combat at all hours of the day and demanded as much from their representatives. And so we see some of that now in this reaction to Fetterman. And the second being that his Republican bona fides, such as they are, seem to me entirely limited to the degree to which he just refuses to jump on board with the activist class when it comes to Israel, exclusively about Israel. He won't say that there's a genocide when there is no genocide. He says he's very happy to see Hamas fighters be brutalized and murdered on the battlefield, and that just drives the activist class crazy. And it seems to me that there's obviously the activist energy around anti-Israel sentiment and anti-Semitic sentiment, I should say, is certainly capturing the mainstream of the Democratic Party in ways that are probably not necessarily going to redound to their benefit. Because Israel as a subject, when people go into the voting booth in November, is not going to be front of mind, save for a variety of activists who are monomaniacal about the subject. So the degree to which they're talking about Israel in Maine and talking about Israel in Michigan and talking about Israel everywhere is not touching voters' true concerns. You have to make this tangential roundabout case about the war in Iran, about the post-10-7 actions that Israel engaged in, in order to connect voters' concerns about pocketbook issues and domestic corruption and all the other stuff that they're actually genuinely concerned about, in order to get it back to Israel. And it's just a bank shot in a way that I think the people who are really obsessed with this issue don't see. And perhaps it's clouding their judgment. And I think perhaps it's clouding the judgment of the reporters in Washington who see John Fetterman as resembling anything like a conventional Republican. He doesn't save one very particular way. And that is the degree to which he's not willing to throw Israel under the bus just to get ingratiate himself with with a really unlovely activist class on the left. So Charlie, I asked a question to you. Rate Donald Trump's political health at the moment. Robust, tepid. You know, he's in bed. He has a thermometer under his tongue. we're seeing if he has a temperature bad or catastrophic like so catastrophic one of jim gary's spirit airlines metaphors might apply i think it's bad i'm not sure it's going to get much better i think it's hard to be catastrophic in this environment with the democratic party as unpopular as it is if the democrats become much more popular then trump's position would become catastrophic i also think there's a possibility that the economy will do quite well in the second half of his second term and that might shift a little bit so i would say it's bad at the moment jim gary it's bad um and let's you know we've talked on this podcast the republicans are probably going to lose the house people are really worried about the senate uh democratic house and Senate are going to attempt to, you know, they'll impeach him over something. This will eat up a chunk of the, you know, that post-election cycle. Senate won't convict him, but that'll be another thing, that the attention will start to shift towards the presidential primaries in both parties. We probably have seen the apex of the Trump presidency. Let's also point out that he turns 80 later this year. I know we're all talking political health, but, you know, the last president turned 80, things did not turn out great. So I think that things are... I'm sorry? You're calling peak Trump? Remember that from 1516? People always say we've reached peak Trump. I just don't think I don't see him I don't see his political fortunes getting better and I don't see him having more political power than he does for the next couple of months. I think midterms will go badly and everything kind of declines from there. There's no peak Trump Rich. We always find new ways of fracking it out of the ground. Yeah, bad. It's more than a case of the sniffles. But But it could be worse, and it will get worse. I agree with Jim. His political utility will diminish significantly after the midterm elections. But before the midterm elections, Republicans still need him, and that's going to be his base of support. So he will not be the lame duck, completely dismissible until late November of this year, perhaps a little bit later than that, but not before. I'm going to go slightly worse than you guys. I'd put it between bad and catastrophic. There seems to be a just a comprehensive decline in a standing across all metrics. Now, you always have to have a grain of salt with these media polls because some of them kind of want to drive the message home. But it's I don't doubt that it's that is quite bad. It's it's be a little hard to know how he would be in a worse place in advance of the midterms. I take Charlie's point that the Democrats are in a very low, low place and that might limit Republican losses to some extent. But Trump is definitely not in a great place himself. With that, let's hear from our third sponsor. This episode, Charlie, our favorite watch company, Vare. Absolutely. Well, Vare was founded in Los Angeles back in 2016 with a simple but very ambitious mission to revive the American watch industry. Cut to today, and Vare is proud to be the largest independent watch assembler in the United States, building watches in California, Arizona, Rhode Island, and Alabama, as well as manufacturing leather straps in Illinois and Florida. All of us here at the editors have been wearing our Vare watches for a while now. In fact, I have mine on right now. And I can tell you firsthand that they are truly amazing. VEAEA makes some of the most durable, well-built watches on the market. They use top-grade luxury materials. They all come with a waterproof warranty, which means you can safely swim or dive with your watch on. And they've earned over 10,000 five-star reviews. What's more, VEAEA's classic analog approach to timekeeping is not only sophisticated and refined, And it's also a welcome departure for people like me who are tired of getting pinged on their smartwatch all day. So if you want to support American craftsmanship and own a watch that's both rugged and refined, check out Vare. You can find them at VareWatches.com. That's V-A-E-R Watches.com. So I have my VareWatch on right now as well. And I was in Chicago last week at O'Hare Airport. was sitting at a restaurant bar and the bartender was just kind of staring at me. And then I realized he was staring at my wrist and he's like, is that a Vera watch? Turns out he's a watch guy and loves Vera watches. So we get comments on these things all the time. They are a wonderful product with that. Let's hit a few other things before we go. Jim Garrity, you did some drinking with neighbors. Yeah. And I don't drink the way I used to. You get older, you know, actually I find myself not having hangovers as much. I just find myself getting tired, completely impromptu. What am I great next door neighbor says, hey, you know, let's have some people over. We're going to, you know, the weather's nice. We're going to set up the fire pit in the backyard. Why don't you go over? Brought wine, brought whiskey, but we did not bring water. And so the good news is it's right next door. Very convenient path to stumble back home to my house. Good time was had by all. But again, if you're not getting into a car, it makes it a lot more easier to say, yeah, I'll have another drink. So Noah, you were engaged in one of your least favorite domestic activities, although a favorite activity of yours with regard to middle east military policy mowing the grass yeah sure way to break it back um yeah first mow of the season changed my oil out in the new tractor because i blew up my first tractor as as long-time listeners will remember and so i got a new tractor and you know had oil in there from the previous owner so i changed it out and did the first mow of the season which is you know it can get really grueling by august but the first one's not too terrible and the property looks pretty. You drive around and you see all the things you have to do, which can be kind of daunting. But nevertheless, it's a, you know, break out the season and begin to get excited for the summer season. It's a lovely little experience. So Charlie, you have a baseball triumph to brag about. I do. I do. I've mentioned before that my eight-year-old was doing pretty well on his baseball team hitting home runs he finished the season with four also a whole bunch of triples and doubles and a stack of rbis but the team made the final that's the second year in a row he was on a different team last year different coach and his team made the final and won so he's a back-to-back champion and he has been picked for the all-star game they are having an all-star game this weekend of the 22 or so best kids who what's his wins above replacement that's a great question i normally i'm a big spreadsheet guy actually i like to build software to answer math questions because I'm such an idiot when it comes to math. I should do that. I don't even know how you do that math, Rich. What is that calculation? I don't know. Fielding and all sorts of defensive statistics that play a role, I've never understood it. And you get pretty radically different war calculations from different outfits. So obviously the inputs matter. But I'm sure it's quite high. It's clearly. The thing that is the most impressive to watch for all of the kids across the season is how they improve in the field. Because batting is one thing, but by the end, they were getting double plays. They were making these great throws to the bases and tagging improbable runners. and I think that's the most fun thing to see as you watch as they begin to understand the game in a way they didn't at the beginning. Yeah, so speaking of baseball, I had the good fortune to go on the field of Yankee Stadium over the weekend prior to a Yankee Orioles game. I'd never done that. It happened through the good offices of a friend of a friend. As I've mentioned before, I'm such a fan of the game. I love free game stuff. I love just watching drills. I love being on a beautiful or near a beautiful baseball diamond and sure enough, there are a couple of things I noticed that I'd never noticed before during this experience. With that, it's time for our editor's picks. Jim Garrity, what's your pick? I'm going to select a House editorial by the editors called Don't Pull Out of Germany. Look, I think we have lots of reasons to be irked with German Chancellor Friedrich Merz. He's made some very rude comments about Trump. He's kind of obnoxiously played to the, let's face it, pretty darn large anti-Trump sentiment in the German public. But let's say, by the standards of German chancellors, other ones have caused us bigger problems. And it just seems like the removal of 5,000 U.S. troops from Germany and the promise for more mixes personal pique and personal insults and feelings with U.S. national security interests. And in the end, don't mix business with pleasure or it's personal. Don't take things personally. Don't make your long-term decisions based on a moment of anger. And it looks like the administration is doing it again here, which is frustrating. Anyway, well written. Noah, what's your pick? Our own Dan McLaughlin recently sat down with Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch. And this one is a multimedia experience. He's written a couple of pieces around it, but he also has a video with his very illuminating, thoughtful conversation with the justice about the founding, about his new book, children's book about 1776 about collegiality and interaction on the court and continuity across the centuries which was very grounding and i thought really um very well done dan deserves congratulations for that one and you should go check it out sure i'm gonna pick andrew stutterford's magazine piece hitting the mother road rediscovering route 66 i just love americana I love road trips. I love history. And when these things all come together, especially when written by a fellow Brit who is also in love with America, it's just terrific. So I'm going to pick a Carolyn Downey piece on the podcast, Call Me Daddy. I've always been confused about this podcast. I've never listened to it, but I do look at New York Post headlines, so I'm aware of it. I always thought it was Don't Call My Daddy, but it's actually Call Me Daddy. But regardless, it sounds like awful content rich isn't it call her daddy okay yeah yeah whatever it is it sounds it sounds perfectly terrible so that's it for us you've been listening to a national view podcast any rebroadcast retransmission or account of this game without the express written permission of national magazine is strictly prohibited this podcast has been produced by the aforementioned incomparable sarah schutte makes it sound better than we deserve thank you charlie thank you jim Thank you, Noah. Thanks to Made In, Red Flags Press, and Vare. And thanks especially to all of you for listening. We're the editors. We'll see you next time.