Episode 859: What Happens in Havana . . .

Where are we in the Iran War and why was Code Pink and Cuba will discuss all this more?

On this edition of the Edders, I'm Rich Lowry and I'm joined as always by the sage

of Authenticity Woods, Jim Garry, The Good Neighbor, Noah Rothman, and Andrew, Andrew

Stutford.

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I said anything.

So Jim Garry, the markets liked what they heard from Donald Trump, part of what was going

on last couple of days, classic Trump play with everyone up into a frenzy of fear about

what might await them in the world by saying you're going to start bombing the power plants

in Iran in 48 hours, which would have been sometime Monday and then lo and behold Monday

morning, around the time the markets are going to open, you know what, they have another

five days for this deadline, the deadline has been extended another five days and we're

having a really productive talks and things are going great and there's a big relief rally.

Price, oil goes down and part of what's going on here, there's always been a lot of

turmoil in the oil markets, markets generally.

So if we assume this campaign goes on another three weeks or so, who knows, I'm going to

ask about that at the end of this segment.

If you buy yourself a week where the oil is not going, price crude is not going out of

control and people kind of think things are about to end and are going great, that's good

because in terms of the military element of this campaign, time is on our side, right?

We're going to inevitably work down these Iranian capacities to a nub at some point, but

the political and economic equation time is not on our side.

So whatever you can do to mitigate that element is to the good and then there's the last

thing I'll mention before throwing it to you, there was a school thought that the whole

negotiation thing was kind of fake, but there was at least fuelers going back and forth

through various intermediaries in this time period when Trump decided to delay the apocalyptic

attack on Iranian power plants, what do you make of it?

So yes, the price of oil came down immediately after that post on truth social that negotiations

were going well.

It did bounce back up.

It went back, oil was up above 100, Brent crude, up to 114 to barrel on Monday.

This was, I don't know whether it characterizes the taco trade, but this was a sense that

people were reacting to this through social posts and then as the day went on, price of

oil went, you know, climbed back up again.

So I don't think we should say, ah, this, this, you know, calm the markets or anything

like that.

I think your characterization of the war is going militarily well for the United States

and Israel, but not necessarily well geopolitically or economically is a really good way of putting

it.

That's the way it's kind of drifting in this way for a while.

I think one of the more unnerving reports I had seen the last 24 hours was political reporting

that the Trump administration, presuming that talks are actually happening.

And probably they're still, they're happening to some degree, you know, likely through intermediaries,

but the idea that the Iranian parliament speaker, Mohammed Bogger, Galibov, could take

over.

This guy is still a hard liner.

This guy is still lined up with the militant IR, IRJC, for what it's worth.

He says there's been no talks and he's also saying the US must offer, quote, complete

and humiliating punishment and pay reparations.

If this whole thing ends with this guy still in charge, this, you know, I don't actually

call it a full-on, it's certainly on a military defeat, but it does feel like what was the

point of all this?

Yes, we destroyed the Iranian navy, yes, we've destroyed the Iranian Air Force, yes, we've

dramatically reduced their ballistic missile capacity, although not entirely, we've, you

know, done more damage to their nuclear, we've done some things.

But this began with Trump telling the Iranian people to rise up against their oppressors,

and now in a very Venezuela-esque type deal, it looks like we're totally open to keeping

a like-minded hardliner in charge, and this is after the president had jumped on Truth's

social and said that our demand was unconditional surrender.

So Iran's going to come, at this point, it does not seem terribly unlikely that Iran

is going to come out of this and say, hey, Israel and Iran, Israel and the United States

through everything they had at us and we're still standing.

We demonstrated we can close off the straight-of-war moose anytime we want.

We are now collecting payments from ships to get their ships through the straight-of-war

moose, apparently they got $2 million.

New analysis indicates that they have taken about $8.7 billion in profits from the increase

in the price of oil since the start of the war.

Not great.

No, that's really great.

Conservatives were justifiably really mad about the Obama administration sending $1.7 billion

in cash to the Iranian regime back during the days of the Iran deal.

And now we're in a situation where they're making a lot more money on selling the oil,

and we lifted the sanctions on 140 million barrels that were on their way to China, under

the thinking, well, they might get sold to other allies in Asia.

It just feels like every 24 hours are objective and are strategy and the statements from the

president are changing really dramatically.

It's very clear to get a sense of exactly what our red line objectives in this war are.

You know, I, I, I, I, everybody is going to be calling me a doomsayer.

I'm sure Noah is probably going to have a more positive take than I do, but I, I don't

love the way this is going.

I don't think this is going the way we want it to.

Jim, we'll get to know Noah in a second.

I stick with you.

So, so would you consider the delsi, a delsi Rodriguez scenario in Iran, a defeat, one,

and, and, and two, let me add, let's say we get the delsi Rodriguez.

Maybe it's this house speaker, you know, the Mike Johnson of this, this, this scenario.

Um, no, someone knowing it heard of all of a sudden would be the key player.

We don't know whether it's going to be the key player, but, but he's the one people

focused on.

He does, as Trump suggested, probably over optimistically, but let's just play with

the hypothetical.

He says, oh, yeah, it can have our uranium.

Would that be a defeat?

The regime's still there, but you've gotten someone who's, who's to, to say, all right,

we're actually giving up this program that we've, giving up the nuclear program would

be a significantly better mixed bag than the trajectory that we're on.

Uh, with that said, if the president is willing to settle for something less than

unconditional surrender, he should not

jump on true social and say that our objective is unconditional surrender.

Yeah.

Well, yes, he clearly shouldn't have said that.

And it's very unlikely we're going to get unconditional surrender.

So no, when we started this war, at least a lot of us were, were dismissive of the idea

that ground troops would be involved or be necessary.

But there are arguments that they will be necessary to opening up the straight

if we're moved, Seth Cropsey, very acute analysts had a Wall Street Journal piece saying

you're going to need of ground forces on the shore, you know, special operators, but

then then the other guys to protect the special operators.

We have Marines headed there.

We have the 82nd airborne headed there.

Other analysts, I've heard to say the level of ground forces, the amount we're sending

at the moment wouldn't be enough for any kind of major operation, like holding the shore

or the straight of her moves, which is extremely extensive, but you may need them in an island.

Yeah, an island, you might need them on, on Cargaion.

There's been a lot of discussion about that.

But if that doesn't make sense, you might need them in the, the various islands in the

straight that are, are on uses as, as bases to launch a small fast boats, et cetera.

What do you make of the possibility of ground troops in this war?

Yeah, there was some live talk about seizing Cargaion.

And now there's second guessing about the degree to which it could be valuable

in a negotiation with a ranholding at hostage, suggesting that just the spigots would be

cut off from the mainland.

So what's the point of it?

I still think there's value there.

Also, what I've heard about troops deployed to the actual Iranian landmass, the mainland,

involve special forces operations to try to track down, for example, mobile sea launched

or rather mobile anti-ship missiles, for example, that are difficult to spot and difficult

to introduce.

But that is also sort of a remote, as far as I last saw, it's good to have the option

on all those assets are still moving into place.

I mean, I'll say it at the outset, as I've said far too many times to count now, it's

certainly suboptimal to have a president in wartime who's not a reliable narrator and

whose statements you have to kind of discount.

I take a lot more solace from listening to the president's subordinates, in particular,

the people with stars on their uniforms or stripes.

They're demeanor has not changed, and their mission objectives have not changed.

As of yesterday, let's talk about these statements from the president.

I saw a rush from mainstream media reporters to determine that the president was just saying

stuff, just bluffing, as though there's absolutely no reason to believe him and every reason

to believe his counterparts in Iran, the most mandatious regime on the planet Earth.

It made perfect sense to me that there would be back channel communications in wartime.

That's totally believable, at the very least.

And within about an hour or so, enterprising reporters tracked down the intermediary channels

that were using transmit messages back and forth.

You can doubt the details of what Trump says he spoke with, whomever he spoke with, as

I do.

I'll see nothing remarkable about that.

And look, there's a lot of theories about what he was doing, maybe he's looking for an

off-ramp, maybe he's testing diplomatic opening, maybe he's trying to manipulate oil markets,

which he certainly did, although it's interesting that West Texas intermediate crude and Brent

dropped something approaching normal levels as of this morning.

It's about $101 per barrel for Brent, as opposed to $113 where it closed on Friday.

Or maybe he's sowing discord in the Islamic Republic ranks, making them paranoid that

somebody's talking, that somebody's trying to secure their future after the regime begins

to implode.

One or all of these things could be true at the same time.

But meanwhile, we're still winning.

Lots of loud noises, but all the assets that we're talking about are still moving into

place, including ground forces, including marine expeditionary units, and the 82nd airborne.

The statements don't necessarily always reflect the tactics.

Iranian leadership sometimes says things that its field commanders don't follow through,

but nobody in the West is talking about the extent to which Iran is blinking.

Iran did attack Iranian desalinization plants, and now they're saying we're going to back

off, because Iran is going to the United Nations and trying to internationalize security

in the state of Hormuz.

Iranian assets did say they were going to back off attacks in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia,

because Riyadh is saying we're going to enter this war in earnest as a combatant.

The UAE wants regime change.

It's basically on record saying as much.

Qatar is expelling Iranian diplomats, and the IDF is steadily degrading the capacity

of Iran to eliminate ballistic missiles, 330 out of 470 last I checked.

It's difficult to get everyone, you know.

So there's always going to be more hitting Iran's new naval depots and bunkers, IRGC targets,

command and control, police stations besiege.

Nobody seems to care about that, even though it is tactical success.

And phase three of this war was always going to look like a failure from the perspective

of people who wanted it over yesterday.

Everybody has been saying since day one that this would end when major combat operations

are over, at that point we encourage an insurrectionary revolt on the ground, and that

could take months.

It could not happen at all, but it is the sort of thing that's not going to happen overnight,

and a no credible figure in Western military apparatus has said that it would resemble

anything other than the historical parallels we've been talking about, Libya, Serbia, etc.,

which would be a week's long intervention.

Only internal fragmentation of this regime will undo it, and that takes time to materialize.

Patriotage networks have to break down, international isolation has to bite, but what have

we seen so far from this war?

China is going to intensify its reliance on outside sources, pivoting away from this

regime to which it was never wedded.

The Gulf states recognize Iran as an existential threat, deepening their reliance on Washington,

and frustrating the efforts by Moscow and Beijing to ingratiate themselves.

Proxies are freaking out, they're getting decimated in places like Iraq and Lebanon, on Lebanon's

arresting Hezbollah and expelling Iranian ambassadors, and Iran has largely been defied.

I would be the first to say an ambiguous outcome in this war that leaves Iran in control

of the strait, leaves its capacity to charge, for example, oil exports.

That was a sort of thing that we knew was possible in theory, but making it possible

in practice is another matter, and it would overturn the precedent that we have set in

1987-88, in which Reagan established that we will open up the strait by force if it's

ever blocked.

That would be that.

But right now, oil and gas is marginally more expensive for a time being, in exchange

for the shift of a status quo that was never durable in the first place.

Pick a day after October 7th, and you'll have a different status quo.

In fact, that attack was an outgrowth of the fact that Iran is a revisionist power committed

to upending the status quo in its favor.

There was never a time typified by stability and a low commitment on America's part to

containing the Iranian threat, but we're working towards is that very outcome.

So Andrew, there's no doubt we've had a lot of tactical successes.

The question is whether tactical successes will lead to big strategic successes.

One would be the fall or a big change in attitude, and a fall to regime or a big change

of attitude in the regime.

I haven't seen that yet.

It might eventually be in the offing and reopening the strait.

I think that's just such that we've talked about it a lot, but really the crux of the

matter at the moment, because if you reopen it in two or three weeks, and tankers are

flowing, that's the major point of leverage this regime has.

They have others.

They can threaten to hit infrastructure more than they have already in the Gulf.

This is the major point of leverage it has.

If that goes away, they just really, they have nothing, but then there's the question

of whether we can actually do it or not.

If you can't do it, then you better find it off for AMP and some sort of deal.

I thought the most disturbing thing Trump said in all the many things he said the last

48 hours, he's always saying a lot of things, he was asked, who's going to control the

strait?

He was like me and the Ayatollah, and he said maybe whoever the Ayatollah is going

to be suggesting there's going to be a next Ayatollah after this one, and maybe he just

thinks this other Ayatollah is going to be so pliable, he'll just let Trump control

the strait.

But if we're actually talking about joint Iranian-US control of the strait or removes, that's

a big step back from where we started in this whole thing.

Yeah, and I don't think that that will happen.

The best from that, assuming the existence and survival of the current regime in Iran

is that they stop blocking the strait of all mules, and the problem we have is the idea

that they would agree to some sort of joint commission or anything like that, I think,

is a fantasy, and I don't think they would agree for it.

Well, they might agree to it, but anything the Iranians agree to is essentially meaning

that's what other people may say, and the reality is we cannot abolish geography, and for

as long as there is a host to regime in the place where Iran is, the strait of all mules

is going to be a checkpoint, and there is absolutely nothing we can do about it.

I think that the problem, it's easy to say all this in hindsight, and it's also to talk

easy to talk at a distance of thousands and thousands of miles about other people risking

their lives, but the reality is I don't know what the trigger was for the decision to go

in hard, but I think the hope was, I mean Trump had said these things earlier on in the year

when the latest revolt against the regime happened in Iran, we're not going to stand out

ugly by, so to speak, and I think that there was an underestimation of the internal vulnerability

of the regime. The hope was that the crowds essentially could bring the regime down, and I think

that what people forgot, or not forgot, I mean there was a lot of talk, you saw these terribly

brave people out at the streets, you saw statues coming down and all the rest of it, but people

forgot that the critical moment with the arrival of Kamani in 1979 from Paris, let it not be

forgotten, in terror, terror, how did that regime, how did that regime occur? And it occurred because

in the end, the Shah was not prepared to, maybe this looks as American pressure, I don't know,

but the Shah was not prepared to fire violently, to go beyond the, you know, correct like day-to-day

violent crowd control to suppress the revolt. My question, by the way, Andrew, is that we weren't

pressuring him to go soft, that he was just indecisive himself, and he kind of said, well,

I needed the green light from the Americans, but we weren't stopping him, he just didn't have

the stomach for, you know, good for him, right? A little bit like Gorbachev in some respects,

and maybe that's right, I mean, I can remember watching it on the TV at the time, and frustration

was everywhere, and I think that the Americans weren't playing, that could well be unfair,

but he didn't want him, for whatever reason, and to his credit, he didn't want a massacre,

but of course, the mullers show no such hesitation, and so given that we can't enforce

imposer regime on Iran, it's not that sort of country, it's not militarily possible,

the impetus for change has to come from inside, it doesn't seem that there's going to be

enough of it for now, which means that we have to live with the facts of geography and political,

and that is not going to mean the threat is removed from the strait of all moves, whatever happens.

So, Andrew, do you understand the insurance market for these tankers? Do you know enough about

this as you do, as much about this as you do about the northern European growing season?

Yes, still worried about that, we're still worried about that.

Is it just that these are military vessels, they're big and expensive, they didn't sign up

for military conflict in any form, so no one's going to ensure them in a military conflict,

even if there's one shard of a drone flying and potentially hitting them, that's enough to stop.

That seems, as a practical matter, a little ridiculous or overly sensitive,

but is that just the way it works? Do you understand?

Well, no, there is almost always a price in the insurance world, and obviously,

normally when you get into wartime situation, we can call it this, a lot of insurance contracts

fall away, and all that does is recognises, for example, Rich or someone who

demolishes your house with a missile from, from Tehran, that's unlikely to be covered by

insurance, because they're farms, not really there. What? Stay farms.

The pay time is not going to be there, no, no, no, no, and the reality is,

there's wartime risk, there's a different sort of risk, and I haven't studied the contracts,

but the answer is anything in the end is insurable. The question is whether the people

transporting the liquid, if you like, the LNG or the oil, whether they are prepared to

pay that price, and if they are, that is going to be reflected in the ultimate price of what

people pay at the gas pump, but it's all a question, the markets work, it's all a question

of finding the price, but people buy these things, as you say, a spare drone can do a lot of damage.

I did look, would you believe, whether oil tankers cross the Atlantic in World War II,

and they did. Now, I'm not so history-bass without email me. Were those vessels insured?

I don't know, it's the question. I was just curious, actually, because I was actually thinking

about LNG tankers and Europe, and if we ever got into a part of...

Is this your equivalent of the guy who said he thinks of the Roman Empire every day,

you think of LNG tankers in Europe every day, at some point?

It is a little bit like that, and you have to remember that you were talking about

WTI, and Brent, we do have to remember that there are two, or in fact three, because if you include

Asia, fuel markets, and everyone talks about the global market for fuels, and that is only half

right. For example, if you look at LNG, which goes around in boats, naval people everywhere,

faint when I use that term, what was headed to Europe can go to Asia and so on and so forth,

but they are different markets. The impact of all this in Europe and Asia is actually going to be

much more heavy than in Germany, and then in the US, and the price rises that you are seeing there

may well be more painful, or will be actually more painful that we see in this country,

and that is going to have an effect as well. So, Jim, here to ask the question to you,

what is your over-under in terms of a date of when this war will end, or the major hostilities

will end, over-under in the sense that your date might be a day or two earlier, it might be a day or

two later, but this is the date you're circling on your calendar. What would be you guys?

April 30th, but before we jump in, I just want to point out, Noah, you know I love you, but you

said that oil and gas prices have marginally increased. There were 279 on February 23rd,

a little bit before the war began. There are 397 today, that's the national average, so we're up

a buck 20 or so in a bit more than a month. That's more than a marginal increase in gas prices,

I'm not very price sensitive to every day good to drive my wife crazy. I'll bring a home

of bag of groceries and she'll pull something out. She'll say, do you know how much this costs?

I'm like, no, I have no idea. But to get me price sensitive on gas, it was 460 at a gas station

where I had to stop the other day because I was almost out. But the first time ever, I was like,

now I'm just putting a couple gallons in here and then trying to drive in 20 minutes away,

we're just cheaper. So we're not going past the fourth as the first number on the gas science

for very long. So Rich, you haven't yet got into the prep of mentality. I, you know, filling up

whenever you can. I was amused on Amazon yesterday. Someone suggested I got the recommendation

given my purchases that because I bought a wind up radio that I should be considering potassium

iodide. I thought you were already stocked up on that. I do have it. I have my 9.11 stock.

I don't know when it gets off. Yeah. So Jim Gary, so April 30. So we got another

what four or five weeks or so. Yeah. All right. No, nothing. I have no idea.

Self-set deadlines are a bad idea, which is why the president shouldn't have set them.

I would say probably mid to late April for the heavy combat phase of this thing. So wait,

a date, I guess you have to do halves with overunders. So April 20th, 0.5, I suppose.

And we may have to break out the discombobulator on the coast, but I anticipate that the

political pressure will conspire with market pressure to put an end to this thing soon.

I'll be it not before our military objectives are achieved. And as everyone,

including the president to his credit has said early and often, and as the New York Post and

others have who have had contact with Iranians on the ground indicate they're hearing clearly.

The time to come out is not now. It's later. And when that happens, it will follow a cease-fire

of some sort with whomever we can talk to inside Iran. But that is not the end of the conflict

with the Islamic Republic. It's just the end of this war. Yeah. Conflict ends with the regime.

Yeah. And fairness to Trump, the basic concept is that it wouldn't happen during the conflict.

He said stay inside because all the stuff is going to be blown up. So that there will be no

patience or tolerance for the notion that the Iranian people need a couple of weeks maybe

to pull themselves together into an insurgency force. Interest out for date.

Date. Again, you know, I like really none of us have any idea. I think that the

and the game, the game that the Iranians are clearly playing is they're just trying to

hunker down, stay intact and think that the appetite of the US and indeed the pressure from

Europe and Asia is going to mean that we slow things down. Yeah, you know, what are we today?

We are March 24th. So I'll say completely unscientificly April 24th.

I don't know. You guys are later than I. I'm going to say April, April 6th.

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that's DonorsTrust.org slash editors, please check it out. So, no, we have this ongoing

scene of just massive lines at certain airports. I think Atlanta has been particularly bad. You

have these news reports of lines out the doors of certain airports. So, the DHS shutdown is really

beginning to bite. You have TSA staffers quitting or just not showing up. And now as a quick fix,

attempt to quick fix, we're going to have ICE agents at airports to try to take on some of this

burden, but it sure would be good if Congress just funded this function of government that has a

huge effect on people's personal lives and this really important commercial artery for the entire

country. Yeah, it would be ideal if we had a functional Department of Homeland Security in

middle war with the world's foremost exporter of Islamist terrorism. Seems just like good sense

there. The Trump administration has been kind of admirable on this because they haven't made the

DHS shutdown hurt as visibly as they could have. It's been an interminably long shutdown,

but we're finally beginning to see the effects of this in airports. And the images are appalling

and the disruption to people's lives is real. The folks will say most Americans don't fly

all that often, but I think it's roughly 90% of Americans fly about once a year, something like

that. So a lot of people are if not going to experience this directly, are definitely seeing it.

And it lights a fire under Congress. You're seeing Democrats now kind of squirm,

because the rationale for this thing was the anti-ice demonstrations in places like Minneapolis

and the effects, the political effects of ISIS sometimes rather in judicious crackdown,

including us. I was one of a very soft way of saying shooting American citizen during a protest,

albeit one in which the conditions were ambiguous and I've said as much. Nevertheless,

created some real political pressure on the administration to rein in ICE and rein in some of

these deportation regime. We've had some reports in the last couple of weeks that the president

is a little miffed at Stephen Miller for the optics associated with the deportation regime,

which he wants to pair back. And that's sensible. It's sensible politics, but Trump responded

to political pressure before Democrats did. And now we're seeing the effects of it. Democrats do

not have an argument, because they cannot back off. Their base will not allow them to back away

from the notion that this is essentially a Gestapo force. It's basically the SS in America.

And to fund it is to concede to fascism. That's what they believe. And they're not going to

allow Democrats to back off without extracting pain from them on their side. And Republicans

aren't going to allow them to back away from this without conceding at least something to their side.

So Democrats have put themselves in a pretty difficult position here. And Republicans could put

them in an even more difficult position if they were so inclined, not only this, but

the big legislative argument now is over the SAV Act. And the SAV Act is still kind of ambiguous,

but voter registration and rather voter ID is not. And Republicans could be banging the drum

on this sort of thing much more consistently than they have been. In it took events, it took

exigencies in American airports to really get the messaging down. And it shouldn't have had to go

this far. Honestly, we shouldn't have had to be doing this two months into this shutdown.

However, long we are, a month into a war where we have an unfunctional Department of Homeland

Security. And this should have been something that Republicans were banging the drum on every

single day, including the president and the press. We haven't seen much of that. We are saying it

now. And I suspect this impasse is going to break pretty soon. We had some quiet negotiations

last night that were reportedly successful, at least according to Senator Katie Britt. I'm not sure

where the status of those negotiations are. But it seems like we're going to move off this

thing sooner rather than later. But I just don't know if the progressive activist class will forgive

Democratic senators, especially the establishmentarian types, who are willing to acknowledge that

their painful reality is worse than the painful reality that it would experience from capitulating

and backing off of this fight. It's not a winning fight. I don't even know what they want really.

I don't think they know what they want. So it's time to move off this as a political tactic. You've

made your point. We'll see who has the gumption to do that. Yeah. And this really is, there is a

guy from Australia, a dear friend of ours, who used to come on our cruises. He used to say when

something was a bad idea, a crazy idea, he would say it was a rum scheme. And this really is a

rum scheme because ice is funded. It was funded through this reconciliation bill that funded it

lavishly. So you're not landing any blow against ice. You're just screwing American travelers.

Yeah. And I think the name of the game here is, you know, the worst, the better, in a way,

is you see, you see, I speak as somebody who has postponed a trip by about a week or so.

And I'm mentally flying in the sort of 10 days or so. But you see all the, you know,

people when they watch the online or hear the news or whatever,

they, I think the democratic, the democratic calculations was, this is something that happened on

Trump's watch. And whoever is ultimately responsible for it, people don't have the time to

or the inclination or the interest to analyze whose fault it was. It's happening on Trump's watch.

It looks terrible. It's a mess. And we can pick up some votes at the end of it.

The question is, is how long can they carry on, sort of, playing that game until it rebounds?

And I don't think they can do that forever. You've got a heavy travel months. We're in actually,

a heavy travel months already normally. And you've got the Easter coming up.

And I think, you know, we had in our editorial, we had a couple, I think, of reasonable

discussion about a couple of reasonable options, you know, splitting the funding

or moving towards some sort of reconciliation process. But I do think that,

I don't think the ICE people are doing much good. That's nothing against them and all the rest

of it, but people there. But I think, you know, what are they supposed to do? I mean, they can

be around. And I can, I suppose that they can look menacing so that the people standing,

the three-hour crowd don't go berserk, but they don't have the, they haven't been trained how

to process people or anything like that. So I think that they, it is strongly in the Republicans

interest to get a deal done. It is strongly in the Republicans interest to keep paying on the

message that this is the Democrats fault. And they just have to keep paying on. And I think that

that in essence, some behind the scenes deal can be struck quite quickly. They have to start

putting forward, putting forward some of the, this is a couple of suggestions that we put forward

in the editorial so that the Democrats have to be seen to be saying no to it. Because this is a

shambles. So Jim, it used to be an iron law that if you're the side demanding changes to pass

some spending bill and they're a shutdown resulted, you were blamed. They're headlines slamming

all the time. There's no escaping the blame for the shutdown. But, but here we are. That's

exactly what Democrats have done. There's this real world consequence. Usually the effect of a shutdown

right was, was someone put chains around the Washington Monument and there was a local news report

about some tourist being disappointed that they can't go up in the Washington Monument. Here's

something that's had a real world effect on, on tons of people, but there's been almost no

political pressure on, on Democrats to relent. Yeah. There was a little bit Jake Tapper asked

this of Cory Booker and Cory Booker said, well, you know, we're trying to get funding for TSA

and, you know, Tapper responds, yes, but Republicans want to fund all of, you know, DHS. And

Booker's like, yeah, they want to fund the whole thing. Those bastards, you know, how, how

unreasonable of them? How dare they? I would point out that if you work for the Department of

Homeland Security since the start of the fiscal year, in October 1st, first you did not get paid

for 43 days during the government shutdown overall that we had last fall. It's about seven weeks,

six weeks. And, you know, obviously you went the end of the shutdown, federal workers do get their

back pay. But in the meantime, you've got all these bills that are due. Maybe you got some savings,

but then you got to dip into the saving. It's a pain in the neck. And now, by my count,

this is the 40th day of DHS workers not getting paid as Noah points out. This is during a war

with Iran. We've had, you know, a bunch of Islamists, the, you know, property of all a guy down

in Austin, the two nut jobs who threw the pipe bomb at the mob dummy. You know, like we've had

certainly, this is when we'd really think if you work for DHS and your jobs preventing terrorist

attacks, it would be nice if we could pay these people. This really doesn't seem like too much to

ask. I would say you certainly can't say the media is, you know, ignoring massive lines at airports,

but people have pointed out on social media, the number of reports that are basically, well,

there's another really long line at this airport take a look at the footage of this just striking.

And now here's skip with the weather with very little explanation of the fact of the

line. It's just a natural disaster. Yeah. So this is a poll, but I should point out that like,

you know, DHS workers are leaving. And it's hard to begrudge them. I don't begrudge them

for calling in sick. It's really annoying to not get paid for weeks and weeks at a time. It is

kind of, and it's unsupertly like people are asking, do I want to do this with the rest of my life?

Do I want to start a new career somewhere else? Because I don't want my paycheck to be dependent

on these idiots on Capitol Hill getting their act together and not deciding that they have more

to politically benefit from, from not agreeing than they do from agreeing. Everything,

whatever your dispute is with ISIS, we've done it. ISIS getting paid. Everybody work in TSA.

This is their fault. They're not the ones who are doing all this stuff. Why are they being

the ones being punished? Why are America's air travelers being punished? Why is there this

enormous incentive for lawmakers to maximize the suffering of the American people to get a

win? And because this is an audio podcast, you can't see me making air quotes, but you know,

I'm being very sarcastic when I say a win. So it is appalling. This, you know, the other

interesting thing is I did, I was, you know, as we're recording this on Tuesday, no sign of a deal

yet. I did hear some talk this weekend. If you're a Democrat, you feel like the war is not going

great for Trump, at least in terms of political perspectives. Gas prices are going high.

You probably feel pretty good at a whole bunch of fronts. Why are you getting into this self-inflicted

mess where Republicans can blame you for the long lines at airports? It doesn't seem to make a

lot of sense there. So hopefully Democrats can pitch you late. It's just, you know, utterly

infuriating and a demonstration of utter irresponsibility by people who say they're in public service.

All right. So no, I ask a question. Do you put on your pundit hat? So I think we consume Republicans

of the lost the house. Will Republicans lose the Senate? We've seen some indications, early

indication that Trump's approval rating might be ticking down a little bit. We see the generic

ballot. We see occasional generic ballot polls that aren't so bad for Republicans in large part

because just the status of Democratic Party is so low, but will Democrats take the Senate in

your view? I think the prospects are still pretty remote. And as you've said, we have many

indications from the data as well as previous election history that Republicans can and often do

outperform the president's job approval rating, even when he's not on the ballot. But Democrats

would have to win in North Carolina, which looks likely. They'd have to win in Maine, which is kind

of a toss up. They'd have to win in Texas, Montana, they need four to get an outright majority.

And I just think it's still Ohio, Ohio's a pickup opportunity, perhaps. But the Senate map is still

arrayed against Democrats in ways that are very difficult to overcome in the absence of an overwhelming

way of election, which could be in the offing, but we still haven't quite seen it in data. So

percentage odds, 33 percent, maybe every three or four rolls of the dice. I didn't ask percentage

odds, but I appreciate you giving them. So sometimes I ask for them and you won't give them, but you

gave them gratuitously here, which I, which I really just preempt as preemption. It's my doctrine

of preemption. Jim Garrity, will Democrats take the Senate? Yes or no? I will feel more confident in

my answer when I know who the Republican nominee in the Senate raised in Texas is. If it's

Corning, I feel he's got a really safe chance in the general election. If it's Paxton,

I feel a little more nervous about that. The second major factor rich is whether the Nazis

can annex Maine. They did ask the Graham Platner campaign, you know, some people don't want to

talk about your candidate because of his infamous SS tattoo. And the response was, we have face to

make you talk. So Andrew, so that's basically it, but you're kind of at this juncture, you'd be a

no unless things bounce the wrong way. Jim? I'm so it's what seemed unthinkable because of the

size of the advantage now feels thinkable if the ball bounces the wrong way. So Texas would get

Maine and North Carolina very plausible losses for Republicans. And then if they lost Texas,

that would get Democrats. Then I get nervous. Yeah, then I get real nervous. If Paxton

against Tolerico, like, then I get much more nervous that if the, you know, the war is going badly,

and our economy is not going well, people still frustrated about high cost of living, then it

starts to feel like that perfect storm to flip that many sentences. Do you, by the way, by the way,

the counterintuitive theory that I would have been a little dismissive of before the democratic

primary. But now I'm thinking, maybe it's right that the Tolerico is actually a worse choice than

Jasmine Crockett because he's the most annoying kind of woke weeny type, whereas she's at least,

you know, recognizable sudden urn and kind of entertaining, whereas this guy, you know, had

full on vegan campaign or whatever it was a couple years ago. I don't buy into that.

She had her own copious weaknesses. Now, I, one of the things I think gets really overlooked is

that Tolerico needs to do better than Beto O'Rourke did against Ted Cruz in 2018 in terms of sheer,

like, vote total, not just percentage. And he needs the, you know, the Republican nominee to do

worse than the worst Republican performer in the last few cycles. Now, the goodness for him,

the worst Republican performer statewide in the last few cycles is Ken Paxton.

Yeah. And it looked as, after that primary, when Kornin's surprisingly came out on top,

that the Trump was on the verge of endorsing Kornin. By the way, the White House special for

lunch today is tacos. Because like Trump could have endorsed him. He could have endorsed Kornin.

That would have ended it. And he didn't, because I think he's afraid that if he endorsed Kornin

and Texas Republicans decided to pick Tolerico, then the narrative of, oh, Trump is a lost

controller. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But yeah. Yeah. Trump says he has a lot of power over

the party, but he's afraid to use it. Andrew, we go to you for, for your American political

punitory. My American, they're exactly as proud we're here. We have two nose. We have a no

and a probably not, but a little nervous. I'm obviously, I'm looking kissly at the growing

season. This has a famous statistical connection between that and the midterm results.

No, I, and I'm a perennial pessimist always, but I do think that the Senate race, and this

is really saying nothing, will the Senate race go to be much closer that it should be. I think

it's absolutely right to be focusing on Texas. And so net net, I would say that the, I think

that the Republicans will hold it. And I'll put just with the caveat, especially under this

administration, to use the old term for British politics that events, dear boy, can always intervene.

And if there is some disaster at the Middle East or some appalling scandal or something,

it could change. But if it was held tomorrow, I think that I think, so just if it could,

is the, I think that the Republicans will hold it. Yeah, I don't think Democrats are taking the

Senate yet. Things could bounce the wrong way. It depends on how, how quickly the war ends

and on, on what terms to try to get the price, price gas back down. But I still think it's hard

to, to count above 49 for the Democrats in the Senate with that. Let's hear from our next sponsor.

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pressure on Cuba, including President Trump saying, we could so go that he's got the honor of

taking control of Cuba and doing with it whatever he wants. The regime there is just hanging by a

string, but don't worry. CodePink is on the way. So we had CodePink types and various

noxious left-wing influencers making a trip to Cuba to try to buttress this communist regime that

has ruined Cuba over the last 50 years staying at the nicest hotel that you could find in Cuba,

which I imagine is not particularly nice in the scheme of things, but better than what most

people are experiencing. So this is another and a long catalog of useful idiots going to

communist regimes and saying how great it is when they have no idea or not really interested in

what actual people are experiencing. The tradition that goes back at least to the Russian

Revolution. I'm reading this book on economic progress in the various economic models we've seen

across various countries the last couple hundred years. It's just amazing how much technology

the Soviets got from Americans going over after the revolution and saying, I'll help you set up

this factory, et cetera, out of a commitment to the revolution. And indeed, the Arthur Herman

has written a extremely good article. I think it was in the Coolidge

on some of the, just on a couple of pages, just describing the contribution that was made

by American industry, if you say, American capitalism. I have a file that to write about it,

to the survival of all the economic success of the early Soviet regime. And of course,

it was the American, for perfectly good reasons, the Americans played an indispensable part

as Stalin acknowledged, only once but he did acknowledge it in the Soviet war effort because of

all the equipment on the machinery that they supplied. It's unlikely that the Soviets would have

survived without it. However, this bunch, I just, they aren't student makers sending trucks.

They appeared to be dancing in the one remaining illuminated building in Havana. It was a

nauseating spectacle. It sort of combined a sort of, sort of, preening moral, virtue-siddling

taken to the end. You know, we're so terrible. And you poor Cubans are in this mess because of

of the nightmarish Americans. Can we take a snuff of you poor people? And maybe, maybe they might

have thought about the fact that the lapidation of Havana might have taken more than three weeks

to occur. But the sheer insensitivity of it is absolutely astonishing. It is the insensitivity of

people who see themselves over here as a ruling class in the, in the making, the, the, the, the,

marry onto a net, if you like, but on the winning side of the American Revolution.

The dance in the party, well, I mean, I can't say how disgusted I, I, I, I was by this spectacle.

And as you say, it's an old tradition. The hotel was probably, if I had to guess, was probably

reasonably comfortable because Cuba does have a Canadians who go there a lot in between

selling things to China and to, to, to enjoy the beaches and so on and so forth. But in the old

Soviet days, it was always the hotel metropole at Moscow, where you could have a decent meal and

the rabble were kept out. And, but it was more discreet. And it tended to be a celebrity guest

or two down to Henry Wallace. But you, they, they, they went and they would go and visit the

Gulag and not notice that there was anything odd going on there. Or the famous case, one of the

leading French statesmen was taken to see some, some Soviet city. And the grocery stores were all

filled with groceries. And everyone was issued with shiny new clothes to wear. But they were all

told you'll be giving these back at the end. And don't buy anything from shops. They just

don't display. So it's an old tradition. The only thing I think that has, but it was done by,

if you like, politicians, intellectuals, academics, it is that there's an era of frivolity

about this generation of useful idiots, which is particularly disgusting, actually.

Yes. So Jim, the, the castorite regime has taken this place that, that should be a wonderful

vibrant, growing place and just, just destroyed it over the, the course of decades. I had an old

old friend who's, there's one of these guys who just loved everything. No matter what it was,

it was just fantastic. And, and he went once on a cruise to take you, but he's like,

those terrible. I couldn't stand it. It was awful. So that's what they've, they've done. And

perhaps they finally might be at the, at the end of their rope here. Code pink, if they didn't

exist, we would have to invent them. They are a Christopher Buckley novel's notion of a hardline

leftist, absolutely in love with every hostile regime that oppresses its own people,

and absolutely hating of the United States in every conceivable way.

You know, that this is, you know, a deliberate willful blindness, deliberate lying, a desire to

be fooled, a desire to oo an awe at the Potemkin village. You know, right around this time last year,

my buddies and I were driving around Syria and everything turned out okay. But we sort of like,

you know, having been to some unusual spots of this world, there was a question of like,

would you ever want to go to a North Korea? And we kind of were, you know, kick around the idea,

another way we're actually going to do it. But like, if you did it, you'd need one, you do

guarantee that you get out of there safely. You need a guarantee that everybody you're interacting

with is going to get out of their safety, that they're not going to, you know, torture or

anybody you talk to, that you're not going to end up doing some propaganda for the regime,

and that you're not going to counter or undermine U.S. policy towards that hostile regime.

Everybody within CodePink wants to do the exact opposite. They hate the U.S. government.

They are the quintessential people who will not take their own side.

So, you know, it's appalling and there's something like weirdly juvenile about it. There's

something weirdly silly about it. The degree to which they're being fooled and they know they're

being fooled and they want to be fooled. But that's who they are. And that's what they believe in.

And as I understand it, the founder is married to a guy who made a ton of money in China and his

deep connections in China. And in the end, this is a, this certainly looks like somebody who's,

you know, not on our side trying to put out a message out there designed to undermine American

support for the right thing to do about an autocratic regime that oppresses some people.

No. Yeah, it's Jim's point about Potemkin villages, you know, irrespective of the

zarrist implications of that one. The Soviets really perfected it. And you used to need a

village to impress these people. Now, while it takes is a hotel with a gas generator attached

to it. And then you can just wow them. You would think that the left, if they had any consistency

far left, would look at the communist regime in Cuba as an exemplary illustrative of everything

they hate. It is one of the most racist and racially segregated societies on earth.

Income inequality is extraordinarily big in Havana. And it's a matter of doctrine that it is

that big. Environmental degradation is atrocious in Cuba. You name it. Every ideal that they supposedly

have is betrayed by this regime. But all is forgiven because it's anti-American. And they're all

communist. So they don't care. They really don't care. Because the, the object of their

affection is not the Cuban people. It is anybody who frustrates American interests and make life,

makes life more difficult for Americans. And the fact that they're complaining about blackouts

on the ground is that this is a new phenomenon. Power goes on in Cuba all the time for sustained periods.

Even when they were relying on free Venezuelan oil, which they are not anymore. And all this comes,

you know, this outreach trip comes at a time when in early February, Cuban President Miguel

Diaz Canal was entertaining rapprochement with Washington, was had his hand out and was engaging,

according to reports in quiet talks with the State Department over the prospect of internal reform.

That's a sort of thing that advances American interests and we cannot have that. So this little

dispatch, this delegation, this ends on Cuba to inform the Cuban citizenry how good they

actually have it and why they should keep going with this Marxist experiment, which is utterly failed.

It is self-discrediting, as Jim said. And it's a demonstration of the extent to which they never

believed anything. They said they believed all those ideals were just the instrument of political

utility, the nearest weapon to hand to advance their true project, which is anti-Americanism everywhere

and at all times. Next question to you, Andrew Stutt referred, as we're talking about Cuba and the

Castorite regime. We could have solved this problem maybe way back towards the beginning,

did JFK mess up by not falling through with a airstrikes and a more serious military effort

during the Bay of Pigs. Yes or no? I think that he did not screw up because the I think that

the failure of the landings of the Bay of P, which is a tragedy, of course,

were to trigger a rising was an indication that to do something to overthrow the Castorite regime

was going to take a mighty big shove. And at that time a lot of the Cuban people had yet to see,

well they'd sit there, there'd been plenty of horrors, but quite how bad it was going to get

probably hadn't really sunk in. So I think it would have been a very hard fighter in Cuba and I'm not

sure given the Cold War situation, whether how wise that would have been. Jim Gerdy.

A wise elderly philosopher from the planet Dagobah said, do or do not, there is no try.

If you're going to start a war to topple the Castorite regime, don't do it halfway.

Once you start something, you really need to finish it. Otherwise, you end up with festering problems

that tend to get worse. Within a year we were in the Cuban Missile Crisis. That might be applicable

to current events. I did that. You don't want to start a war with a hostile regime and do it halfway.

So I'm going to lean towards yes. I think once you're in a war, you've got to win it.

Yeah, you can't get into it and then say, shortly into it, this is a bad idea. I don't

want to do this anymore. No, you get to break the tie at least for now because I might retire it

depending on how you answer it. Yeah, Kennedy screwed up, but Eisenhower's screwed up worse.

It would have been easier to execute that operation in 1959 and we should have because Cuba

subsequently exported revolutionary terrorism throughout Latin America, throughout Sub-Saharan Africa,

into the Middle East. It has inspired every terrorist militant group throughout the 20th century

from the bottom-mind Hoffgang to the Iranian regime. Iranian regime was a Marxian project

at the outset and a lot of its adherents are still beholden to Che and Fidel and all those figures

who've tormented us for the better part of a century now. So yeah, any operation would have

been preferable to the status quo represented by the Cuban Communist government.

I'm with Andrew. I don't think you screwed up. I think this was a scheme that was destined to fail.

Terrible. These guys were so ill-trained, so ill-equipped. It was just a disaster from beginning

to end and what happened to them when they made it unsure. It was just awful, but we weren't prepared

for a major military operation. So this would have been really stumbling into it. So I think you

made the right call considering the circumstances, but Noah's absolutely right about what a tragedy

this regime has been for Cuba and for the world. So with that, let's go to our final sponsor,

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offers valid for limited time terms and conditions. May apply. With that, let's hit a few other

things before we go. Jim Garry, you're watching the TV show Dark Winds. Yeah, I think about around

the pandemic I got into the Long Meyer television series to start reading the novels. I'm not

big into Westerns, but recently kind of got back into this. It's based on the Tony Hillerman novels

all set in the Southwest about Navajo tribal police officers. TV show is set in the 1970s.

And it's like just good, you know, slow burn psychological thriller. I know that this is

supposedly part of the golden era of television, but very rarely do I find myself wanting to watch

dark, heavy, slow moving, grim and gritty dramas. But something about this one is just

interesting. The characterization, the time and the place. So I'm enjoying it and I'd

recommend it for everybody else out there. No, you've had car trouble. I thought I did around

Sunday night. It's late. It's like 8.30, almost 9 o'clock. And then in my garage, my car starts,

the panic button starts going off. It's beeping at me. And I don't know what that is. So I go and

turn it off. And then it happens again. And I go and turn it off and I start getting pretty worried.

And I can't find my car key. And then it happens again. And I start freaking. I started, I'm like,

Jeremy, my wife has helped me. I don't know what's happening here. I start googling, like,

do I have a bad battery? Is there a faulty sensor on the door? It was a car alarm kept going off.

Just kept going off for no reason. I'm freaking. Was there a change in temperature?

Look, Rich, I'm examining everything. I don't know if there was a change in temperature,

but I'm googling. I don't know enough about cars to know how this happens. And then I turn,

it turns out that I left my key at my neighbor's house. And he packed his entire family in their car

at 9 o'clock at night to sit in front of my house with the lights off, tormenting me with the panic

button. And we're freaking out. We had no idea what this was going on here until my wife just

decided to go in the car. She said, I'm going to drive the car, drive the stupid out of the car,

and just drove it. And then she found this group of people who are filming us,

and they're meticulously filming us as we're tormented by our car in the video. I don't know

my neighbors nearly enough for well enough for my neighbors to even think of doing such a thing to

me. So this is another thing. I didn't think they had it in them either. It was a very,

very good prank, but like to get the entire family involved demonstrates a level of commitment

that I didn't think they had. So we're going to have to step over again to the next massive

neighborhood gathering. I got to think of a retribution here. I'm working on it.

Is your neighbor asked in Kutcher or something? That's a good prank. I mean, I got to give them

credit. It really was driving me nuts. So Andrew, you've been obsessed with duo lingo.

That's right. That's right. I just know how you heard Noah's horrific story. I just

pick up a word for isolation. Yeah. Your neighbors do have no idea who you are. You've

not at all. No, actually, my building is. But you're making it like that. But thank God that you

the loneliness of New York once again emerges as a selling point. No, duo lingo. Duo lingo is,

as I'm sure many listeners know, is a online thing tool for learning languages. You can learn

many, many languages. Speaking of the Southwest, you can learn Navajo, I think. But I am learning

Spanish and to the amusement and irritation of my family who disloyly refer to me as a duo

lingo addict and a cheer at my attempted pronunciation of Spanish, which I would say is not good,

but I get encouragement from various people who I try and add on. But they also,

their key, if your competitive, is the gamification aspect to it. And I have been and duo lingo

people will understand what this means in the diamond league for a very, very long time.

And I was threatened with demotion this week. I think they have changed the score last week.

They've changed the scoring system. And at the 89th minute on Sunday, I brought, you know,

I saved myself. And once again, the diamond league, it was the high point of my, of my week.

No question. Good for you. So I am quite the efficient fishing out of Coke. And I just want to

put it on the record. I do not like the new tall cans. I don't know what the purpose of them is.

I like the very traditional sized 12 inch 12 ounce can. I'm great with with tall glass bottles,

green glass bottles, but I don't get the point of the tall cans. With that, it's time for

editors, picks, Jim Garrity. What's your pick? So Charlie, Coke is not here, but I kind of wish

he was. So I could say to his ears, how much I enjoy his cover piece against misery. There are

many joys to working here at National Review. But one of the, I've noticed is that you see comments

in our company slack. And you can kind of see these pieces take place. Charlie is pointing out

the fact that we were all very lucky to be born in the United States or to be US citizens. Charlie

is immigrated here because he may have been born over the United Kingdom, but his soul was always

that of Florida man. And you know, yes, it's wonderful appreciation of everything that, you know,

we have. And he's a clear eye to about the problems our country faces. But he just looks around,

particularly social media. And he sees people left, right, and center acting like they're in the

worst time ever. So it is a large dose of the much needed antidote. Well done, Charlie. I'll tell

you the next time we're around. No, Ross. What's your pick? Well, I'm afraid that I'm going to step

on Andrew's toes. I don't want to do that. I'd like to put in a good word about Jeff Blair's latest

carnival of fools. And it's Tom Wolfian pros on the Havana junket. But I'm going to, I'm going to

go with Jim because Jim's piece in the magazine is as in raging as it is enjoyable to read.

The Democratic Party becomes its friend, which is his take on Abigail Spanberger's bait and switch

from moderate to far-left progressive when she got into office. And it's just really an

impressive array of facts that Jim has that is command. And he presents them in a way just to

maximize my peak. It's really well done. Andrew. Yeah, my pick is, and I haven't yet got to the

mag, but the my pick is undoubtedly Jeff's. There's carnival of fools today on the Cuban

vacation. And it's just, I mean, obviously, I'm horrifying, I said he angered by it, but it is

also bleakly funny. It is bleakly funny. And it made me think of Holidays and Hell by P.J. O'Rourke.

And it also made me think that it's time that the national review volunteered Jeff to get

a lot of trip to Cuba. Whether he get back is a different question, but it's it's it's it's

grimly hysterical. So, New Jeff could do. So my pick is Doug Vythe piece on this question of

imminence and the Iran war and this makes a very compelling case that imminence is not the right

way to look at it. So that's it for us. You've been listening to a national review broadcast,

retransmission or account of this game without the expression written permission of National

magazine is strictly prohibited. This podcast has been produced by the aforementioned and comparable

Sarah Shuddy makes it sound better than we deserve. Thank you Noah. Thank you Jim. Thank you. Andrew

thank you to Donor's Trust, Vera and Fast-Growing Trees and thanks especially to all of you

for listening were the editors. See you next time.