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00:00Have we heard anything from the Pentagon about what this blockade will entail?
00:03The president, when the True Social tweet says other countries are involved, do we know which
00:07ones? And more broadly, logistically, from a military standpoint, how do you execute something
00:13like this? Yeah, look, President Trump has said for quite a while that, well, I will say he's
00:19flip-flopped on this point, but he's wanted to build an international coalition to open the
00:24Strait of Hormuz. A lot of European countries who could have brought some capabilities to bear
00:29were not willing to do that when there was a risk of coming under Iranian fire. That includes the
00:34French, the British. So as far as I understand, their positions have not changed. Some of the
00:41Gulf states, the UAE, for example, have suggested they would be willing to play some role in this,
00:46but they don't have the same level of naval assets to bring to bear in this coalition. So perhaps
00:51some support roles from some of those states, as well as Israel. But yeah, President Trump has
00:56changed his position from, we don't need to open the Strait, to we'll have allies work with us to
01:01open the Strait, to the allies won't do it, forget it, we'll leave, and they'll take care of it,
01:04to now announcing, I guess, that the U.S. is going to play, first and foremost, a role in imposing
01:11a
01:11blockade and in figuring out what gets in and what gets out of the Strait.
01:17Jeff, let's take a step back here and try to parse through what exactly this means for the U.S.'s
01:21role in the region right now. Is this an escalation in a time where there's supposed to be a ceasefire
01:28to negotiate? Yeah, I mean, it's an escalation of sorts, yes. It's not an escalation of military
01:36might yet, although as I said. But the threats of it are there.
01:40Exactly. The threats are still there, and that's how he concluded his most recent
01:43True Social post. And that's also how he went into the negotiations, by saying if they didn't lead to a
01:50deal, then the shooting would start again. I think it's actually quite interesting that that's
01:54not what he led with here. Instead, he led with this blockade, creating more questions about how
01:59that's going to work, which countries are going to be involved. The spot-on question that Christina
02:04asked, which is how does the military even execute this? And then leaving the clear conclusion that
02:11the U.S. is not moving out of the region, but going to stay. So that's a long way of
02:17saying
02:17it's an escalation of sorts. And I tell you what, I think it'll be very interesting to see how markets
02:22react to this tomorrow, because the fact of any blockade, be it by the United States or other
02:28countries, preventing ships from going through the strait, that has been the biggest economic
02:35ramification of this war, has been the closing of that strait and the impact on oil prices,
02:41which President Trump desperately wants to bring down so that the gasoline prices are in the United
02:47States anyway, are at a more palatable place come November.
02:51Alicia, I want to bring you in because there is, correct me if I'm wrong, I think there's a war
02:56powers resolution vote coming up on the Hill next week. Question we ask all lawmakers from all sides
03:03of the aisle every time we have on, is realistically, is there anything Congress can do to stop not only
03:09this president, but really any president that wants to take a military action like this? And can they
03:14even get on the same page to try? It's a great question. And as we know, you know, the president
03:20has no issue going around congressional authority. The war powers vote specifically will be largely
03:25symbolic, even if it passes through the House and the Senate. The president has the power to veto it.
03:32However, Congress still holds the power of the purse. There's still a roughly $200 billion
03:39supplemental funding request for defense spending sort of looming in the background here. And so
03:46there are only so many creative budgetary moves that the White House can do before they will have
03:51to turn to Congress and say, you know, we do need extra spending to put some might behind this conflict
03:58in the Middle East. And so it will be a stretch to see, can he get, you know, a sufficient
04:03number
04:03of members behind what is essentially an unpopular war? Well, I'm glad you said that because this is
04:10exactly the needle that these members of Congress have to threat, especially those members who are
04:14up for reelection, you know, come November. How do they do this or what are they doing in a way
04:19that
04:19shows that they support the president or possibly if they start to push away from the president's
04:26position because this is unpopular to try to win reelection, Alicia?
04:32Exactly. I've talked to, you know, election analysts and experts who say that it's possible
04:38we get to a point relatively soon where Republicans start to question, you know, do I side with how
04:44my constituents are feeling or do I continue to side with the president? What's going to be more
04:49beneficial for me? What is going to position me best to get up for reelection, you know, especially
04:56with the midterms looming this November? So it is possible we start to see more of that fraying
05:02in what is already a very slim majority and kind of a disorganized Republican Party, especially in
05:10the House.
05:11Dave, I want to go back to you and ask, first of all, if you've heard just even in the
05:16last intervening
05:17minutes, anything from CENTCOM or the Pentagon, any details, I'm assuming the answer is no. But if I'm
05:21wrong, please correct me. I also want to ask, I mean, there's a ton of military equipment from the
05:26U.S. in the Middle East. Obviously, we tracked it for weeks as it was all heading over there.
05:30Do they have logistically the equipment they would need to execute something like this?
05:35And is the Pentagon, is the military getting a bit overstretched because we had Venezuela,
05:40we have this, and now Trump is already talking about potential action in Cuba. At some point,
05:45does the rubber meet the road? And even a very loyal DOD is going to say,
05:48we have to pick some priorities because we can't be everywhere at once.
05:52Sure. Yeah. For the aircraft carrier, one of the two that's in the region is setting records for
05:57the amount of time that that crew has been on that ship. They were involved in the Venezuela
06:01operation. Now they're over in the Gulf. There's been some good reporting about just how stretched
06:07they are, that particular crew. You sort of extend that out to the full range of the forces that the
06:13U.S.
06:14is bringing to bear. Certainly, you could see the U.S., the troops themselves and the equipment
06:20being stretched. Some stuff needs repairs, needs to be rotated out, etc. Now, whether there's enough
06:27in the region to pull this off now, it depends exactly how they're going to execute this mission.
06:33There's been some doubt cast on the idea that the U.S. or even its allies have enough to be
06:38able to
06:38escort individual tankers in and out of the strait. Now, that's not what Trump is saying here. He's
06:44talking about a blockade. I'm trying to visualize even where you would position assets in order to
06:50impose a total blockade. Very, very difficult. It is a narrow stretch of water, but not narrow enough
06:57that unless the U.S. is willing to open fire on vessels that come through, which maybe we are,
07:03that you could interdict everything that's coming in and out of the strait. But obviously,
07:07there has been some thought put into that on the Pentagon side. This has been one of the options
07:13that's been presented to Trump over the past several weeks. Yeah, it's going to be a question
07:20of how they execute it and whether they then think, OK, we need to bring even more force to bear
07:26in the
07:26region, which will suggest to people sitting back in the U.S., to lawmakers, etc., that this is going to
07:32be a longer, costlier, potentially bloodier campaign, depending on what tactics exactly the
07:38military is using at a time when they were just sort of preparing the American people for this to
07:45be over. Right. It was just a few days ago that Pete Hegseth said all of the military objectives
07:50had been achieved. President Trump himself was sort of talking in a in a tone that suggested he thought
07:58it was time to get out. And now after just one day of talks, we could be back into a
08:03point where
08:03we're looking at an expanding U.S. operation in the Gulf. Now, I don't want to speak too soon.
08:08Those announcements were just made minutes before we all came on. Literally minutes ago. We'll give
08:13you some leeway there, Dave. You're still making sense of it. But yeah, I mean, the signal could be
08:17that that the U.S. is stepping up, you know, the operation in and around the Gulf rather than,
08:24you know, one or two more weeks, as President Trump had said previously.
08:28Jeff, I'm wondering if, you know, and we may not know at this point who we think got in the
08:33president's ear about this, because we talked previously, it seemed to me at least that the
08:37president was kind of saying, well, the strait could be open. The strait could not be open.
08:40He'd almost lost interest in it. And now we get this about face and this very forceful
08:45tweet language and action from the White House. Do we think this is Vance coming back and giving him
08:49a call? Do we think this is someone else in his orbit pushing this? Who does this sound like to
08:55you as someone who covers this administration intimately?
08:58Well, honestly, Christine, I think it's just reality getting into his ear. I mean, the fact
09:03that the strait was an open question mark was a huge vulnerability for this president, for the
09:09United States, for the rest of the world. And it's a vulnerability that largely wasn't there before
09:14this war began. So even though he has used sort of positive language to say, oh, it'll just open
09:20up on its own, that was never realistic. And I think it also raises questions now. Again, there's so
09:27many questions that are being raised about what's realistic about this blockade. There weren't that
09:32many ships going through in the first place. Certainly, the point of the blockade appears to be
09:37that he wants to prevent any ships going through that Iran had blessed. So that's going to impact
09:42Iran and up pressure on them economically and also increase pressure on other countries that were
09:49supporting Iran. But I don't know the answer to who got into his ear. I think certainly it's he said
09:56that Vice President Vance and his other two envoys had briefed him. So I think they would be the last
10:01people who he must have been on the phone with. But in general, he had to address the strait in
10:08some
10:09way. And this is how he's decided to address it. The person who called was reality, as Jeff puts it
10:14so eloquently. Hey, Alicia, we got to make a little bit of a pivot here because you cover Congress and
10:20we do have a member of Congress who's in the news right now. And that would be Eric Swalwell, who
10:25is
10:26facing pressure to step down from the governor's race in California. Questions about his own future and
10:32investigation opened here in New York about sexual assault allegations. Could you just bring us up
10:38to speed on what could happen to him and three other members of Congress that, you know, now we're
10:43talking about could actually be expelled for various reasons? Of course, it's definitely not, you know,
10:49a great time in the California governor's race. Hakeem Jeffries already put out a statement, you know,
10:55condemning the actions and the allegations, asking Swalwell to step down from the governor's race.
11:03To me, it seems like only a matter of time to not have the party leader on your side.
11:08You know, it just seems like a grim chance of continuing in that race. And that really shakes
11:14things up. You know, it's going to be interesting to see how California plays out. And of course,
11:21there's allegations amongst other members in both parties. And so, you know, as the midterms continue
11:27to play out, you know, it'll be interesting to see how this all goes.
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