Midterm Reckoning: Congresswoman Harriet Hageman on Iran, War Powers, and the Battle for America
38 min
•Apr 10, 20268 days agoSummary
John Solomon reports on Trump administration's military operations against Iran, featuring Congresswoman Harriet Hageman discussing war powers, the SAVE Act, and regulatory reform. The episode covers emerging Middle East coalitions, China's geopolitical losses, and Republican electoral strategy challenges.
Insights
- Iran's military infrastructure is severely degraded (90% of industrial military complex destroyed), potentially forcing pragmatic negotiations despite public rhetoric
- Sunni Arab nations are aligning with Israel and the US at unprecedented levels since 1991, reshaping regional energy infrastructure and bypassing Strait of Hormuz dependency
- Democrats' consistent messaging discipline and year-round electioneering infrastructure outperforms Republicans' cyclical approach despite losing on 80-20 policy issues
- China's influence is declining across multiple fronts (Venezuela, Iran, Panama, Cuba), exposing vulnerabilities and reducing leverage in the Trump era
- Naval blockades emerge as a viable alternative to military escalation, with precedent from Venezuela policy and potential application to Iran sanctions
Trends
Shift toward alternative Middle East energy infrastructure bypassing traditional chokepointsDeclining effectiveness of traditional NATO alliance structures in modern geopolitical conflictsGrowing recognition that regulatory compliance costs (diesel exhaust fluid) harm domestic industries without environmental benefitConservative media investment acceleration but still insufficient to compete with left-wing cultural machineryEconomic pressure and sanctions as primary warfare mechanism replacing traditional military engagementRealignment of Arab-Israeli relations driven by shared Iranian threat perceptionRepublican need for permanent campaign infrastructure to match Democratic 24/7 electioneering modelErosion of China's axis of evil partnerships and regional influenceInternet shutdown as economic warfare tool with systemic economic consequencesVice presidential elevation in foreign policy negotiations signaling confidence restoration
Topics
Iran Nuclear Negotiations and War Powers ResolutionMiddle East Coalition Building and Energy InfrastructureDiesel Exhaust Fluid Regulations and Trucking Industry ImpactRepublican Electoral Strategy and Cultural MessagingNATO Reformation and European Defense InvestmentChina Geopolitical Losses and Regional InfluenceSection 702 Surveillance Reform and FBI ComplianceVenezuela Naval Blockade Precedent and ApplicationDemocratic Year-Round Electioneering InfrastructureSunni-Israeli Strategic AlignmentIranian Economic Collapse and Sanctions PressureArtemis II Space Mission and American ExceptionalismMigration Impact on European Political AlignmentHunter Biden Laptop Censorship and Facebook ModerationUltra-Processed Food Regulation and Health Policy
Companies
The Wellness Company
Sponsor offering prescription medical kits and health products endorsed by Dr. Peter McCullough
Policy Genius
Online insurance marketplace sponsor offering life insurance quote comparisons
GhostBed
Mattress sponsor featuring temperature-regulating sleep system technology
Natapath
Grass-fed collagen supplement sponsor supporting bone health and joint recovery
Brickhouse Nutrition
Weight loss supplement sponsor offering Lean product for appetite suppression and fat burning
120 Life
Blood pressure management drink sponsor with powdered supplement formulation
EverPeer
Data storage platform sponsor offering subscription-based infrastructure solutions
Ayrdish Foundation
Think tank where Victoria Coates serves as VP for National Security and Foreign Policy
People
Harriet Hageman
Guest discussing Iran conflict, war powers resolution, SAVE Act, and diesel exhaust fluid regulations
Victoria Coates
Former Deputy National Security Advisor discussing Iran negotiations, NATO reformation, and China's geopolitical losses
John Tillman
Guest discussing Republican electoral strategy deficits and Democratic messaging infrastructure in new book
Dr. Chad Walding
Guest providing weekly health update on collagen supplementation and ultra-processed food reduction
John Solomon
Podcast host and editor conducting interviews on geopolitical and domestic policy issues
Amanda Head
Co-host and colleague who reported on Artemis mission connection to 250th anniversary celebration
J.D. Vance
Leading delegation to negotiate Iran peace deal despite previous skepticism of military interventions
Marco Rubio
Not included in Iran negotiations delegation despite diplomatic role
Steve Whitcoff
Included in Iran peace negotiations delegation alongside Vice President Vance
Jared Kushner
President's son-in-law included in high-level Iran negotiations delegation
Jack Keen
Suggested naval blockade as alternative to military escalation against Iran
Lee Zeldin
Made progress on diesel exhaust fluid regulations and economic deregulation
Kash Patel
Supporting 18-month study period on Section 702 surveillance reforms
Tom McClinty
Judiciary committee member scheduled to discuss Section 702 surveillance powers
Tristan Levin
Experiencing Facebook censorship while producing Hunter Biden and IRS whistleblower documentary
Chris Todd
Hired to create Hunter Biden and IRS whistleblower documentary facing Facebook moderation
Quotes
"This is the first president after decades and decades and decades who's been willing to go in and actually rescue them from having to live under the thumb of the ayatollahs."
Congresswoman Harriet Hageman•Early segment
"Iran has lost this conflict by any conceivable metric. The last little piece of leverage they're clinging to is the Strait of Hormuz."
Victoria Coates•Second segment
"The left understands that winning elections is a propaganda war. Politics is downstream of culture."
John Tillman•Third segment
"We need to build those capacities to get our handles on the vice and compete to put pressure on the system to support people doing the right thing."
John Tillman•Third segment
"Protein is the building block. It's the thing that's satiating. It's what boosts up your metabolism."
Dr. Chad Walding•Final segment
Full Transcript
All right, folks, it's springtime. You know it, right? The grass is starting to go greener. The flowers are starting to pop out of the ground. You're pulling up some weeds, you're getting ready to get a good summer in our great time ahead of us in order. Well, that's also a time when I start to look and update my insurance portfolio. Protecting my family and finding the right insurance policy is important. And what I want is it to be straightforward, and that's a top priority for me. Policy Genius makes it easier to do so. Policy Genius is an online insurance marketplace that allows you to compare quotes from some of America's top insurers side by side, totally for free. Their license team helps you get what you need fast so you can work on your life. Easily find what you need, coverage amounts, prices, terms, no guesswork, just clarity, simple clarity. Policy Genius helps you find your most affordable policy that meets your needs. 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If you don't feel the difference, you can send it back risk-free. Ghostbed is offering my audience their lowest prices of the season, plus an extra 10% off. That's a great deal. Go to ghostbed.com slash just news and use the promo code just news. One more time, ghostbed.com slash just news, promo code just news. ["Just News"] Hello, American. Happy Friday. Welcome to the latest edition of John Solomon reports. The podcast from Just The News where a sand clock is ticking down. In just a few short hours, two extraordinary historic events are going to occur. The astronauts aboard Artemis II will finish their journey back from the moon. The farthest mankind has ever traveled from Earth on this mission. They'll splash down a little bit after eight o'clock Eastern time tonight in what has been an extraordinary journey. Not only the longest journey that man has ever made in space in terms of distance and time, but also it's been a moment for everybody to celebrate the American exceptionalism that it takes to get a rocket to do this that gets America back to getting on the moon in a couple of years, building a moon base, and then going from that moon base to Mars. That's what we're setting in motion here right now. And all of it's in the backdrop of the 250th birthday of America. My great colleague, Amanda Head, had a great story this morning about how this Artemis mission has been sort of a slingshot for the 250th anniversary celebration in America. And the president, President Donald Trump, saw that story and truthed it out this morning, shared it with everybody, clearly indicating he agreed with it. That's the first thing that's going to happen. The second is even more consequential. It could set the course of history in the Middle East and across the world for decades to come. J.D. Vance, not always been a fan of the president's military actions, though he is a loyal vice president. But behind the scenes, he sometimes argued against military action. He's been put into pole position. He's going to lead the delegation that is going to negotiate the peace deal with Iran. Marco Rubio not there. Steve Whitcoff, the ambassador for all the hot spots in the world, he's going to be there. The president's son-in-law, he's going to be there. So a very high level delegation there. But the vice president, who's been open that he hasn't always agreed with everything, there's been reporting in the New York Times, even where Vice President was on this military mission in Iran. But that said, he's been there for the president. He knocks down the idea that he isn't supporting the president. He gets a chance to set in motion a historic deal. Now, while that's going on, I want to point out something that I think is a real possibility in this evolution. I think everybody's expecting, hey, if these talks fall apart this weekend, does the president just blow up? My right, is it a nuclear weapon? Is it a laser weapon? I think there's another thing that we ought to consider he might do. And that is to create a naval blockade. He did that for Venezuela, and he brought Venezuela to its knees, because it couldn't get any oil in or out, which literally strangled the cash flow of the leadership of Venezuela. I think you might see the president do something similar here, Jack Keen, the retired general, he suggested. Some of the other people I know inside the administration are suggesting it. Just something to watch. Now, it's very possible this Iranian regime, this group of negotiators, they have a lot less to negotiate with. Enriched uranium is buried beneath the rubble. Their navy's gone, their air force is gone, their missile batteries are significantly reduced. Most of their industrial military complex, those things that make the drones and make the weapons, they're significantly destroyed about 90% according to the Pentagon, the War Department. It could be that these Iranians make a deal, despite all of that heavy rhetoric. Part of the reason I think that is, there's been actually some quietness in the military operations of Iran, in the last couple of days. Now, a global deal won't be easy, even if it occurs, there needs to be a verification process to back up any American trust that occurs. But I think the dynamics are important for people on this show listening to understand. This Iran, this moment of Iran, they're humbled. They've been broken on. The rhetoric aside, cast their rhetoric aside, the people I'm talking to who are monitoring their conversations, the people at the negotiating table, it's a slightly different tone from Iran. They're still bad people, they're still Islamists, they're still theocrats. But I think they might be more pragmatically inclined to make a deal before they get blown to smithereens. And then, if they need a little incentive before the president destroys everything in sight in Iran, he could simply do a naval blockade and shut off what little cash flow that goes to and from Iran from places like China and India, and that would be an extraordinary, extraordinary stranglehold. And it also would put some pressure on India and China to get in the game and get this deal done. So just think about that. That's something I'm thinking about. Now we've got a great show for you today. I'm very excited. Kicking it off, Congresswoman Harriet Haggin, she is running for Senate in the great state of Wyoming. She's the woman who knocked off Liz Cheney a couple years ago. She's become a very influential voice. She's gonna walk us through Iran. She's gonna walk us through the SAVE Act. She's gonna walk us through what would happen if Democrats got back in charge next year. All the impeachments they'd probably be launching. And she's also gonna talk about Section 702. We're gonna talk about it a couple times this week. Congressman Tom McClinty, who's on the judiciary, can be also gonna join us later in the week. But Section 702, it's one of those spy powers. Now it was reformed last year by Donald Trump, and we are seeing some better compliance as a result of those reforms. President Trump, Kash Patel, there's 18 months in keeping it where it is so they can study the reforms a little more. Not handicapped the FBI from spying on enemies. Congresswoman Harriet Haggin is gonna talk about that. In the second Bakashow, we'll talk to Victoria Coates, former Deputy National Security Advisor. She'll bring us up to speed on Iran, Ukraine, Russia. And I think the unspoken loser in the current Iran-U.S. conflict, China. China has been exposed to be a strong power, but not a superpower. They've been humbled by some of the things that have happened in the last few weeks. And Victoria will get into that. In the third Bakashow, everybody should read his new book. John Tillman has a fantastic new book out on what conservatives and Republicans get wrong about electioneering. The Democrats have a 24-7, 365-day, every year of a decade electioneering plan. They have a plan. They get out, they work. There's a permanent infrastructure. Republicans don't. They turn it on, they turn it off. They turn it on, they turn it off. It's given the Democrats the ability to survive a red wave in America because America's moving more conservative. You can see it in the map. But Democrats are still finding a way to win elections. John Tillman, I think, has an excellent diagnosis of why that is and what can change. And in the final Bakashow, we'll go a little healthy. And you know very much my journey to become more healthy. I've lost some weight. Got my blood pressure down. Got my blood sugar down. My cholesterol down. I exercise more. I feel better. I sleep better because of my new ghostbed mattress that I'm so proud of. Natapath is doing a great thing for us. They're one of our long-term partners here. Dr. Chad Walding is back from a little time off. And we're going to resume our weekly Justin News Health update, and you'll get that today. So Congresswoman Harriet Hageman, former deputy national security adviser, Victoria Coates, a great author, a great conservative thinker, John Tillman, new book out. And then Dr. Chad Walding at Natapath. What a great lineup for this Friday as we're watching the skies for Artemis to return and the Hormuz Strait for a possible sign of an Iran-US deal, or maybe a return to hostilities. We'll have to wait and see. Either one. We got you covered at justinnews.com. Before we go to quick break, I talk about my health journey. And I know sometimes people have trouble losing weight. Now, I've been able to lose weight without having to do injections or much things. But sometimes people have a lot to lose. It's hard. And they don't want to do those new is mpic injections. They're not interested in the pain of that or what goes along with it. There's now some concern about whether GLP-1s might contribute a little bit to bone density loss or some bone issues, bone integrity issues. My good friends at Brickhouse Nutrition, which I use a lot of their products, I've created a product, a weight loss supplement called lean. Now the studied ingredients in lean have been shown to lower your blood sugar, burn fat by converting it into energy and curb your appetite and cravings. Those are the three keys to losing weight. If you're not hungry, if you're not eating as many carbs, you're burning fat and your blood sugar's down, you're gonna lose weight. You're gonna lose it in a much better way. Now lean's not for the casual dieter. If you only got a couple of pounds to lose. 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Hey folks, the Trump administration has brought a lot of positive changes when it comes to fixing our broken healthcare system. The reality is though, that there is only so much the government can do. And if we really want to make America healthy again, it's gonna start at home with each one of us. And that's where the Wellness Company comes in. You see and hear from TWC doctors all the time, like Dr. Peter McCullough. And you know their products are the gold standard for keeping you and your family safe and healthy. The Wellness Company gives you the opportunity to make sure you are prepared for whatever happens with your prescription medical kits. Kits that contain an assortment of life saving medications and guidebooks to assist in the proper use of these medications. Additionally, the Wellness Company offers a variety of products from parasite cleanses to methylene blue to weight loss, and by the way, so much more. 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Many people see improvements in as little as two weeks, which is exactly why the product has become so popular. It fits into real life. And the powdered version has just one gram of sugar making it a smart option for people watching blood sugar. Go to 120life.com. That's 120life.com and use my code JTN for 20% off. That's a great deal. Try it risk-free for two weeks. If your blood pressure doesn't come down, you'll get a full refund. Go to 120life.com and use the code JTN to save 20%. Don't wait until next month, nothing to lose, except high blood pressure right now. Go to 120life.com and use my code JTN for 20% off. Use that code JTN today. All right, we got a great show for you today and we're gonna kick it off with a really good one. She joins us from the great state of Wyoming, one of our favorites here. Congresswoman, Harriet Agamon. Congresswoman, good to have you on the show. It's wonderful to be here, John, thank you. We love having you on. Next week's a big week, the Democrats are gonna try to force a war power act resolution vote. Tell us where we are, where you are personally on what the president has achieved thus far in Iran. One of the things that I think that this exposes is that the Democrats are always gonna take the side of our enemies and that is exactly what Iran is. I remember the 1979 Iranian Revolution. I remember how things changed instantly for the women of that country when the Islamic Jihad came in and they have lived under tyranny for 47 years and here is President Trump. He is the first president after decades and decades and decades who's been willing to go in and actually rescue them from having to live under the thumb of the ayatollahs. This is also something that we have to understand that we have been paying a terror tax since 1979 as well. Just exactly what Iran has done over the last two weeks with the Strait of Hormuz. They have attempted to hold essentially the entire energy industry or the entire oil and gas industry that many countries depend upon. They have held it hostage for years by threatening to do exactly what they've done which is block traffic in the Strait of Hormuz. This is a tyrannical country. They are the leading state sponsor of terrorism. They have wreaked havoc throughout the region for far too long and I am incredibly proud of the president for taking action to free the United States really, free the world from this tyranny and also try to provide stability and certainty within that region. Yeah, it is a global solution if he pulls us off. There's no doubt. Absolutely, well, and Congresswoman, there's another aspect of this that I wonder if it will actually hurt Democrats in the midterms. I know a lot of people are saying that this is gonna hurt Republicans, especially the longer it gets dragged out, but we all remember the rhetoric of Democrats surrounding the withdrawal from Afghanistan. There was nary a word about the 13 service members at Abbey Gate or it was rare. And the messaging now, they are highlighting on every perceived negative of this conflict. Do you think that voters will recognize the hypocrisy there? And I think that it is more than hypocrisy because they truly are taking the side of what has been an enemy of the world for many, many years. It is stunning to me that the president has actually taken a position that forces the Democrats to defend the government of Iran. And I do think it's going to hurt them in the midterms. I think that things are going to stabilize over there. I think that the president absolutely has a plan of action. I think you're going to see more and more of the oil ships being able to navigate the Strait of Hormuz. And again, we are hopefully freeing the Iranian people from the tyranny that they have suffered under. And to compare it to Afghanistan is I think an excellent comparison. What Joe Biden did, one of those brave military members was from the state of Wyoming. We suffered greatly because of the decisions that Joe Biden made. And yet here you compare that or you compare Libya to what we have done in this operation and it's night and day. And I think that that demonstrates the leadership that you receive with the Trump administration as compared to what the Biden administration did. Place where we haven't seen much leadership during this conflict, Europe. They left us in the cold. Even though midway through the operation, they learned something very harrowing, something that President Trump was warning. Iran had developed mid-range ICBMs that could reach the European continent. Still, they don't join our fight. They don't even let us, in some cases like Spain, fly over the aerospace. Is there a growing appetite in Congress to reevaluate NATO, to maybe shut down some of the bases, pull out entirely? What are the range of options and what's the appetite in Congress right now? I think that this is for discussion. I don't know that I can give you a definitive answer on that, but what I can say, I think the actions taken by our so-called European allies are the result of the mass migration that they have allowed to invade their countries over the last several, many years. I think what you're seeing is that the Muslim population in those countries really have a stranglehold on many of the people that are in leadership. And I think it's playing out in space right now before our eyes. And I think that this is something that needs to be discussed in much greater detail as to what is the real impact when you import people who are absolutely antithetical to your culture and actually want to undermine the very form of government that you have, what does that mean on the national stage and on the international stage? And I think we're seeing a play out by what our allies have done in relation to this particular conflict. Hmm. Yeah, great. Congresswoman, just one more follow-up on this. The War Powers Resolution vote that's gonna be coming according to minority leader Schumer next week. What do you make of it? I know we know which direction Democrats are gonna go. How many Republicans do you think will side with Democrats in this issue? And Frank, I hate to sound so flippant, but does it matter? Because there have been a lot of military actions in the last 10, 20, 30, 40 years that didn't even come close to that type of vote. Well, actually 80 years. The last time that there was, the Congress declared war was in 1942. So you look at all the conflicts that have taken place since then, via the Vietnam, Korea, the war on terror, we can go on and on and on. I don't think that it is going to go anywhere. I don't think it should go anywhere. I think that we have to trust our commander-in-chief for this particular operation. And I hope him, I wish him all the success in the world because I think ultimately the world wins. Congresswoman, before we let you go, EPA's Lee Zeldin's made a lot of progress on regulations that were harming the economy, but there's still a lot of people trying to shut down and thwart one of the great power engines in America, the diesel engine. Tell us a little bit about what progress we've made and where there are still some threats to common sense. Well, one of the things that happened in the Obama administration is the requirement of using diesel exhaust fluid in our trucks, in our tractors, in our diesel vehicles, in our tow trucks. And it's absolutely been devastating to so many of the important industries, whether it's the ag industry, the trucking industry, the towing industry. In fact, just this week, I was with one of the very oldest trucking companies in the state of Wyoming. They've been in business for 145 years. They've actually been in business longer than trucks have existed because they used to use buckboards and haul things out to the oil fields and to different things. They said that it used to be that they would get about a million miles on an 18-wheeler engine. It's now down to about 500,000 miles because of the fact that they have to use diesel exhaust fluid. So that does not provide an environmental benefit. And I have heard many horror stories where people have been stranded because they ran out of death for the system itself in their vehicles' malfunctions. So I am working to find a way to repeal the requirements that our vehicles be retrofitted so that they have to use diesel exhaust fluid. I know that Lee Zeldin has also been working in that regard, issuing a couple of orders in August and February and March of this year. We're moving in the right direction. We're moving in a common-sense direction, but we still have more work to do in light of some of the horrific regulations and requirements put in place by both Obama and Biden when it comes to actually powering our economy and protecting our industries. Hey, folks, don't go anywhere. When we come back, President Trump's former deputy national security advisor, I think one of the most important voices in all of the security world today, Victoria Coates, up next, right after these messages. 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One of the untold stories of the Iran conflict thus far is not only NATO leaving us an alert, but all the Sunni Arab nations that often been a little reluctant to get around anything Israel's doing, coming and becoming perhaps a stronger coalition of the willing than we've seen at any time since the Persian Gulf War I in 1991. It's pretty remarkable. Joining us to make a good sense of that. The vice president for national security and foreign policy at the Ayrdish Foundation and the former deputy national security advisor President Trump and a great friend of the show, Victoria Coates. Victoria, great to have you back on. Wonderful to see both of you. All right, there are so many silver linings or unexpected developments in the conflict. I know there's a lot of uncertainty still where this will end, but you've got the Arab Sunnis more aligned with Israel and America than anytime I can remember since maybe the invasion of Kuwait and China and Russia, well, losing some assets and some leverage in the region, walk us through that dynamic. Now, this is really what's gonna be exciting going forward is all of the assumptions under which we have labored as policymakers really since 1980 and President Carter establishing the Carter doctrine by which the United States would guarantee the free flow of energy out of the Gulf. All that is changing. And what President Trump has done and credit where credit is due, the Iranians have contributed to this by shelling their neighbors indiscriminately and turning everyone in the region against them. What they've done then is gotten all of our partners in the region. So we're talking not just about Saudi Arabia and UAE, both of whom have behaved exemplarily in this conflict, but also in countries like Qatar. And then they're all lining up with Israel behind the United States. This is the strong coalition. And so going forward, I think what you'll see is those countries, essentially the GCC plus Israel, looking at an alternative infrastructure for energy in the Middle East that bypasses the straight. We won't necessarily be talking about the straight for anything essentially, but fertilizer. At this point, all the rest of the products can travel by pipeline. It'd be nice to take them out by ship through the straight, but if the Iranians are acting up for whatever reason, we're gonna have a whole new pipeline architecture across the Arabian Peninsula that will make that meaningless. Boy, that's huge, huge. Victoria, I want to ask you about another aspect of this. The vice president who just a few weeks ago, the media was saying, where's the vice president? The president's obviously lost confidence in him. And then all of a sudden he is not only frauds are, but now he is in this very important position, traveling to Islamabad this weekend to head negotiations. It seems that the president, his confidence in the vice president is not shaken at all. No, dirty little secret. The president actually has full confidence in the vice president who has a wonderful staff. I interact with them regularly. The notion that vice president Vance is some sort of wild-eyed isolationist is just wrong. He asks a lot of very pointed questions. He wants to make sure that policymakers are putting America's first as it should be. And he represents the president and the president's views. And so he's taking with him two of the president's key people and special envoy, Whitcoff, and then also Jared Kushner, obviously the president's son-in-law. And they are gonna be a really formidable team because then for no other reason, then the president has given them all of the cards. Iran has lost this conflict by any conceivable metric. The last little piece of leverage they're clinging to is the Strait of Hormuz. And as we've discussed, that is a asset of diminishing value for them. They have nothing else. And so I think the vice president is ready to drive a very hard bargain. And as he said on the tarmac yesterday, all of those forces, the president poured into the region, they're gonna hang around, just make sure things go the way we want them to go. Yeah, that's a pretty big threat if you're Iran, because you have no way to defend against those assets anymore. It's pretty remarkable. It seems to me that what could be constructed here is a lot of concessions from Iran on the security front. And they probably want a pretty good sizeable ATM back in return. Good way of looking at what's probably really on the table right now. Well, they need that ATM, John, because they've shut down their internet now for 37 days. That's not happened in any modern economy. We don't know how much damage that's done. We know that they were complaining mightily about shutting it down for three days in January. What's happened is gotta be almost close to systematic failure. And speaking of ATMs, all their ATMs are empty. There's no cash left. And if there is cash, it's cash they're printing in 10 million real notes, which are worth about $7. So the second front of this war is not a ground force invasion of Iran. It's the economic pressure that the president's been putting on Iran since the first term, since the maximum pressure campaign. And he's been doing it again over the course of the last year. So they have no recourse and they know it. They have to have the sanctions relief or the country ceases to exist. So I think the basic three points the president has laid out, no nuclear weapons, no missiles, and no terrorist proxies, those are pretty basic. That's easy for them to meet. And we've actually taken care of the missiles for them, largely taking care of the nuclear program so they can just hand over what the president's calling the nuclear dust, the highly enriched uranium. And we can get to a deal here. But then the point of all that is that whatever survives that will have the seeds of its own destruction are sown into it. That's when the Iranian people can start to insist on reforms that allow them an orderly transition to a freer future. That's a great point. That's a big idea. I just wanna ask you one more about NATO because this is something, I mean, President Trump has been talking since before he even came down the golden escalator about NATO's value or lack thereof to the United States. Do you think that he would make good on his notion that he would leave NATO? I think the president is gonna demand a new NATO for New Europe. And I was not working for Secretary Rumsfeld when he was a master to NATO in 1974. I was a little bit younger then. But I've read his memos back to then Secretary Kissinger 50 years ago saying the Europeans were not investing enough in their defense that we were creating a culture of dependency. That's what President Trump is gonna break now. And the countries that do pay and our Baltic allies, Poland, Romania, our new Scandinavian friends that are in NATO, they're all investing at five plus percent of their GDP in their defenses. Those are the countries we should prioritize. And old Europe can, I mean, they can't defend themselves. The Brits can't get a single destroyer into the theater to help us. Where is the vaunted British Navy? It's nowhere. And so we have to focus on New Europe, the partners that will support us. Hopefully old Europe will get the memo and start to perform better. Before we let you go, Victoria, I would say that China's had a rough few months. Its energy vulnerabilities exploited and exposed by the Australia for Moos being shut down by its oftentimes ally, Iran. It's influence in the Latin America hemisphere significantly reduced its game and chip with Panama didn't go well. And its economy is not faring that well even by their own numbers. And they tend to inflate their numbers. How much is China been losing in the Trump to era? Now it's a rough year. You're absolutely right for the axis of evil. They've lost one member in Venezuela entirely. They're about to lose another in Iran. They might lose a third in Cuba. And you now have North Korea distancing themselves from all of this thing. Oh, we have nothing to do with Iran. Don't come get us. And they should be concerned. I think the president will be looking at North Korea. But what we're going into here, John, is this really critical summit in May with President Trump going to Beijing. Now Chairman Xi could have canceled that. If he cared about Iran, he might have said, oh, because you are starting this conflict with Iran in solidarity with our Iranian brothers, we're going to cancel the summit. No, they said, we want you to come. And then President Trump postponed it. They said, we still want you to come. They want to talk to the strong horse. They want to talk to the guy who's just taken out Maduro, who's about to take out, who took out the Ayatollah, who's about to take out Cuba. And so this is a really powerful message to China. We can project power wherever we want. You can't. And so this is really an interesting moment. And hopefully we'll have time for lots of discussions going into that summit in May. Hey, folks. A good one around the corner. John Tillman, a good friend of mine, great author. Does a lot of work in the political space. Got a new book out diagnosing one of the reasons why Democrats are more effective than Republicans are in year round electioneering. It's about infrastructure. It's about will. It's about strategy. He's going to break it down for us in the next block of the show. [?]. Welcome back, everybody. Our next guest wrote a book about how the radical left controls America and what can be done to take back our country. Joining us is political strategist and author of the book, the political vice John Tillman. John, welcome to the show. Great to be with you, Amanda. Thanks for having me. Absolutely. We're delighted to have you. But I look at these issues where Democrats are on the wrong side of 80, 20, 90, 10, 75, 25 issues. The Save America Act, trans issues, immigration. They are consistently on the unpopular side of these things. And yet you look at midterm polling, and they are doing fine and dandy. Yeah, now that's kind of the point of the book, is that the left understands that winning elections is a propaganda war. And there's the famous term that politics is downstream of culture. What they know is that that means they have to be at the headwaters of the river, talking to voters all the time, 24, 7, 365 every year, not just election years. And they use the media, which is one side of the political vice, to indoctrinate and propagandize on issues, the other side of the vice, which is the American people. And then meanwhile, the bottom of the vice, which are elite influencers, they have tremendous control over the comms, systems of universities, K-12 education, all the nonprofits and the NGOs. We've learned about corporate communications and all the rest of it. And so there's this constant drumbeat by them among those people who are thinking of voting. But meanwhile, when you take that away and you do the polling on the issues, the issues resound to the right, the political right. But when it comes to the brand of Republican and Democrat, the Republican brand is tarnished because of all that power I just described, putting pressure on the political system, which is a pressurized system. Yeah, I was lucky enough to get to read this book early before it came out. It is sensational, John. And there's two things that I walked away thinking about that are unresolved if you're a conservative or Republican. One is the left-still controls the cultural machinery in a great deal, Hollywood music. There's some alternatives coming out, but not at the scope and scale yet. And then two, they literally start running for the next election, the night the first election ends. And so they've got this 24-7, four-year continuous machine. Republicans take a break after elections and they may go a year and a half. We've seen that to be pretty consequential in these off-year elections where Republicans have underperformed every election since Donald Trump won in November. What is the key? I mean, you nailed it in the book. You diagnosed the problem. What's the key to solving those two deficits in the election machinery? Well, I wrote the book to try to get two key aspects of this done. Number one is I think the conservative right needs a skunk works brain trust. And I'm not saying that we should have centralized command and control. The left has centralized command and control. That's why you see affordability become suddenly the talking point that everybody's talking about. The whole debate going on about right now in Iran and they have really done an amazing thing to make the American people think we're failing in Iran or when we're having one of the greatest successes ever. They have command and control and centralized messaging and it permeates all their distribution channels with the right content that gets people to think Democrats are better than Republicans. The problem on the right is that we're like cats. We don't like to be herded. We're very independent. And we don't actually see government as the be all and end all. The left sees the government as their ultimate aim. They are after power. Most of the people on the right want to devolve power out of government and back to the people. So we actually need to do is be willing to form a command and control to go on offense on key issues that will properly brand the Democrats as to who they are, who they are when it comes to protecting criminal aliens that are committing violence here in the United States. The whole men playing women's sports, gender transitioning of children, wanting to get taxes into oblivion and preventing jobs growth and investment in small businesses. Every issue that there are those 80, 20 issues, we need to go on offense on those issues. President Trump is the first one in a long time that has been better at going on offense, but most of the time our side is reactive rather than proactive. So that's the one thing. The second thing is, I'm part of the reason I wrote the book and I'm sending it out to a lot of my billionaire friends is our investor class, our donor class, who are putting tremendous amounts of money and many, many sacrifices. I do believe we have to continue to invest in the popular culture, the media entertainment. There's been a huge improvement shows like yours, the cable channel, your news channel, and all the rest of it. We've had a huge influx of investments in conservative media, but we have to do more to reach that untethered voter who's in the middle or the soft left who's not gonna see these channels. And then we have to start to, one layer at a time, peel off capacity and popular entertainment as well. John, we've just got about a minute left. I think a lot of people notice when conservatives get into office and then they really moderate. Why is that? We got 30 seconds. That's why I wrote the book and how I started down this journey. Conservatives get into office, they move left. Liberals get into office, they just move further left. Why would just nobody move to the right? It's because politics is about pressure and the vice of media control, popular culture control, and elite influence or control applies to pressure. We need to build those capacities. I was just talking about to get our handles on the vice and compete to put pressure on the system to support people doing the right thing and put pressure on people doing the wrong thing. All right, folks, one more good one to go. I want you to feel healthy going into this spring weekend. Dr. Chad Walding from Native Path, up next with our weekly Just The News Health Update right after these messages. ["Just The News Health Update"] Welcome back, everybody. Now that the food pyramid has been flipped upside down and the term administration is pushing back against ultra-processed foods, what can you do to maintain a healthy diet, joining us to discuss this? And more is Dr. Chad Walding. He's the co-founder of Native Path. He's also a doctor of physical therapy who has helped millions of people improve how they move, how they feel, and how they age. And he has spent years studying what actually keeps the body strong and resilient over time. Chad, great to have you back. Hi, Amanda. Hi, John. So good to be back. Thank you. I have to ask you because we've got this new food pyramid. You've got President Trump and the entire Trump administration, especially RFK Jr., talking about ultra-processed foods. And it seems like it is striking a nerve with all of the right people. Are we on the right path? I think we are. We've come a long way to turning the pyramid upside down. And I think what's happening is people are generally just sick and tired of being sick and tired. They're really starting to feel the effects of what happened generation after generation of eating ultra-processed, refined foods with so much sugar. People up to this point have been feeling the effects of a poor diet. They've been feeling low energy. They've been feeling inflamed. And they've been fed a bunch of pills and they're just fed up with that. So they want something new. They want something different. They're looking for real whole food and real good solutions. I want to ask you about our grocery shopping because obviously we want to maintain a healthy diet with respect to keeping processed foods to a minimum. What's the ideal ratio? Because sometimes it's almost impossible to avoid all processed foods, especially if you like to cook and bake 80-20, as far as stuff that has a label on it and stuff that doesn't. How do we break it down? I think 80-20 is a good rule. And there's a lot of convenience in foods that you can take with you in snack and things like that. But generally when you do go grocery shopping, as often as you can, shop on the ends. Where the eggs are, where the vegetables, the real vegetables are, the fruits are, the whole proteins are. Don't go inside the aisles as much and think that that's where you want to get your dinners and your lunch and your breakfast. Go on the outside. The things on the aisles are there for dressings and to help make your foods a little bit more tasty. But don't go there first. So if 80-20 helps you, that's great. And when you're eating, really think about building your plate around protein. Protein is the building block. It's the thing that's satiating. It's what boosts up your metabolism. It's a big needle mover in your diet and affects your health. And that's the same way we want to think about collagen. The most abundant protein in the body, one of the best things you can do to supplement this modern American diet that we've all been eating is to fill in the gaps for what's missing. Yeah, that time I was at dinner with someone not that long ago and they had a, I guess a young adult child who had some sort of skin problem that was related to overhyperactive inflammation. So the skin was getting sores all the time. They started taking collagen. They noticed a really significant improvement. Are some of these growing skin diseases, we see a lot of drugs in the market, say, hey, we'll get rid of that rash for you. But is there some evidence that collagen can help in the healing of skin sores that are related to inflammation? Well, you know, the skin issues typically come down to irritating foods in the gut, right? Foods that are reacting in the gut to get in the bloodstream that then show themselves as a skin issue. So we really want to think about that. If you have bumps on your skin or something like that, it's not so much a topical cream that we need to put on our skin that we've been thinking about. It's something that we're eating that's irritating in the gut, right? And typically that's those are processed foods. Those are sugar, gluten's a big one. Dairy can be problematic for people in many cases. So we want to remove those foods and we want to go back to repairing the gut lining, right? And that's where collagen really comes back in is it seals that gut lining. It prevents all these foreign proteins from getting in the bloodstream. Then all of a sudden you can start absorbing the food and the nutrients that you're taking in. And then it's a needle mover, right? When you prove your gut is central to the health of your entire body as well as like the health of your brain, your mood, it's all connected to your gut. All right, folks, that wraps up our Friday edition of John Solomon reports. A big thank you to Congresswoman Harriet Agamon of Wyoming, former deputy national security advisor, Victoria Coates, my good friend, John Tillman, great author, and of course, Dr. Chad Walden, who makes us all feel better every time we do the native path weekly health update. Back tomorrow with great conversation including with Congressman Tom McCleintich of California is gonna weigh into fraud. We've got an amazing story for you. I just want you to tease it. Remember when they were censoring all of us who believed that the Hunter Biden laptop was real? It was. Remember when they censored us and said that you can't say that Joe Biden, Hunter Biden were involving foreign corruption or that Ukraine was involved in election meddling or political interference? Well, we thought we stopped it, right? The industrial complex of censorship was greatly reduced, but Tristan Levin from the Whistleblower Center and Chris Todd, the producer he hired to create a new movie about Hunter Biden and the IRS whistleblowers. They've been running into some Facebook censorship they believe they're gonna explain that tomorrow. Be sure to check it out. Until then, God bless you. Please have a great night.