EXPOSED AND DECIMATED: Ilhan Omar's SHOCKING moment to Trump's Iran ultimatum | Recap

It is with great great pleasure to welcome back on set general Jack Keane Fox News senior strategic analyst general Thank you for doing this. We appreciate it You know general McCormick, you know, you know him

He's speaking the truth Mackenzie Kenzie rather sorry. Yeah. Yeah, I know him very well He's he was an outstanding commander in CENTCOM And metal had a lot of challenges himself. And he's reflecting something that we're very much aware of. This actually, our planning and dealing with the regime actually started when they took over.

And when they first killed over 300 of us in 1983, when Reagan was president, blew up two embassies and blew up our Marine barracks, we realized we had an adversary on our hands. So it was in even those early days that Central Command began to plan for a war with Iran,

given what they had already done to us. And then they continued to kill us. What President Trump is different from those previous seven presidents is while many of them had to deal with Iran, who has killed Americans, all seven of them

had to deal with their overall aggression and destabilization. And not one of them was ever really willing to confront them in any consequential way. And I love what you're saying up there in the introduction. President Trump is trying to put an end

to this 47 year experience. That is the purpose of what is taking place here. And why. What's the motivation. There's intense motivation that came out after the 12 day war to include are taken down in a nuclear capability. What Prime Minister Netanyahu and President Trump recognized based on their intelligence services looking at this, that Iran recommitted to all of their goals and objectives. And that was missile development, Chinese helping them, more drones, recover their nuclear program.

And then the fourth thing is they began to continue the funding, the proxies. They used different banks to do it, passed it through Istanbul, hundreds of millions of dollars, and nothing had changed. If anything, they were recommitted to all of those goals. And they realized we have got to do something about it. We can't wait because they're developing longer range ballistic missiles, more lethality, recover a nuclear program with the potential, obviously, to use it. And that created a sense of urgency. And then they looked at a central commander. They looked to the IDF commander and they are dusting off plans that already exist and

have existed for years. That's the thing. I just what John McKenzie said is so important because you've got these Democratic senators and House members, we hear about it every day from somebody and the legacy media. There's no planning. There's no, of course there's planning.

They are insulting the military and they are using falsehoods. And that's why I think, you've said this a lot. Now you've got company with this General McKenzie. I mean, it's something that needed to be said. It needed to be put out there. Of course, there's been plenty.

They've been planning for four, almost five decades. And they don't only just put a plan in place, then they go out and practice it. Yeah. Right. Tabletop exercises, CPXs, and then they adjust the plans because the enemy always has a vote. And what we do, so our audience can understand, we organize a red team to oppose us in those

computer exercises. And we give that red team all the resources that Iran has, and they're operating completely independent. There's no coaching by anybody. And they put huge pressure on a blue force So as a result of that all the options that Iran could possibly come up with our exercise I mean it was a revelation to some people when they when they imposed their will on the straits of the moves and it's at all

Americans weren't prepared for the straights Are you got to be kidding me when I was a division commander two-star general a corps commander three-star general and a four-star general decades ago We knew that we knew that was be one of the first things that they would do and we have worked against that We know exactly what these guys are doing and what they can do to intervene with us Interfere with us if we begin to impose our will on them, which we will do

Yes with us if we begin to impose our will on them, which we will do. Yes. Our military plans call for us to open the Straits of Hormuz and use military force to do it and to secure it and keep it open to recover the nuclear, whatever that is left there, and finish off their ballistic missile program as much as we possibly can to include drones. And we will have accomplished our our assigned missions that's a fact.

IHormuz General there's been a lot of talk about this Pentagon final push more troops coming into the Persian Gulf theater the Mideast theater in general can you comment on that what does that mean I mean we're gonna we will reopen Hormuz and in the next segment we're going to talk about the Venezuelan model of who's gonna run the money in the oil But in terms of the military side of this as you say it will be reopened a lot of people think this new Addition to troops are part of that reopening. Do you think they are?

Well, the president has options and and certainly the Straits of Amuse, Karg Island, what it truly represents, 90% of their oil distribution is sitting right there on that island. And he has options to exercise here. In the war games that we've played in the past, we have used ground forces for short-range missions in, out, maybe stay a few days, depending on what the mission is. This is not an invasion force, to be sure. Anybody in other words, put that out of your mind. We're talking about 10,000, 20,000 troops at most here. An invasion force would be something north of 100,000.

So this is, give a very specific mission. It has a certain time duration associated with how long does it take to accomplish that mission, and then they're out of there.

And I'm just going to guess our Air Force has been planning this anyway by taking out various Iranian, whatever they have, missile sites or drone sites that are in that neighborhood, either on the cliffs of the Hormuz Strait or someplace but there are probably I'm just guessing but I'll ask you are has

this been in preparation already we have been working on this probably ever since they imposed their will we began executing that war plan and what does that mean that means taking down down anti ship missiles at distance long range ballistic missiles at distance. The Shah had drones can go almost a thousand miles. So we're going deep into Iran that can access the Straits of Hormuz. And then we're working close in to deal with what close in mine layers small boats that could be suicide boats to interfere with shipping. They could fire drones from that that small boat as well or fire other kinds of short range missiles at a boat. All of that is being exercised. And then the other thing is do we have

to control a piece of ground there in addition to having what overhead. What we have right now in the area are Apache attack helicopters very effective move slower than a jet fighter. We have a 10 war hogs which is an Air Force airplane designed in a single purpose as the only airplane in the entire Air Force Navy or Marine Corps inventory who specifically designed to provide close support for troops on the ground. So they are operating in there right now. And as convoy came through we would have drones up in the air supporting it. We'd have counted drones on those convoys even on the merchant ships. We would have a patch. We would have those close air support aircraft as well There would be plenty of opportunity to suppress whatever they're gonna throw at it It doesn't mean Larry that they can't fire at us. They likely will be able to it does mean in our judgment

It's an acceptable risk and we can minimize that risk. Well, as you say on this and other things you're gonna take out Iran's Capabilities. I love that word capabilities. I think that covers a lot of ground. And I think it's important that people hear you on this subject. Let me ask another thing. I guess it's on the area of diplomacy. So President Trump is saying he thinks he's negotiating with a new regime.

That is to say, the leadership of the first regime has all been taken out. The leadership of the first regime has all been taken out. The leadership of the second regime has all been taken out. Now he thinks there's a third regime. If I get Mohamed Ghalibad, the former, I guess he was Speaker of the Parliament, or is Speaker of the Parliament, he was a member of the Revolutionary Guards. I don't know how new this is, but the President is saying to some extent it's like regime change.

Now, I know you followed the diplomacy here. What do you make of this?

Well, they're different people, I think, but have affiliation with the same regime. These are all elite hardliners. Galabov, you know, the speaker, he was an IRGC general. He was in charge of a force that repressed the Iranian people years ago. He's as much of a thug as the Ayatollah was and all the other thugs that we've just been killing over the last couple of weeks. They're all part of that.

The leaders are hardliners for sure. Can we maybe bend them a little bit more to their will? Because I think the number one thing in their mind right now, Larry, is personal survival.

Yeah.

The second thing is the regime stays in place so they can stay in power and have all the benefits of what they do. Remember, these people are all very, very wealthy. All of those generals, the IRGC, all those police commanders, they are all multi, multi millionaires. It was a business.

They were running a huge business enterprise. I mean, it's kind of like a mafia Yeah, it's what it's like. Yeah, everybody's wealthy. Yeah, and they want to maintain that lifestyle

You need to bust through that don't we don't mean golly?

I keep asking you the best thing to do with them is to kill them Yeah, and that is the truth of it sir I mean, I'll't like to use that word lightly, but these are killers of their own people. 30-something thousand, a couple thousand plus Americans in this deal as well. That is the best answer for them.

Yeah, yes sir. I'm not the expert you are, but that makes the most sense. I keep asking, you know, there is a regular army, which by and large we have not hit too hard. Somebody from the regular army, you told me a lot of them are draftees, most of them are draftees, they're not as ideologically crazed

as the Revolutionary Guard. I'm waiting for someone like that to come forward, or I don't know, maybe the Shah's son, I mean he has certain claims to this and that. It's gotta be somebody other than the Revolutionary Guard people.

Yeah, I think we have a ways to go yet, because if we end it, my preference is a military end to this, because I think we can force the economic collapse of the country, particularly by seizing, not destroying, but seizing the oil distribution point at Karg Island. And I think that is a much better preference than if we get a deal, we're going to throw the regime a lifeline. Because they're going to want sanction relief, they're going to want frozen assets released,

they're going to get billions of dollars. And what does that do? That extends them and gives them an opportunity to recover.

You've said the military can do all the conditions we have which are the capabilities of Iran the military can handle that with deal or no deal they can handle it yes sir

there's no doubt in my mind about it the central commander today is Admiral Brad Cooper he's exceptional officer I've talked to him many times during all of this he really he's on top of it. He's got the backing and confidence of the president of the United States, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs and Secretary Hicks. They they are doing an outstanding job out there.

They are very confident.

Terrific stuff. General Kane, as always. Thank you, sir.

We appreciate it. Great talking to you. Always.

I love it in person. Always. Yes sir. It's great to see you. Either way you

look very well. Wave of mega tech IPOs could drive markets this year led by AI giants and space players eyeing record valuations. SpaceX targeting a valuation of more than two trillion dollars in a potential IPO which could make it one of the most valuable companies in the world. Open a I mean while closing a record breaking one hundred twenty two billion dollar funding round valuing that company more than eight hundred fifty billion. The Chad GPT maker also eyeing a potential IPO as it looks to scale and compete with rivals like Google and Anthropic which is also considering a public debut of its own. I want to bring in sandbox a QCEO Jack Henry Jack. What are your thoughts in particular. It's not just the size of the valuations of these IPOs especially when it comes to SpaceX. But it is I think it's

more indicative of kind of where we're going with the market and with investments. And that is space and A.I. Cheryl yeah absolutely. Good morning. Good to see you today. The second half of this year promises to be very different than the first half. As you mentioned I think we're going to see the IPO of SpaceX SpaceX. People think of as a rocket company but actually the rockets are just a platform for many applications. Starlink is the first mega application on the SpaceX platform. It brings in recurring revenue. It's growing by leaps and bounds and gives SpaceX a unique position in the market and a global reach. And so we expect that to be a very successful IPO. Five major banks are going to be doing that globally. But as you said, also OpenAI and Anthropic most likely to also file and go public, if

not by Q4 this year, then certainly by Q1 of the coming year. One of the reasons for tapping the public market, Sheryl, is to also access those retail investors. To date, most of the investors have been big institutions, sovereign wealth funds, pension plans. But now retail investors will have a chance

to get at these three interesting companies. Do you think though that retail investors should be trying to take a part in these

IPOs in particular the SpaceX. Well given the extreme focus of many retail investors online on various stock trading boards there's no way to stop them. They're going to be involved in this. We hear that up to 30 percent of the IPO raise may be allocated towards the retail investor in each of the banks that is involved in raising money for SpaceX in this upcoming IPO have extensive retail arms that they can tap into be it high net worth but also even retail beyond that you also probably going to see Robin

Hood. And many other online platforms participate by allocating also for these IPOs either pre IPO or post IPO.

Yes, it is exciting again these valuations are just incredible. I do want to talk about cybersecurity. So Anthropic says that it accidentally exposed internal code for its cloud tool. They called it human error. It wasn't a breach but the leak did it didn't hit customer data. But it's giving rivals a glimpse into the product roadmap there. And that raises fresh concerns around AI competition and security. I do want to

get your thoughts on that. I mean I understand that they're saying that it's human error. But when you see these systems breached

like this it does raise concerns. Well the bigger picture that that particular case was human error. But Anthropix more interesting announcement was back in November 13 of this past year when they and we applaud them for doing this came forward and said that a state sponsored hacker from overseas attempts to get into 30 of their customers who are using Anthropic Claude via the use of that A.I. And so there's definitely a very big concern as we look towards AI agents now, Sheryl, that are now proliferating across large companies and small. Agents can definitely provide you a lot of productivity and potentially increase in revenue and earnings,

but they also come with cyber caution because they have the keys to the kingdom in your company and they can actually expose a lot of the crown jewels of the company. And so that's why we have announced at the RSA conference just two weeks ago active guard for agents to make sure the agents remain productive members of

the company and not vectors of cyber attack in the company. All right. Let's get into this. OK. So you launch this active guard these guardrails. This expands monitoring and this helps enterprises manage any hidden risks in the age of agentic A.I. and the platform can identify any unseen A.I. usage enforce real time controls and protect against threats like any kind of data leaks or or you know anything else. But I think one of the things that you talk about when you

say security threats is post quantum security. Explain that and why that you think is such a critical threat that we need to

focus on. That's exactly correct. Cheryl we have the agenda. I issue where again a lot of positivity, but also great cyber danger. And we need to all address that. But in the last week, a lot of news in the post-quantum era. As we all know, quantum computers are getting better and better. And it was initially thought it would be in the 2030s when quantum computers would break all the cyber protocols

that we use every single day in e-commerce, banking, telco, the energy grid, the government with its confidential information. But it turns out two major announcements in the past week coming independently of each other bring forward Q-Day. Q-Day is the day that Quantum breaks RSA, breaks ECC and other protocols. Q day is now thought to be by us and by other experts to be in 2029. That's literally 36 months from today.

And so there's really no time left, Cheryl, to really start getting going in moving over to the quantum safe protocols known as PQC, post-quant quantum cryptography. So exactly correct. These are two twin cyber threats,

one on the AI agentic side, but also of course now with Q-Day moving forward to 2029, this is the time to protect ourselves.

You know, when you hear so many people moving ahead to quantum, I thought that was very interesting that those that you were flagging that now, and that the timeframe frame is shorter than You know originally thought by many and I don't think enough people are talking about it. So I'm glad you brought it up Jack Henry

Thank you so much for being here

Manhattan Institute senior fellow Chris Ruffo has been investigating widespread fraud in California in a new report He found that fraud losses during the Newsom administration totaled at least $180 billion. California Governor Newsom responded to that report saying it relies on quote, guesses. Newsom says California has been a leader

on combating fraud. Chris Rufo joins us now. Chris, what's your response to the news. Newsom's response.

Yeah well you know Gavin Newsom is definitely becoming associated with the word fraud. But it's not for fighting it. It's for enabling it. And look even under the most conservative estimates experts from Harvard from the Department of Health and Human Services, from LexisNexis Fraud Division have told us that the fraud in California is unprecedented. It represents the largest financial crime in American history. And scammers have been stealing billions of dollars per year, some estimates say as high as $50 or $60 billion a year, from the state of California, from federal taxpayers who actually send money to the state. And so, look, this reputation is catching up with the governor.

He's going to try to run away from it, but the facts are not on his side.

So what's the most egregious example of fraud that you've found?

Sure. Well, really, Medi-Cal is the 100-pound fraud within the system. And HHS officials told me that they estimate that the state of California is now losing up to $50 billion a year to fraud. And what I've noticed in the reporting is that it seems like every criminal enterprise from around the world has looked at California as a vulnerability. They're seizing. In our reporting, we show that neo-Nazi prison gangs, Romanian fraud scammers, death row

inmates and foreign fraud gangs have all been ripping off the state of California to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars. And we're just looking at the tip of the iceberg.

You know the buck stops with the governor clearly. But how many people are dropping the ball on this because if it's that easy to steal money there's got to be a lot of failures along the chain.

Yeah well what's happened is that essentially California is operating many of its public programs in essence on the honor system. There's very little oversight. During the pandemic when California was distributing tens of billions of dollars in unemployment insurance, there were only two state employees in charge of guarding against fraud for the entire system. And even worse, some of those employees that were in charge of guarding various programs were committing fraud themselves. We've seen this through criminal indictments and it goes all the way to the top.

It's outrageous.

And that's a good place to leave it. Outrageous, indeed. Chris Rufo, thank you so much for bringing this report to us. We do appreciate it very much.

Welcome back. House Speaker Mike Johnson and Senate Majority Leader John Thune working on a new two-track plan to end the record-long partial shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security. It would affect all of DHS except parts of ICE and Customs and Border Protection. The funding would be handled later through reconciliation, bypassing the Senate filibuster. The president endorses the plan, writing on Truth Social, yesterday, I am asking that

the bill be on my desk no later than June 1st. The Senate convening earlier this hour for a pro forma session, sending their bipartisan deal to the House for a second time. The House will also meet later at 8.30 a.m. Eastern,

all in an attempt to pass the measure with a vote later today. Joining me now is Wisconsin Senator Ron Johnson, a member of the Senate Homeland Security Committee. Senator, good to see you. Thank you so much for being here this morning. Can you tell us a little of your expectations of how this plays out today?

Good morning, Maria. Well, listen, I think this is the only thing, unfortunately, that we can do with the Democrats being so obnoxiously obstructionist in terms of funding the very agency that we need to keep us safe after they threw open our borders. So this is what we have to do. In terms of the second step, the reconciliation, I think we need to keep that as narrow and as focused as possible, or that could potentially get

out of control as well. So again, this is really, you know, I've been supportive of this approach since last week. It's the only thing we really could do. I'm glad that the Speaker and the House is coming to understand that point. And really looking at the wording of that legislation, we didn't defund CBP and ICE. We made sure we had that funding through the reconciliation. Now we're gonna have to use a second reconciliation

to fund it in the future, so that Democrats can't use this as a bargaining chip.

But they literally are using the security of our homeland as a bargaining chip in their sick political

games. It's really disgusting. Well that is incredible. I mean look you say you want this reconciliation plan to be narrow and focused. Otherwise it could it could be vulnerable. And I understand that. But you know what do you want in it. I mean what are your what are your most important things? CBP and ICE? And then what else? What else goes in the reconciliation?

Well, actually, I'd want it more expansive than that. I know that's what they're talking about right now. So that's really narrow and focused. I would want to fund all of Republican priorities within DHS, which is pretty much all of DHS through fiscal year 2029. That's what I've been talking about. That's what I'll be pressing for. Again, we can't allow Democrats to use the security of our nation, of our homeland as a bargaining chip in their, you know, let's face it, their game plan to turn America into

one party nation. That's what this is all about. Opening up the borders, you know, flooding this country and people that have been completely unvetted putting America and American citizens at risk to turn this into one party nation. So we need to stop them at that. We can't allow them to use DHS as a bargaining chip.

Well, I mean, what about defense spending? I mean, the Pentagon's asking for 200 billion dollars to pay for the war in Iran. The president wants a one and a half trillion dollar defense budget for 2027. Then you've got to say that, right? There are colleagues of yours who have made the case on this program that that could be a budgetary item because you have to, you know, outlay money to the states for secure elections.

I mean, Florida and Mississippi have just signed laws requiring proof of citizenship to register for vote, allowing the removal of voters who do not provide documentation. Florida's law includes checking voter rolls against state and federal databases while tightening acceptable voter ID rules effective January 2027. These actions come as the President's SAVE Act is stalled.

So Senator, what about that? Would you consider, I know you want it narrow and focused, I know you want DHS all the way to 2029, but what about defense and what about the SAVE Act?

Well, narrowly focused on something that can get all Republican votes and elements of the SAVE Act, we certainly do that. So there are things we can do budgetarily, for example, provide grant money to clean up your voting rolls, provide money to pay for voter ID if that's a big issue. So there are some things, again, if we insist on policy changes, I don't think we'll be able to do that through reconciliation. I think you understand my stance on ending the 60-vote threshold and filibuster so we can literally save this country. But again, that's going to be a little more difficult. Right now, we've got to focus on funding DHS before June 1st.

So we need to keep it as focused as possible so we can get all Republican votes. OK. All right. So June 1st.

And you feel that all of those things can can be in there for June 1st. What did you make of the president last night? He addressed the nation, providing Americans with an update on Operation Epic Fury. Here's what the president said also to our NATO allies. Watch this.

Buy oil from the United States of America. We have plenty. We have so much. And number two, build up some delayed courage. We should have done it with us as we asked. Go to the strait and just take it, protect it, use it for yourselves. Iran has been essentially decimated. The hard part is done, so it should be easy. And in any event, when this conflict is over, the strait will open up because of our drill-baby drill program.

America has plenty of gas. We have so much gas. Under my leadership, we are number one producer of oil and gas on the planet, without even discussing the millions of barrels that we're getting from Venezuela. Because of the Trump administration's policies, we produce more oil and gas than Saudi Arabia and Russia combined.

Think of that, Saudi Arabia and Russia combined. And that number will soon be substantially higher than that.

I mean, I was really struck by that, Senator. Your reaction to the president's speech?

I had two main takeaways. The first is exactly what you were pointing out there. President Trump was asking our allies to step up and play. They're the ones that use the oil. They need to get in there, open up the Strait of Hormuz. Give us a hand here.

Let's end this regime that's a menace to your security. So that was the main takeaway. But the other one that really perked up my ears, I haven't heard much about, when he talked about talking to the families of the 13 fallen service members, how to a person, they also make sure you finish the job.

He made a real point to that. First of all, I was glad to hear that. I think that's the biggest mistake we can make, having made this very tough decision and we see why it's been a tough decision. This is not easy. Iran still has drones and still has missiles. It's still doing still being destructive. We need to end that but we need to end it for good. We can't leave that regime or regime like that

in place. They'll continue to threaten the region and threaten world peace. So I was glad to hear the families who have sacrificed more than any of us told the president,

finish the job.

Yeah, for sure. Senator, let me get back to the filibuster, because you know and you've told me many times that you do believe that when and if the Democrats return to power, they will remove the filibuster.

Is that how you feel?

Yeah, again, you know, good people could disagree on that point, but I think that's the split in the Republican Party. There are those of us who are firmly confident that that's exactly what they do. And so we better move first, particularly with the things we want to do. We want to secure our elections. We want to further secure our border. We want to provide prosperity. If Democrats do it, it's all about consolidating their power. Turn Puerto Rico, D.C. into states, pass the Supreme Court, what, with six more Ketanji Browns. Now, we need to act before they do.

We've got three years. We have three years of President Trump in office to try and save this nation, to prevent

Democrats from putting America on an incredibly destructive path.

Yeah. Well, it's true. And I just wonder how you're going to feel if you don't do that when, in fact, the Democrats return to power and do do that. So I understand that, you know, you probably don't have the support to do that right now, regardless.

But how are you going to feel if, in fact, your colleagues get back to power and they do it?

Well, we feel like schmucks. OK. And we would deserve to feel like schmucks again. I keep pointing out to my colleagues. I've been there 15 years. We passed six out of 180 appropriation bills on time. Six. That's a 96 percent 7 percent failure rate. How much more broken the United Senate gets. So look at reality, look at the reality of what Democrats will do. Step up to plate. Let's make sure that we can again save this country, secure our elections, you know, secure our board. You know, I was disappointed the Supreme Court, the justices there. I mean, this is using the Constitution. You know, it's not a suicide pact.

And unfortunately, the justices, they may, maybe their ruling will be on the law and on the Constitution, but you have to look at the bigger picture here. What is happening with China, with the, you know, tourism, birthright citizenship, tourism, this is going to destroy this country, you know, creating all these, you know, millions of voters that will obviously not be voting in the best interest of America. So we have to understand exactly what the left is doing, what kind of China is doing,

and we need to act now to prevent that.

That is exactly right, Senator. And I'm so glad you raised this, because people have to understand how the Chinese Communist Party has undermined America on every level, and even to the extent of using our Constitution against us, using birthright citizenship. Forty-one percent of birthright surrogacy numbers are Chinese communists. Peter Schweitzer told me all about it in January.

Do we have that? I want to get your take on what Peter Schweitzer told me back in January. More than—here it is. Watch this.

China has a very sophisticated program of exploiting birthright citizenship, and the Supreme Court is going to be hearing this case. Our federal government has no idea, no idea how many children are being minted as U.S. citizens using this technique. But China has looked into it. China has encouraged this, they've pushed it.

The Chinese government believes that every year for the past 13 years, Maria, roughly 100,000 Chinese babies have been born in the United States, so they're then taken back to China, raised in China. When they turn 18, they're gonna be US citizens.

They can vote in elections, donate to turn 18, they're gonna be US citizens. They can vote in elections, donate to political campaigns, get government jobs. That's more than a million voters. Remember that 2016 election was settled by 80,000 votes. So it's a massive exploitation of our immigration laws. Other entities like the Muslim Brotherhood

and the Mexican government are doing the same sort of thing.

I mean, it's what you said. I mean, you were talking about the Supreme Court justices Muslim Brotherhood and the Mexican government are doing the same sort of thing. It's what you said. I mean, you were talking you were talking about the Supreme Court justices and I there was really interesting comment. Look, it's not it's not a suicide. What did you say?

It's not it's not a suicide. The Constitution.

Yeah, the Constitution is not a suicide pact. And again, I can't really say it any better than Peter Schweitzer did. Other than to point out, if you've ever read Sun Tzu's Art of War, and I've read it repeatedly, you know exactly what's happening. You know exactly what China's doing. They take a very long-term view. They use their enemies' laws and constitution against their enemies.

They infiltrate.

They steal all of our secrets. I mean, this is—they're relentless. They are an adversary that they want. They want to do with America. Do away with America. We can't let them. And I hope our justices will look at that.

Or if not, Congress has to act.

Yeah. And the president is the first president that's actually taking this on. Thank you so much for taking it on as well. Senator. Good to see you, Senator Ron Johnson.

We'll be right back. Stay with us. Tonight, Iran's Navy is gone. Their air force is in ruins. Their leaders, most of them, terrorist regime they led are now dead. Never in the history of warfare has an enemy suffered such clear and devastating

large scale losses in a matter of weeks. Escalation or exit. The president says that the military's objectives in Iran are almost reached and that we could see an end to this conflict by the end of April. But he's not done yet. And that is driving stocks lower today. The president also left the door open for a knockout blow. Energy targeted strikes that would cripple the Iranian regime once and for all. Welcome to the Big Money Show everyone. I'm Jackie D'Angeles along with my co-host Taylor Riggs. Digging McDowell Brian Bramberg and with us for the hour making money host Charles Payne. The message last night was pretty clear. America did the

heavy lifting. Now the rest of the world might have to step up.

So to those countries that can't get fuel, many of which refuse to get involved in the decapitation of Iran, we had to do it ourselves. I have a suggestion. Number one, buy oil from the United States of America. We have plenty. We have so much. And number two, build up some delayed courage. Should have done it before. Should have done it with us, as we asked. Go to the straight and just take it. Protect it. Use it for yourselves.

The president calling NATO a paper tiger after allies refused to join the Iran campaign and is proposing a new world doctrine. America will not pay and provide security while our allies sit on the sidelines. So while the administration says that Iran's military is essentially finished they're still openly preparing for a next phase. It's a negotiation. But, they don't like mixed signals. And Charles Payne, you see the market is lower today and oil prices really spiked on this. Again, he let us know the duration yesterday was going to be another two to three weeks, but that sort of uncertainty is definitely hitting this market.

It is, but I think it's a chain reaction. So if you look at oil, if you look at the oil short ATF, they had $977 billion in buying. That's about a million times more than ever before. So some of this I think is short covering. And then of course, we've already twice gone positive. Twice already today's session.

Massive intraday reversals. Massive, bam, just like that. So don't panic right now. I felt like he gave us a timeline. Hopefully two to three weeks is the timeline. It's ironic that in some ways it feels like the market is okay

whether we walk away from the street or not. Just the market itself, not commerce, not businesses, not countries, not nations. And I thought the most pointed thing, obviously, was for two things, two audiences. China, our military has done extraordinarily well

against your defense systems that you sold to Iran that didn't work. We wiped out all your air defense stuff. Everything you sold to them did not work. Any other nation that's buying from you probably should think twice.

And Europe, listen, you know what? From the Marshall Plan until now, the budgets, our defense budgets, keep the free world free. Our technology keeps the free world free. All they do is tax our technology.

But they don't have their own. And the lack of gratitude, one thing I can tell you from knowing President Trump, I don't think he hates anything more than people being ungrateful.

Yep.

So this is what's probably frustrating and more than anything else. Listen, we know the UK isn't going to send an armada. They may have a ship. If they send a rowboat, we'd be OK with it. We know France isn't going to send.

We know that these countries have let down their defenses. That's why Russia was OK invading Ukraine. Because they knew there would be no pushback from the nations that are most vulnerable to the next wave of Russian attack. Not America. We have to come in there. We have to write the checks.

We have to send the know-how. So listen, we all should be fed up with that arrangement. It's not a good arrangement.

I think a lot of Americans are, Charles, to your point. Dagan, we were talking about this yesterday when he said the two to three week extension of this that it would cause more market volatility. Perhaps we're seeing that. We didn't really hear anything new from him. We didn't hear that we were making some sort of offensive although he left the option open said the talks are ongoing. We don't really know what's going to happen in the next two to three weeks. And so this this volatility could continue. I mean that was our forecast yesterday. Right. The. Market. This is why the market is reacting to

the speech the way it is. The market only really cares if the U.S. leaves and does not care as if Iran is getting rich off of selling oil, as long as the oil is getting out of the region and economically important commodities. If the U.S. is staying and blowing targets to bits, that's not good for the broad markets in the following ways. It raises borrowing costs, although the 10-year has pulled, the yields pulled back a little bit.

But we're so deeply indebted, we, the United States, cannot afford a trillion-dollar war, or even anywhere near close. It raises borrowing costs because we've been completely profligate prior to this day and $39 trillion in debt. It cuts off commodity supplies and oil coming through the Strait of Hormuz if we stay.

And it also causes broad-based inflation. And I've just bumped into somebody who works at a major, major truckinging firm all of these trucking companies have Automatic fuel surcharges that are built into their contracts, and this is gravy for them because business is decent And they just every week they get the diesel numbers from the Department of Energy And they just hike the fuel surcharge week after week after

week and as long as the demand is there, these companies are doing fine. The small truckers, screwed. But my point is, is that when you have costs in a trucking firm that are being passed on to all of the customers, that's how you get a broad increase in prices across an economy. And you will see that in the coming weeks. OK.

Also Taylor in the speech last night he talked about NATO. He bashed them to Charles's point. But I left that for you. Well

Austria just the latest I think an hour ago saying that they've denied U.S. military access to their airspace. No surprise, because NATO never shows up when we need it. And I think we're actually proving Trump's point that if NATO needed us, we would show up. I think it was the German defense minister a few weeks ago that secretly said, we know that Israel's doing

our dirty work for us because they won't do it, but then won't show up when we need them to come and help and so I think unfortunately this is proving the point that NATO is sort of a toothless spineless thing that doesn't really have teeth anymore. I think what's interesting is there was a report a couple hours ago talking about Ron and Oman were coming up with protocols for the strait.

Yeah, what's that about?

So here's my take on it. Now protocols, is that like charging an official fee? Okay, so people think, well that's like an additional cost. My hot take, and I heard this from someone someone is once Iran got a nuclear weapon, they were probably going to close the straight and charge this fee anyway. Of course. So we're just going to have them maybe charge a little bit of a fee. But the good news is like maybe they won't have a nuclear weapon. Right. And so I guess my thing is we're getting to the same same end point of maybe this fee in the straight. And again I'm we don't really know what

that protocol is. I'm just sort of spitballing here. But we're at least we're going to get to the end point with hopefully without them having a nuclear weapon. So that's sort of the good news. And I think the market then did a massive swing down one or 2 percent up to try to pop into positive territory because that shows that there's enough pain for everyone. We need the straight open, Iran needs a straight open, China needs a straight open, Japan everyone needs a straight open. Once there's enough pain I think eventually people are going to come to the negotiating table and figure out a protocol or something to open up the

straight and then the straights open and maybe our negotiating power is you open

the straight. Maybe we stop bombing you. I don't know. Lindsey Graham was on with Hannity last night and he said among other things the senator Iran's ability to finance terrorism is gone. No it's not. Actually there's shipping oil. We're allowing them right now to try and keep oil prices in check to sell oil to well even India for the first time in seven years. And yes the straight will reopen because Iran needs the money and will charge a toll and the entire region needs to move commodities

and the world does as well. But guess where that money's going to go unless we remove the regime to reveal and holy.

Yeah.

We're malign activities.

Yeah.

But the new guy.

But he also mentioned, just to be fair, because I was watching that last night, too. He also mentioned the billions of dollars that the Obama administration and the Biden administration had basically handed over to them. The oil revenues aside, I think he was talking about some of those kind of handouts that were just flat out given to them by other...

The pallets of cash in the middle of the night that Obama sent to them that we wouldn't know about if not for the Wall Street Journal's reporting.

Yeah, sorry Brian.

I tried to impress you yesterday with Bahrain and the UAE. Yes. You didn't bite. Oman, can I impress you with Oman? Let's see. the Oman, are they more impressive? I thought last night's speech was great. I had to pick up my son from a movie last night, I thought, it was about nine o'clock,

I thought, well, it's no problem, I'll get back in an hour, I'll be able to catch the last half hour of speech.

Blank and you missed it.

No, he was done in 18 minutes.

Yeah, it was quick.

Okay, it was a tight, crisp speech. The markets, you know, were very negative on it because of the two to three weeks of bombing the heck out of him thing. But I thought he was actually straight on the money. You know, all the press before the speech were like, well, he's probably gonna drop out of NATO and he's gonna taco, right? He's gonna chicken out and just leave Iran.

And he didn't do any of that stuff. He wants to finish the job. He's hitting them hard. Of course, you know in a Trump negotiation, you're gonna hit them the hardest when you probably think a deal is the nearest, right? You don't wanna back off them.

He's giving these guys till what, April 6th to clear the straight, okay? He's gonna pound the heck out of them until then.

By the way, that's Monday.

Yeah, so that's Monday, right? So he's upping, he's turning up the heat on these guys. And I just think what you didn't hear last night was we're in this for a forever war, this is gonna go on forever. He was very clear about the limitedness of the engagement and again, the media wants to tell you it's all chaos. There's no objective. The objective changes from day to day.

He's like, no. No nuclear weapon for these guys, and none of the conventional weapons that could shield their development of a nuclear weapon. He said it's not regime change. And everyone said, well, wait a sec.

You talked about regime change before. Yes, they've talked about regime change before. But there's musts, and there are pluses. The must was nuclear and their conventional weapons. The plus was regime change. But it's not a must.

And he said that last night. I thought it was a great speech. I thought it was one of the best speeches I've ever heard from him.

My only beef, he should have given it several weeks ago. I agree with you, because he revisited that messaging of what the purpose was to remind the American people why we're doing this, why we're taking the short-term pain, because there's a bigger vision here. And I think that's really important. But it did feel a little late to me. And although he didn't say anything like this,

reading between the lines and sort of looking at his Iran playbook leading up to this point, I would say, Brian, what he was saying in the next two to three weeks is, yeah, if they don't do what they're supposed to do and if these negotiations don't move forward, then we are going to take the next steps. And, you know, obviously that's not going to look pretty. Sort of preparing people for what could happen, but that they still want to keep that duration short, and that there's a plan for it.

Because so many people say, well, they completely did this without a plan. Well, they didn't.

They've got a plan.

By the way, Democrat Congresswoman Ilhan Omar admitted her party is responsible for the DHS shutdown. Listen to this.

As many of you know, Democrats said we are not going to pass the appropriations bill for the Department of Homeland Security unless they agreed to ten reforms, simple things like unmasking ICE agents when they were patrolling our communities.

Florida gubernatorial candidate Byron Donalds joins us this morning. All right, Congressman, you heard it right there, but the question is, what do voters think? Do they blame Republicans more than Democrats?

No, they blame Democrats because Democrats have been playing games with TSA and national security over the last two months. And it's all cynical political BS simply because the Democrats still cannot take the fact that they lost a 2024 presidential election. They do not want secure borders. They do not want interior enforcement of immigration. And the Democrats do not want to deport criminal illegal aliens. They want to protect them. The American people have never supported this type of position. That's why Donald Trump won the midterms. So whatever deal Mike Johnson and John Thune think they have, that's not with my vote. I'm not agreeing to that deal because we have a responsibility to fund all of ISIS operations and all of Customs and Border Patrol's operations. And let's be very clear, if you're not funding that,

then you're not taking the security of the nation seriously. We already know the Democrats do not care

about the security of this nation.

Next one for you, Governor Ron DeSantis in Florida signing the state's version of the Save America Act. That's the voter ID bill. Almost immediately, a coalition of voting and civil rights organizations sued. Why is voter ID so controversial?

I don't get it.

It's controversial to Democrats because this is the only way they have a chance to win elections if you don't have strict controls on elections. And what you have to do in elections, which is what we do in Florida, and we thank Governor DeSantis for signing this piece of legislation, it's only going to make things even more secure in our state, is that we treat our elections incredibly seriously.

We make sure that ballots are carefully handled as like evidence in a criminal trial or a civil trial, because you want to make sure that you're protecting the ballot and the franchise of the American people. So the Democrats, they sue, and quite frankly, they sue all the time on all kind of ridiculous reasons, but they sue because they want weakness

in the controls of our elections, so it helps them find votes to win elections.

That's why they sue.

That's crazy. Very quickly, 30 seconds, new polling shows, healthcare is the number one worry among Americans. This is voters apparently less concerned about inflation, crime, and immigration, which used to be top issues.

Is that what you're hearing from voters?

Yeah, healthcare is a real problem. And let's also understand this. Health care inflation is out of control because of the Democrat policy which governs health care in the United States, the Unaffordable Care Act, aka Obamacare. It was designed to increase the cost of health insurance in our country to force all Americans into a single-payer health care system. That's how it was constructed. It is not working. The Democrats

refuse to make any concessions because they want to protect their policy framework that would drive people into higher costs higher premiums and higher deductibles. It's insane policy. We need to change it at the federal level. And states need to be focused on price transparency making sure people have a clear view on the prices that they're going to pay, and then also lowering prescription drugs the way President Trump is doing with Trump Rx.

We'll have to leave it right there, but we covered a lot of ground. Thank you so much. Congressman Byron Donalds talking to us this morning.

Thank you, sir.

If during this period of time no deal is made, we have a rise on key targets. If there is no deal, we are going to hit each and every one of their electric generating plants very hard and probably simultaneously. We have not hit their oil, even though that's the easiest target of all, because it would not give them even a small chance of survival or rebuilding.

But we could hit it, and it would be gone, and there's not a thing they could do about it.

President Trump giving an update on Operation Epic Fury for the entire nation last night, threatening to strike Iran's power plants if no peace deal is reached, and bomb the country, quote, into the Stone Age, sending stocks lower, oil prices soaring. But there's losses in check as we speak, as we head into the afternoon. Welcome back to the second hour of the Big Money Show. I'm Dega McDowell, along with my marvelous co-host and with us for this hour, Endeavor

PAC founder Tiffany Smiley. Before we move on to what the president said about the conflict in Iran last night, he was making some news, as he he always does that has just broken. Pam Bondi fired by the president as the attorney general. And the reports are that Todd Blanche, who has been his longtime counsel, is going to be replacing her as the attorney general of the United States. As we dig into this, Jackie, you were reading about it as we were in the commercial break. Yeah, I'm dying to know

what happened. Um, my understanding from the reporting from Fox News Digital is that it happened last night before, um, the president's address to the nation and that she was on her way back to Florida while the president was speaking. Obviously, when something like this happens, the president has come out many, many times praising Pam Bondi. And so I'm wondering what exactly it

was that led him to this decision, that it was time for her not to be part of the cabinet.

This is my take. She, from the get-go, royally fouled up the release of the Jeffrey Epstein documents. And it was just such a rolling disaster all year and was handled so poorly that that was one of the biggest problems, despite her obvious loyalty

and her background. But she met with President Trump, according to Fox News Digital, in the Oval Office on Wednesday night ahead of the speech to the nation on Iran and was where was she was reportedly informed of her house or she was with him though.

Yeah.

At the front. No. In front of the Supreme Court.

Oh yes.

Yes.

Sorry. She was.

And then she got the the you can go.

She was supposed to be deposed by a House committee later this month. Wasn't she? Wasn't she subpoenaed by a House committee on the Epstein files? I think, so I don't know if that's, maybe that doesn't happen now, maybe it does if she's not in this role. The Epstein files are not my issue du jour, but my sense watching that throughout was there were these big promises, Tiffany maybe this is something you watch more closely, big promises of information. And then it always seemed like it was a thud, a dud.

Nothing happened. And people were like, wait a sec, we thought we were gonna get transparency. It feels like we're just getting obfuscation. Maybe I read that wrong, but that was my perception of it.

Yeah, and I mean, it's a tough job. Pam Bondi was in a very, very hard position, and you have to wonder what was actually going on behind the scenes. Yes, she is the leader. She's the face of it. But what was she being directed to do,

and what information did she have access to? I will commend her. She's a patriot. She has been on the front lines for many, many years fighting for America and has extreme loyalty. So I thank her for her service and stepping into that role and doing the best that she could in the time and in the moment that it called

for. And again, it's a tough job. And President Trump obviously feels like it is time to move on and bring in someone else for the administration.

I was just going to say, given what? So Todd Blanch, who is the deputy attorney general of the US, previously a criminal defense attorney, worked very closely with President Trump in three of the criminal cases. The legal warfare that was targeting President Trump.

Todd Blanch will be the interim attorney general, based on the reporting. We will see who potentially is nominated for the job full-time. But the attorney general role for the president is so personal and critical, not just for the nation, but given what happened with Jeff Sessions, which opened the door when he recused himself idiot and opened the door for the Mueller investigation, the Russia collusion hoax, all of it.

That's the that's one of the most important jobs and also for enforcing the laws of the land and fighting crime and writing all the wrongs. Yeah. Of the Biden administration and just the bad cops who are still living and working inside.

Well, my thought goes to the whole fraud push too, right now, and how much people are asking for prosecutions on that. That's the A.G. is gonna help push that along with Vice President J.D. Vance's task force.

I just wonder, on the Epstein side of it, like you, Brian, I wasn't in the weeds of it because there was so much other stuff that was happening news-wise. But we did eventually get the documents, or most of them that she promised.

Is the issue that she just didn't put them out there soon enough? I mean, when you start to look and peel back the layers of what was involved in those documents, I know that there's a need for the American people to have transparency, but it's also extremely sensitive information also.

There was a period where I think victim sensitivity was an issue. And so to your point of it being a hard job, you wanna serve the public interest, but you also are making decisions that impact people along the way.

And in some ways, that's a thankless job, because it's just so difficult to do. Yeah, and I mean, they were scouring thousands and thousands and thousands of records. That takes time. And it takes precision.

And it takes absolute perfect execution. They couldn't just openly release it. There are victims in there. There were other people in that that needed to be protected. And so she was doing that exactly to your point, you know. And maybe the public just didn't understand they want it now. If they want it now, they want it now.

And the Democrats were, you know, pushing it and going hard and saying Trump's gonna be in there and they're covering it up and they made it a whole thing.

But sort of Republicans, because the committee that voted to subpoena Bondi included Nancy Mace, Lauren Boebert, Tim Burchett, Michael Cloud, Scott Perry. So it was a bipartisan issue. And I wonder if that, I mean, she was supposed to testify or be deposed, I guess.

It was April 14th. I mean, so I think that was sort of a gathering cloud that maybe Trump didn't, maybe it's still gonna happen, I don't know. I don't know if the subpoena doesn't go away, but it was becoming a big bipartisan issue in some ways.

Attorney General Rohl is critical from a business perspective, and from, you mentioned the fraud investigations for a nation that's so deep in debt to make sure that we're not, that our money, our borrowed money is not stolen, misused, abused, but also to ensure that there is fairness in our legal system when it was used as for political war. The Department of Justice was used for political warfare to go after a former

president, a presidential candidate and anyone that they didn't like who was on the right. And that is a fair justice system is the only way that you can operate a business in the United States.

And Susan Rice is already saying they want to do it again. They're already thinking about who they'll go after when they do have power next time.

One, there are reports, several reports from different publications that President Trump on Tuesday met with Lee Zeldin, former congressman, currently boss of the EPA. He was discussed in last year's California wildfires. And he also just discussed, according to reports, the potential for tapping him for the attorney general role. That's according to reports.

And our own Ayesha Hosni on the news channel actually spoke with Pam Bondi just a short while ago. She said she was working in Florida filming a PSA involving for abducted, about abducted children for the NFL. And she flew into Tampa this morning and went straight to work.

So no comment on the firing. Let's go to Edward Lawrence, who's at the White House. Hey Edward, what do you know?

Hey Degan, I can add a little color to this. I was actually in the office there when President Trump spoke with our Peter Doocy on the Fox News side related to this. Now, the president wanted to stress basically there's no bad blood between the two of them. They just decided, or he decided, that Pam Bondi would be better in another role on this.

She is OK with the decision as far as the president has said on this. And as you know, Todd Blanch, the number two currently, will be the interim attorney general. There's no decision yet. The president did not decide who permanently will replace Pam Bondi. But at the moment, Todd Blanch will be the interim member of that running the attorney general's office. So, again, the president is stressing this is just moving to another role within the

administration. He felt that it was time to do that. She ended up taking as much incoming bad press as he did on a number of the subjects, especially when you talk about the release of the Epstein files, when you talk about some of the other things that she did. But she was in lockstep with President Donald Trump, with all of his agenda items going

forward from the moment she took office as attorney general. But again, this is being described now as just moving her to another role. But there's no bad blood between the two of them, as you reported there to Ayesha Hosni saying that Pam Bondi is back to work today down filling filming a PSA for the NFL.

Back to you guys.

And Edward, but any other just you're covering the White House so closely. Other, why now? Why get, why send her out of the AG role now? And to your point, Kristi Noem, not the head of DHS any longer, that's Mark Wayne Mullen is the secretary, but she's still within the fold in the administration, just in a new position that the president created.

But why now for AG Bondi, former AG Bondi?

And this has been talked about for several weeks or so is my understanding about possibly there could be a move in role related to this. Is there a trigger that it's why now? I don't think that we have seen one as of yet. You'd have to ask the president, which he did not indicate why exactly now is the time.

But this has been sort of talked about to move her into another role related to this. Again, not a firing. The president's describing this as just moving her to another role. So she's still within the fold, as you mentioned, of the administration. But there wasn't one trigger that did it. Now, we know, with Kristi Noem's situation, there was a lot of hubbub behind the scenes, and she had had some issues, publicly issues, with some of the folks on her staff related

to the — you know, getting upset about a pilot leaving a blanket or someone leaving a blanket on a helicopter. So there were triggers for that sort of removal from office. This one, there isn't just one trigger that said, okay, now is the time. But this again, it had been

talked about. Oh, and with Noam, you left out the more than $2 million that she spent on a ad campaign. And then when questioned by Senator Kennedy, if the president knew about it, she said yes. And that was the final straw with that one. But there's more to come on that as I think Congress looks into where that money went. Ed, great to see you.

Thank you so much.

Thanks, Dave.

Who wants to? I'll just quickly point out, I think what I liked that I heard from Edward is that there isn't bad blood. I think Trump and the president in the past has said Attorney General Pambandi, former, has been a wonderful person and is doing a good job. And so I like to see sort of those positive words continue. Also, as I sit here and I think that we're 14 and 15 months into the second term, I really,

I've said this before, I went to the polls for for Doge I went to the polls to cut the crap and I I think a lot of people feel Brian to your point on the Waste fraud and abuse need to see more prosecutions when it comes to all of the fraud Need to see more rule of law come back and potentially it just felt like maybe the progress wasn't moving fast enough

But I'll just say this one thing and I agree with you on all the fraud stuff. This you get another second chance within the Trump administration seems to be sort of like a Trump 2.0 more benevolent way of doing things than just you know booting people out. I mean I can't remember exactly what Kristi Noem is doing but it's certainly not of the same significance.

Is it the shield of America or something?

Yeah, I'm curious to see what role Pam Bondi will get. Remember Kimberly Guilfoyle when she was not engaged to his son anymore, she got the ambassador role to Greece. Everybody gets something second, kind of.

Do you think, though, I know we gotta go, but do you think, sometimes it's nice to see people moved on. And I understand, it's not, you know, the bad blood thing. Biden never moved anybody on. He had terrible cabinet members who he kept forever, who wrecked the country.

And I like that we have a chief executive who, like, doesn't have to be bad blood, but it's just, we're not getting done, but I need to get done. I need somebody else, I'm gonna move you along. And I think that's important. And I think it's not an entitlement to have these jobs.

And Americans demand results.

You have to earn it.

You have to earn it. If you're not getting results, you've got to move somebody on. And I kind of like that, actually. I don't need to see bad blood.

But I think it's good for the chief executive She had the full confidence of the president and maybe the refocus now is going after the waste, fraud and abuse and you just simply can't do that with the same person. And so she served and she served wonderfully under the pleasure of the president. And I think it's a good move for our country, perhaps to your point, Degan. Like, let's get serious about what this role is about and focus on those areas that we need to waste, fraud and abuse anding people, and getting our money back.

Well, one indelible image is the influencers with the big white Epstein binders, which happened early last year, that was embarrassing. Because there was nothing new in them. And then you get this groundswell of where are them and it just was not good and Pam Bondi out as

Attorney General more after this.

Welcome back to the second hour of the Big Money Show I'm Jackie DeAngelis along with my sensational co-host and with us for the second hour of The Big Money Show. I'm Jackie D'Angeles along with my sensational co-host and with us for the second hour. Fox Business contributor Marcus Lamont. We're so glad to have you. So some data out today shows that America added one hundred and seventy eight thousand jobs in March almost tripling expectations. Health care leading the charge again. And as President Trump's invest in America push takes shape construction jobs are growing and manufacturing is starting to see a turnaround while the public sector shrinks. Also some progress on affordability. Average hourly wages are up three and a half percent outpacing inflation

over the last year. The White House says the economy is strong and Americans are starting to notice. It's an exciting time for this American economy. And you know the president has done exactly what he promised he would deliver on. And now the people are feeling it on the ground. It's all the investments that these companies have made and the commitment by this president and the hard work that the Labor Department is doing to make sure we

close that skills gap and those manufacturing jobs start to continue to take up. You know Taylor as I was coming in for the day just given the volatility we've experienced as a result of the war overseas. I took a pause and even with the jobs number coming out I thought it's nice that there's no trading today. No Jack. It is. It is. I used to read the report when I don't know how equity is. It's nice to just take a deep breath and let everybody get grounded. Given everything that's going on. But if the market had been open today and you had your crystal ball how do you think investors would have looked at this. Because there's a couple of things that you can consider. It's positive for the fundamentals of the economy. But

we're also watching rates and you don't want something. They're Goldilocks numbers with these numbers. You don't want things that are too hot and too too fast because then

that creates a problem for rate cuts to come. Well I have good news for you, my 10-year yield is still open for trading even though my S&P 500 is not. Well let me

question the liquidity of that contract, like how many people are trading it?

You don't know, you think everyone, hopefully everyone's in church for Good Friday. All jokes aside, Jackie, okay, curve ball. What if we don't get a cut this year? If inflation isn't as low as we think and we're adding jobs that's accelerating. If you take out the

health care strike, remember normalize that and I said my three-month average is 68k jobs a month. What's our net? 20,000. Like what would be even, Brian? 20,000 a month? So if I'm growing above what's needed to keep an unemployment rate steady and I'm higher than a six- to keep an unemployment rate steady. And I'm higher than a six-month or a 12-month average, and I see acceleration in the job market.

An inflation print next month that likely will be higher than expected. One print, I know, just one. But after rent's coming down, Brian, I don't see a lot of case for a Fed to come in and say, you know what? You're right, let's cut.

If this is as strong as the market is, we think it is.

So what are you calling for a rate hike?

Nope. Steady as she goes. Steady, steady.

I mean, I listened to everything you said and I tried to pay attention, but I couldn't get off the fact that you said, what if there isn't a rate cut? I'm surprised you're still asking that question. There's not gonna be a rate cut. Why would there be?

Well, I think all of them think there will be.

I don't think there will be later this year.

Why? Yeah, tell me why.

I'm with you. I'm looking at this and saying, when everything normalizes... I wasn't expecting this number today. So if this continues, everybody I've been talking to has been saying that they think the jobs picture is going to get better, which is sort of the antithesis of the expectation that's out there.

I wasn't necessarily anticipating it. So I'm thinking to myself, if the conflict ends, if oil prices come down, if any perceived inflation rise normalizes and labor stays the same as it was before this month. Plus we could get revisions next month.

You might still be able to make the case later in the year that a cut would be warranted. I'm not saying cut at the rate that the president is suggesting, but it's possible.

You're going to have to use at a very low one point six percent.

That adds that case. War's over wars over we're gonna get tariff clarity That's to me. That's Nobody's answered that we haven't talked about tariffs in a couple of weeks

Appropriately so with the war but what happens with tariffs in the back half of the year you get your 301s and your 201s And your 122s

well this morning something came out because I got a text message that we're going to get a huge refund on some steel that we had to bring in. There's apparently some sort of rebate or refund that's going to happen on steel. But I think a lot of it is the war's going to end, hopefully soon.

Tariff clarity, hopefully soon. Job's still doing well. Is it a stabilization, or is the economy strong? And I think that was the one part that I got a little annoyed about. When the economy is not strong, it's stable. Stable is good. Stable is really good. Yeah.

We just have to stop exaggerating as an administration

because voters at home know that it's not strong.

I will go ahead.

No, I say I would trade a strong economy and signals of a strong economy for a rate cut all day long. I have gotten so sick of the Fed being at the center of every economic conversation. I'm so tired of an economy and a market that hinges on, are they going to cut or not cut?

And I want a strong economy. I want to finish this war successfully, see energy prices come back down. I want to see the government get a handle on its spending, and I want to see the 10-year come down where it needs to come down because you've taken risk out of the market, but not so far that it suggests you've got a weak economy. A strong economy is going to give you higher yields. And I don't mind that so much. But I really really want

the Fed to not be the focus of this economy because that is not the real economy. Rates do impact growth. So the borrowing

costs for these companies it will impact how quickly they can expand and grow when the rates are higher. Presumably they can borrow less. There is we've talked about a sweet spot of being able to have you know the company prosper. The interest rate on your mortgage kind of being a sweet spot. We're not saying it's got to be

zero. That's artificial and not really realistic long term. But I don't you think we've gotten into that? Like part of my point, I don't know, we could be there. It's like that context that we had for so long of zero, zero percent rates, three percent mortgages, like that was so unrealistic that historical benchmarks for things like mortgage rates are not three percent, right? And that's like fixed in our heads. I'm not saying I want it to be high, but I'm saying we're not in crazy land on interest. But is it six and change, right?

If it was somewhere in the fives.

That's what I'm saying.

There's this wiggle room that I'm looking at.

Which we touched the other day. We touched high fives on mortgages and then the worst.

Right, and then the worst.

So we're not far in my view, Tara Dan.

Now we're, what was it yesterday? Somewhere like six and a half. The Fed needs to cut rates and will have to cut rates because of U.S. borrowing. That's why rates have to go lower. Because our interest expense is becoming out of control.

That's not one of the factors they consider.

Well absolutely they do. They absolutely, they will never admit it, but a third of our debt has to roll in the next year, roughly. And to keep borrowing costs in check. So it started under Janet Yellen, but has maintained under Scott Besant that the entire schedule of borrowing is weighted on the short end. And it's very short, like under a year. And it's so short that some of our debt, it rolls more than once in any given 12-month

period. So, yeah, that's what the Fed can't control beyond the next step would be because the market, the actual investor market will move against you, which is what's happened during the war, is that they've been demanding a higher rate of return for holding longer-term debt. So longer-term interest rates have gone up because we're so deeply indebted. And they're expecting investors more supply from the U.S. government to fund said war

and defense spending, if you look at Trump's budget, so first the Fed lowers rates to finance the debt on the short end the next step would be and they already are buying about 120 billion in Expanding the balance sheet the next step would be really blowing out the balance sheet to buy our debt because we can't find actual natural buyers in the private market at a decent rate.

Doesn't it make the independence of the Fed then laughable that you could spend too much, borrow too much, and then, you know what, I'm going to adjust my rate to be more affordable

for me.

Well, that's why I called Jay Powell the other day a Tony Fau Fauci like spotlight seeking clown show that because what he did during the four years of the Biden administration, they were borrowing money hand over fist on the fiscal side to spend it on God knows what. We don't know where the money went. And then J. Powell blew out the balance sheet by $5 trillion to sop up that debt. So there's no independence.

That, by the way, just if you want to read economic history, I'm not disagreeing with you. But that is exactly how uncontrollable inflation in countries starts, monetizing debt like that. All that is is printing money to cut the government's borrowing cost, which

is a hyperinflation instigate.

Right. I'm not saying it's happening. And that's why higher oil prices right now are not causing inflation. Inflation is a monetary phenomenon. And also, if you look at just in the last week, to bring it back to the energy inflation story, oil is still up notably. But other commodities are completely in check. Natural gas, Newcastle coal is 1.5% gain in the last week.

It is not the catastrophic energy crisis that you would see in other scenarios. It is not the catastrophic energy crisis that you would see in other scenarios.

And the metals have corrected somewhat.