00:00And now we're in a situation where the president seems to be in a corner that he can't get out
00:05of.
00:06Some have called it an escalation trap.
00:08I thought initially that he would be really hemmed in by two things.
00:13Markets on the one hand, munitions on the other.
00:16Markets in the sense that the longer this went on, when you saw gas prices going up.
00:23Fertilizer, diesel.
00:24You know, as you saw fertilizer price, et cetera, that there would be a real constraint,
00:29especially the closer you got to midterm elections.
00:31And then munitions, we're fast running through a lot of critical munitions,
00:37both defensive as well as offensive, that we need in other theaters potentially to act as a deterrent.
00:43And I think the president knows that.
00:45At least I hope he knows that.
00:47And I think he wants to get out of the corner he's put himself into.
00:51He's been looking for an off ramp, but he can't find it.
00:54And he can't accept the proposition that he's also created an entirely new reality
00:59that didn't exist before this war, which is the Strait of Hormuz.
01:03There's a good reason, Andy, why administration after administration,
01:08while trying to make sure that Iran never had a nuclear weapon,
01:11was very careful about the way we did that,
01:14and particularly not getting into a situation with them
01:16where they thought that the regime was existentially threatened, as they obviously do now.
01:21Now, we knew that one thing that they could do would be to close the Strait of Hormuz,
01:25and it would be very difficult for us to open it again,
01:28absent some kind of land invasion of Iran, a country of 90 million people.
01:32And in addition to that, we have troops in the region,
01:35whether it's in Saudi Arabia, whether it's in the UAE, whether it's in Qatar,
01:40whether it's in Iraq, who would be endangered.
01:43And what have we seen?
01:44They closed the Strait, and they've killed our troops.
01:47So this was not thought through, and beyond that, getting out of it now is very, very challenging.
