Episode 5295: Corruption And Cover Up; Trump Threats More Destruction In The Strait
Stephen K. Bannon and John Solomon dissect a "deep state" conspiracy involving withheld impeachment evidence, alleging a decade-long operation by Adam Schiff and others targeting President Trump, while detailing plans to nominate Todd as Attorney General. The episode covers a U.S. naval blockade in the Arabian Sea that sank 158 Iranian ships, causing oil prices to fluctuate near $105 per barrel amid fears of economic warfare against China and BRICS nations. Additionally, reports highlight White House pressure on Tennessee and Missouri legislators regarding AI safety laws and OPT visa concerns, suggesting a broader strategy of corruption cover-ups and geopolitical destabilization. [Automatically generated summary]
Let's do a level set of what you're breaking today and how it plays into what we've been talking about the deep state, all these investigations, all these grand juries, and what it means as additional information rolls out this week, sir.
Yeah, listen, at 30,000 foot, sometimes we look at all the different scandals of the Democrats targeting President Trump and his followers and say, well, there's Russia collusion, then there's Ukraine.
It was one continuous operation.
That is what these documents made clear today.
As soon as President Trump was cleared on Russia collusion by Bob Mueller, the deep state went right back to work.
A CIA analyst filed a complaint that we now know, as of this morning, for the first time was based only on hearsay evidence.
Was based on a whistleblower who was caught lying, giving a falsehood to his intelligence community recipients, the people who received his whistleblower, who had clear biases, including the fact that he worked for Joe Biden, Donald Trump's likely rival in 2020.
And despite all that, they proceeded ahead and forwarded this allegation, these unfounded allegations from a biased and flawed whistleblower to Congress.
And then that exculpatory evidence, that evidence that the president could have used, To defend himself at the impeachment or the impeachment trial was kept from the American public, was kept from Congress.
Does not look like even his lawyers knew that.
How does that happen?
Well, you start with a whistleblower that's tied to Joe Biden.
That's what these documents that Tulsi Gabbard declassified at our request and gave to us this weekend show.
He was a Joe Biden sycophant.
He was actually on trips with Joe Biden to Ukraine.
He was an advisor to the president.
He disliked Republicans.
He made Fun of Republicans and badmouth them.
He didn't want Devin Nunes to see his complaint in Congress, the then top Republican on House Intelligence.
So you have a biased partisan whistleblower who then gives it to a deep state inspector general, Intelligence Community Inspector General Michael Atkinson, who then decides he's not going to tell Congress the full story about this whistleblower.
A few minutes ago, shortly after our story broke overnight, Tulsi Gabbard released to the House Intelligence.
Committing some new evidence.
It's the actual interview of Michael Atkinson.
Michael Atkinson is the inspector general who catches the whistleblower's complaint, disseminates it to Congress, and really kicks off the Ukraine impeachment or Russia collusion 2.0.
He did not tell Congress in his interview the full extent of what he knew and what was wrong with the whistleblower.
He didn't go into the biases of the Biden angle.
All he said was he was a registered Democrat, didn't give any more detail than that.
There were really significant Details that people needed to make a judgment on his credibility before we tried to remove a president from office.
But that was kept by Atkinson.
So these two actors, a CIA analyst tied to Joe Biden and an Intelligence Committee Inspector General, keep the public in the dark and allow that scandal to burgeon without the evidence of exculpatory evidence, without the evidence that would balance out the picture of who this man was and what was going on.
I interviewed Alan Dershowitz.
For this story.
He was one of the president's impeachment lawyers in 2019.
He was a Democrat at the time.
He said, listen, in an adversarial justice system, which, by the way, includes impeachment, impeachment is a judicial proceeding in Congress.
In fact, in this case, they were supposed to use the same rules that you use in federal court.
They're called the rules of civil procedure.
It is incumbent on the government to give up all exculpatory evidence.
And that didn't happen here, Alex.
Alan Dershowitz said, he said it was a travesty.
To justice, a travesty to the American people that the government, particularly Michael Atkinson and this whistleblower, hid this exculpatory evidence from the president, the American people, and quite frankly, the Senate jurors and the House impeachment managers.
So that's where we are now.
I expect a lot of developments in the next few hours on this story.
I wouldn't be surprised if the name of the whistleblower eventually is released.
And I also wouldn't be surprised if you start to see some actions taken based on these revelations.
The president or his team could go to the Chief Justice.
John Roberts, remember John Roberts presided over the impeachment proceedings.
He was the trial judge.
And say, hey, the Democrats, Adam Schiff, the chief prosecutor, cheated on this.
Maybe you should consider erasing or reversing the impeachment.
You could also see the FBI or the new Inspector General of the Intelligence Committee take a look at whether what Michael Atkinson did by withholding some of the six scope of the air attempts, whether that is a problem, whether it's prosecutable, whether it's an administrative thing.
But I think you'll see some significant follow up to these revelations today.
So, because just to pull the camera back for a second, you had the crossfire hurricane, you had the trying to stop him beforehand, you had the Russia collusion hoax after he was in office, and essentially that is Obama in this coup.
That failing, you had people seconded to the National Security Council.
This is why we tried to bottom blow it so quickly.
You had people, you had Sergeant Higgins give a memo with this whistleblower's name as the top guy.
Here's my point I know going to the Chief Justice and all that.
But these are crimes.
The deep state and the CIA and other elements, they 100% understood what they were doing, how they were doing it, the people they were doing it with.
And it was covered up, right?
First of all, the action itself is illegal.
Then it was covered up in the media, MSNBC, the New York Times, all the reports that came up.
I think there were two Pulitzer Prize given for this the Washington Post and the New York Times.
This, as you say, this is the biggest.
Crime and it all rolls into the stealing of the 2020 election.
It's all of a piece.
So, as this comes out, either a couple hours later or over the next few days, and Tulsi Gabbard's doing, I think, an amazing job of standing in the breach here and trying to do this.
John, well, who is going to take the bit and say, hey, this is even bigger, I think, than the grand jury that's going on by Brennan?
This is the single, and it's all one continuous piece from a deep state that's relentless, and they're still relentless today because they have been held accountable.
Who is the perfect person to take the bit here and assist President Trump in ridding us of this process and ridding us of these people, sir?
So I think the president has a team in place to do that.
I think he will nominate as early as tomorrow, Todd, to be the next attorney general that will lock in an attorney general that he trusts.
He's got Kash Patel at the FBI who developed the grand conspiracy case.
And I want to walk through that in a second.
And then he's got this pretty rugged team down in Florida that's a really tough team.
Well trained and well experienced prosecution team that's building the case.
And the case goes like this it's a wash, rinse, repeat cycle of abusive government power.
Hillary Clinton has a Russia problem.
They hang a fake Russia story on Donald Trump and then turn it into a criminal investigation.
Joe Biden has a Ukraine corruption problem.
I break those stories in the Hill in early 2019.
They try to hang a fake Ukraine impeachment scandal on President Trump, which results in both a criminal investigation of certain people.
And impeachment of the president.
In 2021, Joe Biden has a classified documents problem.
They go and create a classified documents investigation of Donald Trump.
And then in 2023, as it's 2022 and 23, as it's clear Joe Biden has a mental acuity problem, they ramp up Arctic Frost and try to create a criminal prosecution out of the president's speech, arguing that what was twice done before legally in the United States, submitting alternate electors to the Senate in a contested election, was somehow this time.
Criminal.
That's the wash, rinse, peat cycle.
It's the same actors all the way through.
You got Eric Swalwell, you got Adam Schiff, you got John Brennan, you've got this whistleblower who starts with Biden all the way back in 2014 and 15, and it's still going in 2019 and 20.
I think you're going to see a new attorney general, the current FBI who wrote the conspiracy case memo, and this team down in Florida really escalate their move towards a A large conspiracy case.
I think you'll see in the next month two big things a decision on whether to indict.
John Brennan for obstructing Congress.
That's a big name.
That's a big charge.
They're looking at some new evidence that came from the National Security Advisor, the President Trump, Mike Rogers, and possibly bringing new charges against James Comey.
There's a lot of activity on that.
And then when you start to get those people under indictment, you may make a deal.
Once you get one insider to flip, just like you do in the mob or the drug cartels, you then are able to put all the conspirators together in one big conspiracy.
That's the strategy, and that's what's playing out day in and day out.
In Florida right now, some new resources are being sent down to Florida, including a veteran prosecutor who has years of experience as an independent counsel and a U.S. attorney in earlier times.
They're beefing up the house in Florida to go big on this investigation.
This, folks, when you talk about Watergate, it's a second tier burglary.
I mean, Nixon was right.
And you look at the, but they removed him by the same type of lawfare.
Jeff Shepard lays it out with Sirica, the house, all of it.
Which is the foreshadowing of this.
That's the reality.
But it's tiny compared to this.
This is a, to quote in the 1950s McCarthy, a conspiracy so vast.
That's why you need a couple of very smart people that can hold the narrative as they pursue the prosecutions because they're going to try to dissipate the power of this.
And for the president, this could be his most lasting, of everything he does, the most lasting legacy is the shattering of the deep state because they understood from the beginning what a threat he was.
Everything, as Alan Dershowitz wrote in his book, it was all about getting Trump.
They had to stop Trump because he was a threat, not only to the way business was done as usual in Washington, but he was a threat to the Democratic Party.
He peeled away core constituencies of the Democratic Party Hispanics and black males and working class and union workers.
And they had to stop him because he could crush the monopoly that the Democrats had over their constituencies for 50 years.
And so It's a 10 year conspiracy.
When you look at it, there are dozens of common players across the four wash, rinse, repeat cycles.
And there are more than a thousand victims that I've been able to put together on a list.
More than a thousand people had their civil liberties violated, had their privacy intruded upon, even though they were always innocent.
They never did anything wrong, but their phone records were taken.
Their lives were turned upside down.
Their reputations were smeared and destroyed.
There has to be some recompense for that.
And it starts with charging the people who did it.
And then revising the system so it can't be done again to a future president.
I think you'll see an acceleration of what's going on, and there'll be some satisfaction knowing that there's real activity, meaningful actions being taken.
There's a great relationship between him and Kash Patel.
The prosecutors in Florida are in lockstep.
They've been working this since October really aggressively.
I think it'll be a good thing after a decade of frustration.
I think those on the conservative side who want some accountability are going to see a machinery capable of delivering it for the first time.
I just want to read you a line from it in which he said, he's talking about Iran.
He said, But if I told you a year ago that our pilots, men and women, would fly in Iran, who would have believed it?
If I told you a year ago that the United States of America, the strongest power in the world, would fight by our side, shoulder to shoulder, wing to wing, for nearly 40 days against the common enemy, who would have believed it?
But all of this happened because we initiated, we acted, we attacked.
He faces prosecution for corruption, potentially goes to jail, his political career is over.
So the stakes are very high for him, and he needs to persuade the voters that he is acting in the best interests of Israel and they can trust him to keep Israel safe.
So it suits his narrative.
also to tell his voters that, look, I was able to bring the United States into this conflict.
One of the things that you have to look out for is, of course, the geography of the place that we're looking at here, and that's the Strait of Hormuz in this case.
So theoretically, from a geographical standpoint, this is going to be easier to do than, let's say, Venezuela or Cuba.
But there's a lot of traffic that is supposed to go through the Strait of Hormuz, you know, on average, 135 ships a day before the war.
So there's a lot that has to be controlled here.
And so what the blockade would probably look like is that the U.S. forces would principally be focused in the southern approaches, basically from the Gulf of Oman and the Arabian Sea into the Strait of Hormuz, that 21-mile-wide gap that we're seeing right there.
And the other part of it, the northern part, may very well be controlled by the Emirati and Saudi and other Gulf states.
Arab states.
So what they would have to do is they'd have to work together.
Now, the president of the United States has not said anything about the Saudis or the Emiratis or the Bahrainis or anybody else getting involved in this.
So that would make it easier if they did.
But let's assume for a second that the U.S. was the sole country to do this.
They would have to have basically a fleet of destroyers out there, coupled with at least one, preferably two aircraft carriers that could maintain maritime surveillance over the area.
And then what they're trying to do is they're trying to prevent any ships that paid Iranian tolls from getting through the Strait of Hormuz.
So if that's the case, that could set us up for a conflict not only between Iran and the United States, which is already happening, but also potentially with other countries such as China, which have paid tolls that allow their ships to go through.
So it's an area where we have to be very careful what happens next.
But that's basically what this blockade would look like.
Look, I think it's a step in the right direction, Mika.
It puts pressure on Iran.
The idea that they would control what's going through the Strait and would collect hundreds of millions of dollars a day in the process is untenable, I would argue.
And don't forget, before this war, what was the Achilles heel of the Iranian government?
It was their economy.
The war has made a bad situation worse.
So where we have leverage over Iran is not with.
Continued applications of military force, it's with enhanced economic pressure.
So I think this is a step in the right direction.
I would couple this with a diplomatic initiative, say we're going to essentially block the Strait until everybody gets to use it.
We also want to see some kind of a new authority.
The Iranians could participate in it with all the local countries about what the ground rules are for using the states.
Maybe even there could be a small toll that would be shared by all the neighboring countries.
But this is, to me, far better.
Then think about it, Mika, seizing Karg Island or trying to escort individual tankers through the Strait of Hormuz.
Those would have been military and political nightmares.
So I think this is a smart move, and it puts pressure on Iran.
Quite honestly, I wish we had done it before the meetings in Islamabad.
And indeed, my biggest problem with the talks is that we didn't focus on the Strait.
We've got time to deal with the nuclear issue.
We've got time to deal with some of the other issues, Iranian support for proxies.
The issue that's untenable for the United States and the world is the impact of the war on the global economy.
So, this ought to be up front.
We need to sequence the approach to the negotiations.
So, I actually think this could create a backdrop to successful talks.
And so I worry that the logic still points in the direction of potential military escalation, where the U.S. may be pulled into another ground war in the Middle East.
Well, Steve, I think in strategic terms, I think the president's announcement was much like the Iranians saying that they were going to put or control the strait.
Or put mines in the strait.
It has the same deterrent effect in a way against Iran, which is to say their ability to control what's going on and have ships come in and out, even through their toll booth, are now going to be interdicted.
I think that's a strategic point.
Operationally, it was just reported here in the last two hours that the USS George W. Bush has gone through the Strait of Gibraltar.
So we have now three aircraft carriers in the theater of operations.
So that means associated with those aircraft carriers is a number of Aegis destroyers and independent steaming destroyers are already out there, like the Michael Murphy that transited through the strait a few days ago.
So we are now setting up essentially a choke point outside of the strait, and we have put out a notice to mariners.
I haven't actually seen the actual notice to mariners, but the United Kingdom's Maritime Trade Office put out their assessment of it and basically said.
The restrictions encompass the entirety of the Iranian coastline, including ports and energy infrastructure.
Transit passage through the Strait of Hormuz is to or from non Iranian destinations, and is not reported to be impeded by these measures.
However, vessels may encounter military presence, directed communications, or right of visit procedures during passage.
What that means is, and I will note that the CENTCOM statement was very clear, and they said, in accordance.
We're giving our direction that we're going to implement this blockade as of 10 o'clock Eastern time today in accordance with the president's proclamation.
And then you have the further details.
And so there's been some online discussion about, well, the president said it's a total blockade, everything is stopped.
CENTCOM said they're only going to control what comes out of Iran and not target any other ships.
I think we'll find out the details as these days go along.
But the most important thing is that now the United States is controlling.
Anything that comes out of Iran.
And as we've talked in previous episodes, Iran has 28 flagged tankers that they own that runs most of the money that comes from, you know, that they own themselves.
So those tankers are certainly open for interdiction.
There's 12 of them right now in the Gulf of Oman that are sitting fully loaded outside in the Gulf of Oman.
I expect those will be put under some kind of quarantine.
And then I've also heard a lot of comments about, well, how can we do this?
How hard will it be?
How will we know?
Well, I can tell you.
From experience, that the Fifth Fleet Director of Intelligence there in Bahrain and his team and those back in Tampa, they know every ship that's coming in and out of Iran.
And they were tracking them and they know who they are.
And those ships will be identified.
And it doesn't matter their flag, it doesn't matter if they're Iranian or not.
When they come out, they will be identified and quarantined.
Just like when the initial, you know, obliterating the Iranians' nuclear capabilities, they didn't want any part of it until it was done in a couple of hours.
And then they said, oh, we'll help you.
And Trump said, no, thanks.
We got this.
I think the same thing will happen.
I believe in this blockade.
I think this is the smartest alternative.
I'm so happy for Hegsteth and Trump and the folks who are making the decisions in the situation room that they came up with the one thing that could take the straight out of control of the straight out of the Iranians' hands and bring it back into ours.
Just enforce it.
If they're able to enforce it, this is going to be a monster great idea without having to put boots on the ground or obliterate civilizations.
Eric, hang on for a second because I want to get back to you about are the markets now looking at 100 as the old, is 100 the new 50?
Right, President Trump's economic plan is predicated upon full spectrum energy dominance with oil with a four or five handle in front of it, not at a hundred dollars.
We'll get to that in a moment.
Captain Fanel will give us more detail on the blockade itself and how it's actually implemented.
If somebody says, Hey, and they're not going to heave to, what happens?
You put a shot across their bow, or is the United States Navy and the Marine detachments actually bored like the old days?
Liz Troutman, Elizabeth Troutman Mitchell joins us.
I know you've got time constraints, but there were two stories you broke over the weekend.
I want to make sure people read today and talk about.
The first is about artificial intelligence.
It was a lot of confusion.
I've had people reaching out to me all weekend about what exactly happened with the White House political team in the state of Tennessee and some of these other folks who are just saying, hey, look, the guidance you're given is totally with the oligarchs and this artificial intelligence.
We can't do that with our people.
Politically, it's not feasible.
It's also not the right thing to do.
So, what exactly happened?
Did political people at the White House or David Sachs, who I thought had been given his walking papers, actually try to get in the middle of Tennessee and some of these other states that are coming forward with legislation to protect children, ma'am?
So we already knew this is something that was happening.
I have written in the past about Utah and Florida, where the Trump administration has gotten involved in these states in AI legislation, usually legislation that has safeguards for children and has called people in power or sent emails or memos that would lead to the bill being killed.
And it has been revealed now that this is happening in two more states, Tennessee and Missouri.
In Missouri, I spoke to State Senator Joe Nicola, who introduced a bill to put a variety of transparency and safety Limitations on AI, saying that AI doesn't have personhood, limiting potential deep fake videos made by AI, and saying that the AI operator is the one who would have the responsibility for such illegal images.
And he got a call.
He had a call with someone in the White House Intergovernmental Affairs Office and was told that he needed to soften the bill in a variety of different ways.
They felt that it was too strongly worded.
And so he is now working on his 11th version of the bill, but he was very Frustrated by this involvement, said it inspires him even more to limit AI and protect his constituents.
And then, secondly, in Tennessee, if you can believe it, a Tennessee state senator actually did it on the floor.
Hang on, People in the White House have threatened Missouri legislators that they will hold back broadband funding unless they do the bidding of the oligarchs and soften the I just want to make sure we understand the stakes here because this is not a small thing.
I'm also not sure the president's getting perfect information from these oligarchs and the David Sachses of the world.
And was it Kratziotis?
All these guys, they're all giving him the oligarch's position.
The White House is not reading the room right now.
The country's in a revolt against this, whether it's data centers or whether it's children's, make sure that they're protected as well as families protected.
And they're getting bad information.
I just want to make sure in your reporting, you're saying they threaten this guy with withholding, which is.
A central part of the MAGA program or the populist program is broadband for rural areas.
You're saying they're threatened withholding that unless he softens this to kowtow to the oligarchs?
Well, if you read that December 11th executive order, which first established that state laws that were quote unquote onerous to AI would be preempted, in that law, it says that states that have these onerous laws could lose broadband funding.
And so this is something that Joe Nicola had a conversation with his colleagues about.
And they said, we don't want to risk losing this broadband funding.
It's extremely important to our constituents and they don't want to risk it.
Yes, this bill doesn't, I mean, it doesn't seem like it puts too strong of limits on AI to a variety of people in the AI safety movement, talking about how AI doesn't have a soul, it can never be a human.
And really, the big focus of this is these deep fake images, which I think is a huge concern for lots of.
Parents around the country that now you can make an image that looks like anything is happening.
And so putting a limit on this and saying that it would be the duty of care is on the AI company that allows this to happen is something that I think a lot of people can support.
But there are, of course, concerns that we're hearing now about this.
And particularly given this, the meeting that Besant and that Scott and Powell had with the banks about the mythos, the new mythos cyber weapon.
Right, it could basically take down a bank in seconds.
It's scared people to the marrow of their souls about the concerns here.
It realizes this AI is completely out of control right now, totally out of control.
People should just know that.
At least I know you got to bounce.
I got to get to the other story is that, by the way, there are other legislatures too.
I just want there are other people they're reaching out to, whether it's Tennessee or other places, and trying to put pressure on them.
We'll get to that, but I want to get one.
We've had.
We've had Rosemary Jenks on here with this out of control H 1B visas and taking jobs from American kids, American tech workers.
12 million STEM workers are out of the labor force.
And at the same time, AI is eating up jobs.
We've got these guys going for these visas more and more and more.
One of the worst part of it, as Rosemary Jenks talks about, is OPT this situation where you have all these foreign students and they can get in underneath.
The regulations on H 1Bs.
This is one of the reasons the corporations game the system.
Is it Senator Scott to finally have somebody in the Senate stepping up to this?
You have an exclusive about this, about he stepping up to say, this is another program that's destroying American kids and American workers, and we got to stop it?
Yeah, so this optional practical training program gives a tax incentive to employers to hire foreign students.
And so he's saying not only does this harm American college graduates who are facing very high unemployment rates, it also gives a leg up to communist China because UCSIS has said that there is a threat of Chinese Communist Party coming in, sending foreign students.
Those foreign students then use the OPT program to get tech jobs.
Physics jobs, programs where they're going to learn a lot about American innovation and they're going to be able to take that information back to China, which could use that to beat the United States.
So, not only does this harm American college graduates, it also harms national security.
And so, Senator Scott is urging the White House, urging DHS to do something about this.
The Chinese Communist Party, you have a tool right there that Scott's saying, We've created the entire ecosystem for the CCP, not just to finance them debt and equity financing, also to provide them with chips and to provide them with training back here in the companies and the labs, and most specifically, taking billets from kids in these colleges, then training them up and they go back.
I'm going to get Eric Bowling back in here and Captain Fennell.
Breaking news, President of the United States, Commander in Chief, and I quote Iran's Navy is laying at the bottom of the sea, completely obliterated, 158 ships.
What we have not hit are the small number of what they call fast attack ships because we did not consider them much of a threat.
Warning if any of those ships come anywhere close to our blockade, they will be immediately eliminated using the same system of kill that we used during the drug dealers on boats at sea.
It is quick and brutal.
P.S. 98.2% of drugs coming into the United States.
By ocean or sea, have stopped.
Thank you for your attention in this matter, President Donald J. Trump.
Eric Bowling, capital markets right now.
One of my concerns is that in the Wall Street Journal, it's got this big piece out on petrodollar, like your thoughts on, or an opinion piece about the petrodollar.
And you see the president right there, that's going to, I think, rule markets a little bit more, but they're saying, hey, he's going to be very serious about this.
He's going to take some ships, he's going to take some warships down, maybe even take a tanker down.
You never know.
Right now, the price is at 100.
President Trump's economic plan works.
If it's at 50, Besant has been one of the biggest advocates of this blockade to kind of use this as a forcing function, particularly against the Chinese Communist Party.
Your thoughts on a Monday before you punch out and get ready for your show?
I thought, Steve, the 98.2% of drugs, he is very precise.
You got to love him.
I mean, so the fast boats, the little boats that Stevie could take out with one or two little You know, you could even probably take it out with a 50 caliber.
I don't think this is going to royal the markets or move the markets.
It hasn't yet.
So we were at 105 when we first started trading this morning.
We're at 102 or so, 101, 102, versus a $96 settlement on Friday.
It's all wait and see what the Iranians have.
Do they have anything to combat this blockade?
And are they stupid enough to use it?
And then what will be the response?
So I think the oil market will stick around the $100, trade between 90 and 110 for a while until we find out exactly how well the Iranians have to respond.
If they don't, then you may start to trail off and then equity markets can go higher.
Also, there's been a flight to the US dollar recently, since the last 45 days or so.
Always happens in war time, whether it's us involved or other.
Major countries involved.
Remember, when an oil producing country is involved, that roils the world, the global markets, the equity markets, all markets, because energy is integral into every single economy in the world.
So, with producing countries involved, producing nations involved, especially OPEC nations involved, then it will have a bigger impact.
So, this flight to the dollar out of other assets into the U.S. dollar, seemingly the safest currency on the planet, has happened.
And what it does is it puts a bit of a downward price on assets like gold.
You'll probably talk to Philip Patrick about that.
I'm pretty sure he'll say, with the new strength in the dollar, that's Putting a little bit of an anchor on gold right now.
But when things start to clear up, when the strait starts to open up, when people breathe the sigh of relief that there's going to be no destruction or boots on the ground or civilizations going away, I think you'll see that flow out of the U.S. dollar.
The problem is, BRICS countries have been trying to move away from the U.S. dollar as the global reserve currency.
I think central banks are also not sure where it's headed because they're buying gold instead of U.S. dollars.
The U.S. dollar treasuries are at the lowest they've been in maybe decades, and they're Their treasuries of gold have been at the highest because they want to make sure if it's not going to be the dollar, if it's going to be the yuan or some BRICS, euro or BRICS currency, then the dollar will substantially lose its value.
And that, Steve, is a very, very negative impact on our economy as well as others, but mostly ours.