world wide on the W M A L app O'Connor and company. It's 607. Good morning. Thanks for tuning in here on this Wednesday in your nation's capital. It's O'Connor and company getting you off to where you need to go. Hopefully with a smile on your face at the end of the morning because Lord knows we need it coming up in 30 minutes. Cal Thomas will join us 705 John Reed of the Republican Party of Virginia on the gerrymandering scheme. 735 The US government rendering scheme. 735, the one and only, the great Sean Spicer. I said it just how he wrote it out for me. At 805, Lieutenant Colonel Tony Schaefer. That's Carrie Lucas with the obligatory giggle for my shenanigans. Good morning, Carrie, from Independent Web. Good morning. Good to have you here. Thanks for having me. You're very welcome. Well, where to start? Again, we broke on the show you yesterday. We read the president's true social post that he put out yesterday with regard to the eight o'clock deadline where he used language like a civilization will and will break down what he had to say a little later because the over the top reaction to it, you know, in the same tweet, he said, you know, at eight o'clock tonight, a great civilization will end and cease no more. And then in the same breath, he said, you know, because we're going for regime change here. And then he said, but who knows something could happen. There will be a miracle. And it's like, Oh my God, you guys, it's like you may not like that the president uses hyperbole and rhetoric and says stuff like that. And it's like, these are not the norms. These are not. Yeah, listen, I'll take it over Joe Biden, making his Clint Eastwood eyes and saying, don't, don't, you know, I did. Well, what's more effective? Thank you very much. Again, you don't like it. That's fine. Don't like it. But if you're a paid political analyst and you've lived through the last 10 years of Donald Trump, why are we acting like we don't recognize how Donald Trump goes about his business and does these things where he creates, you know, a hyperbolic rhetoric atmosphere that then changes the playing field so that he can gain some level of leverage on the opponents that he's facing down and then eventually works out some sort of arrangement. And I don't know why people were expecting mushroom clouds and every single person of Persian descent to be vaporized yesterday. Yeah, you know, it's incredibly, obviously this is an incredibly serious thing. And I think one thing when the president uses, you know, rhetoric that's unique to him, obviously this is not something that other presidents have done. It's important for us all to remember who his audience is. And the president clearly doesn't care about the, the, all of the hand wringing on X. He's not worried about what other, you know, what American politicians are, and even the public are thinking at this moment because he has a very clear goal in mind and he wants there to be a great outcome in Iran, the best possible outcome with Iran. That's what these messages are geared towards. Up until now, what we know for sure is that their military has been severely debilitated. We basically have a run of the place. I mean, we proved that over the weekend when they, you know, with one lucky shot downed one of our aircraft and we were able to get in, rescue that person and leave and operate more effectively and more efficiently on Iran's own territory than Iran could operate on their own territory. That's dominance right there. We still have two Marine expeditionary units off the coast of Iran with the third one on its way coming out of Camp Pendleton in San Diego. We are not going anywhere, but we did announce yesterday that a ceasefire for two weeks has been agreed to in exchange for Iran opening up the Strait of Hormuz, which was sort of the last sort of choke point there that Iran had sort of, they've, they've put all their eggs in the Strait of Hormuz basket. Every single military asset that they have left standing, they have been utilizing to terrorize peaceful oil tankers trying to traverse the Strait. So they've agreed to open it and we've agreed to do a two week ceasefire, whereupon we will utilize these two weeks to negotiate further the so-called 10 points that Iran wants and the 15 points that the Trump administration, the U.S. government wants. And so here we go. You know, now, now we've got two weeks of very tense negotiations that could very well result in further military action. We're not going anywhere. In fact, the president put out a statement. He's put out a couple of statements here, but here's the one that I thought was funny. A big day for world peace. Iran wants it to happen. They've had enough. Likewise, so has everyone else. The United States of America will be helping with the traffic buildup in the Strait of Hormuz. There will be a lot of positive action. Big money will be made. Iran can start the reconstruction process. We'll be loading up with supplies of all kinds and just hanging around in order to make sure that everything goes well. I feel confident it will. Just like we're experiencing in the U.S., this could be the golden age of the Middle East. President Donald Trump, he put that out at 9 p.m. last night. So, that's where we are. That's where we are. And it's interesting, because it's important, I think, to take all of these proclamations that the president puts out as a part of this negotiating tactic. Is this really the end of the conflict? The president's, I think, painting a picture of what might be possible. What a better future could be in the Middle East. But you're right. But our guys are hanging around and are ready to jump into action. Yeah, according to Kelly Meyer from News Nation, she says, Senior White House official says this is a win for President Trump. The president always said four to six weeks for military operation. And I guess that's true. We're just finishing up the fifth week. The military was exceptional and achieved our objectives. Iran no longer poses the threat they did six weeks ago, the official said. The official tells me, POTUS and V-POTUS, tough negotiations led to a ceasefire and a roadmap to a workable diplomatic solution for long-term peace with Iran. The official says, straight-up hormones will reopen, which President Trump was able to accomplish without the help of NATO, despite the fact that they should have helped all along. Good key point at the end there. So, here's my concern. This was announced around seven o'clock an hour before the deadline. By nine o'clock, we were getting reports of multiple missile strikes and rocket strikes and drone strikes in Tel Aviv, in Kuwait. We got multiple news. Here's the Fox News report, just at 9 p.m. about an hour after the ceasefire. Excuse me, this is actually at 2 a.m. Tel Aviv time. Indicating that another missile is inbound, and it looks like those bright lights in the sky are the missiles, and it looks like you can see an interceptor that is in hot pursuit of the missiles. And it's always quite dramatic when you see those interceptors going after it. And these ones might disappear behind our building here, and we're going to lose sight of them. I think probably a complication for the administration is that Iran, the good news is that a lot of the Iran leadership has been decimated. But that means that the people that they're talking to, that these negotiations are being conducted with, may or may not be fully in control of all aspects of the kind of Iranian military. So, undoubtedly this is complicated, and this is one day on what will be an ongoing, you know, wrestling. Yeah, maybe military, hopefully diplomatic. Let's see, we're tracking the White House, we know that the President usually awake by now, so we might be getting some sort of statement from his true social account on this. And then there's the left, then there's the media, and then there's the Democrats, who spent all day yesterday, as I said, with their hair on fire, saying that President Trump was a madman who had to be removed from office because he was going to push a button and send us all into a nuclear winter and destroy with war crimes, the Iranian civilization. And then when he announced a ceasefire, those very same people started taunting the President for chickening out. So, if he pushed the button and launched, you know, this full-blown campaign, they'd arrest him for war crimes and genocide, but by not doing it and negotiating a ceasefire, they're taunting him and saying that he chickened out. Do you see how they do this? Do you see how it works? I can't make heads or tails of it. That's why I don't go to them for political analysis or to get smarter, and that's why you don't either. You come here and thank you for that. So we'll break that down and show you what those usual suspects had to say, and a little bit more on the state of affairs in the Middle East as of today, but first, at 6.15. In the 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's been really high as a positive, but if you're a saver, you know what that means? Sha-ching. Silver lining, Joe. Silver lining. Afford anything. Follow and listen on your favorite platform. Yeah, we don't talk about it too much on this program because it's just sort of an insulting, pejorative, and I like to use this word taco about Donald Trump. Trump always chickens out. They think it's funny. They think it's cute and clever. It's ridiculous. It's the political left in this country, but Aaron Burnett on CNN employed the derogatory statement last night as the president announced the ceasefire. There will be some who will call it, you know, taco. Trump always chickens out, which is making way too light of it, but it's also a truth, which is that he makes giant threats that he does not follow through on. So it's one thing for everyone to say, well, nobody wanted him to do this. And it's another to say that the word of the president of the United States is now something that people do not think that they can take at his word, that they expect it to be just a quick trading opportunity every single time. So I want you to hear Trace Gallagher's response to this from last night. It's pretty good. Again, I try to understand people who I disagree with Kerry Lucas, but this one I can't really wrap my brain around. So now their concern is that the president has damaged America's credibility because we didn't launch a full scale attack against Iran and instead worked out a ceasefire deal. So that's a problem because American credibility is more important. By the way, how is American credibility damaged here? He said, reach an agreement with us or we're going to do this. So they reached an agreement. So America's credibility would be damaged if we went ahead and did it anyway after reaching the agreement. I don't get it. I really don't understand their criticism. Absolutely. The very use of the word chicken out is such a schoolyard as if you're trying to goad somebody into doing something that they ought not do. Yeah, I double-dog Daria to Nuka. Exactly. As if that's going to make the president have his inform his military decisions. It's childish. Yeah. Here's Trace Gallagher. He was brilliant last night on this on their late night show on Fox News. Single time. Have they ever heard of negotiation? He makes giant threats and they condemn him for those giant threats. And then when he backs in, oh, see, he didn't follow through on the giant threat. Make up your minds, people. Thank you. But you can't, you can make neither heads nor tails of it. Literally the same people who were calling for the 25th Amendment to be employed and the Trump removed from office and, you know, sent to Nuremberg or the Hague for war crimes because he put out a true social post during a negotiation also said that he was chickening out. And meantime, by the way, as we're talking about lack of credibility and war crimes, you realize that the Iranian regime is the regime that's been targeting civilians this entire time. They've been going after civilian infrastructure, hotels, hospitals, apartment buildings, and they're the ones who it appears. I mean, I'm trying to find some sort of analysis on this, but nobody seems to be talking since it happened overnight. They appear to be the ones who have no credibility because they violated their own ceasefire that they agreed to. Absolutely. And Larry, even like yesterday, this idea of using human shields, that is a war crime. You're not supposed to do that. You're not supposed to put children on a bridge and then say, oh, you know, it's so horrible that they might bomb this. That's them putting their own people's lives at risk and knowing how much would hurt the United States to have to have civilian casualties. Laura Ingram last night took to the airwaves. President Trump has been calling, proactively calling people to have conversations about what's going on behind this. It's an extraordinary thing. This second term is so many books are going to be written about what we're seeing go on with this president. The fact that we had Mary Margaret O'Lean on the show yesterday and he'll take calls from reporters directly onto his cell phone, not screened by anybody, and have conversations and relay stuff to them for their news reports. And now, yesterday, we saw President Trump earlier in the morning calling Brett Baer, obviously wanting to get messages out through these people on cable news, and obviously not just for the American people, but for his adversaries over in the Middle East. So after the ceasefire was announced, here's Laura Ingram's recitation of her phone call with the president. The deadline is off and we have what's being called a double-sided ceasefire, a live report from the region in moments. Now, I want to tell you how we were scheduled to start the show. I spent all afternoon writing the script. It started like this. Tick tock. T minus 59 minutes, 30 seconds. Until Donald Trump's 8 p.m. deadline for Iran to reopen the Strait of Hormuz. But just moments ago, Donald Trump posted this. And it's the entire truth social post where essentially says, based on conversations with Prime Minister Shabazz Sharif and Field Marshal A.C. Manur of Pakistan, and wherein they requested that I hold off the destructive force being sent tonight to Iran. And it continues to go on and on. And I just got off the phone with President Trump. And I will say this, and we'll read the whole post later. He literally just had to rewrite the whole show. He was extremely serious in my conversation with him just now. And he was also cautiously, but seriously optimistic. He told me that the negotiations are and were incredibly complex. He does not want them jeopardized. There still needs to be an announced agreement. And of course, we all know in this part of the world anything can happen. But it sure looks like... Oh, there we go. Sorry. Well, we'll clip it off there. But there you go. And so he called Dora Ingram before she went on the air and said, hey, here's how we're feeling. Here's what we're thinking about this right now. And honestly, I don't know what to make of most of it other than to just relay that most of the analysis you get on cable news is just garbage and makes you stupider for it. And there's a lot of unanswered questions here. But the bottom line is, if this ceasefire can hold, that's a good thing, obviously, because that's a sign that negotiations are progressing. Hi, Lucas. It's also a good scene for all of us who have family members who were sort of sitting on ships right now, waiting to engage in the escalation that is anticipated, because if we can keep our men and women out of harm's way and not utilize them and actually just use them as the big stick that they are, and utilize that threat of military engagement to get a peaceful resolution, all the better. Yeah, absolutely. And it is interesting, you know, the president really does seem to, you know, this is all happening in public. We do, we know that this isn't the end of the story. He doesn't, it hasn't already been written. This is part of a process. And we count, count our chickens that everything is going to be perfect. This is the end of, you know, the end of this chapter. But, but it's promising. And it shows us what we're what, what he's trying to do. And he does want peace, obviously. And when you boil it down again, just to sort of button up my criticism of the people who get paid way better than me to give their analysis and they're so often wrong, Carrie, that when, when you boil down their criticism of this, I guess it just amounts to this isn't how things are done. This isn't how things are done. This isn't how we've done things. This is, this is, this is so abnormal. This is so different. This is so, you know, they, they'll use the word dangerous and, and unpredictable and, and chaotic and all those other things. And my only possible takeaway from that is, dude, the way things are done has gotten us to this point. If we do things the way we've always done things, that's how we get 47 years of a stare down with a tyrannical theocracy that at any given moment has launched terror attacks against innocent people all around the world, including thousands of Americans. And we do nothing about it. The way we do things in the past is how they get billions of dollars on a palette delivered to them that they can then use to finance the October 7 terror attacks. So maybe it's time to try a different approach. Exactly. Just maybe. Yeah, maybe we shouldn't just wait for Europe to write another very troubled and angry letter. Yes. Very concerned. Yeah. Exactly. We have more on this. We got Tony Schaefer, who is a former Intel officer in the army. It's pretty well sourced. He joins us at eight. Oh five. Well act. Sean Spicer about it as he worked in the Trump White House is a keen observer of these things. That's all coming up right now at 625. Now on 105.9 FM and screaming worldwide on the WMAL app O'Connor and company. 637. It's O'Connor and company coming up at 7 to 5. John Reed of the Republican Party of Virginia talk about the get out the vote effort here to stop the Jerry Mander referendum two weeks from yesterday at 735 Sean Spicer of the Sean Spicer show. Give us some insight into what things were like at the White House yesterday and at 8 0 5 Lieutenant Colonel Tony Schaefer will tap into his intelligence there about the current state of affairs in Iran. And that's all coming up. It's Larry O'Connor. Carrie Lucas of independent women sitting in with us this morning. Good morning, Carrie. Good morning. I just I just exclaimed there before we went on the air as I'm trying to digest all the news and all the information and all the takes that are going on. I exclaimed to no one or everyone. What the hell is going on? That's what I said. What the hell is going on? I suspect people come here every morning to find out what the hell is going on. And it's just one of those mornings where it's sort of hard to hard to get a grasp. A lot is going on. And that's that's why we're glad to have somebody like Cal Thomas who's seen it all written about it all pontificated about it all. And so Cal, you tell me what the hell is going on? I wonder why people never say what the heaven is going on. That's always the question that's looking at my mind. Well, it's not the it's not the Stone Age. You know, I remember a line from I think it was General Curtis LaMay during the Vietnam War who wanted to bomb North Vietnam back to the Stone Age. So we resurrected that little line again. The problem we have is the same problem we've had before. Now, though we don't know who's running around, they have broken every promise and agreement they've made in the past. Is this just another rope a dope operation where they delay getting bombs some more while they regroup and maybe move around what uranium what uranium they have left there. So nobody really knows. All I know is that the stock market futures are going to go way up this morning. I'm waiting for the gas prices to go way down. They seem to go a little slower when they're going down when they're going up. So we'll see. Opening the straight will certainly be that's an achievement here after five weeks of sort of severely diminishing if not completely crippling their their military force that they had there, except still remnants of their missile. But it's interesting you said, Cal, that, you know, where this stands currently with Iran in terms of who are we negotiating with and who are we talking to and everyone says regime change regime change. What does that look like if not the sort of decimation of their leadership I keep saying decimation and that literally means 10% way more than 10% of their leadership is gone now so. But we have to factor regime change now don't we or do we need a full new constitution and change of way Iran goes to business. Well that would be great Larry the problem is you know they're executing people right now we're told hanging shooting people are intimidated they don't want to come out. I don't blame them I mean I wouldn't want to come out unless it was less than 100,000 200,000 million people from all over the country turned out to that's what's going to take. But I mean they've got families that not everybody in Iran is a fanatic. You've got a great history of the country but I don't know I say obviously regime change would be the best thing to go and you had a secular government at least one that didn't believe in killing everybody who doesn't agree with him but yeah, we can only speculate right now. Incredible voices of Iranian Americans Persian Americans who have been hoping for the toppling of this regime many of them you know came here during what what they call the the disaster of the late 70s. And it would be great to see that happen for them that has not necessarily been the goal of this military excursion over the last five weeks. Just from a distance in terms of the mechanics of punditry which you are you know the best at and have been for decades now. What am I to make of the people who spent all day yesterday saying the President Trump needs to be removed from office 25th amendment. He's a madman because of the red and by the way why they're not used to the rhetorical flourishes of this man after 10 years of witnessing I'm I'll never know. But then when he announces a ceasefire at the 11th hour those very same pundits are saying well look at he chickened out he chickened out like they're taunting him for not doing the thing that they wanted to remove him from office for. You look at the accomplishments of President Trump regardless of what you think of his personality or the way he talks or whatever. The borders closed the taxes are reduced I wish the debt was gotten under control but he has done a lot of great things. The Democrats and the left and the must much of the media don't have any policies all their only policy is hate Trump. We know what their policies are transgenders men and women's locker rooms we've been through all of this stuff before men and women's sports any cockamamie thing that comes down the pike therefore and the voters rejected that all the polls show it even some Democrats. Mark Penn the pollsters admitted that. Brahma manual said they went too crazy. A lot of other Democrats are right. So these these people who are running the show now the Democrat Party don't have any policies or at least no policies the public wants. They are still absolutely paralyzed with just opposed Trump that's all they got it might be enough in these midterms Lord knows but it's not enough to build a party and a movement off of. Hey Cal radically shifting gears here it was announced yesterday that Stephen Colbert's replacement will be a stand up comedy show like I find this to be a tacit statement or acknowledgement from CBS that Stephen Colbert and late night comedy in general has sort of dropped the comedy. You're absolutely right and I was thrilled to see this and I hope it becomes a trend. I've known Jane Leno for a long time and we've had conversations about this and he said I couldn't do a show like they do in today's environment. The great thing about Leno and Carson they were equal opportunity they made fun of both sides. You couldn't really tell where they were politically and I think this is a great move with CBS along with a new president of CBS Barry Weiss and I hope it catches on with others. Why do you want to stay up late and listen to stuff you've heard all day. They want entertainment. They want to laugh. They want to they want to be told funny things. So I think this is a great move and we'll see if it affects the other two networks. It's called comics unleash with Byron Allen Byron Allen by the way who's been in the entertainment business and basically a bit of a media mogul himself over the last several decades. It's been on Paramount Plus their streaming service and it's basically stand up comedians sitting around in a panel. It's almost like a BBC panel show and they try to make each other laugh and talk about funny things and my understanding based on the purpose release. Let's see how long this lasts. But CBS has said yeah go ahead and do it. Just stay away from politics. We don't want this to be you know a funny version of Abby Phillips CNN panel show. Right. And gee I wish I was a mogul. You know I always want to be a mogul. You want to be a mogul. Yeah you can be a mogul. You carry yourself around like a mogul. I'm going to start calling you a mogul. Can I do that. Okay. And Mr. Mogul to you. Counts on this Mr. Mogul. Thanks for joining us and making sense of what just doesn't make sense. That's why we love you. It's 643. Vince Colnays is redefining news talk with the Vince show. It is a reflection of your response to this program that we get to take this thing to the next level. These gigantic shows. This is going to be so much fun. It's unbelievable. In-depth interviews, live caller interactions and a front row seat to the most important conversations of the day. I've got updates. I've got big stories. We'll sort through the truth of what's really going on. So buckle up. Here it comes. The Vince show. Following listen on your favorite platform. Anyone who's been down to the Washington mall, especially for the Cherry Blossom Festival over the last year or so, you've seen a major construction project going on at the beautiful, incredible, legendary Lincoln Memorial. And we have an update on this just in time for spring and summer. The elevator process of the undercroft project has now been completed and it's open. So that giant temporary accessibility ramp that was built, like basically covering up half of the Lincoln Memorial so that people who require assistance to get up those steps, the Americans with Disabilities Act had mandated that if the elevator was down, then they'd have to go up this really gigantic network of scaffolded ramps. That's no longer needed. And so the edifice of the memorial will go back to normal at this point. And that's a huge, huge advance now. Yeah, the pictures look so beautiful. It's such a welcome change to have that back. And yeah, in the last days, I think the Cherry Blossom Festival goes on through this weekend. So a good time to come out. Yeah, the project continues to happen. You're not going to see it directly because it's all happening sort of in the basement, what they call the undercroft, I think is what they used to call the dungeons of a castle, right? Yeah. But basically all of the work that's being done under there that should hopefully be reopened soon is a new large exhibit space, new restrooms, larger gift shop, and a replacement for the old elevator. The elevator part of it is done now. And it's safer and not harrowing if anyone has, I've written in that elevator before because I have a child with a disability and you felt like you were taking your life in your hands. Yeah, that's not good. We should be able to do better. We're never getting out of this. It's like the ghost of Abraham Lincoln was actually operating the cables in the background. So that's all good stuff. And that temporary accessibility ramp has now been removed. So get down there for your photo ops. Exactly. Yeah. It is a 6.52. We're going to work to play golf. Join the party on the golf course. I was like, let's go to the range. So what are we putting on it? We said 10K, right? 10K. All right. We probably bet more than all the other golf channels, right? 10K, 9-olds. Those guys bet for like cookies. I feel like I'm going to shank it. This guy's been trading like a Navy SEAL when it comes to golf. I'm very, very excited. Are you excited? Yeah.
