6/23/26: John Mearsheimer On Iran & Ukraine, Tucker Says He Is Done With Republican Party

29:26So the Russians say enough is enough. So there is a large amount, maybe a huge amount of talk inside of Russia about how to end this. And the strategy that most people talk about is launching conventional attacks against European countries or against NATO countries, attacking maybe the Baltic states or Romania or Poland with conventional forces to send a very powerful signal to the Ukrainians and to the West that this has got to stop. And if it doesn't stop, the Russians say that maybe what we have to do then is use a handful of nuclear weapons against a European country. And I've talked to a number of Russians on this issue, and they believe, and I think it's quite correct, that if they were to launch a nuclear weapon or two or three into Eastern Europe, that NATO would not attack Russia with its own nuclear weapons.

30:30In other words, they think they could get away with it. But the important point here is that from their perspective, and here I'm talking about the Russian perspective, they think that they would establish deterrence. They would deter future major attacks on Mother Russia. And they think if they don't do this, if they don't take these drastic measures, and what I just described are surely drastic measures, that what will happen here is that the Ukrainians, with full support from the Europeans and even the Americans, will continue to up the ante in their bombing campaign against Russia. Yeah. Professor, let's stress test the Ukrainian theory.

31:09So let's put B-2 up here on the screen. You know, you are first and foremost with a major one to highlight just the Ukrainian ability to actually thwart Russian ground attacks has never really existed. It's been frozen now on the front line. They continue to lose a war of attrition. So now they've escalated to this cruise missile and drone strategy, largely attacking critical infrastructure. Well, as we just showed you, Ukrainian attacks have dropped Russian oil percent output by about 10 % or so. I believe they just hit Crimea yesterday, took out almost half the energy inside of Crimea. Their theory is to immiserate the Russian population, to force the Russian population to bring the Kremlin to make sure that the war will end on favorable terms.

31:53Actually, in some ways, it's similar to how the Iranians achieved victory. They attacked oil infrastructure, they drove oil prices up here at home, and Americans said enough with democratic pressure. Why is that theory incorrect on the Ukrainian side? Well, in terms of the Iranians, their magic weapon or their magic formula for victory was closing down the strait. There's no question that their ability to use Iranian missiles to hit targets in the Gulf states and in Israel and to hit American bases in the region did matter. But their magic weapon was economic in nature. Here's the way to think about this.

32:35We've been watching the war between Russia and Ukraine for over four years now. We're into the fifth year of this war. And as you well know, the Russians have been pounding the Ukrainians with air power at a much greater level than the Ukrainians have been pounding Russia. Right. You remember all the damage that the Russians have done to the Ukrainian grid, their electric grid, over the past two years and the negative consequences of that. Quite great. But there is no evidence that that has caused the Ukrainians to throw up their hands and surrender. And there is absolutely no reason, given the historical record, to think that these attacks will cause the Russians to surrender, or to put it in slightly different terms, will affect events on the battlefield where the Russians are on the march and continuing to win victories, slowly but steadily.

33:43The bombing campaign is not going to reverse that. The great danger, however, which we were just talking about a minute ago, is that this bombing campaign will lead the Russians to attack into Europe because they will become so desperate to put an end to those attacks. Let's talk a little bit about the Trump administration's approach. We can put this final tear sheet, B3, up on the screen here. This is an analysis of what he had to say at the G7 with regard to Russia and Ukraine. Apparently, he told a press conference Russia was losing more soldiers than Ukraine in the war, described Moscow as the offensive party in the conflict.

34:24Zelensky's goal there was to convince Trump and others that Ukrainians' battlefield position had improved, that they were making gains, that this was not a lost cause. Trump showed a, quote, real change in approach regarding the Ukraine war, according to French President Emmanuel Macron in comments earlier in the day. Other European leaders made similar comments. So I wonder if you think anything significant came out of the G7 and what you think the Trump administration might do going forward. Well, just with regard to President Trump's rhetoric, as you know, it changes from day to day on almost every issue.

34:57So you can never put too much stock in anything, he says at one point in time. The biggest problem that Trump faces, even if he wants to help the Iranians, is that we've expended so many munitions in fighting the Iranians that we just don't have the weaponry to give to Ukraine, even if we wanted to. It's quite clear, and the New York Times had a big piece on this, that Ukraine is desperate for more PAC-3 missiles. These are the Patriot missiles to knock down incoming ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, and drones from Russia. And we just have no Patriots that we can give them. And it's true of almost all of the weapons in our inventory.

35:47We just used up so many weapons in this fight against the Iranians, and we have needs all over the world, especially in East Asia. When you talk about containing China. So President Trump is just not in a position to really help Ukraine in any meaningful way. But the more important point is Ukraine, despite the rhetoric in the West, is losing on the battlefield. It won't be long before the Russians control all of the Donbass. And I believe they will eventually control all of those four oblots that they have annexed. And I wouldn't be sure if they even annex more territory. There's no question that Ukrainian drones have slowed down Russian progress on the battlefield, but Russian progress is being made and the Russians are going to win this war.

36:40My last question actually sticks with the munitions points, actually ties in with the Iran situation as well. Ray Dalio is out with a new essay this morning and he points specifically, he's just spent a month in Asia where Chinese war planners, intellectuals, leaders, and others have been observing both the situation in Ukraine and the situation now with happened with Iran. Iran was the breaking point, but Ukraine kind of showed the roadmap here. To the munitions point, they really do view now the United States, both the population and its defense industrial base, as a second rate in its ability to produce at a level in which the U.S.

37:15population does not 100 % support a war. What do you think that that means then for both Iran and Ukraine in these two situations just in the last decade for what the future holds in Asia? Well, first of all, we learned from the Ukraine war that if you're going to wage a large scale conventional war over a long period of time, you need a significant industrial base. The Russians have that. We do not. Just very important to understand. We do not have an impressive industrial base. that can pump out the weaponry that's necessary to fight a protracted war of attrition. If you go to East Asia and you look at China's capability on this front versus air front, the Chinese have an impressive capability to pump out weaponry over a long period of time and to wage a protracted war of attrition.

38:10And we don't. So we're in deep trouble to begin with. Second, as a result of the Iran War, during the course of the fight, we pivoted away from Asia. You remember starting with Hillary Clinton's announcement in 2011 that we were going to pivot to Asia? We were heading in that direction up until the Iran War. Well, once the Iran War started, we pivoted away from Asia. We moved Patriot missiles. We moved THAAD missiles. We moved the Marine Expeditionary Unit. all out of East Asia to the Middle East. This weakened their position in East Asia. So if you look at our ability to contain China, our ability to deter the Chinese from taking Taiwan or trying to take over the South China Sea, we are not in an ideal position by any means because of, number one, the state of our industrial base, and number two, because of this foolish Iranian war.

39:12And last one from me, just I'd love for you to play out the sort of Russian logic that is being debated internally right now. Let's say that they do decide to strike within Europe using conventional weapons. How do you think that will be perceived by the Europeans? How do you think that they will respond? How do you think the U.S. will respond? Do you buy into the Russian logic that this will help to establish a deterrence, or do you think it will lead to a further and even a more dangerous escalation? Well, you have to distinguish between the Russians using conventional weapons and nuclear weapons.

39:46I think if they were to attack with conventional weapons, we would have a powerful incentive, we meaning the West, to retaliate with conventional weapons. I'm not saying we would axiomatically do that because there would be a powerful set of incentives to just shut the conflict down at that point to prevent further escalation. But I think it's more likely that we would retaliate with conventional weapons, which would push the Russians to use nuclear weapons. And I think if they use nuclear weapons, we would not retaliate. Because you have to ask yourself, in these sorts of situations, how does this play out?

40:28People like to focus on the first move or even the second move in situations like this. But you want to focus on the third move, the fourth move, and so forth and so on. And the point is, if the Russians were to use a small number of nuclear weapons in Eastern Europe, it would be almost impossible for the United States to hit Russia with nuclear weapons, because that would give the Russians a very powerful incentive to hit the United States with nuclear weapons. They would not want to tolerate a situation where the Russian homeland was hit with nuclear weapons and the American homeland was not.

41:06So this is a scenario that once it began, once the Russians used a handful of nuclear weapons, the incentives for everyone to shut this down immediately would be enormous because we would be out there on the slippery slope to oblivion. And this is why if you talk to the Russians, they think there's a serious possibility that this would work. Quite chilling to be contemplating any of these scenarios. Professor, thank you so much for your analysis this morning. We really appreciate it. Thank you for your time, sir. Who doesn't love warm, carby comfort? Satisfying sandwiches, loaded bagels, rich mac and cheese.

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43:15Visit BajaMar.com today and discover a vacation destination where memories are made for a lifetime. Baja Mar, life spectacular. spectacular. So we wanted to zoom out a little bit from the Iran war and check in on how things are going overall for the Trump administration and the Republican Party as a whole. And a good place to begin our journey here today is with some interesting Tucker Carlson comments. Let's take a listen. I would not support the Republican Party. There's no chance I would support the Republican Party. Not going to support the Democratic Party. I don't know what I'm going to do.

43:44But at this point, you know, how could you support how could I or any American voters support a political party that's not loyal to the United States that puts the interest of a foreign country above those of its own citizens. Like that's that's, you know, it's not possible to vote for people like that. And I'm not going to. And I think I voted Republican my entire life. I worked at Fox News, CNN, MSNBC. I've been a consistent defender for 35 years of the Republican Party. I mean, very consistent defender. But there's no defending this because it's immoral. And it's exactly the opposite of what a political party in a democracy is charged with doing, which is representing its own voters, its own citizens, its own nation.

44:28And they're not doing that. So, no, I'm out. I'm out. He's out. Well, MTG backed him up. Tucker is not the only one done supporting the Republican Party. There's a lot of us that are absolutely fed up and will not support a party that betrays its voters in his country. that does not mean we're turning into Democrats either, but we are done with the America last Republican Party. I mean, look, in Tucker's case, right, this is a person who has quite literally been, I wouldn't say party line, but has been a dedicated - I mean, at one point for sure, total party line. Up until, let's say, when did he become interesting?

45:022017? Like, really? That's whenever the Tucker show started, and that's when he started to see some of the breaks, and there were some challenging interviews and all that. So let's say that's like the last nine years. Up until that point, I mean, he already had these private views, but really he was playing the game like in public and he was defending a lot. I mean, he was a Fox in front of the host. Yeah, I know. To this day, he says it's the worst job ever. Worse than MSNBC and worse than CNN. Don't blame him. I couldn't do it either. Doing some fake like concert in Times Square at 545 a.m. Thinking about him doing like the morning show shit.

45:33Oh, my God. Yeah, he's not built for it. I'm not built for it either. I'd be like, what the fuck am I doing here? We're playing a water gun game in Times Square. Anyway, all right, let's put that aside. I can do it. You think so? Yeah. Yeah. No, you have a better personality than I do. I'm just too disagreeable. But whenever it comes to Tucker, this is, I think, the point that he's making is around Israel. And I actually do think this is a very important point. And I actually blame myself for it as well. So let's think to the calculation that was made in 2024. The calculation was this. anybody with open eyes knew Miriam Adelson had given Trump$100 million.

46:11All right. And you can all roll the tape in the monologue that I did up and before the election. It was in October. And I said, if you're pro-Israel, you should vote for Trump because you're going to get some of what you want. This was clear eyed. We knew this. However, what we thought was, well, J.D.'s the vice president. There's all these, you know, Steve Bannon and the so-called anti-war coalition seem stronger. these forces will have equal weight within the coalition, right? In some cases, the Israelis will win. Everyone was clear out about this. We knew that they were going to get what they wanted in Gaza.

46:42Now, did we think we would get the Iran war? No, like genuinely no. We could tell you this from Trump's comments, from JD's comments, from Stephen Miller's comments. I could go on and on. What has happened is that actually, even now, you know, oh, the Israelis are melting down because they're not getting 100 percent of what they want. But if we look at the long network now of Trump's actions from January 20th, 2025 up until today, the balance of power is overwhelmingly on behalf of the Israel lobby. So I do think truckers' comments about saying I cannot support them while they're literally enslaved to a foreign power is true in the sense that if the Israel lobby is in your coalition whatsoever, you have to just assume that they will overwhelmingly use their money, their power, their influence, their media arm, the propaganda to take full control.

47:31And that's why it basically just has to be, this is where I'm personally at, is if you are taking Adelson money, if these people are a part of your coalition, I cannot be part of that. And it's not even just like a morality thing because now there's that to it too. But we know how much influence and operate they have. I think the Democrats have all discovered this as well. Like there's whole, you know, track APAC. We have to give them credit for it. Track APAC made it so they're like, there's no splitting the difference here, guys. Like you're either in or you're out. The voters are on the outside.

47:58A lot of the establishment is on the inside. The GOP, everybody's still trying to play the dance, the aspirational politicians. I don't think politically that it can happen at this point. And look already where we are. The Iran deal polling that came out in CBS where MAGA Republicans support the deal. 80 % of the American people support ending the war now even though they know that we lost. The political constituency of neoconservatism is so tiny that I actually do think we just need either both parties or one party. whoever it is. But like I personally, and I think a lot of people can as well, you cannot expect to have equal weight coalitions ever again.

48:37After what has happened, we can only go off of what we see now currently. Currently, the evidence exists. And I'm not just talking about the Iran war. How about bombing Iran back in June? How about deporting all of these student protests? Have you seen this shit with the coffee shop? What's going on right now? Okay, let's talk about it, right? Because this is important. So there's a New York City coffee shop. And what did they did not? Dan Goldman, the congressman, came in, and I think they found out who he was later. They refunded him. They're like, you're not welcome because you support Israel's genocide.

49:06Okay. Well, guess what? Now, this is a full-blown freakout. The Department of Justice is opening an investigation into this coffee shop. I've been around since Masterpiece, okay? We have the right to refuse service, as long as it's not based on race or whatever the protected classes of the Civil Rights Act is. If it's based on a disagreement over Israeli policy, to me, yeah, I mean, a little weird, you know, to be. Well, they didn't even refuse them service. They just refunded his money. OK, I mean, whatever. Right. Sorry. Like, by the way, I don't give a shit. There's much bigger problems that are all right.

49:41New York City has got a lot bigger problems for, I think, for the Department of Justice. But the Department of Anti-Racism stuff or Department of Anti-Semitism, which I've been calling it, this Leo Terrell fanatic, this what with the Florida student. the IDF shirt. I mean, this is I can't live like this. That's how I feel. Well, and it comes to a time when J.D. Vance is out there saying if everything is Jew hate, then nothing is Jew hate. It's like, OK, well, where is that in terms of your administration's policy? Because it's been quite the opposite in terms of what we've seen. I mean, it's very interesting.

50:12It reminds me that going back to the Tucker comments and also, you know, the way you're explaining your position, it does remind me of some of the like disaffected left basically saying, OK, we're done with the Democratic Party, you know, for many very legitimate reasons, many of them moral, also having to do at times with genocide. But then it becomes, OK, well, what then? Yes. You know, and I guess it also comes to a question of neither of the parties is going to be a perfect fit for you. So where are your moral priorities or are you going to try to do some third party thing? are you, Tucker Carlson, going to run for president and say you're going to be the one to restore the Republican Party to what it should be, et cetera, et cetera.

50:52He said explicitly, he's like, you never would do that in this interview. I mean, I could be wrong. I know him. I don't think he would run for president. I kind of agree with that. Not because there's not an opening available. He's a very talented, I think, and very savvy person. But I'm not sure that, you know, lifestyle-wise it's not fun running for president. He gets to live in Maine and do his thing and he's got a great life, I'm sure, making lots of money. etc uh so in any case it does just become a question of okay well what then and he immediately says of course the democrats are totally off the table and it's like okay well at some point you have to evaluate what are my moral priorities the democratic party right now is still very much in the zionist establishment israel status quo place and it's a civil war too however yeah however you You are much more likely at this point, given where the Democratic coalition is, to have a complete change on Israel in the Democratic Party than you are in the Republican Party.

51:50Because the only group out there in the public that still diehard pro-Israel, Israel no matter what, are boomer Republicans. And that is who dominates the Republican Party base. Like your average Fox News viewer is way more important to the Republican Party than your like super online griper. who, you know, so so in any case, it's interesting to me and we'll see where he goes from here. But obviously very noteworthy that he is coming on so strongly as to saying I'm done. I'm not doing this anymore. And it really is in a way I don't want to overstay it. It's kind of an end of an era because Tucker Carlson has been one of the most known faces of Republican Party defense for, you know, as long as I have been aware of politics going back to the bow tie days.

52:36and Crossfire and all of that. Literally since when I was born. Like, that's what's so great. And I, you know, he gave me my job just to show you how long this guy's been around for. I do think, I mean, the left analogy is very interesting. And I don't disagree with you. Like, look, you and I are not third-party people, much to the chagrin of a very online slice. Like, sorry, it doesn't work. Trump showed the, I mean, not Trump. Every aspiring great politician has shown the path. You take over a party and you make it your coalition. Period. End of story. Some of us thought that's what Trump was doing, okay?

53:08And by the way, though, you know, you see now even more clearly when Trump does pivot and use his cult of personality for good, like, or at least, you know, to rectify his own wrong, the whole base will come along crawling for you. That's what being a, you know, a very powerful leader is. That's how FDR was. That's how any of the transformative politicians, Eisenhower, any of these people. Actually, the Eisenhower one is a good example. The GOP throughout the entire FDR Truman era was built around opposition to the New Deal. That's where the base was. It was a very small Calvin Coolidge, like, oh, the welfare communists.

53:41And Eisenhower was like, yeah, that shit's over. Like, we're just going to end that. And guess what? He won the popular vote, not just in terms of who he was because he had enormous prestige. He transformed the Republican Party forever and gave birth to this kind of like Nixonianism, which embraced the role of government, but in a conservative form, leading to the EPA and some of the other good things that the Nixon administration did. My only point is that what you can do is you can use that cult of personality or leadership or whatever you want to call it to take over. The Democrats, like you said, are in the civil war.

54:11Is he going to vote Democrat? I mean, honestly, maybe. It depends on who the candidate is. I mean, if I'm thinking about him in Maine - You have to actually think about who is the candidate. Isn't it easier to imagine him voting for Graham Plattner than Susan Collins? Well, okay, did you see Susan Collins' interview yesterday? Yeah. I mean, this is insanity. Like, this woman is not only, like, nearly 80 years old, but she's like, well, AIPAC is just a bunch of Americans who love Israel. And what else did she say? She was like, and Graham, he's so anti-Semitic for calling out AIP. I'm like, lady, this shit is not going to fly anymore.

54:41She said AIPAC is made up of Americans who care deeply about her relationship with Israel. That's true. Yeah. Plattner makes it sound like this is some sort of evil foreign influence, and that is absolutely wrong. She also said, I remain a very strong supporter of Israel. I think this sadly reflects rising anti-Semitism in our country that Plattner is certainly part of. This is some 2017 nonsense. Like, this shit does not fly, period, to any politically engaged person. So, yeah, I mean, do I think he'll vote for Plattner? I don't know. By the way, I still think Gramsci should go on his show. I know that that was a significant controversy, I think, in Maine, which I think is ridiculous because I think very obviously he'd reach millions of people and Tucker is a Maine resident.

55:23They could actually probably talk more in depth about Maine-specific issues than any other national television host who would interview him. But like you said, zooming out, it depends. And ultimately someone made this point. You don't vote for parties. You vote for candidates. Like, it's about the candidates. So let's see. Especially at the presidential level. Especially at the presidential level. Yeah. You're right. Right. Because, you know, Democrat, Republican in the House, Senate, 90 percent of the time these people just vote party line. Yeah. And it matters more who has the majority and who's being elected Speaker of the House and Senate majority leader.

55:54Then, you know, if you're president, then, yes, the individual person makes more of a difference. Yeah. This is why in red states they often can elect blue governors is because they're executives. So they trust, you know, that person to oversee things differently, even though they might vote Republican. I don't know. I mean, I know this is a bit long way, but I do think it's important to talk just about how the coalitions and all of that evolve. Like, let's see who the Democratic presidential nominee is. And we can all evaluate based on that. A lot of Democrats voted for Trump or former Democrats or any of these other people.

56:23A lot of Republicans may vote for a Democrat whenever it comes to 2028. I have no idea. But that's where the candidate matters more than anything. Yeah. Yeah. So we will see. We also want to check in on, you know, I my thesis is effectively that the Iran war really just destroyed the Trump presidency. like all of the grandiose goals, not to say there isn't still lots of harm being done. But in terms of the most maximalist aims of the Trump administration coming out, you know, out of the gates with Doge and then they have the mass deportation, they're buying all these warehouses, National Guard is invading cities, protests are getting shot in the streets.

57:01That has all been dialed back a lot in terms of the at least public image and the sort of aggressive posture. A lot of that really happened after Minneapolis. And there was a I think I was skeptical at the time, frankly, but I think there truly was a retreat from the Trump administration in terms of their, again, aggressive public posture. You brought in Mark Wayne Mullen. You got rid of Kristi Noem. And so now we've seen a few interesting things on the immigration front, which really was the core of their their promise, the place where they probably did have the biggest mandate that and dealing with cost of living, which we all know how that has gone.

57:37In any case, let's put C2 up on the screen because this was such an emblem of the Trump administration approach, which was very showy. It was meant to be showy cruelty with the intent of signaling to immigrants, just get out before you find yourself in alligator Alcatraz or you find yourself, you know, being dragged and your kids being torn apart, all of that, right? That was an intentional intentional direction led by Stephen Miller and Kristi Noem. So now Alligator Alcatraz is actually shutting down permanently. This was in Florida. Ron DeSantis was very gung-ho. In fact, Florida taxpayers fronted the$1 billion that went into this monstrosity.

58:20It was beset by problems from the very beginning. Sewage overflows, worms in the food. You had abhorrent conditions because it is basically in a swamp. It was never meant to have this many people being held for indefinite periods of time. The federal government was supposed to reimburse Florida. They're still holding the bag on that one. That money has not come through. And now the whole thing is being completely shut down, which, again, I think is very emblematic of the fact that they not only on cost of living, but really across the board, they have lost their mandate on even their strongest issue.

58:59Yeah, welcome to George W. Bush's presidency. It turns out that when you launch a disastrous war, you have no political capital to do literally anything. And then you are one Katrina away from being, you know, 25 percent, like 25 percent in terms of your approval rating. Look, you're right. And, you know, whenever, by the way, I hope that we don't bail out Florida and I hope that they have to raise property taxes instead. Anybody else think of bailing Florida out? All right. Pay too much money to Florida. I know I've spoken against that type of rhetoric in the past, but, you know, whenever they're considering abolishing their property tax, you know, somebody has to draw the line.

59:33But, you know, on the immigration front, let's just think about this very, very like logically on timeline. They came in with the mandate. The mandate was against chaos at the border. Then they decided and they had two paths. One was allegedly, I mean, reportedly pushed by Tom Homan, which is we need an orderly arrest. By the way, you know, not a shrinking violet, Tom Homan. He was like, we need to launch, use this new budget to target these criminals. And instead of doing large scale civilian tile raids in blue states, he's like, let's just launch across the nation. We can do a few of those types of targeted actions where we need to be unimpeachable for the media.

1:00:09Kristi Noem, Corey Lewandowski, Stephen Miller decided in the latter to use the political coalition that they had to try and to capture the media and the public attention and also to use it as a strategy to get people to self-deport. It did actually quite work at that. Some quarter of a million people did self-deport. There are still tens of millions of people here living illegally. So at the same time, you burned your entire public reputation. Then Minneapolis happens. Minneapolis happens and is a full-scale disaster whenever it comes to public relations, which is then immediately followed by a major international crisis.

1:00:42So in the interim of this, what, it's been almost 150 days, something like that, since Minneapolis happened. Well, what happens? You see, you're that all of the showiness of Alligator Alcatraz and the warehouse detention centers and all this stuff, which became major political hotbed issues in the states, even where those were purchased. They're like, yeah, that's over. So what are you left with? You're basically left with an overwhelming amount of money, no strategy, and your political capital has been burned. Also, at the same time, you have come on the heels of this disastrous Iran war. Soon we will have the midterms.

1:01:14We will even have Republicans, I believe, in the future. Once the midterms happen and Trump is officially an actual lame duck, I'm not going to say they're going to speak out against him, but it will be very John Cornyn-esque. Things will start positioning for the future. Things will really start to go in a different direction. All kinds of people are going to be opening their mouths in a different direction. Yeah, Tucker, Marjorie Taylor Greene. And then, I mean, already there, John Cornyn just gave a big interview where he was critical of Trump and critical of the sycophancy and saying they're pushing people like me out of the Republican Party.

1:01:43So sort of like the country club type Republicans, which is he is the biggest emblem of. You'll start to see more of that. And you mentioned the warehouses put C3 up on the screen. This was another one of those big emblems of their grandiose plans. You remember who? I don't remember who it was that said they wanted to turn the deportation mechanism into Amazon, where you had vans zipping around and people being literally warehoused in these type of facilities. And if you're going to accomplish what Stephen Miller and the rest of them want to accomplish, you would need this kind of space. To Sagar's point, so now ICE is selling a bunch of these warehouses that they had purchased.

1:02:25They spent$700 million on seven warehouses. Now they're trying to get rid of them. And to your point, it was a problem in most of these were located in very rural, very Republican areas. But it became like a NIMBY thing where they're like, wait, what is this going to mean for my water bill? What is it going to mean for my wastewater treatment plant? I'm going to have all of these people. like, what does this mean for my community? And so there was huge backlash in these places. And again, if you were at a different point in the Trump administration, where they had more of a mandate and able to just sort of like bulldoze through that local public pressure, especially from fellow Republicans, then it would be a different deal.

1:03:04But the other thing is, you know, all of this was half-baked to begin with. Warehouses are not set up to be able to hold human beings for any period of time, you know, just in terms of what would be required in terms of renovating these things. So it became a complete boondoggle. And even though they have effectively all the money in the world that they could possibly want to buy these places and rehab them to serve the purpose, et cetera, they just decided, you know what, we're not doing this. We're getting rid of this. And one more on this front with regard to immigration, put C1B up on the screen because this just happened yesterday.

1:03:39And we were talking about Minneapolis and the way that that genuinely did mark a huge turning point in terms of the Trump administration's approach on immigration. You don't have a judge blocking these DOJ subpoenas that were aimed at Tim Walz and other, I think that Mayor Jacob Fry and some other Democratic officials in the state of Minnesota, calling them blatantly unlawful, seeing them as direct sort of political retribution. They said initiating a criminal investigation in order to harass political opponents or coerce them into taking official action, particularly official action the federal government cannot directly require those political opponents to take is a blatantly unlawful and unethical use of the grand jury process.

1:04:21This was a George W. Bush-appointed chief judge who believed, correctly so, that the subpoenas were aimed at sort of bullying and intimidating Tim Walz and cooperating with them on what they wanted him to do with regard to immigration. And, you know, you may think like, okay, this probably would have played out regardless of what happened with Minneapolis, regardless of the strength of the Trump administration. But judges are very political creatures, and they do also put their finger in the wind and see where the public mood is and see where things are shifting. And on that note, we can put C4 up on the screen.

1:04:55We've got SCOTUS set to rule on a few different matters, including the Trump administration's opposition to birthright citizenship, an attack on birthright citizenship. And it looks like in these three key rulings, two of which have to do with who you can hire and fire, and the other one is the birthright citizenship thing. It looks like in two out of the three, they're going to go against Trump. Mostly throughout the administration, they have kind of given Trump what he wanted. The two significant rulings that went against him were on Kilmar-Brego-Garcia, where they said, the way you did this was not right.

1:05:30And the other one was on tariffs, which I think was a huge, huge deal. He was very, very mad about the tariff ruling. And now you have this set to go, you know, two of three against him. Again, I think these are highly, highly political actors. They're not just wearing the weighing the merits of this case. They're also looking at the public mood and how strong the president is and concerned about their own legitimacy and whether or not there's going to be some, you know, extraordinary actions taken by Trump to, you know, to go around them or pack the courts or whatever, defy them outright. And so the fact that they feel comfortable to issue two rulings against him at this point, I think, is also a sign of the times.

1:06:10Yep. Another easy historical analog is FDR. Whenever the court struck down his court packing plan, he never recovered. And that's actually the first time that the Senate and a lot of the congressional Democrats and others decided to defy him. And they had to look to this public pressure, this public pressure. And they're like, oh, we actually do have the ability to say no to the man in the White House. which they used to call him FDR. And that was kind of a watershed moment in the history of his presidency. That's also when foreign affairs become much more important for FDR, also for the world.

1:06:44But I do think you could see not everything is one-to-one. I'm just pointing to, as you said, the political wins, where things go. And when you lose here and what we're about to talk about here with affordability and with housing very specifically, you just cause yourself, it's like death by a thousand cuts. There were so many over the course. Iran is definitely the turning point. I think the midterms are going to be a big one. I genuinely, my like modus, like the way that I'm thinking framework wise for Trump to this the last two years is just the Clinton presidency. Clinton from 98 to 2000, he lived in hell.

1:07:21He lived in Lewinsky hell. He could do nothing. Everything was just Congress, you know, bitching about this. Congress calling you for this press conference over this just constant warfare with the congressional Republicans, with Kenneth Starr and with all of that. People were in open revolt. And Clinton still had 60 something percent approval rating, but it didn't matter because the whole political system was against him. He got literally nothing done in those two years. So I think that's basically what it's going to look like. You make a good point, though, that presidents who are on the rocks with public approval and don't have political support remaining in Congress.

1:07:54What do they do? They turn to foreign policy. I mean, we already see that really with Trump. And so even after the Iran war, if it resolves here, which big question marks there, obviously, what's going to be next? Is it going to be Cuba? Is it going to be Greenland? Is it going to be Cuba and Greenland? Is it going to be something else? I mean, I could definitely see him continuing to go in that direction because that's the area where he has the most unilateral power. And we saw the same thing with Biden and his obsession with like, you know, NATO and AUKUS and all. I mean, it was partly like his declining brain, but it was also his declining power with regard to the public and any sort of political mandate.

1:08:30Taylor's oldest time, Obama, JCPOA, you know, it's like they all - At least he did something good with it. No, I know, but I'm more just saying like when they lose their power in Congress, they just all look abroad. They're all, you know, egomaniacs obsessed with their own legacy. So that is unfortunate, I think, for us, especially probably for Cuba.

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