Hour 2 of NMN, Trump Lives Rent Free + EJ Antoni

We have a little bit of cleanup to do from the last segment. So we asked the big question, and that is what is the big difference between Bucky's and Dolly's? And we named a couple of differences. But a lot of folks pointed out, remember, Buckees is not welcoming to truckers. And Dolly's is. That is the biggest, I would say, the biggest difference between Buckees and Dolly's. Now, Joan, you just sent me something. I cannot believe I saw this. Yeah. So this is, and again, this is going to be something I, this is not in my actual stack of stuff. But apparently Ted Liu, who is a nutball. He is one of the nutballs. Like, he's one of those not so moderates on the left. He's a congressman, right? He's not a senator. He's a congressman from California. Okay, of course. Land of fruits and nuts. So this is a day. He says that Donald Trump has a terminal illness? Yes. Was this a story like yesterday? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I totally missed this. Maybe nobody's taking him seriously, but. Where is he, do we know? I don't know where he speak. Oh, well, he's speaking at the House because he's got the House flag behind him. Okay. But he's holding a news conference saying that President Trump, he thinks, is the recipient of a drug from Eli Lilly that was given under special consideration to one single American who is 79 years old, President Trump is 80, who's 79 years old and has a terminal illness. Okay. And he thinks it might be President Trump. All right. So this is that audio. today what's causing him to chicken out again is it taco Wednesday or is the side effects from a drug we don't know this erratic behavior the president is very concerning he has trouble staying awake at multiple White House events and cabinet meetings he has clearly some weakness in one of his arms he's got swelling in his hands And the White House needs to come clean. What we know is there's a report saying that one person in America got this special new drug. There's a 79-year-old person who's very high profile, and this drug can only be given to someone under the compassionate use provision, meaning you do that if someone basically has a terminal illness. So we need to know. Did Donald Trump get this special drug from Eli Lilly? And did he get it under that provision? And if he did, why is that the case? So one of the things that I would ask is, I mean, number one, give me a flip and break. Where were you with Joe Biden? I mean, that's the obvious thing that I would say. But the other thing that I would say, just at first blush, when the media reported this. Did they report it where they said Congressman Ted Liu says without evidence?

that Donald Trump is taking this drug from Eli Lilly. Because, you know, they love that whenever Donald Trump or a Republican says something about anything, the media will always say, well, the Republicans, Donald Trump says, without evidence. So I'm curious as to whether or not they'll hang that without evidence moniker on Congressman Ted Liu, because there is no evidence. Where is he getting this from? Yeah, that's an incredible. accusation. Accusation to make about the president of the United States with zero evidence. And I hope President Trump goes after him, although I feel like he's doing it to get, like to bait him on. Bate the president? Yeah. Well, maybe, and maybe, Joan, that is his plan. Yes. Maybe his plan is to bait Donald Trump into a public debate and that forces the issue. But I just think that Donald Trump is 80 years old. He's tired. He has said my hand looks the way that it does because I spend all this time shaking hands. And he also said the reason why he sometimes apparently has problems staying awake in his cabinet meetings is because they're boring as heck. I mean, he has literally said that. So anyway. I had not seen that story. So thank you for bringing that up, John. Yeah, just the craziness. Just absolute insanity. Even though we just had his most public physical, what was it, May 26th of this year from Walter Reed. Yeah. He's an excellent health. Yeah, I would just ask the question. Okay, so what evidence do you have, even just from the videos of Donald Trump out, okay, so he'll close it. If he's nodding off, okay, then he needs to figure out how to stay awake. Number one, we know that the man doesn't sleep a lot. He doesn't necessarily need a lot of sleep clearly. But, I mean, other than that, he'll sit there, Joan, you know this as well as I do. He'll sit there for hours answering questions off the cuff with seemingly no problem. So I just. 30 out of 30 on his cognitive test. Yeah. Oh, but they all say that it's a lie. But then after, you know, after he does, he spars with the Senate last night over the Iran Powers resolution, all of that, and the Senate backed off, what did he do? goes out onto stage and does his dance, you know, the dance that he does. Yeah, he did a, he had a massive event last night. Yeah, yeah, the great American fair, state fair out there on stage. And there were flyovers and bands and he's dancing. They kicked it off last night. Trump kicked it off. It was a great. They treated it almost like a rally. And I mean, I've seen a few highlights of his speech. I mean, it was pretty standard fair for Donald Trump, of course. But, you know. He seems pretty cognizant to me. He seems like he knows exactly what he's doing and what he's saying. I think this is where they may have him, though. He's gained 14 pounds in the last year.

The United States Soccer Federation presents the U.S. Soccer Podcast. I'm your host, Megan Klingerberg. One thing I promised you is an all-access pass that you wouldn't get on any other show. And we found out that whoever comes on scores a goal. Burhope, Freeman, trustee. U.S. soccer podcast magic is real people. We still got plenty of coverage all throughout this World Cup. Okay, let's get into it. The U.S. Soccer podcast. Presented by Henko. Follow and listen on your favorite play. That must be what's doing. That's a lot of Big Macs, but whatever. You know what? Okay, so what's the guy's name that everybody said smelled really bad? New York Congressman. Jerry Adler. Jerry Nadler. High pants Jerry. So Jerry. He does look like he smells like a nursing home. Jerry Nadler, the word was that Jerry Nadler like smelled like an adult diaper. Like, that's what they say. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Moving right along. Gross. The relationship between President Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu is highlighted in a new book where it is alleged that President Trump told the Israeli prime minister, all the Jews are sick of you. As the president was trying to broker a peace deal between Israel and Hamas, this was supposedly back in September of 2025. The president, this is what they say in this book. The president was on the call with Benjamin Netanyahu, Senate-in-law, Jared Kushner, envoy Steve Witkoff, when they became frustrated with the prime minister following an Israeli strike on Qatar. That's when Trump unleashed, according to the book. Everybody's sick of you, BB. All the Jews are sick of you, Trump reportedly said to Benjamin Netanyahu as he tried to pitch the Israeli leader on Jared Kushner's 20-point peace plan. Then referencing Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, he added, even the two Jews on this call are sick of you. Jared Kushner was reported to have said, telling an ally, I'm freaking out. The Israelis are crazy. Trump, who had a strong relationship, does have a strong relationship with Benjamin Netanyahu, then demanded he stick to the peace deal, which was announced two days after the call. And now, there's some people that are saying that this is sort of controversial. I don't know why this is considered controversial. Donald Trump is probably the first American president that has spoken to Benjamin Netanyahu in this way. I mean, you've had other presidents on the Democrat side who basically have ignored Benjamin Netanyahu or the relationship hasn't been that close. But Trump, I mean, he's willing to really speak to Benjamin Netanyahu, quite frankly, in a way that he needs to be spoken to. The president apparently saying, you cannot back out of this. I'm the best friend Israel ever had, saying everybody hates you and I've stood by you. This is a great deal for Israel. Now, I don't believe that everybody hates Benjamin Netanyahu either. But anyway, this is that new book. We were talking about this yesterday. It is called regime change. I don't know how true this is, but honestly, it does make sense because the president.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent says, look, it is important for Iran to see what life is like and their finances are like without sanctions. It is a carrot that we can always pull back. We want them to see what it feels like not having the sanctions on. and then we can always put them back on. Their economy is hurting, though, obviously. Devastate. They've got more than 100% inflation. Troops weren't getting paid, so we have laid their economy to waste, and that's what brought them to the table. So when you hear the Iranians, maybe it's the IRGC, with this public relations saying the IAEA inspectors are not coming, the Strait of Ramos is closed, all of these things day to day. get picked up. What amazes me, it's the same people, a lot of the hawks in the U.S. who say, you can't believe anything the Iranians say, unless they say it about the negotiations. Believe them for the negotiations. Remember Baghdad Bob from Iraq? It's kind of Taran Tim. Like, it's just a lot of big talk. And let's just see how this cooks out. But I'm optimistic. All right. So he is optimistic. I'm optimistic this morning. I'm going to be honest with you. I am. And all of that is true. Their economy, Iran's economy, is in big trouble and all the other things about it destroyed military. All of that is true. We all know. The Strait of Hormuz, I think I heard. Let's see here. Yeah, they ran dozens of vessels through the Strait of Hormuz yesterday, as a matter of fact. So what Scott Bessent says is making sense. The question is, what does the Islamic Revolutionary Guard, you know, the guys in charge of Iran and who we are negotiating with, what do they value? Above all, you know, they value their ability to make weapons of mass destruction. They don't really care about any of that other stuff. They certainly don't care about the people of Iran. Now, I had hoped that they would be swayed by that carrot that he's talking about. But the longer this goes on, the more I wonder if they'll ever go legit. Meantime, you had this. Last week, we signed a historic agreement to end. the conflict with Iran, fully opened the Strait of Hormuz, and accomplish what no president has ever been able to accomplish before. Iran will never have a nuclear weapon. That's done. Since the agreement, the stock market and your 401 case are skyrocketing upward, and oil prices are plummeting downward today. It hit a new low. And the world is a much safer place. We had to make that little journey to Iran to do what we did. Very soon, you'll be at $2.50 a gallon for gasoline.

All right, so that is President Trump last night at that big time rally. And by all accounts, a great speech. There's a lot of great audio that is out there. I'll try to play some of it. I have a very busy show this morning. Joan, if you don't mind, I hope you have the ability to do this. I've got E.J. and Tony coming up. We are going to talk about, you know, oil prices and the like. Where are the future is at right now? Trump is saying $2.50 a gallon in no time? So you're talking about oil? Oil futures, yeah. So the Brent crude price is at $72 a barrel, but the West Texas crude, intermediary crude, is at $69 a barrel. So we're below $70. I mean, it's a mark that hasn't been seen in a long time. And at every step, you know, of the way down, gas prices are just, they will plummet. It's going to come, but it's not at the immediate moment, but it will happen. Very soon, you'll be at $2.50 a gallon for gasoline. That is President Trump last night with his big speech in Washington, D.C. went to bring in E.J. Antony. He is somebody who we talk to often. issues related to the economy and gasoline prices and so forth. E.J., you just heard, and by the way, senior economists for the Heritage Foundation, EJ, you just heard Donald Trump say that very soon gasoline will be back to $2.50 a gallon? Thumbs up, thumbs down. True, not true? What do you think? It depends on what you mean by soon. It's the best way to put it. Look, here's part of the problem. Although we have the Strait of Hormuz open and although oil is starting to flow and you're probably going to have production almost at pre-war levels, the issue is that the entire world has depleted their reserves. Here at home, for example, we have our strategic petroleum reserve run by the government, but we also have... private stockpiles run by the oil industry itself. And all of that has been seriously depleted in order to deal with the supply shock from the Iran War. And that's what prevented us, by the way, from getting to $200 a barrel oil. We flooded the world with supply from our stockpiles, from our reserves. Well, all those things have to be refilled now. So that represents a huge increase in demand, which is going to... essentially help keep prices a little higher. In other words, we're not going back down to $60 a barrel anytime soon, most likely. So one of the things that has been interesting, and you and I have spoken before about how the oil infrastructure in the Middle East has also been impacted and damaged. And so it's going to take a while for the Middle East, I guess, to get back to full production. Exactly, 100% right. Essentially, you're going to see because some of that oil infrastructure has been damaged or destroyed, it's going to need to be repaired or rebuilt, therefore. So what you're going to see is other oil infrastructure essentially have to operate at capacity in order to try to make up for that lost production elsewhere. But you're talking about infrastructure that was already operating near capacity.

So instead of, let's say, 90% now, it's at 100% of capacity. In other words, there's not much of a fudge factor there. There wasn't a lot of wiggle room to begin with. So production will still be down slightly, most likely coming out of the Middle East. And you're going to see production out of places like. here in the United States or Russia, South America, you're going to see those production levels try to go up a bit in order to counter that lost production, again, coming out of the Middle East. One of the things in E.J., you and I talked about this before, and I'm curious if there's been an update, but there were some. OPEC countries who said that they were going to start producing oil outside of OPEC with the hope that that would do something to help alleviate the production numbers and alleviate gas prices. So what have we seen? That was like a one or two-day story. They're not like disappeared. Has there been any kind of an update on these Middle Eastern countries as members of OPEC saying, you know what, we're going to go ahead and do our own thing outside of OPEC? Have we seen any movement on that? No, no further movement on that. And I think the reason why it was really only a story for 24 hours, part of that is just simply the fact that the news cycle with the Iran War has shifted from, look, it's not even a 24-hour news cycle anymore. It has shifted to a 24-second news cycle, right? You get a tweet that says one thing, and then a few minutes later, you get a tweet that says something totally different. And that's how you get these insane market swings. The Dow is up 1,000. It's down. thousand i mean it's just absolutely insane but that that sadly is is kind of where we're at today but the other part of the problem is the fact that you know opex still has a lot of pricing power and so a single member leaving is not going to break up the entire cartel. And then the other factor is what we started this conversation with, with the war ending, with the Strait of Hormuz opening back up, now the supply shock is replaced with a demand shock. There is now such a huge demand for more oil because everyone's trying to refill their reserves that essentially even if you don't have an OPEC cartel, the world can only produce so much oil at once right now, given our current infrastructure. And so, again, whether or not you have a cartel, the bigger factor is simply just the physical limitations on production right now. E.J. and Tony is joining us, senior economist for the Heritage Foundation. I should have followed up with you, and this may not be fair, but...

When I asked what you thought about Trump and saying $2.50 a gallon soon, we'll be paying, and you said it depends on what you mean by soon, do you actually have any kind of a prediction? I know that's probably unfair. Yeah, I mean, part of the difficulty, again, just goes back to the idea of this news cycle with Iran. It's just constantly changing. It genuinely depends on what happens in the Middle East. And unfortunately, as we have seen for the last four months or five months, it's just impossible to know that. So things have literally changed minute by minute. However, you know, let's say kind of a best case scenario, I think you're probably looking at a national average. below $3 early next year. Early next year. Okay. I would say very good, but the midterms are in November. So one of the other things, I guess we had, and I'm hearing conflicting stories, and you're right about the news cycle, man. It is just, I think it's every six hours, things are changing. But yesterday, at least I heard this morning, 69 vessels traveled through the Strait of Hormuz. Does that jive with what you know? And what was average before the war? And what needs to happen to have that full capacity going through the strait? Well, before the war, I mean, you would regularly get 120. So you're still way down from pre-war levels. And it is a bit annoying when people say things like, oh, this is the highest level we've seen in months. Okay, yeah, that's true. But you're talking about comparing right now to when the street was completely closed. And occasionally a ship would try to run the straight at night with its lights off and its transponder off. Like, you know, don't talk about more levels. Look at pre-war levels. That's the context you really need. When they talk about record numbers of ships going through the straight, that's very deceptive. Okay. traffic and volume. Jim Rome takes on sports. Part of what makes this show, the show within the show. The biggest topic on the show always seems to be the show itself. This is a way to give you clones a way to interact with one another. Yes, we will be going through the chat. Yes, it'll be a part of the program. The only thing that could ruin the show are the old school clones spitting up the same bull crap that they always have. The jungle is out taking names and ready to dominate. Let's get it. The Jim Rome Show podcast. Follow and listen on your favorite platform. It's still way, way down. I do think that's going to continue improving.

as we get greater clarity from both the United States and Iran in terms of what the rules are in the region and what the rules are for traffic going through the street. So fingers crossed, again, best case scenario, we can get back up to those pre-war levels relatively soon. In fact, I think there's actually a good chance, Dan, that you surpassed those pre-war levels because, again, there's going to be such a surge in demand. There already is. and there's going to be a huge desire to get more oil out of the region than normal. You have a lot of stockpiles that have been built up at different terminals within the Persian Gulf, and they stand ready, essentially, to dump a lot of oil into tankers. One of the things that has happened in the last couple of days, President Trump calling out Exxon and Chevron specifically for price gouging for not lowering their prices. Talk about the process of lower oil prices and what we pay at the pump. Because there's a lot of people that are hearing the stories of, okay, you know, Brent crude is lower and the, you know, all of that. But sometimes it doesn't match what we're seeing. at the pump where we go to buy our gas every day. Well, and some of that has to do with the fact that so often when we hear the price of oil being quoted in the news, very rarely are they actually talking about the price that refineries are paying today to get product in the door today to refine it today and turn it into gasoline and diesel and jet fuel today. Almost always the price you hear on the news is the futures. price. In other words, this is the price for a contract of oil that's going to close usually in a month or so. And then the oil does not get delivered for another month or two after that, depending on what we're talking about WTI or West Texas Intermediate or whether we're talking about Brent, which is more of a global benchmark than an American benchmark. But whatever the case. You know, those future markets, again, they are looking at the future. They are looking at the price of oil sometimes several months from now and what speculators think the price is going to be then to get oil in the door at a refinery. But that's not what refineries are paying today. And so even as those oil futures prices have gone down, as the price to get oil into the refinery today has remained high, that has meant that the refinery is passing those costs. onto consumers and ultimately that trickles down to higher prices at the pump. The other big problem is the fact that a lot of industry participants get squeezed on the way up. In other words, they don't actually get to pass on the full cost to consumers. A lot of those costs hit them before they can actually increase the price to whoever they're selling to, whether that's the distributor or the actual gas station or to you, the consumer. And so they make up for that on the back end by keeping prices higher for longer. But look, all you have to do to see are these people actually price gouging us is to look at the profit margins.

of these different market participants all throughout the supply chain. And you see they are nowhere near what the Democrats, for example, are criticizing them for having. They don't have these astronomical profit margins. In fact, they're profit margins when oil is swinging up and down. If you average it out, it's basically exactly the same as those years when oil prices are steady. Yeah, you know, we actually have, we have a text line here, and somebody was texting in earlier today, and I don't pay attention to profit margins and all of that, but they said that, well, you've got these oil companies that have this massive profit margin. Clearly, they are price gouging. When you talk about the profit margins and what they pay, what we pay at the pump, isn't part of that? where the oil companies, they have these refineries, they have to fire them back up again. They've got to shut them down. They've got to change from winter to summer. You know, all of these things are a part of that whole process of not only how much they make, but also what they don't make when times are a little tougher. Right. And another thing we have to consider, Dan, is the fact that during this whole episode with Iran, we have seen refineries in the United States regularly running at over 100% capacity. And they have been delaying maintenance. They have been doing all kinds of extraordinary measures that we now need to make up for. And what you're going to see, you've already seen it, but you're going to see more of it in the coming months. is refineries that are shutting down more than they normally would be at this time of year because they have to go back and do that maintenance. They have to go back and switch over in order to get the correct seasonal blends for summer to meet all kinds of government regulations. And all of these different things are going to mean that price increases that would have happened during the normal spring months are now going to have to happen during the summer. And one last thing I'll point out is the fact that the government is still making more on a gallon of gasoline than these refiners are. In other words, you pay so much in taxes between federal taxes, state taxes, etc., you are actually paying the government more on a gallon of gasoline than you do ExxonMobil or Chevron or whoever else. So before the politicians start criticizing the oil companies on making too much on a gallon of gasoline, they should look in the mirror. E.J., one of the things that Scott Bessent, Donald Trump, and the Trump administration are sort of banking on is they're lifting the sanctions on Iran, the sanctions on Iran. And what they're hoping for is that Iran will see the light and really enjoy making a lot more money selling oil on the open market, as opposed to having to deal with China and selling it to China sort of on the back channel, if you will. And so I guess my question would be, how much more money is Iran going to be able to get as they sell their oil on the open market without the sanctions?

Good, good question. Part of the reason why it's so good for us to actually have them on the level and not participating in a black market is then we can actually keep track of what they're doing, who they're selling to, how much for what price, et cetera. We don't necessarily have a great sense of that right now. I've seen estimates that say in their black market activities, Iran sells oil at a discount anywhere from 10% to 50%. So it's unclear. Is Iran going to be selling the oil for twice as much now? Or are they only going to be selling it for more like a 10% or 12% increase? That's unclear. So again, part of what's really good about getting them on the level is the fact that now we'll be able to actually observe a lot more of their financial activities. We'll be able to track a lot more of it. And the other thing. is the fact that, look, I'm a big believer that the more you have trade with different nations, the more peaceful your relations tend to be. That's just a historical fact. And it tends to be that before any two nations go to war with each other or that their diplomatic relations deteriorate, their economic relations deteriorate first. EJ, one of the things that you do is you write for the Daily Signal. You've got this story. The headline is Alaska's Senate wants to raise your cost of energy again. Talk a little bit about what is going on in Alaska. I guess the state senate there is preventing us from doing what we want to do to lower the cost of gas. Yeah, this is just the absolutely insane move. And it's actually something that the House, the Alaska House, has already rejected twice. It's something that the governor said he doesn't want industry participants, don't want it. Literally, nobody wants this. And yet the Senate just shoehorned it into a tax reform bill. They turned a tax reform into a tax hike. Basically, what this does is it targets certain types of corporations, what we call S-Corps as opposed to C-Corps. The C-Corps are the big oil companies like ExxonMobil. The S-Corps are very small companies. It's where you get passed through income, where the owner essentially just gets the income from the corporation. And S-Corps are designed to function like personal income. That's how the Congress structured the tax code. And now the Alaska Senate wants to basically create this new kind of carve-out, I guess, where this specific type of... of pass-through income and just in the oil industry is now going to be treated like the larger corporations even though that's not what they are it's basically a major tax increase on these small companies that have invested a lot of money in alaska that are planning on investing a lot more money in creating new infrastructure in bringing new energy online both for oil and natural gas That's going to help not just our domestic market, but it's going to allow us to export more. And it would mean that we make more money as a result. So it's lower prices here domestically. It's making more money by selling to the world, except all of that investment now is on the line. In other words, if this tax goes through, a lot of these companies are going to say, well, the heck with it, it's not worth it anymore because you're going to go from that income being tax free to that income being taxed.

quite heavily, actually having the fourth highest marginal tax rate in the country. So it's basically just going to kill all of that investment and prevent that new energy infrastructure from coming online, which in turn is going to prevent that new energy supply from coming online. It's just absolutely insane. I can't believe they're actually trying to put this into the bill you could find that on i'm assuming uh obviously in the daily signal but also at your social media which is how can people find you online uh that you can find me on the x platform and the handle there is at real e j antony From Taco Night in Tulum to Lume to sushi in Tokyo, everybody's rewarding and post-worthy with MX Gold's four-time membership rewards points at restaurants worldwide. Wherever you dine, points are piling up. So bring your friends along for your next course, because it's not all about the posts. It's about the company and the memories. How can Gold from MX sweeten your next food moment? Learn more at Americanexpress.com slash explore dash gold. Terms and points cap apply.