Tucker and Megyn Kelly React to the Latest Developments

0:00 I noticed that every time Axios announces an imminent end to the war,

0:04 a lot of people make huge bets on oil futures right before

0:07 it comes out and presumably make a lot of money on that.

0:10 Um, and then it never happens.

0:12 It's my hope that the United States gets out as soon as possible.

0:16 There will be damage.

0:17 There already is damage.

0:18 A lot of people have died.

0:19 12 countries have been bombed.

0:21 Many thousands have been killed.

0:23 Uh, the US economy has been hurt.

0:25 Lots of countries economies are wounded by this.

0:28 But I don't see a future where it gets better by staying in longer.

0:32 And by the way, neither do any of the people you just mentioned,

0:35 who don't know anything about the region,

0:36 who don't know anything in general other than what they think Netanyahu wants.

0:41 But if you were to ask Shapiro or ask Mark Tissson,

0:45 whoever that is, or ask Mark Levin, like how does this play out exactly?

0:50 Um, they don't have any clue.

0:51 I mean, there was a the IC the American

0:55 intelligence community reached the assessment yesterday and it was

0:59 leaked today to the Washington Post in a John

1:01 Hudson piece that Iran has three or four months of

1:08 basically stability left in it.

1:10 It's not going to there's no imminent collapse of the Iranian regime.

1:14 That's just not true.

1:15 The blockade is not toppling this government.

1:19 And so what do three or four more months

1:21 of a closed straight look like for the rest of the world?

1:24 Well, for Asia, for Africa, for Europe, for North America,

1:29 for the United States, it's a pure disaster.

1:32 Do they have a response to that?

1:33 Of course not.

1:33 They don't care.

1:34 They probably don't even know.

1:36 Nothing matters to the people you just mentioned other

1:39 than the political fortunes of the prime minister of Israel.

1:42 By the way, it's not even good for Israel.

1:44 How is this good for Israel?

1:45 In no sense is it good for Israel?

1:47 But BB wants it, so they repeat it.

1:50 And I just I really pray that the US government,

1:53 the administration will stop listening to these people.

1:55 They're the same ones who got us into the Iraq war.

1:57 Trump used to know that.

1:59 I don't know how they went up in charge again.

2:02 Yeah.

2:03 the um there's an article in the free press Barry

2:06 Weiss's uh publication by Amit Seagull who's the chief political correspondent

2:12 for Israel's channel 12 arguing that gez you know the reports

2:17 are that we're closer to a deal than at any

2:19 point during this war and it's unfortunate timing writing

2:23 that if the status quo blockade remains the Islamic Republic will

2:28 not survive 2026 and saying that the but however this entire

2:32 strategy relies on that big if of the blockade continuing.

2:37 So if Israel hopes to sustain the blockade through the end of 2026, Tucker,

2:43 through the end of 2026, Israel hoping, no,

2:46 it's we are the ones doing the blockade.

2:48 Of course, there is the unavoidable matter

2:50 of the American midterm elections to contend

2:52 with and trying to refocus the president

2:55 arguing that Iran will be his legacy pushing.

2:59 Now, that's the first we've heard someone openly say the blockade's

3:03 got to go on through the end of 26, post the midterms.

3:07 Tucker, Israel could not sustain a blockade

3:11 or defend itself for 24 hours without the $1.5

3:17 trillion US military backstopping it and enforcing

3:21 the long-standing defense guarantee that we have with Israel.

3:24 If that were to go away, Israel would have two choices.

3:28 that would either suffer elimination or would use nuclear weapons.

3:32 So that's where we'd be without

3:34 the United States government backstopping Israel.

3:37 Period.

3:38 So anybody who tells you Israel is going to do this, Israel

3:40 is going to do that, Israel has no capacity to defend itself.

3:43 Period.

3:44 And anyone who works at the Pentagon who will speak to you

3:46 honestly off the record will explain it to you in great detail.

3:49 We wouldn't Israel would have done none of this.

3:51 It wouldn't have a six or eight or 10 front war,

3:54 whatever kind of multi-headed war they're now waging.

3:58 None of that would have been possible without the US military,

4:00 US service members being killed on their behalf,

4:02 US tax dollars paying for the whole thing.

4:05 So, there's that.

4:06 But there's this weird kind of tunnel vision,

4:09 and I do think it begins with Trump, where all that matters is Iran and making

4:15 sure they don't have nuclear weapons and degrading them,

4:18 toppling the regime in Tyrron.

4:21 It's like that's something that you might want to do,

4:24 I guess, in a perfect world,

4:26 but that's like number 417 on your to-do list if you're the American president.

4:31 The number one thing you have to do

4:33 is make sure your own country doesn't degrade.

4:36 It's people don't become poor.

4:37 Your OD rate for young men doesn't rise as it is rising.

4:42 There are jobs for your kids.

4:44 You have some kind of plan when AI eliminates half of all

4:48 white collar jobs in the United States in the next 3 years.

4:51 You you need to think about your own country.

4:54 And so the idea that the purpose of the US government

4:57 is to somehow keep the world safe from Iran is insane.

5:01 And so if you begin there, of course,

5:03 you wind up like Mark Tissson and all you care about is Iran,

5:08 there is a world that's pretty easy to imagine

5:10 where you would just live with a sovereign Iran, which is a regional power.

5:15 It always has been for thousands of years.

5:17 It will remain a regional power.

5:19 Sorry.

5:20 And that's just the world that we're going to live with.

5:22 It's not the ideal world, but we don't get an ideal world.

5:24 We have a world in which we create priorities and the US government has

5:28 to put its own people at the top of that list and it's not.

5:34 Case in point, the argument over whether we

5:36 should continue to provide the subsidies for Obamacare

5:40 recipients that we just went through over the latest

5:42 closing of the government was saying these people,

5:45 I mean through no fault of their own,

5:46 Barack Obama took away their health care that they had and they

5:49 liked and their doctors and replaced

5:50 it with a government-run program called Obamacare.

5:54 And it was so expensive and ridiculous the government

5:56 had to subsidize it so that the people

5:58 didn't realize how much more it was costing them for the first 10 plus years.

6:03 And now here we are with the bill coming due, the subsidies going away.

6:06 And the argument by the Democrats was we need like

6:09 some $25 billion in subsidies in order to keep this going.

6:12 The government said, "Are you crazy?

6:14 We don't can't afford that." Guess what?

6:16 We just spent a minimum uh on this Iran war.

6:19 The the price tag was 25 billion.

6:22 Of course, it's much more than

6:23 that, but that's what the Pentagon's willing to admit.

6:25 So, we've spent it on Iran,

6:27 but we wouldn't spend it on our own people to save them

6:29 the pain from this bill that was shoved down their throats by Barack Obama.

6:34 And now we find out that though President Trump said that we're going

6:37 to have this this ballroom built and it's going to be completely free.

6:42 It's going to be privately funded.

6:44 No.

6:44 It turns out they slipped hundred million dollars into the budget.

6:48 A billion.

6:49 Um, not openly.

6:50 Yes.

6:50 Sorry.

6:51 Okay.

6:51 not openly owning what that was going to actually cost people.

6:55 So, yes, the the priorities are definitely not

6:57 on the pocketbooks of the American people and they know it.

6:59 But wait, I want to get back to what the pressure

7:02 that they're putting on Trump not to enter into a deal.

7:04 And I agree with you.

7:05 I have no idea whether there's a 14-point deal or not.

7:07 None whatsoever.

7:08 I don't trust a word President Trump says about this anymore.

7:10 He's told us 31 times that the Iran war is over.

7:14 Okay?

7:14 Only to then tweet about how we're going to bomb them into oblivion.

7:18 So, what we're seeing is, yes,

7:20 I I mentioned um the free press and of course Mark Leven.

7:25 Now you've got this Israel first uh think tank,

7:29 the Foundation for Defense of Democracies,

7:31 out there actually saying that the Iran war presents Trump

7:35 with an opportunity more transformative than the collapse of the Soviet Union,

7:41 talking about how the window for regime change remains open as Iranians

7:45 still await the call from the president to take to the streets.

7:48 Like they they want every last thing.

7:50 We want regime change.

7:51 We want to annihilate what's left of the regime.

7:54 And that brings me to my next sound bite,

7:56 which is Hugh Hewitt hosting John Padoritz sought too.

8:04 Up until now, it was the Supreme Court.

8:07 But if he actually crushes the Iranian nuclear threat,

8:11 that's a world historical uh achievement.

8:14 This deal is not that, is it, John?

8:16 A deal is not that.

8:17 Now, the problem here is that say it's July 17th and Israel

8:26 bombs a Hezbollah site and the Iranians say we don't like this.

8:32 So, uh, we're going to close the straight for 48 hours.

8:38 What are we going to do there?

8:40 I mean it's always it will always be conditional

8:44 because Hormuz became the the the card that they played.

8:51 He kind of has to go for regime change now.

8:53 The regime that is standing cannot remain standing because it has closed

8:59 the strait and it now has that as its trump card if you will.

9:05 So he's actually deepened the necessity for a successful military

9:12 conclusion to the war that has a regime change effect.

9:17 I that's not where this was 6 weeks ago.

9:20 I don't think your thoughts.

9:24 It's just embarrassing.

9:26 It's embarrassing to see public intellectuals in the country I

9:29 was born in and love reveal themselves as ignorant and dumb.

9:34 You you can't administer a global empire unless you understand the world.

9:38 And almost none of the people who are weighing in on we

9:40 should do this, we should do that have any understanding even of geography.

9:44 Iran controls the straight of because it

9:47 has the majority of the coastline along it.

9:50 It always has.

9:51 Again, it's geography.

9:53 Iran is an economic power first and foremost

9:56 because the commodities that flow through that aperture

10:00 at the at the eastern end of the Persian

10:02 Gulf are necessary for the global economy.

10:05 So Iran is an economic power.

10:07 We have spent the last 40 years focusing

10:10 on its various weapons programs including its WMD program, its nuclear program.

10:15 But we've completely missed the fact that Iran is not going anywhere.

10:19 There will always be Persians on the other side.

10:22 They have problems with the Arabs on on the on the GCC side.

10:27 Like these are long-standing conflicts, but they're not going to change.

10:32 So Iran has always had control over the Strait of Hormuz by definition.

10:37 They've just decided not to invoke that that power.

10:43 And that's not going away.

10:45 And so any kind of settlement, if you were to nuke Iran,

10:48 the remaining survivors would still have the ability to block

10:52 the straight of Hormuz with mines or with boats.

10:57 Somali pirates harass shipping off the Horn of Africa.

11:00 It's an asymmetrical problem.

11:02 So the best case scenario is you have a coherent government in Iran.

11:06 It probably is not going to be pro- Western, sorry.

11:09 but that you can reach some terms

11:11 with that government sufficient to get shipping

11:13 through that straight so the world economy

11:16 can function as it did on February 27th.

11:18 That's just a fact.

11:19 That's not ever changing.

11:21 So I I don't understand people like, well, you just just topple the regime?

11:26 What happens then?

11:27 Do failed states make for secure shipping lanes?

11:31 Just the opposite.

11:32 Only a coherent state, whether you like that state or not,

11:36 can guarantee a shipping lane.

11:38 So like the the dumbness on display just boggles my mind.

11:41 And the rest of the world watching this is

11:43 like really these people are running the globe?