Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 7/2/26: Trump's Crypto Corruption Worth Billions, Vance Says US Reloading For War With Iran

Episode Date: July 2, 2026

Krystal and Emily discuss Trump's crypto corruption, Vance says US reloading for war.. Trita Parsi: https://tritaparsi.substack.com/ Michael Lange: https://substack.com/@michaellangenyc    To become a Breaking Points Premium Member and watch/listen to the show AD FREE, uncut and 1 hour early visit: www.breakingpoints.com    Merch Store: https://shop.breakingpoints.com/   See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Wait a minute, Dakota. She's calling the hotel while they're checked in together. Yeah, that's right, Sophia. And it gets worse. It's Vacate to Vacation Week on the Ok Storytime podcast, where she caught him buying gifts on Amazon and then tape the 10-page letter inside his luggage. before he flew out. So she planted evidence before he even took off? And spoiler, Sophia, two years later, karma hits so hard, he's calling his ex-wife in tears,

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We need your help to build the future of independent news media, and we hope to see you at breaking points.com. Good morning. Welcome to Breaking Points. I am back once again in the soccer seat. You're going to have to put up with it for another. other day. I'm so sorry, Crystal, but we'll make it work. It's a gift, really. Lots to get to you in the show this morning. We just got some Trump financial disclosures and truly, truly, truly, world historic levels of corruption, billions of dollars that he and his family have profited off of the presidency this time around. Break down those numbers. Also, we got some little bit of insider trading, a little bit of Qatar Force One, a lot, lot going on there. And And it's such a hard story to cover because I feel like nearly every day there is a incredibly

consequential corruption story that we could be covered. And it's just so overwhelming that it's hard to adequately get into the show with the frequency with which it truly deserves. And there's a Trump quote we're going to talk about in that block that explains why that is, I think. Yes, very good point. We're also going to have Trit to Parsi. Join us to break down these new comments from Vice President J.D. Vance, where he seems to

maybe kind of give up the game of what the Trump administration is really up to with regard to this memo of understanding. We also are taking a look at the DSA Coalition. Who are voting for these candidates? What does it say about the future of the country, the future of the party? What are the attacks? We've got the numbers from Michael Lang to break down truth from fiction on that front. MTG and Tucker are thinking about launching a third party effort. Could that succeed? What would that look like? We also have an update for you on several significant members of Congress and their health status. Mitch McConnell continues to be hospitalized

after having been found unconscious. Very scary situation. Their representative, Tom Keene is back. After four months out, he says, because of depression. So pretty interesting from a guy who votes against paid time off. So we'll get into all of those sorts of things. Yes, and I just have to say, Crystal, before we jump into the show, today's bottom bar for the listening audience,

it is much, I think, cleaner than yesterday's bottom bar, which I believe involved MK. Ultra brains. Yesterday's bottom bar was a little chaotic, but in a good way. It was, yeah. It was our own sort of Operation Chaos, the Operation Bottom Bar chaos. I always watch the show, even when I'm not on it, because I learn a lot from my fellow co-hosts. Yeah, I was like, okay, we got an eclectic mix of topics today.

When one Rojas came on, he looked at the bottom bar and he was like, what the hell is going on? Really? Yeah, before we went there. Kyle and I watched the Brain Segment together. which was really fascinating. Romantic. Which people, yeah, isn't that sweet? That's the sort of thing we do.

Which, anyway, people seem to really respond to. A lot of people watched it. Yep. You guys hooked them in with the, like, medical establishment stunned or whatever the headline was. It's true. But it was a truly fascinating segment. So I love, you and Ryan tend to look like a little bit further afield,

and I like that. Right, man, he brings the craziest stuff. Ryan in particular, yes. He's the new Andrew Huberman. You heard it here first. We should also mention, by the way, if you want newsletter versions of Crazy Ryan's segments, It's breakingpoints.com.

Go ahead, subscribe. Which, you guys know. I mean, you can't watch that brain segment and then just leave it there. You got to dig into the newsletter. You got to find the, okay, what's the study? What is he talking about? Let me see a little bit more. So there's a free version.

There's a version premium subscribers you should already be getting. By the way, if you aren't, what is it, support at supercast.com if you're having any trouble at this point. But so far, the response has been really great. And, you know, we're really proud and excited to bring that to you. All right, let's go ahead and jump into the details here that we are learning with regard to the truly, truly extraordinary corruption to the tune of billions of dollars in a single year to Trump and then even more to his villain. I'm going to fully get into that today. In any case, Trump got asked about some of these new disclosures. Let's go ahead and take a listen to how he is responding to some of these new revelations.

I don't get involved in my personal. We have funds that run my money. Well, you are benefiting. Well, I've made a lot of money before I became president, and they invest my money. And I don't talk to them. I don't even speak to them. So I have many people, I don't know what they call, closed accounts or something. You put your money in, and that's it.

I don't talk to them. They're big institutions, and they run it. But yeah, I've had a great career. In business, I've had a great career. I've had a great career. I don't know if I've had a better career in politics or business, but I had a great career in business. And, you know, you saw the cash.

and you report the different things. And what they do is we gave it, I think it's called the blind account, but basically they take it. And I purposely, I never speak to any of the people that run the money, but they're at big institutions and they invest in whatever they invest. But the critics say you're profiting all the prices.

Well, you know why I'm profiting because the stock market's going up. Everybody's profiting. If you have a 401K, how has your 401K done? It's about up 85%. Thank you, President Trump. There's actually so much to get into just with that one clip, Emily.

First of all, for those of you who are just listening, standing in the background, his two sons, who are deeply involved in all of the business ventures, maybe not specifically the stock trading, although who knows, but the crypto ventures, which are where the vast bulk of the wealth has been accumulated in Trump 2.0, that is run by his sons. He's like, I don't talk to the money people. They're standing right there, and they're your own children. Okay, so that's number one, number two.

He says, oh, well, my money went up because the stock market went up because I'm such a great president. Everybody's benefiting. Well, again, the vast bulk of the wealth that has been accumulated is billions of dollars from these crypto scams, which anybody out there who has crypto holdings, you tell me how the crypto market has been doing. And specifically how your investments, if you dare to invest in like the Trump coin, how they did, you know, there's a breakdown we're going to show you in a moment. They made $2.3 billion. dollars, and that all came on the other side with $2.3 billion of losses. Many of the people

who are suffering the most are his fans who were tricked into investing in this thing and have lost basically everything. So, you know, this is not about all the stock market went up, so I just happened to benefit. And then even on the stock market piece, we're going to show you thousands, thousands of trades that were made, and some of them timed in a very specific way, seemingly, seemingly coordinated with actions that were taken directly either by him or by his administration. Well, also, Trump famously reads several papers front to back every single morning, like physical papers. He gets them printed out, New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, and New York Post, of course. And so for him to say that he's not aware of how these decisions are being made, let's just hypothetically, we'll give him the benefit of the doubt and say he's not talking to Don and Eric about World Liberty Financial.

We remember, by the way, that was pasted on the octagon during the UFC fight. The World Liberty Financial branding was on it. But let's just, you give him the benefit of the doubt on that one. He is damn well aware of what's happening with World Liberty Financial with the investments that his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, has, even just if it's through the media. Because once again, we know he watches Fox News, and we know Fox News doesn't do much coverage of this. But he actually does read these papers front to back every single morning. This is like a well-known fact reported about how he spends the early hours of his day.

And so for him to say that he just knows nothing, that none of this would be in his head while he is making governing decisions is flatly ridiculous. Oh, of course. And so A2, we can put this up. I think he gave a much more honest answer back in January to the New York Times when they asked him why having told his family not to make new business deals in foreign countries during his first term as president. He was permitting them to do so now. He said, I found out nobody cared. I'm allowed to. So I think this is, you know, was specifically about Kushner. at all making all of these foreign business deals. But I think this is the true sentiment that is that he has embraced with regard to his own profiteering off of the presidency and, you know, just incredibly corrupt dealings. The crypto piece is really the locus of the bulk of the wealth that has come in. And I mean, this is the top use case at this point for cryptocurrencies at large is like being able to funnel corrupt to facilitate. to take corruption specifically for the President of the United States and his family.

Also further to the point of whether or not, oh, he's involved in any of these deals, you know, New York Times had reporting A8 actually put this up on the screen about how he pushed specifically to grant access to this tungsten mine in Kazakhstan that his sons are a part of, the company that's going to be able to exploit the mining in this region. So he directly pushed for that. So there's no doubt whatsoever that he is directly involved in these deals that he is talking to, the deals that he is pushing things on foreign countries to benefit him and his sons directly. Let's go ahead and put A3 up on the screen here.

These are some of the details that came out in this financial disclosure. Trump pulled in at least $2 billion after returning to the White House, the release of a mandatory financial disclosure for 2025 shows the Trump family's holdings, particularly the president's crypto businesses, were stunningly lucrative. All told, they say, the president pulled in at least $2.2 billion, a figure that includes other parts of his vast holdings, such as real estate assets. That compares to a minimum of $622 million. His enterprises pulled in for all of 2024 before he returned to the presidency. So we went from $622 million in 2024, still a lot of money, to at least $2,000.

$2.2 billion since he returned to the presidency. They say one of his biggest halls in 2025 came when an investment firm tied to the United Arab Emirates bought nearly half of the Trump family's main crypto company, World Liberty Financial transaction that blurred the line between foreign policy and private enterprise. He had to put it mildly. He also collected hundreds of millions of dollars from sale of his Trump meme coin and World Liberty sale of its own digital tokens. The results, detailed Mr. Trump's mandatory disclosures, released Tuesday, pulled back the curtain on his business operations, his crypto ventures. The report shows are now some of his most lucrative enterprises, remarkable turnabout for a man who once slammed crypto as a haven for drug dealers and

scammers. He realized, oh, I could be one of those scammers. Why shouldn't I be involved in the scamming that's going on in crypto? And the World Liberty Financial transaction that happened here with the UAE, we covered at the time, Emily, right after that, guess what? he's, oh, you know what, we can export some of these highly advanced ships that you're looking for. He did something that they wanted, the UAE wanted, shortly after this massive cash windfall comes to him through his cryptocurrency. Well, they're also, this is another one that gets lost, and I'm trying to look it up exactly what it is, but the Trump organization is currently working on a big development project

in Doha. So it's not even just that. It's all tied together. Don't tell me that Donald Trump doesn't know his sons are working on a development project. in Doha. It's obviously ridiculous to say that that's not the case, that he has no knowledge of it. And this is not, I forget who said this the other day, but this is, I wish I could give them credit for this exact quote. But this is like real money. People were saying like, oh, with Hunter Biden, which we covered here, by the way, and I cared about a lot. Yeah. We had Ken Vogel on. We talked about all of this stuff at the time. It was ridiculous. This is billions. This is billions of dollars. And it is really directly tied back into, yes, there are still, I think there are still very serious questions about Burisma. and Carlos Slim and all of these deals that were happening with the Bidens.

This is like literally peace deals that are being made in the Middle East by people who are invested with the countries. Their companies are invested with the countries that are at the center of the negotiations. There's never really been anything quite like this. Yeah, it's a complete smash and grab and a sale of U.S. foreign policy. I mean, that's genuinely you can't look at the picture and think of it otherwise. Glad you brought up Hunter Biden. I had Claude make a little chart to help us visualize.

Just the dollar amount differences that we're talking about here. Put A10 up on the screen. So on the one side here, that little tiny sliver that you can't even see. Okay, those are the reported Hunter Biden earnings from Burisma over five years. Okay. You can almost see it. It's about $5 million. You can almost see it there.

That was his board salary from 2014 to 2019 over five years time. Okay. Trump on the right, this is just from one. part of his crypto earnings from one year, $1.4 billion roughly. That was just in 2025. And Claude gave us this little helpful disclosure here. Note, these are not the same Apple to Apple comparison. Hunter's figure is personal board salary over five years per the DOJ tax indictment. Trump is one year of business venture income 2025 federal financial disclosure, Reuters calculation. Trump is about 280 times larger. Both figures exclude value.

that flowed through intermediary entities. So just to give people a sense of proportion here of what we are talking about, okay? You can barely see the Hunter Biden piece. And we covered it, Emily, to your point, extensively. Extensively. And Ryan had like an encyclopedic knowledge of all of the Biden like corrupt using the name, you know, his brother, all that stuff. Extensively, we covered it here.

There was a lot of right-wing concern about the Biden family profiteering. I think that's fine. I think that's fair. That's why we covered it. you cannot even wrap your head around how much more profound, how much larger, and how much more impactful in terms of the way that our government and our country is behaving in the world, it is all tied into is Trump profiting or his son's profiting, is Kushner profiting, is Whitkoff profiting, or his kids profiting.

I mean, again, we are narrowly focused here directly on Trump today, but the circle of graft and corruption in this government, it appears to be that their primary focus and the lens through which they filter their decision-making is how can I get a cut? How can I personally enrich myself or my family off of the operations of the United States federal government? And there's always been corruption. We have never seen anything in our history. And I would dare to say, you know, in world history, in terms of the dollar amounts, in world history, you would be hard pressed to find larger dollar sums flowing to, flowing to to the head of state and his family directly. Well, if we put the chart back up on the screen just briefly,

I want to say if you put together all of the different Hunter Biden deals that we learned about from the laptop and leaks and the like, it would probably not even get to that $200 million mark, which is the first part of the chart for the listening audience. So we're looking at $1.4 billion. But if this is just, this is Burisma, but if you put together like Romania, Mexico, all of these other countries that Hunter Biden was trying to cut deals with,

which, by the way, we're involving influence pedaling, where he was basically offering access, and so was his entire family, Frank Biden, James Biden, and Valerie Biden-O-N-Win, that was happening. But the scale would still be, and you could put it all together. It would be tough because they were doing so many random deals, but the scale would still be wildly disproportionate between the Trump crypto grift and the Biden grift overall. And in fact, the crypto grift isn't, it's just the tip of the iceberg because they're also doing all these investment deals. And they also involve Steve Whitkoff, how to the Biden grift, Lutnik and others. So the influence peddling does, I think, a real moral injury to the country.

There's some kernel of truth in what Trump says when he claims nobody cares. He learned that nobody cared. I do think some of that comes from much of the mainstream, quote-of-mainstream media downplaying some of the Biden stuff or just not covering it as a supero-sook. I don't buy that. Let's do it. Let's do it. I mean, look, at a certain point, you just have to say that his graft is so overwhelming that, first of all, it makes it very difficult to focus on it. And that is part of their strategy with this administration overall was, you know, at the beginning, we're going to have all of these executive orders and do all of these outrageous

things, but they're going to be so much and so insane that you can't keep track of it. 100%. It's the same thing with the graft. So, look, you know, we can talk about mainstream media failures all day long. But the bottom line is they have really given Trump a lot, kind of a pass. They grade them on a curve in a lot of regards. there was way more focus on hunters' paintings and hunters this and hunters that than there are on these corrupt dealings. It's just sort of accepted as this is like this is just how he operates and what he does.

So, you know, I don't, I think there, I don't think that they are primarily the, I don't think the fact that they let the Biden's off the hook has anything to do with, you know, what we see in the coverage today. I think that the Trump, Trump realized he can get away with it because he can just, do so much and, you know, and not just here, create so much controversy throughout the entire country and the entire globe and start wars and kidnap foreign leaders that people aren't going to be able to focus on this. And if you wanted to point anywhere to blame, you have the Supreme Court saying, and you can do what you want. And there's going to be no, there's going to be no consequences. So it's off to the races. Well, and I think the Biden stuff, I mean, these are, to be clear, I think they're completely on different levels. I think the Biden stuff was also

so spread out and scattered that it was hard for anybody to focus on and latch on to. let's also be clear, like, we're talking about Hunter Biden, okay? And James Biden and Frank Biden and Valerie Biden. The only thing we have on him is like 10% to the big guy. That's the most that we ever got on any direct Joe Biden corruption. He didn't even own stocks as president of the United States. So, you know, it's also very different when you're talking about Trump himself versus, you know, Hunter and Burisma and these sort of like things that are tangential. They're related.

And obviously I covered it. Now at this point, I honestly regret covering it as much as I did because it is of such a different scale in proportion. Nancy Pelosi's stock trading got nothing on what Trump has been up to. Well, there was melding of the Biden finances in like vague ways, but you're completely correct. I think that's absolutely true. What I was saying about Trump's point on this kernel of truth being that he learns,

nobody cares. I think what happened is that institutional trust in the country just completely cratered. And so people put all of this beside them now. And they're like, yeah, you guys are all garbage. And Trump has this unique insight into the American public realizing that politicians are no longer seen in any, like there's no veneer of moral benefit of the doubt that people assigned to their politicians or ascribe to politicians anymore. And so he's picked up on that and he realizes that, nope, it doesn't matter. There is no longer this pretense that our politicians

are great human beings and so many politicians still cling to that, this idea that like, well, I'm at an elected office. Like, I have the dignity of the office attached to me. How dare you question me on X, Y, or Z? And Trump is like, nobody cares about that. So, I'm going to do whatever the hell I want to do because it's 2026 and people's expectations are in the basement. Yeah, certainly. Although I will say I think that there is a rising stench around this. I agree with that. This is of a different nature and kind and the size and scope of it is so different from what we've seen in the past.

And I've even seen some sort of more like right-wing people being like, oh, if you want to have socialists sweep the entire country. Yep. This financial disclosure is how you're going to help to make that happen. Yep. It's so disgusting. It's exactly how that happens. And you could go back to the first Gilded age because we're obviously in the second Gilded Age now and see certain like capitalists panicking about exactly that. What did Lennon say the capitalists would give us the rope to hang them with? Like that's happening right now. How could you possibly create less trust in the financial system? Milton Friedman actually talked about this too than doing conducting yourself like this. You could not possibly do it.

By the way, World Liberty Financial has a stable coin. Donald Trump is the president of the United States. Howard Lutnik is the Commerce Secretary. Scott Bassett as a Treasury Secretary, it's in and of itself. Like, it's an inherent level of corruption that is egregious. There's nothing like it. Listen.

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and unbelievable true crime stories from music history. These are the stories you haven't heard, the kind you'll end up telling someone else. Like the time Paul McCartney spent in one of the world's most notorious prisons. Imagine that. You're Paul McCartney. It's 1980. You're an ex-Beatle, and you're doing time in one of Japan's worst prisons right there alongside Yakuza gangsters and for a ridiculous charge.

Or the bizarre crime Lady Gaga is accused of. Who is the artist Lady Gaga as being accused of doing the unthinkable to after allegedly stealing her music in style to become famous? And what about that time, Blondie's Debbie Harry escaped a serial killer? The man who had given her that ride she barely escaped from was Ted Bundy. Listen to Discraseland on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. My husband is currently on a vacation with his mistress, I'm confronting them.

Tell me, Sophia, how did she even catch them? One Amazon shopping receipt. He accidentally sent her a photo of the kids' Christmas gifts with a delivery to another woman at the bottom. He exposed himself? That's a rookie move. Couples massages, monogrammed bath robes, and lingerie he then mowed her for. So she spent four weeks gathering evidence

and taped a 10-page letter inside his luggage before he flew out. In his luggage, she came to play. And the second he landed, he blew. She walked her. So she called the hotel room directly and got the mistress on the phone. Ooh, she got the mistress live on the phone? That is a bold move. Let's see if it pays off. Then it gets worse. He took the mistress on the Bahamas honeymoon trip he had planned with his wife. And then the mistress tagged him on Facebook, outing the fair to her entire family. That's like a whole public confession.

And spoiler, two years later, karma hits him so hard. He's calling his ex-wife in tears saying about the mistress. What a mistake that was. Find out what happened. Listen to the OK Storytime podcast on the IHart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Put a four up on the screen, Reuters tracked down some of the specifics regarding the $2.3 billion that Trump threw out on all of his crypto ventures appears to have earned. This was before the financial disclosions came out. But this really gave a honestly heartbreaking look at some of the people who were huge Trump fans who invested like way more. of their money, well, you shouldn't have given him a single dollar, but really overextended themselves because they believed in him, oh, well, Trump has his name on this shit coin, it can't possibly be a scam. And it was. It was a rugpole. It was a pump and them. And now they're left with

holdings that are basically completely, you know, I've gone virtually to zero. And one of the ways that you can know something as a scam is basically like, okay, is there someone who's going to profit off of this regardless of whether it does well or not? and that someone is Trump. We can put the, we've got a chart for A5 that we can put up on the screen that shows you that as Trump and his family were gaining here from these various crypto ventures, and this was put out by Steve Ratten, compiled and put out by Steve Ratner, by the way, based on the Reuters numbers from that report, we're just showing you. So with World Liberty Financial, he has profited $1.1 billion, he and his family.

The investors have lost 674 million. On the meme coin, he has profited 616 million. The investors, many of whom again, were sort of rank and file, Trump supporters, have lost 711 million. On this Alt-5 Sigma thing, which I didn't even know about this one, they profited $538 million. Investors lost $675 million. And then on American Bitcoin, they haven't gotten too much down to this one. Only a mere, Emily, 19 million. Investor losses, $216 million. So these were all set up so that no matter what happens, no matter how much of the American people's money got scammed and flittered away, that it would all flow into his pockets. It is truly, truly astonishing. to see this. And the other thing that was really sad in this article is there were some of these people who were like, I am an idiot, I got scammed, I can't believe, like, he's so different than I thought. And there were some people who were like, I don't blame him that I lost my entire life savings investing in his shit coin and somehow managed to still be like, I think it's because the Democrats are like shorting it. And so they have, they're the reason that it collapsed.

The reflecting pool, the metaphor of the reflecting pool, it's not working because Democrats are slashing it with knives. Yes, exactly. That was the, you know, in their head, oh, it can be his fault. It has, the Democrats have to have done this somehow. And so they invented these wild theories of what was going on and why this thing went to zero. And that also is like you can, you can follow the logic of a person who doesn't trust anyone anymore coming to a conclusion like that. Like, obviously, I think it's completely wrong. But I understand with, this is that gets back to institutional trust. And to your point about the politics of Trump's corruption, I don't think Republicans have any idea what's waiting for them on the other side of these midterms. I think they're starting to see it creep into the campaigns as general elections get closer and closer. And the primaries are settled. Because in the first Trump administration, yes, there was Gryft. There was Kushner Gryft, no question about it. There was Trump organization Gryft, no question about it.

The hotel was here in the middle of the city, like two blocks away from the White House. We saw it. But it was not like what's happening now, obviously. And also, before the pandemic, the Trump economy was better. And we were not in a hot war. Like we, well, I guess they would say we're technically not in a hot war, but I think we all know the answer to that question. We were in clearly a hot conflict bombing Iran for weeks and gas prices were going through the roof. And so I don't think they're prepared for this scale of Trump corruption in a bad economy.

Because I think when you're in a bad economy, Trump's point about whether or not people care changes. People do care when the economy is really bad and you claim to be a populist champion. And when it's so, it's just so blatant, you know. It's very shameless. Yeah. Well, and the other thing I would say is, I'm not going to play this club because the audio is kind of shitty and it looks like it's from 1996. But, you know, to your point about, okay, what are the meta reasons that this is allowed

to persist, et cetera, is Republicans, they never, you know, Republicans in Congress never cared. They never, they're happy to, you know, how many hearings we have about Biden and whatever. But when it comes to Trump, when they get asked about it, oh, I didn't. see that report. I didn't read about that. Well, I don't do those sorts of things, but I don't know. I'll have to get back to you with regard to Trump. Like, there's just zero, zero moral accountability what it comes to Trump for the Republican Party. And that's the place where it really matters, because a Trump doesn't care if some, you know, some lib like me is mad about his corruption. It doesn't matter to him. What would matter is if you had some, you know, some pushback from

within his own side that would be consequential. That would make him much more. upset, that would act as much more of an effective check potentially on what he's doing here. But because so much has been, you know, they didn't say a word about it in the first administration where there was truly at that time eye-popping levels of corruption, and, you know, which was astonishing, this dwarfs that by orders of magnitude. And not one of them has a thing to say about it. So I think that's an important dynamic here, too, is just the total lack of this. any sort of moral standards or standards with regard to corruption or consistency on the issue

coming from his own side. Well, I wonder actually if it matters at all to him whether Republicans turn on this particular issue, which, to be clear, I don't think they will. But, you know, Democrats can subpoena and there will be damaging things that come out of subpoenas if they take back the House and the Senate and there will probably be impeachment proceedings and the like. And subpoenas can do, yeah, that can do real damage. It can expose more of the problem. It can expose them potentially to liability. He'll do whatever pardon, preemptive pardons at the end of his term probably as well. But all that is to say, to me, it almost looks like a race to the end of the administration, like, because he's not going to be on the ballot again. So make as much money as you can

in the next few years. It doesn't really matter if Republicans start to turn on him at this point. Just rake it all in as quickly as possible. Yeah. I mean, there's a tie in here, psychologically with like the way that the tech oligarchs behave to. And I don't think anyone has done a better job of describing this dynamic than Naomi Klein, who coined it, end times fascism, where it's basically like they have these apocalyptic views of where human civilization is going. Partly they have those apocalyptic views because they are the ones that between the climate crisis, but specifically through AI development, are trying to push us over some sort of a cliff. year. And so it is just like a smash and grab. It's like what can we, what resources can we suck up immediately? What sort of cash can we, you know, accumulate, what kind of wealth can we hoard so that when things go go really bad, that we have enough money and power to be able to protect ourselves from the fallout from, in many times, in many ways, their own actions. And so I think that is part of the mentality here too, is like, and you know, Trump comes

And also with all of this, like, oh, they tried to throw me in prison and they failed. And, you know, now I'm just going to do whatever the hell I want to do. And there's going to be no check and no limit on me and, you know, and what I'm up to. And so I think that comes through. Because you can report it as much you want. You can subpoena me as much as you want. A, I can pardon. But B, this is the Trump mentality.

B, the media could cover this every day. It could be the headline every single day. And because people don't have trust in the media anymore, F it. Like, it doesn't matter. It's not like a big headline story in New York Times. every day would have taken down the Clintons or would have taken down maybe like George W. Bush of his financial antagonments. It was a different time in the country.

There was a different level of institutional trust. But now that's all burned up. So here I am. I'm doing whatever I want to do. Yeah. No, he absolutely is. So let's do a couple more here. We've got eight, nine, the Qatar Force One, the plane that was gifted to him.

To him, by the way, not to the government. to Trump himself that has been rehabbed into the new Air Force One. To his library, right? It's a donation to the library. Yes, that's right, exactly. So he gets to maintain control over it in perpetuity. I'm sure that, you know, has no impact on his decision making whatsoever. Anyway, that has been retrofitted using taxpayer dollars, by the way. And that is now, I guess, taken its maiden voyage. We can put A-11 up on the screen with regard to the stuff.

stock trading, 22,000 stock transactions made in 2025, according to a Financial Times analysis, is the immediate predecessor Joe Biden made 13 transactions over four years. In Trump's first term, the whole first term, he made 517, which was, I guess, a significant amount, but nowhere near 22,000 in a single year. And this year already, we've seen 6,100. In addition, put A6 up on the screen. What is, what's he doing in those, in those stock trades? You know, what's, what, what purpose? What sort of companies is he investing in here? Well, his latest financial disclosures reveal he invested about $500,000 in Abbott Laboratories.

Abbott Laboratories is a one of the primary baby formula manufacturers in the country responsible for a large portion of the market. You guys will probably remember when there was, you know, a lot of problems with the formula coming from Abbott Laboratories. They had to shut some of their manufacturing down. It created a baby formula shortage that was a major, major issue. The Justice Department had spent years investigating them over how, and this is for more perfect union, they managed a baby formula facility where potentially deadly bacteria was discovered and suspected of causing infant deaths. Well, guess what?

Just after Trump invested in Abbott Laboratories, two months later, the Trump, DOJ dropped that investigation. And, you know, and you would think Trump would be in a position to profit off of that since he held had significant holdings in their stock. This is one of many examples that have been tracked of the type of corrupt dealings, potentially, potential insider trading, potentially, that was going on here with these 22,000 stock transactions, put a 12 up on the screen, that he also invested in Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, NVIDIA, Broadcom, meta, as much as $5 million each in those in July of 2025. And on that same day that he invested in each of these, he unveiled his AI action plan, which could help each of those companies. Prices for most of those stocks have since increased. So just on every level, in every way.

And these are just the ones, Emily, too, that people can kind of, like, track and follow. So much of this is completely opaque that we have no idea. but we see all of this very likely insider trading that's happening. And it could easily be the president himself, his sons, his family, et cetera. We just, we don't know. But as we covered, as we covered last time on Tuesday, if the government was interested in some of these blatant insider trading issues, they could investigate, but they don't, which does raise some questions over why are they uninterested in investigating those sorts of things. Well, I hope people also took a look yesterday, and you can read about this on Matt Stoller's newsletter, Big,

about the Justice Department's settlement with these big egg companies where they're getting like $3 million fines for naked, naked corruption. They have them dead to rights in these transcripts of like phone calls and emails where you see them colluding to drive up egg prices, which caused so much financial stress for average American families for a really long time. You can see on a chart that Stoller posted exactly when the Justice Department investigation is announced, the prices start to go down. That's not even the biggest piece of evidence.

So people should check that out as well. The Trump Justice Department settled with them. They didn't have to admit they did anything wrong, which obviously prevents certain future legal actions. And it's a great deal for them because they have to donate eggs and pay like $3 million fines after they raked in tons and tons of money. This isn't directly tied back to like Trump's investments. It may be.

We don't know yet because we can't necessarily trace all of it. But this is just, I'm a pessimist. If there is an optimistic take, it's that, he's pushing it to such an extreme that at some point, it's not like Pelosi's, right? It's not just like who else was trade, like Marjorie Taylor Green was trading while she was in office. Like, it's not like that. It's something on such a different scale that maybe what comes after Trump is, finally you get a ban on congressional stock trading.

Finally, you get some prohibitions on politicians doing this because you can't possibly extricate their professional knowledge from what they're doing with these. track or with these investments, you can't do it. So if there is an optimistic case to be made, I'm not optimistic about the optimistic case, but if there is one, this has been pushed to such a logical extreme. The economy is bad. There's a crypto bubble very clearly. There's a crypto bubble that could pop.

And what can come after that is really dangerous. It could be potentially violent, not to be a fearmonger, but I think we all understand how these cycles work and how they worked in the 20th century. So we'll see. But if you want to feel hopeful. Maybe that's the dose of optimism. Last two things that I wanted to highlight here, one in particular. So in the financial disclosure, it also shows him receiving $86.5 million from settlements in five separate lawsuits against ABC, CBS, YouTube, Meta, and X.

You know, 86.5 million is, I guess, pennies when you compare it to the billions he's getting from crypto. But I think it shows you the way that he is systematically profiting off of every aspect of. of his presidency that he possibly can, including his ability to weaponize the federal government in order to bully companies into submission. All or most of these cases would have been, I mean, laughable on their face. Many of them, oh, you edited an interview in a way that I didn't like. But all of these companies decided to settle because they were fearful of the consequences of continuing to push forward in these lawsuits.

So they just decided easier and better to effectively pay off the president and not have to worry about it. So you can see that as well in terms of the way that he's operated and his personalized view of the presidency, the way that he uses the whole of government to advance not the interest of the country, but the interest of himself, the interest of his ability to accumulate power and certainly his ability to accumulate wealth. And then the last one that I'll mention, too, that I didn't even pull the element for because there's just so much here, again, that it's kind of overwhelming. There's also, like, the pardon granting operation is deeply corrupt. And one insider said, yeah, it's well known in my industry that for $2 million you can have a pardon. We talked to Jonathan Swan and Maggie Haberman, and they said that he's basically said, look, anyone who gets within, you know, however many feed of the Oval Office, I'm going to give him a pardon.

There was a conversation about, for the celebration of America's 250th anniversary that they were going to maybe release like a a whole boatload of pardons move forward with a bunch of pardons. And if you look, again, at the track record here, it's like, who donated to him, who has business dealings with his family, who gave the right person, millions of dollars, et cetera. And so it speaks both to the corruption and also to the level of impunity that they act with because he abuses the pardon power to just an extraordinary extent that we, again, have never seen before, not that the pardon power has never been abused before. It certainly has been by most, if not all presidents.

but, you know, the level that he's taken to means that it's not just him. It's everybody around him who feels they can act with impunity because they know at the end of the day, oh, Trump's going to pardon me. So there's not going to be any real accountability for anything that I do that is criminal here. Yeah. And I think that's just a great point to emphasize as we wrap up the segments that there are real substantial consequences to policy and to governance that stem from all of this. It's not just Trump getting rich on this kind of icky scheme to,

leverage his influence and, you know, like get a prosecutor fired to go back to the Burisma comparison. It's not like that. I mean, these are like hugely consequential psychological effects on people who are in public office right now, but then also on, I mean, we're about to talk about Iran. Qatar is in the center of those UAE, the Saudi, we're about to talk about this big New York Times story on MBS and the Saudis who are heavily invested in Kushner's affinity. in his fund. It's just completely insane. There's no way to capture it.

But that's where we are right now. And just so we're clear, as the economy goes into a shakeier and shakeier place, this could get so, so ugly. And Trump is to blame. Yep. Well sad. And that's like a transition to the very latest

with regard to Iran. An IHart Radio experience. You end up with weekend gold tickets to Lassau, Montreal. Thomas Rhett Mumford and Sons Well here's my pride And here's my shame John Party, Old Dominion

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And enter to win Lassau Montreal Every Day you listen It's another chance to win I'm Jake Brennan And on the Disgraceland podcast, I explore the wild lives of rock stars and unbelievable true crime stories from music history. These are the stories you haven't heard, the kind you'll end up telling someone else. Like the time Paul McCartney spent in one of the world's most notorious prisons.

Imagine that. You're Paul McCartney. It's 1980. You're an ex-beetle. And you're doing time in one of Japan's worst prisons right there alongside Yakuza gangst and for a ridiculous charge. Or the bizarre crime, Lady Gaga is accused them. Who is the artist Lady Gaga as being accused of doing the unthinkable to

after allegedly stealing her music in style to become famous? And what about that time, Blondie's Debbie Harry escaped a serial killer? The man who had given her that ride she barely escaped from was Ted Bundy. Listen to Disgraceland on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. My husband is currently on a vacation with his mistress, and I'm confronting them. Tell me, Sophia, how did she even catch them? One Amazon shopping receipt. He accidentally sent her a photo of the kids' Christmas gifts with a delivery to another woman at the bottom.

He exposed himself? That's a rookie move. Couples, massages, monogrammed bath robes, and lingerie he memowed her for. So she spent four weeks gathering evidence and taped a 10-page letter inside his luggage before he flew out. In his luggage, she came to play. And the second he landed, he blocked her. So she called the hotel room directly and got the mistress on the phone. Ooh, she got the mistress live on the phone?

That is a bold move. Let's see if it pays off. Then it gets worse. He took the mistress on the Bahamas honeymoon trip he had planned with his wife. And then the mistress tagged him on Facebook, outing the fair to her entire family. That's like a whole public confession. And spoiler, two years later, karma hits him so hard. He's calling his ex-wife in tears saying about the mistress.

What a mistake that was. To find out what happened, listen to the OK Storytime podcast on the IHart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Checking in on the latest with regards to the Iran War, the negotiations, are they on, are they not on? What is the vice president of the United States saying we are joined this morning by our friend, to Parsi of the Quincy Institute. Great to Caesar. Good to be with you guys. So let me first get your reaction to these comments from J.D. Vance that caught a lot of attention where he seems to indicate that they are using this moment of a pause in hostilities to quote unquote refill the oil market. Let's take a lesson. There are a few things that we want. We want durable commitments

that are verifiable and backed up by inspections that Iran will denuclearize their entire country. Okay. We're going to see how we get there. Number two, we want to see. We want to see. what kind of an arrangement actually exists in the Middle East between not just Iran and the United States, but the GCC, Israel, Lebanon. We're going to play that situation out. And then on the Strait of Hormuz, I mean, I think you actually said it well, which is that the Strait is open in the sense that to oil traffic, we're seeing more oil come out of the Strait of Hormuz. And some days actually more oil coming out of the Strait than came out before the war even started. So there's this element of the, you know, where the world oil economy is kind of getting back into gear,

that's going to take a little bit of time, but you've already seen the prices come way down. Now what the cynics will say as well, if you look at the number of ships that are trafficking, that's actually down from the pre-war start. But they're mostly talking about cargo ships and other vessels, at least so far, what we've seen is the oil traffic has reached its pre-war, its free war height. So I think what the president has told us to do is use this MOU to sort of refill the world's oil economy, to refill some stocks. and then to see where the hand is.

And, you know, as I've said this repeatedly, if the Iranians are willing to make the commitments that we would like them to make and are willing to back those up with verifiable milestones, then we are going to change our relationship with Iran. And if they don't do that, then nothing has really changed except for what we've already accomplished

from the military campaign. So he says there the president wants to use the MOU to refill the oil market and then see where the hand is. What did you make of that? I'm frankly not terribly surprised. What I see this being is essentially that the administration has a plan B, that they're trying diplomacy. I think there's some people in the administration that are probably not that excited about this

diplomacy. And they have a plan B in case it doesn't work out. And they want to pursue their plan A in a manner that ensures that their plan B is stronger. I think the Iranians are doing exactly the same thing. This is part of the reason why they're insisting on their position on the Strait of Hormuz. part of the reason why they're assisting on their position in Lebanon. It's very much in case there is no plan A, there is no deal, that they will be in a position to be able to face the United States in another war if that is what it comes to. So in and of itself, I'm not particularly surprised.

Perhaps it was formulated in a way that gives the impression that the plan B actually is the plan A, that this whole thing is all about making sure that you restock the storage of oil in order to make sure that you can go to war again. I'm not under that impression that that is actually what the administration is doing. I do think, however, there's a significant risk that that is where we will end up, not because the intent is to go there, but because either diplomacy doesn't work or because diplomacy is sabotaged. I also want to point out one thing.

Part of the reason why oil prices never went up as high as they could have during this war was because by pure happenstance, the inventory of oil globally was extremely high. So if the idea is to go back and in some ways improve on that situation, I think it might be actually difficult because it was extremely high in the first place and we still had a major, major oil shock and increase of prices. And again, the Yvanias never went after. the infrastructure of oil in the Persian Gulf states in a manner that they could have, which was one of the cars that they kept close to their chest,

they could have played it if there was further escalation. So if the idea is that some way somehow, because of the MOU, the United States is going to be in a much better position to launch a war that militarily will be more successful than the previous one. Colomis skeptic. I don't think the U.S. has that option, even if the inventory of oil is restocked. And this is exactly what we wanted to ask you about next. We can put B2 up on the screen.

Trita, professor at the University of Tehran Sey, Ed Mirandi, responded to the Michael Moles interview that J.D. Vance did. You just watched that by saying Iran is rapidly rebuilding its civilian infrastructure, stockpiling critical supplies, advancing new weapon systems, replacing thousands of destroyed decoys, fielding emerging technologies, and expanding its network of underground bases and command and control centers. From your understanding, is that an accurate? description of what's happening right now?

I suspect so. This is also exactly what the Iranians did after the June war, and they did it much more successfully than I think U.S. intelligence and Israeli intelligence expected, because they were quite ready for that war that came later on. So again, I think it's very important to understand both sides are taking a bet on a plan A that diplomacy could work, but neither one of them are walking into this situation thinking, Plan A is so solid, so likely to succeed that there is no need for a plan B and for a plan C. Both of them are investing heavily in those as well.

The question is, does it mean that the plan A is fake, that there actually isn't a real intent to make it work? At least when it comes to what I've seen so far, given how far the administration has gone in, for instance, pushing back to Israelis, the progress that is made at the negotiating table, the signals they are sending about a new resolution. and how the Iranians are responding and receiving those, I do think that there is a serious plan aid from both summits. I'm more worried about that there may be elements who are trying to sabotage this, whether it is the Israelis or whether it is some of these recent things that have happened. So, for instance, the MOU that the U.S. side mediated between Israel and Lebanon, to me, looks very much like an effort to sabotage the MOU altogether, and that was done by a different

part of the administration. Let's talk a little bit more about that. Put B3 up on the screen. This was your analysis over at your substack, which, guys, if you aren't subscribed to treat a substack, yet I don't know what you're doing. The headline here is why Iran believes Israel will attack again before October. The recent Israeli-Lebanese agreement, and Hezbo's unreported role in the previous war is leading Tehran to this conclusion.

So break down your analysis here and why you think that deal with Lebanon is such a problem. So the deal with Lebanon puts forward a completely different approach on how to deal with Israel's presence in Lebanon. It makes a condition for the Israelis to leave Lebanon, and that condition is the disarmament of Hezbollah. The disarmament of Hezbollah will not happen unless there is some sort of a civil war that breaks out in Lebanon, in which against all odds, Hezbollah loses. So it essentially ensures that Israel will stay in Lebanon for a very long time. The entire document is read as if the Lebanese government is partnering with Israel, who is occupying Lebanese territory against Hezbollah, as if Hezbollah is a common threat to both of them, rather than Israel being a threat to Lebanon's sovereignty

and territorial integrity. This is completely different from the MOU. The MOU essentially suggests that Israelis have to leave all of Lebanese territory by the end of the MOU. It does not make a condition for that being that Hezbollah has to be disarmed, although there's going to be part of the negotiations on whether Hezbollah will move further up north in Lebanon, north of the Littani River or other things. But nevertheless, there is no suggestion that Israel will stay in Lebanon for as long as Hezbollah is not disarmed. So this completely flips the entire equation. And part of the reason why this is now really worried the Iranians is because they believe that the Israelis have managed to do this because they're currently holding certain positions in Lebanon that were held by Hezbollah during the war and were critical for Hezbollah's participation in that war, which has been highly underreported.

The Iranians tell me that they've only used about 40% of their offensive capability against Israel during the war because they didn't need to because Hezbollah was so active. And this diverted Israeli forces and defense capabilities because they had to face that front from Hezbollah as well. By now having taken those positions, Hezbollah's ability to participate in the next war is compromised. And this gives the Israelis a very significant advantage, not a decisive one according to the Iranians, but a significant advantage in which they can launch a war again without having to worry about Hezbollah, having the same potency that it did during the war.

And incidentally, we never heard about any of Hezbollah's activities, or at least the extent to which they were affected, because of this near-complete Israeli censorship of what was going on during the war inside of Israel. You mentioned that the... Hezbole, a part of the agreement, was being negotiated by a different part of the administration. I'm assuming, Tudai, you're referring to Rubio, State Department world versus Vance Whitkoff world. Is that what your understanding is of the dynamic here between what's being negotiated with the Iranians

on the Strait of Hormuz and other territorial Iranian questions versus what's happening with the Lebanese negotiations? I think there's a very common perception that Rubio is not particularly excited about the nuclear deal, about the MOU, and now suddenly he got very active in the region, which he had not been before. He spent most of his time focusing on Cuba and Venezuela. And then you had this agreement as well as a joint statement by the GCC states that took a very pro-American position when it comes to the Strait of Hormuz. So there was a flurry of activities by Rubio suddenly in the region, the perception, you know, region-wide, not just on the Iranian side, is that this is done in a way that undermines the MOU

because there is a struggle within the administration. I can't claim that I can confirm that that is true or not, but if you're standing on the outside, it certainly does look this way. And I find it very difficult to read the MOU and the Lebanese agreement in a manner that makes them compatible with each other. They actually seem to be almost designed to be incompatible. The time frame, the conditions, everything is different. And this also tells you why it was so important for the Iranians to make sure that Lebanon was a red line for them.

Because it meant that if it wasn't, if Israel could remain in Lebanese territory, if they were not pushed out, as part of the MOU, the Israelis and the US would be in a much stronger position to attack Iran again, which goes back to what I said. earlier on. Obviously, the Iranians have been working on their plan B and their plan C just as much as their U.S. administration has. And this contradicts their plan B. If the Israelis remain in Lebanon, it means that Iran's ability to defend itself if Israel attacks, again, in which incidentally the Iranians believe is now inevitable, because there's another aspect that comes into play here, which is by October, the Israelis are going to have their elections. And Prime Minister Netanyahu is already in a bad shape as a result of the MOU, as a result of him not being able to deliver the United States. He's being attacked by all sides for this failure from their perspective.

And if he loses that election, he just doesn't lose his political career, he will then also lose his immunity when he comes to the corruption charges that he faced and as a result may end up in jail. So he has all the incentives in the world right now, both political, personal and strategic to launch a war. And keeping those positions in Lebanon makes it much easier for Israel to do so. Here is. You end up how with weekend gold tickets to Lassau Montreal.

Thomas Rhett. Mumford and sons. Well, here's my pride and here's my shame. John Party. Old Dominion, Carly Pierce, and more. And the prize gets even sweeter. With flights from Border Airlines, three nights at Residence Inn downtown Montreal

and $1,000 cash. Download the free IHeart Radio app, listen to Pure Country for 10 minutes, and enter to win. Lassau, Montreal. Every day you listen is another chance to win. Every song has a story, but there are some stories you were never meant to hear. I'm Jake Brennan, and in the Disgraceland podcast, rock star mythology collides with unbelievable true crime stories from music history. These are the stories you haven't heard, the kind you'll end up telling someone else. Blondie's Debbie Harry was not for the first time in her life, in shock.

The man who had given her that ride all those years ago, a ride she barely escaped from with her life, that man was Ted Bundy. For the last eight years, I've taken listeners behind the music, into the mythology, into the crimes and consequences underscoring the careers of your favorite musicians. From Double Elvis, Disgraceland, is now part of the exactly right network in the I-Heart podcast.

New episodes every Tuesday, bonus episodes Thursday, and rewinds on Sunday. Listen to disgrace. On the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. My husband is currently on a vacation with his mistress, and I'm confronting them. Tell me, Sophia, how did she even catch them? One Amazon shopping receipt. He accidentally sent her a photo of the kid's Christmas gifts with a delivery to another woman at the bottom. He exposed himself?

That's a rookie move. Couples massages, monogrammed bath robes, and lingerie he then moored her for. So she spent four weeks gathering evidence and taped a 10-page letter inside his luggage before he flew out. In his luggage, she came to play. And the second he landed, he blocked her. So she called the hotel room directly and got the mistress on the phone. Ooh, she got the mistress live on the phone? That is a bold move.

Let's see if it pays off. Then it gets worse. He took the mistress on the Bahamas honeymoon trip. he had planned with his wife. And then the mistress tagged him on Facebook, outing the fair to her entire family. That's like a whole public confession. And spoiler, two years later,

karma hits him so hard. He's calling his ex-wife in tears saying about the mistress, what a mistake that was. To find out what happened, listen to the OK Storytime podcast on the IHart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Let's talk a little bit more about the economic realities. If we go back to the first clip we played there,

Vice President, J.D. Vance, saying basically like, yeah, we're getting the oil market back to normal. We're refilling it. Certainly, the administration wants to project a lot of economic confidence. At the same time, we can put before up on the screen, there was a declaration of emergency and authorization for temporary duty-free importation of phosphate fertilizer from Morocco. It is not just the oil markets that are impacted by disruptions in the Strait of Hormuz, a fertilizer, we've all learned. It's also a very important commodity that flows through that area and comes from that area. So what did you make of this announcement? Does it indicate that there is perhaps more economic pressure and strain continuing on the U.S. and the global economy than what the administration wants to project? Well, there certainly is much more because there is the oil impact.

It's the fuel impact. And then it's all of the different secondary impacts. and one of the most important secondary impacts is fertilizer for which a lot of oil products, of course, are needed for. And the fertilizer, of course, are tremendously important because it feeds all of our agriculture, which means that it feeds our food. And if we don't have food, we have a completely different crisis

rather than just people having to pay a little bit too much at the gas pumps. So we always knew that there was going to be these repercussions. Now, if this repercussions coincided with it continued, closure of the straighter. For most obviously it would have been much worse. But this is at a minimum of reducing it, but it doesn't mean that we're completely out of the woods or that these secondary impacts are not going to occur.

They're going to occur, but they're likely going to be less impactful or detrimental than they would have been, of course, had the straight continue to be closed. But this is part of the reason why I'm very skeptical about the idea that just restocking these, the oil inventory, is going to make sure that everything is going to be fine, and the next war is going to be fantastic. I think that's a highly optimistic view from the perspective of anyone in the administration

who would think that, and I'm not really sure that that is what they're thinking. Do you think the Iranians and the U.S. have a slightly different conception of the pressures on the oil market? I was reading one analysis that said effectively. What the Iranians are really watching is the strategic petroleum reserves, which continue to go down. So even as there is more flow into the oil market, that there continues to be. a pressure that is mounting over this time period because I know one of the internal arguments

in Iran is whether or not they should have even moved forward with this MOU, whether they are losing some leverage in the meantime. What's your understanding of those arguments? No, I think the strategic reserves are tremendously important. And first, you're going to see the rest of the global economy being able to absorb this oil before you will see the strategic reserves being restocked. And that, again, is going to take some time before. you have that type of a full restocking that would bring us back to the previous situation. There is obviously an argument on the Iranian side that says that they should have gone further. They should have attacked the GCC states more aggressively, particularly the UAE.

They should have kept this going longer than they did in order to get the strategic reserves to go down even further. And the question is, at the same time, there is a flip side of that argument, which is if you wait too long, you will also then make it more difficult for the administration to have the time needed to be able to provide the sanctions relief that would come through a deal that you're trying to achieve. After the midterms, most likely the Republicans are not going to do that well, at least in the House. Trump is going to have less leverage than he did before. He's going to walk into becoming more of a lame duck. his ability to provide and deliver on the sanctions relief that would be agreed upon in a potential MOU starts to get compromised. And as a result, it actually weakens Iran's ability to be able to get a good deal.

This is part of the problem that was happening during the JCPI. The JCPI, in many ways, was overnegotiated. It took them way too long to get to that deal. And as a result, by the time they got the deal, The administration had very little time left to make sure that the implementation was solid enough to protect it from any future presidents trying to walk out of it. And as a result, it became weak at anybody otherwise could have been. You don't want to repeat that mistake now by allowing the negotiations to take way too long time. And then by the time the deliverance of the different agreements is supposed to take place, the U.S. side is going to be too weak to be. able to fulfill those promises. I wanted to get your take on this big New York Times piece as well.

We can put the next element up on the screen about U.S.-S.-Saudi relations. Kind of going under the radar this week is that the Saudi foreign minister is in China. The Times' headline is how the Iran war ignited a clash between Trump and the Saudi crown prince, which sort of a remarkable headline, of course, given the close ties between Trump, certainly between Jared Kushner, his son-in-law and the Saudi Crown Prince, reading a bit from the peace here. It reports since the U.S. and Israel attacked Iran. On February 28, Saudi Arabia has tried to chart a middle course to protect its interests. It gave military and diplomatic support to the U.S. and was attacked by Iran, but the kingdom has also opposed Mr. Trump at critical

moments, flexing its muscles when it sensed greater dangers resulting from American and Israeli aggression. The peace also asserts that the Saudis are seeing the U.S. increasingly as a less reliable partner. Does this story resonate with you, Trita, does this sound like an accurate rendering of what's happening behind the scenes, and what could the consequences be of that, if so? I think the overall picture absolutely resonates that you're seeing, first of all, that the Saudis at first were actually in favor of this war. They did provide military support.

But I think they were deeply disappointed. They thought the U.S. was going to be much more affected in this war. They too had underestimated the strength of the Iranians. They had overestimated the impact of the protests when he came to the fragility. of the Iranian Theocracy. So they were disappointed in seeing how this whole thing went down and then were questioning many of the different decisions that the U.S. made going forward

and did not want to see meaningless escalation that only would lead to the Saudis and the other GCC state suffering more without really changing the strategic picture. And that's part of the reason why they stood up in a few couple of occasions against this. But they had also struck their own deal most likely with Iranians. Part of the reason why the Saudis did not get the brunt of the attacks.

In fact, a very little amount of attacks from the Iranians in comparison to other states, such as Kuwait, Bahrain, and the UAE. So I think at least relatively early on in the war, the Saudis realized this is not going the way they thought, this is not going the way the U.S. thought, and they started to look at their options instead of blindly following the United States, realizing that the U.S. didn't know where it was going. And the fact that they are now coordinating with the Chinese, that they're looking for further diversification is going to be a pattern that we are very likely to see, not just with them, but with many of the other GCC states as well, including the UAE. The UAE may very well double down on its relations with Israel and Saudi Arabia. But it is simultaneously striking deals with Iranians.

They struck a deal with Iranians just in the last couple of weeks, which is part of the reason why when it is, came to the last round of exchange of fire between the U.S. and Iranians retaliated against Kuwait and Bahrain and did not strike the Emirates because they had already struck a deal. So you're going to see a lot of double play, a lot of countries making deals with many of the different actors instead of just simply putting all of their eggs back into one baskets. That's what they did before. It didn't work. They're going for diversification now.

And lastly, what is your understanding our talks happening this week? Are they not happening this week? Do we expect another market-timed resume of bombing campaigns here over the weekend? What do you think? I mean, talks did occur in Doha, whether they get renewed or not remains to be seen. You know, I think we should also remember we've seen a tremendous amount of drama and tremendous high decibel of all kinds of statements, even threats, etc. Nevertheless, with some delay, talks have gone forward.

And I think it is a reminder of the fact. And in fact, on top of just high discipline, we also saw attacks from both sides. I think it is a reminder at the end of the day. Neither side really wants to go back to a full-scale war. It is not to their benefit. They need to get to some sort of diplomatic arrangement. It is to the benefit of both of them as well as for many others as well.

So there will, unfortunately, a lot of snafus and a lot of elements of escalation, but so far, we have not seen the talks collapse altogether. Could they absolutely have a couple of more of these type of exchanges of fire between the U.S. and Iran, and it's very difficult to see that this MOU will collapse. But it will not collapse easily. I think that's the lesson we should learn from the last two or three weeks. All right. Well, that's a hopeful note to end on Dr. Trita Parcy of the Quincy of the Quincy Institute and also of the Tritiparcy. Great to have you. So great to see again. Thanks so much for having me. Appreciate it. pleasure. I'm Jake Brennan, and on the Disgraceland podcast, I explore the wild lives of rock stars

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