 The radical, fundamental principles of freedom, rational self-interest, and individual rights. This is the Iran Book Show. All right, everybody. Welcome to Iran Book Show on this Monday morning. I hope everybody's having a great start for their week, their work week. We love work, so this is a good thing in the beginning of the work week. Not a bad thing. All right. So welcome, again, to our experiment of these short morning shows that are going to be focused very much on items from the news. We'll see how long each episode lasts. I guess they were very, you know, from day to day, depending on how much there is in the news to talk about. And also depending, of course, on the number of questions you guys ask. So today, you know, everybody's sick of talking about the election and everybody's sick of talking about Trump, but the reality is that the elections in Trump still dominate the news cycle. So we will be discussing kind of some final thoughts or some updated thoughts, not final thoughts, updates on the election, on the midterm election. It's still going on. There's still no finality with regard to the House. We'll be talking about Trump. Trump's announcement tomorrow is probably, most likely, hard to believe that it won't happen. Going to announce that he's running for president in 2024. Everybody in the Republican Party is panicking. So that's going to be interesting. And then we'll pick up some additional kind of odds and ends items to round up a discussion. Again, these shows are going to be short 20 minutes to 30 minutes, maybe 40 minutes if we have a lot to talk about. And you guys come through with a lot of questions. Just to remind you, we do have a revised goal for these shows that, you know, the goal is $250 of Super Chat support during the morning show. So let's see if we can make those numbers. I'll be amazing if you guys can come through with that. So let's start with just a quick update on the election. I think a lot of this you've already heard. I mean, the shocking news, the surprising news, but if you were following the election closely, you would have the last few days at least accounting of the votes. It's not a complete shock. And that is that the Democrats held the Senate. That is the seat that was most likely to flip Republican, you know, maybe only other seat that was likely to flip was the Georgia seat. The other seat that was likely to flip Republican was the seat in Nevada. The Republicans really thought they had a really good chance. A poll showed the Republicans leading, going into the contest. It looked like the Republicans would pick up a seat in Nevada. They did not. That seat was won by a Democrat. So the Democrats now have at least 50 seats in the Senate, the same that they have right now. And it hinges now on Georgia, what the final number is. But even with 50 seats, so even if the Republicans win Georgia, and it's 50-50, then what you get is a Senate that is dominated, that is run by Democrats because they have the vice presidential vote, which breaks ties. I'd also say the Republicans would then have 50 senators, but of lower quality. Clearly, Walker, who would basically replace Tumi. Tumi is the senator from Pennsylvania who basically retired. And, you know, they would get, what they would get is instead of, Tumi, they would get Walker. Tumi was actually pretty good. I mean, too religious for my taste. But actually was objective, I think, about Trump. I think he was good, really good on many of the economic issues. Was good on kind of the principled issues with regard to what Republicans supposedly stand for. So overall, I would say, you know, it is a net loss for Republicans even if they gain Georgia. So that's 50-50, which will make Mnuchin and Sinema key votes for the Democrats. So that is better than 50-149 where now they can take, they can peel off, still win even if Mnuchin or Sinema, one of them, votes against whatever the Democrats want. The other issue, of course, is the House. The House is still very close. Republicans are within four votes of having, four wins of having a majority. They have 214, a majority is 218. 214 is pretty good shape that they only have four of, what is it? So four plus 13. So it's like 17, something like that. Still seats, they have to win four of them. That's pretty good odds, but you never know these elections. You never know. Democrats are leading in a number of places the Republicans didn't expect. And we'll see. There's a case to be made that this election will be determined funnily enough and surprisingly enough in California that it is California House seats that will determine whether Republicans have a majority or not. Given that California probably had low turnout, that's my expectation, Republicans who didn't go to vote who wanted, you know, you should have gone to vote. Your vote probably had more meaning in California than anywhere else in the country. There's some really close house races in California. And in California, I would have voted in the House mostly Republican primarily because the Democrats in California are particularly bad. Plus, you want to slap the California Democrats a little bit. They dominate the state so much. A few losses over there would shake things up a little bit. So let's see what happens. Unfortunately, I think Katie Porter, who is right now one of my least favorite house members, is a Democrat out of Orange County, California, a county that used to be solidly Republican. Looks like she's leading a Republican opponent. She might actually be winning there, which would be terrible because she's really, really, really bad. All right, so what can I say? As we talked about already last week, we've talked about over and over again, this midterm election was a phenomenal success for Democrats, a massive defeat for Republicans. This is really borderline worst case scenario for Republicans. If they win the House, they will barely win the House. They will gain, I think, less than 10 seats. They were expecting 30 to 50 seats. Maybe there was even talk of 60 seats. I mean, it's truly a disaster for Republicans. And they, of course, were expected to have a one or two-seat majority in the Senate. The Senate is less of a surprise. The polls were basically predicting status quo 50-50 or 51-49 for one of the parties. So the Senate is not that surprised, if you believe the polls, but the House certainly is. The other thing is, coming out of this election that's interesting before we get to Trump, is that the polls were actually correct. The polls were pretty good across the board. Everything was in the margin of error. The polls predicted this to be close. They predicted the House would not be overwhelmingly run over by Republicans. They did not predict a red tsunami. They didn't even predict a red wave. And therefore, you know, polls, particularly, what do they call, 587 or whatever it is, Nate Silver's outfit, which I have followed, was particularly good. So it looks like whatever biases were built into the polls in 2016 and even in 2020, it seems like those have been corrected and those have been fixed. Of course, we'll see as we move forward if that holds true. But at least for now, this election, the polls were good, were pretty good. They got it right. So they have corrected. Lauren says the issue with Katie Porter is that she is very effective as a demagogue. Absolutely. So while she might not be as left-wing and as wacky and as crazy as AOC, or as articulate on television as AOC, Katie Porter is excellent in committee and House hearings where she has COs in front of her and she ridicules and belittles and attacks them. And she has a little whiteboard where she writes numbers to make a seam, both intelligent and sophisticated. So she appears to be, she's very effective communicator by using that little whiteboard. And she comes across as very objective to people who don't know what she's talking about, of course. But it's effective. It is, no question effective. So it is a little disheartening that she went. She has a little whiteboard. Lots of videos I've owned on YouTube, particularly going after, it's a, what do you call it, drug company executive. She's very good with drug company executive. Of course, they are pathetic in trying to defend themselves. They're really, really bad. And so she rolls all over them, completely rolls all over them. So anyway, that's where we are with this election and huge win for the Democrats, huge, huge massive disappointment for the Republicans. I think one of the lines Donald Trump will have tomorrow when he announces that he's running for 2024. I think one of the lines is going to be he'll blame McConnell, he'll blame mainline Republicans, he'll blame the Republican establishment for not supporting his candidates enough, for not giving them enough money, for not backing them up. He will claim that everybody, he really solidly, fully supported one, that everybody did much better than expected, that he is the only person who could save the Republican Party, and he is the guy who can turn this around and all these wimps out there, they're the problems. He is it and then he'll harp on all the problems with the Biden administration, which will all be mostly be true, but Donald Trump paying the solution to them, but he will present himself as a real savior for the party. I think that the few days right after he makes the announcements are going to be very telling. How do the Republicans respond? How do they react? How does the Republican leadership react? How do grassroots people react? To what extent are they going to immediately endorse him? What's going to happen to many pro-Trump congressmen? Are they going to endorse him? Are they going to jump on the bandwagon? Or are they going to wait and see if DeSantis announces? Or if others announce to see what happens? Or will they rush to Trump's side and rush to Trump's defense? The extent to which people are rushing to be on Trump's side will be the extent to which he will win this. And that will also determine whether somebody like DeSantis decides to run or not. I mean, he is not going to run if he thinks that he's going to lose to Trump, if he senses that Republicans are still committed to Trump and will not vote for anybody else. So very, very interesting few days in terms of the future of the Republican Party and the future of Trump. I've said this before, I'll say it again. I think Trump is pretty much the only Republican. I mean, there are probably a few others. But the only Republican of the credible nominees, the only Republican that can actually lose to a Democrat, can actually lose to Biden or lose to whoever the Democrats nominate for president. Maybe the governor of California is probably a pretty good bet. But Trump could lose to them. So Republicans are going to have to figure out, do they want to win or do they want to be committed to Trump? Now, also they have to figure out, do they want to support a moronic, pragmatic loser, which is what Trump has proven himself to be. Interesting though that it really looks like Murdoch, the guy behind the Wall Street Journal, New York Post, and Fox at the end of the day is turning against Trump. At least the New York Post is clearly coming out with stories that are anti-Trump. A story that broke this morning, again, I don't think Republicans care, but it's one of those stories that just gives you more and more insight and more and more visibility into the character of Donald Trump if you needed more information. I don't, but if you needed it, here it is. And that is that Mark Kelly, who was Trump's chief of staff for much of his presidency from 2017, from July 2017 to the January of 2019, basically is now saying that Trump asked him to weaponize the IRS, against his political enemies, to go after his political enemies with audits, and that Kelly repeatedly told Trump that that was both unethical and illegal, that he wouldn't do it, and Trump went behind his back and went to other people in the administration trying to get the IRS to go after, and particularly Comey and McCabe from the FBI, and to go after them with IRS audits. Unsurprising, in 2020, 2021, or 2020, a massive audit of Comey and I think McCabe as well was launched. So another example, if you needed more examples of Trump using the levers of power to go after his enemies, the levers of power to do his own personal bidding, his own revenge rather than his duty and responsibility as president of the United States. The interesting thing about this story, which came out this morning, is that it is featured on the New York Post. This is not a story that's coming out in the New York Times. This is not a story that's coming out in the Washington Post. This is a story coming out in the New York Post, the New York Post, throughout the Trump administration and until about a week ago, was solidly behind Trump, advocated everything for Trump, didn't question Trump at any point in time, and he continued to do this. Tom says that Trump tried to do what Obama did, yes, and Obama was rightly condemned for it. IRS was rightly condemned for it. Of course, not enough in my view because I can't think of much greater abuses of power than what Obama did and what Trump was trying to do and looks like actually achieved doing. For both of those, it is a massive violation of everything, the responsibility of a chief executive. And certainly in Obama's case, a massive violation of freedom of speech because in Obama's case, that was the number one complaint. I mean, of all the things Obama did in his presidency, I thought that was the worst. If you go back to my podcast from 2015, when I started the podcast, that IRS issue was a big, big issue for me and I thought it was the most horrific thing because it was such an explicit violation of the First Amendment. It was going after conservative organizations and not giving them tax-free status by the IRS for purely political reasons. So yes, but I'm consistent. I'll go after anybody who does this whenever they do this. I actually think what Obama did was worse than what Trump tried to do, but okay, so they're both awful. If everybody recognized that Trump was as bad as Obama, maybe they wouldn't vote for him. All right, so, whoops, I didn't want to close that. Damn, let's see if I can re-find it. All right, so the big news again is that Trump will probably announce tomorrow and we'll see how kind of everything breaks given that. Let me just see what else I wanted if there was anything else related to that. Just one other political thing, one other race that is interesting to watch is the Los Angeles mayor. Oh, Arizona, the Arizona race still hasn't been called, but Kerry Lake has a good chance of still pulling that out. She seems to be gaining, but it's still too close to call. She has gained on the Democrat opponent, but it's, again, it's probably going to go to a recount because the margin is so small, but we'll see. Another race worth watching is the Los Angeles mayor's race where you have two Democrats, but Karen Bass, who is kind of a traditional progressive Democrat, as you'd expect in terms of a mayor of Los Angeles, but she's running Antwerp Caruso, who is a billionaire, who is a businessman, who is running on an anti-crime agenda, who's running on a, what would have been a Republican agenda if Republicans even tried to compete in Los Angeles. Karen Bass is leading that race by 9,000 votes, but it's very, very close and still only 67% of the ballots counted. Caruso still has a chance of winning. Go Caruso, absolutely. That would really send, I think, shockwaves through the whole thing, through the whole system if he wins. It's still probably Karen Bass' to lose, but it is a race to watch because it is a race within the Democratic Party in terms of where the Democratic Party wants to head from here on. All right, let's see. Yeah, quick update on Iran because, you know, it's a topic I like to talk about. I think it's an important topic. It's a topic that is, I think, inspiring. We still have demonstrations going on over the weekend. The Iranian courts have now, for the first time, the Iranian courts for the first time have now sentenced one of the protesters to death. They've given the death sentence. Now it's going to appeal and so on, but there's a good chance. And so there's a really good chance that the courts in Iran are going to use the death sentence as a deterrent to the protesters. And try to fight the protesters with the idea that if you get arrested, you might get the death sentence. I think over a thousand people have been arrested already. Other people have already been sentenced anyway for between six to ten years in prison over the protests. So the Iranian regime fighting back against the protests, it really is going to be a question of how long can they sustain themselves. And is there within the military or somewhere within the regime, within the Secret Services, within the bureaucracy, is there anybody there who is willing to step up, step forward and take on, take out the current regime and replace it. It's going to be very hard just from the outside, without support from the police, the military and the National Guard, the Secret Service. Somebody with weapons to be able to go in and actually have regime change. But the longer this is sustained and the more brutal the regime becomes, and if it's sustained in spite of the brutality, the greater the chance that they have in making a dent. So go girls, go revolution in Iran, you know, and blast the regime. Again, very interesting that in American press, almost no mention of any of this. You look at headlines, New York Times, Washington Post, Fox, anywhere you want. It's just nothing, zero zilch. It's as if it isn't even existing. It's not even happening. On the other hand, European media is covering this a little bit, BBC, the French media, some other media are covering it. And indeed, the European Union is imposing significant sanctions on Iran. So I think the more brutal the Iranians become, the more sanctions they can expect from Europeans. The Americans are ready to sanction heavy, but the American media doesn't seem to care. So this is kind of moot. All right, let's see. I had one item of good news, just cool news, I guess, that I think is is interesting. And then I can go for your questions. We are, we only have like two questions. Let's see. We're at 150 raised out of, well, there we go. We now achieved our goal. Thank you. Amin, Amin is our guy, particularly when I talk about Iran, he steps in and gets us over the goal. I think the one cool thing is, I think it was yesterday, this unmanned solar powered US space plane. Did you know there was an unmanned solar powered US space plane up in space? Anyway, yesterday it landed back on Earth after being in space for 908 days. 908 days. That's two and a half years, almost three years. In space, all on solar power, this is a military space plane. Who knows what it's doing up there. Hopefully it's figuring out how to disable Russian and Chinese satellites or maybe disable ballistic missiles, but hopefully it's doing something useful up there. We don't know. It's all classified. They won't tell us. I don't think it's just a space plane. We don't need a spy plane. We don't need a spy plane. We've got spy satellites up there that do everything we need. What I'm hoping is that this is a prototype for something that can be there and can be maneuverable up in space that can actually go after maybe satellites, maybe even ballistic missiles. I don't know. That's just me speculating, but it's just cool technology. It's a plane that first launched in 2010. It's kind of old technology, but what's cool is that it broke its own record for time in space, for a plane to be up in space. That is 908 days. That's pretty astounding. Super cool. Thumbs up to US technology. Hopefully as it keeps going up into space, they're doing more and more sophisticated, more and more interesting things and more and more things that are helping protect this country rather than help them spy on us. Let's hope that this plane is not up there trying to spy on Americans. Let's hope it's there to go after our enemies. Alright. Let me quickly scan breaking news and see if there's anything interesting that just happened that might be worth commenting on. I'll just say that there was a shooting in the University of Virginia, three dead, two injured, but I really had nothing to add beyond the headlines. Biden and Qixi met today in Asia at the summit. They're shook hands. They're all friendly, but of course they're not friendly, so there is a lot of tension there. We'll find out. Hard to believe that anything interesting will come out of that. We know what Qixi is. We know how Biden is, so nothing much is going to come of it. Two other quick stories. One is, of course, you saw over the weekend, Gerson is Ukrainian now. It's been taken over by Ukraine. Flags have flown. Zelensky just visited there. He called it the beginning of the end. I hope he's right. I hope he's not being overly optimistic, but it does indicate those of you out there in the world who still think Russia is going to win this. There's just no way. This is really an indication of how badly the Russians have done. The one provincial capital that they took in that first attack wave in late February, early March, they have now retreated from. I think from now on it's just a matter of Ukraine being chipping away. The Ukrainians chipping away at Russian gains until they kick them out of all of Ukraine. Pence has just published a book that covers his period as vice president with Trump. It's going to be interesting. He can't slam Trump too much because he was his VP after all. Why did he stick around if Trump was such a monster? He can slam him on January 6th because that was the end. He has an excuse. He didn't see it coming. He does. He's already doing interviews around the book, promoting the book. Trump is going to have to handle Pence going after him, Markelle going after him. I think other former Trump administration officials coming out and slamming Trump as he announces his run for presidency. We'll see if he can extend to which he is resilient given all of that negativity. That is my quick news update for November 14th, 2022. Tomorrow we will not have a show like this. The next one might be on Wednesday. I'll try to do Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, but we'll see. I'll be in Costa Rica Wednesday and we'll see what the internet is like and whether I have enough time before my flight to Mexico City. And then Thursday and Friday I will be in Mexico City. So then the question is, do I have enough time in there to do it? And again, what the quality of the internet is. I will try to do this. As I said, starting in December, this will become a regular feature, particularly if like today, we can actually achieve our $250 goal. And we can't just rely on Armin to do it every day. So some other people are going to have to step up. Or alternatively, if somebody steps in and sponsors these shows, it's a thousand bucks for a week. So again, that's 200 times five. So let's see if you guys support this financially as we do it. And if subscriptions go up, then we'll continue doing it and be worth my investment of the time. If not, then we'll have to figure out a different path for the book show to take. Okay, quickly some super chat questions. Ali says, hi, I sent you a message on Twitter. I'm looking to sponsor an interview or talk. Let me know what you think. I saw it. I'm really not interested in interviewing. I forget the philosophy professor at the University of Texas that I thought you mentioned. I know him. I generally don't like interviewing people. I'm going to fundamentally disagree with and argue with on the show. I don't, that's not, I don't want to be confrontation on my show. I wouldn't mind debating him in a public if you wanted to sponsor debate at the University of Texas between me and him. But we're going to disagree. He is a Trump supporting kind of Republican philosopher, conservative philosopher, who is good on certain things, particularly attacking the left, but is not good on anything positive, I don't think. Again, I've met him in the past, very friendly. We got along. He supported Tara Smith, who's also at the University of Texas fallacy department, who I think her tenure application he supported. I give him credit for that and for the establishment of her kind of chair, a program there. But I don't want to interview him. And I'm not going to give him room on my platform to talk because philosophically, we are fundamentally opposed to one another. I mean, in real sense. If you want to talk more about it and try to figure out if there's something we could do, I think a debate is more appropriate. Then send me another tweet and we can try to figure out what alternative we can do. I apologize for not applying to your tweet earlier. I've been overwhelmed the last few months with travel, but hopefully things will start slowing down here soon. Colt says, the new rights meltdown over the midterms has been fun, but also annoying is they're now blaming everybody else for their loss, for their loss. The term they use, they call loser right, which is funny because they themselves are losers. Yes. I mean, this is the Trump strategy. Never take responsibility for anything. Always blame others. Always project. Be strong. What does strong mean? Blame other people for everything, for anything you do, for any loss you take. Never admit you've lost. Never apologize. Never, never retract anything. Always lash out and blame everybody else. That is the strategy of losers. That is the strategy of people without self-esteem. Lash out to the others. And that's exactly what Trump does. And that's what the new right has learned to do. And it works at least within the sphere of the new right. Amen. Thank you. $200 really appreciated. Amen. It says, the Iranian people need some external support. Little girls against the Mullahs is not a fair battle. I agree with you. I'm hoping that secretly the West and the Biden administration are arming whatever resistance exists within Iran. Maybe the Israelis are helping out as well. Israel has a sophisticated spy network in Iran. So hopefully that is all working in some way or another to help the dissidents, to arm the people who might be willing to actually arm the resistance. But it's going to be very, very, very difficult to do this unless there is some element within the Iranian regime itself, which would be willing to reject the Mullahs, reject theocracy. I don't know. Hard to tell. I don't know if any of you watch the show Tehran, which is an Israeli spy thriller set in Iran. It's on Apple TV. It's definitely worth watching. It's very suspenseful. And you get a little sense of the kind of life within Iran. You get a little sense of the regime, the hypocrisy, the outright evil of some of these people. But also the difficulties the Israelis on the show are having in actually doing what they would like to do, everything they try to do gets screwed up. My thoughts on Matt Walsh. Matt Walsh from what's his name? Ben Shapiro's network. I mean, I'm not a fan of Matt Walsh. Matt Walsh is super religious. I am not. I am anti-religion in many respects. I do not have respect for people who would want to bring religion more deeply and more substantially into the political arena. So I don't like Matt Walsh. Matt did that show on what is a woman. I mean, I thought there were elements of it that was good, but I just found it unbelievably frustrating. You know, this is a Christian who has very, very Middle Ages views on sex, on other things. He's the guy defending what a woman is. The questions I thought were weak. Some of the challenges were weak. He can't actually describe some of the issues related to this. So, again, not a big fan there. He doesn't like Atlas Shrugged. He's actually read the book and doesn't like it. For me, for somebody as intelligent, and obviously Matt Walsh is. He's super intelligent. He's bright. He's smart. The fact that he read Atlas Shrugged and he did nothing for him, on the contrary, he didn't like it, tells me a lot about who he is and his character and what ideas animate him. And yes, the individualism, the rational egoism, the respectful reason, none of that struck a nerve with Matt Walsh. So, I'm not a fan of Matt Walsh. I mean, in that entire network, the only person I have any respect for is Ben Shapiro. And again, even there, I am struggling with Ben, and we have our deep disagreements, mostly about religion, and mostly about everything that religion implies, including, for example, abortion. Yeah, we've got Mr. Hat, 5,000, who's really upset at me. You really should calm down, man. I am disgusting a devil and a scumbag. Disgusting a devil and a scumbag. He must be a member of the new right, maybe. Suddenly, not of the left. All right. Any other, you know, those would be my thoughts based on my exposure to Matt, and again, haven't been impressed by what he's done. I've given kudos for having the courage to do the documentary on what is women, but I've found his arguments. He shows the other guys to be pathetic, but he can't make a positive case, because that's a problem with religionists. They can't actually make a positive case for anything, certainly around sex, but they can't even do it around anything else. You know, he can't defend capitalism, he can't defend freedom, he can't defend liberty. And if I remember right, he is one of the pro-Trump, you know, he's very pro-Trump, an apologist for Trump. All right, let's see. Colt says, to clarify, the new right calls everybody else on the right to lose the right. Also, I love this new morning show format, waiting to see what comes next. Thanks Colt, really appreciate the support. JJ Gigbiz, last question. What do you think about Los Angeles as a city? I'm from there, so I'm just curious. I don't like it, I've never liked it. Los Angeles is, there's nothing appealing about it. I mean, it has a certain dynamism, certainly if you're in the movie industry or aspire to be in the movie industry or anything like that, then it is an exciting place to be. You know, my son lives there. But in terms of a city, I mean, when we moved to Southern California from Orange County at the time, the Inran Institute was in Marina Dore, which is just outside of LA. And I told the board of directors I'm willing to move to become CEO of the Inran Institute. This is in 1999. Only, if ultimately I can move into Orange County because I will not live in LA and that commute is hellish. A commute I did actually for almost two years. I commuted from Orange County to LA, which is one of the worst commutes in the world. That's another thing about LA. The traffic is so bad, and always, no matter what time of night or day. And it always takes you much longer than you ever expected. Well, now you have ways, so you know how long it'll take. But it's just, it's not a pretty city. It's not an interesting city. I mean, it has a good museum. It has a great upper house. It has a good orchestra. It has all the cultural elements. But that's why you live in somewhere like Orange County and you go up for special occasions. All right. J.J. Jigbez. Thank you. Thank you all. Thanks for being here on this new format, on this new show. We'll keep doing these. Yeah, we had a significant number of live watches. So that's great. And of course, because of the Super Chat is primarily almond. We made our $250 goal. So just keep in mind that these goals have, I really want to attain these goals. I really want to stick with it. I really want to make the Iran Book Show the thing I live off of. So for that, we're going to have to make our goals in the morning and in the evening. Given how much time I'm devoting to it, that'll be terrific. So thank you all for joining me. And I will see you all, actually, see you all tonight. Either at 7 or 8 p.m. East Coast time. I'll notify you later, but it's 7 or 8 p.m. East Coast time. We'll have the Iran Book Show regular format, regular thing tonight. I still don't have a topic, but I'm sure I will by then. All right. See you soon.