Nobody Believes the Iran Deal Anymore. Not Even MAGA. - The St. Louis Podcast: Episode #154

Trump signed the peace deal less than a week ago. Iran's military says the strait is closed. Iran's own foreign ministry says it's open. The US says it never closed. Nobody agrees, and ships still aren't moving normally.

Tucker says it's a retreat. Schumer says Iran won. Ted Cruz says Trump got bad advice. The left and the right are united against this deal for the first time in years.

Meanwhile Trump's economic approval just hit the lowest of his presidency. The stock market hit an all-time high the same week. A self-identified Trump voter in Georgia called it a slap in the face.

And politicians are legally insider trading on prediction markets while your power bill subsidizes AI data centers.


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Transcript

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SPEAKER_01 0:05

Welcome back to another episode of the St. Louis Podcast. As always, my name is Eric Brown. Thank you for tuning in. We have some great stories today. And as usual, it's about the average person continuing to get messed over, if you will. I think you know the word that I would likely use there, but it's in the first couple of minutes of, of course, YouTube, Spotify, et cetera. So let's leave the curse words until we get about 20 minutes in here. All right. So a ton has happened uh since the last podcast. Uh quite a few things that I want to get into. You know, I called it, uh, I think I just recorded shit four or five days ago as they were essentially walking in to sign the peace deal that is now, of course, with the Strait of Four News, uh, you know, it lasted what a day or two, uh, which I called. And now no one is taking either side seriously. I mean, we look at uh everyone's looking at Trump like he doesn't know what he's doing. Even in Iran, you have uh different party leaders, uh, you know, the military and then also uh the people in power, you know, disagreeing on their statements. Obviously, we got Israel doing their own damn thing. Uh so shit's all over the place in the Middle East. And to be honest, I'm sick of hearing about the Middle East, but the only reason that we care about the Middle East, well, a few reasons, um, is of course oil. Oil. In Afghanistan, you know, they had drugs, right? We're resource whore, the United States. That's really what a lot of this comes down to. So let's get into the deal that won't hold. Uh, the Iran peace deal is already cracking. Insurers call BS. Trump once tolls the deal nobody believes. Iran says closed. U.S. says open. Shippers say hell no. I think they got, you know, like 15 to 20 ships through uh late last week before this whole thing kind of blew up on the 20th. So, of course, last week they signed a peace deal to reopen the Straight of Formes. This week's Iran military says it's closed. Iran foreign ministry says it's open. The U.S. says it never closed, and the only people who actually decide aren't talking to any of them. Meanwhile, the deal united the left and the right against Trump for the first time in years. I think Epstein also did that, of course, as well. Uh current Hormuz uh status as trackers are split. June 23rd, one reads effectively closed, another shows tankers picking back up. Uh, of course, we got live Brent crude, uh, was uh $28 on June 23rd, which is today the day that we are recording. Uh, so we will go ahead and look over the latest ship transit count. It seems to be uh that it is showing that, you know, we had essentially that day of pickup where 15 or 20 or so tankers went through. Since then, on the 20th, Iran says it's closed. And now we're continuing to have the issue of what the hell is going on in that portion of the world. And for I think the average United States citizen would say, I'm tired of hearing about it. Why are we continuing to spend billions of dollars over in this place of the world when we hand our have our own issues at home? Instead of having a 14-point plan for Iran, maybe we should have a 14-point plan for the United States people. Of course, on the 17th, Trump and Iranian president uh signed the Islamabad MOU and hostilities on all fronts, including Lebanon, reopened the strait, toll-free for 60 days. Iran clears mines in 30 days, U.S. lifts its blockade, sanctions, waivers, and frozen assets released for Iran. And not only that, a 60-day win on to negotiate the nuclear question. Trump, of course, posting ships of the world, start your engines, let the oil flow, services in NASCAR. Of course, on Saturday, Iran's IRGC military command broadcast across maritime channels that the strait was closed to all vessel traffic, blaming Israel's continued strikes in Lebanon as America's blatant breach of the signed agreement. Within hours, Iran's own foreign ministry told uh TASNIM that shipping was operating normally and denied any closure. U.S. Central Command said traffic actually increased, reporting 55 ships transited Saturday carrying $17 million. 17 million barrels, excuse me. So we have the Iran military uh saying it's closed, the Iran's foreign ministry saying it's operating normally. U.S. CENCCOM said traffic increased.

SPEAKER_00 5:16

So what's true?

SPEAKER_01 5:22

I think what's true is we're getting a little bit more ships through, but it still seems to be a continuation of a problem in that it's not just, hey, we're open. Ships are gonna flow through freely. Which is obviously not the case. And that is not it, uh, you know, that's not what's happening right now. Now, of course, uh, we've had conservatives meltdown about the uh, you know, of course, this agreement. Ben Shapiro, who of course backed the war. Ben Shapiro, obviously ultimate Israeli uh uh dick rider, uh, called the MOU a disaster that does not achieve any of the signal goals. Do agree on that. The vice president, the chief negotiator, has not well served the president. He's openly blaming Vance. Now, of course, Vance somehow is trying to you know be used as a scapegoat for these issues um, you know, in this part of the world. We meanwhile, Vance is openly criticizing uh Israel, which is interesting. Now, of course, Vance is going to make his running, uh, I'm sure, for the presidential election in what would be 2028. Now, with that said, he also just released a book, I believe, called God Chose Me.

SPEAKER_00 6:48

What the hell is his new book?

SPEAKER_01 6:50

I thought he was doing a podcast where we're talking about this. Anyways. God chose him, God told him to back what's going on, obviously, in the Middle East and to be a scapegoat for Donald Trump. Uh obviously, we have Tucker Carlson saying the deal isn't a victory but a retreat. We also have Tucker Carlson saying he's no longer a Republican, which is interesting. Eric Erikson said this is an American surrender, which of course I've been saying since day one that the United States is not going to win this war and that essentially uh Trump's going to have to tuck his uh you know tail between his legs and go ahead and take the L on this one. Mark Levin demanded uh it be labeled a treaty, so Congress must approve it and reportedly hinted at Israel using very powerful weapons it hasn't used. Ted Cruz said Trump is getting some really bad advice. Thomas Massey is saying that $300 billion for Iran is five times what Congress spends on roads and bridges annually. Nikki Haley said if this is true, Iran wins. Vance fired back at Levin, saying why do neocons uh believe Iranian propaganda about only one thing, the peace deal, implying his own sidehawks are doing Tehran's messaging for it. Now, of course, we have the left saying similar things. Schumer, it looks like Iran has one on just about every one of them. Senator Blumenthal, unconditional surrender, not for Iran, but for the U.S. Booker, Iran gets all of the benefits. NYT editorial board, President Trump lost this ward. The anti-war left is cheering it for the same reason the right hates it. We give them back their money that we froze. Let's come home. And I believe I've talked about this on the podcast as well in previous episodes about you know essentially freezing uh Iran's, you know, money dating back to, you know, 30 or 40 years ago, which has really kind of put them into the position that they're in now. Um, obviously the United States would not be happy if let's just say the you know the United Kingdom or France or Canada or whoever was just, you know, freezes, you know, 300 billion or 100 billion of your dollars. In the same way that, of course, we froze Russian assets, which of course we had to unfreeze due to some of the oil issues that were caused by obviously President Trump and Netanyahu. So the 60-day clock is running in the talks at the Bergen stock resort on Lake. Lucerne are where the real fight is. The honest headline, they agreed on a roadmap, not a deal. Negotiators set up three working groups oversight, sanctions, and nuclear, plus a day deconfliction. Deconfliction sell for Lebanon, but the core dispute is unresolved and may be unresolvable. Obviously, we have the enrichment standoff. We have people saying uh declaring Iran will never back down from the right to enrich uranium, and the other side is forced to accept it. The U.S. position is Iran must never have the capacity uh to quickly build a weapon, which American negotiators read as requiring severe enrichment limits. Those two positions don't currently fit in the same sentence. The IAEA blackout, of course, this is the nuclear watchdog whose presence makes any deal legitimate, currently has no access to any of Iran's four declared enrichment facilities and cannot tell negotiators how much uranium Iran has, where it's stored, its enrichment levels, or where enrichment is ongoing. They're negotiating over a stockpile nobody can find or measure. Uh, 440 kilograms of 60% uranium, believed buried under the bomb sites. Vance said Iran agreed to invite IAEA inspectors back at the minimum of this week, but Iran has not publicly confirmed that commitment. Treasury uh simultaneously suspended restrictions on Iranian oil for 60 days, in line with the productive talks. Now, of course, while Vance and the team with Whitkoff and Jared Kushner were at the table, Trump called into Fox from Camp David and threatened to take over Iran and warned uh Pezesh Kian to watch what he says. Iran's delegation took offense. State media said talks entered a difficult phase and recessed after an insulting message by the U.S. president. In the Iranians left the site to meet Qatari mediators, though an official said they remained engaged and didn't intend to talk. Now, of course, again, my opinion. Watch Vance's angles here. His angle, excuse me, is leading the he's leading this personally by openly weighing a 2028 run. If the deal holds, he owns peace. If it collapses, Shapiro and the Hawks have already pre-written the story that it's Vance's fault. He's negotiating with his own political future on the table, which may explain why Trump from Camp David keeps reminding everyone else whose deal it really is. Iran's uh new Supreme Leader uh has not publicly settled the dispute between his own military and his own foreign ministry. The silence is the story. It signals the internal Iranian fight over whether to actually implement this deal isn't resolved. A deal one sided hasn't decided to honor isn't a deal yet. It's a press release. So I've called a majority of this. Um and you know, we'll see how this story progresses. I also wanted to talk about really how uh, again, the little man continues to get uh screwed over here. Let's talk about who's paying for the AI boom. Who's paying for it? Not only with your money, but with your health, with uh your livelihood, with your environment. So your power bill funds big tech, 330,000 Missourians cut off. Holly turns on Amaron. So data centers have already paid Amon, Missouri $28 million towards transmission upgrades, with Amoron holding roughly 2,300 megawatts of signed agreements across five data center projects. The scam is in the business model. Now we have Ari Pisco, he's Harvard Electricity Law Initiative. He says that utilities have a peculiar business model where their profits are tied up, or excuse me, are tied to how much money they spend on physical infrastructure. So the more power lines and power plants they build, the more profitable they are. A single hyperscale data center can draw as much power as a small city. To serve it, utilities build expensive new infrastructure and they spread that cost across all rate payers through rate increases. Not just the people that are going to be using that new area that was just built. It is spread across all ratepayers. So everyone in Missouri. Missouri preloaded the harm uh 2025's SB4 overturned, a nearly 50-year ban on construction work in progress, letting utilities charge you for a power plant before it's even running. From March 2024 to December 2025, Missouri utilities discontinued more than 330,000 customers. Aspire customers' average winter bill gas nearly doubled from $91 a month in 2020 to $177 a month this year. Even Josh Hawley sent Amaron's CEO letter, Missourians deserve affordable and reliable electricity. They should not be forced to subsidize corporate projects while struggling to keep their lights on. I mean, I don't know, you know, how many times we're also going to say this on the podcast that we, the average person, should not be subsidizing, subsidizing, excuse me, the billionaire class. Why do we continue to pay for the people that already have all of the wealth in the US to continue to hoard that wealth and to make more and more off the backs of the people that not only are not receiving a benefit, if anything, are largely receiving a bunch of negative. KSDK reported new data center rules passed in Missouri shielding Amarin customers from costs. We will go ahead and see how this plays out. Now there are you know over 3,000 data centers operating. There are almost 1,500 more planned, uh, 80 to 150 uh gigawatts projected demand from 2025 to 2028. We have an o almost close to 100% residual electricity increase from 2021 to 2026. We also have over a billion dollars a year just in Texas and Virginia, tax center subsidies. Just in those two states, there's over a billion dollars a year for data center subsidies. Now, PolitiFact found Senator Warren's 267% more figure refers to wholesale prices, not residential bills. The defensible version is this residential electricity rose 94% in DC, 74% in Maryland, 58% in New York from 2021 to 2026. And data centers are a major, not of course the only, but a major driver of those increasing costs in those areas. Now, of course, other drivers exist too: aging grid, equipment costs, clean energy build-out. Obviously, those are also included in that. But again, data centers are the major driver. Now, we have more than 300 state data center bills were filed across 30 plus states in just six weeks of 2026. Now, this is the shift luring uh data centers with tax breaks to regulating them. New York is pursuing a multi-year construction uh moratorium. At least 18 states are creating special large load rate classes so the big users pay their own way instead of you. And again, we're starting to see you know rare fights where populist Republicans and progressive Democrats are on the same side against the utilities. Look at you know, Josh Hawley and Elizabeth Warren. Uh, when Hawley and Warren are both mad at your power companies, uh, the divide isn't partisan. It's the people who pay the bills versus the people who ride it. Obviously, who's benefiting from this is big tech, the people that essentially own the government as it stands right now. They get cheaper power in tax breaks. And of course, investor-owned utilities are guaranteed, you know, over a 9% profit on everything that they build. Now, who pays for it? Ratepayers. Your neighbors getting disconnected, and taxpayers funding the incentives. Now you think if you know we're helping to build out this infrastructure, that we should be able to get in the profits. And I've said this about, you know, stadiums that are built off the taxpayer money. You know, why are we not treated essentially as an owner if we are paying, you know, why are we not benefiting from the money that we are putting in? Uh, these companies are, you know, again, a 9% profit on everything that they build, but we see nothing and we pay for it. It's insane. Is it not? Now, of course, uh, who decided this? Legislators and utility commissions, often with no consumer advocate in the room. Missouri's nuclear task force reportedly has none. We also have the UN uh Secretary General call out AI companies on their climate impact. It is time to come clean. A global exclamation point on the local power bill. And that's what we have for AI data centers. You know, I think it's very odd uh to be pro AI data centers. I think that a lot of these data centers that are being built, you know, essentially are going to be abandoned in, you know, five, 10, whenever it is, when this whole AI bubble thing uh, you know, kind of blows up in everyone's face. Not to say that AI isn't going to be, you know, large language models, I should say, aren't going to be, you know, just dead in the water, I'm sure that they are always going to be used. Um, but I don't think that all of this money being spent, number one, I don't think a lot, you know, some of these construction, you know, issues aren't even going to be completed. Uh, these construction projects are not going to be completed. I see a lot of these, you know, getting like half-built or you know, break construction and it never completes, or they, you know, uh, you know, grade the land and you know, take out trees and blah, blah, blah, but never actually put anything on it. Or what's arguably worse is they build it out and three years from now, it's abandoned, it's empty. And then who's responsible for the cleanup of these absolutely massive data centers? Of course, not only that, you know, the issues that we just talked about with electricity, water, pollution, um, you know, uh, the fact that we have, you know, Claude and Open AI saying that it is going to take people's jobs. We are actively trading AI to take people's jobs. Um, I don't see that as a net benefit for the majority of the population. And so therefore, fuck AI. All right. So we got I, you know, with all, you know, these stories today, I think there's uh, you know, kind of a common theme, which is greed, corruption, and again, the average person getting fucked over. So let's talk about uh democratizing finance. The rig casino. Let's talk about it. Prediction markets say they harness the wisdom of the crowd. What they're actually built as a way for insiders to cash, classifying information into five and six-figure payouts, funded by everyone else's bets. Then we end on proof the machine can still lose. So Call Shee and Polymarket pitch themselves as democratizing finance. In practice, per fast company, they've created a lucrative way for politicians and staffers to treat inside info like a day trading asset. God damn it. I wish I could day trade insider info. Of course, we got George Santos, eight months out of prison on a Trump uh commutation, bet on Call Sheet that he would not show up to the Stadium Union, then said a market flipping tweet blaming a flight and collected a five-figure payout. He's now under CFTC and DOJ investigation. A U.S. Army soldier who helped plan the operation to capture Maduro was charged with five felonies. The DOJ alleges to use classified intelligence to bet 33,000 on polymarket that the raid would happen, then cashed out nearly $400,000. An anonymous polymarket trigger netted $300,000, betting correctly, on four specific pardons Biden would issue in his final hours. Now, of course, uh, you know, the biggest thing is the part that they don't advertise. They don't advertise the fact that the economic theory behind prediction markets requires insiders to trade. That's literally how the price finds the truth. So insider trading isn't a bug they're fixing. It's what they want. It's the engine behind polymarket and call she. And the engine runs on retail money. Prediction markets turned over a record. $31.2 billion in May. Who's the liquidity? The insiders feed on regular people who think they're investing in their knowledge. Call Shi alone pulled in $138 million in fees in May. Who pays the crowd they claim to empower? So the AI, you know, pub, you know, the AI company powering public safety operations for the 2026 World Cup just raised $250 million. Mass surveillance infrastructure getting built out and funded under the cover of the world's biggest sporting event. The same event juicing the prediction market betting boom, spectacle on the front end, surveillance and speculation, cashing in on the back end. And what have I said about, you know, essentially mass surveillance at that point at this point with Flock, with uh, you know, with Palantir, with obviously, you know, NSA and all of these companies building out, you know, massive data centers, uh, you know, enough storage, again, to store everyone in the United States calls, emails, texts, any sort of communication. And obviously, you know, let's just say you're you're, you know, you're you're ring doorbell, you know, video footage from inside your house. Obviously, there's a lot of, you know, uh, like, you know, now Roomba's vacuums that have cameras on them, of course, that you know can essentially visualize your whole house. Uh, we also have, you know, one one good thing is uh, you know, the proof the machine can be beaten. And how can it be beaten when it's named under pressure? From Bernie Sanders and the FTC, AstraZeneca is cutting its inhaler price to $35 a month for most U.S. patients, down from as much as $645. The same system that lets insiders skim a casino caved on inhalers the second, the spotlight hit. So it, you know, it's not hopeless. It's fairly hopeless. Seems hopeless, but if you got a fight, you know, you can still obviously make change. And this is, you know, something that's good. I've talked a lot about, you know, Israel and APAC over the last couple of months, but let's not forget that the I think you know, the largest contributors to, you know, call them the largest um you know, political action committees, consultants, you know, whatever, giving money to politicians. APAC is a number one or two. Right? It's all healthcare, pharmaceuticals that are way more powerful than the APAC lobby. Now, of course, who benefits from this? You know, the platforms themselves, insiders, surveillance surveillance venture capital companies. Who pays? Of course, retailers do retail, retail better sold, democratized finance, and patients who paid $645 for $35 medicine until until someone forced the issue. Regulators are only now catching up after the money was already made. Now, of course, you know, when it comes to this is what I want to do get a presidential commutation, bet against yourself showing up to a speech. I want to tweet a lie, cash out, and repeat. That's what I want to do. I want to start insider trading on Polymarket and Call Shi. So we have a peace deal, the insurers don't believe, a power grid rewired to bill you for someone else's servers, a casino that calls skimming you freedom. Every single one runs on the same engine. The people who decide are never the people who pay. But the inhaler story is a crack in the wall. When you name the machine out loud, sometimes it blinks. That's the whole point. Now in St. Louis, we have the $255 million finally on the way of moving. After four years, mayor oral election in Tornado, the city is finally spending the $255 million of one when the Rams left. The final vote is this Friday, June 26th. So we will see. Now the initial 12 to 3 approval was June 18th. Final passage is scheduled again for this Friday. Then it goes to Mayor Spencer's desk in the Board of Estimate and Apportionment. So the breakdown. We have $110 to $120 million going to North St. Louis plus tornado recovery. I've already talked about my thoughts on a lot of this on previous episodes. So I'm not going to highlight my thoughts here again. Please go back a couple weeks and listen to that episode. We will update you next week on the news that comes from this. Now, we also have, you know, Trump's economic numbers creators, MAGA, Grandma Turns. Both parties are underwater. Now he ended a war saying the market loved peace. He signed the biggest IPO in history, and his economic approval just hit the lowest of his presidency because none of it reached the kitchen table. Now we got NPR PBS mayorist on June 18th, overall approval of 36%, the lowest of his second term. Just one-third approve of his handling of the economy. His lowest ever in the mayor's poll. Economists in Ugov economy net approval at roughly minus 34, his worst in either term. So it's not just Democrats. A self-identified Georgia Trump voter told NPR's actions felt like a slap in the face. So we have Trump saying let the oil flow, but gas relief is slow and the deal is contested. So the war's end didn't deliver at the pump. I think that's one of the big issues that we are currently seeing right now. The AI boom is a GDP story where while your power bill goes up and 330 Missourians get disconnected. Again, you know, it it continues to seem like the only number that anyone cares about is the Dow, is the stock market. And of course, to the average person that could care less. That is not a sign of the economy doing well to the average American. Of course, we have uh record markets in the first trillionaire. While a casino economy skims regular people, and I would go ahead and call space acts a casino as well. You know, that stock was up, you know, to over. Let's just take a look. It was up to, you know, almost $220 last week. It's back down to you know $155 here today. You guys know my thoughts on that. We went over the the economics of it, and the valuation was absolutely insane compared to, of course, the revenue and profit. And also when you look at companies like Amazon or Google or Meta, and you are saying that SpaceX is more valuable than Meta or Amazon, which of course makes no sense because there aren't going to be data centers in space. Sorry. And if there is, we're all going to be dead and we ain't going to be here to see it. Obviously, we have 2 million 255 million dollars existed for four years while North City waited. The top line economy, markets, IPO, peace looks great in the approval numbers in the floor. Why? Because the people being asked don't live in the top line. They live at the pump, the power bill, and the rent. The gap between the stock market and the approval rating is the story. Now, to be fair, approval ratings are noisy. Single polls bounce, and the second term's presidents almost always sag. Markets are up, the war did end, inflation has cooled from its peak. A defender would say the hard part, ending the war, the deal was done, and the political payoff lags the policy. Now, of course, this is where you just have someone in the background playing the saxophone, the stock market just hit an all-time high, his economic approval just hit an all-time low. I like this story. We'll end it on this. We have actually two more. All right, so we have the Israel Hezbollah ceasefire and why it keeps not holding. A U.S. Qatar-Iran brokered Israel Hezbollah ceasefire was announced, but Hezbollah announced an attack in Nimbate almost simultaneously. Israel kept striking southern Lebanon, and the announcement failed to hold within 24 hours. Sinceane, Netanyahu has said he won't withdraw from Lebanon, defying the terms of the U.S. Iran deal, which is exactly the threat Iran is pulling to justify the hormone's closure. Ended on this. Instead of getting fucked over. Let's work against corporate greed. Let's work against uh technocracy. Let's work against uh, you know, essentially all the politicians that are in charge of our economic policies and you know, most policies in the U.S. Um we need community. We need people to get together and actually to make some change. Because the more I sit on here every single week and talk about us getting fleeced, meanwhile, you know, the good news, you know, the bad news is the whole United States is getting fleeced. And the good news is we have, you know, the Volkswagen in Tennessee. It's like, you know, you're fucking over a lot of people, and then we have a good story about, you know, 10,000 or 5,000 workers. It's like we need to equal those out. So, as always, that's all the time we have for today. Please like, review, subscribe, leave a comment. We please we appreciate everyone's support. We're on YouTube, we're on Spotify, we're everywhere. So wherever you listen to podcasts, please leave us a review. We appreciate you. As always, go ahead and support the companies that support this podcast, Half Coast Studios here in Creefcore, Missouri, St. Louis. Uh, they can take care of recording the podcast, editing, distribution, marketing, etc. If if you just need help with, let's just say, a studio build out, you don't want to come in here, or you record at your house and you just need help with editing, they could do that as well. Reach out to them at halfcoastudios.com. Of course, if you go on Google and just type in podcast studio St. Louis, they will show up number one on Google. Why? Because they have the best damn marketing company on the planet backing them up. That company is ViMedia. VIE, been around for 10 years now in October. We work with a ton of businesses here in St. Louis and around the United States. Feel free to check them out at vi.media or just go ViMedia, type it in on Google, look at their reviews, check out their website. They do good work. Last but not least, it's summer. It's hot. If your AC is always running, if you have rooms that are different temperatures, you may have an in you may have an issue with the insulation in your attic. And I'm sure a majority of people haven't thought about this because you don't get in your attic, so you don't look at it. But what I would suggest, either do this, take a peek in your own attic. You're probably not going to know what the hell you're looking at. Instead of doing that, call the boys at West County Installation. They service St. Louis, Jefferson County, Eastern St. Louis, St. Charles. They go all over the place. Have them come out. They'll get in your attic. They'll see what you need done. If you need anything done, they'll give you a fair and honest quote. And they do a damn good job. So you can reach out to them at Half Coast or excuse me, at West County Insulation.com. Also go on Google, check out the reviews. They have great reviews too. All right. Thanks for the support. We'll see you all next week. Bye bye.