Episode 5238: Markets Shift As Talks With Iran Begin
President Trump's conflicting accounts regarding Iran negotiations create market volatility, as the "taco trade" sees oil prices swing between threats of strikes on power plants and potential deals securing the Strait of Hormuz. Domestically, pressure mounts to pass the Save America Act requiring voter ID, while ICE deploys agents to Atlanta and Houston airports for election security tests amidst reports of a 43% crime reduction in Memphis. Ultimately, these simultaneous geopolitical maneuvers and domestic legislative pushes highlight a administration balancing high-stakes international diplomacy with aggressive internal security reforms. [Automatically generated summary]
President of the United States boarding Air Force One to go to Memphis.
We've got Brian Glenn.
We have Brian Glenn on the ground there.
We'll go to Brian Glenn momentarily.
We've restructured the entire show because of breaking news in the last couple hours about President Trump negotiating an end to all of this with the clock ticking down as we talked over the weekend, the clock ticking down on this ultimatum he gave that was going to basically expire sometime late this afternoon, early this evening, about the straight of our moves being open in freedom navigation, the Iranians' pushback.
Now, there's a lot of confusion of exactly what's going on.
President Trump's talking about, and we'll play this again, the first part of it, momentarily, President Trump, who he's actually negotiating with, some of the official statement from the Iranian Revolutionary Guard that said, hey, he's not negotiating with us.
Nothing's changed, and we will destroy any oil and water assets that the Arabs have or in the local community.
Here's what we're going to do here in the war room.
It's Monday, 23 March, year earlier, 2026.
We've got an amazing cold open.
We're going to blow the first break.
Eric Bolin's going to talk to us about markets.
We're going to get all of this done this morning and much, much more.
Let's go ahead and play the cold open on this Monday morning.
Conflicting accounts between President Trump and Iran.
President Trump this morning said the U.S. have had productive talks with Tehran and that he had postponed military strikes on Iran's power plant plants.
But shortly after, Iranian state TV cited the country's foreign ministry saying there is no dialogue.
We were about to take a step, an escalatory step, David, that many in the region and across the world feared could not be walked back.
I'm curious, what are you hearing right now about the president's decision to take a step back and talk about these negotiations that he says have been going on?
So, Joe, he's obviously exploring the diplomatic possibilities.
If you read his statement, he's not describing a deal.
He's just describing the tone of negotiations.
Here's what I know about the diplomatic side.
Qatar had been involved in extensive mediation efforts along with Oman over the last week.
And those came to a sudden halt when the Israelis attacked Iranian gas facilities at South Paris, and that negotiating channel suddenly ended.
A new negotiating channel was initiated by Turkey and Turkey's foreign minister, Hakan Fidan, over the last, I'd say, three, four days.
And there were statements yesterday suggesting from him that his meetings with Iranians, implied Americans, others involved had been productive.
Turkey's a key ally of President Trump in the United States, a NATO member.
One final thing I just would note that we didn't talk about earlier this morning, but over the weekend, when Trump was making his fire and brimstone threat to take out all Iranian power plants, the Iranian foreign minister issued an interesting statement in which he said, the Strait of Hormuz is not closed.
Ships hesitate because insurers fear the war of choice you, meaning Trump initiated, and then close freedom of navigation, which we want cannot exist without freedom of trade.
Respect both or expect neither.
In other words, kind of an opening from the Iranian that may have coincided with the conversations that Trump is referring to.
So we talked earlier about breaksmanship.
It's dangerous, could lead still to a very bad result here.
But for the moment, it does seem to have provided some space for negotiation.
Yeah, and I think this may be how exactly you define having a conversation.
Certainly, there are no direct talks that we know of between the U.S. and Iran, although as I understand it, according to people familiar with the matter, that there have been messages passed back and forth between countries like Turkey, like Egypt, trying to sort of get the read of either side.
And of course, this is now significant.
It's the first time that the president has actually said publicly that there are conversations.
Up until now, he has not sounded all that open to any kind of negotiation that would end this conflict.
And so that in itself, I think, is meaningful, as is the president's decision to postpone any attack on Iranian power plants.
And this is part of what these messages that were passed back and forth over the weekend were about, were warning of the major sort of escalation and retaliation that that would prompt from the Iranians.
You know, Tehran had warned that it would strike energy facilities in the Gulf, even potentially desalination facilities in those countries that really rely on them for all of their fresh water.
And so this is a significant step that the president has decided to open the window for some potential discussions to continue.
But at this point, it is still entirely unclear about who exactly these conversations are with.
Remember, the president had said in the past that all of the Iranian officials that he thought would be worthwhile talking to had been killed as part of this conflict.
We also don't know exactly what the president means when he says he's looking for a complete and total resolution to the conflict.
Does that mean, for example, that Iran would be able to keep the highly enriched uranium that remains buried underground at one of its nuclear facilities?
Does it allow Iran to maintain the ability to close the Strait of Hormuz in the future?
A lot of unanswered questions about what exactly these conversations and these negotiations actually consist of.
But it does seem clear that the president is looking for a way to find some sort of negotiated settlement to this conflict as we now enter week four.
Let me just read you something from the Atlantic does an assessment on that.
They say U.S. troops may well take Karg Island.
We believe in their ability to do so, but only to endure ballistic missile strikes, drone attacks, petrochemical smoke, all without a reliable means of obtaining logistical support.
Okay, the first one: if Iran says, okay, you know, we're willing to do some sort of ceasefire and let us stay in power, and that would be the best, right?
For oil prices, I don't know about obviously not for Iran.
But if you're talking about like the conflict, that would all depend on how it goes, right?
It would be a huge step for the U.S. to like occupy Carg Island or one of the islands in the Strait of Ormoz.
And, you know, you are very vulnerable there, and it would all depend on the day-to-day back and forth of the war, I think.
I just spoke with President Trump, and he told me that Iran wants to make a deal badly.
He said that the talks have been ongoing.
I said, how much longer will this conflict go on?
He said the talks, I said five days to halt or postpone strikes on the electrical infrastructure.
It could happen sooner, he said, but I have put down five days.
I asked him what his reaction is to Iranian state television saying that there are no talks.
And he said he's not sure what they are referring to because the most recent talks happened, in fact, last night with Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner and their counterparts.
When I asked about the Iranian TV saying that no talks have happened, he said it's hard to get any information there because of the U.S.'s blowing up so much of their infrastructure.
So again, he wasn't sure what Iran state TV was talking about because the most recent talks, he said, happened last night with Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner.
Again, the president just told me moments ago that the Iranians want to do a deal badly.
The market, of course, has reversed course this morning after the president posted this morning in the middle of a big decline in markets.
He said that he has directed the military to postpone strikes on the electrical infrastructure and the power plants for five days as these talks continue.
In addition to oil flowing, imagine the economic activity and growth that will occur in the Middle East.
Imagine a Middle East where even countries not just that opposed Israel, but opposed each other, some of these Arab countries, they start to work together.
They start to have more commerce together.
They start to have more commerce with us and so forth and so on.
Isn't that another way of looking at this?
And if the enemy did get that nuclear weapon, that straight could be shut forever and there couldn't be a damn thing we could do about it.
I think over the weekend, what we talked about was this forcing function that was going to take place later this afternoon with the president saying, hey, if you have not opened up the straight or her moves to free navigation, I'm going to unleash hell.
Of course, the Iranians came back and said, fine, we hear you, and we're going to unleash hell back.
Capital markets, bond markets, equity markets, but particularly commodity markets, literally in free fall overnight.
President announced today they've actually been in discussions with appropriate personnel on the Iranian side, Jared Kushner, Steve Witkoff.
Turkey may have a role in this.
I would tell folks, buckle up this week.
I think it's going to be a bumpy ride.
Eric Bowling, let's get you in here first.
You did a great job teeing us up on Saturday.
The deadline at five clearly worked as a forcing function, particularly to the global capital and commodities markets.
Last night was pretty brutal in Asia as the markets open early evening, New York City time, Eastern daylight time, and particularly oil.
Now that's kind of reversed, but there's bounce backs from that as people try to sort this out.
Just give us your assessment of where these, what are the markets telling us this morning about this new information they've gotten from the president of the United States?
Well, I think the markets are telling us, buckle up, like you just said.
We were talking about that last week, Steve, where it's going to get really volatile, where every news story, every comment, either out of Trump or the foreign ministers, whoever's running Iran, they make a comment, markets react.
I'll tell you exactly what happened last night at 6 o'clock.
We get a preview of what's happening.
The night trading starts, all the equities are down.
Dow, SP, NASDAQ were down three, four, 500 points.
Woke up this morning, they were down 700.
Trump made the statement that on truth that he was going to delay this, whatever action he was going to take, the bombing of Iranians' oil and electricity plants for five days.
Markets went from down 700 to down 1200.
And then the foreign minister said, Oh, no, we're not negotiating with Trump.
Wall Street, they're jerks, but they call it taco.
Trump always chickens out.
What means he says things sometimes and it doesn't follow through on him.
And markets, when he says them, they react.
And then he doesn't follow through, which is exactly what happened this time.
And they flip and go the other way.
And some people are now trying to game that system by saying, when Trump says something, do the opposite of that, the direction of it goes, because he will back out and it will go back up the other way.
The problem with the taco trade is, you know, sometimes Trump's playing the media and playing even the markets as well, playing Wall Street, because, you know, he said he was going to take Maduro from Venezuela.
Oops, and he did.
And he also said, I'm going to attack Iran.
Oops.
And he did twice.
So they're playing a dangerous game here.
I will tell you, the volatility is here to stay.
And there are fallouts because this means gas and oil prices will remain elevated going forward.
We're going to hit a $4 average of gasoline probably on Wednesday, Steve.
And like I said, over the weekend, probably a $5 down the road.
And I don't believe.
So, oil, very quickly, oil went from at the time of Trump backing off, it was $101 a barrel.
WTI West Texas went down to 88, and now it's back up to 92.
And now it's playing around 88.90 or so.
So it's still lower.
Markets are still higher, but everyone's waiting to see, holding their breath to see what's real and what's not.
I saw 101 low of the day for Brent, then it bounced back up and it's trading right around $100, $101 a barrel, but it had gotten as high as, you know, legitimately staying $115 for a while late last week.
Remember, our great allies in the Gulf, particularly Qatar, UAE, and the Saudis, they want oil and gas prices as high as possible.
Qatar, obviously, very concerned about their field.
They said 17% of production taken out of their LNG capacity.
But they would love to be able to cause force majeure on those contracts and particularly as far out as you can get and renegotiate those with the Europeans.
Same with the Saudis.
The Saudis love oil above $100 a barrel, right?
So our allies are only our allies in certain aspects of this, Eric.
Yeah, so they're allies to Trump saying, yeah, Trump, go ahead, keep going.
We got your back.
We support your action against Iran because every one of those actions creates a higher oil price.
And then also when the Iranians retaliate against Middle Eastern oil infrastructure, which is very strange to me, Steve, when you think about it, why would they go after oil and infrastructure in the Middle East, other than maybe trying to send a message to Trump, we're going to get oil prices as high as possible?
There's a danger.
So my point is, I think we've been talking about this for the better part of three weeks now that the Middle Eastern allies, so to speak, may be in somewhat cahoots with the Iranians, even if it's not an actual email or text saying we got you.
But maybe there's some communication from the Iranians to, let's say, Bahrain or Kuwait or Saudi Arabia, not Israel, but the others, where they say, we're going to hit this oil infrastructure, whether it's a refinery or an oil-producing platform.
We want to let you know, get your people off there, but it's going to get hit.
That means they get their people off, no loss of life, and all of a sudden oil prices remain high.
And then these countries get to slowly bring that back online.
They could say it's going to take us 60 days, 90 days.
The longer it takes to bring all that energy production back online, the longer these prices are going to stay elevated.
And filling the coffers of the Middle Eastern countries is a problem.
I will tell you, Lindsey Graham out there saying, go hit them, take Carg Island.
That's one of the most foolish things I've ever heard in my life.
Stay away from the oil infrastructure right now.
Carg Island's all about oil and energy.
You want to stay away from those at all costs, hit other things, not their oil infrastructure, because that was going to come back and haunt you.
Lindsay just never met a war he didn't fall in love with or wasn't already in love with or supporting or agitating.
I do think he's not talking about destroying the oil infrastructure.
At least his concept, I think the concept of people is these two Marine expeditionary units, one on the Tripoli coming from Japan, the other on the USS Boxer with even more capabilities coming from San Diego.
I think total of 5,000 Marines.
I think they view that as let's seize that and that chokes the Iranians down because that's essentially where all their oil goes to be transported to vessels to get out of the Strait of Hormuz and Persian Gulf.
I do think that one thing that became evident, it was already evident, but I think it's pretty evident now is that President Trump's, at least his stated goal of turning it over to the Japanese and to NATO to keep it open is just not going to happen.
Number one, President Trump didn't refer to NATO allies and scheme this out.
They're getting their ass handed to them on a stick.
And the one thing they do have is the only thing they have to ever rebuild back is oil, right?
So in that, you're right, Carg Island is essentially their main oil terminal.
They have others, but it's the main one.
If you're Iran and you hear that someone's coming after Carg, which is essentially your existential threat, and let's just say we are as badass as we are and we get the Marines to look like they're going to take it.
Do you think for one second, Stephen K. Bannon, that those that Carg Island isn't already wired with explosives to blow the smithereens out of that island if it looks like they're going down?
Talk to me about how are markets viewing this right now?
Because obviously President Trump is very attuned to market reaction to his moves, right?
Particularly tactically.
As you see this develop today, and I think you'll see that the Turks have a role in this as some sort of intermediary or at least helping and assisting President Trump get communication with whoever really can make a deal.
How do you think, what are markets going to look for today, tomorrow, and the next day to make sure that this turbulence, which President Trump's clearly trying to get out of the markets, that for them to get back to stability and a little more calmness, what are they going to look for?
Okay, there's so much else going on, and we're going to make it make sense for everybody as we go back.
We're going to go back in a minute for the President of the United States, what he just said going off the plane.
By the way, Brian Glenn's in Memphis.
We're going to get that president's heading there.
I asked Mike Davis.
So, Mike, first off, Save Act, we covered it all weekend.
Tubberville's thing got shot down.
God bless Mike Lee.
Mike Lee has just been grinding all weekend, trying to get a legislation, not just a messaging bill.
The president understood had a quite hot conversation.
I think it's been reported with John Thune.
Not exactly happy with Thune's energy and urgency on the Save America Act.
The president's got ICE going to help out at the airports.
And you should know in some of these airports like Atlanta, there are three and four-hour waits.
ICE is going, but he just reiterated: hey, yeah, if somebody's there, I guess they can arrest people, right?
Now he's saying they got to take their mask off, but arrest people.
A little confusing, but he's told Thune and guys, no deal on DHS.
There's no deal on these radical Democrats until I get the SAVE Act.
Just kind of put it in perspective: where do you think that what's the president trying to accomplish here with this?
I'm not trading off ICE to get the SAVE Act.
You guys are going to hold the line on that.
And I'm still going to get the SAVE Act because Thune, I need you to ramp it up, brother.
And oh, by the way, morning, Joe, and total meltdown.
I'm going to put ICE into the Atlanta airport and the Houston airport, and they're going to help out.
And by the way, if they see a couple of three guys that are, you know, guys that look like bad ombres, maybe they get, maybe they get stopped and asked a few questions.
Senator John Thune, the Senate Majority Leader, is a very nice guy, but the Save America Act is a crucial test of John Thune's effectiveness, of his leadership.
We have a bill, the Save America Act, that has 80% support of Americans, including a supermajority of Democrats and even a supermajority of minorities.
It's because the bill is commonsensical.
It requires proof of citizenship and voter ID to vote in American elections.
These Democrats have mass imported tens of millions of illegal aliens into our country.
They are lavishing them with welfare, welfare fraud.
They are allowing these illegal aliens to get driver's licenses.
And in many of these states, when you get a driver's license, you can easily opt in to register to vote.
And then these Democrats are refusing to turn over their voter rolls to the Justice Department's civil rights division to make sure that illegal aliens are not voting in American elections, which is hard to find.
These Democrats know that They are replacing American workers and replacing American voters, the replacement theory they used to call it.
But it's actually happening, right?
And there is no excuse for Senate Majority Leader John Thune and the rest of his Senate Republican colleagues to not get the Save America Act through the Senate and on President Trump's desk for his signature.
This is the most crucial piece of legislation.
Are we going to have a republic that is run by sovereign citizens, or are we going to have a republic that's run by foreign invaders?
Mark Wayne Mullen, you and I had a discussion the other day, said there's got to be, what, judicial warrants to go in and to the offices and to the businesses, et cetera.
Very confusing because with President Trump, hey, it's all part of the same thing.
There's 20 million here.
We got to get them out.
And just saying they can't vote is not going to, that's step one.
And of course, he jumped Thune because we covered this all weekend.
And you've got Mike Lee and you've got Eric Schmidt and you've got a couple of three there that are actually fighting to get a legislative process.
The rest, you could tell, are like 11-year-old kids when they don't want to do something like stick around for the weekend or kind of, you know, mopey about doing it.
I think Trump put them on notice.
Also, the Supreme Court, tell me what's going to happen at the Supreme Court.
Another huge element of this of trying to get to the bottom of 2020 election theft and make sure it doesn't, we don't have the Chinese Communist Party and the Democrats working in conjunction can't steal future elections, Mike.
Yeah, I mean, let's go back to the Senate just really quick.
Our most crucial sovereign power as we the people is controlling our border and controlling our populace, right?
And these Democrats are trying to sabotage the will of American voters when the American voters overwhelmingly elected President Trump, a Republican House and a Republican Senate to secure our border and to expel illegal aliens, starting with the worst of the worst, like Trende Aragua and MS-13.
We had another incident where a young woman was allegedly murdered in cold blood by another illegal alien in America.
This is unacceptable.
And the American people overwhelmingly support securing our border.
They overwhelmingly support expelling dangerous illegal aliens.
They overwhelmingly support proof of citizenship and voter ID in our elections.
The problem is that Senate Republicans are completely out of touch with their constituents.
They need to get outside of the beltway.
They need to touch grass.
They need to go home and have town hall meetings like my former boss, Chuck Grassley, does every year, the full Grassley, 99 counties every year.
That's what these Senate Republicans need to start doing because they are out of touch with their constituents.
Because I can tell you this, hearing from the inside, Senate Republicans are overwhelmingly against the Save America Act.
They don't want to pass it.
And so that's why we need to turn up the heat with the war room posse and hold them accountable.
Turn up the heat as high as it will go and get this thing passed.
I just want to make sure people understand this, that the people you see coming to the microphone, except for a handful of them, the Mike Lee's, the Eric Schmitz, a couple other of these warriors, the rest of them have literally no interest in this.
And the proof is in the fact that this legislation, legislative package has 80% support of Americans, including a super majority of Democrats and a super majority of minorities, even.
If you can't get legislation through the Senate when it has that much popular support, you should not be in the Senate, right?
You need to find a new line of work.
Maybe you can, you know, President Trump worked at McDonald's in the drive-through.
Maybe these senators can go do.
I don't know what these senators think they are doing if they cannot get something passed with 80% support of their constituents.
And frankly, for these Republican senators, it's probably much higher back in their home states.
The issue is that they need to show the courage and more importantly, the will to do this, right?
We don't have a House of Lords in America where we have these lords who don't listen to their constituents.
We don't have that, right?
So to these Senate Republicans, get moving on this.
This is a test, a crucial test for you.
And don't fail this test because you're going to see your constituents very angry with you if you fail this test.
Let me, again, the war room posse's superpower is go to article3projects.org, article number3projects.org, take action.
And the most crucial action item right now is if every person in the war room posse can go to take action and it's to keep illegal aliens from stealing our elections, right?
If you light up both of your home state senators right now, send them emails, light them up on social media, do the patch-through phone calls.
Article 3 Projects Action Center makes this very easy.
You can do it in about five minutes.
If the war room posse does this and just lights up the Senate switchboard, you can help them find and keep their courage among Senate Republicans.
Look, the president right now is trying to make some sort of overall deal, or at least the beginning of a process in the deal in the Persian Gulf-Iran area of combat.
There, he's searching for a deal.
Here, he told Thune the exact opposite.
He says, I'm not trading off ICE and DHS and what we need there, minimum funded to get a deal.
You've got to pass the SAVE Act, you, Thune.
And if not, I think he implied, I'm going to be looking for a new leader.
Leaders are supposed to go find votes.
Either find me the votes or we'll have a further discussion.
So that's how high it is.
Also, let's play this clip.
A lot of action at the Supreme Court day.
Let's play the clip, Mike.
I want you to opine on what's happening today about how we stop elections from being stolen in the future.
Tomorrow, the Supreme Court is set to hear oral arguments in a voting rights case that is pitting Republican against Republican.
In an unusual case of inter-party warfare, the case Watson versus Republican National Committee challenges a Mississippi law that allows for a grace period for election officials to count ballots postmarked by election day, but arriving up to five business days later.
Mississippi Republican Secretary of State Michael Watson and Attorney General Lynn Fitch, whose case pushed the Dobbs case that overturned Roe, are defending Mississippi's law, which passed Mississippi's Republican supermajority legislature by a vote of 118 yays to one lone dissent.
But will the people be damned, at least when it comes to this RNC backed by the White House and Justice Department, who argue that ballots must be received before the end of election day to be counted.
So under the elections clause of the U.S. Constitution, these federal elections are decided by state legislatures unless Congress comes in and overrides them with time, place, and manner rules of the road.
Congress has done that.
Congress has set election day, right?
And election day means election day.
You need to vote and have your ballots cast and received by election day because we're tired of these games that Democrats play with all-male ballot elections or absentee ballots where they figure out how many votes they need in Fulton County, Georgia on election day.
And then voila, four days later, they have enough votes to win the state in Georgia.
It's unacceptable.
Election day means election day.
This is how they do it in just about every other country around the world except for America.
They want to play games with our election rules and make it easier for Democrats to rig and steal elections.
Okay, the crime is very important, obviously, and people are focused on that.
But this whole issue we got now, Mike Howell and people put together a mass deportation coalition because Mark Wayne Mullen sounded like he's a little squishy on this.
And actually coming from the White House is that we can't even use the phrase mass deportations again.
Is that going to be part of this?
Do you believe besides crime enforcement and bad ombres, is there going to be any discussion today of our favorite topic, mass deportations?
Because look, we're all for the Save America Act, but you still got to get them out of the country.
Social media to cover you through the day with the president of the United States in Memphis, Tennessee, one of the great cities in our country on the Mississippi.