Back to episode — Episode 2974 CWSA 09/30/25
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ess the government shutdown isn't inevitable now. And that happens in the next day or so. The government's going to shut down. Now it's not the whole government. It's a whole bunch of non-essential stuff. And I say this every time we're in this situation but doesn't it seem weird to you? And would you have designed this system if you were the founders of the country? You're sitting around in your…
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Well Axios is talking about Trump's promise or his threat I guess to big pharma that they better lower the prices, give us the same low prices that other countries get. And in response, pharma has done, checking notes, not a thing, nothing. They have not lowered their prices. So I think their deadline has passed and I don't know if Trump's going to come down hard on them because you don't want to do anything that would reduce our access to valuable meds. On the other hand you can't really have them just ignore the president and keep those prices where they are.
So oh wow, Wall Street Journal just reported the White House plans to introduce Trump RX, a new government website to facilitate drug purchases. I guess that would be to cut out the middleman. Or maybe that's the only place that you get them cheap. I don't know. So we'll find out. But just know that Trump's going to have to do more and maybe that website is the answer. They'll have to do more to get those prices down because big pharma is not going to do it just because you asked.
All right, here's my question. Are we at war with Russia? Now I know we've been asking that the whole time we've been feeding weapons into the war, but so at this point we're giving them American weapons. The weapons require American training I believe. So we're probably training. We're giving them weapons. And the latest thing is that the new weapons will go so far into Russia that Ukraine is only allowed to use them with our permission. So they'd have to get approval to do something extra deep into the country of Russia.
I'm guessing that America's satellites are helping them locate targets, right? So if it's true that they're American weapons and can only be used with American training and American approval and American satellites, maybe. Isn't the least important part of that the soldier? Because you could replace the soldier but if the soldier didn't have these missiles the war would be over. I feel like the American part is the important part and the soldier is becoming the least important part.
So I'll ask again, are we at war with Russia? Because you know the further we go into this, oh it's not us, it's not us, it must be those darn Ukrainians that keep fighting but we're not. Oh no we're not part of this. I don't know how far that could go. Obviously Putin would think he's at war with us but he's smart enough not to attack the homeland because that would empty the cupboard and he doesn't want that.
Well Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu has agreed to terms to Trump's 21-point Gaza proposal, Wall Street Journal's reporting. But not until Netanyahu inserted some edits into his plan. Those edits might be the kind of edits that would make it impossible to get a deal because it allows Israel to have indefinite military control of Gaza no matter what else is happening.
So the other parts of the plan would be things like the Arab countries would help monitor and manage the place and the Palestinians who had lived there could move back but Hamas will be gone. Hamas will be no more. So they wouldn't be allowed to be in charge. But until all the risk of terrorism is removed, according to Israel, Israel can keep its military there. That would be the plan.
Do you think Hamas will agree that Israel can have perpetual maybe military control of Gaza? I don't know. That might be a problem.
So let's look down some of the things. Hamas has three or four days to respond according to Trump. And Netanyahu had to apologize to Qatar for military action in Qatar that took out Hamas leaders and negotiators. And I guess Qatar just needed an apology so Netanyahu gave one. I can't imagine that was the most sincere apology. What did that sound like? We're totally sorry that we had this hugely successful raid in your country. We'll definitely not do that again unless we need to.
All right. Two of the countries that might be managing Gaza would be Saudi, Egypt, Jordan, and Turkey. Because you know those guys all get along great. So should be no problem at all. And then the new proposal gives Israel a veto over the disarming of Hamas and things. So I think the problem will be that Israel is looking to have some permanent kind of control even if it's not pick up the garbage kind of control, if it's only military. So we'll see. And Hamas says they're taking it seriously and they're going to look at it. We'll find out.
So one possibility is that Israel knows that Hamas will never accept any kind of a deal. Part of it also is release the hostages in 72 hours I think. But if you assume that Hamas will never accept anything reasonable, then all it does is give Netanyahu a free pass to keep pounding them because keep negotiating this thing while Israel continues to pound them and they'll just say hmm I don't know, maybe we should add this thing, maybe we should add a little tweak. And they'll get another week to pound them.
So I don't even know if it's a serious offer
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or Israel is just cynically sort of saying yeah yeah we totally agree with this, we'll totally do this. So I guess you can't blame us for war because we already agreed to peace. So if Hamas doesn't agree, well then they're just bringing it upon themselves, wouldn't you say? So I think Israel wins either way. They win if they get the end of fighting in one way and they would win a different way if…
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