Transcript of Trump Freezes Up Over Iran Trap New

Iran is setting the trap. Donald Trump is walking right into it, and United States senators are being denied access to American military bases in the Middle East that have been struck by Iran as the Trump regime is desperately trying to cover up the damage. Let's talk about what's happening. Treasury Secretary Bessent posted the following message: Operation Economic Outcast is delivering results. The rial has plunged to record lows. Iran loaded zero crude oil onto tankers last month, and even Iran's top security official has admitted the country is facing one of the most difficult periods in its history. Notably, Treasury Secretary Bessent talking about the pain and suffering being inflicted on the Iranian people, not the Iranian regime. Bessent also says Iran has a new oil minister. Considering Iran has not loaded a single barrel of crude onto a vessel since August 25th, what is the oil minister managing? As Brett Erickson writes. Scott, do you know that they continue to utilize oil for domestic consumption, right? I know you're trying to dunk on Iran, but you're pretty piss poor at it. Let's talk about economic outcasts for a moment. Now, Iran has been invited as an honorary guest to the CIS meeting in Turkmenistan.

CIS stands for the Commonwealth of Independent States. These are states that were previously part of the Soviet Union, and they're having their annual meeting in the coming days. An assistant to the Russian president, Yuri Ushakov, said on Tuesday, yes, yesterday that Vladimir Putin will be meeting with Dr. Pazeshki and Iran's president. He's Dr. Pazeshki, and he's a world-renowned cardiovascular surgeon, far from being an economic outcast, as the Trump regime is desperately trying to do deals with Russia regarding its foreign oil assets. Russia is meeting with Iran at the CIS meeting, and you also have Iran's parliament leader, MB Ghalibaf, posting the following in response to Treasury Secretary Bessent.

Boo!

Are you ready? And you take a look at the ghost as we head towards Halloween, if you will, and you look at what's happening as the line goes up to the head of the ghost and what's going up, what's going down when the line is going down to the bottom of the ghost again. So you can see things like dated Brent, junk bonds, junk bond spreads, the 10-year yields, diesel prices, all of that is going up. And look what's going down: consumer confidence, hyperscaler free cash flow, housing affordability, foreign net purchases of treasury bonds. You know, and one of the things that the Trump regime and other propagandists keep on pushing is that more oil is getting out of the Strait of Hormuz now than before the war started, or it's very close, it's almost the same. I mean, it's completely false. Significantly less oil is getting out of the Strait of Hormuz. If before the war started, 20 million barrels were getting out, in my estimation, it's closer to 8 to 10 million barrels of oil are getting out. But let's also talk about the cost of getting oil out through the Strait of Hormuz.

The cost in order to get a crude tanker to take the oil out of the Strait of Hormuz, it's about $1.5 million a day. For the full voyage, it's about $30 to $35 million. A captain of one of these vessels carrying the crude right now is being paid about $100,000 a month, a $50,000 bonus if they get past the Strait of Hormuz. The risk premium is so high because it's difficult to get out of the Strait of Hormuz that it's adding about $33 per barrel. And the United States is dedicating 30% of its deployed military force trying to help ships out of the Strait of Hormuz. That's unsustainable. And the cost of moving crude out of the Strait of Hormuz is so high that this actually plays right into Iran's hand. This is why I'm saying the trap is set. If you're saying, well, look, Ben, isn't this economic outcast working? Well, Iran's being invited as an honor honorary guest to the CIS meeting. They were also having a prominent role back at the Shanghai Cooperation Organization meeting last month. They had a pretty prominent role at the United Nations where they were meeting with other countries, a pretty prominent role at the BRICS bloc meeting.

But if you just take a look at, uh, what they're doing, yes, they've been able— they are definitely economically suffering, but they've basically been subject to massive sanctions for decades and decades and decades. One of the things that they realize is by creating the risk within the Strait of Hormuz because they control the Strait of Hormuz. If the US controlled the Strait of Hormuz, we'd be moving Navy destroyers, we'd have aircraft carriers in there, which we don't. They could increase the cost just to take crude out of the Strait of Hormuz and make it so expensive. And that's what we're seeing now happening here. And we're looking at like, what's the cost that refineries are selling diesel at? What are they selling gas at? We're talking about record highs, what I refer to and what people refer to as the crack spread, the difference between the kind of future markets of of crude coming out of the Strait of Hormuz and what's being sold. I mean, it's at record highs. I showed a story yesterday about the price of heating oil in Maine. It's basically 80% higher than it was last year. It's about $1,500 or so in order to kind of fill it up.

And so, and you have to do that multiple times. And so people are really feeling the pain over here. And then I want to get back to the point where we're talking about all these US military bases that have been destroyed, destroyed by Iran in the region. Mostly all of the US military bases in the Middle East have been targeted by Iran. They've been destroyed and they've been evacuated. Iranian ballistic missiles and drones have been hitting these bases. We did a report earlier yesterday, and hat tip to the fine folks at the Associated Press for breaking the story about what took place at the Kuwait base at the beginning of the war on March 1st, where so many service members were warning the commanding officers, please, we're so close to Iran, we're not protected in the event of Iranian drone strikes. Their commanding officers forced them to leave the bunkers and to be in the building that was ultimately struck, resulting in 6 dead and many injured. And the Trump regime has not been giving the benefits to the family members of those who were killed and even those who were injured. Took months for them to even get MRIs because the Trump regime categorizes traumatic brain injuries as minor headaches and as not a big deal.

But we had Democratic Senator Murphy, Chris Murphy. He's been in the Middle East. He's been doing a fact-finding tour in connection with his role as a United States senator. And he says that he was refused refused access by Hegseth to U.S. military bases. This has never happened in his career before. Watch what Senator Chris Murphy has to say. And he continues to, uh, continues to have bigger and bigger leadership roles. Watch Senator Chris Murphy as a kind of a major player if Democrats take control of the Senate. Well, the Senate as well, he already is. But listen to what he said as part of his trip. He was in Qatar, he was in Saudi Arabia, he met with leaders of the UAE. Here's what he has to say. Play this clip.

Something unprecedented happened during my trip to the Middle East, and that is this: I have been denied total access to U.S. military facilities in the region, in particular in Qatar, the Al Udeid Air Force Base, which is one of our biggest and most important facilities in the region. I have been to the Middle East probably a dozen times at least while I have been a member of Congress. I have never, ever been denied access to military facilities. This is part of a coordinated, deliberate campaign by the Department of Defense to try to hide the consequences and the true cost of this war. Of course, we have a right as members of Congress to oversee military action overseas. We appropriate the money for that military action, and it is an ordinary function of members of Congress to travel around the world and talk to our generals and to our troops about military activities, especially during a time of war. Adding insult to injury, the Department of Defense, under orders from Pete Hegseth, even denied me access to talk to military leadership. They would not provide me even a briefing at the embassy. Never before has this happened.

Never before has a member of Congress been denied access to military facilities and been refused briefing by— briefings by generals in theater. And from what I understand, this is happening both to Democrats and Republicans when they are traveling to the Middle East. So just understand what this is. This is Secretary Hegseth deliberately trying to cover up the extent of damage, likely in the billions of dollars, trying to cover up the true cost of this war, trying to hide From you, from the American public, not just from members of Congress, the actual consequences of a war that is spiraling out of control by the day. This should be unacceptable to every member of Congress, Republicans and Democrats, and this should be unacceptable to the American public.

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Also, Chris Murphy said, both nights I have been in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, there have been urgent alerts issued about Houthi missiles heading toward the city. This is now a full-blown regional war, just as every expert predicted if the U.S. attacked Iran. A disaster of Trump's making. I've been saying full-fledged regional war for some time now, and I've seen some of the comments saying, Ben, you're being hyperbolic, it's not really a regional war, all hell really isn't breaking loose. And I said, it is. I don't know how else to describe it. There is a full-fledged regional war war taking place. And I said also, and I did another video on this this morning, look at what's happening in Ukraine and Russia right now as the war is escalating there. Apocalyptic images coming out of cities just absolutely burning down. But take a look what we're seeing right now as this regional war escalates as well. So Yemen's Ansar Allah, allied with Iran as part of Iran's Axis of Resistance, they were able to strike Saudi Arabian headquarters. They were able to strike, uh, the King Khalid Airport in Saudi Arabia. They were able to strike the airport in Jeddah.

We saw multiple flights being shut down there. But let me show you what it looks like in Aden. Aden is the city that's still under the control of kind of the Saudi-UAE-backed PLC— really Saudi, but there's still UAE elements in Aden. I won't bore you with the specifics of the UAE-Saudi dynamic. There's a whole history there. Um, but the Aden airport is the main kind of capital and city of the Saudi-backed PLC, whereas Sana'a is the main capital of the Houthi Ansar Allah, of Houthi Ansar Allah. Um, as the Saudi-backed forces engaged in all of these strikes, um, using Saudi weapons against Ansar Allah, against Sana'a, against some of the western areas under the control of Ansar Allah, Ansar Allah struck the Aden airport with 2 ballistic missiles. I want you to watch what took place there. And we have other video here as well of Yemen's Ansar Allah hitting, uh, over here Yemen's Aden airport. Let's take a look at it. Another video of that impact right here. Let's, uh, play that for you as well. Yeah, and so this full-fledged regional war continues to spread. Um, we've seen those strikes in Aden. We've seen— that's in Yemen.

We've seen the strikes in Riyadh. We've seen the strikes in Jeddah. We've seen the strikes in Yanbu, all part of Saudi Arabia. We've seen the strikes in Sana'a, the Houthi Ansar Allah stronghold. And then with respect to the United States military, I reported on this already, so I won't belabor the point, but one of the main U.S. aircraft carriers, the George H.W. Bush, that was in the Arabian The BNC is now in Phuket, Thailand. That leaves one aircraft carrier, the USS George Washington. The USS Theodore Roosevelt has departed from San Diego. Notably San Diego, right? That's where Donald Trump threatened that it would just be not a big deal if Iran, you know, just be, you know, we would—

don't—

it'd be not a big deal if Iran struck San Diego or Los Angeles. And then they were like, he was just joking about it. He didn't really mean it. Anyway, the USS Theodore Roosevelt The Gerald R. Ford-class aircraft carrier built is now heading towards the Arabian Sea. That'll get there in, you know, right around mid-November after the midterms. And with its carrier strike group, there's an amphibious assault group leaving from San Diego as well, heading to the Arabian Sea. And then Donald Trump ranting and raving like a lunatic in front of the Navy yesterday in Baltimore, saying the Hormuz Strait belongs to the United States. This is what Trump was saying. Here, play this clip.

To almost higher than they've ever been. In other words, the Hormuz Strait belongs to the United States Navy and the United States of America. That's where it belongs. And that's where it is right now.

And Donald Trump's like, nobody knows who's running Iran. Does anybody know? Yeah, we know. We know who's running Iran. I mean, you sound like an utter lunatic here. Play this clip.

Tehran. And the biggest problem I have is nobody knows who the hell is running the country. Nobody knows, but maybe that's a good thing.

So that's where we're at right now. We'll keep you posted every step of the way. Hit subscribe, get a copy of WTF America, the book I wrote with my brothers. Get the audio or the ebook or the hardcover. It comes out October 20th, but, uh, get it now. The pre-orders are really helpful, and, um, lots of people have been saying they've been getting the audio, so let me know what you get. Thanks for watching, appreciate you.

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