Conservative? You bet. Controversial? Right again. It's time to squabble on the Jim Benson show.

Hello, and welcome to another edition of the Jim Benson show, conservative news and commentary addressing the issues that concern you here on the BBS radio and television network. I'm increasingly worried these days about our upcoming and all important congressional midterm elections later this year. Historically, these midterm elections have mostly resulted in the opposition party taking control of congress. This year, that would be the communist aligned democratic party. As the war with Iran or rather with what's left of the fanatical jihadist Mullah's regime that's been in control of Iran for half a century continues.

Its drag on The US economy, especially in terms of much higher fuel and energy costs, could have a telling effect on the midterms. In other words, the Iran war could hand the communist democrats control of congress. As they have stated, this would likely mean an immediate impeachment and removal from office of Donald Trump Trump, president Trump, and everything else they could do within their power to crush MAGA or the make American gradient movement and steer us back to the Marxist revolution that Democrats and their allies imposed on America with the rigged and stolen twenty twenty election. I'm equally worried that not enough is being done to counter the massive rigging and stealing by Democrats and their RINO, that is Republican in name only, allies in so many elections over the past several decades. And this would include the enforcement or lack thereof in these Democrat controlled blue states of the now unconstitutional or declared unconstitutional by the US Supreme Court, rigged districts, racial districts and which have been handing Democrats power and control of these states and in Congress.

It appears to be that the Democrat controlled states, California, Illinois, New York, and others are proceeding with the midterm elections, their primaries for these without changing anything. They're not going to change any of these gerrymandered racially gerrymandered election districts having their power unless the Department of Justice steps in. I have been understood that Department of Justice was looking to enforce this, but I'm not hearing much about it. So this is again part of the worry of this whole upcoming election matter. I'm equally worried that not enough, as I said, is being done to counter the massive rigging and stealing by Democrats and their rhinos over the years of these of our elections.

We now know that communist Venezuela aided and abetted by communist China and Cuba developed and corrupted developed the corrupted election software that has been sold to The US and so many other countries and used in so many US elections in recent years. This software often used with equally bad electronic election hardware, so that illegally, as I understand it, made in China, has have been used to flip millions and millions of votes to communist supported candidates like Joe Biden. The Biden family has taken tens of billions from entities connected with the CCP and the illegitimate Biden presidency was an unending series of disasters for The US that gratefully greatly benefited China. Gary Berson, retired CIA agent and political consultant, is mentioned prominently in the new book Stolen Elections to Take Down of Democracies Worldwide by Ralph Pizzulo, that's p e z z u l l o, which is available on Amazon. Mertzon has given interviews which we featured on this podcast in which he has stated that the communist Venezuela regime of Nicolas Maduro had a national elections commission with some 100 people dedicated to this insid dedicated to this insidious electronic vote data manipulation, stealing elections for communist and allied candidates in over 70 countries including The US and Venezuela, of course.

Although I haven't found anything said publicly about it, I have to think that along with the removal of Maduro, The US has been working to dismantle the Venezuela National Elections Commission election stealing operation. More broadly, the Trump administration's actions against Venezuela, Cuba, and Iran are part of a strategy to counter the growing influence of the CCP not only around the world, but particularly in America's own society, popular culture, and even government. So much of which has been thoroughly infiltrated and corrupted by the CCP. Part of my worries about the war with Iran has been the great schism that has developed over it between president Trump and his former very significant supporters, the major alternative media influencers, Tucker Carlson, Alex Jones, and others. For all the fascinating and illuminating information I've gotten from watching Carlson and Jones, I've been shocked of late to see the vigorous condemnation of the president by Carlson and to a lesser but still significant extent by Alex Jones.

No question the president has an ego and he in turn has come out swinging against Tucker Carlson, Alex Jones, Candace Owens, and others calling them low IQ and vilifying them along with congress people and others attacking Trump over Iran and his other policies. I think it is important for the president to realize that he is not politically invincible as we saw with what happened in 2020. If you've been watching Alex Jones, his daily shows have been filled with endless warnings of doom for The US over the Iran war, of what a supposed disaster for America, the war with Iran is that is threatening to destroy all the good things Trump and his team have accomplished and destroy America along with it. On this matter, I all but totally disagree with these people, that is Jones, Carlson, and the others breaking with Trump over the Iran war because I continue to fully support Trump, the Trump administration and its war against the mullah madman of Iran. That said, while the war against the Iranian mullahs has been a bargain in terms of costs compared with US actions in Iraq and Afghanistan, if it becomes more costly and drags on, it's sure to have more severe consequences for The US economy.

And this could indeed cost the Republicans control of congress in the midterms. The mainstream media over the shivols for Democrats, communists, and their allies constantly harps on the damage to The US economy from the Iran war. These supposed media elites are doing all they can to brainwash millions of Americans with this defeatist crap. So with these things in mind, let's play today's three video presentations. These are the three recent videos by commentator, doctor Steve Turley, which were broadcast recently on his YouTube channel.

Due to time constraints, I'm playing these videos back to back without intervening commentary. The first video is the longest and is about twenty two minutes and it's an edited version of more than a one hour talk Turley did recently analyzing Trump's trip to China. The second video is Turley's commentary on the effect of the Trump Xi summit on in China on the war with Iran and what may well be happening if the Iranians are not the Iranian mullahs still controlling that country are are largely controlling it, do not come to the negotiating table and reach a deal soon. As of this recording, reportedly at the urging of Gulf states, Trump is holding off on commencing his promised resumption of military action against the Mullahs if they don't agree to a deal, which he says will bomb them back into the stone age. Turley speculates on what is likely to happen to Iran if if a political deal is not reached soon.

The last video is another recent Turley YouTube broadcast in which Turley discusses Tucker Carlson's newfound virulent opposition to president Trump. I believe Turley did a great job of summarizing key facts and aspects of these events and their short and long term effects on The US and the world. Here are the videos. Oh, this week was without question the most consequential presidential visit to The Middle Kingdom, as it's called, in the modern era. This wasn't just any state visit.

It was the first one in nearly ten years by US president, for sure. But this was a state visit that came after months of Trump squeezing China from every direction simultaneously. We've been talking a lot about this, for weeks now. Trump has applied trade pressure, tariff pressure, a rare earth standoff, the Iran pressure campaign, the Strait Of Hormuz Crisis from which China gets 40 to 50% of its oil, The Strait Of Malacca deal that just gave US forces full access to that choke point, that crucial narrow waterway in Southeast Asia through which 80% of China's imports travel. And bottom line, China was hurting.

Xi Jinping needed this meeting far more than Donald Trump did. Trump came into this meeting with more leverage than any American president in modern political history. And that gang, that's, as they say, that's the entire ballgame right there. This summit was decided before it even began. That's what the legacy media will never tell you because they're too busy projecting their incessant TDS to their dwindling audience.

Trump walked into this summit literally holding all the cards. China's entire business model think about it. We're actually talking about this last night at a in the Faroe's ad. China's entire business model has been built on two planks, cheap oil and cheap exports. Cheap oil and cheap act exports.

That's it. You could do a lot with just, like, a couple of things. China has made trillions through cheap oil and cheap exports. Without cheap oil, bought on the, black market at a massive discount, and without cheap goods that ships out to 80% of countries across the globe, China's business model collapses. Think about what Trump has done in these last several months.

He's cut them off well, actually, starting in January, he cut them off from the cheap oil by cutting them off from Venezuela, and then he cut them off from the cheap oil from cutting them off from Iran. He's actually holding, as we speak, 40 to 50% of China's oil imports hostage by shutting down the Strait Of Hormuz. And at the same time, Trump has hit China with the highest tariff rate of any major trading partner peaking at a 145%, so which causes their goods the price of their goods to rise. So Trump has basically eviscerated the very heart of China's global business model. And so that's what made the summit so fundamentally different from every other presidential summit.

When Obama went to Beijing, he he was hat in hand. It was embarrassing. When Biden met Xi in San Francisco, essentially a damage control summit. But when Donald Trump stepped off Air Force One in Beijing this week, he wasn't alone. He brought the entire economic Avengers team with him.

Right? We're talking Elon Musk of Tesla and SpaceX. We're talking Tim Cook of Apple. Jensen Huang of NVIDIA. That was huge.

Larry Fink of BlackRock. Kelly Ortberg of Boeing. Goldman Sachs, Visa, Meta, Qualcomm. The list goes on and on. Gang, Trump didn't show up with a briefcase.

He showed up literally with the Fortune five hundred. Message that Calvary sent in unmistakable diplomatic terms. America is open for business, but we're doing business on America's terms in a way we don't get ripped off anymore. According to Politico, China did not officially even confirm Trump's visit until just a couple of days before he landed. That's unprecedented.

Alright? China in in diplomatic ease, China would have confirmed to their nation that there was gonna be a major summit months ago. What that means is that China was still haggling over what was even going to be discussed right up to the final hour. The treasury secretary, Scott Besson, actually held an emergency meeting with Chinese officials in South Korea literally just hours before the summit, reportedly still negotiating the terms on the ground. The translation of that is rather simple.

Xi Jinping was desperate. He needed this meeting badly enough to keep negotiating into the final hour, which means Trump showed up calm, cool, smiling, holding all the cards while Beijing was frantically looking for its poker chips under the table. That, my friends, is what four d chess looks like. Not weakness, not flattery, leverage, pure leverage. So with this four d chess motif as our model here, what I wanna do in our livestream today is I wanna show you Trump's four major moves that he made here, what I'm calling the four fronts at the summit so that you have a full understanding of exactly the four d checkmate involved in all of this.

So there's four fronts involved here. Let's go through them one by one. The first front is what we might call the front of flattery. That's right. The front of this is the art of the deal after all.

Right? The front of flattery. And what a lot of people simply don't understand is the importance of the strategic use of flattery in high stakes negotiations. For example, strategic flattery explains exactly why president Xi said this. This is a historic visit.

This year marks the start of China's fifteenth five year plan for economic and social development. The over 1,400,000,000 people of China, drawing on the rich heritage of our over five thousand year civilization, advancing Chinese modernization on all fronts through high quality development. This year is also the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of American independence. The over 300,000,000 American people are reinvigorating the spirit of patriotism, innovation, and enterprise, and ushering in a new journey for the development of The United States. The people of China and The United States are both great peoples, Achieving the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation and making America great again can go hand in hand.

We can help each other succeed and advance the well-being of the whole world. So Xi's gone MAGA. Xi's gone MAGA. Make America great. Xi framed the summit as making both China and America great again.

He overtly and publicly endorsed the Trump project of making America great again, and in so doing, he believes Trump is helping to make the world great again. Xi is flattering Trump because Trump has so much leverage over him, and leverage involves having what others want. But, and this is absolutely key, it also works the other way around from a different dynamic. And that's a very, very important observation because a lot is being made right now of Trump's comments to Xi when he said this at the negotiating table. President Xi, I wanna thank you very much.

First of all, that was an honor like few have ever seen before. And I think I was particularly impressed by those children. They were happy. They were beautiful. The military is obvious.

It couldn't be better, but those children were amazing and they represent so much. And I know I know they represent so much to you. You and I have known each other now for a long time. In fact, the longest relationship of our two countries that any president and president has had. And, that's to me an honor.

We've had a fantastic relationship. We've gotten along. When there were difficulties, we worked it out. I would call you and you would call me. And whenever we had a problem, people don't know.

Whenever we had a problem, we worked that out very quickly. And we're going to have a fantastic future together. I have such respect for China, the job you've done. You're a great leader. I say it to everybody.

You're a great leader. Sometimes people don't like me saying it, but I say it anyway because it's true. I only say the truth. And I just want to say, on behalf of all of the great delegation that we have, we have the greatest businessmen, the biggest, and I guess the best in the world. We have amazing people and they're all with me.

They every single one of them. We asked the top 30 in the world, every single one of them said yes. And I didn't want the second or the third in the company. I wanted only the top and they're here today to pay respects to you and to China. And they look forward to trade and doing business, and it's going to be totally reciprocal on our behalf.

Now the borderline illiterates in the legacy media want you to think that that's an example of American decline, that that was a US president literally groveling at the feet of Beijing. I kid you not. The legacy media is pushing I mean, look at this, headline. The legacy media is pushing literal Chinese propaganda because that's what Xi Jinping said over a decade ago, that China was ascending and The US was declining, and the world order would inevitably reflect that. And so the legacy media is deliberately pushing Chinese propaganda just as they've been pushing Iranian propaganda and claiming, in this case, that Trump was bowing to Beijing there.

What that pathetic excuse for analysis misses you know what? It's not even it's not even it's not even political illiteracy. The legacy media knows what's really going on here. They just decided to lie to you or to the I should say to their dwindling audience. The legacy media knows what Trump is doing there.

Instead, though, they're lying, and their audience loves to be lied to. Right? This is a post truth era, and they are deliberately lying so as to try to infect more people with their ridiculous TDS. What every great behavioral psychologist knows, what every student of Machiavelli, what every reader of the arch of the deal already knows, flattery in the right hands in its right use is not weakness. It is in fact the opposite.

And so then that leads us to the second chess move, to the second front of the summit. Front two is the Iran masterstroke. China just defected on Tehran and has changed the straight of Hormuz forever. So what happened with China and Iran at the Beijing summit may be the single most consequential development in the ongoing Iran war. And I wanna make sure you understand the full magnitude of what just took place here because the numbers really are staggering.

So here's the baseline. Okay? China used to import let's see. What? China imports 11,000,000 barrels of crude oil per day.

So that's a record high. K? Of those, nearly 2,000,000 came from Iran. And, again, this is per day. And they were often disguised through ship to ship transfers off Malaysia and Indonesia to dodge US sanctions.

These are these phantom shipping and so forth. So bottom line, they were getting one out of every seven barrels from Iran delivered at a deep discount because Iran has nowhere else to send it. China's been the Iranian regime's single greatest economic lifeline. 90% of every barrel of oil Iran exports goes to China. The entire hard currency revenue stream that keeps the IRGC funded, that keeps the missiles flying, it all runs through Chinese refineries.

But this week changed all of that. Check this out. Out of their oil, 40% of their oil from that location. So what has happened and one thing I think that we we're gonna make a deal on is they've agreed they wanna buy oil from The United States. They're gonna go to Texas.

We're gonna start sending Chinese ships to Texas and to Louisiana and to Alaska. And I think that was another thing that was agreed to. That's a big thing. What about liquefied natural gas? Much longer.

Gas too? Yeah. Everything. Energy. Energy.

That's the one thing. They really need energy. That's the one thing. They have an insatiable appetite for energy, and we have unlimited energy. Do know we've now under under me, but we now produce more than if you combine Saudi Arabia and before the war, If you took Saudi Arabia, Russia, put them together, we're doing twice as much oil and gas as they are.

Think of that. It's amazing. And you know what that was? Were too. Called drill, baby drill.

Right? It's amazing. So there you have it. I mean, that's huge. That alone, that China wants to reduce its dependence on the Strait Of Hormuz changes the geopolitical chessboard in literally permanent ways.

Iran just lost its financier. They just lost its biggest customer and its most important diplomatic backer in the same summit. That is four d chess at the highest level. So front one is the strategic art of flattery. Front two is getting China to defect on Iran, which is absolutely huge.

But then front three is what I'm calling the jackpot, the economic avalanche. Trump came away with a massive economic haul from this summit, and the numbers really are absolutely breathtaking. We're talking 200 Boeing seven thirty seven MAX jets. Okay. China again, you have to put this in perspective.

China has not placed a major Boeing order in years. They've been routing their business straight to Airbus in Europe. 200 planes coming back to Boeing means American manufacturing jobs, American supply chains, and a direct hit to European aerospace. It signals to the entire global market that The US China trade lane is back open for the big ticket American goods that move the trade deficit. We're also talking 25,000,000 metric tons of US soybeans per year for the next three years.

So that's American farmers in Iowa, in Illinois, in Nebraska. The people were getting crushed by the trade war. Now they're getting their largest customer back. And we already talked about the 600,000 barrels of American crude oil per day that's already happening now. It's already being sold via West Texas oil.

At current prices, again, that's close to $10,000,000,000 per month flowing from China into American energy producers. You've got the extension of the rare earth minerals agreement. So China's suspending its export controls on rare earths like gallium and germanium and antimony and graphite for the benefit of US end users. So this was this was the economic weapon Beijing was hoping on. They were counting on to strangle American chip manufacturing, American battery production, American solar panels, American defense systems.

Right? We need rare earth minerals to create all of these things. And Trump has Beijing with its hand off that weapon for another year, minimum. Trump gave Xi yesterday's flagship chip. China gets the previous generation.

NVIDIA gets billions of restored China revenue, and American AI labs keep their structural lead on the frontier. And then now when Trump and Xi sit down in their next meeting in September when Xi comes to The United States, when he's at the White House, the Blackwell ban now itself becomes new leverage, something Xi badly wants, something Trump can hold over the table for the next round. This is not giving away the crown jewel. That is giving away last year's model while keeping the crown jewel locked in the vault for round two. It's called the art of the deal.

And then that finally brings us to the forefront in this four d chess. And it's this front that many believe to be the most consequential of them all. But first gang, if So this brings us finally to front four, and that's the body language throughout this summit. Now these are the details that tell the full story of who was actually in control of this meeting. First, the reception itself.

Vice president Hong Joon was waiting at the airport to greet Trump, a higher ranking official than even during Trump's last 2017 visit. Hundreds of young people in uniforms waving ribbons and shouting welcome slogans, large crowds gathering outside the Four Seasons Hotel where Trump was staying, Chinese social media absolutely lighting up with enthusiasm for Trump's arrival, something that's not happened for any foreign dignitary this year. Despite years of anti American propaganda from the CCP, Donald Trump still generates a level of curiosity and enthusiasm and excitement inside China that the CCP simply cannot manufacture replicate. And Chinese observers, insiders who know how to decode CCP symbolism, notice something extraordinary. The children at the welcoming ceremony, they weren't wearing red scarves.

Now, gang, the red scarf is the signature symbol of the what's called the young pioneers, one of the CCP's most important youth indoctrination organizations representing communist ideology and the communist cause. Beijing deliberately soft pedaled its most visible communist symbolism for Donald Trump and his delegation. That's not a small thing. That's Beijing quietly signaling we need this man's goodwill more than we need ideological posturing. And then there was Xi himself.

Chinese observers noted that compared to previous summits, Xi appeared noticeably more restrained and less animated. Some described him almost as looking tired. Others said he appeared unusually cautious. And in a moment that went viral on Chinese social media when the PLA officer saluted during the troop inspection, Trump returned the salute. Xi did not.

He bowed. And Chinese netizens immediately asked, who's the chief commander here? And let's not forget the music. Right? Did you hear when Trump because we gotta watch out for copyrights here.

But when Trump walked into the Great Hall Of The People, what song was the Chinese military band playing? Did you see it? Check it out on x. They were playing YMCA. I mean, you can't make this stuff up in Beijing with a Chinese military marching band.

I mean, I don't know what stage of the simulation we're in, gang, but this is not a picture of a leader who's negotiating from strength when it comes to Xi. This is a picture of a leader who's trying everything in his power to make his guests feel at home. The Iranian regime thought they had it all figured out. Close the Strait Of Hormuz. Make the world bleed.

Let the clock run out on Trump. Wait for a Democrat. Get the sanctions relief, get the nuclear deal, and go right back to building the bomb. That was the plan. That was always the plan.

But something just happened in the last seventy two hours that has completely blown that strategy to smithereens. Iran just lost the one ally it was counting on to protect it from maximum pressure. And now, president Trump is signaling he's about to go up the escalation ladder in a way that Iran is completely unprepared for, and the world will never be the same. Hey, gang. It's me, doctor Steve, your patron professor here to help you make sense of the madness with breaking news and analysis.

You're not gonna get anywhere else. You know what to do. Make sure to smack that bell and subscribe button. So let's start with where things actually stand right now with the Iran war. The Strait Of Hormuz has been effectively closed since late February when American and Israeli strikes decapitated Iran's military and political leadership, and the IRGC retaliated by blockading the world's most critical energy choke point.

20% of the world's seaborne oil used to move through that narrow strip of water every single day. It's been shut for over two months. Gas prices in America have climbed more than a dollar a gallon. Brent crude briefly touched $95 a barrel. The International Energy Agency called it the largest supply disruption in the history of the global oil market.

Airlines raised baggage fees because jet fuel spiked 95% in North America. And the Pentagon, in testimony to congress just last week, put the total cost of the war thus far at $29,000,000,000, which, to be fair, is a bargain compared to the trillions of dollars squandered in Iraq and Afghanistan. 29,000,000,000 to take out in one fell swoop the single most aggressively destabilizing regime in The Middle East while at the same time boxing out China from controlling Hormuz is a heck of a bargain when you compare it to the colossal cost of Iraq and Afghanistan in both dollars and days as it were. We've been we were in, we've been Iran for two months, and we were in Afghanistan for twenty years. Now in the time, what's left of the Iranian regime has yet to fully crack using the ceasefire as cover.

The IRGC is still running military drills in the strait, calls the martyr commander exercises, specifically designed to use drones, fastboats, anti ship missiles, sea mines, and GPS jamming to keep commercial shipping terrified and insurance companies refusing to over, to, underwrite to cover any transit. Now Iran's strategy here is very interesting, and it's very clear. Their strategy is not to defeat the United States Navy in open battle, right, in in head to head combat. They they're not that stupid. They know they can't win that way.

Their strategy is to make the strait so dangerous, so expensive, so legally uninsurable that no shipping company sends a vessel through it regardless of what any navy does. Now US forces could destroy the weaponry and equipment that Iran is using to conduct these military exercises, easily, in fact. But apparently, they're hiding behind a number of mines, these, exercises that Iran is conducting. They're hiding behind a number of mines that have been placed in the Persian Gulf, so the mines would indeed have to be swept first. There's also an escalation ladder risk.

Destroying the equipment means attacking Iranian territory, Iranian naval vessels directly, which would end up triggering Hezbollah remnants in Lebanon and completely disrupt the ceasefire. Attacking what's left of the IRGC force would also wipe away, ironically, negotiating leverage. So right now, the intact IRGC naval force, what's left of it, is paradoxically actually a diplomatic asset for Washington. As long as Iran has something to stand down, right, equipment to withdraw, forces to pull back, mines to locate, There's a negotiated off ramp that allows the regime to at least in part save face while reopening the strait. But also, and this is the ace in the hole, given what just happened in China, Iran's last official ally, and the way Xi just turned his back on Iran and called for the straight to be fully open, meaning, yo, Iran, enough.

It's time to back down. Given that, there's all the international pressure in the world to get Iran to finally concede defeat. So here's the core of what we need to understand. Iran's strategy for surviving this war has always rested on two pillars. One, Russia.

Two, China. So for years, the conventional wisdom was that as long as Beijing was quietly buying Iranian oil through shadow fleets and ghost ships, relabeling Iranian crude as Malaysian or Indonesian. As long as they were doing that, Iran could survive any level of American pressure because they had China China had their backs, basically. China was importing roughly 1,380,000 barrels of Iranian oil per day according to trade intelligence, the trade intelligence firm, Kepler, which tracks actual tanker movements. But the IRGC made a catastrophic miscalculation.

When they closed Hormuz, they didn't just hurt Europe. They didn't just hurt Japan. They didn't just hurt the global oil market. They hurt China directly. 45 to 50% of China's total crude oil imports and nearly a third of its LNG comes by way of Hormuz or at least it used to.

That's all now been totally interrupted. That's an existential energy security crisis for one of the world's largest industrial economies and what was once Iran's really last remaining ally. China has stockpiles for sure. They had about 1,400,000,000 barrels in reserve, roughly a hundred twenty days of net imports, but that clock's ticking. And every day the strait stays closed, Beijing bleeds.

And then Donald Trump flew to Beijing. And what came out of that room changes everything. Trump Xi summit on May 14, both presidents agreed publicly in front of every camera in the world that the Strait Of Hormuz must remain open. Both agreed that Iran can never obtain a nuclear weapon. Xi Jinping publicly opposed the militarization of the strait and any Iranian tolling system for passage directly shooting down Iran's floated plan to create a so called Persian Gulf Strait authority that would have forced every ship in the world to get IRGC clearance before transiting.

And then g dropped the bombshell. He expressed direct interest in purchasing more American oil from Texas, Louisiana, Alaska, specifically to reduce China's long term dependence on Hormuz and on Iran. Let that hit you. The largest buyer of Iranian oil on the planet just told The United States it wants to buy American oil instead of Iranian oil. So while Russia's bogged down in Ukraine, China just stood next to America's president and agreed that Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon and the strait must be reopened.

Both pillars of Iran's insurance policy have cracked Russia and China. They have cracked simultaneously. Iran thought China was on its side. Unfortunately, the only side president Xi on, unfortunately for Iran that is, is, he's on China's side and no one else's. And unfortunately for Iran, it's about to get a whole lot worse.

And that's because the calculus is changing, and it's changing very, very fast. The midterms clock is approaching, which means that Donald Trump's window to finish this is coming to its end. Republicans lose the house or especially if they lose the senate, Trump's ability to sustain this campaign, fund it, authorize ongoing operations, and pursue the kind of maximalist outcome that prevents Iran from ever going nuclear, all of that goes away. And he knows this. His team knows this.

And Iran knows this. That's why they keep stalling and delaying in these negotiations. This delay tactic, ironically, ironically is actually eroding the timetable for strategic patience. If Iran continues stalling, running out the diplomatic clock while keeping the straight closed and oil prices elevated, if they continue to do that heading into the November midterms, the political cost of not acting for Trump starts to exceed the strategic cost of acting. And so that's why Iran's stall tactics are ironically putting them more and more in harm's way.

At that point, you will likely see a targeted systematic campaign against IRGC naval infrastructure specifically designed to eliminate the harassment capability while leaving Iran's land based political structure relatively intact, essentially decapitating the blockade without triggering a full regime collapse scenario. That's almost certainly what's going up the escalation ladder actually means in practice. In the meantime, Iran's main oil export terminal at Karg Island has had zero oil loaded in days. The US naval blockade is holding. Iran's storage tanks are full.

Satellite photos show Iran is beginning to physically shut down oil production because there's literally nowhere left to put the oil. No ships getting in. No ships getting out. Iran's oil economy is not just hurting. It's actually beginning to physically stop.

The comprehensive squeeze, right, the military blockade of Iranian ports, sanctions on the shadow fleet, a joint public statement with China that the strait must stay open, a commercial incentive for China to replace Iranian crude with American production. And we didn't even mention the Saudi and UAE covert strikes on Iranian territory, right, that was confirmed last week by Reuters, by New York Times, Wall Street Journal. All of this means that Iran's isolation is now total in a way it simply has never been before. So next up, Trump is going up the escalation ladder. He has to.

The time constraints demand it, strategic logic demands it. Donald Trump is not gonna let this moment pass. The midterms are coming. China has given him the signal. The strait is still closed, and the escalation ladder has a few more rungs left.

Iran is about to find out who they're dealing with. And when they do, it's going to change the world. Tucker Carlson's TDS is out of control. We're used to Rachel Maddow and Keith Olbermann spewing out vitriolic nonsense about Trump, but what you're about to hear from Tucker just took a genuinely dark turn. And when you see the full picture, what's really driving this, how he's been embarrassing himself on live television, and most importantly, what the tape actually shows, you're gonna be absolutely floored to find out just how much the real problem isn't Trump.

It's none other than Tucker himself. Subscribe button. Tucker Carlson and Donald Trump used to be the most powerful duo in American conservative media. Tucker's nightly Fox News broadcast, the most watched cable news program in American history, they were essentially a megaphone for the America first agenda. When Fox fired him in 2023, Trump publicly defended him.

When Tucker launched his independent show, it became the most downloaded political podcast in the country. Conservative influencers were ecstatic. We've done a number of videos on this channel on how the success of Tucker post Fox was proof that we are now the media. We don't need the gatekeepers of the legacy outlets that push establishment propaganda. Tucker was repeatedly in the White House.

He was at Mar A Lago. He was in every practical sense, the unofficial media arm of the MAGA movement. And then February 28, everything literally blew up. The reason? One word, Iran.

When president Trump joined Israel in launching Operation Epic Fury against Iran, Tucker called the attack, quote, disgusting and evil. He went on to say that he felt personally and politically betrayed. According to Tucker, he had championed Trump for one reason above all others. Trump had promised to keep America out of foreign wars. That was the deal.

That was the contract. In an absolutely explosive 18,000 word New York Times interview, Tucker said exactly that. Quote, it doesn't make me the person who breached the contract. He's the one who breached the contract. Then Tucker took the extraordinary step of issuing a public apology to his own audience for helping get Trump elected.

So looking back, being because, I mean, you and I and everyone else who supported him, he wrote speeches for him. I campaigned for him. I mean, we're implicated in this for sure. Yes. It's not enough to say, well, I changed my mind.

Or like, oh, this is bad. I'm out. It's like, in very small ways, but in real ways, you and me and millions of people like us are the reason this is happening right now. Yes. So I do think it's like a moment to wrestle with our own consciences.

You know, we'll be tormented by it for a long time. I will be. And and I wanna say I'm sorry for misleading people in it was not intentional. Now Tucker's core accusation is that Trump has been captured. Okay?

So he actually hasn't he's not really blaming Trump. He's able to at least partially continue to ingratiate himself with Trump supporters that way. He's not directly and explicitly blaming Trump. He's instead blaming outside influence, literally foreign influences and neocon influences of basically hijacking Trump, manipulating Trump. And so that's why Tucker's referred to Trump as, quote, a slave to Bibi Netanyahu, to wealthy pro Israel donors, to neocon rhinos in his inner circle.

In other words, he believes that the president of The United States is not acting as a sovereign commander in chief, but rather as a hostage to foreign interests. Alright. Fine. But then recently, Tucker's meltdown went from political disagreement to something genuinely darker and indeed far more sinister. On his April 16 podcast, Tucker asked his audience this about president Trump.

So to a lot of Christians or people who know the bible well and believe in it, these predictions in both the old and the new testament, and there are others, seem to fit what we were watching. Here's a leader who's mocking the gods of his ancestors, mocking the god of gods, and exalting himself above them. Could this be the antichrist? Well, who knows? At least that's my conclusion.

Who knows? We're also told repeatedly in the New Testament that you're not gonna know. Now stop right there. I mean, keep in mind that this is the same Tucker Carlson who spent years telling his audience that Trump was a providential figure, almost divinely sent to save America. So he's gone from divine intervention to the antichrist in less than two months.

We'll come back to what that tells us about Tucker in a moment. But then, in a sense, it got worse. Last week on Megyn Kelly's show, Tucker said this. That we're just not good at predicting the future. You know, we imagine, like, this is gonna happen in November in the midterms.

Maybe. Maybe not. Just remember that Trump turns 80 next month, you know, and I hope he has a great birthday. I don't wish Trump ill. However, he will be gone relatively soon, and we'll still have this country.

I don't think things are going well. I think they could be a lot worse. I think they're I can think imagine other leaders who are both malicious and competent. Trump is incompetent. Gavin Newsom is not incompetent.

He's far more malicious than Trump. I think he's far less transparent than Trump. Like, I don't know. We just need to keep our wits about us and not ping pong from one bad idea to another bad I I mean, when your best argument against the sitting president of The United States is he's old and he'll die soon, you've not made a political argument. You've in fact made a concession.

You've you've essentially said, I can't beat them on the merits, I'll just wait for biology to do the work. That's not analysis. That's resignation dressed up as critique. But then it's what he goes on to say that it's essential for us not to ping pong from one bad idea to another bad idea. That ping ponging metaphor is very apt for what Tucker is himself guilty of doing.

Wait until you see this. But My view is you can kinda tell who's telling the truth. You can smell it. You know, you've been talking on your show about whether Trump is the antichrist. I have not said that.

On your show, you said, could this be the antichrist? I actually did not say could this be the antichrist. Could this be the antichrist? I don't know where that comes from, but I know that those words never left my lips. Raise some eyebrows this week when you said that Hamas is more like a political organization than a terror group.

Hamas is a, you know, group of jihadis. They're Islamic extremists, which they also claim constantly, which I don't I don't know if that's true, by the way. Seems more like a political organization. Actually I didn't say I didn't say that. Future that I imagine is not a future in which we're yelling at each other about race.

It's a future in which people are legitimately revolutionary, maybe even violent. You said in our previous interview, the future that I imagine is not a future in which we're yelling at each other about race. It's a future in which people are legitimately revolutionary, maybe even violent. I'm amazed that you have a tape of me saying that, and I just wanna disavow it. A lot of young men in America, mostly white, but not exclusively, listen to Nick Fuentes really carefully.

This kid is the single most influential figure among young white men, and not just white, actually. Is that true? Well, it's definitely true. Of course, half the thing was about Fuentes and, like, who care Fuentes? A lot.

There was a lot of Fuentes. Who cares about Fuentes? Talk about irrelevant. Dare I say it, but as you could see from that montage, the real problem here isn't Trump. The real problem is Tucker.

While Tucker's been going around diagnosing what's wrong with Donald Trump, there's a camera rolling. And the footage tells a very different story. Tucker's he's not simply gone to war with president Trump or Israel or former allies. He's gone to war with himself, with his own recorded statements, with his own past assertions and opinions. This is not what a man with a clear conscience and a coherent worldview looks like.

This is what a man in the middle of an identity crisis looks like. He's not diagnosing Trump's failures. He's projecting his own, and the tape doesn't lie. America's supporting Israel because it's an ally. I don't even know what those words mean.

I'm just saying my principles They're an ally. Right? I mean, they they both You know what that means to be an ally? Qatar is like, one of our closest allies in the world. The largest American air base in The Middle East is in Qatar.

They're a close ally of ours. I come to Israel and the infrastructure we're flying in, and I said to my buddy, I was like, man, the looks first of looks great. I love the agriculture in Israel because it's beautiful. I love green. I love plants.

I remember when it didn't look like that. Yeah. Yeah. First time I came here in fifty three years ago. It's great.

Israel, which is one of the single ugliest countries in the world. Nothing of beauty has been built there since 1948. Sorry. I've been everywhere in that country and it's true. Let me get to the nub of the question since, again, a lot is at stake.

A lot of money is at stake. Land is very valuable. Israel has a lot of resources. We have a huge country. This is a country the size of New Jersey with no resources.

JD has been subject to, and this is well known, but I'll just confirm it, nonstop treachery. Accusing people of treachery, so I'm wondering Who who do you mean specifically? I don't, you know, I don't know the answer to that. I've never worked there. So like if you don't work there, you can say you you know, you can say what you think you know, but it's hard to really know.

If I was telling my kids, if you think someone's lying to you, you're right. Yeah. I'm sorry to say it, but Tucker, to my knowledge, has yet to offer any coherent, solid, insightful analysis of what's really happening in The Middle East. He hasn't. Again, to my knowledge, he hasn't attempted to understand how taking out this rogue regime with the ascent of the Abraham Accords is indeed thoroughly MAGA, thoroughly America first.

Instead, he's using this as an opportunity to incessantly bash Trump, and in the process, he's turned into an intellectual mess. That's why I would argue that the problem isn't Trump, the problem is Tucker. Trump knows exactly what he's doing and what's happening in the world. It's Tucker who appears to have little idea of what Trump is doing and what's really happening in the world. You see, Trump in one fell swoop is eliminating the single biggest impediment to a common Abrahamic peace and prosperity in The Middle East, while at the same time eliminating China's de facto control over the single most important energy choke point on the planet, which in turn secures the petrodollar for the foreseeable future as the dominant currency in the world and fully connects a networked multipolarity of sovereign civilizations stretching from the Western Hemisphere all the way through the Middle East with Israel and Sunni Arab nations on the same side through India to Japan and The Pacific centered around American money and might, decisively making America great again on the world stage for generations to come.

That is what Trump is doing. That is America first. And unfortunately, for whatever reasons, Tucker has chosen to sit this glorious moment out. That's all for today's show. As always, we hope you found today's content of interest and value.

You can watch and or listen to a podcast of today's show when it's posted shortly here on the Jim Benson Show pages at b b s radio dot com forward slash the Jim Benson Show. And elsewhere on the Internet, including x.com at James b five zero three zero nine one nine seven seven. Also on rumble.com and Apple podcasts. While you're at it, if you visit my pages here at bbsradio.com, scroll down on my index page at bbsradio.com forward slash the jim bessett show. That's the first page.

And check out our related videos section. Look for us again two weeks from today in this same time slot with another edition of the show. Have a great rest of your day and evening.