The Megyn Kelly Show - Shock Story About Kristi Noem's Husband's Double Life, and Trump Warns Europe, with Brandon Weichert, Tom Bevan, and Andrew Walworth | Ep. 1285

Episode Date: March 31, 2026

Megyn Kelly begins the show with a shocking report about Kristi Noem’s husband’s secret cross-dresser double life, pictures in The Daily Mail showing him wearing giant fake breasts, Kristi Noem’s reaction, and more. Then Brandon Weichert, host of "NatSec Talk" on Rumble, joins to discuss Trump's warning to European countries that they should “fight for yourself” in the Strait of Hormuz, his mixed messages on what America will do in the Iran war, what the uranium mission might entail, the messages to President Trump being pushed through various forces in the media, what the leaks before and during the war really tell us, what happens if Trump pulls out of the Iran war right now, the impact to the region in the short and long-term, and more. Then Tom Bevan and Andrew Walworth of RealClearPolitics join to discuss the national security implications of Kristi Noem’s cross-dressing husband exposed in The Daily Mail, what this means for Noem's next political move, new reporting about the potential motive for this leaking to the public, what to make of GOP House retirements ahead of 2026, the JD Vance prediction market odds for 2028, breaking down the overall polls, and more.   Weichert- https://rumble.com/user/NatSecTalk Bevan & Walworth- https://www.realclearpolitics.com/   Riverbend Ranch: Visit https://riverbendranch.com/ | Use promo code MEGYN for $20 off your first order. Relief Factor: Break up with pain—Relief Factor targets inflammation so you can move better and feel better; try the 3-Week QuickStart for just $19.95 at https://ReliefFactor.com or call 800-4-RELIEF  Birch Gold: Text MK to 989898 and get your free info kit on gold Quo: Make this the season where no opportunity slips away. Try QUO for free PLUS get 20% off your first 6 months when you go to https://www.Quo.com/MK     Follow The Megyn Kelly Show on all social platforms: YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/MegynKelly Twitter: http://Twitter.com/MegynKellyShow Instagram: http://Instagram.com/MegynKellyShow Facebook: http://Facebook.com/MegynKellyShow  Find out more information at:https://www.devilmaycaremedia.com/megynkellyshow Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Welcome to the Megan Kelly Show, live on Sirius XM Channel 111 every weekday at New East. Hey, everyone, I'm Megan Kelly. Welcome to the Megan Kelly Show. We've got a lot of big news to get to today with the war in Iran. But we begin today with an unbelievable report from the Daily Mail, which has just been confirmed by the subject. It's a bombshell in more ways than one. Earlier this month, President Trump announced that he was replacing Homeland Security Secretary Christy Noem while she was in broiled in multiple scandals. She drew controversy by making herself the face of a $200 million ad campaign for the DHS, and she was accused of having an affair with her longtime aide, who is technically her subordinate. Corey Lewandowski, many blamed her for the politically unpopular immigration surge in Minneapolis, and her messaging around it was, you know, she got out too far ahead of her

skis, saying things about Alex Pready, for example, that she couldn't back up and kind of compromised the whole narrative in doing that. All of that is what got her in trouble, but all of that is kind of nothing compared to what I'm about to tell you. According to the Daily Mail, Nome's 56-year-old husband, Brian, is a secret cross-dresser who wears gigantic fake boobs and wears pink hot pants while he chats online with fetish models who have gigantic breasts. Okay. For the listening audience, we're showing a picture of him that the day. Daily Mail found and published. Think Kayla Lemieux.

Think the Canadian shop teacher. He's clearly put on like a tight little sports bra that's sort of nude colored and is stuffed two enormous balloons down there for his breasts with the little like tie of the balloon appearing to be like mismatched nipples. And then little hot. hot pink biker shorts below, or maybe their leggings, I can't see far down enough. Thank God. But in other pictures, the Daily Mail got its hands on, you can. You can see him in his tight little leggings trying to look like a woman, but like a freak woman. The Daily Mail reports that it has

reviewed hundreds of messages involving Brian and three women from the so-called Bimbald. Fetish area of the internet. I don't know how he finds them, but this is where performers receive outrageously large breast enhancements to obtain a Barbie doll-like look, and I guess he's been paying them to show it off for him,

and then he returns the favor in kind. It's relevant. It's obviously very very, salacious, but it's relevant because the reason if we had known this, she never would have been confirmed for this post, is it makes her subject to blackmail. It makes her subject to blackmail. Because if the daily male can find these pictures and this fetish by her married husband, so can our adversaries. And who knows who could go to Christy Noam when she was DHS secretary and say, you will do the following things, or we will run to the New York Times with these photos.

One of the models who messaged with Brian told the Daily Mail, quote, his kink is for huge, huge, ridiculous boobs. Yes, we can see that. According to the report, Brian got in touch with a model using the pseudonym Jason Jackson. That's what he calls himself. And complimented her amazing curves, saying he would treat her like a guy. goddess. Brian asked, how are your boobs? Would you go even bigger? I'm not like this is unbelievable. I'm sorry, but it's just so absurd what, like, the ubiquitous nature of porn on the internet, you know, it's not like when it used to be like Playboy

and Penthouse and like a man would see a couple dirty pictures and read a dirty forum and move on with his business. Like, it's everywhere. It's everywhere. And any kink you have can be indulged, including like this. I mean, this is a form of cheating. There's no question. Like, ladies, can you imagine if you found out your husband was doing this? And he's not just looking at photos. He's interacting with the so-called bimboes as I espoused here quoting him. How are your boobs? Would you go even bigger? Yeah, I'd consider that cheating. He's clearly getting off to the sight of these women who have just mutilated themselves for the pleasure of random strangers online. And then he's returning the favor. He's doing it himself. Like, that's a totally

different fetish where then you've got to do it. That's autogynaphelia. That's what most of these trannies have, where you get off. It's a sexual fetish. How many times have we discussed this? You, you you get your rocks off dressing like a woman. And then so much the better if other women are around you or see you doing it. That's clearly one strain of what Christy Nome's husband apparently has. And don't tell me it's just the daily mail and we don't know because she's just confirmed it. Okay? This is, this story's real. We're going to have to deal with this because she's still in the government. She's not in our DHS post, but she's been offloaded to this new commission that the president created and she's serving there right now. Brian telling this one model that the Daily Mail

made contact with that she inspired him to dress like a girl. Quote, you turn me into a girl. Should I put on leggings? No, for the love of God, do not put on the leggings because those pictures may be even more disturbing than the enormous fake breast Kayla Lemieux wannabe photos. I mean, honestly, that's what he looks like. That level of, breast enhancement and perversion, though he's not wearing a wig. And by the way, his face is all over the photos. He's not even trying to hide his identity as the spouse of the Department of Homeland Security Chief. Here he is in another one of his little outfits with the same giant fake breasts giving a kissy face. Is that what that is? I don't like, he does the close up of the fake breasts. And then is it a kissy face?

Abigail Feinan and I were debating it backstage where Abby made more just like a sour puss. But I don't know what that is. But I can speak for all women in America when I say we don't want to see our husband doing it. I mean, I feel for Christy Noam, it puts a totally different spin on the affair she's allegedly been having with Corey Lewandowski. Who could blame her? Who could blame her? It feels almost noble. at this point. I mean, like, it's not noble. They're both married and have children and all the bit. I'm just saying it definitely gives a different look at it because you never know what's going on in someone's marriage.

Now, I'll get to what she's saying. She's suggesting she didn't know. So I guess technically it wouldn't justify the affair. But even if you don't know, don't you know as a wife? You know, I had a dear, dear friend who had a husband who cheated, on her for years, years and years and years and years and years and years. And she finally found out when one of the women came forward to her. And my friend didn't know, like we were all shocked, but my friend had been manifesting, I think, knowing, without knowing, in multiple health problems and stress and anxiety that had been plaguing her. I really think it's very hard for a spouse to get away with this for years, for, you know, who knows how many years this has been going on with him, without the other spouse having something internal tell them something is off.

I just, maybe I'm just telling myself that that you'd know, because we all want to think we'd know. Anyway, back to the story. A PayPal account associated with this Jason Jackson, again, that's Brian, would regularly send the woman money in install. typically between $500 and $1,000. That's your tax money going to use there. In total, he allegedly paid the models at least $25,000. The Daily Mail got in touch with Brian, and he did not notably deny having explicit online conversations

with these so-called Barbie or bimbofications, and nor of sharing photos of himself dressed as the so-called bimboes. So he did deny the notion that Christy Nome could have been blackmailed over it. Okay, well, he doesn't know. I mean, that's not deniable. That's for us to decide whether she was subjected to black, could have been subjected to blackmail over it. But he did not deny that it was him. So, you know, it's a scoop by the Daily Mail.

And it turns out, you know, the right wing may have its own K. Lillamew, though I don't think we own Brian. Noam. I, but this is Kayla. Maybe the two of them can meet up. She, she, he, Kayla is a male, was the Canadian teacher who wore the fake Z cup breasts in school. Take a look at them side by side. They're basically twins. They're twinning.

There's, like, there's enough breast between these two to take up an entire aisle at the grocery store. You think you, like, the chicken breast, nothing. This is pounds and pounds of breast. I don't know what was Can Kayla's fake boobs, but we are told that Brian's his balloons. That's how it looks. And now we get a comment from Christy Noem, who tells the New York Post, she's devastated by these allegations. It's someone, some representative of her saying she is devastated. The family was blindsided by this.

They ask her privacy and prayers at this time. I mean, she's got them. She's got them. This is not what you want to see. If you are married to anyone to find out that this level of betrayal has happened. This speaks to somebody's entire character. The fetish, yes, but the lying, the deceit, the money, the getting off with another person, not your spouse, all of it is very dark and dirty and disgusting. And I'm sure whenever she found out, whether it was today or.

or previously, I'm sure it's made her skin crawl, like it's making our skin crawl. And just what an incredibly reckless risk for her husband to have taken, given the position she just held. For the first year of the Trump administration, it's not the president's fault. It's her husband's fault.

And I don't know, I wouldn't be so. They've been married since they were in high, like their sweetheart since they were in high school. He's talked about it. She came on our show and talked about it. She was a young, like, rancher's daughter. They met, they fell in love. Actually, I think we cued some of this up.

Here is, let's see, yeah, he gave an interview to Moms for America in April of 2021. And here he is talking about how his relationship with Christy started, SOT3. We were friends, and I was a classmate with her brother. And so I was acquainted with her throughout high school. And then she went to the same college I did. We started dating when she was in high school. and she went to college and then just, you know, the typical off and on relationship, and we finally started to get serious, and then we, you know, I asked her to marry me,

and of course she said yes. And so, but we grew up in the same community, going to the same school with the same group of friends, raised on a farm with the same kind of upbringing, good values, hard work. and when I went to college my freshman year, I'd heard that she had some interest in me. And then, of course, why wouldn't I have interest in her? She's remarkable. So we started dating then, and then it kind of went from there. And in 1992, we got married.

It really does make you wonder what causes a fetish like this in somebody. You know, I remember Deborah Soe came on the podcast early on before we even had video. And she's a specialist in this kind of thing, in these sex fetishes. And she really thinks that. they should be normalized and that we shouldn't stigmatize them. I mean, this is a different scenario, given Christy's role, given the money that changed hands, given the fact that she's saying this was a secret from her. But, okay, let's say it wasn't a secret or it isn't in some marriages. Like, what causes it? And Deppre So told us that one of the weirdest fetishes she ever dealt with was people who

get turned on by the idea of an animal eating them, like eating them for lunch. Like, what causes is that? What happens to you in your childhood that makes that be your thing or makes this be your thing? Where it's not only like the enormous breasts on a woman, I think a lot of men could say, yeah, I'm into that, but like the grotesquely enormous breasts and then you put them on? I don't know. I really, I would like to understand that better. Not that much better. I don't want to spend that much time on it. But in any event, that's the latest news out of the Department of Homeland Security. We're actually going to pick it up in our second hour when the guys from RCP join us. But now we turn to more important news on the war in Iran.

We'll pick that up when we come right back. Don't go away. If you are looking to make smarter choices for your health this year, consider River Bend Ranch. Their steaks are not only delicious. They also contain real high-quality protein that helps fuel your body. Did you see the reason to study that the, The folks in Sweden who ate meat every day staved off Alzheimer's way better than the folks who didn't. How about that? Eat your beef. It's a complete protein. It contains all nine essential amino acids

that your body needs to function. And it also keeps you fuller for longer, reducing cravings and snacking. But here's the key. Not all beef is created equal. The quality of the beef depends entirely on how it's raised and where it comes from. That's where River Reef. River Bend Ranch stands apart. For more than 35 years, River Bend Ranch has been building an elite black Angus herd, carefully selecting cattle for exceptional flavor and tenderness. All River Bend Ranch cattle are born and raised right here in the USA. They never use growth hormones or antibiotics, and the beef is processed at the ranch in their award-winning USDA inspected facility. No shortcuts, no middlemen, just incredible, healthy, and flavorful beef shipped directly to your home. Ordered

today at Riverben Ranch.com and use promo code Megan for 20 bucks off your first order. We've been reporting for weeks that the Trump administration's messaging on the Iran war has been all over the place. We've already won, but we can't leave yet, et cetera. The latest example, the Strait of Hormuz, where roughly 20% of the world's oil supply normally flows before Iran effectively shut it down because of this war, causing the price of oil to surge. As we told you, President Trump on Monday, on truth so, threatened to blow up Iran's energy plants and desalinization plants if the straight was not, quote, open for business. And here's what Secretary of State Marco Rubio told Al Jazeera

yesterday. Watch. Well, the Straits of our moves will be open. When this operation is over, it will be open and it will be open and it will be open because Iran agrees to abide by international law and not block the commercial waterway or a coalition of nations from around the world and the region with the participation of the United States will make sure that it's open. One way or the other it's going to be open. But we have very clear objectives that we're trying to achieve here. Those objectives are the destruction of their Air Force, which has been achieved, the destruction of their Navy, which has largely been achieved, a significant reduction in the number of missile launchers that they have, which we're well on our way to achieving.

And we are going to destroy the factories that make those missiles and those drones that they are using to attack their neighbors and the United States and our presence in the region. We will achieve those objectives. We are well on our way or ahead of schedule. We will achieve them in weeks, not months. And then we'll be confronted with this issue of the Straits of Hormuz, and it'll be up to Iran to decide. And if they choose to try to block the Straits,

then they will have to face real consequences, not just from the United States, but from regional countries and from the world. Seems pretty clear. But then Monday night, the Wall Street Journal, out with a report stating President Trump was telling AIDS he's willing to end the war, even if the Strait of Hormuz remains largely close.

That's a huge change. That is a very consequential decision. If so. And then this morning, Mr. Trump posting on true social, quote, all of those countries that can't get jet fuel because of the Strait of Hormuz like the United Kingdom, which refuse to get involved in the decapitation of Iran, I have a suggestion for you. Number one, buy from the U.S.

We have plenty. And number two, build up some delayed courage, go to the strait, and just take it. You'll have to start learning how to fight for yourself. The USA won't be there to help you anymore, just like you weren't there for us. Iran has been essentially decimated. The hard part is done. Go get your own oil. So it's all over the place, right? I mean, the president himself was saying they have to open the strait. His secretary of state, literally the day before saying the straight of Hormuz will be open. Trust me, it's got to get open. And then the president telling AIDS, per the Wall Street Journal, maybe we don't have to open

the Strait of Hormuz. And then finally this morning coming out and saying, ah, you know what, if you're mad about the straight being closed, go get your own oil, London, Europe, UK. I mean, it's, it's so erratic that even Fox News, the biggest cheerleader of this war by far, is starting to ask some questions. Watch. If we cannot come to some type of peace deal with people who can't be trusted, then what? Well, looks like the U.S. is going to escalate. President Trump is already warning of widespread further damage, threatening to hit electric generating plants, oil wells, and Karg Island, as he's reportedly considering sending ground troops in to secure the uranium.

Now, knowing what little time we have and how quickly this can spiral out of control, we still have a lot of questions. For instance, was the president fully briefed about the risks of all of this from the beginning? And was he then able to take it all in and understand the complexity of this, how complex it could actually get, and further possibilities of casualties or other damage, the difficulty of dealing with these people? or was he told this would be relatively quick in and out? Here to react to all of this and more is Brandon Weikert. He's senior national security editor of 1945.com and host of NatSec Talk on Rumble. Brandon, great to have you.

Thanks for being here. So let's just start with a disparate messaging on whether the Strait of Hormuz must be open or closed or something in between in order for us to end this war. Well, thanks for having me. It's good to be here. And it's pretty interesting watching this, you know, will they, won't they open the straight when, as you note, 20% of not just the energy sources, but key fertilizers, helium that's needed for the production of silicon-based semiconductors, which is the basis of this AI tech boom that's really keeping the U.S. and Western economy afloat right now. So the president is saying, he's sort of going, eh, not my problem. And that's interestingly what Yaakov Armador, the former national security advisor to Benjamin Netanyahu, told me last Monday on another network, it's not their problem.

But ultimately, it's the whole world's problem if the Iranians keep this thing closed and they're going to. So, you know, the president can say that, but then you look at what's going on, Megan, with the troop movements and the way that the U.S. military is still engaged, despite having. won the war, supposedly. It sounds to me a lot like we are getting ready to make a move. And unfortunately, I think it's going to be a disaster with U.S. ground troops going in somewhere in Iran. But the Strait of Kormuz remaining closed in about 48 hours. Europe starts running out. Asia starts running out of oil that they've had stockpiled. And we start running out of oil in terms of what we brought in from overseas, April 15th. So unless I'm a lot of that thing gets reopened soon, everybody's going to feel the pinch in the next 48 hours.

So, Brandon, you think he is going to, he's still determined to go in with ground troops because yesterday we had on Professor Pape who said, don't look at just the troops being sent over. Look at all these supporting operations that we're sending in to support the troops. But Trump is now starting to talk more like you and me, you know, about wanting to wrap it up. So I have a glimmer of hope. Right. He talked about that before as well, though. I mean, we were all hoping that he would supposedly taco, you know, out of the initial airstrikes. Would love the taco. You love the taco.

Taco Tuesday. Who doesn't love it? And, you know, but then he ended up still going ahead with the airstrike that started this whole war. You know, so we have these periods where it looks like Trump's going to negotiate possibly and get finding golden off ramp. And then that turns out to be not accurate or that ends up being a ruse. So I think the same pattern is at play here where he's saying something to try to keep the markets calm. It's not working like it used to, by the way. And he's saying something to try to keep the adversaries off balance and to try to keep as many people on board with what he's doing until he thinks he can get that final kill shot in.

Except we've been looking for a final kill shot for the last 30 days. It ain't coming up because the Iranians figured out our war plan years ago and they've decentralized. their capabilities and their leadership and they've hardened them. And so whether we're landing on Karg Island or somewhere along the Iranian coast to try to force open the Hormuz, the Strait of Ramos, which would be like Gallipoli in World War I, which will end in a disaster for the United States Armed Forces, or if we have this sort of weird uranium Tom Clancy style hunt in the middle of the, you know, Iranian heartland, either way, this is going to end in a disaster for the United States military. It will end U.S. power projection for at least a generation into the Middle

East. Let's talk about the weird Tom Clancy uranium hunt. That was a new one that was dropped on us late in this thing. You know, it was like, first it was regime change and then it turned into, well, the nukes. And then everybody was like, you said you destroyed the nukes in June. Didn't we just do all that whole thing? And then it kind of morphed into, we got to get the missiles. And it was like, all right, well, the missiles do seem like a problem. But that definitely doesn't seemed like it was your primary motivation. They weren't firing them at us until we went there. And then it was like, we got to get that straight of Hormuz open.

It's like, well, it was open. It was open before we started bombing them. So we got to like have a war to solve the problem that we caused with the war. And now finally, we're talking about we have to go in and get the uranium because Mark Levins said that on his program on Saturday night, which President Trump drove people to go watch with Mark Tison was all about getting the uranium scuba tanks out of like the mountains. It was like, okay, that's our new mission. But then today, President Trump was called and gave an interview with CBS, Weizha Zhang, and he kind of went off of that a little, too.

One of Trump's main were objective, she writes, is to rid Iran of its nuclear capabilities. I asked if removing its enriched uranium is necessary to declare victory. Quote, I don't even think about it. I just know that, you know, that's so deeply buried, it's going to be very hard for anybody. We've watched it for, you know, since the attack, we've watched it. And at least I think finally people admit it was obliteration. It's down there deep and they haven't been able to do it. You know, even without a war, they haven't been able to do it. So it's pretty, it's pretty safe. But, you know, we'll make a determination. My own translation is he saying, the Iranians haven't been able to get to it. It's underneath those three nuclear sites that we blew

apart. And so we feel like it's pretty safe and it would be very complicated for us to do. Very hard for anybody, as he puts it. And we haven't yet determined whether we're doing the Tom Clancy operation or not. Well, if I were a parent of someone about to deploy, I'd be very worried that that's what the commander-in-chief is talking like on the eve of what will be a major ground combat operation. I think this is this is a very serious thing the president is talking about doing and he doesn't seem at least in public to be taking it very seriously. But every time that we turn around, there's an escalation from us against Iran. I think it's important to note we don't like the Iranian regime. They support terrorism. We accept all of that. At least I do. But ultimately, as you noted, the Iranians were

not going to war with us before we attacked them. And every time, the Americans and or Israelis have escalated up the escalation ladder. Only at that point do the Iranians counterpunch, which is how we're in the position we're now in where the entire Middle East is a battlefield. Remember, this was supposed to be really a 96-hour pinprick strike against the leadership. It was going to fold after that, just like Maduro's regime supposedly folded. And then the people of Iran were going to rise up in 96 hours after the bombs fell on Kamani's head. and it was going to be great and Trump was going to look like a hero and we wouldn't even be talking about this come March.

Well, here we are now in March, and I'm sorry, March and going into April, and we are having this conversation now. I think the bottom line here is the, I don't even think it's about the uranium. My personal view is that the Israelis... I don't either. Yeah, I think the Israelis wanted this. I think they pressured Trump. I think that our friend Joe Kent gave a very good description in his resignation letter about the echo chamber that had formed around Trump. I think the president is surrounded by advisors who are George W. Bush

Acolytes. They're from that era of the Republican Party. There were very few MAGA voices, America First voices around him. And I think that he's listening to all these inputs, just like during COVID. He's listening to Fauci. He's listening to Burks. He's listening to all the people who have the wrong ideas and who are not on his side. It's the same thing here. And now here we are where he's flailing around, frankly, trying to find, how do I win this thing? there's no victory here so how do I get out of this without looking bad and making our position worse well unfortunately the only he can think to do is to keep escalating and Megan that's why I say I think we're gonna see ground troops

soon and I'm gonna go one more I said this on another show I'm gonna say it here I am convinced that in a couple weeks as soon as a couple weeks we might actually see nuclear weapons being deployed not by the United States but either by Israel and or the Iranian regime which I believe probably has a handful of rudimentary nuclear weapons that they've been playing with. I mean, I was comforted by Professor Pape suggesting Israel knows not to do that because he was saying they know that they're not the entire Middle East hates them. But if they drop a nuke in Iran, which, you know, the blowback of which will spread across the Middle East, they'll all turn on

Israel. And it's only a country of nine million people. Like it would just be too existential a risk for Israel to take. Yeah, but if you're sitting in Tel Aviv and you are in the Lakud wing of that part of that government, which is very fanatical, you might be looking around going, hey, look, this is the use it or lose it moment. The Americans under Trump can't be dependent upon. We have no idea whether Trump is going to actually go forward with what he says or if he's just going to taco out and leave us holding a bag. We can't carry that bag. The Iranians are actually going to walk away from this stronger now. So we going to have to do something to bring them down to size. And that is why I'm fearful, given the current government in Israel, that they might, if they think that the Americans either can't

or will not be able to achieve some semblance of success on the ground, that they will then just pop off some nukes. And I think that's where this is headed. And by the way, if they do that, I think at that point, we're going to find out real quick whether Iran has nukes or not, because I think that they would retaliate in some way using whatever nuclear material they have. Yes, it is not too crazy to say this thing could turn nuclear. I mean, that's what's really scary, that this whole thing could turn nuclear. And we may not, we may not be in control, especially if we leave. I mean, I want us to leave, don't get me wrong, but I want us to stand Israel down too.

Because if we leave and Israel stays and feels like they're now exposed to a very angry hornet's nest in Iran, they may do it because they feel like they've left themselves with no choice. That's right. You know, that Israel may do it because Iran is now even more dangerous than ever. If it does have a nuke that it wasn't using because the old Ayatollah now dead, had a fatwa against it, but the new guy doesn't. And now they're very pissed and feeling defenseless. And Megan, you got to remember, we whacked not just the Ayatollah Khamani,

but we whacked a bunch of IRGC senior commanders. Well, now they're adjutants. the younger guys who are a lot more hot-headed than where their commanders have risen to positions of power, and you're witnessing them execute a very comprehensive, very methodical strategy of counterattack with these missiles and these hypersonic weapons and the drones. Here's some data points that I've been throwing out the last week. I just heard that we have officially expended one-third of our terminal high area high altitude area defense the thad we've spent expended one-third of those interceptors in this month-long war alone those are the very important

high-powered very expensive i think they're about 12 billion dollars a pop uh air defense systems that we have ringing the middle east we've gone through one-third of those and it will take about eight years, if operations stop tomorrow, it will take eight years to replenish those numbers. The Royal United Services Institute, which is one of the oldest, I think it's the oldest think tank in the world, usually very pro-war, by the way, but they assessed last week that Israel is days away from running out of their important arrow two and arrow three exo-atmospheric interceptors. It's a very fancy way of saying they have interceptors in Israel, they rely on, that go high, go fast, and go far into the atmosphere, into space to knock out incoming missiles.

Well, they're basically out of those, which means they've got to wait for Iranian missiles and other attack systems to get closer to their territory, which of course increases the risk. Then you have also this report coming out saying that we are about, on the THAAD system, we are about three weeks away from being totally empty on those THAAD interceptors for what we in our current stockpiles. We're already cannibalizing stockpiles from Indo-Paycom, which is a very important command for deterring China, and we need the thads in place to deter China. They are being depleted now and moved over to the Middle East. So what we are witnessing is a race to depletion, and it looks like to me the Iranians are beating us in that all-important

race to depletion, which is why I think the Americans and Israelis are so spasticly, trying to up the escalation ladder because they figure, well, we're not doing well on this rung, let's go up one higher and we can maybe outmaneuver them that way and end run them, because otherwise if we keep doing this match, tit for tat, it's not going to end well. I think the Iranians probably have about 18 to 24 months left of missile capabilities at least, which is just based on my own observations and based on what I've been looking at, If you look at the way that the Iranians have shifted their munitions packages, this is not a country that seems to be running low.

I know Hegg Seth and the boys keep saying, oh, well, you know, there... He said that this morning. I know. He said that's been saying... He said this morning said... Polyana... The past 24 hours, the number of missiles went down to... It's like 95% less than it was. That matches, though, if you look...

This is my own assessment, so take from it what you will. But if you take my assessment, I think the reason you're seeing that, decline is not because they're reducing numbers too much. I think it's because they recognize the Americans and Israelis have depleted for the most part their interceptor force. So now we can conserve our fires. There's this thing called conservation of fires. And so no professional military wants to waste ammunition, no waste ordinance. So the Iranians are a professional military and they're saying, okay, we've now depleted. We don't have to send swarms as much anymore because the the interceptors are now pretty much drained, and we can have our pick of the litter of targets,

and we know that there is a higher probability of those systems making it through. That's why, by the way, you're now seeing the newer Iranian missiles being deployed, these multiple independently targeted reentry vehicles where you have one missile and then multiple warheads that separate over the target makes it harder for interceptors to hit. It's why you're seeing them deploy these hypersonic weapons. You're seeing them deploy the Karamshar, which is a very very. very complex system. In the beginning of the war, Megan, they were using their old 10-year-old missile systems, rudimentary systems to just drain us dry. Now they're up the escalation ladder and they're

using their more sophisticated systems to really slam targets in Israel and throughout the Arab states. And I think that's because they know that the American and Israeli stockpiles are drastically depleted and they don't have to expend as much ammo. That is very scary when you think, well, I mean, basically in Israel, the Iron Dome has got big holes in it now. And they also punched those radars. So remember, we had installed billions of dollars worth of early warning air defense radars in places like Bahrain and places like Saudi Arabia, Qatar, et cetera. And what were among the first target packages that the Iranians fired and they destroyed were those expensive radars, which is why now we're having to flood in the centuries. planes and of course the Iranians have apparently very good intelligence because last weekend

they blew up our spy planes that came in our radar planes that came into Saudi Arabia the minute they parked at the tarmac which means they have actionable intel live intel sure the Russians and Chinese are helping them as well but they yes they've also got locals on the ground the Iranians have really good human intelligence notably in Bahrain which is mostly Shiite and that's why you're seeing those precision strikes with the drones against the Hilton Hotel where so many of our troops and our CIA and intelligence people, they moved out of the base that's destroyed there and they moved into these hotels. Well, it turns out I think the locals at the hotels and the drivers are calling up Iranian

intelligence operatives saying they're on the eighth floor in the corner of this building. Send your drone there. And so we have a problem where the people of the region are turning against us as well. This is going south very fast, which is what gets me thinking, not only is this not going to end anytime soon, but we're going up the escalation ladder with troops. That ain't going to work. So then they're going to move to, you know, the Israelis saying, well, we're going to have to do something. Perhaps we short circuit this by launching nukes. Pray God, that's not true. I want to follow up with some of what Pete said this morning because

he and Dan Raisin-Kane held a presser. But before I get to that, just want to stick for a minute on the Laura Ingram soundbite. Yeah. I did think it was somewhat promising to have someone as prominent as Laura, who I know the president admires, say, you know, start questioning, start poking. How did we get here? Better late than never. It's certainly, right, totally.

But, you know, it seems like the president may have been misled into thinking this was going to be a snap and by whom. And, you know, obviously we know the Netanyahu was chief among them. He was probably the biggest cheerleader. but we know there were a lot of Fox News personalities who got into the president's ear. And then we talked briefly about how the president pushed to Mark Levins show on Saturday night where my friend, who I really care for, Mark Tieson, said the following. And, you know, like, I can't see a world in which this happens.

But Mark is very smart. So you tell me your take on this prediction. I've never seen a war where the Democrats turned together. the war on day one and are rooting for defeat. You know, there are people in this country who hate Donald Trump more than they hate the Iranian regime that just massacred 32,000 people in their streets. You know, they were all very upset about what was happening in Gaza, but 32,000 people massacred, and then Donald Trump comes in to wipe out the genocidal regime that actually was committing genocide against its own people,

massacring them in the streets like that, and Donald—because it's Donald Trump, We have to play it down. We have to say it's a defeat. We have to say we're losing. And they're all going to have egg on their face because we got we're about halfway through this thing. And when this is all over, this is going to be go down in history as possibly the greatest military campaign. The United States has waged since the American Revolution. Since the American Revolution. Your thoughts on it. Well, that's to be expected from Don Rumsfeld's former speechwriter, I guess. You know, this is this is the same.

Alyana-ish predictions we were hearing in Iraq. I just remind everybody, Iraq was actually supposed to take a few weeks, and then we were supposed to be out. In fact, I know for a fact, Rummy had the plan for the exit was September 03. The last tranche of U.S. forces were supposed to be pulled out of Baghdad International Airport. And that's so that's... And when did we launch it? We launched it March.

This month, actually, ironically, this month, I think it was March 19th, that we launched Operation Iraqi Freedom, which turned into a quagmire. And by the way, we're still fighting in Iraq, just so the audience understands, even though we pulled out, they've ripped open the fighting again between Sunni and Shiite militias. So we are still involved there. So, you know, Mark Teeson, maybe a nice guy. I used to see him bouncing around out Old Town Alexandria when I lived out there. But ultimately, Mark is not the guy to listen to you on anything related to war with all due respect. Well, he's a wonderful guy and he's very smart. And I will say this.

He's completely sincere in his analysis. I'm sure he is. Like, he became a star on the Kelly file. So we used to open our show with him every day. He could talk about him. He's a nice guy. I'm not attacking him personally. Yeah.

No, no, I know. I know. I know. I just like, I don't, since the American Revolution seems like a stretch to me. And I think that the problem is like, President Trump was pushing people to watch that. And clearly President Trump watched that. And back to Laura Ingram's question about like, who's been in his ear and what have they been telling him that led him to completely reverse himself on his promises of no war,

no Middle East war. And all the millions of tweets we've seen circulating from Donald Trump, you know, repeatedly saying it's so dumb to get involved in the Middle East war. Why are we wasting all this money? We should be focused on domestic politics, you know, leading up to when he was president. Well, just remember, Megan. He did it. And we're so confused about why. In 2016, remember his famous South Carolina debate during the primary. You might have even been there. uh you know he went in there trump did and this is when i fell in love with him and i'm a three-time trump guy i and when he went in there and he called out all of the bush people in the audience then he

yelled at at jib bush and he said you know your brother light us into the war that was a doozy he was speaking for i'm on the older side of the millennials he was speaking for my generation 100 percent he was speaking for the gen z generation and probably part of the gen x generation as well who knew that that war in 2003 was a doozy of a lie, and we are still paying down that war, by the way, today. And now, here he is, a decade later. And I think it is the echo chamber that Joe Kent talked about in his resignation letter. But I also think we need to not take away agency from the president. I mean, he is the president of the United States. I think he really was moved by the protesters. I believe that. I think he has heart. And I think that he

saw what was happening to the protesters in January and February and he was like well it was slaughtered by the ayatola right now i don't know to the level of 32 000 sounds a lot i don't know but okay but it was clearly bloodshed it was horrible what was happening again the regime in iran is not a good regime but ultimately i think that he was moved and then you throw that in with his relationship with benjamin net and yahoo and then you throw it in with the echo chamber of neocons that he only listens to now and this is how you have a perfect brew of him believing at after Maduro. And what happened in Venezuela and what happened in June with our Iranian nuclear strike.

He thought he could do it. I will say General Kane, and this came out in the press the day before the war started, there was a very content. He warned him. He warned him. Now, why Kane didn't resign in protest after that is beyond me. And I think that that's actually a blight on his record. I really want to talk about this.

This is underreported and under. I've been covering. There is no question in my mind that the chairman of the Joint Chiefs didn't want this. and warned the president we shouldn't do it. That hit the press the day before we did this. And President Trump came out with a true social saying, all Dan Cain knows how to do is win. If I tell him to go in there, he'll win.

That's the only, he just bellicosed his way around the clear warning. And how did Dan Cain's advice to the president not to do this wind up in the papers? Well, you tell me how. It was vice emerald Fred Kochier, who was, I believe, his And it's a big mystery among people I know at the Pentagon. Did the vice emerald do this of his own volition? Did he just leak it because he was so worried that the president was locked into this horrific, you know, quagmire? Or did he do it because maybe General Kane asked him to do it?

Maybe that was sort of a quiet. That's my question. And we don't know, but I will tell you from what I can tell. And now I know there's an investigation, so this might be why. But I do think it's interesting. They didn't fire Vice Emerald Cotcher for leaking. They removed him from his position on the joint staff, but he's been sent back to his regular post at the Navy. So he is still technically, and I welcome anybody to correct me online if I'm getting this wrong, because this is the last I heard of it was a few weeks ago.

He's still very much active at Vice Emeril in the Navy, which to me is odd because it tells me that perhaps this was not just Kotcher acting on his own. maybe this was Kachar representing the uniformed joint services command structure, most of whom, by the way, are Hegg Seth and Trump loyalists now. They're trying to get a message out to the president, and they know the president doesn't listen to anybody when you're talking to him. He watches it on the media. Trump is a creature of the 20th century. He loves TV.

He's a ratings guy. He cares about that. And I think this is how the Fox News and the boomer cons and the neocons get through to him is through Mark Levin and the TV. And I think that the people who are non-interventionists have figured out too late in the game, you can't talk to the president always. You're going to have to go on TV

and get your points out that way, because he'll see it then. That is really true. This is not an unfair criticism. I've spoken to many people at Fox who've told me that administration figures will come to them saying, please put me on

because I have something the president has to hear. And also, if their fortunes are dwindling, they want a hit, like on Fox and Friends, for example, because they want a show, I'm on TV, see, I'm relevant, I'm making your points. They know the shows he watches, and they try very hard to get on them. But look, we know that the case was made because we know that Tucker Carlson got in front of him three times in the month leading up to this war. And, you know, just he wasn't persuaded. So, but there were just so many other voices.

It was nine to one, you know, that he was listening to, pushing him into it. Not to take agency away from the president at all, but I do think a full. assessment. We know Trump made the call. That's not a mystery, but who pushed him into it, who made these representations also matters. It's the famous bubble. When you work in D.C., I worked on the Hill for a period of time, and you work in the White House. It's even worse, I'm sure. You get into a bubble and, you know, you're always taking incoming, so you only start listening to friendly voices. And, you know, I will tell you, I remember being mortified listening to Dan Crenshaw at a private event in 2018 where we were at Capitol Hill Club,

and he was gloating about how he, Ted Cruz and Lindsey Graham, convinced the president to break his 2016 campaign promise to pull troops out of Syria, and he was gloating at the table about how, and I said, well, how did you even get him to do that? Because I was very cross. And he said, well, he goes, I just, we just appealed to his ego. He has the ego, the size of Jupiter. And he said, and we just kept appealing until after two hours in the yellow oval office, he said we all just got him to break that campaign promise.

It's the same thing with this war. Same thing. I mean, I'm thinking about Joe Kent's wife, his first wife who was killed in Syria. Because she was left there and he had said to her in the last conversation, don't be the last one to die for a cause that no one supports anymore. And Shannon was killed likely by the elements that are now we've elevated in the past. in Syria. So, you know, it's... Well, that's a whole other ball of wax right now. We, we, we elevated al-Qaeda, which is Sunni, instead of the Shiites there, and now, like, they're cooperating to, like, yeah, basically, we're working with terrorists. We're working with

ISIS, to be clear. Let's just be clear. It's ISIS. They're working with ISIS. Yeah. We, we're working with ISIS. It's very dark. Yeah. And yeah. Um, there's more to discuss. Can you, can you stay over? Yeah. Yeah. Can you stick around? All right. Brin. and stays with us. And after Brandon, the guys from RCP will be here. Don't go away. Ever been in a bad relationship? You know, the kind of just wears you down. You settle in. Even though deep down, you know this is not how it's supposed to be. Well, that's what daily aches and pains can feel like. You stop expecting to feel good. And you start thinking, I guess this is just my life now. But it doesn't have to be. With relief factor, you can break up with pain just like Anthony did.

He wrote, quote, I was dealing with debilitating pain and fatigue. I've been taking Relief Factor for about two months, and now I'm back to running my business, fishing, gardening, doing the things that really matter to me. If you have back pain, knee issues, or stiffness slowing you down, relief factor could give you your mobility back. Relief factor's 100% drug-free. It targets the inflammation that causes pain, helping you move better, feel better, and actually enjoy life again. Try the three-week quick start for just 1995. Go to Relieffactor.com or call 800 for relief, break up with pain, and get back to what matters. I heard, we want everything faster.

Higher op tempo. War time, speed. The feeling was the exact opposite of the rotational units year after year in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that were so familiar with. What I witnessed was motivation. It was sheer mission focus. It was the American warrior unleashed. A crew chief we flew with summed it up nicely. He said, it's been a busy few weeks, sir.

Tough stuff. But I'm so honored to be called up. This fight is long overdue. We need to address it for our kids. We cannot pass the buck. Please thank the president from us. I heard that time and time again. Okay, that was Pete Higseth, our secretary of war.

Like, to me, I just, it sounded like a Jack Nicholson impression. I just, of course, the men and women in uniform speaking to the Secretary of War are going to say that. That doesn't tell us whether this is, in fact, a noble cause or whether it was smart for the United States of America to do in the first place. I care for Pete, as you know, I backed Pete, but this bravado is not going to get it done. We actually need to be very serious and sober about the risks we're exposing he and the president. He and the president, are exposing those men and women who are so courageous to and and for whom are we doing that. Brandon Weikert is back with me now.

Your thoughts on that, Brandon. Well, I call him Pollyanna Pete for a reason. And I say this because I was a, like you, a very firm supporter of his. I actually got a lot of pushback from friends of mine in the defense community who were like, why is this guy becoming secretary? I said, look, I think he has some great ideas. And to give credit where credit is due, he's done a lot of good work. work with until now with recruitment and he's done a lot of good work with acquisitions reform now

acquisitions reform has been my great bugaboo for a decade so i give credit to to to mr heggsett but on the war he's polyanna pete and uh unfortunately we don't need that right now we don't need a mindless cheerleader we need someone who understands strategy ends ways and means and as i noted at the beginning our strategy in this war megan makes and as you noted makes no sense you saw in the previous hour you played Rubio's clip. Rubio's now emphasizing, oh, we got rid of the Iranian Navy and the Air Force. That was never a significant threat. The Iranian Navy, I mean, and also, it's like the Iraqi Navy. The other problem with that is we learned, we learned in our 20 years in the Middle East in Iraq and Afghanistan that it's not about that. It's great. Okay, Iran no longer

has the Navy and the Air Force. That's better than them having it. But that's not how these guys fight. That's not the thing that's right. That's right. Kills Americans and makes the war go on on and on. It's like the Mujahideen, the fighters, the like ongoing jihad from the like, the caves. That's what we've proven. We've learned nothing from 20 days. Not inept at fighting, but it's a very much, it's a very difficult fight for us. Go ahead. Well, you're right. And what we're facing is yet another, and it's, it's different because it is more of a state actor, but it's a hybrid model. We're facing yet another insurgency. And that's basically what this is. This is the unconventional insurgent model. And I got to tell you,

the Iranians are reminded me a lot of the Muge, and they're reminding me a lot of the Viet Cong and the North Vietnamese who, remember the North Vietnamese, after the Battle of Iadrang, or into the Battle of Iadrang, the first major conflict battle we fought in Vietnam in 1965, the general there was saying that we want to kill Americans, we're welcoming the Americans, we want them to land so we can bloody their nose. And it's interesting, President Poschkian of Iran, who by the way was raised, among the Kurds, the Kurds that supposedly were going to overthrow the regime. Interesting little fact there. So we stood down on that. Right. Because they couldn't work. Wasn't going to work.

But President Posashkin has said twice now in the last two weeks that we cannot quit the war in Iran because we have to bloody the Americans know so much that they never try something like this again. So that is what you're dealing with. That clearly seems to be what they're doing, Brennan, doesn't it? Like that the reason they're being so cagey about whether they're negotiating or whether they want an end of this war in which we're killing lots of them every day. Clearly we are. Look how many Vietnamese we feel like they can outweigh us. They're like, we don't really care. We want you to feel the pain economically. We want President Trump to feel the pain politically. We want gas prices to go up. And for you to get the message that this is a

freaking disaster for you. And it is. And the Iranians, like I said. So, you know, the Iranian strategy, I've said this on Tucker. I'll say it here because it needs to be constantly reminded. Von Klauswitz, the great Prussian leader in the Napoleonic War, wrote a book called On War. It's required reading at all the military colleges around the West. And he said, essentially, politics is an extension. I'm sorry, warfare is an extension of politics through other means. You have to have a political end goal in mind that your military strategy is attempting to achieve. In our case, what is our end goal?

It is shifted from regime change to we want to get rid of the nukes, to we want to get rid of ballistic missiles in Iran, to, oh, we're going to sink Iranian Navy, sink the Air Force, and oh, by the way, we're going to get them to stop supporting Hamas and Hezbollah. So that's like six things that are kind of ambiguous, and we've attached an Air Force-only, an Air War-only approach. You can't achieve those goals in a short time frame with air power alone. Meanwhile, on the Iranian side, Megan, their only strategic end goal, their political goal is survival. Regime survival, that's all they have to do, is hang on long enough for the Americans to run out of stuff and to run out of patience with fighting the war. Now, there is a chance. There is a chance now because as we're talking in the

first segment, I got a note from a retired CIA guy, and he says to me, quote, he goes, I think we might actually be thinking, we need to be thinking the unthinkable, that POTUS will actually leave the war by leaving the Iranians in charge of the Strait of Hormuz. So on the One hand. Oh, I think that's what he's getting ready to do. I hope you're right. That's how he sounds to me. I hope you're right. And I think President Trump has seen these numbers that we've been reporting on our show, you know, and I've been reporting them on X and I get all sorts of blowback, Brandon, because my audience loves President Trump for the most part. But I say to them, you need to see this. Yeah. But even if you still love Trump and you, you know, you want him to succeed. He's got another three years to go. You have to see these numbers. You have to see what's real. It can still be potentially turned around. There's no reason. to double down on what we've already done. If there's any way of wrapping it up quickly, we should. And as I listen to President Trump over the past 24 hours, I think someone has seen the many Harry Anton reports,

the Fox News polling, the Kinnapiaq polling, the Reuters polling, that Amherst polling that came out yesterday putting his approval rating at 33%. The drag that this war on Iran has been across the board for every single group that put him into office. President Trump is brilliant. He is very smart when it comes to politics. And I think he's finally at the point where he's like, I'm out. You know what?

Eff it. I'm out. It's Europe's problem. Somebody else going to have to do with it. The problem is, though, the enemy gets a vote. And like I said, Peseshkin is talking about, I'm not going to let go now until I've bloodied your nose. And the Israelis get a vote, too. And the Israelis are making it clear. They're not going to stop. I mean, like I said, last week, I talked to Yaakov Armador, who was, he's still very much intimately involved with Netanyahu. And he made it clear that the Israelis will only do what they think is in their national interest. They do not care if the Americans want to reopen or keep closed the straight of her moves. They do not care if the Americans bail out. They will

do what they perceive is in their national interest. So that to me was an implied statement that they will continue pressing militarily, knowing full well, it's probably going to rope us back in, not going to let us go. And so this is why I see. Yeah, which they won. Yes, which is why I said in the beginning, I'm very doubtful that even if Trump wants to quit, which he probably does at this point, because like you said, he's politically savvy. He might not be able to. This is the nature of what your previous guest, Dr. Pape, was talking about with the escalation trap. You are trapped now.

Yep. And so this is why. Let me show you just one. We could play these Harriet and SOTS all day. Let me show you one. SOT 12. This is the lowest of his term. The lowest of his second term, we're talking about minus 17 points, 17 points underwater.

So I went back and I looked at all of the presidents at this point in a presidency, all of them, all of them at this point in a presidency. And guess what? Donald Trump is the lowest ever, the lowest ever at this point in a presidency. Yeah. Today he updated that to say it's actually minus 19, not just minus 17. UGov with his latest poll, Trump's approval among independents, approved 22 percent, disapproved 65. the trend for independence in March of last year, 12 months ago, Trump was one point underwater with independence, which is very good.

In December of last year, he was minus 26. He was already losing them because of affordability issues. And then March this month, he's minus 43 with the independents who are worried about their money and do not support this war. The independence, there's almost none who are supporting this war right now. And more and more, you're seeing the Republican Party split. The core magas for it. But every other Republican is at best split right down the middle.

Which is exactly what happened in Iraq and Vietnam. If you remember, it started out strong support, patriotism, rally around the flag. And a lot stronger support, by the way, in Iraq and 03 than there was this time around in Iran. But what happened was over the course of time. And it wasn't in Iraq in particular. Remember, the first bombing on the airport road in Baghdad occurred, I think six or seven weeks. after we invaded. So that was relatively quickly that the war started, the support started turning on the war

because it was the first Marine that was killed was that 19-year-old guy by the IED, the improvised explosive device. And from that day onward, you can track the decline in support in the United States and the rise of the Democratic Party, the return to power in 06, that ultimately then laid the groundwork for the rise of Obama. and really the unseating of that Reagan coalition that had dominated American politics since the 80s. And that really ended there with Obama. And that all goes back to the first bombing in Iraq in 2003.

Something similar is going to happen, I think, in Iran. I just want to make it clear, by the way, the president can quit today if he wants. We don't know what that's going to mean in terms of is, is Iran going to stop or what are the Israelis going to do? but even if it all works out according to plan, the time that it will be needed to restore economic capacity, the time it will take to rehabilitate the destroyed infrastructure of the Gulf Arab states as well as Israel. Now, the Gulf Arab states are more economically important because of the oil and the fertilizers and the helium is the big one as well. It's going to take years and years. I mean, they put on force majeure in Qatar on five-year contracts for oil.

That indicates to me that they're anticipating... Meaning they don't have to honor them because of like a... Yes, forgive me. A massive intervention beyond their control. So what that tells me is that the Arab states, if it all goes according to plan and they quit the war now, it doesn't matter. We're not getting that economic capacity restored fully for months and months, if not years. And we saw this, by the way, when Trump finally reopened after lockdowns in COVID, it didn't matter. The economy did not rebound the way they said it was going to.

Well, wait, but does this... matter because you know Trump's been saying we don't get our oil from the straight of our moves so while you know cutter may be suffering a you know a problem on its balance sheets we'll be fine it's important that we understand global markets and i don't mean to sound like a like a jerk when i say that because i understand people think in america what we have all the stuff we need under our feet and it's true we do but we don't actually have full productive capacity here in the united states and that is a business decision that has been made by various oil and natural gas and fracking companies because they want oil internationally in a price range.

They like it. I think it's $66 to $88, preferably closer to $66. They like it in that sweet spot. So what happens if you overproduce at home your oil and your natural gas, you're going to lower the global price of oil, which means good for you and I at the pump, but it's bad for those oil companies, which have to see ROI, return on investment. So when we talk about, why is what's happening in the Strait of Hormuz affecting us here? It's because we're integrated. Why is my gas more than a dollar? Right. More a gallon than it was a month ago. It's because we do not get all of our oil from our own, not only North America, but the Western Hemisphere. And also, even if we did, we're still affected

by volatility swings in the oil market. So what that means is we are going to be subject to price increases and shortages here in the United States, especially because, because we don't have full capacity. The infrastructure's not in place and the oil companies don't want to spend the money on expanding infrastructure in the near term for a variety of reasons, but mostly because that's going to harm their bottom line every quarter. They have to post a return every quarter for their stockholders or their shareholders. So it's not in their interest to do this. Long term it is, but short term it's not. And everything in America is about the short term. And the number one thing that's upsetting voters here is the economy. So the last thing.

we need to do is give them yet another hit in the economy. And we haven't even talked about the fact that the war is costing us a billion dollars a day. They want $200 billion to fight this. We can't afford that. We can't afford to rebuild all of our military bases throughout the Middle East. We can't afford to replenish all these interceptors. And so like, we can't afford any of this, but we're going to have to because we can't sit exposed without these things, less we get attacked. But wait, I want to ask you about something else, Brandon.

This just broke via the New York Times. it's related, but not on the same exact topic. The Revolutionary Guards of Iran just issued a threat against top American corporations accusing them of helping the U.S. and Israel carry out strikes against Iranians. From now on, the main institutions involved in such operations will be considered legitimate targets, says the Guard in a statement that named 18 companies including Apple, Google, and META. The statement carried by Iranian state media called for employees of these companies, quote, in all countries of the region to evacuate their workplaces and stay a kilometer away from their officers.

I think they mean offices. It was not the first time that Iran had threatened American tech companies earlier this month. They threatened wider attacks against enemy tech and infrastructure belonging to seven U.S. tech firms. They think the tech firms are helping, are assisting in the conduct of this war. Now this is a direct threat against the people who work at the branches anywhere in the region. I mean, that's not good either. Like we don't spend a lot of time talking about the satellite problems that this thing is going to cause beyond the gas. So my, yeah, my first book was on Space War. It's called Winning Space. It came out in 2020. And I talked about the threat to our space systems, which is still very underappreciated. Your audience might be aware of these fireballs in the skies over Texas and Ohio. Some of them are meteorites, but some of them, I think, are satellites being destroyed. Now, I don't have proof of this, but my theory is I think somebody is clipping SpaceX, possibly Starlink satellites.

I hope that's incorrect. I hope that they can prove that is not correct. By clipping, do you mean like tapping into? No, I'm sorry. I mean shooting down. And I believe the reason that Starlink is a target now is because we know 40,000 Starlink terminals were uncovered in Iran during the protests by the Iranian regime. And they are now associating that as not a private satellite company providing internet to people around the world, but as a backdoor way for regime change by the West using these decentralized satellites. In fact, we saw the Ukrainians in the Ukraine war at the beginning.

We're using Starlink to basically keep their units in the fight after the Russians attempted to delink Ukraine from the world telecommunications networking. Now today the Russians are using Starlink terminals as well. well. So we're seeing Starlink increasingly used whether intentional or not by SpaceX, it's being used to, you know, in these combat situations or in these political situations, which is now in turn making it a target. I think also there's probably some some anti-satellite warfare going on because I was told years ago there is a fear that the Iranians put a cluster of EMP satellites or satellites armed with electromagnetic pulse weapons above the United States. and I suspect we're probably taking those things down as a precautionary measure. But ultimately, I think that the businesses, particularly the tech companies that they're singling out, the Iranians believe, and it's not always wrong, that these tech companies in some way, or members of these tech companies, are facilitating operations against the regime in Iran electronically. So how do we get out of this?

If the president pray God calls you tomorrow to say, Brandon, help me. He's never calling me. What should I do at this point? Clearly, he's not big on talking to the critics, but what do you want to see happen at this point? Well, what I would love to see happen is a complete reorganization of the U.S. defense posture. I want to see the complete reduction, if not complete pullout of U.S. military forces from the Middle East. We've lost this region. I want to see the reorganization of our defense apparatus so that we are prioritizing only two things, only two things.

Western Hemispheric defense plus space dominance. And that is the only things that we should be focused on, patrolling the world's oceans and patrolling the world's, you know, straits and whatever. Sounded great in the 90s, very Alfred Mahan, you know, influence of sea power upon history, wonderful stuff. but we are no longer a unipolar, you know, hegemon anymore. We have blown that. The economic situation alone for consistently many years indicates we can't afford that kind of an empire anymore. What I want to do is focus on rebuilding America. I want to focus on rebuilding the defense industrial base truly, the industrial base. I want to bring the factories home. So you can't do those things if you are constantly engaged and exposed to the varying hostages.

and grotesqueries of geopolitics in Eurasia, that's Europe and Asia and the Middle East. You can't do it. You've got to be hard about this and say, we're getting out. And I can't think of a greater example of why we need to get out than looking at how boxed in we are by the Iranians of all people. You know, they spend a fraction on their defense budget than we do. Also, you know, we... Well, but wait, but wait. We're boxed in by the Iranians.

We're boxed in by Israel. who saw all of this coming and couldn't have cared less what this is going to do to the United States. This chaos serves every single one of their interests. Well, on paper it did, but of course, if you look at what's going on in Israel now, I don't think in another decade Israel is going to be a real country anymore. I think that they have been completely smashed. If you look at Tel Aviv, the footage, you have to go to foreign sources, because, of course, our own censorious media won't cover the story.

but if you go to some of these foreign networks in India and elsewhere, you will see the real footage being revealed on social media, on their networks. You know, these Iranian missiles are nothing to joke about. They're very serious and they're doing a lot of damage. You're talking about, you know, their key ports, Haifa is getting hit. Elat has been blockaded on and off for years. They've had an economic downturn because of this. You look at the hundreds of thousands of professional class people,

who are getting their passports and going to places like Cyprus or Crete or Malta or London or Canada or here back in the United States, they are leaving permanently. So you have a brain drain going on. How do they rebuild? They can't rebuild. And they're now breaking the IDF in this stupid thing in Lebanon. You know, the Murkava massacre, they're sending 100, they've lost over a hundred of their Mercado. A million people have been displaced out of Lebanon because Netanyahu saw an opportunity to clear out as a and anything related to Hezbollah, but civilians are being killed there too. And they're promising to do there what they did in Gaza, which is very scary. Yeah, yeah, I don't think it's going to be a viable entity much longer.

And I don't say that pro or con. I'm just pointing out, if you look at the damage, I don't know how they get through this as an intact. They were much stronger before this started than they will be coming out of it. Let's just put it that way. And it's like this was, it didn't have to happen. I'm not defending Iran. Not defending. I mean, we all can't stand Iran.

It's like, okay, we know what they've done. They have been, you know, popping up here and there periodically over the course of the past 40, 50 years. And they are responsible for American blood and treasure being spilled. There's no question, but more got spilled just this week and more will be spilled if we continue doubling down on this thing. To us than it ever did before. Yeah, that's the problem. It's just, it's not worth it. Not right now.

And we're about to lose politically as well if this keeps going. Brandon, thank you. You've been one of my like stages in following you on X and the podcast that you do. You're so smart. I really appreciate your POV. Thanks for coming. You will for sure. We'll invite you. Thank you. Up next, the guys from RCP join us. And there's a lot to go over. Think about this. In 2006, $20,000 equaled roughly 33 ounces of gold at spot price. At today's prices, those 33 ounces would be worth about $165,000. That's why many smart Americans diversify a portion of their into precious metals. And that's why you should consider buying gold from Birch Gold Group.

For thousands of years, gold has been a store of wealth. And today, it's a crucial part of any balanced strategy. Even better, Birch Gold can help you convert an existing IRA or 401k into a tax-sheltered retirement account in gold. Just text MK to the number 9-8-9-8-98 to receive your free info kit on gold. There's no obligation, just useful information. With an A-plus rating with the Better Business Bureau and tens of thousands of happy customers, let Birch Gold help you diversify with gold. Now, that's peace of mind. Again, text MK to 989898.98 today.

Turning back to the double life of Christy Knoem's husband, Brian, part of the Daily Mail report raising national security concerns that his personal fetish poses. Again, he didn't admit it all to the Daily Mail, but when asked about the allegations that he's doing it, that he was paying women to show their breasts to him, enormous breasts,

look at him and his fake enormous breasts. The mail reports that Brian, quote, made indiscreet remarks about Christy Knoem as well while on these forums. In any event, Brian responded to the part about whether this all opened Christy Knoem up to the threat of blackmail, because, of course, the Daily Mail went to him for comment, and he told the outlet, quote, I made no comments like that that would lead to that. I deny the second part of that. but not the whole bimbofication parts. And now we know that Christy Noem has spoken to the New York Post, not Christy herself, but somebody who represents Christyone,

has spoken to the New York Post and said she's devastated by it. I'm going to get the exact quote. Ms. Nome was devastated. The family was blindsided by this. They asked for privacy and prayers at this time. So she's not denying it either. her people are saying she's devastated by it. Okay, here to react, the guys from real clear politics.

Before this show on the Megan Kelly channel, Sirius XM 111, you can hear them live. Today we have Tom Bevin and Andrew Walworth. Sadly, Carl Cannon is off because I really wanted to talk to him about this. You know, Megan, it's funny. You get scheduled on a show and then it's like winning the lottery. Story like this pops up. Oh, my God. So there is a new wrinkle to this story.

It's kind of interesting. Mark Caputo of Axios seems to be getting ahead of possibly a report that he had this story and didn't go with it. Because he is tweeting out, his tweet reads, yeah, I got a weird lead, a source texted me February 13th. They told Axios's Mark Caputo. that an immigrant sex worker, possibly here illegally, wanted to go public about Noam's husband using her services online. It was vengeance for DHS's immigration enforcement. He says he wasn't able to land the interview because he couldn't get the verification the way the mail did. The mail actually got one or more of these workers to talk to them. They got the text messages with Brian. They have pictures of Brian's face. I mean, he can't deny it. It's his face.

Plain is, you know, the day with his weird fake breast and his weird tiny little pants, hot pink and otherwise. I know. Andrew's shaking has said, no, that's how we all. You speak for us all. No, no. In any event, the story's been circulating. It doesn't surprise me at all that it was an illegal immigrant potentially who wanted this story out. The question really is, might some of our adversaries have wanted it out? Look at this. Look at this. Look what's on the board right now. First of all, why are his legs smaller than mine. They're teeny tiny little girl legs from the look of it in hot pink biker pants with his enormous cartoon-like fake breasts. This guy was married to our Department of Homeland Security Chief. Andrew, of course I'm going to start with you.

Well, I had two thoughts. One was first Leo Tolstoy said, what counts in making a happy marriage is not so much how compatible you are, but how you deal with incompatibility. So, um, did you just go to told me as our first answer on the Krispy Knoem boob story? Uh, trying to elevate the story. And he's a deep thinker. Did have to look up bimboification, which is a new word for me, but that is what this fetish is.

Um, and then, uh, finally my initial interaction, I wonder what you. guys thought my first written when I saw the pictures would oh this is fake news these are AI generated pictures i mean this can't be real but uh apparently i was wrong i guess it's a real story and um i mean what can you say i don't know i do think the national security i have a lot to say about this the national security implications of this are serious and you know tom there is a case to be made in fairness though that like we've all known about the alleged affair between christie noem Kareilu-Andowski. It's the most open secret you can have in Washington. And, you know, maybe this is an argument for not just letting that kind of thing, just kind of go by like it's a

nothing. Maybe there is a justification when you hear this. Somebody like the DHS chief, okay, she's like Monica Crowley, my friend, she's in charge of protocol. You know, she's overseeing the 250th. And that's great. But it's like, no one's just trying to blackmail Monica Crowley. Homeland Security matters. Forget the ice stuff. Like, I'm worried about, like, terror attacks and so on. They're the ones who raise the threat level, all that stuff. Maybe this is an argument to, like, you actually do need to kick the tires when you hear

something like this about someone in that. Because who knows how many layers there are to the compromised position she's placed herself in. Yeah. I agree. It raises the question about, you know, should, should. Would spouses be vetted for these positions as well? Because the obvious implication is that they go to him and say,

listen, if you don't start leaking us information about what's going on in Department of Homeland Security, we're going to expose this. But look, my first thought at this is like, it all makes sense now. I could never understand why he stayed with her. Because, I mean, he sat behind her at the Department of Homeland Security.

And it was just sort of being cuckolded like that. It's like, you know, it's in the end It never made sense. And now it kind of does. My other thought was like, I totally don't believe Christy Noem in that statement that she was blindsided by this and didn't know anything about it. That seems impossible or near impossible to me

that this was just going on and she didn't know anything about it. And the last thing I would say is, I don't buy the story that this was leaked by some illegal immigrants, you know, bent on revenge. It happened after she's already gone. I mean, we're hearing sort of rumblings that my first thought was, well, Corey probably leaked it after he got fired. I don't have any proof of that. I'm just saying like that that was my first thought, but that this had to come from someone who had this information and was holding on to it.

And it wasn't ever, it never made the rounds to the media in years. And then suddenly, you know, she leaves the Department of Homeland Security and this stuff just comes out. that's not coincidental. So I don't buy the idea. Yes. Why do we know about her affair? Why is that, Tom, that we know about her affair for all this time, but we don't, we didn't know any of this, even though he's posting pictures of his face on these message boards. Exactly. There's a lot more to this story. And it's bizarre to begin with, but it's not over. So do we, do we care now that, Andrew, she is still special envoy for the shield of the America's Western Hemisphere. No one knows what that is because it's a new

creation. Now she'd be blackmailed and nobody cares like this. I don't know, I guess. I'm not sure, but like, you know, it's not like she was on the message boards with the huge fake balloon breast. Like, I think she'd have to step down if that were the case, but do we care? She's still married to him. These pictures are unbelievable. Like, I'm sorry, they're unbelievable. And by the way, I have the same question on this dude. As I have, I know somebody who is in my orbit, who was a man, very accomplished man in New York City, who suddenly I walked in, I saw this person one day, and they're, they've gone trans. Now they're purporting to be a woman.

They're wearing a dress. They have long, fake fingernails, they have a full face of makeup, they have pearls, they have high, heels, but they still have their man hair, which includes a bald spot and like man hair. Hey, easy on the bald spot. I'm just saying, like, are you phoning it in? Like, where's, where's the full commitment? I don't get that. Why is this guy wearing the enormous Kayla Lemieux fake breasts and his man face and his man hair? Andrew, that's, I know you can't explain that. But do we care about special envoy for the Shield of America? Yes, I think we do. I think, I think she should, uh,

my feeling is she should probably just resign from public life and take some time off to deal with her family or whatever. They have three children. This is embarrassing. I feel terrible for the kids. But it's just, you know, it's a terrible look. And in a normal society, yes, this would be the kind of thing where you would sort of say, okay, I'm going to go to the farm and relax for a while. But I am waiting for the Democrats to come to his defense.

That's what I'm waiting for because this is supposed to be okay. right i mean he just you know he's you know whatever he's thinking he's on some sort of spectrum and you know there are more than one gender and this happens to be one that you know um you have a man's haircut and big boots i mean i guess that's why can't that be one of the 58 genders i saw someone on x saying you know you're so right he's uh he's lucky he didn't have like a puppy fetish That was pretty funny. Oh, I'm just glad cricket is not here to see this. It's like a furry.

God only knows what cricket's for in crickets's limited time with the family. Oh, man. I just feel like, thank God. We count our blessings that cricket didn't have to see this. I will say this. Their children are 31, I think 29 and 23. I mean, that doesn't make it, it makes it a little better than if they were young, young, young kids. But I'm sure they're upset by this.

This is like, this is your night. This is a nightmare to find out your dad's doing this shit. It's a freaking nightmare. And it just reflects so poorly on, like, our country. Like, the whole thing is so skeevy. I do want to play this sound bite. Deborah Soe is, I don't remember her official, like, degree. She's like got her Ph.D.

And, you know, sexual fetishes and sex issues. It's like a Woody Allen movie. She's brilliant. I know. But she's legit and she's very smart. And she came on the show early on. When we just had audio, we didn't have video yet. And listen to her talking about fetishes.

There are so many different parapherias. I really found it interesting to hear what people are into, why they're into it. And I also wanted to help remove the stigma and shame that often comes along with having an unusual sexual preference. I found that there are, and there's a larger body of research to suggest that parapherias are innate in that they are with someone from a very young age. they cannot be changed and that whatever it is that someone finds sexually interesting, if it's very unusual, there's a biological component to that. So previously it was believed to be purely a social thing or that it's something that someone learned. I think it's a combination of both, but the main takeaway is that if someone has a parapheria, it's not something that they can

change. So if they're really into something sexually, they can't suppress that, especially not in men. They can't suppress that and be interested in something else. By the way, that completely tracks with what we know, for example, about like pedophiles. They can't be reformed. You can't just like say, okay, you did three years in jail. And now you can have back out to society. We know that's not true. I don't think that's a sexual fetish. But I'm just saying like that, that logic that you can't be therapist out of your fetish or what turns you on seems real to me, which is why the marriage can't, in my view, continue. Deborah So is, by the way, a neuroscientist who specializes in human sexuality and biological explanations for behavior.

I guess some online are upset that this came out on international transgender day of visibility. Not it, Tom. That's not where the story goes. It's not about that at all. So we'll see what happens with Christy Noem and the husband. It's a nightmare. The whole thing is a freaking nightmare.

Okay, let's keep going because we have other things to get to. I know there's been a lot of talk about the Strait of Hormuz. Trump said we have to have it open. Marco Rubio said it has to be open, period, you know, before we end this war. Then Trump, it comes out last night in the journal, has been talking to AIDS about maybe we peace out while it's still closed. Like, let's not hang around there for too much longer. Well, comedian Lionel Lied went out to the no king's protest and he got to the bottom of this whole Straits of Hormuz thing. Take a look at this, not seven beats.

Isn't it a little bit homophobic that was? so focus on the straits of Hummus and not the gays of Hummus? Yes, I agree, yes, for sure. Why do you think they're willing to leave the gays of Hammuz behind? I think it's just history, historically, like, you know, gays have always been very discriminated against, which is wrong in so many levels. Even in war. Yeah, even in war, it just takes more reform in government, obviously, and then also educating society.

Just feel like if we're gonna go and say, we can't leave the gay people behind. I don't think we should go and say at all, but, if we're going to, the gaze of Hamos, we could turn it into Fire Island. For sure. Well, we need to have it's more education, she says. Yeah, right? More education. I think it was, uh, I think Jesse Waters sent one of his guys into the, you know,

the No King's protests. And like, spring break. I mean, they often, you know, probably can't even find a round on a map. I mean, you know, we saw this with like, Palestinian protests and the whole river to the sea thing. People didn't know what the river was or what the sea. Like, they don't know what they're talking about. They're just out there because it's a vibe, right? They hate Trump. They want to be out there. You know, and we were talking about these crowds. She was young when you just played in the clip, but these No Kings protests were primarily

overwhelmingly sort of, you know, boomers from the 60s that were kind of relive in the, you know, relive in their protest days. It seemed like to me, but a lot of them still didn't seem like they could articulate exactly what it was they were objecting to or what they wanted. It's, I don't know what to say. I got one for you too, Andrew. Tom's not having all the fun. Here's 70. Who things Iranians maintain such good woman and LGBT rights as well?

Well, they have a good leader, Ayatollah or yeah. He's very pro-LGB. They said he wants the next I told her the queen out. Be a woman? No, a guy, but he's a queen. Oh. Like a gay guy. They wanted gay guy to be in charge, yeah.

Who cares? It's actually because Robert Muhammad actually had a lot of gay friends. Oh, yeah? Yeah. Oh, that's cool. The guy's wearing a fuck Trump sticker. These are Trump's enemies, Andrew. You think he doesn't really need to worry, and yet the latest polls suggest he does.

Yeah, well, you know, this reminds me. my mom used to, when she would get mad, she would say to me and my brother, it's your whole damn attitude. And I think that's what they're saying, right? It's like, they don't, the in-co-ed sort of argument against Trump is just that it's his whole damn attitude. They just don't like them. And so on the one hand, it seems like a sort of unfocused protest. On the other hand, it's very focused. It's simply sort of anti-Trump. It's sort of, you know, we can call it Trump Duranement syndrome. But basically, he sort of has personified something to these people, which means that whatever he's for, they're against. You know, anything that he does good for the country,

they want the opposite. And I mean, that's the way I view the whole thing. They've always been against them. Yeah. And they always works. Tom, if you don't start using, it's your whole attitude against Andrew regularly on RCP. I will. Missed a golden opportunity. But can we talk about these polls because these numbers that we've been talking about a lot on our show are, they're just dreadful for the president. And you truly hate to see it if you're a supporter of his. Now, the Democrats are loving it. They're like, we can't leave. We have to stay in Iran, even though they're totally against it, because they want to see these numbers plummet further. Only 8% support sending ground troops in. I'm sure the Democrats are like, do it. We need ground troops

to support the Strait of Hormuz. How does one turn these around? Like, is that? Is historically, have we seen dips this low, like these numbers with independence, where he's got 22% approval ratings, and still a party able to win, let's say, at the midterms, Tom? Well, typically, I mean, the problem that Trump is experiencing, right, midterms are typically lower turnout, so they're base elections. And Trump has, he has shattered his base. I mean, the coalition that elected him and has fueled MAGA is now split. over this. And it's not like a, it's not a tiny split. It's not a split over a sort of tangential side issue. This was one of his main promises, no new wars in the Middle East. And here he is

engaging in it and trying to say, you know, I'll define what MAGA is. And it's not, it's not working. It's not happening. And so you go into a midterm where your base is divided. The other base is united. You're going to get your ass kicked. And that's where Republicans are. I think in terms of independence you mentioned him he's lost ground with independence and there maybe you know 10 15% of the electorate which isn't huge but is important and he's underwater with them not only in this handling of the war but then you go back to sort of domestic gas prices now of four dollars that's the main concern is the economy inflation he's not attending to that at all if anything people would say he's making things worse and so yeah it's it's shaping up to be a perfect storm

against Republicans. And then, you know, after that, it's like, we'll have to see as the race starts to be the inheritor of MAGA, if somebody can put Humpty Dumpty back together again, whether that's Vance or Ruby or somebody else. Right. Now you're talking about 28, which is going to start in earnest after those midterms start or over.

Here's the latest polling, Andrew. I'll give it to you one second. Let me just tell you this just dropped UGov, latest UGov polling. shows that his approval rating on handling Iran. On March 9th, it was 39 approved, 52% didn't. So he was minus 12. March 23rd, he was down to minus 19. March 30th, it's now down to 30, the swing, net 30.

So 30% of the people approve, 60% of the people do not, some 10% don't know. So he's gone from minus 12 on March 9th to, minus 30 on March 30th. With independence, it's worse. He started off at minus 23, with just 30% of the independence favoring it. And now he's down minus 47. 19% of independence approve of the war. 66% do not. I mean, that can you, like, how do you win a midterm election? Do you need the independence? Can you do it with just core MAGA if you're a Republican? Because even if you look at Cora Maga, which is like 15% of the party or the populace, and then you look

outside of Cora Maga, you've got sort of regular America first Republicans, and that second group is split, but MAGA's not. They support the president, though, a little bit less than 100% now. It was like, now I think it's 90. So how can you win the midterms with those numbers? Well, back up just a minute. I mean, you know, at real clear, we average the polls just so because you're quoting you go that's a recent poll but according to our average on the approval of war it's 51 53.1 percent disapprove 39.6 approved so but your overall point is correct it's it's these are not great numbers well what um no in the past three days we've had like a slew of polls we've had four plus polls all of which have these same yeah no no i'm not

i'm saying the numbers are not good and the answer to your question is I think the problem with Trump is that he he not only if he motivates his base but he motivates the Democrats maybe a little bit more and so I think that the fact that he's not on the ballot is a problem because Trump voters might not come out as much but what we're seeing in all these special elections and every special election is special I get that but when you look at this trend those are all going against the Republicans as well. So no, I think I think I think he loses the house but I think that people expected him to lose the house anyway just based on sort of historic trends. What about the Senate?

Well, that's an interesting question. I mean, I we've talked about this on our show a lot. I mean, the Senate is an interesting thing because in my view, the Senate comes much down to much more down to sort of a candidate quality in these individual races. So you really have to look at individual race races, but overall, certainly it's more in play right now than people thought, you know, three or four months ago. Can I just, can I just add, you know, setting, even if you set aside Donald Trump and the Iran war, Republicans have an enthusiasm gap, right? That's very clear. And what's going on in Congress? Like, they won't pass the Save Act. They just, like, did this, the Senate just did this ridiculous deal, declared victory and went home for two weeks. And Mike Johnson was

like, what are you doing? So there is huge, huge frustration with the elected leaders in Congress from the base of the Republican Party. And you could really see the bottom drop out to the point where they're just like, I'm not voting for these guys at all. I'm not going. I'm not doing it. And then they would lose the Senate. I mean, they definitely, there are enough seats out there that Democrats could pick up.

If the bottom really fell out, they could easily get there. I shouldn't say easily, but they could definitely get there. And that would mean Susan Collins would lose in Maine. That would mean, you know, they might lose. Talarico might win in Texas? Yeah, maybe. I think it more like Alaska, Ohio, Sherrod Brown would win there. And they defend in Georgia and Michigan.

And suddenly, you know, you're right knocking on the door of 51 votes. And so that is certainly possible because from what I see where I sit, there's frustration with Trump, but there's also huge frustration with like John Thune and all the Republican leadership in the Senate in particular. What is this, Debbie, that you send me? Is this Republicans? Okay. She's pointing out to that same Yugov poll, the polling of Republicans shows that as of March 9th, Trump had 83% approval of the war. By March 30th, it was down to 68%. So he's losing now Republicans, too, by pretty significant amounts. I mean, if you look back at when the Iraq war

began, the numbers were far, far, far better than this. The majority of the country supported the effort. And that was across the board. It wasn't just like the one party, the Republican Party that George Bush was from. Now, you've got the numbers dwindling by 20, just about 20 points, down 15 points, even amongst Republicans from a couple of weeks ago. So it's not great. Here's the other that I'm looking at, Tom. So in 2026, the midterms, Republicans defend 23 of 35 seats, but many are in red states. So there's not a lot of, not a ton of opportunities for the Democrats to convert. They could do it to gain control, but it's not great. In 2008, 34 Senate seats are up. Of those 19 are held by Republicans, 15 by Democrats. Republicans have to defend more seats.

Democrats have more pickup opportunities. And so I think the thinking is what, like, they can't give up three or four seats in 26 and then be exposed to that map in 28. Yeah. And then, you know, if, let's say J.D. Vance is the nominee, which at this point, he's probably, you know, the favorite, according to all the polls. And I think that's probably right. And he's got to defend Trump's record, and let's say the economy hasn't been great or isn't great, he's got to defend war and all that, you're looking at Democrats controlling the White House, the Senate, and the House. They would have, you know, all the powers of government at their disposal, at their disposal, and they would immediately, I'm sure, abolish the filibuster, legislative filibuster and just get rid of

the filibuster. Absolutely. Hold that thought. That's where I want to take it. Quick break. We'll be right back with the guys from RCP on the backside of this. Don't go away. When you are in a business growth mindset, you know how much the basic stuff matters, like how you talk to customers or clients and keep your team aligned. A more modern setup makes everything run smoother. So I want to tell you about one of our sponsors, Quo, spelled QUO, the modern alternative to running your business communications.

Quo works right from an app on your phone or computer unless you keep your existing number, add new numbers or teammates, and sync, your CRM. Your entire team can handle calls and texts from one shared number, so there's no mixed messages or missed, mixed or missed. And Quo's AI automatically logs calls, generates summaries, and highlights next steps, so nothing gets lost. It can even qualify leads or respond after hours, ensuring your business stays responsive. Make this the season where no opportunity and no customer slips away. Try Quo for free. Plus, get 20% off your first six months, when you go to quo.com slash mk. That's QUO.com slash mk. Quo. No missed calls. No missed connections.

Hey, everyone. It's me, Megan Kelly. I've got some exciting news. I now have my very own channel on Sirius XM. It's called the Megan Kelly channel. And it is where you will hear the truth, unfiltered, with no agenda, and no apologies. Along with the Megan Kelly show, you're going to hear from people like Mark Halperin, Link Lauren Callahan, Emily Dushinsky, Jesse Kelly. Real clear politics. and many more. It's bold, no BS news. Only on the Megan Kelly Channel, Sirius XM 111 and on the Sirius XM app.

Just take a look here. Oh, hello, most house retirement since 1930. So far this cycle, already 36, 36. That is the grand record over the last nearly 100 years. My goodness gracious, that actually beats the former record in total, which was 34 back in the 2018 cycle. and that wasn't that long ago, and I do recall that was a very, very good year

for House Democrats. The bottom line is this, you don't run for the exits unless you know trouble is brewing, and House Republicans so far believe trouble is absolutely brewing. Okay, what they're looking at is the President of the United States

and his approval ratings. So why don't we just take a look here? Why are GOP retiring? Okay, when the President's approval is less than 50%, I went back all the way through the record, all the way back since 1938 and midterm elections.

When the House, the press party in the House, on average, loses 34 seats, loses 34 seats when the president's approval rating is less than 50%. Well, that's certainly not what we want to see come November. Welcome back to the Megan Kelly show. Tom Bevin and Andrew Walworth are back with me.

It is amazing the number of retirements they're having amongst Republicans in the House, Andrew. And a lot of people thought, it was because, you know, leading up to now, it's tough to ever buck Trump. You know, they're kind of a rubber stamp. And if they're not a rubber stamp, he attacks them. And so, like, it's just not a pleasant life. You know, now it's maybe that's still there or not, but it's like, you're also probably going to lose, right? Like they see their fortunes rise or fall with the presidents is basically what they're seeing. And probably even worse so, because they're not Donald Trump. And

Donald Trump's not on the ticket. At least he has some hope of getting like the MAGA faithful out there to vote Republican. But when in the midterm, he's not there, I don't know. You tell me how does it affect your average Republican House member? Well, I think those numbers are indicative of just what he was saying, which is that basically a lot of Republicans are thinking it's two things. It's not that fun to be in the House right now. And second of all, they're going to lose. So why bother? So I think that's bad for Republicans. I think what might be, you know, what the Republicans hoped would offset this a little bit would be redistricting. But it doesn't even look like they're going to pick up any many seats through redistricting. So, you know, I think all indications are pointing to a bad midterm for the Republicans in the House. I mean, I don't think there's an other way to look at it. Having said that, you remember, Tom, the midterms of 2022.

and we really thought there was going to be a red wave and it turned into a trickle. It was like not a wave. They did take control of the house, but it was like a tiny, tiny, tiny margin. So it was like, I don't know. Like how much stock can we put into these historical trends? Because things do seem to be a little different now. People are entrenched in their partisanship. I don't know.

Yeah, no, I agree with that. I mean, Harry Enton, smart guy, whatever, but like, there are a couple different things, right, that comparing 1900 and the 1930s to now is completely different, right? And one of the things is Trump. I mean, Trump's never had 50% job approval rating. He came in in 2016 with, I think, 44% job approval rating and went down from there. And Republicans, you know, he still managed to win Senate seats in 2018, even though Republicans lost. And the other thing, too, is that historic number of 34 seats, that he was mentioning on average, well, because of redistricting, because of gerrymandering

at what's been going on, there just aren't that many seats at play. I mean, so even if Republicans have a terrible night, you know, maybe they'd lose 25 seats, but they just aren't, by the time you get to 34 seats, you're into deep Republican territory. And some of those retirements, by the way, are, you know, Sam Graves just retired from Missouri. And these are deep Republican districts. They're getting out just because they're they're tired of the job or whatever. It's not like those seats are going to go Democratic. So, but the point is taken that when the ones are blowing against you, you know, it's a lot of these folks decide that they're just done with it. It is. It's a light of being the minor. You know, we can talk about how big a wave it'll be,

but it looks like it's going to switch the control of the house. And that and that's, I mean, it is sort of a light switch here. I mean, with it and the Democrats, at least traditionally have been a little bit more disciplined than the Republicans when they have a narrow majority. So if that trend holds, I mean, you know, maybe they'll only have a five-seat advantage in the House, but does it really matter whether it's five or 30 seats? Well, I mean. And who will be the happiest man in Washington, Tom Bevin, if the Democrats take control of the House of Representatives? Who's going to be the happiest man in Washington?

Mm-hmm. Yeah. I don't know. Mike. Mike Johnson? Yes. Yes, he's such a nice guy, but he seems so unhappy in that role. Well, it is just a thankless, thankless job. It is a thankless job, particularly on the Republican side.

To Andy's point, Nancy Pelosi did a better job of managing a very slim majority. Hakeem Jeffries is no Nancy Pelosi. So, you know, even if he's got a five-seat majority, it's going to be tough. And certainly, you know, if Democrats win the Senate, they'd have a, at best, maybe a one-seat majority there. So it'd be 51-49. And then you still got President Trump as a backstop to veto anything. So, you know, it's going to be, we're in a very tribal, very partisan, very evenly divided country.

We have been for a number of cycles. And this is just the way, you know, one side gets a tiny majority in the House or a tiny majority in the Senate. And they're not able to necessarily do a lot with it other than investigate, which is certainly something that, Democrats will do if they get control of House oversight. And if they went control of the Senate, they will definitely, well, they're probably going to start impeachment proceedings in the House anyway. Yeah. But two cheers for Mike Johnson.

Let's talk a little bit about the presidential. Yeah, two cheers for him for sure. I was going to say, I mean, I like the guy. He's done a hell of a job when people didn't even know who he was before he took the office. I know. And like he's managed to keep the president happy and not have a full revolt in the house, but he's now controversial, obviously, given the role. I want to ask you one other things.

So I'm not going to play it, but Harry Anton did another thing on J.D. Vance versus himself and his 2028 odds. And he showed that Vance had fallen from 53% odds. It wasn't a poll. It was like a polymarket thing. 53% likelihood of becoming the nominee six months ago to he says 37% today. And again, that's not a poll. that's like you go to polymarket or one of these betting sites. And, you know, when people have to put money behind it,

the theory is that it'll accurately reflect what the public sentiment is. That's, it's probably not a great time to ask that question, right? Because, like, the Trump administration's fortunes aren't favored at the moment, given everything that's going on. But is there any doubt in your mind that J.D. Vance will be the next nominee, Andrew? Because I feel like for me, I have no doubt that unless he chooses not to run, he's going to be the nominee. I think last time I looked at the polymarkets,

I think Donald Trump Jr. was in second place in those betting. So I don't put a lot of stock in the betting right now. But yeah, you would have to, you would have to say that I think he's going to be the nominee. I mean, you know, people talk about Rubio. But, you know, if you look at what's going on right now and, you know, and Rubio being so identified with the war, I wouldn't think his stock is rising.

I'd be curious to see what the money markets say. So that's very interesting, Tom, because if you talk to sort of the neocons in the Republican Party, they're like, Marco, it's Marco. Nobody likes JD now. You know, JD's going down and Marco's going up. And I have to say, from where I've been sitting,

I'm like, what are you based that on? Like that's just instinct? Because the war's not going well. Trump's, Trump is the grand poohba. You know, the party loves Trump. Even the non-Maga people tend to love Trump if you're a Republican. He's got, amongst Republicans, very high approval ratings. So if his number can go down, anyone's can, including Marco Rubio, who's much more associated with the war and with hawkishness, than J.D.

And I also think it's significant that they're saying J.D. should be the negotiator to bring this thing to a close because, like, the Iranians can trust him since he's not hawkish and he can get the president on the phone whenever he wants to. Yeah, look, it's interesting. I mean, on one hand, he's the heavy favorite, and you have to assume that he is going to run and will most likely be the nominee. However, look, I've talked to a bunch of folks who have and seen some of this stuff online, and you always fall into that trap,

am I too online? Is this really representative of what's going on in the country? But the folks who were America First or she was like, that's it. Anybody who's involved in this administration, anybody who got us into this around, whether it's, whether it's J.D. or Marco, like, we're done. Not doing it. Got to be someone else. Got to be someone from outside to sort of, you know, reinvigorate or whatever, MAGA.

So the challenge is going to come, perhaps, in 2028, from someone on that side of the aisle, whether it's Joe Ken or Tucker or somebody else who will come in there and say. They're looking at Tucker, but I can't see a world in which Tucker runs when J.D. is running. They're too close. Right. I agree with that. And but the thing is then, okay, but JD's going to have to, therefore, somehow, you know, he's going to have to distance himself from Trump on this issue. He's going to sort of have to reassert the fact that, yeah, I wasn't really for this war, but I was, you know, I was loyal and I was doing my duty and all that. I think to sort of recapture some of those folks. And whether they believe him or not, whether they think he's sincere about that or not, he certainly had this sort of non-interventionist bona fides, you know, before. he became vice president. And even during the early Iran exchange, he was on those text messages where he was like,

I don't think this is a good idea. That's the JD that I think people, at least on the MAGAS side, they like that part of him. And so again, a lot of this depends on how does this war work out? Is it still a disaster six months from now? Is it a disaster? Are we still there a year from now? Then does he have to defend it as he's starting to kick in

to his campaign for president? That's going to be a really interesting thing to watch and to see him maneuver. It is going to be very interesting because I think, Andrew, he needs to give the answer that Kamala Harris failed to give on the view. You know, is there anything you would have done differently? He's going to have to say, with all due respect to the boss, you know, going into Iran probably wouldn't have been my choice. But I believed in the president because he's smarter than the rest. And that, as I said publicly at the time, I could get behind it because Trump is a unique commander in chief, unlike George W. Bush or Barack Obama. Obama. But when he's going to have to give this answer, he's still going to be working for Trump.

And while Trump will be a lame duck at this point, is Trump ever a lame duck? Like when he leaves the office, he's still going to be very loud, very influential in this contest and every other Republican contest for a long time. Yeah, I think when you look back on this period, you'll, you know, we will think about how he talked about both Rubio and Vance and how much we tried to figure out where he was leaning. Because sometimes, remember this? We made a big deal. In fact that he would mention Rubio first when he was talking about the two of them as being the next leader of Maga. And the fact that he was talking about Rubio being the next leader of Maga at all was kind of interesting to a lot of people. It's just too early to tell. It's so much depends upon

how the war goes. And, you know, if we're all vacationing in Cuba and playing golf in Greenland, I mean, you know, the world might be. Yeah. It may look very different. They may all be clamoring to take credit for these adventures. Well, Cuba, I mean, you know, Trump keeps saying Cuba's going to fall on its own because they have no oil. They have no electricity. We're letting one oil tanker go through from the Russians so that like probably the government officials can turn on their lights. But it's going so poorly there that it is possible something could be negotiated with Cuba. Yeah. The regime's not so great. They're really not so pro-America. Yeah. I don't know. I've been waiting to play golf in Cuba.

I don't think that the possibility of military operations down there is still on the table after this disastrous Iran thing. I've been waiting to play golf in Cuba for a long time. Every time we predict they're going to fall in six months, they don't seem to do so. I'm just a little skeptical. But I thought that was interesting, Megan. I think Trump, when he initially launched the strikes against Iran, really did think think and was told and was convinced that, you know, We could get this done in four to six weeks, despite the fact that his regime had been in power for 47 years and had total control of the media and all the guns and everything. And then, you know, he turns around and he says the same thing about Cuba.

Oh, I think they're going to fall like pretty soon. It's going to happen. It's like, well, maybe or maybe not. I mean, that regime has been in power a long time as well. Same situation. And these regimes are much more durable than sometimes our politicians think they are. So I thought that was in, I would love to see it happen. I think everybody would love to see it happen, most of all Marco Rubio, and because he's got

family ties and all that. But it's not just going to happen organically, I don't think. That's the Cuban people have been suffering under that regime for 50, 60 years. Well, the other thing that we didn't talk about with Marco is, you know, and I like Marco. I'd vote for him in a heartbeat, but it's not great. They kind of put him in the position that Pam Bondi put herself in with the, I've got the Jeffrey Epstein file, the client list on my desk right now, right? Like, she put herself in that position by saying it it wasn't true. And then she had the influencers there and she embarrassed the influencers.

Poor Marco kind of took a similar shot to the face in being the one who had to come out and be like, we did this because Israel said they were doing it. and we knew that we would get attacked. And we didn't want to get attacked first. We wanted to do the attacking first. So that's the reason we did it now because of Israel. And then everybody was like, and he was like, oh, what I said?

We did it because of the Navy and the Air Force and the missiles. And it was like, suddenly the whole thing about Israel went away as though the evil press had made it up. It's like, no, you're on camera. You said it. You're stuck with it. I think he's been dinged up a little bit by that. You know, I'm sure the administration gave him permission to say that,

not realizing the amount of blowback he'd get. So it's just an interesting, you know, footnote to whose fortunes are rising and whose may not be. I, too, would love to see Cuba. They say wonderful things about Havana. It's supposed to be very beautiful because of the embargo and all that. They say that all the cars are stuck in like the 1950s styles that we had here. You know, we might go down the street and see an Ed Solstall.

It's very like full of pastel colors and warm winter nights. And if we could just get rid of those pesky communists, it might be a lovely thing for the United States to have in the toolbox, you know, as a territory or not, you know, not a state. Imagine how prosperous they'd be with all the tourism dollars they generate to be remarkable. Seriously. I don't just like having a rum drink, Panama hat, like one of those white suits. I always thought that that would be fun.

So big Trump hotel right there in downtown Havana. Yeah. Yes, I would do it. That one I'm kind of rooting for. I was talked into Greenland too. Never talked into Iran, however, and remain against that one. Guys, thank you both so much. You got it.

Thanks, man. Thanks. Great to see you. Don't forget to check out the real clear politics podcast. You can listen to it live right here on SiriusXM, Channel 11, right before we air, or you can listen to it via pod later, wherever you get your podcasts. That was Tom Bevan and Andrew. Walworth. Carl Cannon is also part of the crowd, though not today. Thank you all so much for listening.

We will be back tomorrow and we look forward to talking to you then. We've got a couple of interesting legal cases we're going to go through. Stay tuned. Okay, see you then. Thanks for listening to the Megan Kelly Show. No BS, no agenda, and no fear.