EP 5294: War Enters The 6th Week Of The War; Trump Puts Naval Blockade On The Strait Of Hormuz Cont.
Stephen K. Bannon and Trita Parsi dissect the April 12, 2026 collapse of US-Iranian negotiations following a 47-year stalemate, analyzing President Trump's proposed naval blockade of the Strait of Hormuz as a tactic to pressure China while risking escalation with Turkey and India. Guests Sam Faddis and Jack Pasobic argue this strategy aims to strangle Iran's oil economy and dismantle Beijing's global influence, contrasting with Parsi's skepticism regarding frozen assets and crypto reliance. The episode also covers Irish civil unrest against fuel restrictions and critiques the US dollar empire, concluding that these "medieval" tactics signal a broader shift toward dismantling established geopolitical power modules. [Automatically generated summary]
President of the United States has been talking to Maria Bartiroma.
We're going to pull some of that in a moment.
Huge news overnight, not just that we walked away from the negotiating table, first senior level meeting between the United States and the Iranian government in 47 years.
Took about 15, 20 hours.
It appears, I think, that there were no modified group of 10 points.
Looks like the Iranians dug in on the points they had and were up in our grill, I would say.
And now we've gone to a naval blockade.
We'll get to all that.
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I think your coming on the show has been pretty fruitful in the fact that I think it's given an audience a broader understanding of our enemy because I think that it played out pretty much as we thought it would play out in Islamabad, sir.
And I very much appreciate your conversation with Sam Barris earlier on and much respect his analysis.
And I watched him on your show.
I do have a different perspective on what will make things work at this point.
But I think what we saw here, if the story is true, if what JD said is that the US went there and insisted on zero enrichment, then we should absolutely not be surprised that this didn't go anywhere.
We should be surprised that that was the US strategy because zero enrichment was not Trump's.
Red line.
It was Israel's red line.
Trump shifted the goalpost to adopt the Israeli red line.
That's why we ended up having the war last summer.
And that's why talks back then collapsed.
Had he stuck to his original red line, which was no nuclear weapons, which is very different from zero enrichment, we would have had a deal by now.
So if it turns out that that actually was the U.S. position in these talks, then it raises questions about the sincerity of this entire operation or whether.
Halfway through those talks, apparently there was a conversation with Netanyahu that the US delegation once again shifted its goalpost to adopt what the Israelis had put forward.
If that is the case, then we shouldn't be surprised at all.
However, I think we should also keep in mind that we don't know more than 5% of the real story here.
There may be a lot of other things going on, and it may very well be so.
That, mindful of the fact that we do have another nine days left of these negotiations, everything we're seeing right now is a negotiating tactic, including the threat of closing.
Or doing a naval blockade on Iran, including walking back from the table right now, and that there may be another round coming up in which both sides have the first round assessed each other's strengths, and then the next round will act on that assessment.
And perhaps there still is a way out.
My bottom line, though, is still I don't think there's going to be a deal, but the likelihood of a return to war I don't see as particularly high either.
Rather, both sides will pull back, they will control certain things, but I don't see Trump going back into a full scale war with Iran.
You didn't even see us getting a deal now, but certainly no signed instrument.
You know, Mark Levin's out there wants us to read the Potsdam Accord and then the surrender document for the Japanese as a framework for tactical nuclear weapons.
You kept saying, hey, look, this is not going to be like Japan in 1945.
You're not going to be on the USS Bush with the Iranians signing a surrender document.
Do you still think that's what you see?
Is that somehow there will be some.
Accommodation of what's going on in this, and that it will just kind of drift on, sir?
If you want escalation, you should push for surrender.
So when Mark Levine is pushing for surrender, it's precisely because I think he understands that will ensure that this issue does not get resolved and we get more and more war, which is exactly what he and the Israelis actually are looking for.
So I'm not surprised to see that someone like him would be pushing for that.
The whole issue about A naval blockade, I'm very skeptical about as well.
I mean, look what would happen.
First of all, the U.S. already has frozen all of Iran's funds in foreign banks, about $100 to $120 billion that the Iranians have not had access to for several years at this point.
This happened on the Trump one.
There's no more money out there to freeze, essentially.
The Iranians have shifted over increasingly using the Chinese currency or using crypto because they can't use the dollar.
Secondly, if there is an actual blockade, the United States would have to then take tankers that are no longer Iranian in the sense that the oil on those tankers will have been bought by China or some other state.
That's a conflict with China.
This is something the US has not done yet for a very good reason.
So that's not a targeting of the Iranians, it's a targeting of the Chinese or whoever else is buying it.
The same is true if it goes for any of the countries that have now negotiated some sort of a toll fee with the Iranians, which is Turkey.
Which is China, which is India, which is Pakistan, the very same country that hosted these talks right now.
Moreover, that escalation will likely be countered by the Iranians by having the Houthis close the Strait of Aden as well.
And then you have a Red Sea problem in addition to the Persian Gulf problem.
There's a reason why this is not going to work because we don't have an escalatory path out of this war.
I've said this on the show several times.
That's why I was happy to see that there were negotiations, but negotiations need to be coupled with reasonable and realistic negotiating positions.
Again, if it is true that the full story is that we went there with a zero enrichment demand, that's not a sincere and serious negotiating position, nor would it have led to serious negotiations.
One of the reasons I like the naval blockade, I mean, my theory of the case is that going to Pakistan, Islamabad, and even dealing with the theocratic regime and the Revolutionary Guard, you're dealing with intermediaries.
The people that fund them and are getting them weapons are the Chinese Communist Party.
The President Trump ought to be principal to principal in Beijing in the middle of May.
A great way to do that is to blockade it and stop all the oil going to the Chinese Communist Party.
You have to get somebody's attention.
Right, you've already bombed for 38 days or 39 days, bombed the regime.
And I said the solution to this problem is not under the rubble in Tehran, right?
So, do you believe that forcing this using as a forcing function to talk about the principal sponsor of Iran, the Chinese Communist Party, will lead to any benefit?
So, Steve, I don't think the Chinese are the principal sponsor of the Iranians, they are the main trading partner, but they're the main trading partner of a lot of different countries.
Without being able to sell their oil to China, that will be a huge blow to the Iranians, but it will also be a huge blow to the Chinese.
And there's a reason why, in all of the previous efforts to prevent Iranian oil from being sold, ultimately the US did not stop oil sales to China because that would have led to a direct confrontation with the Chinese.
I don't think we're ready for that.
I don't think that would be fruitful.
I don't think there will be a meeting in May in Beijing with Trump going there if we take this path.
Now, is it valuable to perhaps try to do something to put pressure on the Chinese for them to put pressure on Iran, that logic I understand, and I think there could be value in it.
But I don't see the Chinese playing ball if they see that the U.S. is adopting a position of demanding Iran's surrender and capitulation, which is what zero enrichment entails, because that's a losing proposition for the Chinese.
In that scenario, they will more likely just counter that pressure on the U.S. itself instead of putting pressure on the Iranians.
Treaty, you've been pretty good about forecasting the regime's mindset about where we go from here.
They had, and Eric Bolling read it, they had to have it prepared in advance.
But when the Vice President advanced, went to the sticks and then left, the most brutal part of all the communique was from the Revolutionary Guard, which really disparaged the Americans, the military, us as a people, everything we stand for, and said, hey, bring it.
I mean, this is both sides are doing brinkmanship at this point, right?
For JD to go and give that press conference very, very short and essentially put all of the effort or the explanation on the nuclear issue and saying that the Iranians have not done anything that would guarantee that they're not building nuclear weapons and saying that it's not just about building nuclear weapons, it's about having the capacity.
That's a reference to zero enrichment.
That is seen by the Iranians as brinkmanship.
What we have seen in the way that the Tehran government reacts, it's actually not that complicated.
It's just tit for tat.
We do brinkmanship, they do brinkmanship.
So, when in the JCPOA, when the US started offering concessions, the Iranians started offering concessions.
Sometimes people in Washington look at Tehran and think of it as some sort of a superiorly difficult enigma on how to explain how they're calculating.
It's actually profoundly simple.
It's just tit for tat.
Any kid could figure it out.
And if we're doing brinkmanship, they're going to do the same thing.
Now, again, I want to say, I'm not.
I wouldn't be shocked if in a week or so there is another round.
I'm not saying it's likely, but I'm saying I wouldn't be shocked because neither side, despite the brinkmanship, have said that diplomacy is completely over.
Neither side have explicitly said we are not going to meet again.
I know you got to bolt your closing thoughts until we get some trading later in the evening today in the United States, and we'll have you back on tomorrow.
Yeah, I'll hit you up, Steve, when oil opens up around 6 Eastern here.
One final thought in the last maybe two hours or so, the Saudis announced that they've reopened that east west pipeline.
Seven million barrels a day will flow through that.
Here's my thought, Steve.
My final thought is look, I don't know that.
I agree.
Treat is a brilliant, he's doing great analysis, but I'm not sure that the intent was to have a naval blockade and then confiscate the oil on the vessels, maybe just block it from getting through.
China shouldn't have an issue with us because of that.
They should work their issues out with Iran and mining the strait and keeping it impassable.
I will tell you that there's the option of the Saudis increasing that pipeline from a 7 million to maybe a 10 million, and maybe some of the other Middle Eastern countries building into the pipeline.
It may take a little while, but look what that does it removes the strait of Hormuz.
As the bargaining chip for the fanatical Iranian government.
If they don't have that one choke point, they have nothing, Steve.
They have an oil production that they're going to have to sell somewhere to keep their economy afloat.
They can't sell it.
They can't ship it.
They can't stay afloat, and you starve them to death.
I'm not sure if it's Trida or Pattison that said it, but that's the way out.
And it probably is, bro, it go around the Strait of Hermose.
And the only way to do that is shipping it very expensively around the globe or build some pipelines, and maybe we help.
Our allies in the region build those pipelines for a cost, for a price.
Our oil companies will get some work out of it as well.
It just eliminates the need to destroy a civilization, risk American lives, and it feels like the right thing.
I mean, one final very quick thought.
You can enrich uranium not to the level of weapons grade.
You can enrich uranium for power plants, and there is a big difference there.
And we could have, you know, maybe the deal is we'll have the monitors, and this time, you know, steadfast and hard access to their level of Uranium that they're enriching.
That may be the solution.
Maybe it's two part.
We're going to go around you using pipelines and we're going to go take a look up, let you enrich, but not to the level of weapons grade.
Eric, thank you so much for taking time on Sunday.
Your homework assignment between now and the time markets open, you come back on tomorrow morning, is I'm going to get you a copy of the Potsdam Accords and the surrender instrument for the Japanese that they signed in KSS, Missouri.
One thing is, as we go through the days and weeks ahead, obviously economic warfare is going to come back to the forefront of this and the instrumentality when nations use about economic warfare.
It's the reason we did the end of the dollar empire.
It's not that we want the end of the dollar empire, it's the forces that converge to end it.
It's a construct that's been with us since the fall of the British Empire in World War II and the aftermath and the rubble of World War II.
A new world system was put in place.
The economic system was the predicate of that was the US dollar, Bretton Woods.
That is now, it looks like, coming apart.
We had a major milestone of that as Bloomberg reported, as we've talked about here for months.
They finally caught up with it, where gold backed assets are greater now than dollar backed assets.
And one of the reasons is, as Trita said, the ability of the United States, and as Sam said, the ability of the United States to basically dip into the world's banking system through the SWIFT system and others and be able to not just freeze assets, but Since the Ukraine war, freeze at seize assets, not just freeze assets.
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Captain Fennell, what do you believe as we leave you, and not just the workings of the blockade, but what do you believe?
The objectives, at least the objectives that the president has communicated to Admiral Cooper and CENTCOM, sir?
We're going to institute a blockade to seal off the ability of Iran to make any money from either their toll booth or the ability to sell oil on the global market.
So that's going to be shut down.
I've got to believe that the president just didn't come out of that.
Out of the blue, and that there's plans to do that.
And we now have resources that are refueled and refreshed, and new carriers coming in, and we'll be able to effectively implement this.
And it affects, as we talked about last week, these five rings of John Warden.
We talked about going after leadership and the fielded military forces.
And what this effectively does, instead of bombing the organic essentials ring, the second ring outside of leadership, we're effectively cutting off their energy sector, gas field, all of this.
Refineries, all that goes into that, we don't have to bomb it.
We can just bottle it up and lock it up, and they will not be able to do anything against it.
They don't have a Navy, they don't have an Air Force, they don't have submarines.
So, the worst thing that they're going to do is they're going to take the remaining ballistic missiles that they have and the drones that they have, and they'll try to launch them in some kind of desperation salvos against GCC states or against these existing pipelines that Eric talked about.
But in effect, they will be strangled.
And they will be cut off.
And it's like a wrestling match or WW or MMA.
You know, you're going to have somebody in a chokehold and they're going to lock out at some point.
And I think that's what the president is doing.
And let's just remember in this pause, the Iranians have probably started moving around and shifting and doing things because they haven't had daily strikes.
Well, guess who's been monitoring all that?
Guess who's been watching people come out and military forces come out of their underground caves and do things?
We have.
And we know where they're at.
And so we.
All new targeting data has been developed from this break.
So, not only are we refueling ourselves and refreshing our aircrew, allowing sailors and aviators to get downtime to rest, but the intelligence community has gone in and reaped a whole new harvest of information, and we're going to mow that down as well.
Look, Steve, psychologically, from the standpoint of somebody who's been face to face with the IRGC and their intel guys and their nuke guys, the worst thing on earth you could do would be go back after they just spit in your face and gave you the finger, as you said, and agree to sit down with these guys.
Honestly, I would be telling them, look, we agreed to a ceasefire based on your representation you were going to negotiate in good faith.
You didn't.
The ceasefire expires.
Give them a date.
Screw them.
I mean, that's the way you have to talk to them.
And again, I'm all for the blockade.
This is something I've recommended for a long time.
It is not enough.
You are going to have to strangle them more, and they will lash out.
And they got drones they can build in a garage.
So there's no such thing as a count on how many they have.
And are they going to hit a U.S. warship?
Highly unlikely that they're going to do that.
And are we going to shoot down 95% of them?
Absolutely we are.
But if they fire, If they fire several hundred of them at a desalination plant or a major production facility and only a handful get through, that still has the potential to really, really critically damage the world economy.
They're going to play the Houthi card.
I mean, the Houthis are not in the game right now because the Saudis bribed them.
They're paying them billions of dollars to sit on the sideline.
That's what that game's about, but that could change tomorrow.
We got to.
I mean, literally, the Saudis for real pay the salaries of the Houthi fighters.
That's how that game works.
It's just Middle East stuff.
And you got to seal the land borders.
You got to shut everything down.
By the way, just on the Iranian issue, you think that Tatrida, look, the Iranians enrich uranium for exactly one purpose to build nuclear weapons.
It has no conceivable civil use.
In fact, when you enrich it to like 60%, It is completely useless.
You can't put it in a reactor.
There is only one purpose for enriching uranium to build the way they are doing it is to build nuclear weapons.
So, them saying we won't build nukes, but we'll keep enriching uranium is on its face duplicitous.
It's ridiculous.
It's absurd.
Come on, man.
Your entire program is based on the only reason you do all of this is to build nukes.
Well, Steve, just to add to what your great lineup has already touched on, I think that this is going to play to our strengths.
A blockade plays, Iran may have influence at the Strait of Hormuz, but we own everything else.
So if there is going to be a blockade, if we're moving towards that standpoint, that's playing to our strength.
We do want to call attention to the fact that the CCP is backing up Tehran.
And the reports on weapons transfers, of course, are alarming.
We want to make sure that the CCP is not supplying Iran with the fuel or ballistic missiles.
And when we start to touch on the proliferation issue, Steve, we want to keep in mind that the CCP transferred, it's widely suspected that the CCP transferred.
Nuclear technology to Pakistan, including a nuclear weapon to Pakistan to help them with their nuclear program.
So, we want to watch communist China very closely here as we move towards this.
It is not just the Washington versus Tehran, but Beijing.
Hold on, hang Do you agree that President Trump has sent a shot across the bow of the Chinese Communist Party by saying if he's blockading every ship coming out, most of the ships that are of any importance are heading to.
Are heading to East Asia through Malacca, South China Sea, and up into fuel there.
I mean, he's just told Xi, hey, you're not no more games, right?
But he said yesterday on the White House lawn that if the people said, hey, there's reports that they're sending man pads and they're arming the Iranians, he said there'll be very bad news if that is true.
Do you believe President Trump will back that up with dramatic action against the CCP?
There's a huge vote in Hungary today about whether Viktor Orban is going to continue to remain in power after 16 years already in power.
And of course, Viktor Orban, not just a friend of the show and a friend of everyone here, but also one of the mainstays in the nationalist movement in Europe.
But on the other side, the folks have been the most docile.
The Irish are finally now stepping up and saying, hey, I think we've had a belly full of this.
Eddie Hobbs joins us.
Eddie, can you get us up currently what's happening in Ireland?
It looks like the beginning of an open revolt, sir.
Yeah, well, the action overnight was quite significant.
I mentioned to you on the program the last time we spoke that I thought there was an error in actually blocking the refinery.
So they sent in the heavy unit, which is the guard of public order unit.
These are kind of black, uniformed, masked, you know, full kit.
People trained for heavy duty riots, you know, but they were facing farmers and truckers that were completely peaceful.
So they cleared the place down in front of the refinery.
There was pepper sprays being used.
It was very, very unpleasant.
There's a lot of it on social media.
And then at three o'clock in the morning, they also did the same in Galway over in the west of Ireland in front of another refinery there, another major depot.
But then this morning, they decided at three o'clock in the morning again, without asking.
The truckers and farmers, would they kindly move their heavy machinery?
A request to move it.
They just simply, at the same type squad, ended up coming in.
It was about 300 members of the Gardee arrived into O'Connell Street and basically pushed them out.
They were just ordered to leave, and there was a lot of, again, there was some confrontation there overall.
So that's what's happened.
So, I mean, effectively, The protest people have punched hard for three days in a row, boxed in the government, government pushed back hard through the police force.
There was some army involvement in terms of heavy vehicle, and this raises all sorts of concerns.
So there's an awful lot of high levels of emotion today about what's happened here.
Well, I mean, you have to understand that a large proportion, a high minority of the population are effectively part of the state economy.
And so, you should just whenever you look at numbers.
But there was a poll just published in one of the Sunday newspapers today, before these events became known, where 56% of the population were completely behind them.
I actually think that's rising as we speak as a consequence of what's happening.
The blockades are still ongoing throughout the country, so the standoff continues on.
The leaders of the movement are obviously coming under pressure.
I mean, that's to be expected.
You've had farmers pulled out of tractors, you've had pepper spray being used, as I mentioned earlier.
These are get tough tactics from the government.
The reason they're getting tough is because they know that this is very, very close to a national strike and there's calls for one over the next number of days.
So people are really getting, when you push back, as you know, you get a harder pushback from the population.
And that seems to be the dynamic that's currently underway.
We're depending upon your show and your social media feeds for information about the true information, since all the traditional media in Ireland is all state propaganda.
Well, you'll get me on Counterpoint at Eddie Hobbs, which is on YouTube and on Facebook, and we're on Instagram, and we're on X, getting out all the material.
But can I just say this, Steve, before we finish?
There's some very good work done by an Irish economist, Sinead O'Sullivan.
Which shows really what's underneath all of this.
People mightn't look at the numbers, but the numbers are very significant.
When you track the level of wealth that Ireland has created against the actual delivery of infrastructure and public services, we're way, way, way off where we should be.
There's a massive gap between the wealth being generated and the actual improvement in health services and all the rest of it for the population.
And that gap really is a constant problem because of housing deficits, which are huge.
Health deficits, which are huge.
We built the National Children's Hospital, it was the most expensive hospital in the world per bed.
And so it goes on.
So there's been a complete failure, really, of the governance structure in Ireland for many decades to actually deal with the proper running of the country.
And each of the political parties is terrified of taking that particular role on.
Meanwhile, parties on the left, who would be traditionally in favour of a larger state, are all led.
The three major political parties, including Sinn Fein, who are, by the way, pro Islam, pro open borders, etc.
All of these parties are led by left liberal women.
And we've just elected a president to run the country who's coming from the same stable.
And so we've had a godless Christmas, and we've had St. Patrick reframed as Ireland's first asylum seeker.
So all of this is bubbling away in the background, and it's all feeding into what's going on.
And let me add a couple of other things from an outsider Irish American perspective, as I'm sure you can appreciate.
What you're seeing here is possibly the turning point in breaking what I call the racket in Ireland.
Ireland does not have, in any sense of the word, a representative democracy.
You can have any flavor of ice cream you want as long as it's vanilla.
You have left vanilla, center left vanilla, hard left vanilla.
You have a system that all votes go to this uniparty, which gives the illusion of choice, but gives no choice really in the substance of it.
And one of the examples Eddie brought up was this children's hospital, which was created by Simon Harris under his administration as one of the under ministers back in the day.
It's millions and millions over budget.
It still hasn't opened yet.
And someone pointed out basically you have Scandinavian levels of taxation.
And you have Somali levels of service for the people.
And I explain, as the unpopular outsider here, it's because this racket sits on three, it's a three legged stool.
It's the government itself, which is a unit party with only illusory populist nationalists, that's considered far right and neo Nazi, frankly.
It's the media, which is paid for by the government.
They support these media outfits.
And the third thing are the NGOs, which do things the government technically can't do.
But it's a giant kickback machine.
Steve, you and I, and I know a lot of our listeners, know the history of Tammany Hall, which was run effectively by the Irish immigrants once we got to the United States in the late 19th century.
And that's basically what this is here it's a self replicating racket.
And why they're so scared of this, and I was just talking to our mutual friend, Declan Ganley, who lives up the road from me here.
This is a grassroots revolution in a way that's never been seen before here since, I don't know, the 1920s maybe.
It's top of the day in the pubs when I was home at my local recently at Mass after Mass today.
Everyone's talking about it, but everyone is supporting the need for the truckers to do this in order for the Irish people's voices to be heard.
And they are not heard.
And the simple reason is.
That this is a lonely, windswept rock with terrible weather in the middle of the North Atlantic, and it has become the dumping ground for the USSR's social problems.
So diversity has ended up here, immigration has ended up here, asylum has ended up here.
Anything, any problem that Europe wants to bury, it has its accommodationists and collaborationists in the Irish government to accommodate them.
And it's a sad truth about our people, Steve, but this is.
The result of 800 years of being a slave state to England, that you either leave and find your own way in America, Australia, Canada, or somewhere else, or you become a bureaucrat to serve the new master.
The old masters were in London, they're now in Brussels, they're now Ursula von der Leyen.
So I'm at the amanuensis, which is a word for someone who writes for someone else.
So A M A N E U S I S. I'm keeping up the commentary there because, as you know, I'm in the middle of two other book projects, and that's.
Pretty much occupies all my time.
But I think we've got to make this point about Ireland.
There's 40 million of us, and they are scared of the diaspora.
They are scared of our reach, our power, our celebrity, our money, everything.
And we need to help our Irish brothers and sisters crack this racket so that they have a fair chance for the first time since the Normans invaded, probably in 11, whatever it was, to have their own culture.
Preserve their own culture and have the country they want to have.
Well, look, Steve, the people of Ireland have been mistreated for far too long.
First, they were mistreated by the English.
Now they're being mistreated by Brussels.
And you can see those politicians who sit up there in Dublin and do the bidding of their masters in Brussels.
They're not doing the work of the Irish people.
First, they flood the island completely with third world Somalis to rape the daughters of Ireland.
Then they sit there and they take away the fuel.
They go in with all the green taxes and all the green regulations.
For the petrol in Ireland.
They won't give fuel to the farmers.
They won't give fuel to the people.
They won't give fuel to the hospitals, even the children's hospitals, because the masters in Dublin do not care about the children of Ireland.
They do not care about the Irish people.
And the Irish people fought for far too long to achieve independence for their island to have to be, to let it go and submit and get on their knees and give the throat, show the throat, right?
That's what you used to have to do.
Show the throat.
No, it's time and in high time for the people of Ireland to rise up.
And Steve, I'm seeing videos.
Of Catholic priests holding masses in the back of trucks, standing with the nationalists and the patriots of Ireland.
But, Mr. President, you wrote on Truth Social this morning saying that we will begin the process. of blockading any and all ships trying to enter or leave the Strait of Hormuz.
And at some point, we will reach an all being allowed to go in and all being allowed to go out basis.
So tell us what you're trying to accomplish with this blockade, sir.
These negotiations kicked off, and even prior to the Finish, which I agree with some of the other analysts.
They're not sure if this is completely finished, but here's what is finished.
The idea that Iran can unilaterally shut down the Strait of Hormuz is done.
And here's why because the United States Navy sent a couple of Arleigh Burke destroyers cruising up in there.
And they said, wait a minute, the Iranians came out and said, hold on a second, we didn't give you permission to do that yet.
You know what the Navy said?
The United States Navy does not ask permission, the United States Navy goes where it needs to go.
And it does not ask permission from anybody except the President of the United States, the Commander in Chief, and the Lord God above.
That's the only person, the only entities the United States Navy asks permission for.
Steve, this is about freedom of navigation.
And who provides that freedom of navigation on the high seas?
It is the United States Navy.
This is an internationally recognized waterway.
All right.
This is governed by the UNCLOS, the UN Convention, the Law of the Sea.
And the United States Navy is providing for that freedom of navigation.
And if any of our other partners or allies or whoever else, China, Russia, whoever it may be, would like to participate in that freedom of navigation, well, I'll tell you where you can go.
The address is 1600 Penn.
The guy there, he loves to work the phones and he's waiting for your call.
Because as the Revolutionary Guard shifted the center of gravity of the battle, as Napoleon at Clausewitz tells us, from Tehran to the Persian Gulf, the Strait of Hormuz, we just shifted it to the Gulf of Oman, the global oil markets, the North Arabian Sea, and Beijing.
Is this the beginning of the confrontation of the Chinese Communist Party in the United States of America, sir?
Steve, I have been saying until I'm blue in the face, everyone is focused on the wrong straight.
What did I say?
Everyone's focused on the wrong straight.
And then what came out earlier this week was Xi Jinping sitting down with the opposition to Taiwan, the Kuomintang, sitting down talking about peaceful reunification of the Taiwan Strait.
Everything that President Trump is doing right now is about targeting China.
And we are all hurtling towards this meeting, May 14th in Beijing, there, Zhongnanhai, the Forbidden City, right in.
The gate of heavenly peace, Tiananmen Gate, Tiananmen Guangchong itself.
And President Trump is doing everything.
Looked at Venezuela, came first, then comes Iran.
He's systematically working his way through China's power modules, the arterial powers of the Chinese Empire.
We used to talk about this the dragon, as they put their belt and rode.
I do not believe that Xi Jinping has the favor of heaven or the mandate of heaven.
I do not believe the Chinese Communist Party has ever had it.
And what they do is they use brutal repression and brutal tactics to make the populace believe that they have the mandate of heaven, that they have the best interests of the Lao Bai Jing of the Chinese people at heart, but ultimately.
They do not.
And we are seeing right now that perhaps the mandate of heaven may have fallen, may, may have fallen in a place a little bit closer to Washington, D.C. Jack Pasobic, social media.
If you guys are following, you know that I did take a little detour yesterday to ruin the entire political career of one Congressman, Eric Swalwell, with a video that I received last night, as well as verification of that video, which I then posted.
I'm told that there is More to the story that remains to be seen, and potentially other Democrats elected individuals who may be involved.
And we're just going to leave it at that right now to continue to work my sources on.
Farmer and trucker strike that you've seen since Tuesday has been the government claims to have broken it.
It's a grassroots revolution.
Very importantly, the Irish people are fed up with not the fuel prices, certainly, but it's the housing crisis led by immigration.
Right, which fuels the housing crisis.
So, at least one out of every five people living in Ireland is not native born, and it may be as high as one out of every four people now living in Ireland is not native born.
That's a dramatic change, right?
That's a huge change.
It's happened in the last 20 years, Steve, and it's been accelerating.