[Rush Lindell] Welcome back to the show.
[Rush Lindell] I'm sitting across from Reagan here,
[Rush Lindell] who keeps me honest,
[Rush Lindell] as always.
[Reagan] That's the job description.
[Rush Lindell] It is. We've got a stacked hour.
[Reagan] We do.
[Reagan] Trump called off the biggest strike plan in Pentagon history twice,
[Reagan] then turned around and called Tehran unbelievably duplicitous.
[Rush Lindell] Twice!
[Rush Lindell] You can't make this up.
[Rush Lindell] And Iran's over there saying we're not talking to Washington.
[Rush Lindell] We're talking to Oman about a shipping route.
[Reagan] Which raises a real question about who's actually driving this.
[Rush Lindell] Oh,
[Rush Lindell] we're going there.
[Rush Lindell] And we lost somebody who mattered today in that fight:
[Rush Lindell] Lindsey Graham,
[Rush Lindell] seventy one years old.
[Reagan] One of Israel's loudest defenders in that chamber.
[Reagan] We'll talk about what his voice meant and who fills that silence now.
[Rush Lindell] Plus two Senate votes on this war.
[Rush Lindell] One passed,
[Rush Lindell] one failed by a single vote.
[Rush Lindell] VOTE.
[Reagan] A one vote margin on a war-stick around for that math.
[Rush Lindell] That math-I like that.
[Rush Lindell] But first-this hour is brought to you by Lear Capital,
[Rush Lindell] America's Precious Metals Leader since Nineteen Ninety Seven.
[Reagan] All right-Iran,
[Reagan] whiplash and a straight answer on what's actually happening at Hormuz.
[Rush Lindell] Let's start there.
[Rush Lindell] Before we get into it, a quick reminder: We love hearing from you. If you have questions or topics you'd like us to cover,
[Rush Lindell] head to the link in the description and submit your question.
[Rush Lindell] We read every single one.
[Rush Lindell] Same strike package,
[Rush Lindell] called off twice in one week.
[Reagan] The one Trump says would have been the biggest attack since World War II?
[Rush Lindell] Biggest since World War II,
[Rush Lindell] and he pulls the trigger back not once,
[Rush Lindell] but Twice,
[Rush Lindell] because Saudi Arabia calls,
[Rush Lindell] the UAE calls,
[Rush Lindell] Qatar calls,
[Rush Lindell] and get this,
[Rush Lindell] Iran calls too.
[Reagan] According to Spokesmancom's reporting Sunday,
[Reagan] that's the exact.
[Reagan] Act Sequence:
[Reagan] "Gulf Allies Plus Tehran itself asking for the pause.
[Rush Lindell] And then Monday morning-boom!
[Rush Lindell] Truth Social-Iranian leadership is unbelievably duplicitous.
[Reagan] Rich,
[Reagan] considering he'd just done them a favor twenty four hours ago.
[Rush Lindell] I'm naming this thing the Snooze Button Strike-On Off,
[Rush Lindell] on off-somebody keeps hitting it every few days!
[Reagan] Laughing,
[Reagan] Write it down-you're bringing that back.
[Rush Lindell] Guarantee it!
[Reagan] But here's what breaks the tantrum story:
[Reagan] Iran's foreign ministry spokesman,
[Reagan] Baghaei,
[Reagan] went on record:
[Reagan] We are not currently negotiating with the United States.
[Rush Lindell] Only Oman.
[Reagan] Right,
[Reagan] a transit corridor through Hormuz. Not a peace deal.
[Reagan] Spokesmancom had that Monday flat denial.
[Reagan] Nothing with Washington.
[Rush Lindell] So who's lying?
[Reagan] Maybe neither.
[Reagan] Maybe they're describing two different rooms.
[Rush Lindell] Fair. CNN's live coverage into Tuesday has Trump saying he's under zero time pressure,
[Rush Lindell] calling this Iran's last chance before his word decapitation and claiming Hormuz reopens as phase one of some deal.
[Reagan] Decapitation and no rush,
[Reagan] same breath.
[Rush Lindell] Right.
[Reagan] That's a lot of temperature from a man who just stood the strike down.
[Rush Lindell] And Globalsecurity's Day 158 update backs it up.
[Rush Lindell] Up no U.S.
[Rush Lindell] strike inside Iran reported since August Fifth; fifth quiet night running.
[Reagan] So the guns are quiet; I'll give Riyadh,
[Reagan] Abu Dhabi and Doha this much; their tankers and pipelines sit right next to this.
[Reagan] Asking for restraint isn't weakness,
[Reagan] it's self preservation.
[Rush Lindell] Sure,
[Rush Lindell] but restraint toward what end?
[Rush Lindell] What's the actual American objective now?
[Rush Lindell] Last chance isn't a strategy.
[Reagan] Canceling a strike twice can be leverage.
[Reagan] It can also be a tell you never meant to pull it. The difference won't show up in a Truth Social post.
[Rush Lindell] Bait.
[Rush Lindell] It shows up at Hormuz.
[Reagan] Exactly. And if that strait doesn't move,
[Reagan] somebody's paying for the indecision.
[Reagan] Probably not in Washington.
[Rush Lindell] So where do you think that bill actually lands?
[Rush Lindell] Speaking of whiplash-the second Trump said the strikes were off,
[Rush Lindell] oil prices dropped instantly.
[Reagan] Which tells you the market's not pricing supply right now-it's pricing one man's mood.
[Rush Lindell] Crew,
[Rush Lindell] doing the electric slide every time he posts,
[Rush Lindell] I'm calling it the Mood Barrel.
[Reagan] Cute nickname,
[Reagan] but the mechanism's real:
[Reagan] traders are hedging Truth Social,
[Reagan] not tankers.
[Rush Lindell] And while that's happening,
[Rush Lindell] six Saudi-operated tankers just-
[Rush Lindell] just rerouted clean around Africa,
[Rush Lindell] dodging the Houthi blockade in the Red Sea.
[Reagan] That's two extra weeks per voyage,
[Reagan] minimum.
[Reagan] Fuel,
[Reagan] crew,
[Reagan] insurance-it all stacks fast.
[Rush Lindell] And get this:
[Reagan] Mm-hmm.
[Rush Lindell] GlobalSecurity's Day One Fifty Eight Update says another vessel,
[Rush Lindell] the Minoan Pioneer, took an unidentified projectile northeast of Khasab,
[Rush Lindell] lost power,
[Rush Lindell] fire aboard.
[Reagan] One crew member's missing-that's the human cost sitting underneath every barrel count.
[Rush Lindell] Reuters had Saudi Aramco CEO Amin Nasser putting an actual number on it:
[Rush Lindell] two point six billion barrels of crude knocked out of global supply since this thing started.
[Reagan] Worth taking seriously,
[Reagan] though a barrel count from one executive is one data point,
[Reagan] not the whole ledger.
[Reagan] Iran's held the strait since February twenty eighth.
[Reagan] And every day that continues ensures reprice the risk.
[Rush Lindell] Five months of that gets baked into freight,
[Rush Lindell] into premiums, into what you pay at the register.
[Rush Lindell] And nobody in Washington calls it a war cost!
[Reagan] They call it inflation-same math,
[Reagan] friendlier name.
[Rush Lindell] Which is exactly why when things get this shaky,
[Rush Lindell] people run toward something they can actually hold.
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[Reagan] Here's what you need to know:
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[Rush Lindell] And understand how rare that is—spot price doesn't even include
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[Rush Lindell] So if six tankers around Africa,
[Rush Lindell] one tanker hit,
[Rush Lindell] a crew member missing,
[Rush Lindell] and Iran still sitting on the Straits since February.
[Reagan] That's a war finding new routes.
[Reagan] It hasn't slowed down at all.
[Rush Lindell] And that's the receipt we should be checking against everything the show's predicted lately.
[Reagan] Which is exactly what we're about to do.
[Reagan] Building on that grocery bill,
[Reagan] let's grade ourselves,
[Reagan] Reagan; three weeks running I called this war winding down.
[Rush Lindell] Receipts,
[Rush Lindell] please.
[Rush Lindell] You don't get to declare victory on vibes.
[Reagan] (Fine.) Item one,
[Reagan] mediators:
[Reagan] Armand's carrying real weight on Hormuz transit deal,
[Reagan] and CNN reports Trump himself credits Persian Gulf allies for talking him off two separate strike orders this week.
[Rush Lindell] That part earns a passing grade.
[Rush Lindell] A Hormuz arrangement is closer than it was back in June-I'll give you that one clean.
[Reagan] Mm-hmm.
[Speaker 3] Thank you-see,
[Speaker 3] I told-
[Rush Lindell] Don't get comfortable,
[Rush Lindell] here's where you failed.
[Speaker 3] Go ahead,
[Speaker 3] dock me!
[Rush Lindell] You predicted a cease fire that holds,
[Rush Lindell] but that requires both sides to admit out loud they're talking,
[Rush Lindell] Iran's foreign ministry per CNN still insists it's only negotiating a transit route with Oman,
[Rush Lindell] not Washington,
[Rush Lindell] not a deal.
[Reagan] Tehran would rather eat glass than sate negotiation.
[Rush Lindell] Fair; and Global Security's day one fifty eight tracker confirms five straight nights with no US strike inside Iran which backs your pause instinct.
[Rush Lindell] Instinct isn't the same as the prediction you made.
[Reagan] So,
[Reagan] Partial credit?
[Rush Lindell] Partial credit.
[Rush Lindell] My rule for anyone grading a war from home:
[Rush Lindell] a prediction you can't check against something specific?
[Rush Lindell] Thick was never a forecast; it was a mood.
[Speaker 3] Brutal; fair though.
[Rush Lindell] I try.
[Speaker 3] Now flip that on its head-because nobody grades themselves on cable.
[Rush Lindell] Same panel,
[Rush Lindell] every network-zero memory from Sunday to Monday.
[Speaker 3] Oh,
[Speaker 3] we're doing that bit next?
[Speaker 3] Buckle up.
[Reagan] Sharply breaking now Iran deal imminent.
[Reagan] Countdown clock on screen.
[Reagan] Sixty days and counting.
[Speaker 4] It's been imminent since spring.
[Reagan] That's the bit; Sunday Chiron imminent,
[Reagan] Monday Unbelievably duplicitous,
[Reagan] Tuesday same for retired generals,
[Reagan] zero memory of Monday.
[Rush Lindell] I'm not doing the accents with you.
[Reagan] Sources tell us-sources always tell us.
[Rush Lindell] Rush.
[Reagan] Fine,
[Reagan] fine; but CNN ran imminent on this exact story again Sunday.
[Reagan] Same word,
[Reagan] different Sunday for months now.
[Speaker 4] And nobody's pulled the tape.
[Reagan] Not the Chiron?
[Speaker 4] The Chiron's cheap feeder-the problem is nobody on that panel gets asked why what they predicted in May never happened.
[Reagan] Yeah!
[Speaker 4] That question takes four minutes and it never airs.
[Reagan] Because the answer makes everybody look bad-including us.
[Rush Lindell] So the countdown that matters isn't on the deal,
[Rush Lindell] it's on how long before anyone in that business asks a second question.
[Reagan] Speaking of nobody following up,
[Reagan] there's a story Cable's already buried that we're not burying.
[Rush Lindell] Speaking of nobody following up,
[Rush Lindell] there's a story Cable's already buried that we're not burying.
[Reagan] LINDSEY GRAHAM
[Reagan] Building on that,
[Reagan] we need to slow down.
[Reagan] Quietly,
[Reagan] Lindsey Graham died Saturday night,
[Reagan] seventy one years old.
[Rush Lindell] The Senate's most relentless War Hawk,
[Rush Lindell] gone right as the war he championed reignited.
[Reagan] Al Jazeera reported his office said it was a brief and sudden illness,
[Reagan] and that he passed Saturday evening.
[Rush Lindell] CBS News reported the DC Medical Examiner's preliminary finding was an aortic dissection.
[Reagan] And ABC7 Los Angeles noted he'd just gotten back from Ukraine.
[Reagan] One day before he was scheduled on Meet the Press!
[Rush Lindell] He was going to defend this war on camera; that interview doesn't happen now.
[Speaker 3] The one thing I keep sitting with,
[Speaker 3] Reagan,
[Speaker 3] whatever you thought of the man's position,
[Speaker 3] he showed up,
[Speaker 3] put his name on it,
[Speaker 3] out loud,
[Speaker 3] every week.
[Rush Lindell] Compare that to right now-who in the Senate is standing in front of a camera defending or restraining this war on record?
[Speaker 3] Nobody.
[Speaker 3] Silence!
[Rush Lindell] I'll give both sides their due:
[Rush Lindell] the case for him,
[Rush Lindell] hawkishness needs someone willing to own it,
[Rush Lindell] not hide behind a committee vote;
[Speaker 3] Right.
[Rush Lindell] the case against,
[Rush Lindell] maybe the party had a
[Rush Lindell] He had already drifted toward restraint before he died,
[Rush Lindell] and he was the last man arguing a position his own base was leaving behind.
[Reagan] So which is it-a messenger they lost or a message they'd already dropped?
[Rush Lindell] I don't know yet,
[Rush Lindell] but cables barely touched this connection; the loudest voice for this specific war gone mid war.
[Rush Lindell] That's not an accident of coverage.
[Reagan] That's discomfort.
[Rush Lindell] Discomfort with what?
[Reagan] with asking who's left to answer for it. And that question doesn't wait for cable to
[Rush Lindell] It lands in Congress's lap,
[Rush Lindell] on paper,
[Rush Lindell] in actual votes.
[Reagan] votes that already happened and votes that are about to.
[Speaker 3] So the numbers here matter.
[Speaker 3] Congress actually did something in June:
[Speaker 3] the Senate passed a War Powers resolution,
[Speaker 3] fifty to forty eight,
[Speaker 3] the first time both chambers landed on the same side,
[Speaker 3] all war.
[Speaker 3] Crossover votes,
[Speaker 3] right?
[Speaker 3] For Republicans,
[Speaker 3] Cassidy,
[Speaker 3] Collins,
[Speaker 3] Paul,
[Speaker 3] and Murkowski broke with the president.
[Speaker 3] Al Jazeera called it a rare rebuke to Trump.
[Speaker 3] And the White House's response?
[Speaker 3] Told CNN the resolution carries no force of law.
[Speaker 3] So it passed and nothing changed.
[Speaker 3] Symbolic, my favorite word in this town." Then July thirtieth a follow-up vote fails fifty to forty nine.
[Speaker 3] The Washington Post called it the second such failure in two weeks.
[Speaker 3] Two in a row?
[Speaker 3] Two in a row." And NPR cited Pentagon figures while that vote sat on the floor:
[Speaker 3] eighteen U.S. troop deaths since February,
[Speaker 3] roughly five hundred wounded.
[Reagan] My problem is,
[Reagan] Congress wants credit for opposing this war without owning what stopping it would cost; fair enough,
[Reagan] but a losing vote still lands on the record,
[Reagan] compare that to silence.
[Reagan] So we've gone from the strike Trump can't stop canceling to a Senate that
[Rush Lindell] It can't decide,
[Rush Lindell] either.
[Rush Lindell] Article One gives Congress the war power,
[Rush Lindell] using it symbolically still counts as exercising it.
[Reagan] Right.
[Rush Lindell] That's the parallel; a Congress that won't authorize this war and won't stop it is choosing to watch from the sideline three months before an election.
[Rush Lindell] Bystander government has a ring to it.
[Rush Lindell] Unflattering.
[Rush Lindell] Also accurate.
[Rush Lindell] At least somebody's keeping score.
[Speaker 3] Shifting away from Capitol Hill,
[Speaker 3] while every camera's locked on Hormuz,
[Speaker 3] CBS reported a seventh round of Lebanon-Israel talks just opened in Rome,
[Speaker 3] US-mediated,
[Speaker 3] barely a mention anywhere.
[Speaker 4] Seventh round—nobody's covering the process,
[Speaker 4] only the flash point.
[Speaker 3] Exactly—and it matters because attention's are resource.
[Speaker 3] Adversaries watching us are counting how long we can stare at one door.
[Speaker 4] I'd frame that as a question not a
[Speaker 5] reply.
[Speaker 4] Not a verdict.
[Speaker 4] Are Beijing and capitals in Latin America actually testing how thin our munition stocks run on a second front?
[Speaker 4] We don't have hard evidence yet,
[Speaker 4] just a real question worth asking.
[Speaker 3] Fair,
[Speaker 3] but capacity questions don't wait for proof; that's the whole point of asking them now.
[Speaker 4] Agreed so what would move me three things by next week?
[Speaker 3] Go!
[Speaker 4] one Does commercial traffic actually move through Hormuz again,
[Speaker 4] insurers included?
[Speaker 4] two Does anyone in Tehran say the word 'negotiation'
[Speaker 4] out loud,
[Speaker 4] not 'transit route'
[Speaker 4] or 'Oman'
[Speaker 4] as a proxy?
[Speaker 4] three Does the Senate schedule another war powers vote before midterms or did July thirtieth kill the appetite for good?
[Speaker 3] I'll put my name on all three.
[Speaker 3] Traffic
[Speaker 5] -
[Speaker 3] Traffic moves partial by Friday,
[Speaker 3] Tehran holds the line,
[Speaker 3] no negotiation,
[Speaker 3] not this month,
[Speaker 3] and the Senate sits on its hands till September.
[Speaker 4] Bold.
[Speaker 4] Write it down.
[Speaker 3] I always do-hold me to it next week-that's the deal.
[Speaker 4] We will.
[Speaker 4] Rome's quiet talks might end up mattering more than Hormuz ever does.
[Rush Lindell] So that's the show-trumpeting Snooze Button Strike again,
[Rush Lindell] Reagan?
[Speaker 4] The Snooze Button Strike stole my favorite nickname of the year.
[Rush Lindell] Damn right; and the real headline underneath all that noise-
[Speaker 4] Is We Lost Lindsey Graham This Week Seventy-one years old.
[Speaker 4] Gone just like that.
[Rush Lindell] Yeah,
[Rush Lindell] whatever you thought of the man,
[Rush Lindell] he never hid from a camera on this war.
[Speaker 4] That's the piece missing now-someone on record willing to be wrong.
[Speaker 4] Wrong in public.
[Rush Lindell] Which is exactly why you keep listening to us; we're not hiding either.
[Speaker 4] If you liked what you heard,
[Speaker 4] subscribe,
[Speaker 4] leave us five stars,
[Speaker 4] tell a friend.
[Rush Lindell] New episodes every weekday.
[Rush Lindell] We'll be tracking Hormuz,
[Rush Lindell] the War Powers Fight,
[Rush Lindell] all of it.
[Speaker 4] Thanks for spending the hour with us.
[Rush Lindell] Go live your life.
[Rush Lindell] We'll handle the outrage.
[Rush Lindell] See you tomorrow.
[Rush Lindell] And I'll see you next time.