UNCONDITIONAL MEANS UNCONDITIONAL … OR DOES IT?

Segment 1: Unconditional Surrender — Then vs.

0:10 In a world where every word comes padded, approved, and carefully curated, one show has misplaced the rule book. Safe spaces have been converted to storage here, and anyone saying at the end of the day will be required to explain what they did with the rest of it. Leave us a note support the show or just go shopping at dot G and the discusses calm This is dot G and the discussions on the sabbatical the doctor is the end in studio today is Sarah and the professor is on the line along with Orville although you know last show Orville was quite active and he seems to be a little quieter now.

1:17 He's grooming himself right now he'll be back. I see well he may be back and you know he wants to look sharp. We're so used to him now that I think I'd miss him if you weren't here. And, you know, now that we've violated our own rules about emotional support animals, I don't know why we don't come in with baby goats and chickens. Hey, baby goats are cute. Maybe some kittens. I think I want one. I'm still trying to find a rule book I misplaced. Well, I can't find it. I can't find it. I don't think we need it.

1:51 Maybe we do, because we violated rules within the first two weeks. Hey, whatever. They're made to be broken. Well, what's going on today? Today the subject is have we won this war I was told we did I'm told there is I was told several times there was not but I guess it's still hanging around out there I don't know what they're calling it today. I know I can't call it a war because they'll have to declare it sometime and so you know they're they're walking around that some days it's kind of a war and then they'll catch themselves and walk back and you know then they'll you know they have very tight time deadlines about deadlines about how long it can be out there before they call it a war and they're they're skirting these things very well but you know in a serious vein it's a problem.

2:55 The President didn't sell this war as a long, ambiguous struggle that would end with the United States bargaining over shipping routes or the Strait of Hormuz. Early in the war, he drew a much harder line. He said there would be no deal with Iran except for unconditional surrender. That was about three days in, I believe, about March 6, that that's how this thing would end. And I, at that time, was fully on board because that's how I think American policy should be conducted. In fact, if we get into a time machine, I think we could go back and maybe talk with the president a little bit about that.

3:41 Let's see. Somebody said, how would you score it from 0 to 10? I said I'd give it a 12 to a 15. Adding a bit later. Right now, we're a country that's more respected than we've ever been respected before. Earlier, Donald Trump delivering a blunt message on social media. There will be no deal with Iran except unconditional surrender, he wrote, adding, after the selection of a great and acceptable leader, Iran will have a great future, make Iran great again. on the term unconditional surrender, said his press secretary.

4:16 What the president means is that when he as commander in chief of the U .S. Armed Forces determines that Iran no longer poses a threat to the United States of America and the goals of Operation Epic Fury has been fully realized, then Iran will essentially be in a place of unconditional surrender. President Trump still says that a deal with Iran to reopen the strait could be reached very soon, as soon as this week. Iran's parliament speaker, though, continues to mock Trump on social media. Mohammed Bagher Golubov posted on X, quote, massive attack coming.

4:51 Wait, never mind. They want to negotiate. That's theater diplomacy on loop using bullying and broken promises and fake news as leverage is a failed strategy. Acknowledge the facts and fulfill your commitments. We don't need more theater. This comes as President Trump fired back, speaking to a crowd. crowd on Thursday. Take a listen. I'd rather make a deal. Because I don't want to kill people. I do not want to kill people, but at some point we're going to. We had we were we were set for the biggest attack.

5:25 Of any attack and we've hit him very hard for the last few months. So the first cut was of course from around March 6 unconditional surrender. The last cut from today. So apparently we are still in this war. And what is so striking to me is that the Iranians seem to enjoy playing with him. They seem to enjoy mocking him. And they're on the verge of some kind of win here. So five months later, Iran has not unconditionally surrendered. That's clear. Instead, the United States is looking for an agreement at one time, an MOU.

6:07 Whatever yeah, whatever the hell that was Iran is bargaining over Hormuz and the war is still affecting oil and gasoline prices and Trump is saying he thinks it will end pretty soon. So Here's an opening question. So how did we get from unconditional surrender discussants? To what happened to the campaign promise and Donald Trump was not going to stop wars rather than start them and this is let me just say this all right let me just say this this ain't no party this ain't no disco this ain't no fooling around okay there you go well i appreciate that mr burn uh it isn't no party it certainly isn't a disco and and i don't mean to make light of this at all because we're talking about many many deaths not that many on our side at this point but still every american swords is a precious thing But I would suspect that a lot of carnage inside Iran.

7:12 And so, you know, less than a week into the war, President Trump, appearing alongside Pete Hegseth, wrote that there would be no deal with Iran except for unconditional surrender, as we saw a little earlier. The White House was also describing extremely broad war aims to destroy Iran's missile capability, still have missiles. Annihilate its Navy. That might be gone. It might be at this time. It seemed like they had a problem the other day, though. It seemed like it would have to originate from a naval vessel.

7:49 Prevent it from rebuilding a nuclear program. Sever support for proxies and leave Iran unable to threaten the United States. I don't know that it can really threaten us, but I don't know. Seems like they're still hanging around. So those words matter because they establish the president's own standard. Unconditional surrender does not ordinarily mean that both sides spend five months fighting and then negotiate a compromise over sanctions and shipping security and who controls the traffic through an international waterway.

8:24 Why is that even on the table? I don't think it should be on the table. And neither does Mike Pompeo, neither does several generals who've been interviewed that this is an automatic win for the Iranians, but I think it's coming up against the midterm elections, and so maybe that's why it is. Should not matter. Trump said it would not matter. It seems to matter. If the standard was unconditional surrender, we should. ask whether the standard changed, and if it did, why? That's what we're asking here.

8:56 So where are we now? Iran has not surrendered unconditionally as of August. What is this today? We better not say because, you know, this show comes out a couple days later. Negotiations are still underway. And while important disputes remain over tolls, sanctions, insurance, and security, Trump said August 6th that he thinks that war will end pretty soon. Gosh, we've been given a lot of that pretty soon. We're going to open it up today. We're going to open up tomorrow. So I think he says that every two weeks.

9:26 And I do think that there is a real reason why he does that that is helpful to things, which I think we'll get into in just a second. But so was unconditional surrender ever a realistic war aim? Was it? And if it wasn't, what's he doing enunciating? Then was it? negotiating rhetoric rather than literal condition, or if so, should a president use language that absolute when Americans are being asked to support a war? And if a final agreement leaves Iran bargaining power and some authority over Hormuz whatsoever, can that reasonably be described as the unconditional surrender originally demanded?

10:10 My position here is no on that. Sarah?

10:17 Hormones? Any one of those questions? What's your feeling? If they start with those traits of hormones, where does it stop? I mean, what's next? What do you mean, where does it stop? In particular, what part of it? Where are they going to exact tolls from next? Who else is going to take control of another waterway? That's exactly right. Or what country is going to decide they're going to assert control over it. I can see that the Chinese would immediately assert control between, what is it, the China Sea between them and Taiwan.

10:56 Why wouldn't they? Because the Houthis basically asserted some control over a waterway. It's being allowed. you know, started a war that we declared victory over. And the other side has now seems to be realizing a new revenue stream. Right. Is that fair? Yeah. Let's go to the professor. Professor, you are a supporter of this president, have been since word go. I'm going to be honest and say that, you know, I am too. You know, between takes. I think that as a professor and I have talked many times, I think that he caused himself a lot of trouble with unforced errors, which frustrate me.

11:46 But what do you think? I just wish Donnie Jay would wrap this up. I mean, it seems like he wasn't aware of what he was dealing with at the outset. I mean, no one, as Sarah was saying, in other words, or the result of. Nobody should have any control over these waterways, period, if they're used by the world for trade and fuel and shipping and all that. Wrap it up, Don. Wrap it up. Go over there. I don't know. He's in a bad position. If he sends in troops, then he's broken a lot of his campaign promises.

12:23 If he doesn't, then he's going to get wrapped up at all. I don't know. You tell us, Doc. Do you think he was just misinformed? Well, I think that that's something that maybe we ought to explore a little bit. And again, we're not there. We're not inside the White House. And presidents come under a tremendous amount of pressure. I'm going to say that I think that Donald Trump, for as blusterous as he can be, I think that maybe he came into the job. Well, he was in the job, out for four years. He saw what it was like.

13:01 I'm reluctant to call it naive in some ways, but in other ways it seems like that's exactly what's happened here. It does, and so when we come back we'll look into that a little bit. At the intersection of policy, politics, and culture on the World Wide Web, the Doctor is in. Doc G and the Discussants.

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Segment 2: Campaign Promises, War & the Israe

16:55 to return to a subject we promised the listening audience that we would return to, and that was the professor's question at the end of the last installment where he asked in terms of Israel's, Israelites and the Jewish people, and why is it so popular these days to hate them? I guess I'll let you restate the question. My contention was, it seems like these demon rats are calling the conservatives Nazis, and yet the demon rats are acting just like Hitler and his group. They both hate Jews. So it seems like the demon rats are more Nazi -istic than we, the conservatives.

17:43 I just think it's some kind of hypocrisy that I can't stand, but of course, that applies to about everything in the demon rat realm, communist branch or wing or otherwise. I just, I've got to be careful because I just, the whole thing, as I said, they seem like a disease on the United States, but perhaps, Doc, you could explain this thing about how they can call conservatives Nazis, and that seems to put them right in the position of Hitler, who was calling the Jews Nazis. Explain that one! been a lot of talk about rhetoric and what it's costing the country in terms of violence.

18:21 We've seen a few attempts, a few attempts on the president's life. And this use of the word Nazi is above and beyond for certain. And, you know, commentators, political folk on both sides of the aisle have said, we've got to cool this down a little bit, but yet it doesn't cool down. Then when we get back to this idea that the leftists hating or disliking Jewish people, I think there is some, I think there's some difference between a dislike of Israeli policy and dislike of Jews. I think it's easy for the right to say, well, it's anti -Semitism if you're against Jewish policy, or to describe it that way to get political points.

19:21 On the other side, I'm quite sure it extends beyond a hatred policy. So it's a bad situation for certain, but I think it goes to a place where we see this critical theory taking hold where The United States is always the culprit. No matter what the United States says, somebody else is the loser in the equation when it comes to the United States and how it deals with other people. There's my email. That is annoying. We heard that the other night, and I promised that I would get rid of that, and somehow that didn't happen.

20:01 It seems like when we were growing up, we played cowboys and Indians, which I am quite sure is completely politically inappropriate now, but we rooted for the cowboys to win. Some of these generations first, I don't know whether they're playing that game anymore, and if they do, I'm quite sure they're rooting for the Indians. And I think that these sort of things translate to whatever position the United States takes if the other side couches it in terms of their agreed or their downtrodden, they're under the thumb of the empire, well then I think there's a couple of generations that automatically then put their selves on that side of the equation.

20:50 Now, conjecture again, but if theory serves, we've seen a lot of socialization to that effect where, you know, we're talking about, again, Billie Eilish from a show before. talking about, you know, we're all on stolen land, but yet when we ask her to give hers back, she doesn't really have very much to say. So that's sort of how I want to couch it and that I don't think there's a whole lot of thought given to it, except here's a population that seems to be downtrodden, a lack of basic understanding of history and what's going on in the world.

21:27 And then the fomentation of those things by outside actors, including our enemies that are financing these movements. So you know, some serious things sort of intersecting, which was not part of our discussion. So but we promised we promised we might take a look at it, I guess. I've said all I have to say on that. I think it's unfortunate. And I think that Israel has been our most important ally in the Middle East. And just not very long after the United States was attacked, for which we have a gentleman named Piker and others who have said we deserved, it's a little hard to believe at this point, but it is certainly going on.

22:21 Gosh, man, that took some air out of the room, didn't it? When we were into a discussion that was kind of important. So before the first bomb fell, candidate Trump told voters he was going to stop wars, not start them. That's where we left. During the 24 campaign, and again in his victory speech, Trump repeatedly presented himself as a candidate who would keep America out of new wars. After winning, he said, I'm not going to start a war. I'm going to stop wars. That was not a minor line buried somewhere in a policy paper.

22:55 It was central to the political identity offered voters America first, peace through strength, and an end to the endless war habits of Washington. He also repeatedly promised that he could settle the Russia -Ukraine war within 24 hours. Now that I would laugh at audibly. when he was saying it during the campaign that he would get a hold of this thing and it would be over with in 24 hours if only he were in charge. Did I not, Sarah? Over and over again. I said he's gonna wish that he hadn't said that.

23:30 It's been a lot more than 24 hours. And the way he treated Zelinsky I will never forgive him for. That was beyond the pale in the overall office. He and his little buddy. You have no cards to play. Yeah, that was he turned out. He did quite a few and played them very well. So they are now giving supposedly. Yeah, some lessons in drone warfare, and they have really taken it to Russia in that they're now conducting attacks in. Moscow with our aid, a lot of aid from us, and that's to be sure, but I really didn't like the way he was treated in the Oval Office.

24:21 I don't even know, what was the point? I'm not sure what the point of all that was. Well again, we were talking a little bit about maybe some naivete, and I guess that was just how it struck me that he wanted that war over with. I think he was you know, frustrated that his friend, that the guy he thought was his friend, Putin, wouldn't just do that for him. And so then I think he took it out on the other side, sort of, and like, how are we going to get this thing settled? And I think it all sort of spun out of control.

24:55 So when NBC later confronted Trump with the contradiction between the Iran war and no new wars, Trump responded, I didn't guarantee no war. I don't know. But I think he kind of did guarantee no war. And I am not. I'm not one of the among those who are holding his feet to the fire there. A president needs to be able to maneuver and maneuver quickly. The Constitution made sure that he could maneuver quickly. But I think it was probably a little naive to think that he could keep at it. And here's what's happened.

25:35 as a result of some of these promises sort of unkept. He was going to cut our energy bills in half. Electricity's up 18%. He said gas prices would go below two bucks a gallon. It's up to four bucks a gallon. He said he was going to stop new wars. He's bombed at least seven other countries. He said he was going to lead a blooming manufacturing jobs. We've lost tens of thousands of manufacturing jobs. They said they would be saying Merry Christmas again. No one's wished me Merry Christmas in my life.

25:59 I don't think anybody's wished me that, of course, John Stewart and John Stewart has been on a rampage lately about, you know, unkept promises. Some of his closest allies have had some problems as well. People like Tucker Carlson, Candace Owens, you know, people who are kind of finding themselves outside the warm embrace of MAGA world now because they have noted the inconsistencies and the minute they do, of course, they're all sort of. shown the door for a little while. I don't think they'll stay in the hinterland forever, but...

26:34 Did this not start with two things? One, Iran has said repeatedly, death to the United States. And number two, Iran was getting perilously close to being able to enact that, perilously close to a nuclear warhead and a missile to deliver it. the combination of those two things. So, what, should we just let that go? Should we wait until there's a missile on its way to the U .S. before we take action? I feel kind of bad for Donny J. in that regard. I mean, he can't let it get to that point. And yet, if somebody's not capable of any kind of abstract thinking at all, he might think, well, what the hell is Donny J. doing getting us into a new war?

27:16 Well, hey, you want to wait until the missiles are on the way? Yeah, I think that that's my feeling about it as well. But as we said when we sort of got into the show, I think it sort of signaled some naivete on part of the president as well. But it could have just as easily been a campaign promise that he never really intended to hold himself to and he thought it would play well with the public and it did in fact play well. We're about up against it again. I don't know where these segments go to, but they just seem to burn away.

27:54 There's so much burn and they're so informative. That's where they go. It must be that, or it must be simply that the time elapses and it's time to get into a sponsor. We'll be back. At the intersection of policy, politics, and culture, you're on sabbatical with Doc G and the Discussants. To contact the program or email your favorite discussant, write to docgshostudio at gmail .com. Snakes, zombies, public speaking, the list of fears is endless. But the real danger is in your hand when you're behind the wheel.

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Segment 3: Gas Prices, Oil Companies & Trump’

31:30 Doctor is in. the discussants we're gonna have to get rid of that promo I guess because seems like you can't get into this studio unless you do have a emotional support animal that's embarrassing to say the least so where were we as the war collides with another Trump promise voters can measure without knowing anything about foreign policy they can read the price tag on these gas pump that's for certain again the professor and I doing a little work in the studio last night. And I was noting during the previous administration, there were lots of stickers of Mr. Biden pointing to the price on the pump and saying, I did that, which we always found entertaining.

32:23 And I said, yeah, that's right. He certainly did. Did Sarah say that now there are stickers where Trump did it? Yeah. That's what I was getting at. So Sarah today sees. Yeah, I saw the stickers. Yeah, where it says with Trump. I did that. Yeah. So we're starting to see the Trump stickers, but I did that. And guess what? Yet again, I'm basically in total agreement that we're now paying higher gas prices because of this situation that probably we're going to see. We're going to we're going to see just a disappointment from a large they'll be a knee -jerk reaction and they'll put in some left -wing commie without realizing that things will get a whole lot worse than they are right now.

33:11 Yeah, I think that that's about right. You know, gas prices are a big deal and it is always a problem that if I'm going into an election with high gas prices and especially when they can tie it directly to a policy. I think it may be a bigger problem, but getting back to what Tom said about why did we get in this war in the first place? We didn't want a nuclear Iran. We certainly didn't want them to have a nuclear weapon. The president drew a line and then went to enforce that line. That was Operation Epic Fury, which was what a year prior that was supposed to have obliterated their ability, which I'm just going to say it.

33:55 Midnight hammer. Midnight hammer. Yeah, right. Yep. Thanks for the correction. I was lied to about that, too. Wasn't obliterated. And then we had to obliterate it yet again. And we still don't know what's there. We don't we don't seem to know. And I contend that there's no way we will know without boots on the ground. I think we are at a place now where in order to tie this thing up. we're going to have to have boots on the ground. And I don't think anyone wants to do that. So short of that, I think we're looking at a limited, certainly a limited victory, limited something for the Iranians, because they will have taken the worst that we could give them without showing them troops.

34:39 And they appear to be ready to survive this. So just as food for thought here The Iran war and the uncertainty over the Strait of Hormuz have become major risk to global energy supplies Roughly a fifth of the world's oil oil all if I said all I'd have no trouble with that normally moves through the Restricted traffic military risk shipping costs and insurance all feed into the price of of gas So Trump has criticized And this got my attention as well. He criticized the other day ExxonMobil in Chevron saying that their companies were making too much money from high prices and the oil companies can certainly make extraordinary profits when crude prices rise.

35:35 But that does not answer the casual question, did crude prices and the risks surrounding its transportation rise? Well, it certainly did. That made me wonder what his critics might do with that and sort of came up with this.

36:14 Yeah, so I'm to understand that some of these can go pretty high. So here's a guy that's saying someone else is making a little too much money. Now, some of these watches can go for $10 ,000 and more. Really? Yes. They're extremely expensive and there he sits. Hey, you can't make... I want to know who buys them. Well, I can't imagine who that might be. I guess I can. I'm going to leave that opinion to myself. But I want to note that a lot of these deals that he makes are with third parties. They buy the licensing rights, and they sort of put the pricing on these things.

36:58 But first, this is a favorite tactic of the left to say, that it's capitalism, it's these greedy oil companies that's causing you this pain at the pump. And to that, the right says, well, if you would increase supply, we wouldn't have this pain in the pump. So it's your policies that have caused it. You're not going to get off that easy. It's not the oil companies, it's your policies that have done this. Out comes Donald Trump with the same sort of reasoning. Oh, now, you know, they're gouging us.

37:32 That tells me, again, conjecture, that we're getting a little desperate in the White House to explain why people are paying gas prices as high as they are. I voted proudly with the expectation I was going to pay about $1 .85 per gallon, was looking forward to it. And if we don't win the midterms, I think I can probably look forward to $4 and $5 gas for the foreseeable future. Professor? Professor weigh in on that the Trump watch have you do you buy a Trump watch? How many do you own? Yeah, how many do you own?

38:10 Well, I have two on order one for a backup in case the primary fails Do you don't have Trump sneakers, you know how much those costs when they came out 300 bucks Mr. Somebody's making a little too much money around here. I couldn't believe he said it. I think it was one of those things that just sort of came out of his mouth. Which happens, if you noticed, one of the actualities I played very early on, Carolyn Levitt had to run out and after he said unconditional surrender, and then define what that meant after a few hours, because somebody walked in and said, Mr. President, unconditional surrender, I think the last time we used that was Harry Truman with Japan.

39:11 And we end up bombing them with a nuclear weapon. So I don't know, we might want to clean that one up a little bit. Same thing with the oil companies, with a president who's had them in the Oval Office many times and praised them, which I think is completely appropriate. They are instrumental to the company's well -being. But I thought it was a desperate move. Sarah, you think? What do you think? What do you think of this? I don't know. I lost track of where we were. You lost track of the company?

39:45 Hey! There's a real, now there's a promo for Doc G and the Discussants right there. I'm sorry, one of the Discussants. I like it, I like it. One of the Discussants themselves have lost interest in the show. The show was so interesting that I lost track. So the show was so compelling that a Discussant. I was researching shoes. Researching shoes while we were, while I was. I love shoes. Well great. Well let's go to the professor then, maybe he can pull this thing out of the fire. Sure, I think we should start playing classic rock here on the sink I Wish we could play you know that's the subject for a show.

40:23 I'd like to do coming up how much time we spent The professor and I spent a long long time in classic. I hate to use that word rock radio radio stations spinning tunes Through the decades for the great groups And now I can't touch it. Can't touch it with a 10 -foot pole or risk a lawsuit from the people I formerly used to promote all the time, have them in for interviews, those sorts of things. We can't, we better not do that or... Well, all you gotta do is elect, just elect Abdul El -Sayed. It's Sayed, and if you can't get that straight, Professor, please keep his name out of your mouth.

41:08 It is Abdul El -Sayed. So how do you think that the election of Mr. Said might help us in our quest to play some classic rock around here? Well, he's going to make the nation free. Well, I doubt that he's going to free us from the clutches of Mick Jagger if we decide to play sympathy for the devil. God help us. Well, just food for thought, you know, here's Mr. I don't mind making money. I looked in to see how much it would cost me to play around the golf at Trump Doral. 400 bucks on average for one round.

41:59 Well, that's a lot cheaper than I thought it would cost. A lot cheaper. I can't believe it. Yeah. Well, I thought it was not exactly a bargain. You know, I thought that That might be a little beyond the pale as well. I thought it'd be $1400, not $400. So we're just about to the end of another segment. Coming back, no new wars, energy prices cut in half, unconditional surrender. Five months later, we are negotiating with Iran over Hormuz. And how does this end and what counts as success now? When we come back, we'll take a look at those things and see if we see any way out of this thing.

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46:12 Questions for a discussant? DocGShowStudio at gmail .com. So here we are at the last segment

Segment 4: How Does This End — What Counts

46:23 of this installment of DocG and the discussions on sabbatical. So just as a setup for the last segment, there is the original promises that were made. and the present reality that has finally come to pass. The administration certainly doesn't need to achieve every rhetorical flourish ever uttered during a war. That's, you know, an unattainable standard. But if we are going to evaluate the outcome honestly, we ought to compare it with the standards the president himself established earlier coming into this thing.

47:05 The first one was unconditional surrender. Iran has not unconditionally surrendered. That's obvious. In fact, they seem to be mocking him in negotiations. And if this war ends through a negotiated agreement, what did the United States obtain and what did Iran retain? Here's another standard. The war aims. Has Iran's missile capability been destroyed? Is their Navy actually effectively neutralized? Can it rebuild its nuclear program? Has support for the proxies been severed? Those were among the administration's stated objectives and final judgment should be made objective by objective rather than from the word victory.

47:53 Now, this one's one of the stickiest for me, the Strait of Hormuz. This was completely predictable and I blame, I blame the president, but I also blame his advisors. That was foreseeable. That was the only real card they had to play and they played it. And they've continued to play it. We haven't taken it from them. And that is something that should have been done. It should have been dealt with before this was launched. And I'm not so sure a head or two shouldn't roll over that. So is the strait generally open to normal commercial navigation without the Iranian tolls or unacceptable Iranian control?

48:32 If Iran emerges from this war with recognized leverage over passage, how does that compare with the administration's original objectives? I would say not very well. The cost of living, which is now a huge political point in the campaigns. Trump promised sharply lower energy costs. The war has instead exposed Americans to an oil shock and higher gasoline prices now for quite some time. Even if those prices eventually fall, what does the episode say about the claim that American energy dominance could insulate customers and consumers from geopolitical events?

49:13 I don't know that anyone should believe that, at least not on its face anymore. So what's the administration's best case? At least This is how I see it. The strongest case for Trump is the campaign promises are subordinate now to national security. Iran presented a threat and had to be confronted. U .S. force severely degraded Iranian military and nuclear capabilities, and negotiations are occurring only because military action created leverage. Under that interpretation, abandoning the phrase unconditional surrender would be pragmatic.

49:51 and not necessarily defeat. So my final thought here, or maybe it won't be, much to your guys' chagrin, I'm sure, but presidents do not get to choose every circumstance they inherit or encounter. They do, however, choose the promises they make and the standards they set. In this case, I'm afraid President Trump set unusually clear ones. that gave us all an usually clear way to judge what happened next. So, let's find out what the discussants think. Sarah, where are you at on this now? Or did you go to sleep again?

50:35 Well, I tried. You know, campaign promises are a thing that's always going to be a thing. This is going to happen. And I remember when Trump was running this last time, my granddaughter at one time, we had drove to McDonald's and the price was kind of expensive. And she's like, that won't happen. Trump's gonna be elected again. And this was a ten year old girl and this was her processing of Trump being president again and prices being reduced. And now none of that is happening. I think I even told you at the time, I hope Trump realizes what this means to people.

51:20 And when I'm saying people, I was talking to my 10 year old granddaughter. But their campaign promises, I don't know that people take them to heart because anybody that I've talked to about the conflict now, nobody is necessarily that I am familiar with. is necessarily opposed to it. The gas prices are a cost of that. And most people accept that. Yeah. I think that supporters are taking it in stride as much as possible. But it does touch everything. It touches everything. It touches trucking. It touches the cost of production of everything.

52:08 It does feed into inflation. I think the last figure I saw was around two and a half percent, which is a godsend in this particular situation. So I don't think we're paying the price that maybe we would pay otherwise. And that may be previous production increases sort of helping us through this thing. But they're not sub -tooth at $2 gas. And if the irradiates are allowed to emerge from this thing, one, with an intact nuclear program, And two, with any kind of control over the Strait of Hormuz, I would say that the world will judge, and I believe correctly, that they've won this conflict with the United States.

52:53 Professor? I want to know how that's happening with the gay Ayatollah. I know nothing about that. I mean, absolutely nothing. I'm sorry. I'm just curious. If someone else knows, I'm just curious. Who knows about this? I don't know about this. Is this in fact true? I don't know. I just think it's funny. Okay. Yeah, it is kind of fun. And how does he get it? How does that in that world? How is that accomplished? I mean with their beliefs and everything. How are you a gay? Nothing I could speak to.

53:33 No, no lowdown on that. Sorry, sidetracked. That's uh, let's go to the professor. I wish I knew whether this guy is in fact gay I have no idea whether he's actually in fact gay I hear you know certain commentators one in particular every night calling that name and evidence That this is actually so I'm not sure that I mean is this guy maybe I I don't know. I thought he was so injured too at this point. He is not function function. So two strikes dude come on two strikes dude. Well third time lucky yeah right.

54:33 Well, I just thought I'd hand it to the professor for the last few words here on this particular subject. It's tough. It's very complicated. I think we better bring this to a good resolution, though, because the world is watching, and especially our maybe more capable enemies are... watching to see how we're going to deal with this, and just... I think Bon has done really well on about everything up until this situation, and he needs to get it figured out quickly. I don't know how. Yeah, I think that this is going to be a major issue during the campaign, and luckily it looks like they're going to be up against some people that they can...

55:23 run effectively against, and then I think redistricting is going to help them a lot, too. But that's all words for and thoughts for another show. I'd really like to thank the discussants for another wonderful show. Thank you, Professor. Thank you, Sarah. And we want to invite all of you to go to the website and check us out. You can leave us comments and especially questions for your favorite discussant or all discussants The other thing that you could do that we're going to institute a new segment probably on Friday It's going to be called Doc's gripe box where I'm going to you know, pick out some of the worst Comments that we can pick out of the right box and read those live, you know, we have trash TV Friday on the way where Friday show we do a lot of looking at culture, we lighten it up a lot, try to have a little bit more fun in here.

56:23 Although, you know, Sarah has so much fun in here today that she went to sleep. That brings us to the end of another show. I hope you noticed that I did not say at the end of the day. That's because we do have a few rules around here. Thank you for spending your time with Doc G and the Discussance on Subbapical. Before you go, visit thediscussance .com, leave us a suggestion for a future show, support the program, or have a look through our high quality and quite lovely merchandise. And do tell a friend, preferably one in need of this particular sort of intervention, You know exactly who we mean, don't you?

57:13 Until then, the doctor has left the building.