So I'm seeing the headline on CNN, JD Vance is getting ready to head to the Middle East to begin the conversations with Iran. I'm going to tell you this is obviously a make or break situation for JD Vance. It's a make or break situation for Iran and America as well. And for JD Vance, it's political career. Because if this ultimately goes well for the vice president and it has positive results, this will be huge for his possibilities for 2028. And heading into the presidential election, everybody knows right now you've got Marco Rubio, you've got JD Vance. And so this is a big opportunity for the vice president. We'll have to see how the whole thing goes. Of course, Steve Whitcoff and Jared Kushner will be also participating in the talks. And I got to, I mean, this is going to be a huge, huge weekend. So a lot of people will be focused on these talks. Right now there's a lot going back and forth between what exactly is Iran doing in this rate of Hormuz. You have some people saying that they are charging tolls. You have other people that are saying, well, no, but they're only letting a very few ships through this rate of Hormuz. They're supposed to allow it to be open because of the ceasefire. And by the way, Israel, and you heard Joan report this, I mentioned it early in the five, but Israel is now deciding that they are going to engage in talks with Lebanon as well. So this could be huge because remember, it was Israel who bombed the live and crap out of Lebanon. We talked about this yesterday and President Trump was like, hey, Benjamin Netanyahu, can you pump the brakes while we figure all of this out? As Netanyahu tells the story, Lebanon has reached out to Israel about peace talks as well. So we'll continue to watch this. Ultimately the question is going to be, can you trust Iran? Regardless of what the ultimate agreement is, can you actually trust Iran? The answer to that question obviously is no. You also most certainly cannot trust Lebanon. So this is going to be, you know, whatever they agree to, there has got to be complete and utter transparency. Otherwise it's going to be all for naught. Now, Kevin Hassett, you may have heard Chris play this audio yesterday. Kevin Hassett was on with Maria Bartiromo. These, by the way, all of this is audio only. He was on with Maria Bartiromo. This clip went viral yesterday talking about oil. The president made a stunning comment the other night in his address to the nation that the U.S. produces more oil and gas than Saudi Arabia and Russia combined. That was pretty incredible. So just to be clear, are you saying that you have received interest from allies across the world to buy oil and gas recently during this Iran conflict? Right. It's one of the things that people mention in conversation is that if we set up off-take agreements with our allies so that they have a guaranteed supply of U.S. oil, they'd have a much more secure energy supply and that that would be very, very good for reducing the risks that their country faces. And for sure we've had conversations about that really since the trade negotiations began years ago. All right. So again, that is Kevin Hassett with the Trump administration. He, I forget his exact title, but basically he is an economic advisor among many of the things to Trump. So the point is that we're going to be exporting more oil to the European countries so they have a more consistent fuel supply that they can trust. Now last night I spoke to E.J. Antoni. You know that he is a lead economist for the Heritage Foundation. You've seen him on Fox News. You've heard him on my show many times here on WTN. I interviewed him last night about that comment and E.J. said, well, yeah, that's great, but I think it's definitely good to see the U.S. exporting more energy, right, to see us responding to that foreign demand. That's all well and good. The issue here is that we're simply talking about far more oil and LNG than we can produce. I mean, let alone export because obviously we want to keep plenty here for our own consumption. But again, you're talking about a fifth of the world's energy that's been disrupted right now. And then you have the fertilizer component. You have a lot of byproducts of hydrocarbons, things like helium that are going to be used in chip production. I mean, I can go on and on here, but the fact of the matter is we're talking about an increase in demand that we simply just can't meet. That's why it's so imperative that you get the Strait of Hormuz back open and you get the energy flowing again. Yeah. Yeah. I think it's been very vocal about just getting the Strait open. And the point that he's making there is that we don't make enough oil. We don't produce enough oil to be able to make up for what is being lost with the closure of the Strait of Hormuz. The problem is, and of course we've had, is that we don't know exactly what is going on in the Strait of Hormuz. We keep hearing multiple stories. Is Iran charging crypto? Is there a deal going on to get the U.S. and Iran to work together to get it open? What exactly is going on in the Strait of Hormuz? The problem is that you're getting so much misinformation and even from official sources, whether it's the White House, the Iranian government, you name it, the story is just constantly changing, it seems. So I think the best thing to go by is what is energy actually being sold for today? That's a really good indication of what the interplay is between supply and demand. Demand obviously is relatively constant. It's the supply that is changing dramatically when you can get ships through or when you can. And that is telling us that very, very few ships are actually getting through the Strait right now. Yeah, that's E.J. Antoni. To his point, I don't know, can I check in with you, Joan, on what oil is trading for right now? The oil futures? Yeah, give me a second here. Because I don't think it closed well yesterday. And basically what E.J. is saying is that just look at where oil is. So Brent Crude is up at $95.98 a barrel and we've got the West Texas Intermediate at $98.16 a barrel. All right, and they're going... So right around the $100 mark. Okay. Because I'm no financial guy. That's way up from where it was. So yes, what I'm provided on the screen here is what it was over yesterday's closing price. So both of them are up one by a quarter of a point, the other just slightly up. Got it. Okay. But when it's up, I mean, it's been up since the war started. So yeah, I mean, it's bad. We were talking about how we feel about the talks this weekend. And if you are enthusiastic, if you think that this is going to end well, the talks with J.D. Vance and Steve Woodcoff and Jared Kushner as J.D. Vance is getting ready to leave for Pakistan. We asked folks on the YouTube chat, this is the Daily Dan poll, which has now turned into every once in a while Daily Dan poll. But what are people saying? How optimistic or pessimistic are people? So how optimistic are you on the Iran-US? Hey there, I'm Paula Pan. I help people make the smartest money decisions possible. Joe, you know what's been great about being a saver? For money to make. And that money over the past couple of years has made a pretty good yield. Pre-pandemic, money was making zero. Now it's actually making something, but that's starting to go down, down, down. I love how we can play the fact that inflation has been really high as a positive. But if you're a saver, you know what that means? Cha-ching. Silver lining, Joe. Silver lining. Afford anything. Follow and listen on your favorite platform. Negotiations. The four options were very optimistic, somewhat not an FM blow em up. Okay. Somewhat optimistic leads at 36% of the vote. FM blow em up leads second at 26%, not optimistic third at 25, and then very optimistic at 12. Wow. Bunch of negative Nellies this morning, Joe. There's a majority of people that I would say are not optimistic or FM blow em up, and then there's some somewhat optimistic and very optimistic. So it's 60, 40 almost. Yeah. I think, Joe, did we ascertain where you're at on this? Are you optimistic or pessimistic? I'm pessimistic. We may come out with some sort of a deal. I just, I don't know. You can't treat Iran like you would any other nation. Right. Like use any remnant of the Mullahs there in Iran, and you can't trust them. And I just, I don't know how you can, you know, rid the entire country of those cockroaches. But Joan, where are you at? Are you, are you pessimistic or optimistic about these talks? I'm optimistic that what we'll see is, you know, yeah, so we've got a deal. I'm pessimistic that Iran will hold to that deal or has any actual intention of doing so. So Joan is right where I'm at. Yeah. That's kind of where I'm at as well. What about you, Sam, real quick? I just, I don't think the talks will hold up. I think, I think things will. Well, define hold up. Do you think, do you mean like everybody's going to throw up their hands and say screw it or what do you mean? I feel like we'll hit a wall of certain things they want done that are hard nose for us and something is going to transpire out of that. What transpires, I don't have a prediction on, but I lean towards the, yeah, that from blow them up. E.J. and Tony had more to say about the amount of money that Iran is making right now selling oil legit. So talking about Iran, they are making more money right now selling oil because they have access to the straight of Hormuz. This is what E.J. and Tony had to say. Iran is shipping more oil through the straight today than they were two months ago before the war started. And not only are they selling more oil chiefly to China, but they are selling it at higher prices, not just because oil is more is a higher price today than it was two months ago. That's true. But also Iran was previously selling at a discount because of sanctions today. That discount is gone. In other words, they're getting full market price basically twice as much as they did before. So, you know, one of the things that I asked him last night in this interview was, and I think it is a fairly decent question. So Iran is selling oil. You just heard him. They're selling oil, open market, full price. And you know, they're one of the only games in town right now because they do have access to the straight of Hormuz. But they're making money. They're making good money on oil as opposed to, you know, trying to sell it on the black market. They're dealing with sanctions. They can only really sell to China, etc. Could this prove to those in charge in Iran that, yes, we can make a ton of money selling oil on the open market by just going legit, making that good money? Could this negative be turned into a positive and it could be a teachable moment for Iran? Oh, 100%. And I think that's why if you look at their, I forget if theirs was the 10 point plan or the 15 point plan or whatever it was. But if you look at the plan that they presented, their demands for the ceasefire, that was one of the items. They want sanctions relief. They want to be treated like every other nation on the global stage. Now, obviously for us to concede to that, we're going to need them to make some concessions as well. Things like sponsoring terrorism, that's been a big point of contention, obviously. But absolutely, Iran wants to have normal economic relations with the rest of the world, 100%. Well, they can't, what is it, have their cake and eat it too? I mean, listen, you can't fund terrorism. You can't scream that, you know, Israel has no right to exist and death to America and try to pursue nuclear weapons and believe that you should have access to the open market. You've got to choose to be legit or you can be a terrorist organization. And I think that is part of what J.D. Vance and Jared Kushner and Steve Woodcoff are going to convey to the Iranians. One of the other big questions we have is the discussion of Iran charging tolls. Yesterday, we talked about that million dollar crypto toll. The president posted yesterday, they better not be after that story broken. Honestly, nobody really seems to know if they are or not. Here's more from E.J. Antoni. This was actually something that Iran started doing even before the ceasefire was announced, where they allowed a limited number of ships to go through provided they essentially paid a toll or provided tribute, however you want to phrase it. Whatever the case, I think it's a way for Iran to get additional revenue on top of the explosion in oil revenue, which they're already receiving. And in this way, they are circumventing all of the sanctions on them, where they no longer have to worry about these penalties being imposed for using a financial system, transacted in dollars, they're using alternative methods. And on top of that, this is a way for them to control far more of the world's energy than just what they produce. But now that they have created this choke point that they control in the Strait of Hormuz, they have transformed what used to be a global freeway into an Iranian tollway, in that sense, they now control roughly a fifth of the world's energy. Yeah. And so all of that to say, because this was a pretty long interview and I've cut it down for you, but all of that to say, bottom line, when will we see prices normalize? When will we see prices go back to where they were pre-war? Here is what he has to say. And I'm telling you, it's not good news. Good, good question. Unfortunately, it may take a while because look, you're talking about oil infrastructure here that has been damaged or destroyed in the conflict. Not simply a matter of things had to be shut down. It's a matter of they've been blown up. That stuff is not going to come back online anytime soon. I believe it was Qatar said that one of their LNG fields, their liquefied natural gas fields, has been put out of commission for three to five years until repairs can be completed, rather. So some of this energy is going to be offline for a while. That means you should not expect prices to come all the way back down to where they were before the war. On top of that, there are a lot of price increases in the future that are just kind of baked into the cake at this point. And so it's going to be many, many months, maybe not even until 2027 before all of the kinks are really ironed out here before supply chains are truly normalized and we get an energy market back to something resembling normalcy. Yeah, so when you talk about something resembling normalcy before the war, here in the state of Tennessee, the average price of gas was... 255 per gallon. It is now... 385 to 394. In the race to scale with AI, you need data infrastructure that can match your pace. EverPeer's data storage platform brings all your data into one hub. No silos, no scrambling, just instant access to tame your data chaos. And with EverPeer's storage as a service subscription, your storage and security upgrade automatically with zero downtime. Your infrastructure stays current, so your business never slows down. Visit everpeerdata.com to learn more today. With EverPeer, you're not just in the race, you're built to win it. Now crossing over $4. Yeah, my favorite gas station in Mount Juliet by where I live, I passed by there this morning, in 1989. So if you were hoping that the price of gas would normalize before the midterm elections, at least according to E.J. and Tony, that is not going to be the case, which obviously if people vote with their pocketbook, that does not bode well for the Republicans. In the midterm elections, fingers crossed and we'll see what happened. Have you seen the kerfuffle, Joan Jones? Have you seen the kerfuffle that is going on within the Republican Party here in the state of Tennessee? Oh, yes. Yes, I know what I wanted to talk about. It is a kerfuffle. It all has to do with a three strikes bill that was trying to make its way through the state legislature. This was something that House Speaker Cameron Sexton has been trying to get through. So it goes to the Senate and apparently Todd Garden higher. By the way, the speaker is going to join us at 7.35 here on Nashville's morning news to fill in some of the blanks. But Todd Garden higher over in the Senate apparently killed this three strikes bill that, at least to me, it makes all the sense in the world. So what this three strikes bill would do, this legislation, because we've all heard what happened in California with the three strikes law there. But what it would have done is create a new sentencing structure for repeat violent offenders. Certain crimes would have counted as strikes and if somebody accumulated enough strikes, including at least two violent defenses, they could face a mandatory life sentence. So Speaker Sexton told the folks over at the Tennessee Holler about this. This was audio that kind of made the rounds on social media. By the way, this is audio only. This is Speaker Sexton talking about this. Well, what that bill is, it was the first of its kind. Most people when they talk about three strikes, it doesn't have the aspect in it that we have, which is as you accumulate strikes, if you want to turn your life around and say that you don't get convicted of anything for three years, strikes can come off because it's a way to hold people accountable. But also when people want to turn their lives around, there's a way to reduce the number of strikes. See, that actually makes sense. It's like, okay, so look, you know, three strikes, right? So if you're doing well and you're not out committing bad crimes and violent crimes, then you can work those strikes off. One of the things that I'm going to ask the speaker is, okay, so how exactly do people under this plan, how exactly do people work off those strikes if they're a violent criminal? By the way, what are those qualifying crimes that would get you a strike? All right? So these are the qualifying crimes. Ready? Second-degree murder, aggravated rape, aggravated robbery, and human trafficking. So that does seem to make sense. I think that, you know, oftentimes people, when they hear three strikes, they think of what happened in California before the reforms, where you had, you know, people with, you know, very minor infractions. But if it was their third strike, I mean, they'd go to prison for like years. And so that was something that a lot of people, you know, freaked out about. They realized, okay, maybe this was an overcorrection to the violent crime that was happening in Los Angeles and in California. So I think there is a reflexive reaction to what Tennessee is trying to do. But at least to me, the way that I interpret this is that it is number one, more humane. But let me ask you this question. How many times do we hear, and it is so frustrating, how many times do we hear somebody with multiple infractions? You've got, you know, a rap sheet a mile long, and it's all of these things like rape and robbery and all of these violent crimes. And you ask the question, why are they out? Well, I think this bill that Cameron Sexton and the House want to pass, I think that they're trying to remedy that situation. Here's more from Cameron Sexton. The last strike has to be a violent crime. It can't be a misdemeanor that puts you into the three-strike category. Because third of a strike is a misdemeanor per se. Fourth of a strike, a half of a strike is a nonviolent crime, and a violent crime is a full strike. Yeah. So, I mean, to me, this does make sense. Now, you all know, if you know anything about me, I am hardcore on law and order. I just am. That's how I was raised. And that's how I think that Tennessee should strive to be as law and order as possible. And Tennessee, you know, we've been very tough on things like illegal immigration. The state legislature has really been trying to shore up these kinds of issues. And, you know, again, how many times do we read or hear the stories of guys who should be in prison but aren't? They go out, they kill folks. We see it daily. So, I understand the spirit with which Cameron Sexton and a lot of the folks in the House of Representatives are looking to pass this bill out of the state legislature. So, of course, there are differences between what California did in the 90s and what Tennessee is looking at right now. And it does seem to me that one of the biggest ones is that that third strike could be a minor crime in California. But, you know, if it's a third strike, you could face 25 years to life under the California laws of long ago. In Tennessee, you just heard Cameron Sexton say that a third strike law here has got to be a violent crime. In California, also, you couldn't really work off strikes the way that this Tennessee plan would allow you to do. But this whole thing actually started erupting into a war of words because state Senator Todd Gartenhier essentially killed it in the Senate Judiciary Committee. This is what Cameron Sexton had to say about that. Well, he's always emotional when you're talking about holding criminals accountable. He's the softest general assembly member on crime that's here by far. I think Justin Jones and Pearson are stronger than he is, which is saying a lot. Wow. And I'm going to play that one more time just to make sure that you understand how badly Cameron Sexton has thrown Todd Gartenhier under the bus. Listen to this again. Well, he's always emotional when you're talking about holding criminals accountable. He's the softest general assembly member on crime that's here by far. I think Justin Jones and Pearson are stronger than he is, which is saying a lot. I mean, wow. And that is saying a lot. And clearly the speaker is frustrated. He wanted this to pass through the Senate. One thing that does seem to be a point of contention is the money that it would cost and has the money been, I guess, appropriated? Was it attached to the legislation? That is something that we'll ask the Speaker of the House about at 735. You know, this three strikes law would have resulted in more bad guys going to prison. Sexton Hyer says that, well, we need money for this. And he says there is no money attached. Sexton says that is absolute BS. And in the legislation, that may be three to four years down the road. There's no cost this year to the bill. Zero cost. It's an assumption. There was no cost to the bill. He used a mechanism to try to say there was, but there wasn't. But at the end of the day, he voted against truth and sentencing. He's voted against bail reform. He's voted against three strikes. He just continues to not support victims. And that's unfortunate. Yeah, Garden Hyer for himself, and I've got a little bit of audio from him coming up. But you know, he said a few things in that committee hearing as well. Not real complimentary of Speaker Sexton. We'll get to that and the rest of the story. One of the things about this bill, first of all, again, it is three strikes. It isn't as onerous as other states in that you can actually, as we talked about, you can work off. But I think that's even, I'm using the phrase work off because that's what was mentioned in the couple of news stories that I read on this. But it's actually, it's almost a Sam like time off, if you will, for good behavior. Like if you don't, if you don't do anything wrong as far as like a violent offense or anything like that, and you've got a couple of strikes, then you can just with good behavior, a half a strike can fall off. Yeah. I guess they call it the decay provision for every three years a person had no new criminal convictions. Half a strike could be deducted from their total, but only from the half and quarter strike categories. Right. So you can't, you can't, if you've got a violent felony, so that the one strike, the full point has been assigned to 54 violent offenses. You can't work those off. And that's, I, I, I, I, as Cameron Sexton pointed out, I agree with him that the representative from Chattanooga is, is kind of being sympathetic to the criminal in that aspect, because after the third strike, you'd be in prison for life more than likely. Well, we'll have to wait and see what Cameron Sexton has to say. You know what I'm going to do? What are you going to do? Joan, you know what I'm going to do? Sammy, you know what I'm going to do? What are you going to do? I'm going to play for the speaker this sound bite from Todd Gardenhire talking about him. Speaker Sexton wants to be tough on crime. It's great. Speaker Sexton should have attached. He had the money to it to send it over here and we wouldn't be having this discussion, but he didn't. He sent it over to us to take the bullet, which I don't appreciate. He ought to have the guts to do it, but he didn't. So there you go. I'll play that for Cameron Sexton. Yeah, let's tell you what that sounds like to me. I don't want my constituents getting mad at me that I'm tough on crime. So I'm going to bounce it to somebody else. Well, I don't why, but why would any, why would any Tennessean? Well, you know, I say that, but why would any Tennessean have a problem with, you know, tough on crime policies? I mean, the Democrats clearly they are not tough on crime. There's more Republicans and conservatives in the state of Tennessee than Democrats. But you know, the reality is there are a lot of, you know, Democrats in this state who don't appreciate tough on crime policies. It is infuriating to me. I don't understand all of the times that we have seen people, you know, not only in Tennessee, but across the country that are ultimately murdered by people who should be in prison. Or you put someone like a Daniel Penny in a situation where he feels the need to defend people on a subway. Yep. And now half the country calls him a white supremacist and a murderer. It's just exactly right. And we see this time and time again. Next role with Vernon Davis. I'm your host, Vernon Davis. Okay, y'all, thank you. Thank you. That's my... Today we have Dietrich Weiss. Through my example on the field, off the field, during game day in practice. That was one way that I led because then it led to success. Next role isn't about what's next. It's about why they do it. My man, Bobby Bones. Like I've had a lot of stuff happen, bad and good. And so I don't have any fear of mixing it up. That's powerful, man. Next role with Vernon Davis. Follow and listen on your favorite platform.
