Welcome to today's podcast sponsored by Hillsdale College All Things Hillsdale Hillsdale dot ed or I encourage you to take advantage of the many free online courses there, and of course I'll listen to the Hillsdale dialogues, all of them at q for Hillsdale dot com or just Google, Apple iTunes and Hillsdale Morning Glory and even Grace America. Welcome to the Big Weekend Pod. And what a week it was.
I have talked about pretty much everything, at least a little bit during the week, but I would guess out of the seventy five segments that make up every week of the U Hewitt Show, I devoted sixty at least to the fact that we're on the verge of a major battle with Iran, one that could be quite dangerous to American troops, soldiers, sailors, airman all throughout the region, could be very dangerous to Israel, to our allies. Therefore, President Trump is surging all sorts of force into the region.
The second aircraft carrier is not going as we thought on Thursday. By Friday morning, we were sure that George H. W. Bush was not being dispatched. It's one carrier group, bunches of destroyers, lots of Aegis class cruisers, They have air defense systems, they have knockdown missiles. I don't really want to try to see how great the missile defense is.
That's not why we're doing this. I think President Trump is doing this because he has a red line and he can't walk it back, and he doesn't want to walk it back. If he does, he'll be in the same position as President's Biden and Obama. If you draw a red line, you got to enforce it. I think
Donald Trump will enforce it. But I believe he's going to make sure that the risk two American troops allies, especially Israel, is not any higher than it has to be, and there's always risk, as Ambassador Michael urn for Israeli Ambassador the United States noted on Thursday's program, the Sheffield nineteen eighty two was a Royal Navy HMS Sheffield destroyer and it was in part of the armada that went to the Falklands and a couple of Argentinian Exo set
were fired from fighter jets margit one got it. Twenty sailors were killed on the twenty three seriously wounded, and the Sheffield eventually sunk. Even though it didn't sink immediately, they couldn't get it back to any place that could be repaired in time before it sunk. So there is real risk. There is real danger to your prayers for the members of the military in there. But I don't
know that we can go backwards. And certainly the West has a moral authority to say you may not slaughter thirty thousand of your people and expect the West to turn away. But preparing to do it as safely and as quickly as possible makes a lot of sense. Negotiations broke down on Friday. The Iranians are saying they didn't break down. Obviously, they broke down. There's nothing to talk about. They say it's only the nuclear art so but they
have no nuclear program. It was obliterated by President Trump. So I'm hoping, really hoping that by the end of this half year, by the end of June, the Islamic Republic of Iran is no more and there's a new regime there. Don't know what it's going to look like. Just cannot have a fanatic at the top of it.
So that's mostly what I talked about. Today with all of our regular guests for the weekend review show, Matt Knee, Ben Dominic, Eli Lake, of course John Ellis from News Items, so enjoy, sit back and catch up on whatever you may have missed concerning our looming battle with Iran's America. Good weekend pod to you all. Good weekend broadcast to
you all. I'm beginning the weekend review as I do every weekend with John Ellis, editor in chief and founder of News Items, the one newsletter you need every morning to cover the waterfront. Hello John, good weekend to you. I hope you were going to enjoy the Super Bowl. I pray You're not a New England fan.
I'm not. I'm a Denver Broncos fan. So I'm disappointed by last week or two weeks ago.
Yeah, I don't think I can handle another Patriots when John, at this hour, the Dow Jones industrial averages crossed the fifty thousand mark. It's going to maybe close for the first time about fifty thousand. That's after a terrible week, and after bit coin dived and silver dove and gold kind of I think your word with steady ish, what do we make of all this?
Well, the markets had a skittish week. Obviously, this week we had three big things. One anthropic, the AI company released the latest version of its claud program, and the take from that was that since Claude could write any software that you wanted, software companies were no longer as valuable as everybody thought they were. So there was this huge sell off of software companies and that was its
own little piece of panic on Wall Street. Second was the price of bitcoin just collapsed on the course of the
last five days. It rebounded a little bit today. Bitcoin had been sort of marketed as a store of value that you didn't have to worry about international crisis or deficits because it was its own ecosystem and as long as is everybody agreed that it was worth x, and it was worth x. That that came undone with with, you know, what was going on in the markets, and that was sort of terrifying for people who had thought that cryptocurrencies were here to stay, let's put it that way.
And then the third major development was the same development, which was the major tech companies were spending vast sums of money on the buildout of data centers and the power stations to power those data centers, and you know, Amazon is going to spend one hundred and eighty billion dollars next year on Capex. That created the you know, yet again the narrative that there's a huge AI bubble
and that it's going to burst. There's no doubt that there is some sort of bubble in AI, but it's also a revolution that's taking place, and so if you believe in the revolution, you probably want to stick with John.
Amazon's David Bonson explained to me sometime ago that when the dot com bubble blew up in two thousand, didn't mean that every dot com company did not return value over a long period of time, just meant that a lot of them crashed and some of them survived. Do you think that's going to be the model here, that some of the AI companies will thrive and survive and others will just be wiped out.
We'd be huge consolidation in the same way that there's huge consolidation in the entertainment industry right now, right, I mean, Rupert sold Fox News entertainment assets to Disney. You know Disney's in trouble now, will they be bought by a
big tech company? I mean, eventually you know, twelve companies become seven companies become three or four companies, And that's that's likely to happen in the AR space because you know, the cost of building out all this stuff is so vast and the revenue at the moment is so thin that, you know, start up AI companies, unless they're really focused, I just can't make it.
It's just not going to happen. Yeah, I've been meaning to ask you for a year or so, John Ellison, I've never met Rupert Murdoch. I've never talked to him, but it sure does seem to me over many decades he has been among the most nimble of investors and far sighted of entrepreneurs. Does anyone compare with them in your book?
Oh, there are a lot of great investors, but Rupert, you know, in the entertainment space or the media space is partly is probably you know, one of the most if not the most successful. What sort of distinguished Rupert was? I mean, you look at what he did with Fox News. People forget that Fox News lost money for ten years at the beginning. Rupert had to pay the cable companies had to pay. For instance, cable vision here in New
York ten dollars per subscriber. So you know, there were three million subscribers to cable vision, and Rupert had a wady a check every year for thirty million to be on the cablevision system, right, and the table vision system. And he wasn't on channel four, channel seven of the system. He was on channel like one on nine or something.
But he stuck with it because he believed that fifty percent of the American television audience was quote underserved, and he invested, and he probably invested two or three billion dollars when it was all said and done. And eventually I turned the corner, and now is you know what accounts for roughly ninety percent of the Box Corporation's pre tech profit.
Visionary is a word I don't use often, but that was visionary. Let me talk to you about what I think is a visionary story. You sent me out of China. They're no longer going to award well, they're not going to stop awarding PhDs for research, but they're going to start awarding them for actual breakthroughs and invention. I think that's brilliant. Where did you learn about that?
Well?
I read about it in one of the you know the Asian newspapers, and I was done by it because
it seemed to me such a simple idea. They're calling it practical PhDs, right, so instead of you know, getting a PhD and you know whatever, you get your PhD in building how to build a better highway, right, And that seemed to me like there's so many inventive people all around the world, but also in the US, where if you offered them a PhD in doing something practical, there would be huge take up on that, and I think it would lead to an explosion of innovations.
So it's a great idea. Machine copy it. Let's go to story number three bad news and maybe two grim you put it. Al Qaeda has a network of affiliates and they together have more than fifty times the number of recruits they had at nine to eleven. That's the kind of exponential growth we don't need to see. John Ellis, Yes, it's it's it's it's.
You know Africa, which you know at the time of nine to eleven, al Kaina had no presence in Africa. Now it has a significant presence there, it has a significant president across South Asia, obviously India. Paka, I mean Pakistan and Afghanistan, and then the various you know, quote subsidiaries in quote in European countries and here in the US. It's it's it's a ticking time bomb.
It is, especially when you compare it with your fourth story. The United States economy is not prepared to scale on defense related things like munitions, and China has already scaled. If al Qaeda is growing exponentially and China's growing It's navy, for example, by leaps and bounds every month, producing more ships than we do in a year, how long does it take for us to actually get back in the game, do you think?
I mean, we've covered this story of We think one of the major stories of our time is the force rating us of the US military, and what we've built since the end of the Cold War is an unbelievably efficient consumer economy at the expense of having the resources to do some sustain production of military hardware of all types to enable US to wage war or fight wars in any number of theaters. So you have a challenge from the Middle East, Iran, you have a challenge from
Russia and Ukraine. You have a challenge from China and Taiwan, and you have a challenge in Africa from al Qaeda. You know, we need a lot of guns to be competitive, if you will, in those theaters. And what we found is that our capacity to produce the weapons to you know, to be able to sustain longer term campaigns isn't there. And so it's a huge challenge for a Secretary accept and his team at the Defense Department to whip that
into shape because you know, conflict are coming. It's not it's not if it's when.
I recommend everyone read Arthur Hermann's Freedom Fortune and what we can do if we choose to do. Last story is about the opioid empandemic, and I was kind of stunned to learn it's one of the major drivers of realignment in the United States over the past sixteen twenty years, moving people from a ten year at the Republican That's remarkable.
Yeah.
After the twenty twenty four election, I participated in a couple of roundtables, and you know, I was why did Trump win? And everybody said the same thing, which was,
you know, inflation and immigration and nobody like Biden. But I made the point without evidence that I thought the thing that supercharged the immigration issue was the fentanyl crisis, and lo and behold there comes this academic study which shows that where the fentyl crisis was most acute, those congressional districts, those states, those state senate districts, et cetera progressively voted Republican and that I think has to do with the fact that Democratic policy was to let as
money and as possible, and voters didn't like that.
Out.
Yeah, fentanyl deaths are a law and order issue. Behind the tragedy and the great that's the law and order issue. John Ellis follow him on Exit Ellis Items. Find news items that by googling news items and John Ellis, and thank you for your weekly contribution. John. I'll be right back America. Eli Laynett on the UK. Chack Borger Back America. I'm Eli lake Is with the Free Press. He's also the host of the Breaking History podcast there as well
as a contributor. I've been following the story about our looming battle with Iran extensively. Eli, welcome. My assessment after the meeting broke up in oman early hours of this Friday morning is that Iran is going to go full Alamo. That's my assessment.
Do you agree yes, and I think in some ways it's baked into the ideology of the regime. They are an apocalyptic kind of cult of a regime, and this you can see it from how they've purged dissenters in the past, and you can see it from the rhetoric of Kamenae, and that's what's going to I think you're right.
Full Alimo means that there won't be anyone left in the regime at the end of any conflict, but there will be quite a few casualties on the other side along the way. Santa Ana's army did not come out unscathed, and I think they were defeated in a subsequent battle. Do you think that Iran has the ability to inflict significant casualties on the United States?
Not on the United States. But I just want to go back to what you said. I think Kameney is willing to kind of drive his country into the Abyss, and we didn't need this confrontation.
To know that.
I do think if comedy has taken out, there will be a battle internally for who would be the next supreme leader who takes over. And if you can combine that with as Israel did in the twelve date war, taking out some of the top echelon of the military IRGC leadership, there is an opportunity that then you make the choice very real, and I think there's enough corruption.
Your great interview with Kareem Sagriport made the point that it started off twenty percent Charlatan, eighty percent true believer, and now it's eighty percent Charlatan twenty percent true believer. My hope is that you maybe avoid some bloodshed if you take out a couple of Charlatans and true believers and you sort of put the choice again to the Charlatan, saying, you know, you can go the easy way or the hard way, as they say.
Eli. I've read twice or listened to twice in the last week Empire of Terror by Mark Selenski. I don't know if you've read it, but it's about the IRG.
No I haven't. I'll put that on my list. It's about six years old, but as of six years ago, the IRGC is about one hundred and fifty thousand, the regular Iranian Army is another four hundred thousand, And that took away a lot of my hope for the quick exit for the regime, because that one hundred and fifty thousand will be killed by the Iranian citizen re after they murdered at least thirty thousand people. There will be revenge. There will not be a coalition of amnesty granting people
they're angry. Doesn't that decrease the likelihood of anything other than full Alamo?
Well, if rez Apolovy, who I wrote about this week, can unify the opposition and implement a transition plan, he has spoken about amnesty for lower and mid level folks.
I don't know that you're going to.
See that level of it, but I should say it's certainly there, and it reminds me many years ago, almost twenty years ago, I interviewed Iatol Fomani's grandson and one of that's I was at the time very much taken in by the kind of idea of nonviolent resistance or people power Gene Sharp and when I put it to him, he said, there's such a blood dead at this point that people will extract a heavy price once once the
Mulla's topple. And that's coming from you know, the bloodline of the founder of the revolution.
Well, Yashar Ali, with whom I don't often agree is right about the fact that as the internet connectivity is restored, we will see more and more of what we saw a few of this just absolutely horrific videos, trucks running through through entire crowds, machete to a young lady, the horrible, horrible videos. And I the trauma that Israel went through on ten to seven has now been visited by their
own government on the people of Iran, doesn't that. I just think it creates conditions that we've not seen before.
There will certainly be some vengeance. However, there I think is an opportunity for leadership again, you know, keeping an eye on the prize. I do think that there's an opportunity at least and maybe that this is a role for the United States and our intelligence services to effectively try to buy people off and coerce them. And you can do that by killing some of the prominent leaders and then saying do you want the same faith, do you want to be on the same kill list, or
do you want to face the people? And that so there isn't maybe an opportunity to step aside. My concern would be that if there was a quick fall of the regime, there was something in the interim that there would be an opportunity for a kind of insurgency that would be filled by the ranks of these killers you know at the top right now, which is a similar dynamic of what we saw in Iraq.
Well, you know, I want to know if you agree as well, and feel free to tell me no, you're stupid. Prior to the nineteen ninety one Gulf War One, the casualty estimates that the American public was made ready for was in six figures. Same thing happened twenty years later in two thousand and three. Be prepared for big casualties in both wars. It was under one hundred and fifty in the initial invasion and in two thousand and three.
Of course it went into the thousands over the long term war, but it was a less than one hundred and fifty in Iraq in two thousand and three, less than one hundred and fifty, which is a huge number for America, but never let less than what we were expecting.
In nineteen ninety one, Ambassador Orrin came on form Israeli Ambassador United States WEWICS this week to say, remember the Sheffield, Remember the Sheffield, Remember the Sheffield, the Royal Navy destroyer that was hit by an EXO set from an Argentinian jet fighter in nineteen eighty two, killing twenty sailors, and they could get off a lot of lucky shots. Has anyone talked about to the American people about to be prepared for casualties.
No one's talked about that. I do think that is a realistic thing in terms of the potential to hit the bases. As I wrote this week, we have an interceptor shortage for our missile defense systems, which are very good but very expensive, and so the math game right now favors the aggressors of the people who can build cheap, realistic missiles like Russia against Ukraine or Iran against Israel as we saw in the Twelve Day War, and there
is a potential for that. My understanding is a lot of the military planning and including with Israel, is trying to figure out if you can have a first wave of attack that overwhelms and pretty much dismantles Iran's missile capability.
I don't know the answer to that, but.
You know, I trust the Israeli intelligence, and I trust the American hardware.
I trust the discombobulator. I don't know if you heard President Truy I.
Trust the discard that would be great, right, exactly right?
Do you think?
No?
I think so.
This is one of these situations where as a journalist who's done reporting on it, but I'm not yet ready to publish it. But I'll just tell you in general terms what I've heard. The Israelis figured out both a protocol and a technology that allowed them to blind the not just the air defense system, but the command and
control of their adversary. And you first saw that against Hezbollah, then you saw it against Iran in the Twelve Day War, and even before another strikes it against Iran, and that that know how, because it's not just the tech, it's also how you do it. This is I'm again, has been shared with the United States. I think that might
be the decent discombobulator. But again that's just sort of an inference on my part because i'd heard that before the President talked about that it's a combobulator who.
I will be watching the Free Press this weekend for updates from Eli Lake. Follow him on x at Eli Lake, subscribe to the Free Press. He wrote a great piece on Crown Prince Pavlabi. He also wrote a great piece on the munitions and a great piece on the negotiations. You on top of this, like very few people are. And if Iran is going to go full Alamo, you'll find out about it from Eli First. Thank you, Eli Lake. I'll be right back America. Stay tuned. Welcome back, America.
I'm joined by Matt Connetty, head of Domestic Policy Studies at AEI, columnists for the Wall Street Journal. Hello Matt, and before we get into the very serious stuff that you wrote about for the Journal on Friday, I have to begin with I'm developing a new theory. Have you been married a long time?
I guess it all depends on the meaning of the word long. But yeah, we're about to.
Celebrate our anniversary and it will be fourteen years.
All right, so that's good enough. Do you remember the same movies as missus, Continetti remembers.
Yes, we're of the same generation, we don't, you know, Being a man and woman, we like different types of films, you know.
So this is what I'm texting.
I tried to have her watch The Godfather with me, Hugh, and that lasted all about forty five minutes, So you know, vice versa. She likes the rom coms and the Hallmark Channel, and of course I'm usually in another room watching a live sporting event.
Well, last night I was talked into watching Nodding Hill again for the first time in twenty seven years, and the fetching missus Hewett knows the dialogue because apparently women get fed these little clips. I'm just a girl standing in front of Justice Boy, and I didn't remember anything of it. I didn't remember horses and Hounds, which is very, very fun. Do you remember anything about Notting Hill. It's before you were married.
I know, in fact, if my wife made me watch Nodding Hill, it would be the first time I would have seen that film.
There's a whole universe there that I leave to her, and then of course she leaves all the Star Trek movies and the die hard stuff to me.
I will just make a recommendation. You will, as a fine writer that you are, you will like the writing in notting Hill. Now I'm going to go full serious on you. Do you think Karan is going to go full Alamo?
Well, you know, it would be.
A first if it did that, If the regime did that, this regime has been very cautious over the decades. I mean, let's not forget when it fired rockets at Israel in two thousand and four. That was the first direct attack Iran had ever launched at the state of Israel since
the Islamic Revolution happened in nineteen seventy nine. So then, even after Operation Midnight Hammer in twenty twenty five, you know, the spectacular destruction of the Ranian nuclear program by US forces, iron had the very performative assault on our base in Dohak Hutter telegraphing it beforehand.
There were no US casualties.
So I think for the full Alamo, you would really have to have the Mollahs believe this is it, this is do or die. They're facing extinction as a regime, and I don't think we're there yet.
Well, I put this to Eli Lake, and I'll put it to you. They murdered at least thirty thousands of their citizens, which means there are hundreds of thousands of grieving, revenge seeking Iranians. They already burned down a bunch of mosques and mullah's houses. I don't think anyone from the IRGC or the molocracy is going to walk away if there is regime change, do.
You certainly not from the IRGC or the besiege You know, there of course whole political echelons that are part of this, and there's the regular army, you know.
I think one of.
Our goals should be in order to create space between the regular army and then the revolutionary cadres, the IRGC, which foments terrorism abroad, and the beasiege militias, which are kind of the enforcers of the Mulla's room at home.
It's a very complicated country.
I mean, it's hugely populated, it's sprawling, and so whatever happens next with the fall of this regime is going to be is going to be messy.
I'm going to say for after the break what you wrote in the vertical today at the Wall Street Journal, your column for the week. Before we do that, before we go to the break and talk to me, would you explain to people what the Free Expression vertical is over at the Wall Street Journal.
I'm happy to.
I'm very excited too. It's a new project launched by Wall Street Journal Opinion. Free Expression is a daily newsletter that you get either over email or sub stack. You can sign up at the Wall Street Journal, and it's a lot of stuff, topics that are usually not covered by the opinion pages, more cultural, more youthful, kind of directed about a lot on gen Z what's up with
the kids, so to speak. And then they have you know, the old the Old Fogy Continetti there at the end of each week, where I weigh in on politics and foreign policy. But it's a great mix so far, and we're off to a great start and I'm very excited to be a part of it.
You know, if you're the old Fogy, Matt, that makes me the ancient Mariner. So I'm not really into that description.
You're the oracle, You're the oracle of the Relief Factor studio.
I talked to the oracle of every studio this week, brit Hume down in South Florida where he's seeking refuge from the new Virginia government. I'm going to talk to you about that during the break, and then come back after the break and talk with Matt Continetti about his column this week and about whether or not President Trump is doing what he needs to do to prepare America for a serious battle. Stay tuned, Welcome back in America. I'm with Matt Continetti Calm for The Wall Street Journal,
head of Domestic Policy Studies at AI. In the break between our segments, which will be on the podcast, Matt, in this break, I got to go back to the Beltway on Sunday. I'm not looking forward to that because it's Sunday in seventy five in California, where I spend a couple of weeks every winter, a couple of months, and now I got to go back to the Beltway where it's freezing, but even worse and good old Virginia. The Democrats have taken control with a vengeance. They are
really proposing California's solutions to every problem. Is this just talk or is it real?
I think it's real, Hugh.
I think it's what happens when the one party gains control of the state government, animated by this progressive reaction to Trump, as we're seeing in Virginia. The elections did not go well for Virginia Republicans last November. And on top of that, Governor Spanberger, who said practice nothing during the campaign other than she stood with law enforcement and cared about kids, has revealed herself to be nothing but
a signing machine for the progressive machine. And so one of the first things she signed into law is this proposal to have a new congressional map, which would reduce the Republican representation in Congress to two or even one seat. And this goes from a you know, Republicans haven't won Virginia since two thousand and four in a presidential election, but they still get about forty five percent of the vote. But of course we'd be reduced to almost nothing, no congressional representation.
That's her first priority.
Nothing about the affordability that she campaigned on. They're also looking at course, joining the Blue State Climate Compact, which will mean higher energy costs for Virginian You're looking at now a push to end cooperation with ICE so that violent illegal criminals are released back onto the streets without having local law enforcement working with ICE to pick them
up right there to remove them from the streets. And then of course there's a slew of gun regulations that Spamburger will be asked to sign and will and then there're also tax increases. It's a disaster on a policy level, and it's a Native Virginia I'm just I'm torn up about it.
It's the Californication of Virginia the commonwealth, and people left California. They still live in California. I left California to move to Virginia, and we could have gone anywhere. I thought Virginia was a nice balance between red and blue. And at five and a half percent state taxes, it's not outrageous. It's not Florida, it's not Tennessee, it's not Texas. But it's not outrageous. They want to go outrageous, Matt, do you think there will be an exodus from old Virginia.
I think it's already starting, just anecdotally. You talk to people who are thinking about Tennessee, who are thinking about Florida, North Carolina, South Carolina. West Virginia may actually be the biggest beneficiary. In truth, it's still drivable, you know, don't We don't have normal commute times in the DC area.
So even that the two hours it would take to come from West Virginia seems reasonable to us if in exchange for that commute you have a reasonable government with low taxes, low less regulation, better business climate, and of course more personal freedoms as well.
Okay, so I think already we've got to go on the Relief Factor Network stand by Welcome back America to the Sale New Channel Sale and Radio Network, our affiliate time Hugh Hewitt with Matt Continetti AI and The Wall Street Journal. You missed a good discussion with Matt during the break about politics in Virginia. It'll be on the Big Weekend Pod. Matt. I want to read the opening
of your column Friday in The Wall Street Journal. Because President Trump must choose to enforce the red lines he has drawn against the Iranian regime or entangle himself in pointless negotiations that legitimize the sworn enemy. He needs to demand Iranian concessions as a precondition for future talks, or be prepared to walk away. His credibility is on the line. America's deterrent and the future of the Middle East are too. That's how I see it. That's how everyone I talk
to see it. But are we neo Khans locked in a neo Khan conference room, or are we Reagan Conservatives who understand the value of deterns.
That's peace through strength and look, I think President Trump understands this. He's drawn two red lines with Iran over the course of the past year. The first red line is no nuclear enrichment, not pausing the enrichment, not winding it down to a certain level. No nuclear enrichment, and that needs to be verified. And the second red line that he drew just in recent weeks is that there should be no killing of protesters. There should be no
murder of your own population. Iran has violated both red lines. When it violated the no enrichment red line in twenty twenty five, we were having negotiations like we're having now. President Trump took action. Operation mid Night Hammer destroyed the Iranian nuclear program. Now that highly enriched uranium is under rubble or hidden away somewhere.
Do you the question is do you think that he would launch an attack during the Olympics or Ramadan, which overlapped the Olympics.
I think the Olympics probably not. Ramadan is a different story. There are many many military operations that have taken place during the month of Ramadan. I don't think that would prevent Trump from launching an attack.
Okay, Now what I read is going to have to act you Okay, yes, I agree with you. Otherwise we'll be back to after the Afghanistan debacle. And you can't. You have to rebuild credibility every time you spend it down by letting a red line be violated, and he's already rebuilt it. It would be a disaster to let it go down. However, the first President Bush, before the Golf War one, made sure the American people knew that we might suffer more than one hundred thousand casualties. We
were ready for chemical weapons and everything. The second Golf War with the second President Bush, same drill. The American people were ready for a lot of casualties, were warned, and we were a pit in our stomach. And both times it was less than one hundred and fifty killed in the initial invasion, and the entire desert storm eventually
became thousands in Iraq over years. Do you think President Trump has done what he needs to do with him American people to prepare them against mash casualties in any kind of conflict with Iran.
He hasn't talked about mass casualties. He hasn't talked about the downsides of a potential conflict.
But we need to understand.
I don't think any operation against Iran would look like either Gulf War. In both Gulf Wars, of course, we had massive armies that we assembled on the perimeter of Iraq that went into battle in the First Gulf War to eject Saddam from Kuwait in the Second Gulf War to end Saddam's rule. That's not what's happening here. Hugh Trump has these two red lines, no enrichment, no killing
of protesters. Iran has violated them both. What that means is justice he's done in his first term, whether it was Costan Solimani in his second term, Midnight Hammer or Operation Absolute Resolve with Maduro.
He has to punish the aggressors.
And so what I expect to happen is an attack on the apparatus of repression, that is these militias and the IRGC terrorists, and also an attack on the remaining nuclear sites. What we know from intelligence and the missiles right the ballistic missiles that threat.
In the region.
That's not a ground invasion with the aim of toppling the government and occupying Iran. That's a very Trumpian attack in order to coerce the regime into doing what he wants.
That's what I expect, and I think what now is we're waiting for the timing, and the timing has a lot to do with the military preparations, not only for the offensive, but in expectation of a potential counter attack by Iran and our ability to defend against it, not only our own forces, but also of course the state of Israel.
Former is really Ambassador Michael Lauren called into the program this week twice to remind people about the HMS Sheffield in the Falklands, where the Brits Royal Navy and Argentinian fighter jet got off an exo set that killed twenty British sailors, wounded another twenty five, and sunk a destroyer
before it could get towed to repair. I don't think anyone has said anything yet about how many troops or what our vulnerability is, and the Navy is quite confidence of ability, but I think there ought to be a little bit of preparation, at least by the President and others in the Department of Defense about what might happen. Do you agree or disagree with that?
No, I think we need more explanation. The explanation is a good thing that leads to persuasion. It gets the people on your side. It's not really how President Trump works. President Trump wants to work through surprise and unpredictability, and so he's not going to be really laying the groundwork for any operation UH where He's going to continue his rhetoric. He's going to continue to say, we need something from Iran. They better they better obey these red lines that I've
set down or else they're going to face punishment. They're going to face a reprisal. But he's not going to get into the nitty gritty. And of course we know from President Trump he does not want to risk American lives. He is very he's very understanding that the American people, UH may react negatively to casualties to an operation gone wrong.
He's rolled the dice quite a few times. Midnight Hammer, we hit our target, absol Resolve, incredible, just taking Maduro right before the vault was about to close and protect him right and now he's in New York jail. What's the the question here is what is the roll of the dice in Iran? What is that going to look like? And I think right now there's a lot of military planning happening.
What is the type of spectacular.
Dramatic attack that will both punish the Iranian regime and telegraph to elements within the within the regime, and in the Iranian people at large. You need to make massive changes in behavior. The iotota needs to go or else more will come.
I think you're over the target, Matt, and I hope we are as well in a readable period of time, because it can't. Let the redline be arranged. Matt Kaney, thank you. Follow him on exit continety, read the Free Expressions Vertical and Matt's column at the Wall Street Journal, and I will talk to him again next week. State tuned in America, I'm hi, it's you, Hewitt. You've heard me talk a lot about Consumer Cellular how you can switch
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forget my code is Hugh. Join now by Ben Dominic, host of The Big Ben Podcast on the Fox podcast Network Friends of the program as well. Ben, do you agree with the general in me that it looks like Iran is about to go full Alamo and we ought to welcome that.
Well, I think it's been a long time coming, Hugh. And sorry to be a little a little tardy. I'm that's the second time. I'm not going to keep blaming it, and.
If you have a newborn, you have you get complete.
There's just a handoffs that. So anyway, I think that this is a situation where you know that the regime has clearly been signaling that this was the direction that it was headed for a while. And I think we've heard that from a lot of smart commentators, including the General Uh and including yourself. I think that that's just an inevitability, and at a certain point you have to
accept that. You can't just you know, sort of. I mean, we spent so many years living in the Obama Biden fantasy land under you know, Ben Roads and all of the idiots that we're running policy back. Then we have to accept for the world for as it is, and I think that this Trump administration has done a very good job of.
Doing that now. Ben, I think the idea that the vice president is a restrainer is overstated. But he's in Milan for the Olympics, and Secretary Rubio is here, and Lindsey Graham is channeling your late father in law every minute he gets a chance to. I don't see anyone saying go soft on Iran right now, at least not on our team.
I certainly don't. And look, you know, this is something that I've said before, and I know that JD's team is not particularly happy when I pointed out, but he does have a way of kind of of navigating this where he kind of removes himself from some of these situations. We you know, it was obviously notable that he wasn't in any of the pictures regarding you know, the Maduro raid. I wasn't the only one to notice that, of course, And I think that that is a decision that could
be one that he is making purposefully. I don't know that it is. I'm just saying that it could be. And I think that in this instance, you know, certainly the Secretary of State has made clear what he thinks about this during his longtime career in the Senate, and I don't I don't think there's going to be anybody in the room, certainly not anybody who's going to have the president's ear on this to overwhelm a decision that I think is pretty obvious in a long time coming.
So Ben, I don't fault the president for anything. The left is trying to make him responsible for getting people out in the streets. They were out in the streets before. I think he was trying to deter the Iranian regime from doing what they did, which is murder at least thirty thousand people. And now I think he's got to build up our forces because he can't allow American forces to be killed in great numbers, if any, you know. And so it's going to be a while, or it's
going to be as long as it takes. My question is, do you think anyone has done what they need to do from the administration side to prepare the American public for any casualties. I remember before. You might not be old enough to remember Golf War One, but we were expecting six figure casualties and.
No, I remember it, and somewhere I actually still have my notebook that I took. I used to follow it and track it as a kid.
So do you think that the ground work for readying the American public for casualties, because that's why the Afghanistan withdrawal went so badly for Team Biden. We didn't expect any casualties and lost thirteen.
I do not believe that they have. I do not believe that they have. And look, the President has been and I should say It's one thing to say fortunate, but it's actually, you know, really incredible what he's been able to pull off without American casualties in terms of his approach that he's used to this point. When it comes to our security and foreign policy around the globe, you can't keep rolling those dice and expecting them to
always go your way. And I think that in this instance, very little work has been done, if at all, to show the American people one that this is something that they need to understand comes with a lot more risk than exultrating a you know, a corrupt, you know leader
in Venezuela. A lot more risk to American lives and a lot more potential for American cat And I just don't think that I have not seen Republicans in particular, who have been supportive of this policy in the past, going out there and being willing to say that to this.
Point, I tell people I've been listening to twice now the book Empire of Terror by Mark Zelenski about the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Court. It's one hundred and fifty thousand fanatics and now they've got blood on their hands and they've got to be Iran's got to be at least as traumatized as Israel was on ten to seven thirty thousand people is a lot to be murdered in forty eight hours, and there won't be any amnesty for the IRGC. If there's a regime swap, well there.
Of course no, of course not. And I think that this is a situation where they're I mean, this is going to be an existential fight. And again I don't think that this is something that you are reading that book. I've you know, certainly read plenty on this, and also I would recommend to people if they have not listened to it Eli Lake's podcast that he did a couple of months back, just guiding you through a kind of the Shah and everything that went down with the Red
Green Revolution and everything associated with it. It's a good explainer packed in a small package break history. But I think that this is incredible in terms of what we're seeing play out in front of us. But unfortunately, the American people, I think, really again have not had the type of work done in a dance. People are tired of Middle Eastern wars that they see as pointless and they see as long term and risky and fully sort of dragging down America's resources and leading to the loss
of life. And if the President goes into this, I think without making a strong case for it and having his supporters stand with him on it, then that's a very risky maneuver. But the President is, as you know, is willing to take risks.
Have you heard the argument from anyone this regime showed us who they are. Believe them, they will kill thirty thousand of their own people. We should expect them to want to kill every American and every Israeli if and when they can ben no'll turn to the Shoni. I haven't heard that argument yet.
No, I haven't, and that's certainly not you know, from the people who matter in this and who I think folks need to listen to. And look, a lot of that I think is distraction and reluctance to be the first one out of the gate to say this. But if the President has made clear and look, this is a long standing Republican policy and not just of hawks that you know, we know the effect of Iran around the world. We know the hinge point that it represents
with other world powers. We know what in Iran that looked different today that looked more like what it's people actually want it to be would mean potentially for the region and for and for people around the world. And they are at their weakest point as a regime that
they have been in my lifetime. And so it's one of these situations where, unfortunately, I think that lack of education, that lack of making the case for something before you do it, is something that could come back to bite the president if things do not go well.
You had a notebook on the first Iraq War.
Yes, so that was actually I was home school, Hugh, and so that was an assignment. We tracked it. I you know what. We would watch the nightly news, we would watch Peter Jennings, we would pay attention to the updates and read the Washington Post back when it was a good paper.
We're going to talk about that during the break because that we have to. But I'm just I'm just very happy that someone can remember nineteen ninety one. Besides Britt Hume and I were talking about it.
It was just like right there on page one.
You weren't around though for the first Iranian Revolution, right, You weren't there in seventy eight and seventy nine, So you can't.
It was not.
Yeah, Britt Hume and I were doing memory Lane on that this week. Don't Go Anywhere, America. I'll be right back with Ben Dominic during the break, which will be on the Big Weekend Pod as well, and then he'll be back. I got to do my quiz with him that I gave him that continenty early as well. Don't Go Anywhere. Stay tuned on Super Bowl Weekend on Due Gowett. The HU huge show coming to you from the Relief Actor Studio is brought to you by Reliefactor dot Com.
I'm back with Ben Dominic. Ben. It's my policy never to talk about someone for whom i've worked, So I worked for the Washington Post for a decade or eight years, I can't remember. I read a lot of columns for him, and I'm not gonna say anything at all about them. But what you said about the sports section at the end of the Big Ben Pod is objective. If you don't have a sports section, you're not trying to sell newspapers to Americans, are you.
No? No, And look, this is what people care about when they go to their newspaper. And it's also, by the way, the thing that sparks debate that sparks. You know that you would have situations where someone write a column and you debate it on local sports talk radio, You argue about it in the local bars. You go back and forth on who's right about the you know, the team or the player or what you know, the way things are going, what needs to happen, who needs
to be fired. And that's the kind of thing that makes for a community and actually a unifying element within that community where you have people with very different political beliefs. I mean I was talking to, you know, a friend across across the way, Uh, just this just today about Sonny Jurgensen and uh tweet him and everything else like that.
Yeah, I mean auto versus.
Yeah, quite quite a different pairing. Auto put Sonny on a lettuce diet, by the way, that was what sparked that common But the but the you know, the truth is, I know, for a fact he's just a neighborhood friend, uh that I see occasionally at a restaurant, and he I know that he has complete opposite politics than me. He's about ten years older than me. You know, Washington
bureaucrat lived in the place forever. We all we both love the same teams, and so we both care when someone like Sonny Jurgenson dies, and it would be great to have a sports section that has someone who could write about how great he was as opposed to what you know, Today's Washington Post would probably go through all the problematic things that Sonny Jurgens.
Is Billy kill alive from the great QB controversy.
Of twenty Not only is he still alive, I just heard him doing an interview, uh this afternoon on local sports talk radio and he actually had uh had lunch with Sonny. He said, just a couple of weeks ago.
Well, but Mickey Lolich died this week, like people I grew up with are dying this week. But but the Billy Kilmer, Sonny Jergens, I'm a Cleveland dot com guy. I spend lots of money on Cleveland dot Com. I can't imagine the Post not having like five pages on Sunday.
This is And you know, of course the problem with that as well is that no no media entity was a bigger cheerleader against the Redskins name than the Washington Post, which made millions, you know, sold millions of newspapers on the bandwagon with Tony Kornheiser on the ninety one team. You know that that made so much money because people wanted to read their coverage of their favorite team, and unfortunately, it just got to a point where, look, there was
glowing coverage. You will not find a negative article about uh may Can rap Ito in the Washington Post, Okay, but you will find more criticism of that name uh, you know, and more pushes to change it. And finally, when you know, in the wake of George Floyd, they finally were able to do it. And look, whatever you think about that, it's just that it just speaks to the fact that this was a newspaper that became entirely
possessed of politics. In every section. You know, the people were handing around the article rows.
But that's all I'm gonna say about the Post. I'm going to come back with Ben on the other side, give him my test. Stay tuned in America, Welcome back to America. I'm here here with Ben Dominicch, host of the Big Ben Podcast, which is raw a being good fun this week because it talks a lot about gambling and stuff I didn't know about it, and I learned a lot from it this week, So I would encourage you to go and listen to it before I go there, Ben, though,
I want to run my test. Have you ever heard of the screenwriter Richard Curtis.
That does ring a bell?
He wrote, He's the King of the wrong Coms? Right? He wrote Four Weddings and Funeral Love.
Actually funeral is what I was thinking, yes, Nodding Hill.
So last night I was sucking into watching Nodding Hill again by my wonderful wife of forty four years. I haven't seen it in twenty seven years. So how long have you been married?
I'm well at sixty. I think about things in terms of when I met my wife. We are eight years this we will be eight years this year.
So you don't have a chance yet to forget any movies that you saw together. And so I didn't remember anything. But my theory is now that women remember every line and scene in a rom com and men. Don't you agree with me?
Oh no, I have to disagree with you. And the reason is, well, wait a minute, okay, I think it depends on your definition of romantic comedy.
Well, Nodding Hill Love, actually four weddings at a funeral? They're like all.
Rom coms I know, But I think my wife is a bit more of like a Princess Bride era kind of person of something like that is more in her speed, like the thing that is. I mean, you have to keep in mind you're talking to someone from like the American pie generation.
Yeah, comedy.
The things that we actually quote back and forth to each other most of the time are usually stuffed from like Destin show.
Now, and I took my boys to see Team America when I thought it was actually a fun movie, and I was I'm still having that down.
But badness, it's a fun movie.
It was a fun movie, but it wasn't for them at that age.
It was I think, I think that what you're you're you're unfortunately speaking to someone who's whose wife's favorite genre is horror films. Oh, exactly the same thing.
All right. Now, let me go to the gambling. I had no idea not and you know, the the Guardians of Lost class a forever he gambled. Apparently, it's alleged forty eight different games over a couple of seasons. Luis Ortiza out of the game now too, so that the Guardians Indians have been crushed by this. Now I find out you could have made. It's not a prop bet. Really, I don't even know how you described that market on what someone's going to say on the Colbert Show that's nuts.
Yeah. So this these prediction markets have gotten more attention because obviously they advertise a ton calshee and and people have probably seen you know, stuff about poly market on you know online. Yeah, And the prediction markets that usually get talked about are ones that are about significant events. You know, they're they're you know, what is the fed
rate gonna be? There's you know, I literally heard an ad for something you know on the way over that was about you know, you know, do you want to pick for I can't remember which one of them, but do you want to predict the the Academy Award for the next you know, Oscar winner, that kind of thing. But what people don't talk about in this is that they're so unregulated that in the instance of that Chris Hayes of MMS I guess it's MS now now it talked about he was there was a market for something
he had already done. He had done the Colbert Show, which they tape typically at around five o'clock, and then there was a market that had opened about things that he would say on the program, which creates a horrible situation where you're predicting something that has already happened, and that stuff is perfectly okay according to these prediction markets, which by the way, California does not allow sports gambling.
But you will be able if you are in the stands, you know, in San Francisco for the Super Bowl, you could you could, you know, do the kind of prediction market play that is a swap or a contract considered different from a sports gambling that doesn't have to go through a sports book. And I think that that's a real problem, and I think the Congress is waking up to it. But it's there's a lot of people who are, I think, blowing a lot of money on me.
So what what that raised for me? After I listened to it With the backgrounds of the Guardian, players being banned from baseball effectively for the rest of their careers, whether or not they're convicted. I don't know. Do you think baseball has the regulatory structure or the NBA or anyone to stop prediction market gambling by players versus gambling gambling.
I think that they do not, especially because the and I didn't really get into this on the show, but I think you're catching on to something there, which is that the adiction markets are technically you know, they're governed by the FEDS. They're governed under the CFTC, and they do not have the kind of state regulations and things
like that. And they also, you know, obviously are involving contracts and swaps that are considered different than you know, legally than sports gambling, even though if you look at the actual makeup of their markets, the majority nearly the majority, I should say, the vast plurality, I should say, of these prediction markets. The money that is moving around is about sports, so it's just a substitute for sports gambling in states that haven't allowed it.
I think the commissioners have got to wake up to this, which brings me a course to the Super Bowl. In my last guest that I can ask this, I'm going to be flying, which is very good because I'm torn. Mike Rabel's an Ohio state guy. But I can't imagine having to live with the Patriots fans during the summer if they win another ring. And I don't care about the Seahawks, so I'm not going to care about anything except what the reaction to Bad Bunny is going to be.
What has Roger Goodell made a momentous error or is it in fact something that will be forgotten by next week.
I think this is an error, but I also think it's gonna be something that's forgotten by next week because I think one thing that Bad Bunny is is he's actually not that bad. He's pretty corporate and the bad in the in the you know, likely the buck sort of the the expectations of the most powerful sports league
in America. I don't think that's gonna happen, and I think that that's going to be something that probably, you know, some leftist guts get worked up about, who want him to, you know, show up and have some anti ice display or something like that. It's possible that he does that, but I think on a certain level, if you do that, then that's a toxic moment that will follow you the rest of your career and eliminates the whole bunch of people.
And again, Republicans buy shoes too, So it's one of these things that I think ultimately will probably be forgotten. As for the game, I just have to say, can we can we just applaud Sam Darnolds. Yeah, the guy just such a rough career, got chewed up in New York, blamed for everything, cast off by everybody in can Vikings.
Let him go yea yeah, and he's in the super Bowl now. I got to get a word from you though. On Mahea and Malanowski in New Jersey. I was on Fox today talking about Maheah. I think Apak sent a message, which is you can't be on the fence about Israel. To mister Malanowski and every other Democrat. You can. You might be a far left wacko and hate Israel, but you can't be on the fence.
What do you think, Ben, I think I think that they did. And I think the part of that is, you know, the assumption, uh, you know what is what is the what is the line from uh one of Paul's epistles? You know, because you were neither hot nor cold? I hask you out of my mouth. You know.
I think that's actually revelation, isn't it.
It's I think I thought it was Lilly Pizzles. But it's one of the things that I think is is true of this nature now for apac which says we are not going to tolerate this type of wavering neutrality because we're gonn assume that you're going to be you know, at the whim of the trends. We need to know where you stand.
I think that's where it was, and I think message received for every Democrat. Ben Dominich, back to parenting. I have a great weekend. Enjoyed the Super Bowl as much as as possible with a baby in two toddlers and enjoy I got.
A permission to go to a party. To you, it's a big deal.
You're going to a party. Yes with toddlers?
No, No, myself. Good evening off?
Oh you gotta coupon you won. I salute your wife. That's amazing. Thank you, Ben for joining us. We'll talkt you again next week. Don't go anywhere America. Coming back, I'm gonna talk a little bit more about this New Jersey primary after the break. Oh, I thought we were because we threw up the picture of something other. But here's the deal coming up after the break. There's a runoff in New Jersey a primary New Jersey last night. There are two candidates who are within six hundred five
hundred both to each other. In Mahea and fellow, and I will talk to you about her and him after the break, as I did this morning on Fox.
They can