Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Hey, I'm Zach Terry. I want to thank you for watching Codered Talk. Every episode reaches more people when viewers like and subscribe. So if you haven't already done so, make sure you subscribe to our content that lets YouTube know people are watching, that we're producing content that you enjoy. Help us to grow, help us to reach more people and help more people with this content by subscribing to coderedtalk.com.
Jeff Childers, welcome back to Code Red. One more episode. Man, we've been pretty consistent on these here lately.
[00:01:03] Speaker B: It's great to be back. Love doing them. Let's do more.
[00:01:06] Speaker A: Absolutely. Well, we love to hear from you and your audience is fun to engage with. We need to give you like a user pass for the YouTube channel so you can start kind of talking because they're presuming, I think a lot of times that you have access to all of that. And it's just our team so far might be worth considering to put you as a a user on the YouTube channel so you can respond to some comments. How many do you get on your sub stack?
[00:01:31] Speaker B: And generally on average between 800 and 1,000 a day.
[00:01:36] Speaker A: And a lot of those are kind of sub conversations. They go off on their own conversations with each other, which is interesting. Are you able to interact? Do you have time to interact with comments and that sort of thing?
[00:01:47] Speaker B: Not with a thousand.
[00:01:48] Speaker A: No, not a thousand.
[00:01:50] Speaker B: I dip in when I have time in between things and check in and I'll comment where I can, but I probably only see 20% of it at most.
[00:02:00] Speaker A: Right. Well, a lot of this audience is growing. I know our last episode was close to half a million views. And so it was 4, 10, I think, when I talked to you last week.
And so that's really substantial.
And it's also they're commenting and interacting with one another on there and they really appreciate your take on what's happening, your analysis of what's happening. And this is a little out of my order. I'm going to jump into something that's just pressing on my mind.
Pam Bondi with the transition for DOJ now in a church, when a church, when you hear of a top position either in the Southern Baptist Convention or a kind of a key church in the denomination, if their pastor is removed or if they step down or if they retire, then there's sort of a pecking order so that the next level guy moves up and it trickles down to bivocational pastors. So when Adrian Rogers retired in Bellevue Baptist Church, keynote church in the convention, you see Steve Gaines come from Gardendale in Birmingham. You see Kevin go from Louisville down to Birmingham, and it's just a pecking order. Does that happen in the legal profession?
[00:03:24] Speaker B: In this case, I don't think it's comparable to that.
Remember, unlike the scenario you described, this is a cabinet level position, the Attorney General, so it requires confirmation by the Senate and it's, you know, as political as it gets. Right.
[00:03:43] Speaker A: Certainly.
[00:03:44] Speaker B: Remember when Trump nominated Matt Gates?
[00:03:46] Speaker A: Oh, now, I forgot about that.
Imagine that.
[00:03:50] Speaker B: Yeah.
So expect to see some more, you know, let's say trolling with nomination. I mean, that's what I expect from Trump, because.
And we can talk about this more if you want to, but what's happening is kind of similar to how you describe Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, who's loyal to Trump as they come. I mean, he was Trump's personal criminal defense lawyer during all the lawfare years.
He's Deputy ag, which doesn't require confirmation. And so while there's a temporary vacancy with Bondi leaving, he becomes Acting Attorney General.
[00:04:29] Speaker A: He's running the office.
[00:04:30] Speaker B: So he could have never been confirmed by the Senate.
That's, I think, the thing that people need to focus on the most is that the way they've organized this, with Bondi lifting off the top, Blanche moves up, which Trump never could have got done politically.
So you almost had to do it if you wanted Blanche there.
Now, you know what's significant about this period of time we're going into a lot. There's a lot. Right. You got the midterms coming up. You got all this fraud stuff breaking loose in the blue states and things like that. So there might be a lot of reasons you'd want somebody like Blanche at the top spot, but the only way to get him there is through something like this. You've got to sacrifice an Attorney General. I'm not saying that's what Trump did. I don't know. He doesn't tell me the plan. I don't want to know the plan.
But once again, Trump, you know, coincidentally stumbles or accidentally stumbles into the best possible scenario.
Under the law, Blanche can remain Acting attorney general for 210 days, unless Trump nominates somebody like Matt Gaetz, for example, and the Senate rejects them. Then the 210 day clock starts over again.
So even if Trump just uses that lever one time, they've got 420 days. That's more than a year. That gets you well past next year's midterms and into a new Congress where you might have A whole different Senate composition for. Well, not whole different, but more supportive Senate, and you could have a whole different House configuration. So.
[00:06:09] Speaker A: So it's not unusual at this stage and, you know, before midterm for there to be some Cabinet turnover. We saw that with. No, um, already. Do you. Do you think this is just a typical reset? Do you think Bondi fumbled in some way? I've heard some say that it was over the Epstein files. Others say that, no, this is. This is not firing, as I think you've said before, but more of a legitimate transition. What do you. What do you think's going on there?
[00:06:37] Speaker B: Well, a couple things about that. First, you know, the media just loves to speculate about reasons. Right.
What's really going on. They just ignore whatever Trump says, and it's what's really. It's like that person who never believes anything you say, but is always pointing out what you did, you know? Yeah, but you did this. Yeah. So, you know, there's tons of speculation. Everything from, she mishandled the most politically explosive issue in any of our lifetimes that nobody could have managed. Well, supposedly, she mishandled that without saying what she did to mishandle it, or she leaked information to Eric Swalwell or she didn't get James Comer indicted. You know, and just this laundry list which Trump has said none of that. What did Trump say publicly? He praised her.
[00:07:32] Speaker A: Well, and Trump's not the kind of guy that has ill will towards somebody that he doesn't happen to mention.
He's going to tell you if he's.
He's not a fan. He's going to.
[00:07:41] Speaker B: He's not shy.
[00:07:42] Speaker A: He's not shy. No. He's not holding back.
[00:07:44] Speaker B: Most likely, he's got a broad vocabulary of insults that he has available to use when he wants to. So he praised her, she praised him, Blanche praised.
She's got 30 days. So it's not like they walked her out to the curb with a security guard or something.
They're giving her 30 days to wind things up. I mean, it doesn't look like Trump was mad at her.
[00:08:10] Speaker A: Yeah, you're right.
Do you think. I'm sure you've seen recently where Noam's husband had the expose and has this secret life going on.
Do you think that was known? I mean, it almost had to be by somebody in Internal affairs and CIA somewhere.
Do you think they saw that coming which led to her transition, or do you think it was more legitimately associated with the handling of the ICE raids and that sort of thing?
[00:08:41] Speaker B: Well, the timing is suspect, right. And you could easily imagine that somebody tried to blackmail her with that.
And so she went, did the right thing and went and said, hey, somebody's trying to blackmail me with this embarrassing personal information.
And so they're like, all right, well, let's just take you out of the spot. And that way. And so then the blackmailers, frustrated, ran the story Anyways,
[00:09:08] Speaker A: there's a sense in which this season, unlike any season I can remember previously, reminds me of the way things were maybe during the Kennedy administration. And I mean, things like, like
[00:09:24] Speaker B: if
[00:09:24] Speaker A: there were embarrassing things that were coming, the administration was giving a heads up on it so that they could position themselves appropriately for it.
The media hasn't been doing that in many years, probably since Watergate. And then you see, I mean, we're going to the moon. I mean, just things that have not been discussed have not been happening in many, many years, suddenly.
And it's not making the news, which is interesting to me. I know it's sort of like, oh, we do this every day.
It's not become a big story. There's a lot happening, obviously. But I was curious, and I don't know if you've thought through this or have an opinion on it, but generally, when something really good happens, Trump wants to associate himself with it and, you know, almost take credit for it. He hasn't done that with Artemis.
[00:10:19] Speaker B: He should.
[00:10:20] Speaker A: I wonder why he hasn't. What the thought process is there. Has he just got a lot on his plate right now or.
[00:10:25] Speaker B: He's tweeted about it a couple times and they were, you know, what you would hope about civilizational accomplishments and not just, you know, policy wins or something, which is what it is.
You know, I don't know if you read my post about it, but I have a lot of friends who are moon landing deniers.
[00:10:45] Speaker A: Right.
[00:10:46] Speaker B: And I'll tell you what, I have my own questions at this point. I mean, I thought that was hilarious before COVID but now that we've been through the pandemic. Yeah, I'm open to looking at it.
[00:10:56] Speaker A: Anyway, I get it. I get it. And I do think, what was the movie that came out a few years ago where they said they basically had some B roll set up just in case things didn't work out? I still think there might have been some of that that was used because some of the shots do not look leg.
But I do believe we made it to the moon. But I don't think that everything that we saw, I think the timing of the phone calls were the most suspect to me, where you've got the President talking to the astronaut on the moon when you couldn't call across country without there being a delay at the same time. That was always a little suspicious to me. But nevertheless, I think we made it and I think we're going to go back. I don't know what it's going to develop in the future, but I think it'll be good.
[00:11:40] Speaker B: Yeah. Let's be honest. Did you ever see that movie Plan 9 from Outer Space?
[00:11:43] Speaker A: I don't think I saw that.
[00:11:44] Speaker B: Okay. So you got to look it up. It's a 1950s sci fi movie that's famous for its horrible special effects. I mean, UFOs are pie plates dangling on wires and you know, stuff like that. So there's the connection is that I think a lot of that moon landing footage looks Plan 9 level special effects.
[00:12:05] Speaker A: It's not Star Wars.
[00:12:06] Speaker B: You know, that little buggy they drove around? I mean, when you really start looking at it, I mean, come on.
[00:12:11] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:12:12] Speaker B: So anyways, I'm not getting into that. I'm not a moon landing denier.
I'm just.
[00:12:16] Speaker A: The earth is round. Do you think?
[00:12:18] Speaker B: Yeah. And I'm not a flat Earther, but I acknowledge those people have some good questions. They do.
[00:12:24] Speaker A: I get it.
[00:12:24] Speaker B: That nobody's answering.
And then I want to know why they're not answering those questions. But anyway, the point about that is it doesn't matter if you're a moon landing denier or not.
For 50 plus plus years, they haven't even tried to fake another moon landing.
And so we've now come thanks to President Trump who restarted the program in his first term. This is the program he restarted. He signed one of his first executive orders was Space Policy Directive 1 SPD1, that restarted the moon mission.
And so now here we are. And so this time they're just going around the moon. And then in 2028, next year they're going to test the docking to dock with a landing craft. And assuming that works, the next year, 2028, they're going to land.
And so even if you're like a hardcore denier and you're like, they're still faking it, well, at least they're faking it.
[00:13:26] Speaker A: They're trying again. So I haven't heard anything about Space Force in a long time.
Do you think that there's something, a precursor taking place to getting more defensive or weaponized satellites into orbit?
Have you been in the loop of that at all?
[00:13:46] Speaker B: Well, I mean, we don't know One of the most remarkable characteristics of the second Trump term is how, how secure it is. They don't leak.
And so I would say we don't, we don't know about Space Force in the big picture. I mean, we, I mean, you'll see it. You can look it up. I mean, they, they're participating in the Iranian operation. They do cyber warfare, they do all kinds of stuff. But look, let's not be children about this. One of the main reasons to get to the moon is not because it's fun to drive the little buggy around.
It's because it's a piece of military territory that whoever controls it first is going to have a huge advantage.
[00:14:31] Speaker A: That's true. You know, there was a day that whoever controlled the sea when Great Britain controlled the oceans, had the best navy. They controlled everything.
They were able to control commerce and warfare, you name it.
I read this past week when Napoleon sold the Louisiana Territory to the United States, that was really to equip us to build a navy that was comparable and threatening to Great Britain. I never thought of it that way, but it, but there is a military component to all these things.
We've chased a few rabbits that are just fun to chase sometimes. So thank you for going down those roads with me.
In recent news and things that are taking place that I'd like you to analyze a little bit.
The speech on Wednesday night.
So when Trump does his sort of updated State of the Union was his first major address in many months or many weeks to the nation.
There wasn't a lot of breaking news in that.
Do you think that something changed? Do you think the plan was for there to be a major update? I think I was expecting him to say that maybe the Gulf states were going to pay for the war, they were going to take control of the Strait of Hormuz, something like that. There wasn't a lot of news that was revealed in that address.
What's going on there? Any thoughts on it?
[00:16:04] Speaker B: Yeah. So let's put the evidence on the table. Like how I would prep it for trial. So the first thing was the day before Trump announced that he's going to have this important address on Iran at 9pm Eastern Standard Time, which means the West Coasties can tune into it after they get out of work. Yeah.
So that's unusual. And everybody started speculating about it. So you have the hype announcement when he didn't say what he was going to announce, just a major announcement. And then you have 24 hours of wild speculation, his boots on the ground, some deal with the Iranians, you know, and you have this whole public spat going on between Trump and the Iranians all the time, right? He says we're close to a deal, and the Iranians say we've never even talked about a deal.
And the tension builds and builds and builds till 9 o'. Clock. And then Trump comes out and does his greatest Iran hits, right? It's the same old. We're going to bomb them back to the Stone Age. They've got a few days to make a deal. And there was nothing new. It was just the same recycled stuff. So what was that all about?
Why capture the nation's attention? And all the news channels have to stop their regularly scheduled programming and go to the White House for what?
So what everybody misses is that, number one, we're in a war. And they're, you know, so everybody complains, you know, we're in the. It's the second month. Well, hang on a second.
Ukraine's going into its fifth year.
[00:17:47] Speaker A: That's true.
[00:17:48] Speaker B: And you don't hear people complaining about how long it's taking, who set the bar so low that a war's stale by the second month. I mean, it's barely getting started, so there's that.
But because it's Trump, he's not running the war like anybody else runs the war. He's running the war in parallel with the peace negotiation.
When has that ever happened? Usually you got to bomb them for a few years to get their attention, and then you can talk about peace. You got to invade.
[00:18:19] Speaker A: That is a shift. A paradigm shift.
[00:18:21] Speaker B: Yeah. So he's doing them both at the same time. It's like he's collapsed in the timelines. And so whenever you watch Trump do anything about it, I'm going to give you the secret. Right? Here it is. This is how you decode anything Trump says about the war.
You have to remember he's running both tracks simultaneously.
So when you hear him say something about the war, I'm going to have a major address or whatever. Ask yourself, which track is he talking to?
Is he talking to the war track or the negotiation track? Well, if he's talking to the war track, guess what? I have some news for you. There's this thing called propaganda.
It's used in every single war by every side. We do it, they do it. The Israelis are masters at it. The Ukrainians do it, the Russians do it, the Chinese do it. Everybody does it. Everybody lies about what's officially going on.
Sun Tzu talked about doing it in the Art of War. Thousands of years ago. Okay, so anything he says about the war is potentially propaganda, probably propaganda. So when he says we're going to bomb their electric factories. Okay, well. Or their power plants. Okay, so first of all, are we really going to bomb the power plants, or is he just saying that because he wants them to move their air defense to the power plants and away from wherever they are? Now, how do the Iranians know if he's serious or not?
They have to do something. They either have to ignore it and take a chance that he's going to bomb their power plants, or they may have to move some resources around. So the General say, hey, Mr. President, can you give us a little help? Because we need them to take the air defense away from this bunker, so could you do something? And Trump says, sure. And he goes out and says something like that. Okay, so that's track number one, the war track.
And meanwhile, the media just pretends suddenly they're just naive babes in the woods, like they never heard of propaganda before. Now they accept everything the Ukrainians say and print it as if it were fact. And, I mean, the Ukrainians are the worst. Their propaganda is horrible. They get proven false in like 10 seconds.
But anyway, so then that's the war track. So then the second track is the negotiation track.
So Trump will get up and he will say something, and it doesn't make any sense, but that doesn't make any sense because he's not talking to us. He's pretending to talk to us, but he's really sending a message to somebody inside Iran.
And I think that's the explanation for the press conferences is. So imagine this just behind the scenes, right? So Trump's on the phone and he's like, if you guys don't give me what I want, I'm going to go on TV tomorrow night and I'm going to tell him we're sending in a million American soldiers.
Don't make me do it.
[00:21:16] Speaker A: And it's scheduled, it's planned, and they
[00:21:18] Speaker B: see everything getting organized. And, you know, all the media is. They're all funneling into the White House for the press conference, and all the channels are diverting their programming to focus on Trump. And he says, you know, it's, it's, it's 7:30.
I'm going on at 9. You got 90 minutes to change my mind. Right? And so I would, if I had to bet, and I'm just speculating, I wouldn't bet a lot, but if I had to bet, I would bet Trump got what he wanted.
And they. They gave in. And so he, instead of going on TV and announcing something horrible, he went on TV and just replayed his greatest Iran hits.
[00:21:56] Speaker A: And the traffic in the strait did pick up. There were some oil tankers that were making more than has passed through since they closed it down.
It's beginning to flow some.
The other track, I guess, that I'm curious about and what his game plan is here is the financial track and what it's doing to the economy. There was a certain point when I went back and was watching the timeline and how it overlapped with futures. So there was a certain point where futures began to tank when it was sort of obvious that, okay, we're not ending this tonight. He's hinted at a few more weeks for this to go on.
There didn't seem to be ownership of the Strait of Hormuz. That was something that the Gulf states were going to have to figure out. And the people who are buying their oil there, they're going to have to figure out. However, for us, our futures began to tank.
S and P begins to go down. Costs gold begins to go down. I think we've seen a drop in gold since this began somewhere. It was 5 to 10%, which is really unusual in the midst of a conflict.
[00:23:08] Speaker B: Not really.
[00:23:08] Speaker A: Is it really not? Because historically I couldn't find an exception to that, where gold has not been the safe option.
[00:23:16] Speaker B: That's true. What you just said is a fact. But we're in a unique period of history.
The closure of the strait created a global energy crisis.
So every country in the world that doesn't produce their own oil, so that's all about six of them are having to buy oil.
From who? From the United States or from Russia and pay premium prices. So they need money, they're selling their gold,
[00:23:48] Speaker A: they're flooding the market.
[00:23:50] Speaker B: Basic economics, supply and demand. There's more supply.
They're having to liquidate their gold positions, which is really astonishing because one of the worst manifestations of the Biden period was that all these countries were buying up our gold on the cheap.
That was when gold was 3,000.
It was artificially depressed because they were pretending like there was no inflation, so they were keeping the price of gold low. You remember when Trump came in and he and Elon were like, we want to audit Fort Knox. You remember all that hoopla and. And then it just went away.
And then the price of gold took off. So you want to go back, you want to see something interesting? Chart your timeline of the price of gold from that announcement that they Wanted to audit Fort Knox.
So what we're seeing, I think, is capital flowing back into the United States. So the price of gold is going down. Now we can buy it back.
By the way, the higher price of gold is just a huge benefit to the United States because our gold inventory is priced at $1972, like $42 an ounce. That's what it's priced at.
And Trump has repeatedly threatened, and Howard Lutnick said, that they were going to do this to reprice it to market, which is going to essentially eliminate a bunch of a trillion dollars of debt instantaneously.
And so the higher the price of gold goes, the better it is for us because we can reprice our inventory.
Meanwhile, the global energy crisis is pressuring all these other countries, and so they're having to come up with money. They can't tax their citizens quickly. So what's the fastest way they're selling all that gold that they bought?
[00:25:41] Speaker A: Got it.
What is the investment?
What is the green light investment? Right now? Crypto is going down.
Is there a place where you want to put your. You go into bonds. Where do you go right now?
[00:25:54] Speaker B: Well, I have to say I am not investing. That's not your counselor, Ed Forte. But anything, any remarks that I say cannot be right.
[00:26:03] Speaker A: And I'm a pastor. I can pray for you. That's all I can really do. So make ourselves safe there.
[00:26:10] Speaker B: Yeah, look, the.
What characterize this moment in time is strategic ambiguity.
Why did Trump fire Pam Bondi?
We don't know.
Why did Pete Hegseth fire three top generals, including the Army's chief of staff, yesterday?
No reason.
Why did Trump hold a press conference and say nothing? We don't know.
So the markets have no guidance, and it just is what it is. We live in a very unpredictable and chaotic time.
And so I think that's what you're seeing. You know, a lot of the depressed market, in my view, is just due to that simple fact is people don't know what to invest in. So they're just cash.
[00:27:06] Speaker A: You're seeing gas prices go up, obviously, a little. Do you think that'll change?
Do you anticipate a breakthrough prior to the midterms that will show a great correction? All that's behind us.
Let's get our eye back on the ball. I mean, what do you, what do you anticipate there?
I've wondered. I asked that because I've wondered if, if this is strategic in that sense. Let's, let's let things, the economy get to a place that we can Fix it. You know, when I'm preaching a sermon, I began with creating some tension, give you something to kind of be concerned about. There's a hell to fear. Right. And until you see that and feel
[00:27:45] Speaker B: the heat a little bit, kids call that engagement farming.
[00:27:48] Speaker A: Yeah. Well, there you go. So some engagement farming. I've wondered if there's some of that going on, creating some tension to resolve prior to the midterms so that he can kind of come in on a white horse and fix it.
Is that too simple or what do you think is happening there?
[00:28:05] Speaker B: Well, this goes back to the. Does Trump have a plan or is he just a crazy.
[00:28:10] Speaker A: Winging it.
[00:28:11] Speaker B: Yeah, winging it. You know, so. And he just gets lucky all the time.
I think there's a plan and I think that the Iran, the Iranian operation, Operation Epic Fury, was started when it was because the conclusion is already planned and it will conclude well enough for the midterms that they can get.
Gas is only up a dollar a gallon.
So I think they've left plenty of room for that. And I don't think it's going to be a problem for the midterms. That's just me guessing. But here's the thing about the. The price of gas is for every dollar that we pay more, the Europeans and The Chinese pay $8 more.
[00:28:55] Speaker A: Right.
I don't know how they can. I don't know how they can.
[00:28:59] Speaker B: It's catastrophic for them. Yeah. I mean, they are in a legit emergency.
[00:29:04] Speaker A: That was pre war.
[00:29:06] Speaker B: China is better situated than Europe because it has vast oil reserves. I mean, it's been building its strategic petroleum reserve for decades, but it right now is drawing down on that. And every million barrels that flows out of that strategic reserve is less oil they can use to invade Taiwan with.
So there are so many downstream effects from this Iran operation that the media just ignores. They just pretend like Trump got in a bad mood and he didn't like the way that ayatollah looked at him. And so now here we are. Right. And this is nothing like that. You can go on the Internet right now and find video from Trump in the 80s talking about Iran.
[00:29:49] Speaker A: You're right.
I may play that here and just play that clip. That's pretty fascinating because he's executing the game plan that he told Oprah about in the 80s. I mean, it was.
[00:30:00] Speaker B: Come on.
[00:30:00] Speaker A: It was articulated well.
[00:30:02] Speaker B: And the media somehow has amnesia about it. They can't remember that he's been.
This is exactly what he said he was going to do.
[00:30:10] Speaker A: Right.
[00:30:11] Speaker B: Decades before he Even ran for president.
[00:30:14] Speaker A: It is interesting, I think today I read that in the UK flights were being canceled due to just. They don't have gas.
[00:30:21] Speaker B: They're out of jet fuel.
[00:30:22] Speaker A: They're out of jet fuel. The refined kerosene that's required for the jet fuel is short, and they're beginning to ration it and decide who gets to fly, who doesn't.
That's going to trickle down. And we were there a few months ago, and it was insane what they were paying for gas.
I did not realize China was in the same predicament until you mentioned that.
I've wondered, comparing the game plan of the two nations.
Trump seems to me, as I said earlier, sort of a reset in a lot of ways to a previous version of America.
And so it's felt like the 60s politically in some ways to me.
China, besides just threatening Taiwan, they've not really taken any huge steps there.
China seems to be investing in China.
They seem to be keeping things internal.
Their GDP seems to be.
It seems it's outpacing ours. The last I saw that concerns me. They're not a warlike people in that they've not typically taken new territory. The threat, with Taiwan being the exception, I'm concerned, are we going to get off into these wars and weaken our economy as China is doing what maybe we should be doing, investing in their infrastructure, building up the homeland and creating a stronger economy.
Is there some concern there on your part?
[00:32:05] Speaker B: You know, I'm not concerned about it.
This gets into a much bigger picture and a bigger theory that I have about what Trump's really doing.
But let me just say right away, during Biden, we were constantly worried about a nuclear war with Russia, right, Because of all the brinksmanship in Ukraine, and Biden was giving them missiles that could hit Moscow and all that stuff. And the Russians didn't like it. And I don't blame them.
That's been tamped down. You never hear about that. Nobody's worried about going to nuclear war with Russia.
So Trump's got that under control. I think he's got the Chinese under control, too.
The Chinese aren't complaining about what we're doing in Iran. I mean, they issue press releases, things like that. They haven't gone to the UN Security
[00:32:59] Speaker A: Council, no threats, nothing like that.
[00:33:01] Speaker B: They haven't sent any hardware into the Strait.
So it's under control.
How is it under control?
We don't know, but it is.
And the media thinks that happens by accident. It's not happening by accident.
Trump's got the Chinese under control. Somehow 50% of their oil comes through that strait. You would think they would be pretty upset. You would. And they're not.
They're not that upset. And so there's more layers. There's things happening.
Trump's creating a multipolar world.
They've said it, Rubio said it, Trump said it, and it's in the national security document that they published in December.
And the multipolar world means it's the opposite of globalism.
The Europeans fully embrace globalism, and they don't have any oil now because they didn't keep a strategic petroleum reserve like the Chinese did. They just relied on being able to buy it from wherever they needed, from around the globe, because the international market and we're all working together, there's one global governance system, and so we don't need to make oil. And so they could play with windmills and solar panels and parasols and who knows what other kind of silly things that they were doing for green. And now they're in deep trouble.
We're not, because Trump made US energy independent and, by the way, snatched Venezuela's oil.
And the Venezuelans are doing great.
They couldn't be happier.
So something's going on that the Chinese. What you just said about the Chinese building infrastructure and everything, I think that represents them cooperating with us on multipolarity. They're becoming independent where we don't need this globalist system, where we all, quote, unquote, rely on each other, because that's only as good as a piece of paper. And as soon as something happens, you got these chaos actors like Iran, North Korea, things like that, that just mess everything up. Iran can shut down the whole world by closing a strait.
So China needs to be more independent. And I think that's what's happening. There's some interesting things happening in China far beyond that, if people are interested. Look into how President Xi has disappeared, Most of his top generals.
[00:35:39] Speaker A: Is that recent?
[00:35:40] Speaker B: Within the last six months. Well, that's.
[00:35:42] Speaker A: Yeah, I've not heard that at all.
[00:35:43] Speaker B: No, Mainstream media won't cover it.
[00:35:48] Speaker A: Wasn't there a planned visit between Xi and Trump, got kicked back over the war, or do we know what the cause of that was?
[00:35:55] Speaker B: Well, we don't know what the reason is.
I think most people speculate it's because of the war, but Trump and President Xi aren't saying it'll happen when the time's right, I think.
And we just have to wait and see. There's too much we don't know.
[00:36:18] Speaker A: I Wonder, where would China prefer to get its oil? Does it want Middle Eastern oil or does it want alternatives?
Is Venezuela its top producer? Where is it wanting to get its oil from?
[00:36:35] Speaker B: As I understand it, something like 40% of China's oil comes from Russia, 50% comes from the Middle east through the strait, and then 10 or 50%, whatever is left is from Central and South America, which has been cut off now, too.
[00:36:53] Speaker A: The reason I ask is if it appears.
And again, discerning what's propaganda, what's real, is above my pay grade. I can't figure it out. But I can say that Trump doesn't seem to plan to open up the Strait by American warships.
That doesn't seem to be his plan. It seems like he could do that tomorrow if he wanted to do it that way. Sure, he seems. What he seems to be telegraphing is that we're going to take this where we want it to be, get the people in power that we would prefer to have in power.
Probably one of my favorite quotes, they ask, and I don't know if Trump said it or was one of his people. We're talking about regime change. They're like, oh, we've had three or four regime changes already. It might have been Hegseth in Iran, and. And the people who are there seem to be working with him better from what he's saying.
But I'm looking for who would have the motivation to go in and do the hard work to open up the Strait of Hormuz if we did suddenly just leave and would that be China or would that be the Gulf states?
Who would you see stepping in at that point?
[00:38:03] Speaker B: Well, earlier this week, Trump posted on Truth Social this missive to the Europeans. It told them to come up with some delayed courage and go get your own oil.
[00:38:17] Speaker A: Right?
[00:38:18] Speaker B: Go into the Strait. You've got militaries, you got navies. Go get it, get on it. Why do you keep waiting for us to do it and complaining that we're not doing it fast enough?
If you need it, you have a global energy crisis, go get the oil.
And it reminds me of.
It reminds me of when Trump told them to sanction China because they kept.
Yeah, so they wanted. Or sanction India. So they wanted the US to sanction India, 100% tariffs because India was buying oil from Russia.
So the Europeans kept knocking on Trump's door and wanting to have meetings with them and everything to convince him to sanction India for that. Finally he said, and I don't know, it might have been Rubio or JD Vance but it was Trump.
He said, you guys sanction India 100%, and then we'll do it.
And the Europeans backed right down because they're chickens.
They can't afford to sanction India 100%. They wanted us to do it. They wanted our economy to take the hit, and they could just be free riders. And I think the straight situation is similar.
Trump saying, you know, they keep complaining, they're in his ear, crying about how he's not reopening the strait fast enough.
So he just threw down the gauntlet. You guys want the strait open? Go open it.
We won't get in your way.
[00:39:47] Speaker A: Right.
The number of missiles that we've taken out, there's some mixed reporting on that. Reuter said that there had been, like, one third of Iran's missile capability has been destroyed. They're still receiving attacks into Israel.
It seems from the administration that that number is much higher.
But it also.
There seems to be a major technological revolution in warfare with these drones, these cheap drones that they're sending against us that are making an impact that at the same time cost us a great deal to shoot those down.
Do you trust Reuters that we have not been as effective with the missiles as we've advertised?
[00:40:39] Speaker B: So here's the thing about numbers. And I had to learn this the hard way because I'm a daily news blogger, and during the Ukrainian conflict, at first I was reporting numbers from both sides. Like, the Russians said they. They killed 5,000 Ukrainians today, and Ukrainians said that they killed 3,500 Russians, and they blew up so many tanks and all these numbers that are constantly coming out of the war departments.
And then I learned, like I said the hard way, that that's all propaganda.
So you can't. We cannot trust any of the numbers. And again, it's not a good or bad thing. It just is what it is.
Yes.
Both sides use the. Those numbers for strategic purpose. Reuters and the corporate media just reprint whatever the Iranians say as if it's fact. And then they sneer at whatever Hegseth or Trump says. Like it's, you know, put air quotes around it and stuff like that. Like, Trump claims he's negotiating with the Iranians. The Iranians deny there's any negotiations taking place. Like, well, okay, so it's all propaganda. I don't know. Who knows how many missiles they have left, how many have been destroyed.
That is not for us to know.
[00:41:54] Speaker A: I wonder.
And it's against speculation.
I wonder who would be the most tempted if Iran is weakened to the level that it seems like it's going to be weakened to.
Will it be to such a state that one of the neighboring countries might want to move in?
Would that be a temptation for some of the Gulf states at that point to stabilize the government, put in a puppet regime?
I don't think it's at a place to where we've got to worry about like a Taliban or something like that coming in. But if I were uae, if I were Jordan, if I were in some of those countries in the Middle east that might. Could benefit from that oil, I would be kind of laying out some war plans at this point, I believe.
Could you foresee that happening, or do you think we're beyond that geopolitically right now?
[00:42:46] Speaker B: That's an interesting question. I hadn't thought about that before, but my immediate response is two things that I would be concerned about if I were one of them. One is that they've been cooperating with the US right down the line. I mean, there's no major Middle Eastern country that's not cooperating with us on the Iranian operations. So that would be a major betrayal, I think, of the.
Whatever agreement they've got going.
And then the second thing is they would be invading into an active war zone.
And so, you know, the Israelis are just bombing anything that moves. That's true at this point. So I don't know. That seems like it might be expensive.
[00:43:25] Speaker A: So back on the home front, the news cycle continues nearing the midterms.
We've seen a couple of things that have been interesting to me, I'd like to hear you speak about.
One is the speculation on who's going to be next for the Republican Party. Who's going to follow Trump?
And kind of seems like the leading contenders come down to JD or Rubio.
And am I seeing it right that JD's numbers are spiking right now? Is that what you're hearing?
[00:44:00] Speaker B: I've seen some media about that. I'm skeptical of polls in general.
[00:44:04] Speaker A: I think it was a straw poll that at CPAC recently.
[00:44:07] Speaker B: Yeah, so. For whatever that means.
But look, man, we are far from the 2028 election cycle, and in politics, it only takes a month or two for things to completely turn around.
Rubio is doing a great job, and I'm not surprised that the CPAC folks love him. But we're in a war phase right now.
[00:44:28] Speaker A: Do you have a preference if you had the sovereign ability just to anoint the next.
[00:44:35] Speaker B: I'm going to wait and see what it looks like in 2027 when we start Getting into the, I mean let them run, let them both run for the nomination and then whoever loses can be the vice president.
[00:44:45] Speaker A: Right? On the other side of the aisle, we've had a scandal with ActBlue and it was broken by an entity that's not typically the biggest fan of Trump, that's not typically working for conservatives. The New York Times published internal legal memos, outed what's going on there? Criminal exposure.
The leaders have been told to get their own personal attorneys.
Unpack that for us. Give us the context. That was new to me. You wrote about that this morning in coffee and Covid. So tell us more about that huge story.
[00:45:20] Speaker B: Huge. And it's hidden amongst all the war news and everything else that's going on. Bondi story.
So yesterday the New York Times ran a remarkable magazine style long form expose that is not something that they just whipped up.
[00:45:40] Speaker A: Was it the lead story?
[00:45:42] Speaker B: No, it was maybe halfway, 2/3 of the way down the page in small type. They didn't, they didn't platform it.
But it's 4,000 words according to the AI asked to calculate how long it was.
It's long and there's a long paragraph. I reprinted it in today's post. Of all the time sources and all the information that they relied on to write the story.
And so some just remarkable things to note about that. First, that this isn't like the Pam Bondi story that I criticized the other day because it was based on four anonymous sources.
This is based on memos and documents and letters and correspondence and screenshots of slack emails and interviews with former employees and current employees. Right. So it was the full court press. This is like the Pentagon Papers type of news analysis.
And what they said was that the Covington law firm, which is one of the top DC white shoe Democrat law firms, thousands of lawyers and they represent every administration and every crazy liberal cause and everything like that.
They were act blues lawyers.
And so they wrote a memo early January, February of 25 that said you guys have criminal exposure for what you've been doing.
And that's just the hook. And so everything else, the Times filled in all the gaps around that, how the memo happened, why the lawyers felt that way and everything else. So it's astonishing that the Times is essentially attacking agblue because you would think they would never run that story. We don't know why.
But where did the Times get all that stuff?
The story doesn't say.
Right. And if you read stories like that, this is the thing I've learned how to do since I've been doing news analysis, is read this story. And the Times says, we, the Times reviewed memos and, you know, confidential letters and blah, blah, blah between an attorney and their client.
And then it moves on into this exciting expose about what it all says. And you never stop to think, well, wait a minute, how'd they get it?
So somebody gave a giant package, they served it up on a platter to the New York Times of the worst information that you could put out there about ActBlue. Why?
It's not new to have allegations of criminal conduct against ActBlue. Republicans have been saying it. There's three House committees investigating them. The DOJ supposedly has an investigation going. James O' Keefe ran all those viral videos where he was knocking on poor old people's door and asking them, hey, did you donate 100 times to this candidate? And they're like, no, all that stuff was already out there. But this is totally different.
This is ActBlue's own allied lawyer telling them that their conduct is criminal.
I mean, it's unimpeachable.
The Times printing that in their paper, they quoted right from the memos, first of all, destroys the attorney client privilege.
The attorney client privilege relies on confidentiality. So if you, let's say I'm your lawyer and I send you an email, that's privileged. But if you forward that email to somebody else and say, hey, look at what Jeff said. You just destroyed the attorney client privilege because it has to be confidential. So as soon as you share it with the third party, it's off some judge somewhere. I don't agree with this, but he found that somebody putting their lawyer's communication into AI destroyed attorney client privilege because the AI was a third party.
Maybe, maybe not, I don't know. But something to guard about. That's how delicate it is, right? If it's printed in the New York Times, it's not confidential anymore. So the Times just took somebody, some whistleblower who somebody gave them all that stuff, and then the Times put it in the paper. And now Congress can subpoena it. So can the DOJ, where before ActBlue would have been able to say, no, attorney client privilege. We don't have to give you that stuff. We. Well, I have to give it now. So that's number one.
Number two, it would be malpractice for Todd Blanche. Remember, Todd's coming in now after Bondi as acting Attorney General.
It would be malpractice if he didn't investigate this.
The New York Times, it's like they Ran the Watergate story or something. I mean, it's that kind of a thing.
The evidence of potential criminal conduct is right there in the newspaper. And you have their own lawyers telling them that they have criminal exposure. He has to investigate it, and he will forever. If Todd Blanche now turns on, switches on that ActBlue investigation and shifts it into high gear, he can blame it on the New York Times.
That's a gift. New York Times just handed him that.
And once again, remarkable about everything that happened yesterday, all on the same day, it's.
It just divides itself.
[00:51:19] Speaker A: And, you know, not to say, you know, I don't know how close I would draw that line, but the New York Times would by many be considered almost an entity of the Democratic Party. And so when they're doing the outing right before the midterms, when they're already, my understanding is they're way behind on fundraising compared to what the Republicans have done. And that's unusual.
But something, something in mechanism is imploding or exploding or something.
And it's odd. I can see breaking the story, I can see breaking the story after the midterm, sitting on it for a little while.
[00:51:57] Speaker B: They had lots of options.
[00:51:58] Speaker A: I can't understand the timing of it, why it happened when it did, and how that positions for the Trump administration, Department of justice, whatever their motive would be to exploit it, you know, right before the midterms, strange when they could
[00:52:18] Speaker B: do the maximum damage.
[00:52:20] Speaker A: Right?
[00:52:21] Speaker B: The Democrats, like you said, they already have funding problems and this is their main fundraising engine. If anything happens to it, I don't even know what they would do.
[00:52:35] Speaker A: I know you're of the opinion Trump is sort of the mastermind, strategist, working three dimensional math, four dimensional jets.
Let's just say you were tapped to come in and say at this juncture, what would you do if you were advising Trump right now, what kind of advice would you give to him to stabilize the markets?
I talked, I was watching recently, probably it was one of those moments where something said, pay attention to this conversation. And it was his little granddaughter Kai. They were on a golf course. They were riding around on the golf cart and somebody was filming.
And she said, granddad, you've made it to the highest office in the land. What do you do now? And he didn't hesitate. He said, I'm president. It's the most powerful office in the land now. The challenge is to become the greatest president ever.
And I thought to myself, that makes sense. That seems like an honest Trump answer that would tie together. Why is it that we're seeing our nation do things it hasn't done since the 60s. Why would we see suddenly a crackdown on immigration, going to the moon, foreign wars every president's talked about, nobody's actually done with Iran, all of those things coming together.
And so I would presume that's his M.O. ultimately, is to achieve that fifth person on Mount Rushmore status, so to speak. And I don't blame him a bit. That makes sense to me why he would do that.
If Jeff Childers were advising him in an intimate setting, is there anything you would look at and say, I would.
In the next part of my term, this is what I would focus on.
[00:54:31] Speaker B: Well, when the newspapers compare Trump to previous presidents, now a year and a couple months into his second term, they are comparing him to FDR, to Lincoln, to Grant, to McKinley, some of the greatest presidents we've ever had.
And that's from unfriendly platforms, right?
[00:54:56] Speaker A: That's substantial.
[00:54:57] Speaker B: And so, like, what would you advise FDR to improve how we came out of World War II?
It's almost like the question beggars imagination.
I'm not qualified, I don't think, to advise Trump.
He's so far past anything I even thought was possible. I mean, look, I would have been happy just because he wasn't, Kamala.
He was already successful on day one.
[00:55:26] Speaker A: Good answer.
I would argue back. I think myself and a lot more people included, think you have a lot more to contribute there to the game plan and to the strategy than you give yourself credit for.
[00:55:40] Speaker B: Well, let me give you an example. So, like, I just saw another huge layer to this whole Iran thing that I hadn't recognized before.
And it just, it blew up my brain. I was like, the genius behind this is orders of magnitude beyond anything we've seen from a president, probably in our. I mean, you know, maybe Reagan in his first term, you know, before he started getting a little cognitively soft.
But that was the AI connection, right? So Trump's big on AI. You know that, right? So he's. All these executive orders. I mean, and he's just been. He's got the tech Bros in there from day one, and they're building AI data centers everywhere and all that kind of stuff, right? So Trump, Trump understands AI and how important it is. And AI is a civilizational transformation.
We had the Industrial revolution, and now we're having the AI revolution. And what's so critical about the Industrial revolution that people miss is that it changed the world and all its geopolitics. In 50 years, every country that Embraced industrial technologies, became a superpower. Every country that was slow and didn't think it was that big of a deal became a second rate power.
And they switch places.
The same thing's going to happen with AI. The countries that embrace AI and are on the frontier are going to be positioned to be the superpowers for the next century or longer. And the ones who are slow are going to be second and third world countries.
[00:57:19] Speaker A: I don't disagree with that at all.
[00:57:20] Speaker B: Okay, so there's two things that you need for to be successful at AI as a country.
What do you always hear people complaining about? Data centers?
[00:57:33] Speaker A: The power usage.
[00:57:35] Speaker B: Right. You need massive amounts of power to run your AI.
Well, what's Europe in the middle of a crisis about power? They don't have any power, they don't have any energy.
And China's having the same problem. And all these frenemies and enemies are faced with the same huge problem. Meanwhile, we're building AI data centers like it's going out of style.
So by closing the Strait of Hormuz, Trump created a global energy crisis for all the competitive countries again, except for the six or so that make their own energy, who are not AI powerhouses, with the possible exception of Russia.
But anyway, all of our frenemies and enemies are set back.
How long do you think? 18 months? 2 years, 3 years? How long does it take?
[00:58:35] Speaker A: It happens quick.
[00:58:37] Speaker B: You see how fast AI is progressing.
So if they get knocked back two years, three years in AI data center development, then we'll be so far ahead of them that you never catch up.
[00:58:49] Speaker A: I try with our kids.
They're all on the brink of their adult careers right now and I try to stress to them the importance of leaning into AI.
When we were kids, I think it was probably personal computers.
Our dads were telling us, learn how to program, learn what you can about these computers. I got an IBM or a PC compatible early and it was a big one, but Oregon Trail or whatever, you couldn't go very far with it. You could play a couple of games and type code for three hours that says, happy Mother's Day, Mom.
There wasn't much you could do today.
It's progressing so quickly.
[00:59:28] Speaker B: Yeah.
So you see it and so here's where I was. So it was as recently as last week. I thought that Trump was a genius because the global energy crisis was pressuring China and the Europeans to make a deal. Right. What do we want from the Europeans? We want them to quit facilitating the Ukraine war so we can get that settled.
And we want them to either pay their fair share of NATO or let us out of it or whatever it is that Trump wants. I'm fine with either one.
And with China, we want a multipolar world where China's not aggressive militarily and self sufficient and everything like that. So I thought, oh, it's brilliant that Trump's pressuring them with the energy crisis to make a deal with him. Right? Because he' swhat all he has to do is open that strait.
They need him. They need him to open the strait. Right. So I'm thinking, okay, well, that's what this is all about. He's got them where he wants them now. And then I realized, wait a minute, that's not even.
That's true. He does have that leverage. But that's not what this is really all about. It's about AI.
He's making sure that America is positioned to have global dominance for the next hundred years, not the next 10 or 20 years. That's how far out he's looking.
[01:00:53] Speaker A: The companies that are behind the AI revolution, it's interesting to watch what they're doing right now. They're tooling up the way Apple would back when the iPhone was introduced.
So right now, everybody in my family has an iPhone, probably more than one. We've got some laying around we're not using anymore. I was watching one of the robot companies up in Nashville, which it was just interesting to me that one of the most cutting edge, it's the one that Melania walked out with recently.
That company is in production in Nashville, Tennessee, of all places. And they were saying that they are producing enough soon to produce 1 million of those robots. And I think it was on the Sean Ryan show. The CEO was talking to him and Sean said, wow, do you think you'll be able to sell that many? And he said, oh, we're gonna. The goal is to get one for every human being in the United States because that's the way iPhone production. He said, that's the closest thing to it. We're producing the way iPhones were produced.
[01:02:00] Speaker B: Who doesn't want their own little robot?
[01:02:02] Speaker A: But I mean, can you imagine that day coming to where couple of years you got to get a new robot because you're antiquated, whether you're leasing it or whatever, however you purchase the thing or whatever. You and I were both early adopters with AI. We're using it in our workplace regularly. We're both Tesla drivers.
You're going to get a robot when the time comes out.
[01:02:23] Speaker B: Michelle swears she doesn't want any robots in the house. She has this fantasy that not even the vacuuming. She thinks they're going to turn against us and murderous in our sleep somewhere.
[01:02:33] Speaker A: She may have veto power there.
[01:02:34] Speaker B: Yeah, but I think I'll bring her around. I'll bring her around. Yeah. I mean, who went on? It's labor, right.
[01:02:41] Speaker A: It was able to pick up, I think it said 30 pounds and it had enough strength to lift a 30 pound weight, but it had enough articulation that it could fold a T shirt.
Just amazing.
One of the hosts, he said, well, what if somebody just pushes it over? And the guy said, try. He gave it a good shove and it balanced itself. It was just like it was more stable than I am. I mean, I probably would have went down, you know, it was pretty, pretty amazing to see.
And here we are. It's an exciting time building in America.
[01:03:12] Speaker B: Building in America, not in Asia, which you would have probably thought three years ago.
[01:03:17] Speaker A: Exactly. You would have thought it would have been more cost effective and you would have better just intel and technology development. But building right here and scaling. It's exciting.
Thank you for joining us today. Yeah, there's a lot happening. It's a fun time to be alive, a lot to pray about. It's Good Friday here when we're recording this. We may have this out. Hopefully we can debut it tonight. And so we're preparing for Easter. It just reminds us there's nothing taking place in the world right now that a resurrection will not make right.
Thank you for being on. Hey, my name is Zach. I want to thank you for watching this episode of Code Red. If you are interested in the content that we produce, help us to reach more people by downloading the Maximum Life plus app.
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