4/1/26: Iran Bombs Bahrain Amazon, US Allies Warn Of Disaster, Robert Pape On Iran Gaining Power, Mass Layoffs

This is an I Heart Podcast. Guaranteed Human. No gloss, no filter. Just stories. Spoken without fear. A person who is not generous cannot be an artist. The world will be at peace only when it is ruled by poets and philosophers. Listen to my weekly podcast, the Pooja Bhachon on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Come for the honesty, stay. For the fire. Hey guys, Sagar and Crystal here. Independent media just played a truly massive role in this election, and we are so excited about what that means for the future of this show. This is the only place where you can find honest perspectives from the left and the right that simply does not exist anywhere else. So if that is something that's important to you, please go to breakingpoints.com, become a member today and you'll get access to our full shows, unedited, ad-free, and all put together for you every morning in your inbox. We need your help to build the future of independent news media and we hope to see you at breakingpoints.com. All right, good morning and welcome to Breaking Points. We had some tech issues in the studio this morning, so we're probably going to bloviate a little bit less, do a little bit more news to try to get through the entire show, won't be a two and a half hour behemoth that lands in your inbox. Yeah, you say that now at the beginning of the taping and we're going to push three hours or something. And we're close to two million subscribers on the YouTube platform. So if that's where you watch this show, so if you watch it there and you haven't yet subscribed, go ahead and do that. Do you get a second plaque? Is that how that works? I don't know, it might be five million, it might be one and then five, if I'm remembering the threshold correctly. We can make our own, there are plaque shops. We should make our own, like a bowling trophy. And of course, while you still have money, because Donald Trump is doing everything he can to crash the global economy in a way that it hasn't been probably since 2007 and 2008, before he does that, while you still have money, make sure you become a premium subscriber to bring points. Don't do the monthly thing, do the all at once, because you're not going to be able to afford the monthly pretty soon. I mean, you're losing money if you don't go all in right now. Go all in right now. Maybe literally. Big show. If you need a refund, now. Welcome to- We probably won't have any money either. So. Yeah, so actually maybe you should just do it now. So Big Show, Donald Trump announced last night, he is giving a speech and address to the nation with updates about the Iran War this evening. Well, we all wait for, on just the edge of our seats, Ryan, for that to happen, many, many updates to go through. So Trump was taking questions yesterday that gave us some indication to the extent as possible of where his head might be at. We have quotes and videos from that to go through. Also an announcement from Iran that they are now going to target major US tech companies in the Gulf region. There are- Get it all ready. There are a lot of major tech companies who also double as defense contractors, not really double as defense contractors, a huge source of their business. We're going to get into this in just a moment. There's a preview of it up on your screen right now. So the- Back to the show. The escalation trap, actually speaking of the escalation trap, we're going to have Robert Pape back on the show, but that gives you some sense of how quickly the escalation trap is escalating, just looking at all of those company logos on the screen. So we will have Pape back on to go through updates and understand where they fit into his paradigm of how this war is going to, is likely to unfold. Rent some economic updates. Big, big layoffs at Oracle yesterday. Yep, and nobody can get helium. Asia and Europe are shutting down as if it's COVID again. And the UK says they have one more tanker of jet fuel coming. And after that, they're out. That should be fine for them. It's not like they have a tunnel that can get to Paris, right? They don't have to fly. No, there's nothing to worry about. Yeah, they'll be fine. Everything's in good shape, all according to plan. Ryan, you're also going to bring us some updates about a little guy in Cuba. Yes, so a week and a half ago, we were in Cuba with, and we toured a hospital with Liz Oliva Fernandez, a Cuban journalist, and Brace Belden, American journalist and co-host of the True and Unpodcast. We're going to have both of them on today. Absolutely fascinating story. A Russian oil tanker broke Trump's oil blockade and is now unloading its fossil cargo at the Port of Havana. And we'll talk about what that means and what it means for Cuba and for the healthcare system there. And one really compelling story of a... Going to be a compelling, I don't want to spoil it, but it's good stuff. It'll be a little bit of heartwarming content, which we don't normally do. Indeed. The next block will be anything but heartwarming. We're going to cover the updates from former DHS secretary, Christy Noem, who we now know was vulnerable to an enormous potential blackmail threat. We're going to have updates on this awful, sad, kind of funny at the same time story about Christy Noem's husband, Brian, being a cross-dresser. Yeah, she's basically trying to mimic the FBI director. Former, I don't know, I'm not saying anything about cash. Old one, Hoover. Yes. And one under discussed element of this is probably also how it seems to have unraveled in the media. It looks like there was an interesting tip coming from a person perhaps aggrieved by the administration's immigration policy. So we will have breakdowns on that for everyone. And Bob Bear, Ryan, this was a great interview we did yesterday, fascinating interview. Yeah, interesting. Kind of a legendary CIA case officer, turned author, Bob Bear, he's going to be on the show. You can Wikipedia him, he's got quite an incredible life story, including they tried to prosecute him for planning to assassinate Saddam Hussein. And his defense was I was doing it as part of my day job for the CIA. And they're like, oh, okay, you're good then. Yeah, it was, it's, listen, you can't prosecute someone for doing their job. I mean, you probably should maybe, but we're not going to put it that way. All right, well, a reminder, we are on the cusp here of two million. So go ahead, be that two millionth subscriber will appreciate it. It helps us support our independent journalism that we do here, which we of course think is very important in times like these, where the legacy media is failing you just about every single day. So appreciate it. Now let's get onto the show and update just as we started filming this morning, Ryan, which is a zero. We can put this up on the screen. Reports now that Iran has struck Amazon and servers hosting Amazon web services in Bahrain, literally just breaking this morning. Yes, so Bahrain of course plays host to the fifth fleet. And so they are the only country, the only Gulf country that hasn't even tried to deny that they are allowing the United States to launch operations against Iran from there. They have a population that is pretty and generally in general supportive of Iran, but they are, you know, that population is occupied by the current dictatorship. All of our allies there, basically dictators. And so if you put up a one here, yesterday the IRGC said, if there are future assassinations of Iranian officials, these are the tech companies that we consider to be involved in these assassination programs, and which we will then attack directly. And we are warning all of the employees in the region that they need to work from home if you're engaged in assassination plots. Now, you know as Amazon is not on there, they had previously said that Amazon was a legitimate target because of its involvement with these assassination programs. And also they don't always announce every single one. Sometimes they'll announce these list lists and then they'll go and hit those. But I don't know if, well, Trump was asked about this and then we can talk about it. So in the Oval Office, Trump was asked by a journalist, what do you think about the fact that Iran is now saying it's gonna respond to assassinations? Why not? I don't know, did they even bring up the assassinations in the Western press? You kind of often leave out the rationale for the adversarial action. It just kind of comes out of nowhere. Let's see, I don't actually remember. So let's roll A1B. Iranian government threatened a bunch of US companies today in the region, including Google, Apple. With what? What are they threatening them with? PB guns? Well, that's a question. They don't have much left to threaten. My question for you is are you... I don't know. I mean, what are they, you may just say, what are they threatening them with? I don't know. Tell me, how did they threaten them? Well, all I know is that they threatened them, sir. What does that mean? Fair enough. He said something nasty. You have, you use the government, touch with these companies, you help them to backstop them. You don't even know what the threat was. What was the threat? I haven't heard it. What was the threat? I'll get back. Did they say they're gonna blow them up? They're gonna hit them. They're not, you know what they're not gonna do? They're not gonna hit them with a nuclear weapon. Is there something you're concerned about, sir? No. Along with RGC, there's more in the failed target, 18 US technology companies, if the US continues targeted assassinations of Iranian leaders beginning on April 1st. Those companies, they're gonna be a media, Apple, most of those people are dead already. When negotiating with them right now, they've been, again, we have had regime change. Now regime change was not one of the things I had as a goal. I had one goal, they will have no nuclear weapon. And that goal has been attained. They will not have nuclear weapons. When we feel that they are, for a long period of time, put into the stone ages, and they won't be able to come up with a nuclear weapon, then we'll leave, whether we have a deal or not, irrelevant. We'll be leaving very soon. And if France or some other country wants to get oil or gas, they'll go up through the straight and almost straight, they'll go right up there and they'll be able to fend for themselves. I think it'll be very safe actually, but we have nothing to do with that. What happens to the straight, we're not gonna have anything to do with because these countries, China, China will go up and they'll fuel up their beautiful ships and they'll leave and they'll take care of themselves. There's no reason for us to do it. And I don't mean to pick on that particular reporter, Emily, but it is actually a perfect example of the way that the American public ends up being kind of misinformed about the nature of our adversaries. So often their actions are presented without context. And in this case, it's just, they're threatening to bomb these tech companies. Well, why? Why are they doing that? They're doing it because they say, you should stop assassinating our officials. Stop assassinating our officials, we won't do this. Because Trump had to play this like, I'm such a dummy, I don't understand how these things work card. Then the second reporter just read directly from the IRGC. So if you've watched the whole thing, you do get the context that they're talking about this. And then he's like, well, how are they gonna retaliate? I can't imagine. I don't know, I'm not a military expert, but probably by bombing them. And then within an hours, they bombed Amazon and Bahrain. You know, Trump was really chippy in that question where he gets asked, eventually, are you worried about it? And he says, no. Which is not at all what you take from the tone of that exchange about whether or not he's worried. Actually, could be. Well, he's not worried. Right, could we put a one backup on the screen? Because I wanna just go through a little bit with these logos. So if you're listening to this, it's some companies that you might not expect. Meta, you probably definitely expect NVIDIA, Oracle, Palantir, Google, Boeing, Microsoft, IBM, JP Morgan, interestingly. I mean, it's not surprising, but JP Morgan does have defense contracts. HP, if people don't know about HP in the Pentagon, that's a long-standing relationship. Apple, I mean, just some of the most major American companies that, I don't know, Ryan, I think people don't realize how involved some of these companies that you don't ever think of as Pentagon contractors are. And all of that is just to say, when you go to war, you are putting so much more on the line. It's not just another step in your foreign policy. On paper, it's actually a whole of society, a whole of government and private sector effort. And that's where it seemed like a lot of people were just kind of breezing over this news yesterday. And here we wake up to a strike on Amazon and Bahrain. And since these assassinations don't actually strategically work anyway, maybe we should just stop doing them? And that's the other thing that we kind of breezed over is the, not even, the ethics isn't the right word because I wouldn't expect the media to ever discuss the ethics of an assassination, but even the legality and the legitimacy of that as an act of war, military experts have serious debates about that. It's not actually just a given. So to your point about including the context and the question, it's essential to understanding what's happening right now. Yeah, and we'll talk to Bob Baer about this later, CIA case officer who's been involved in planning assassinations and who's written about assassinations and he too thinks that it's just counterproductive, setting aside the morality of just kind of killing people. It's like, also, trying to imagine from our perspective, let's say they went out and they killed Hegze. Like, that doesn't actually stop the Pentagon from operating. Right. And what a lot of Iranians have said is that some of the most incompetent people had ridden to the top, had risen to the top and needed to be fired, but couldn't be fired and so then Israel killed them and they were replaced by more competent people. Like, that's a thing. Like, it is certainly possible that if Iran did that to our Pentagon and people rose up from the ranks, Pentagon could be more efficient. Might be, there's no guarantee that you've made it worse by just in cold blood, murdering people. Or that you've made your own, well, to your point, does it make Iran weaker or does it make Iran more chaotic and more of a risk for your own? The new Pentagon would be like, Hegze was the compromise. Oh my gosh. So, speaking of our Pentagon, let's go ahead and put this next element up on the screen. We're seeing here the Nimitz-class U.S. Navy aircraft carrier USS George H.W. Bush has departed from Norfolk, Virginia as of yesterday and is scheduled deployment. The ship and its strike group are likely in route to relieve the USS Gerald R. Ford carrier strike group in Europe. Really, I was gonna say striking, but that would be, like, I didn't mean it as a pun, but striking to see this, right? Everybody check your lint traps, you know, the last one. But does anybody out there believe the story that it was really just a lint, like a lint fire or whatever that just randomly sparked? On the Gerald Ford. On the Gerald Ford that has it now out of commission or like ever. The Ryan Grimm theory is that the... Either sabotage or they got struck and aren't admitting it. Or your theory is also that they really don't wanna be there. Yeah, well, I think that's... They definitely don't wanna be there. But then they sabotage the ship by a laundry, which is one way to do it. We can put the next element up on the screen. This is a drop site post. U.S. embassies to coordinate with Pentagon's CyOpsy unit and Elon Musk. We should also mention that when we were listing out tech companies before Tesla was one of them. Again, not surprising. But if Elon Musk were still in our government in the same capacity that he was at this exact time last year, Ryan, I think what many people who were following the story closely understood, which is that he's so deeply intertwined at almost every layer of our national security, actually our government overall, but especially the national security apparatus. This post from drop site makes that very clear. It's about a guardian story. But man, what might Elon Musk's motivations in all of this happen? And what's funniest about this whole thing is that this is the Pentagon basically super worked up that they keep getting community notes on Twitter, on their posts, because they live on Twitter. Like they're still there. And they hate it when people successfully community note one of their posts. And so this is an effort to deploy the resources and the manpower of the Pentagon to fight back against community notes on Twitter. And they said they're gonna use kind of credible local allies to, because it's kind of, you know, I think it's hard for them when they're just rolling out their own stuages and flunkies to sound credible. So they're like, we gotta find some more credible voices and we gotta downvote these community notes. So the war effort is going very solid. No gloss, no filter, just stories, spoken without fear. Addiction is a disease and it should be looked upon as any other disease. How did you cope with a reckless father like me? Join me, Pooja Bhatt, as I sit down every week with directors, actors, musicians, technicians, and beyond. You don't need to work with the biggest people and the biggest sound to have great music. I have gone through the sub-CD hachakar, reached the pinnacle, stung by the sniggered up, fallen down again. Yeah, I am not writing actively anymore and when I see my old work it kind of saddens me. I'm only as good as the last shot that I gave. Mom's gone but don't shut the theater. The show must go on. Listen to my weekly podcast, the Pooja Bhatt show on the iHeart Radio app. Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Come for the honesty, stay for the fire. Starlink is not a non-factor in this war. Tesla is now one of the companies that the IRGC has said that it's targeting and so the flow of information domestically is not nothing. It's extremely significant. And so this is the State Department. This is a cable from the State Department. I'm reading from the Guardian report here, signed by the Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, on Monday and obtained by the Guardian also suggests embassies and consulates work alongside the US military's psychological operations unit to address the problem-rinds- Laughing of rampant disinformation. It lays out a sweeping set of instructions for how embassy staff should push back against what it describes as coordinated foreign efforts to undermine American interests abroad. The downvoting will continue until morale improves. Yes, excellent. Perfect. Pete Hagseth was asked, so why are we doing this and how long are we gonna do it for? And if you wanna feel comforted before Trump comforts us again this evening at 9 p.m., let's roll a little bit of our war secretary here. Not a question I'm gonna answer or the President has said definitively, we have our own goals and guidance and things were military objectives that we're moving toward and things that we look at. And has he's articulated, he said four to six weeks, six to eight weeks, it could be any particular number, but we would never reveal precisely what it is because our goal is to finish those objectives and we're well on our way. Excellent, okay, Mr. War Secretary, what about opening the Strait of Hormuz? Is opening the Strait an essential objective to Operation Epic Fury or is that the job of those other countries? Our core objectives from this podium, from day one, from me, from the chairman, from the president, from the vice president, from Secretary Rubio and others have been clear. Defense, missile production and missile programs, so their entire missile program, defense industrial base and production ability to build and Navy and power projection. So those have been, and then of course, wrapping it all is Iran's never gonna have a nuclear weapon. So those have been very clear. Defeating the Navy is a core part of ensuring they can't project that kind of power. But ultimately, I think the President's truth this morning lays that out very well, that this Strait of Hormuz issue, which we've set the conditions for success and we will make sure Iran knows that very clearly, is not just a United States of America problem set. We've been willing to lead, President Trump's led the entire time, but it's not just us. So ultimately, I think other countries should pay attention when the president speaks. He's proven that when he speaks, he means something. And he's pointing out, might wanna start learning how to fight for yourself. What I love about this guy is that he is the most obvious, sees get degrees, frat boy, that's ever risen to this level of power. And to hear him say- Now, it was ever risen to, maybe who's ever risen on camera so much to this level of power. To hear him say, we've set the conditions for success to explain his failure is just so delightful. It's just such an amazing turn. It's, did I get a B on the test? No, but I set the conditions for success. I did not succeed, and that is your fault. And if you wanna succeed, you should go ahead and succeed. What I did is I set the conditions for success. Yes, but he's also having to explain the conditions. His boss, the commander-in-chief sets- Another sees get degrees, yeah. Success that are constantly shifting and impossible to pin down, likely even if you're his war secretary. I mean, that's a job nobody's going to want. That makes an already impossible job even harder. And it's so embarrassing. When it comes to this straight-of-her-mooze issue, we have set the conditions for success. Reminder, on February 28th, when the US launched a surprise attack on Iran, blowing up our negotiations and blowing up a girl school and killing at least 165 little girls and their teachers, the straight-of-her-mooze was open. Now it's not. But Hegzeff has set the conditions for success. Who is going to take us over the top to success? None other than the United Arab Emirates. We can put up A7 here. The Emiratis are saying that they want to join in the fight. They have bought a whole bunch of fancy F-15s. They've trained up their pilots. They famously have a couple of female fighter pilots, which they used against ISIS. That was their big kind of propaganda effort. Say, look at how progressive and spoken forward thinking we are. It's not just that they can drive cars. Women can also drive. They can even drive fighter jets. So they won in. They won in on the action. The UAE has been pushing for a strike against Iran. I believe it was in 2010 or 2011. Yusuf Al-Oteba at the Aspen Institute let slip at the time that he wanted the US to bomb Iran. That was a big scandal at the time. Created this rift between him and the Gulf countries in Iran, ambassadors were recalled, et cetera. But it has been part of their national security strategy to attack Iran for now going on at least 15 years. They finally get what they want. It's complete catastrophe for them. Probably marks the end of the era of Dubai as we know it. But now, and they recognize that. They recognize that if Iran ends this conflict in control of the Strait of Hormuz, they're gonna just tax the hell out of Dubai. And how are they then gonna have indoor skiing? Well, yeah. This is where the speech that Donald Trump has set to deliver tonight is very interesting because the timing, I'm curious, Ryan, if you think some of it is that Trump is trying to mitigate, like as you just said, this could be the end of Dubai as we know it. And that applies to not just Dubai, but other Gulf states. So what seems possible is that Trump is trying to mitigate the obvious fallout that was utterly predictable. But he's trying to kind of stench the bleeding by coming up with a way to like say the, I mean, he keeps saying the war is over, but to like deliver a formal address to the nation saying, we're done, it's over, mission accomplished. We'll see. And then because we have a three day weekend, the markets are closed on Friday, then maybe he launches another surprise attack. Like it's almost not even worth listening to the guy. And Robert Pave is gonna talk about that. I think when we have him on, okay, you can listen to him, like if you don't have anything else to do, but do not credit what he says as meaningful. I think Carolyn Levin had a great quote yesterday where she said, when the president says something, it means something. Well, it doesn't necessarily mean what he said. Might mean something, but then you have redefined the word meaning. Well, this is what he wrote about in Art of the Deal. Like he uses words to negotiate. Like he uses meaning to your point. Like that's an intentional, we talked about this all time. Like it's a happy liberation day anniversary to all who celebrate. We talked about this all of the time in the wake of original liberation day last April 2nd, which is it's to some extent, you can understand how in business deals, talking like that is a tool and an advantage. If it goes on for a year on tariffs and then it's going on for weeks in a war, it's not like you're just building a new casino. So obviously not like you're just building a new casino and yet it's where we find ourselves. As a senior administration official put it to Axios this morning, quote, this isn't 3D chess, it's 12 dimensional. He contradicts himself regularly so nobody knows what he's thinking. It's on purpose, unquote. Well, the world is just kind of moving on and just trying to say, okay, you know what? We actually, we don't know what this guy is doing. But we gotta prepare ourselves for what is obviously coming. Which again by the way is. Which is extreme hardship. That again by the way is very similar to what certain major companies and countries have bet on with liberation day. And the negotiating principle has been very similar. To create a totally unpredictable environment. So much so that people bet on the United States. This is like steel manning the way Donald Trump would describe this chaotic, if you even described it in a way that was coherent. But this is the steel man argument behind his threats that are all over the map. And what we're seeing is the opposite of the intended effect even when you try to understand those intentions. Which is like you're nearly getting to a wall. Yeah, well that steel man is still being made with foreign steel, manufacturing jobs way down over the past year. The decline is slower than it happened. Okay, well there we go. Good for Trump. All right, so Kier Starmer, UK Prime Minister and Anthony Albanese, the Australian Prime Minister are out there freaking everybody out. Because they are absolutely freaked out. Europe and Asia are basically moving into like, re-dos of COVID lockdowns at this point when it comes to energy usage. We, because we're a little bit down the pipeline, haven't quite started to experience what they're experiencing now. But let's roll Kier Starmer just to get a sense of, oh, this is getting real. It is now clear that the impact of this war will affect the future of our country. So today I want to reassure the British people that no matter how fierce this storm, we are well placed to weather it. And that we have a long-term plan to emerge from it, a stronger, a more secure nation. First, let me say once again, this is not our war. We will not be drawn into the conflict. That is not in our national interest. And the most effective way we can support the cost of living in Britain is to push for de-escalation in the Middle East and a reopening of the Strait of Hormuz. And so that comes after the kind of conservative Prime Minister of Italy, Maloney, said that the US can't use its bases or fly over for the war effort. And the left-wing government of Spain has said the same. Anthony Albanese in Australia also warning his country that, yeah, things are getting rough. Let's roll A-10. Making sure that we are prepared so that if the global situation gets worse and our fuel supplies are seriously disrupted over the long-term, we can coordinate the next steps together. Today, we cut the fuel excise in half, cutting the tax on every litre of petrol by 26 cents. Those savings have started showing up at your petrol station. For our truckies, we have cut the heavy vehicle road user charge to zero. Both these measures will be in place for the next three months. And if you're hitting the road, don't take more fuel than you need, just fill up like you normally would. Think of others in your community, in the bush and in critical industries. And over coming weeks, if you can switch to catching the train or bus or tram to work, do so. That builds our reserves and it saves fuel for people who have no choice but to drive. And all those shift workers and nurses who do so much for our country, the months ahead may not be easy. I want to be upfront about that. All right, Emily, so the entire world is rationing fuel now. I don't see what could go wrong. Not, doesn't seem great. So there was also a related development. Which, sorry, I just want to, like, that affects the cost of everything. Nobody needs me to say that, but that affects the cost of absolutely everything. And we're moving from the cost of things to the existence of things. Scarcity. Yeah, this is bleak. And again, for what? And this is where I think Israel does not quite recognize what it's gotten itself into. Because the publics in Australia, in Asia, in South America, in the UK, in Europe, and when it hits us in the United States are going to understand that whether you want to blame Trump for going along with it or not, Israel wanted this war. Israel very clearly and publicly, and for decades, wanted this war. They got it. We're all paying for it. So last night, AOC met with the, met with DSA to go over their kind of re-endorsement process. It's a very cool democratic process that they have. And what emerged from it are two significant shifts. One, she said she would, in the future, always vote against what's known as the IHRA, definition of anti-Semitism, which says that any criticism of Israel is also then therefore anti-Semitic. And she said, no, I will vote against that. That should not be enshrined. She also said, and we can put up A8 here, that she will no longer, the quote is, she's committed to voting against quote, any spending on arms for Israel, including so-called defensive capabilities. And this had been a flashpoint because for years, she had supported, whether or not she had voted for it, or not she had kind of supported the idea of iron dome and other quote unquote defensive weapons for Israel. She had tried relentlessly to chart what she understood to be kind of a reasonable middle ground where she could be seen and taken seriously by all sides and could help to be some kind of a conciliator or bringing people together here, that she would say, innocent Israelis should not be subject to indiscriminate rocket attacks. What she's finding here clearly is that that's just not a sustainable position with Israel kind of lashing out constantly around the region. Well, I was gonna say, actually, it gets to the point you were just making about it. I mean, you just said Israel doesn't necessarily know what it's unleashed by provoking this war for so long, and there are plenty of people in the American government who have also been provoking and trying to bring us into this war for years as well. Because I imagine for AOC, I mean, I don't know how, you've done extensive reporting on this. I don't know how sincere that middle ground position was, but this is clearly sincere. I mean, I think this sounds like the authentic AOC position. I think it was very sincere. I think that she genuinely thought that she could be somebody that could bridge these camps because she thought she could have credibility with both sides. She was ruthlessly attacked by APEC and its allies, and so there was no political benefit to trying to play this reconciliation role. And there was only then criticism from the other side, and then what does Israel do with our endless quote unquote defensive weapons? They're invading and occupying Lebanon. They're trying to annex the West Bank. They start a war with Iran. They refuse to like move to phase two with Gaza and allow any reconstruction or reasonable aid. They carry the genocide there. So at some point you're like, you know what? There's no political benefit for this. The country won't go a week without going to war or invading one of its neighbors. And so why am I going to kind of drag my own potential presidential campaign down over an issue where I don't get any credit for it anyway? The incentive structure has changed. This is an indication of how the politics have changed. Yeah, and tough. This will be tough for Gavin Newsom. I think it'll challenge Rokana, who I think has still been supportive of quote unquote defensive weapons. It's gonna be like, well, because the public is not gonna, when the public is looking at $150 barrel, five, $6 gas, they're not gonna wanna hear about these distinctions about offensive and defensive weapons. Right, right. So you're like, they're just using our weapons to create chaos and expand their territory in the Middle East. Why should we keep doing that? Is I think what you're gonna hear from the public and definitely from Democratic primary voters. Well, let's get now to Professor Robert Pape, who's going to brief us on the escalation trap. No gloss, no filter, just stories, spoken without fear. Addiction is a disease and it should be looked upon as any other disease. How did you cope with a reckless father like me? Join me, Pooja Bhatt, as I sit down every week with directors, actors, musicians, technicians, and beyond. You don't need to work with the biggest people and the biggest sound to have great music. I have gone through the sub-CD hachakar, reached the pinnacle, stung by the sneaker, I've fallen down again. I am not writing actively anymore and when I see my old work, it kind of saddens me. I'm only as good as the last shot that I gave. Mom's gone, but don't shut the theater. The show must go on. Listen to my weekly podcast, the Pooja Bhatt show on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Come for the honesty, stay for the fire. Well, as we mentioned earlier in the show, Donald Trump plans to address the nation on the Iran war with a quote update 9 p.m. Eastern Live Tonight. Now we're joined once again by Professor Robert Pape. He's been on with Crystal and Sager and is of course author of the escalation trap sub-stack where he's going to be doing a live briefing on Saturday and wrote actually just like nine hours ago according to sub-stack. I don't know, have you got enough sleep? Professor Pape, that Trump may say the war. Three hours. Oh gosh, that's not enough. Trump may say the war is over. He's wrong, Professor Pape, of course is Professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago. You can and should follow the escalation trap on sub-stack. Professor, thanks so much for joining us. Thank you very much for having me. You accommodated my schedule here. I really appreciate that. And I'm also delighted to speak to the audience here again, which is so crucial. Your audience is so important. And I just couldn't thank you enough. Well, thank you. And we wanted to start with this clip of Benjamin Netanyahu talking about what Israel's goal for the region might be after the war, obviously to nuclear or one nuclear nation potentially trying to thwart another nuclear nation from growing, which has been the focus of your entire career, Professor. So let's go ahead and roll the clip. This is the guarantee for our future. We are working on transforming Israel into a super nation in the region and globally. And we were able to do so thanks to our soldiers and our captains and all those who fought and those who died. And of course, thanks to your solidarity and your steadfastness. So, Professor, the title, as I just read of your latest post on the escalation trap is, Trump may say the war is over, he's wrong. Is this why you think if Trump tries to say the war is over, he's wrong? Yes, what we're gonna see, and your listeners will know, I talked about three stages. We've done stage one, we're stage two. Stage three is the ground power dilemma. Well, if we don't go to the ground war, that's not de-escalation as many people would hope. It's going to be a stage four. There's going to be a continuation, and that's what I'm gonna explain here and also more later. So, stage four, and this is where Netanyahu is really wrong, is about what will be the new center of world power coming out of this conflict. Netanyahu said, it's gonna be Israel, he's wrong. It's not gonna be Israel, and you can already see who it's gonna be today, which is Iran is not just controlling shipping the way people are describing, oil prices, the way people are describing. Iran is controlling so much world oil, so much, and oil is so critical to world power that Iran is emerging as a new global center of power. So, let me just explain this a moment. So, before the war, 33 days ago, there were three centers of world power we discussed, the US, Russia, and China. Now, why was Russia even in that mix? Because it had 11% of the world's oil, and of course it uses that for military purposes. Well, Iran now has double that amount of world oil, more than any other country on the planet, and what that's gonna mean are $75 billion, $100 billion a year more to put into military, that nuclear enrichment is now more likely than ever to become nuclear weapons, and over time, as the months and the years go on, which I know we're having a hard time coming to grips with the reality that's occurred here, is that this is going to create a new center of world power and dwarf Israel. This, as you can see right away, for all of our lifetimes, oil has been so critical, and it's not just oil, of course, it's gas, it's the energy, it's the fertilizer. This is what Iran has now as a chokehold on the world, but it's 20%, and there's no way you're gonna make up for that in the next three or four years. Even if you start drilling now, it will take that long. So Iran is coming out of this, and we've never seen this in our lifetimes, a new world power center created in a month? That's what's on issue here. So whatever President Trump says tonight, whether he wants to go forward, ground war or not, all of this we don't know, and he may not even know. Let's face it, he's been all over the map. The reality, I deal with the realities here, and what we are seeing is escalation reality with strategic consequences. Those aren't over because President Trump thinks he's gonna stop and go to Mar-a-Lago and just cut himself off from the world. No, the world will have to live now with this new center of world power, and there's no good way to deal with this. This is why I was so opposed to this war with the modeling I've been explaining. This is not like, this will end up being worse than Vietnam, maybe not in battle deaths, so the 58,000 dead, well that took 10 years, however, so we haven't been into this 10 years yet, but it's because of the consequences. There was no way Vietnam was ever gonna become a center of world power. It had no nuclear-enriched material, it was not gonna do shocks. This one was always fundamentally different, and I realized most of the world would not know that. Why should they know that? They're not modeling this for decades. This is what was always coming, and that's why I said this is the horns of a dilemma. It's a branching where we're at. It's not a, well, now that we're gonna not go forward with the ground war, we can all live happily ever after, oil prices are gonna come down, Iran's just gonna give up the power that I'm describing. When was a country ever give up any power, let alone world power? Well, United States. This will be my new discussion points going forward, and that's why I so appreciate coming on your show to share it. You got it first, basically an exclusive. So I mean, you're answer to the question of what country would ever just voluntarily give up power might be the United States. Oh yeah, well, that's what you can, so all that talk of America first, okay? I've been trying to argue for America, I'm not using Trump's language, I'm not supporting that, but I'm just pointing out that was always cheap sales talk, cheap sales talk. What you're getting now is the reality, sir, and what you are seeing is, as the four centers of power now, there are now four, America's the one going down. Russia going up, China's gonna be going up, Iran's going up, who's going down? And so we have a little breaking news on this nine o'clock event that Trump is having, so when we get your reaction in real time, so he did one of these very brief interviews with Reuters about what he's going to talk about, and he told Reuters he's going to express quote unquote, my disgust with NATO, and it sounds like it's going to be significantly a broadside against NATO, and he said he's quote, absolutely considering withdrawing US forces from NATO. So you've spent decades, he says, modeling the escalation trap when countries get involved. I don't know if you've ever had a model with this many variables. Well, actually, so this, I appreciate that your audience is not familiar with this, but that's not, it is the case, sir, that we deal with this. So let me explain first to your audience, what is NATO? NATO's not just a political club, a talking club of diplomats, it's a military organization with the American general at the top who gives orders to the other countries' militaries. That's what NATO is, okay? It's a command structure. Right now, today, sir, even though that still is in place, do you believe for a second the British army is going to follow General Cain, the American general, just imagine if General Cain said, British army, you go X, that's just not happening. So what I would just say is we've talked about the fading away of NATO for years. We're not at that point anymore. NATO is dead, NATO is in the morgue, and the obituary is what's being written now. So it's already dead. There's no way the Europeans are following the American generals here, and I'm sorry to say, even if it's a Democratic president comes in, they're not, we've elected Donald Trump twice now. The idea that Europeans are going to obey orders from American general, not happening. So this is really gonna have also major consequences because we never had to worry about this problem of these little dust-ups like on Greenland. Well, this may be a future here, and that's a horrible future, but I'm just pointing out what Donald Trump has done here. This is much larger consequences, and the oil shock and the energy shock is already astounding. I'm explaining, there's a stage four here, and this is even as astounding as it's been already in 33 days, my gosh, the next six months, we're gonna be, this is gonna be the reverse of the end of the Cold War. The end of the Cold War, we shot up like a rocket, like a rocket. Those 90s, Bill Clinton's presidency, oh my goodness, those days, yeah, everybody, you all, yeah, we all know, boy, do we want those days back, right? Well, this is the other way around. We're now on the other end of this, going the other way, 40 trillion in debt, oh my gosh, alien, I mean, the amount of trouble here, that's why we're, I'm so appreciative, again, just talking to your smart audience, it's my favorite audience to talk to, it's like being at the University of Chicago, you guys, it's just that, I mean, it's just that, that's terrific. Don't cast them up too much, they're gonna get big heads. Well, I'm just trying to point out, and it's you guys, and it's also the other folks here, I mean, you're asking really the right questions. And on that point, you, I wanted to ask about this thread that you posted yesterday, you mentioned, at one point in this thread, watch the deployments. As US forces move to secure the Strait of Hormuz, the region is already splitting, Iraq is hedging, Qatar and Oman are staying neutral, Saudi and UAE are growing more alarmed. So you posted that again, according to X, 22 hours ago this morning, we will go to the news that, I came right out of class, and by the way, so I'm teaching here in just a few hours. And essentially, all my students are asking exactly, and my class are bursting, okay? They're all asking all of this. So that's why these thoughts are there, because I'm already talking to my students about these. So what you are seeing, oh, go ahead. Well, I was just saying, we woke up this morning in the news that Amazon had been hit in Bahrain, and that's what you see is threatening all of these major defense contractors in the Gulf region. And I was curious from your perspective, Professor, that seems like a very obvious tripwires around the entire region, where you could end up seeing boots on the ground to potentially defend those major defense contractors. Well, you're seeing this, we're on the horns of the dilemma. So you're seeing right there, do we defend it, or do we go away? You see, this is what we're looking for here. And I suspect whatever President Trump says tonight, two weeks from now, we'll see where we're really at. That's why I say, follow the deployments. Right now, we have another carrier coming to the region. We have more special forces being mobilized. We have the additional Marines coming, until those forces literally reverse course in the water. And the Marine Mews, that big hunk of metal ships with all those equipment, go back to Japan and go back to California. And we start pulling out forces from the region and moving them to other parts of the world. This is not a reality. The rhetoric here, we've got to see, that's what that deployment is. And also, what you're also seeing is the second point I made is that Iran, I warned before, that as Iran's horizontal escalation would continue, you would see the fracturing of the Gulf states. That's exactly what you're seeing. And Bahrain, I explained in that tweet here, there's three groups in the Gulf states now. There's those already bandwagoning toward Iran, that's Iraq. There's those that have been in the middle, that is Oman and Qatar, and they're desperately trying to duck and not avoid getting, but they're in the middle. They're not pro-America now. And now you have the others and Bahrain, UAE. These have been focused here. They have some Shia. There's real reasons to pressure those particular states. And that's what you're seeing Iran doing. They're being extremely smart about how they're fracturing those three pools. And what they're doing is breaking the coalition. We're not growing, we just talked about the end of NATO. We're, our coalition's falling apart here, and they're picking up pieces. And this is the problem. Russia will pick up some more pieces. China will pick up some more pieces. So this is what we are going to see more of. And I don't know if six months from now, President Trump may decide he wants to keep the American forces and bases there. He may have to fight to keep them there, just where they are today. So I don't mean to grow. I mean, these, Bahrain has a big base. They may throw us out. And we may have to say, well, we'll have to topple the Bahrain government to keep that. Are we really going to do, these are the choices President Trump has put us in now. This is not where we were 33 days ago. You had written something that, it was kind of a disturbing insight, which cuts against, I think, of a lot of the conventional thinking about how this unfolds. And I think the markets in general seem to think, okay, this can't go on because it's going to destroy the world. Like that, the longer this goes on, the more energy volatility we have. And by volatility, actually just heading straight down. It's not even volatile. The economy is just down. Trump will back off to clear victory because the source of the problem, the source of the economic crisis, is what Trump's doing. So he'll remove himself from that. Therefore, removing the source of the instability and the crisis and we'll be back to normal. That seems to be the markets assumption, which is why they haven't completely bottomed out. Your argument is that, no, this instability actually feeds the cyclical trap itself. Can you walk us through that a little bit? Because that, and I was like, I'll stop. So the trap, as I've explained it so far here, and we just repeat that, because it's very helpful, is at each of those stages I described, the Americans are tactically successful, but strategically failing. And it's the failure and the counterproductive, we're in a worse position at each stage, that sucks us to go deeper into the trap. What I'm adding now is a new layer, and that's what you're noticing, and thank you very much. Again, smart identification of the newness here. What I'm adding is, and I'm really talking to J.P. Morgan, I'm talking to Jamie Dimon, I'm talking directly to those people, even though they may never have heard my name. I'm trying to explain that they, I'm trying to explain that they, I'm trying to explain that they, I was gonna say J.P. Morgan was on the list of defense contractors that the IRGC said are now fair game in the region. Yeah, that's exactly right. I'm trying to explain why their assumption is fatally flawed for their business. I don't just mean like cocktail chatter, okay? I'm trying to go to the heart of the matter, and the heart of the matter is they're assuming that the root of this can be snagged out by just simply Trump walking away. And I've heard Jamie Dimon yesterday talking about this on Fox. He's just wrong. It's just flat out wrong. And the reason is because we have created, through no intention, but we've created a new center of world power, and Iran is not gonna stop trying to grow that power. They're gonna want to exert more influence in the Persian Gulf, and that's what you're seeing in those Amazon attacks. And absolutely, they're gonna want to knock J.P. Morgan and Amazon out. That's Western imperialism as they see it. And they have a lot of power, and especially if Trump pulls back, they will have even more power. Then they also have growing power in Asia. I've been talking to Bloomberg, others in Asia. So much of the oil from the Middle East goes to Asia, and Asia right now is in a supply crunch, not just a cost crunch, but there is in the Philippines, there's 200 million people in a supply crunch here, almost the size of the United States in Asia. This is generating enormous power for Iran, and also in relation with China. They can do more and more together. And so what you're going to see here is this fundamental assumption that this can all just be blown over, and all we have to do is we're gonna apologize for killing the supreme leader, and yeah, Trump was stupid, and then we're all gonna admit that it was just Trump here. We're just gonna blame Trump, blame Netanyahu, and Iran's gonna just give up world power. No, and who's gonna pay the price? The businesses, J.P. Morgan, Amazon, this is gonna have mega effects, because they're not up for, if they want AI, Iran's gonna get AI from somebody. It's China, and I spent two weeks in China last June touring the AI factories and shops on the robot shop floor to see for myself how the BYDs and so forth are being made. And oh my goodness gracious, China has enormous leverage here that it can share that AI with Iran. And so this idea that Iran needs J.P. Morgan, I don't know what, I'm just trying to explain. This is the fatal flaw in that thinking. Can we get to other, real quick, rather breaking news, the manufacturing numbers are out for March, and the actual is plus 7.8 points over the consensus, the highest number since mid 2022. This is oil already, oil prices already funneling their way into manufacturing prices, which is just another way of saying you're getting poorer. And meanwhile, Professor Stox, the market just opened about an hour ago as we're speaking here in the CNBC headline is, stocks are higher to start the month as optimism around Iran war-ending grows. Well, sure, they haven't caught up to the reality that I'm explaining. They still think Iran is 4% of the world's oil. They're operating as if we were 33 days ago and all that's changed is bombing. So we end bombing and everything goes back to 33 days ago. There's just a flaw here. I don't know quite how to explain it. There's a reality, and that reality is Iran is a world power now. And as each week and month goes by, this will become more and more evident. And at some point markets will catch up. I mean, markets are often behind. I mean, I always say, you know, Washington is three to six months behind and markets are typically behind more than that. That's how you get the balloons. So otherwise you would not have those balloons popping. So the fact the market, that's just another group of smart people. I deal with smart people all the time. Everybody I deal with is at the University of Chicago is actually really smart. So this is not about smart versus not. This is about how to understand the reality that we're seeing versus the hopes that we also all have. Well, that sucks. Props just done this. I'm sorry to say it, but you're allowing me, this is why I keep complimenting you folks. You're allowing me to express it. You're following, you're seeing what's new at each week because the world, I'm not just responding to, you know, yesterday's news. I'm trying to explain what to expect in the coming weeks. And I don't think that United States pulling back equals de-escalation in the way we would understand it, which is the economic shock here. Iran is going to squeeze countries as they go through. And I suspect they will never let a drop of oil from Saudi Arabia or UAE past the Strait of Formos here because they want to topple those governments. And I think that's why Saudi Arabia is talking to Pakistan because Saudi Arabia is looking for who's gonna help me and Pakistan's friendly to Iran. So why is Saudi Arabia making these relationships with Pakistan here? They need a backup in case Uncle Trump bales on him. And who would, yeah, you can see right away. You're not counting on Trump. So what are you doing? You're looking for a backup plan. And Pakistan may not be your best bet, but it's probably your only bet here to help. MBS has got a real problem. How is he going to, his regime survive in this situation where he's lost that much oil revenue so he can't use money as much as he could before? Iran is gaining power. These are the real consequences that I'm explaining by the new center of power. And it's just not likely to change. I just don't see how Iran, even if you got a new regime in Iran, why would they give up all this power? And Saudi Arabia reached a security deal with Pakistan. And I think the reason that Pakistan was trying to host the mediation talks is that so Pakistan could then tell Saudi Arabia, sorry, we can't participate in this war. We're mediators, but they're not. Well, I would go a little further. I was just on for half an hour with the big Pakistani media because I think what's being missed there is, I think Pakistan has been one of the countries understanding this emerging geopolitical power, not just the details. And so if you notice, who else was there? It was, you basically had Pakistan, you had Turkey, you had Saudi Arabia, you have Iran. This is the, there's a growing anti-American coalition that is emerging here. As soon as we talked about arming the Kurds, we effectively lost Turkey. I mean, Turkey's got millions of Kurds. The idea, we're gonna arm the Kurds. The first thing those Kurds are likely to wanna do is turn on Turkey. So this is already, our ideas here are just doing everything to push away those countries. And Pakistan is starting to build coalitions here. So I don't think this is just about being Mr. Nice Guy Pakistan, let's be nice. I think that what you're seeing is the reality of how the geopolitical game is played. Professor Robert Pape, author of the escalation trap sub-stack, probably have to talk to you again next week to get more depressing news about how we spiral. I'm very glad to do it. And thank you so much. Really, thank you, that was excellent. Thank you. You got it. All right, we'll see you later up next. A little rundown on the economic news and guess what, it's not great. More bad news. No gloss, no filter, just stories, spoken without fear. Addiction is a disease and it should be looked upon as any other disease. How did you cope with a reckless father like me? Join me, Pooja Bhatt, as I sit down every week with directors, actors, musicians, technicians, and beyond. You don't need to work with the biggest people and the biggest sound to have great music. I have gone through the sub-CD, Hachakar. Reach the pinnacle, stung by the sneaker, I've fallen down again. Yeah, I am not writing actively anymore and when I see my old work, it kind of saddens me. I'm only as good as the last shot that I gave. Mom's gone, but don't shut the theater. The show must go on. Listen to my weekly podcast, the Pooja Bhatt show on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Come for the honesty, stay for the fire. Major announcement from Oracle yesterday. We could put C2 up on the screen here. The headline, Oracle Slash, is 30,000 jobs with a cold 6 a.m. email. 30,000 jobs yesterday. Now we can move back to element C1, put that up on the screen. The economic indicators are starting to look very bleak. Indeed, this is a quote from reporter Steve Luckner, who said, in a speech with echoes of the news, this is pulled from a political Europe article. EU energy chief, Dan Jorgensen, said Europe was facing a very serious situation with no clear end in sight. Ryan, Trump has teased the speech that nation at 9 p.m. Last I checked, futures were up, which is interesting, given all of this news that we're going through right now, but let's say we didn't have this announcement about a Trump speech, but we're going to have a lot of news that we're going to be seeing. Let's say we didn't have this announcement about a Trump speech. Hypothetically say we have absolutely no idea what he's going to say, which isn't just a hypothetical, that's always true of Donald Trump. People seem to believe he's going to indicate a kind of mission accomplished type moment. Public relations, end of the war, we've won, we're successful. What do you make? What do you make of the economic indicators? Is he responding, let's say, to some of this really bleak, some of the bleak prospects from places like Europe, which are saying, listen, this is pandemic level, possibly. Yeah, and Oracle is probably what, AI related, plus a bunch of their money comes from Gulf States. They're also on the IRGC list of companies to target. Yeah, and so this is a clash between the ability of a president to manipulate markets and actual reality. And so actual reality with the Gulf countries, which are major financiers of Oracle, are struggling because they're getting bombed constantly and their ability to produce the thing and distribute the thing that undergirds their wealth is being undercut by the war. Trump thinks if he can tease that the war is going to end constantly that that will kind of prop up the markets, but at some point people actually need to know people actually need the things that are being produced and they're not able to get them. It's not just fuel, helium, which is a byproduct of the process of making natural gas or you need it. Don't take your scientific news from me. I only get science news from you. It's very hard to get helium now. We're entering a helium shortage. Liquid helium is essential to actually AI, but also MRI machines and all sorts of other like advanced technology because it is able to be cooled to an extremely low temperature, which is essential to a lot of magnetic technology that's related to these high end processing functions. Fertilizer, which is now this, I can tell you something about. Spring is when you plant things. That I can tell you if you didn't know that. It's now spring. So there's two pieces of information. The fertilizer runs through the straight up hermose. China has basically stopped exporting fertilizer because they realized they need it for their country, dastardly Chinese. And so all around the world, farmers who are beginning the planting season do not have the nitrogen rich fertilizers, phosphorus rich fertilizers that they need. That is going to, again, helping you out here, mean that there's going to be less food, which means that people are going to starve and people are going to pay more for food. Your quality life is going to go down. And that's money that, because you have to spend money on food, that's money that you're not going to have for other things. And let's take a look at these numbers that Joe Weisenthal pointed out yesterday. This is the next element. Will the employment situation compound what Ryan was just describing? Weisenthal looking at the New Joel's report said, while the hiring rate in February hit the same level, it did in April, 2020. So April, 2020, what was going on in April, 2020? Was anybody hiring in April, 2020? No, nobody was hiring. In other words, nobody is hiring today. Like right now, this is one of the things that- Got a new class of graduates about to enter the workforce. Right, yeah, yes. I feel so horrible for people who are graduating in May, entering the workforce, quote unquote workforce. This is, we've seen this for about the last year, even before it was showing up in the data, right? Readers, viewers were telling us this, people in our lives were telling us this, that like, and hiring managers were telling us this, that like, there just are not job openings. That unemployment is remaining fairly low, relative to historical highs. But if you do not have a job, trying to find one is like impossible. And all of these companies are putting out fake job openings for data purposes. Have you seen this? Yes, I've absolutely seen this. And so people are then applying to all these fake jobs, of course not getting an interview or anything else, because it's not a real job. That should be illegal, by the way. And they're using AI in their HR departments, the people who are creating their resumes are using AI to brush them up. So it's AI talking to AI, and humans are just, as you see in that chart, just cut out of the equation. And they're feeling it. The humans, unlike the robots, are responding. Let's roll C4. I struggle every day, and now I'm taking care of my mom who's older, being denied simple, simple things like breeding meds. So gas? What are you gonna do? So I don't eat this week, because I have to take mom to the doctor's tomorrow. If you could pick one word to describe the economy, your economy, your economic situation right now, under these conditions, one word to describe that. Desolate. So that was just a normal man from Florida that MSNOW interviewed about the state of the country yesterday, and Ryan, one of the interesting things I saw in a report about TSA, I'm trying to remember which publication was off the top of my head, but they did a great interview with a TSA agent who said he actually, was he part of a strike? Yes, it sounded like he was part of a strike, but he actually couldn't fill his gas tank because he hadn't had a paycheck to commute. Which, when you put two and two together, it's completely obvious, but that's what gas prices, I mean, these are, I passed the gas station this morning, it was like 520. And those are levels where obviously, I mean, gas prices are always, it's a persistent problem for the American people, but. That's something they talked about in Cuba a lot, people didn't have the gas to get to work. And Trump has always, always, like with the market, tied his political success to things like gas prices and the stock markets. So maybe that explains whatever he's gonna say tonight, we don't know yet, but the pressures are obvious, probably to anybody outside. When they're obvious people in DC, you know they're bad. When Washington is talking about the economic pressures, you know they're bad. Yeah, and airlines are canceling a bunch of flights because in order to, like, let's say they sold a plane load full of tickets at 300 bucks when jet fuel prices were what they were back in February, now to operate that flight, they might lose a million dollars. So they're like, you know what, I don't think we wanna lose a million dollars. Now there's laws about whether or not they can actually do that. You guarantee they're combing through every possible mechanism they can to say, oh, it's not because of the, that we're losing money on this flight, it's because of something we didn't foresee. Whatever it is, don't worry about it. So you're just like, just, oh, your flight's canceled. Now if you wanna, here's $300 credit, if you wanna read book, here you go, it's gonna cost you $1,500 now. Perhaps I'll find another one. Perhaps I'll find another one. Perhaps I'll find another one. Perhaps I'll find another one. Perhaps I'll find another one. Perhaps I'll find another one. Perhaps I'll find another one. Perhaps I'll find another one. Perhaps I'll find another one. Perhaps I'll find another one. Perhaps I'll find another one. Perhaps I'll find another one. Perhaps I'll find another one. Perhaps I'll find another one. Perhaps I'll find another one. Perhaps I'll find another one. the podcast, the puja bhajjo and the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Come for the honesty, stay for the fire.