Ben Shapiro debunks Tucker Carlson's unverified CIA referral claims, exposing them as political theater while analyzing the Oscars as left-wing agitprop. He details Trump's strategy to secure the Strait of Hormuz and dismisses false rumors about Iranian leadership, contrasting U.S. military successes with legacy media narratives. The discussion highlights shifting public support for Gaza strikes, the strategic value of ending the Iran nuclear deal, and rising Indo-Pacific energy deals worth $56 billion. Finally, Shapiro critiques New York's proposed estate tax compared to Republican tax cuts, concluding that Trump's assertive foreign policy effectively counters Iranian pressure while boosting American economic standing. [Automatically generated summary]
So the other day I found out that the CIA is preparing some kind of criminal referral against me, a crime report, the Department of Justice on the basis of a supposed crime I committed.
What's that crime?
Well, talking to people in Iran before the war.
They read my texts.
So the crime under consideration apparently would be the Foreign Agent Act or something like that, acting as an agent of a foreign power.
And I don't expect this to go anywhere.
I'm not too worried about an actual criminal case against me for a bunch of reasons.
Yesterday, we heard from a whistleblower within the U.S. government who reached out to warn us that the NSA, the National Security Agency, is monitoring our electronic communications and is planning to leak them in an attempt to take the show off the air.
The NSA at the time denied the accusation, saying, quote, this allegation is untrue.
Tucker Carlson has never been an intelligence target of the agency, and the NSA has never had any plans to try to take his program off the air.
Tucker's story never led anywhere, it should be noted.
It's quite possible Tucker's texts or communications were caught up in surveillance that the NSA or CIA were doing of foreign agents.
If Tucker was just negotiating to have on a foreign figure and aides to that figure were being surveilled, his emails or texts might crop up.
That still would not mean that Tucker Carlson was being targeted.
Let's also be clear on Tucker Carlson's rights.
Tucker has the right to talk to people abroad.
Of course, the Foreign Agents Registration Act, that is the act Tucker pretends he doesn't know about, requires people to register as a foreign agent if they act at the, quote, order request or under the direction or control of a foreign principal.
So, Tucker talking with the Iranian government or kissing their asses or even spreading their propaganda at his own behest would fall under the protection of the First Amendment.
In other words, it is highly unlikely that Tucker Carlson is about to be hit with a farah prosecution.
I believe him when he says he's not being paid by outside sources.
I think that Tucker Carlson is being truly anti-American all on his own.
And now comes the speculation.
There are a few possibilities worth examining here.
And let me just say right now, we see a lot of people make up news stories.
DW remains committed to actually bringing you the truth and analyzing things based on the facts, which is why you should subscribe at dailywire.com slash subscribe.
All right, so back to the possibilities.
The first is that Tucker Carlson is saying something that isn't true.
Tucker Carlson has a very, very long history of lying.
He does it on nearly every show, from openly accusing his own political opponents of being in the pay of foreign powers to linking Chabad, again, Chabad.
Chabad is this Jewish outreach organization that like wraps filling on people at public events of facilitating World War III from jabbering nonsensically about the supposed Hazarian roots of Jews to simply making up false flag Israeli attacks in Qatar.
That last lie was so egregious it had to be formally rebutted by his own friends in Qatar.
They literally had to put out a statement saying that actually there were no Mossad cells arrested in Qatar.
Now, what's particularly incredible about this story is that in order to believe that Tucker is the victim, you need to believe two things.
First, he's guilty of nothing.
And second, the Trump administration, again, Trump is the head of the administration, the Trump administration, CIA, which again falls under the purview of Tulsi Gabbard as the DNI.
And again, President Trump, the Trump CIA, is targeting him, not the Biden administration, the Trump administration CIA is targeting him.
You have to believe not that his texts were incidentally caught up in a sweep of Iranian cell phone data.
That, by the way, is what Mark Caputo of Axios is reporting this morning.
You have to believe, no, that according to Tucker, he was targeted.
That would make the Trump administration, the people he constantly claims he loves, some of the most nefarious abusers of the law in American history.
It would put President Trump at the head of a Nixonian conspiracy to silence Tucker Carlson.
It would put Trump at the head of that conspiracy, not the Jews, not Chabad, not Mark Levin, not me, Donald J. Trump, who's the head of the executive branch.
So, why would Tucker lie about this?
Well, because Tucker, like so many in the grievance party, enjoys playing the victim.
See, here's the thing: Tucker is not a victim, he is worth tens of millions of dollars at the very least.
His show is very successful.
He has the ear of the vice president of the United States and, until recently, was a frequent guest at the White House.
He may be again.
His son is the vice president's deputy press secretary.
He owns sweet real estate in Florida and Maine, and now apparently in Qatar.
Tucker Carlson is, by pretty much any available metric, one of the least victimized human beings in the history of all humankind.
But claiming victimhood gives Tucker Carlson unearned sympathy.
You see, he's not just a country club blue-blood silver spoon who went to school in Switzerland and is shocked at the ways of the peasants who shop at Aldi's.
He is now the target of the nefarious United States government, and in particular, the CIA.
And victimhood, if you're a member of the grievance party, is heroism.
So, let's say that Tucker Carlson had his eye on something beyond merely cheap clicks from conspiratorially minded ex-users.
Let's say he wanted to build a movement against the Trump administration.
Would that square with this accusation?
It would, of course.
Candace Owens, fresh off of finally solving the mystery of Jack the Ripper by uncovering Benjamin Netanyahu's time machine, a time machine Charlie Crook told her about in her dream, has signed into chat to explain, quote, If they come for Tucker, we ride at dawn.
Really, nothing else to say here.
We're not doing the Gulags 2.0 with these Bolshevik descendants.
By ride at dawn, she means she's going to go on her podcast and say things.
Marjorie Taylor Greene, the newest critic of the Trump administration, is openly saying it, quote, If you're noticing Tucker Carlson being attacked from literally every direction of the political machine, it's because they are terrified of him running for president.
I assume they hear is President Trump because he would win and they know it.
And that's why I'm deeply concerned for my friend Tucker Carlson and his family.
These people are vicious and evil and will attempt to destroy anyone and everyone that reveals the truth.
They so if Tucker were trying to initiate some sort of anti-Trump movement for 2028, that's a possibility.
And again, that possibility would be that Tucker Carlson is lying for political gain.
That brings us to the second, not incompatible possibility that he's actually trying to get ahead of a story that might break about his texts.
So again, let's assume Tucker is telling the truth about the CIA having his text messages.
Not about the CIA targeting him, but about him being caught up in an incidental sweep of Iranian sources.
By the way, it is literally the job of the CIA and the NSA to monitor the communications of our enemies.
And if Tucker was talking with those enemies, he might be incidentally caught up.
That doesn't mean he's being targeted.
And again, let's assume that Tucker didn't do anything criminal because the only one telling us he's even under investigation for criminal activity is Tucker Carlson.
And because I don't generally assume criminality unless there is evidence of a provable crime.
So, if, in fact, the CIA is reading Tucker's texts, why is he talking about it?
Well, as anyone in public relations knows, the general rationale for doing what Tucker just did is to get ahead of a story that might be bad.
Blame the CIA, impugn the administration, anything in order to avoid the consequences of texts you know are about to break.
That's a possibility, too.
We'll find out which one or both is true in short order.
Or maybe we won't.
Maybe this is yet another stupid cycle of Jussie Smollett victimhood from the same grievance party that always traffics in such faux victimhood.
The same grievance party that plays host to Candace Owens, who claims the French were trying to kill her.
The same grievance party that routinely burnishes low IQ randos on X who post things like, just tweeting now to tell you I didn't kill myself, or I'm not going to die for Israel, as though they're under true murder threat or are about to be drafted by the nefarious Zionist-occupied government.
Faux victimhood is the name of the game in the grievance party.
Megan Kelly, who has been claiming faux victimhood since her signal failure to defend Erica Kirk against the evil charges of Candace Owens, played that game over the weekend too.
Upset that she'd been called out by Mark Levin, she lashed out, claiming that Mark Levin had a micropenis, a truly dazzling feat of intellectual sophistication from a woman who continues to devolve into a 14-year-old mean girl in a 55-year-old woman's body.
This prompted President Trump to sign into chat to defend Mark Levin.
Quote: Mark Levin, a truly great American patriot, is somewhat under siege by other people with far less intellect, capability, and love for our country.
Mark is tough, strong, and brilliant, hence the nickname the great one, conceived by our MAGA friend, the wonderful Sean Hannity, after years of dealing with Mark in legal, media, and other capacities.
Mark would often do Sean's show speaking as a lawyer, and Sean realized then, as did others, that he was special.
Mark Levin was not looking to do television, radio, or anything else, but he was drafted by very smart people who understood that there are few like him.
When you hear others unfairly attack Mark, remember they are jealous and angry human beings whose sway is much less than the public understands and will know now that they know where I stand rapidly diminish.
Other than for his wonderful wife and family, Mark Levin only cares and wants one thing: greatness and success for America.
Those that speak ill of Mark will quickly fall by the wayside, as do people whose ideas, policies, and footings are not sound.
They are not MAGA, I am, and MAGA includes not allowing Iran, a sick demented and violent terrorist regime, to have a nuclear weapon to blow up the United States of America, the Middle East, and ultimately the rest of the world.
MAGA is about stopping them cold, and that is exactly what we are doing.
So President Trump calling out some of the grifters.
So, what is the upshot of this Tucker Carlson claim likely to be?
Well, probably the story just dies out in a couple of days, and then everyone just forgets about it.
And then Tucker will continue on to his next bizarro conspiracy theory, all while maintaining that his opponents work for the interests of foreign powers.
There are a bunch of people in the U.S. government who do not put the United States before futures of Israel, period.
And you saw that very clearly with Mike Huckabee.
We interviewed him last week, and there was no sense at all that he represents the United States or has any interest in what happens to the United States.
His party is in defending Israel.
Now, Huckabee is not Jewish.
Who knows what his religion is?
Mike Huckabee's loyalty is to Israel over the United States.
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I think that's probably what's happening.
Well, speaking of people who get paid money to play parts on screen, the Oscars were last night.
I know.
You didn't watch.
Nobody watched.
The Oscars have been in a state of precipitous decline for decades, in part because nobody has seen the movies that are competing for the prestigious Academy Awards.
But it's also because the ceremony has become a left-wing agit prop fest.
Last night, no exception.
The big winner was One Battle After Another, a truly egregiously terrible film about the virtues of domestic terrorism against a white supremacist infrastructure.
The other big winner was Sinners, a critical race theory remake of From Dawn to Dusk.
That's the Tarantino vampire movie.
Meh.
Conan O'Brien, formerly a human who was funny, told a bunch of stale jokes about how much Republicans suck.
Now, all those people who don't agree with our politics, they're probably just, you know, the only thing they've got is Kid Rock and Dave and Busters and all the rest.
Well, yes, guys, there's a reason your ratings are in precipitous decline.
Well, Conan then went on to make some Epstein references as per our usual arrangement.
Of course, we here at the Oscars are always trying to figure out ways to reach a younger demographic.
And I've been assured this next segment will do just that.
When you're host mastering the Oscars and locuinely trying to rizz up the younger demographic by going brain rot mode, and even though you're uncoded with a bunch of fame-killed NPCs, you're still S-tier level aura farming 6'7.
Well, that's a message that the young people will definitely see watching broadcast television.
All in all, it was a totally forgettable evening, and at least most of the Oscar winners stayed out of politics to the disappointment of at least one author in the New York Times, a Daniel Kelman.
Kelman is the author of a book called The Director.
Honestly, it's a really, really good book, like a really, really good book, but also the author of a pretty terrible column on the necessity for actors to say things.
Kelman wrote before the ceremony in the New York Times, quote, Hollywood's great actors and directors are not merely well-known.
They are famous figures everywhere, even in dictatorships now closed to the world, such as Russia and North Korea.
On Oscar night, not only will the eyes of the American public be fixed on them, so will the ears of the entire planet listening for the answer to the question, your country is being turned into a dictatorship.
People are being arrested and shot in the streets.
Your mad king is trampling your venerable constitution underfoot.
What do you have to say about it?
Yes, according to Daniel Kelman, we need to hear from our greatest artists, actors, about their geopolitical analysis.
This, of course, is very silly.
Kelman's book is about a director named G.W. Papps, who's a little-known director from the 1920s and 30s who actually returned to Nazi Germany from the United States in order to be allowed artistic resources by the regime.
His book is about art's surrender to tyranny.
In the book, Pabs is fully complicit with a genocidal Nazi regime.
He even takes advantage of concentration camp victims as extras.
So to equate America in 2026 with Nazi Germany is an act of extreme moral blindness, of course.
But unfortunately, that seems power for the course in much of the artistic community.
That's why actress Charithra Chandran, who I'd never heard of, wore a pin for the anti-Israel ceasefire in Gaza, where Hamas is currently murdering opponents in the streets, but had not a single actor or actress anywhere on the Oscar red carpet.
They had nothing to say about the slaughter of 32,000 Iranians by the regime.
The only truly overtly political moment from any winner came from Paul Thomas Anderson, who won a long overdue Best Director Oscars for one of his worst films.
Here's what he had to say.
unidentified
I wrote this movie for my kids to say sorry for the housekeeping mess that we left in this world we're handing off to them, but also with the encouragement that they will be the generation that hopefully brings us some common sense and decency.
This episode is sponsored by the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews.
Let me paint you a picture.
It's midnight.
Sirens are blaring.
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Now, imagine you're elderly and your legs don't work the way they used to.
Getting downstairs feels impossible after all that.
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This is what's happening as Iran continues to launch missiles into Israel indiscriminately.
Children are being traumatized, families exhausted, homes have been destroyed.
That's why the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews is there on the ground, bringing food, emergency equipment, care for children, and help for the elderly, and supplying bomb shelters and medical centers with critically needed essentials.
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Again, the ongoing war in Israel has continued for essentially three years at this point.
And so the necessity to help people out remains.
Check out the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews and help out right now.
But Shalom is great.
All righty, back to Syria's news.
Speaking of manure merchants, the legacy media and Iranian government had themselves a ball this weekend promoting a series of propagandistic lies that would make Pinocchio blush.
Last Thursday, a radical Muslim terrorist attempted to attack a synagogue and Jewish school in Michigan.
That terrorist name was Ayman Ghazali, a Lebanese-born U.S. citizen from the radical Islamist hotbed of Dearborn, Michigan.
Defenders of radical Islam immediately jumped into the fray, declaring that Ghazali's action was revenge for Israeli evil.
Ryan Grimm of Dropsight News, a far left-wing propaganda outfit, put out this tweet: The man who rammed his explosives laden truck into a Michigan synagogue today was named Ayman Khazale, according to a source familiar with the situation.
Khazale posted photos overnight of his family members, including young children, who were killed in a recent Israeli attack on the town of Mashgara, Lebanon.
This is a developing story.
Now, you'll notice the framing here that Israel randomly attacked Lebanese civilians and that the terror attack was a natural response.
First of all, that's totally crazy.
Zero American Jews, zero, went and randomly attacked mosques after October 7th.
But it also turns out that the two brothers of the terrorists were, wait for it, wait for it, wait for it.
Terrorists for Hezbollah.
As CBS News reports, Khazali was originally from Mahgara, a town in southern Lebanon with a significant Hezbollah presence and influence.
Apparently, a freelance journalist working for CBS News in Lebanon learned from sources on the ground that Ghazali's two brothers stayed in Lebanon and were members of a Hezbollah rocket unit in southern Lebanon.
The two brothers were killed in a drone strike carried out by the IDF on March 5th.
According to the New York Post, one of those brothers, Ibrahim Mohamed Khazali, was a weapons operations commander in Hezbollah's badr unit.
But Grimm's tweet quickly rocketed around the internet.
Some like Megan Kelly retweeted it, only slightly better, was the original New York Times headline: quote: The Michigan synagogue attacker was a quiet restaurant worker.
Well, then, as long as he provided enough napkins to the Shwarma customers, he worked at an actual Schwarma shop.
I guess the whole being a terrorist thing, not a big deal.
But falsehood has become the order of the day when it comes to Middle East coverage, and Iran knows it.
That's why they promote conspiratorial nonsense that taps directly into the toxic power plant that is X. Over the weekend, Iranian National Security Secretary Ali Larijani, who may in fact be the guy running Iran right now, tweeted, quote, I've heard that the remaining members of Epstein's network have devised a conspiracy to create an incident similar to 9-11 and blame Iran for it.
Iran fundamentally opposes such terrorist schemes and has no war with the American people.
The reason he is tweeting this is obvious.
He knows it will be amplified by the Democratic Party, the Grievance Party, their acolytes on X, which, of course, it has been.
Again, there's a reason that Tucker Carlson parrots pretty much every Iranian conspiracy theory and did just a couple of weeks ago.
Hasn't been reported, but it's a fact that last night in Qatar and Saudi Arabia, authorities arrested Mossad agents planning on committing bombings in those countries.
Now, that's weird.
That doesn't make any sense.
Why would the Israelis be committing bombings in two Gulf countries, which are also being attacked by Iran?
All of this falsehood is minor league stuff, though, compared to the broader narrative being crafted by the legacy media and Democratic Party that America is currently suffering some sort of catastrophic military defeat.
Over the weekend, the Wall Street Journal, whose newspages actually left of the New York Times, said this: quote, the joint U.S. military operation has killed Iran's supreme leader, targeted military headquarters, and damaged or destroyed more than 90 Iranian vessels.
Yet the price has been steep.
At least 13 Americans have been killed, including six, in a crash Thursday of an Air Force refueling plane, making the war in Iran the deadliest military operation of Trump's two terms.
At least 140 Americans have been wounded in the conflict.
Well, it's true that this is the deadliest conflict of Trump's two terms because he didn't do any other conflicts.
But can we be clear, just for purposes of historical clarity, this has not been a costly action comparatively.
In fact, the Iran action ranks dead last since 1900 in terms of casualties incurred as a result of a major military operation, which is to say, in American history.
But the idea from the legacy media continues to be that catastrophe is right around the corner.
You can feel it permeate every aspect of coverage.
In fact, if you were an alien landing on Earth and just reading the American news, you would probably assume that America was somehow losing the war right now.
And that is not true.
Essentially, America and Israel have completely wrecked Iran's military and defense infrastructure.
Iran has been reduced to lashing out with ballistic missile and drone attacks on every nearby country.
Even those strikes are increasingly desultory given the reduced state of Iran's military capacity.
Iran keeps shutting down its internet because they are afraid that people will coordinate and rise up against the government.
Here was Foreign Minister Abbas Araki trying to justify that move on American national television yesterday.
That, by the way, is not the only scurrilous rumor about Mojtaba.
According to the New York Post, U.S. intelligence believes that Mojdaba is, wait for it, gay.
I'm not kidding.
They think he's an actual member of Queers for Palestine.
They think he's the gay Atolla.
No wonder the Post is now reporting, quote, President Trump was stunned to learn last week that U.S. intelligence indicates a new Iranian supreme leader, Moshtaba Khameni, may be gay, and that his father, the late Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, fearing his suitability to rule the Islamic public for that reason, the Post can reveal.
Trump couldn't contain his surprise and laughed aloud when he was briefed on the intel, according to sources.
I mean, I'm not sure it's possible to love President Trump at this moment more than I love President Trump at this moment.
Others in the room also found it hilarious and joined the president's reaction.
I mean, I'm sorry, it is funny.
While one senior official intelligence official has, quote, not stopped laughing about it for days, said one person familiar with the briefing.
To be fair, it's the funniest thing in the entire world.
Like maybe in modern history.
I mean, I guess we know why the supreme leader of Iran's nickname isn't the straight of hormuz.
This does open up some new possibilities.
Perhaps he will finally want to negotiate.
After all, imagine how much Moshtaba wants to avoid an eternity of 72 women.
If we send him DVDs of Bridgerton, is peace on the horizon?
And we could be watching history in the making.
Since Iran actually transes its gay men, that's a real thing.
They hate gay people so much they would rather, quote unquote, turn them into women.
Since Iran transes all of its gay men, this could mean we are one surgical snip away from the first female supreme leader of Iran.
Her history in the making.
So at this point, what does Iran have on its side?
One geographic advantage, weak westerners too stupid and short-sighted to grab victory when it's in hand, and the willingness of propagandists to do Iran's work.
So, let's talk about that actual real geographic advantage, the Strait of Hormuz.
Again, that's not a nickname for Mushta.
It would be an opposite.
So, as we've discussed for literally years on this program, see, here's the thing: if you listen to this show, you get smarter because I've been talking about things like the Strait of Hormuz or the Strait of Malacca or the Taiwan Straits and the importance of critical waterways for years on this program.
Hey, so man, this is why you listen to the show.
As we have literally discussed for years on this program, the Strait of Hormuz is a vital shipping waterway.
20% of global oil transits the Strait of Hormuz, nearly 40% of it is actually headed for China.
As Secretary of Energy Chris Wright pointed out this weekend, the Strait of Hormuz runs directly next to Iran.
According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration and the International Maritime Organization, the strait is 24 miles wide at its narrowest point.
The only actual navigable part of that 24 miles is where massive oil tankers can pass through deep enough water is only six miles wide.
A highway of two miles going one way, two miles going the other way, and a median between the two of two miles.
The outborn export lane is the northernmost lane.
That places exporting tankers, apparently about 15 miles from the Iranian coastline and anywhere between three to 10 miles from Iranian-owned islands that are even closer.
So, Iran, in an attempt to stave off the end of its regime, has been mining the strait and firing ordnance from its shores at shipping through the strait.
President Trump has struck back by sinking basically the entire Iranian Navy and moving to demine the strait.
They've been trying to put out mine layers in the strait and we're blowing them up.
Weirdly, the country that is actually most endangered by the shutting of the strait is not the United States, it is China.
40 to 50 percent, as we've said, of China's oil transits the strait, which means that China actually has a pretty strong interest in keeping it open.
That, by the way, is why Iran is still letting China use the strait without bombing its ships.
Because if they didn't, China would probably have to work with the United States to keep the Straits of Hormuz open.
And that is what President Trump has been counting on.
Yesterday, he explained his goal on Truth Social and on Air Force One.
So, one of the tactics that President Trump is trying, and he put this up on Truth Social, is trying to get countries who benefit from the Strait of Hormuz to send warships to keep it open.
He wrote, quote, many countries, especially those who are affected by Iran's attempted closure of the Hormuz Strait, will be sending warships in conjunction with the United States of America to keep the strait open and safe.
We've already destroyed 100% of Iran's military capability, but it's easy for them to send a drone or two, drop a mine, or deliver a close-range missile somewhere along or in this waterway, no matter how badly defeated they are.
This, by the way, is why Iran has now been attempting to bomb outlets for oil shipments in the UAE that are sort of on the other side of the Strait of Hormuz to stop them from relieving the pressure on the oil.
Hopefully, says President Trump, China, France, Japan, South Korea, the UK, and others that are affected by this artificial constraint will send ships to the area so that the Hormuz Strait will no longer be a threat by a nation that has been totally decapitated.
In the meantime, the United States will be bombing the hell out of the shoreline and continually shooting Iranian boats and ships out of the water.
One way or another, we'll soon get the Hormuz Strait open, safe, and free.
See, here's the thing: President Trump is not the type of person who is just going to count on our erstwhile allies.
After all, he knows that they are deeply, deeply unreliable.
Just ask the useless Nambi Pambi, Kiastama, the erstwhile prime minister of the UK.
But ultimately, we have to reopen the Strait of Hormuz to ensure stability in the market.
That is not a simple task.
So we're working with all of our allies, including our European partners, to bring together a viable collective plan that can restore freedom of navigation in the region as quickly as possible.
He's going to work with his European allies to do nothing?
Wow.
That thumb with glasses is going to save us all.
And the German defense minister is taking a similarly prone posture.
He explained: quote, what does Trump expect a handful of European frigates to do?
The powerful U.S. Navy cannot.
This is not our war, and we did not start it.
Well, actually, Iran kind of started it 47 years ago, and then they never stopped.
But the Europeans who want our help against Russia in their own backyard suddenly go totally flaccid when it comes to confronting the leading terror sponsors on the planet who are currently shutting down the world's main oil waterway.
But hey, you know, probably the Europeans.
I mean, Starmer said he's going to work with the Europeans and come up with some answers, right?
Well, here's Kirstarmer's answer: This is a vital cause because until we get ourselves off the roller coaster of international oil and gas markets and onto clean, homegrown British energy, tyrants like Putin and the Ayatollahs will be free to attack our energy security.
So he's going to make it harder for people to use oil and natural gas to get it shipped in from the United States or elsewhere in order to 50 years from now suddenly be able to be free of the need for the Strait of Hormuz.
Yep, the Brits want to fight the Iranians with solar panels and windmills.
Good luck to them.
And so the next step, I believe, is coming the United States' seizure of Kharg Island, which again, if you've been listening to the show, you'll know we've been talking about for a while.
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Consistent is what Alvin Plattinga says, and he's correct.
Well, in preparation for that move on Kharg Island, the Pentagon is moving additional Marines and warships to the Middle East.
As the Wall Street Journal is currently reporting, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseph has approved a request from U.S. Central Command, responsible for American forces in the Middle East, for an element of an amphibious ready group, an attached Marine Expeditionary Unit, typically consisting of several warships and 5,000 Marines and sailors, according to those officials.
Now, there could be a lot of reasons for this move.
The most obvious possibility is the United States simply taking Kharg Island.
That is the Coral Island 15 miles off Iran's coast, the place from which 90% of all Iranian oil is refined and then shipped.
Late on Friday, President Trump announced that already the United States had taken out the military resources on Kharg Island.
Quote, moments ago in my direction, U.S. CENTCOM executed one of the most powerful bombing raids in the history of the Middle East and totally obliterated every military target in Iran's crown jewel, Kharg Island.
President Trump said, our weapons are the most powerful and sophisticated that the world has ever known, but for reasons of decency, I have chosen not to wipe out the oil infrastructure on the island.
However, should Iran or anyone else do anything to interfere with the free and safe passage of ships through the Strait of Hormuz, I will immediately reconsider this decision.
During my first term and currently, I rebuilt our military into the most lethal, powerful, and effective force by far anywhere in the world.
Iran has no ability to defend anything we want to attack.
There is nothing they can do about it.
Iran will never have a nuclear weapon, nor will it have the ability to threaten the U.S., the Middle East, or for that matter, the world.
Iran's military and all others involved with this terrorist regime would be wise to lay down their arms and save what's left of their country, which isn't much.
Thank you for your attention to this matter, President Trump.
Well, here's some of the footage of the United States striking Karg Island.
This is from CENTCOM.
You can see that's making things go boom.
That is what the United States military is incredibly good at.
Just busting up Iranian military facilities on Kharg Island while leaving all of the oil infrastructure intact.
Look at the sophisticated.
I mean, you can see there's like a populated area right across the road, and we're hitting specific targets.
We're hitting planes on the tarmac, blowing up the ability of the Iranians to actually fly their planes out.
It's incredible, incredible stuff from the U.S. military, which of course is performing in an extraordinary fashion.
Well, I sort of doubt that the United States is going to stop here.
It makes little sense to leave Kharg Island totally intact and in the control of the Iranians if the Iranians are still threatening the Strait of Hormuz.
And remember, when it comes to dictatorships, it is the flow of money that dictates power.
If you cannot pay your IRGC members to murder dissidents, why would they continue to work for you?
Right now, there are no working banks in Iran.
Apparently, they shut down the rest of the banks.
The ATMs aren't even working in Iran.
There is no money.
Soon, there may be no oil flow.
So what comes next?
Well, Crown Prince of Iran, Reza Pahlavi, he's the one who is the son of the Shah, and there's a big movement inside Iran to sort of bring him back as a figurehead.
He announced his goals over the weekend to free the economy from military control, to reclaim Iranian wealth abroad and return it to Iran, to cut off Iranian wealth going toward terrorism, to take anti-corruption measures and to invest in human capital of Iran and connect it to the global economy.
So what happens next?
Well, it sort of depends.
Everybody wants the regime to fall in the next five minutes.
David Friedman, former U.S. ambassador to Israel, made a fantastic point online the other day.
He said, listen, Ronald Reagan made the Bring Down This Wall speech in 1987.
Took a couple of years for the Soviet Union to fall.
So, everybody take a little bit of a breath.
That doesn't mean unending conflict in Iran or years-long conflict, but if the regime is so weakened that in six months it's gone, that is one of the great historic moves by any administration in American history.
So, here's the question: Where are Americans in terms of the polling?
Well, despite the insanity of the Grievance Party and the Panicans and the Democrats, the American people are still ready to give President Trump time.
In fact, the current conflict in Iran is more popular than it was when it began.
According to a new Washington Post poll, while only 39% of Americans were in favor when it was initiated, versus 52% opposed today, 42% support it and 40% oppose.
The share of Americans who say we ought to continue the strikes has now risen from one quarter to 34%.
Meanwhile, the share saying we need to stop has declined from 47% to 42%.
Suffice it to say, Americans are pretty split on the war.
I have to do what's And we're going to let Iran have a nuclear weapon to blow up the entire Middle East and beyond, right?
Because, you know, they were going to blow up the Middle East.
If I didn't terminate the Obama-horrible deal, the Iran nuclear deal, it's called, if I didn't terminate that in my first term, they would have already had a nuclear weapon and they would have used it immediately upon getting it.
It went from, I think we had one more after the conference closed.
I think we went from $56 billion to $57 billion over 22 deals.
We had over 630 attendees at this conference, the first ever Indo-Pacific energy security conference led by the United States here.
And of course, this is all of our Pacific allies from Australia, New Zealand, all the way up to Japan.
And this conference was planned months ago completely independent of anything going on in the Middle East because this is President Trump's energy dominance policy is about the fact that we need to sell energy to our friends and allies so they don't have to buy from adversaries.
And reportedly, the Chinese are kind of freaking out.
According to the Wall Street Journal, President Trump's use of military force in Venezuela and Iran reinforces a view long held in Beijing.
The U.S. will use all means necessary to assert American dominance around the world, a posture that threatens China's core interests.
Apparently, Xi is now concluding that the U.S. must be approached with toughness.
That is really, really silly.
That he ever supposed the U.S. could be approached with weakness, like he was going to be moving forward with detente in the absence of American strength.
The difference is that before there was somebody who was a pansy on the other end, and now there is someone tough on the other end representing the United States.
Other Chinese allies are also weakening.
Cuba is in very serious existential trouble due to the Trump administration's stranglehold on Venezuela.
The oil that was holding up Cuba is gone now, and the protests in the streets are growing.
Here's some of the video.
You can see major protests in the streets of Cuba.
This is only going to continue, by the way.
I mean, children, adults, women marching in the streets.
Cubans were actually rioting outside the Communist Party headquarters.
Things are getting very serious for the Cuban communist regime.
This regime is not long for this world.
Thank God.
Peace through strength breeds victory.
Weakness and appeasement breed only a stronger enemy.
And stalling for time typically favors America's enemies.
Meanwhile, on the home front, Democratic states continue to alienate their producers by raising taxes.
Zara Mamdani, fresh from his week of soft-peddling the threat of radical Islam, was back to soaking the rich over the weekend.
Being in the wealthiest city and the wealthiest country in the history of the world, we already see an exodus of working and middle-class New Yorkers.
So I don't have a hesitation in asking those who make the most amount of money in the city or the most profits in the city to pay a little bit more so that everyone can actually stay in this city.
Except that they're not going to stay in the city.
Bloomberg is reporting that Mamdani now wants the New York estate tax, like the basis for it, cut to $750,000 and he wants to increase the confiscation rate to 50%, from something like 16%, like to 50%.
Meaning, let's say you inherited a $2 million home from your parents.
You would now owe 50% on $1.25 million, thus losing about a third of your total inheritance.
Well, listen, New Yorkers, you voted for this.
Republican states, by contrast, are moving to lower taxes.
States including Mississippi, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Missouri, are moving to decrease their income tax rates.
The Wall Street Journal reports in 2006, 15 states had top income tax rates on wage income below 5%.
Just one exceeded 10%, according to the Tax Foundation, a group that favors lower rates and fewer breaks.
Now, more than half of the states have gone below 5%.
Five others plus DC are in double digits.
Actually, I think this is great.
Let the American people choose with their feet.
Some of us already did.
Folks, so bottom line: when we look at the state of the world, President Trump continues to win.
If you think he is going to allow the Strait of Hormuz to remain closed, you have another thing coming.
And every day that the Iranians try to exert more and more and more pressure, every single day, President Trump will push even harder on the other end.
And the people who right now are trying to undermine the Trump administration with silly rumors, terrible rumors about the Trump administration coming after them.
I'm just going to say right now, my belief, it's nonsense.
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