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Chapter 1: What are the current implications of the war with Iran on America?
Good morning. Good morning. Welcome to Hot Topics. How are you guys? Glad that you're here. Oh, this is good. I actually have my 120 life in there. This morning I needed a little inspiration, so I channeled. This is my old Wendy Williams mug. It is time for Hot Topics. This is when Wendy would be doing her thing, right? We miss her. That was some good morning TV. It was actually the best.
People didn't realize it then. You don't know what you got until it's gone. Welcome to Hot Topics, everyone. I'm really excited that you're here this morning. I have to tell you some stuff. Oh, showtime, Dennis. Let me know where you're streaming from. First order of business, as you know. Like, thumbs up. Hit that like button. Hit that like button. Producers, put it in the top of the chat.
Pin it, pin it, pin it.
and so i'm gonna do before we get into the show i'm gonna do just do some business so because sometimes we do it at the end of the show right but i just want to make sure that you hit the like and the thumbs up and i want to let you guys know because they said let people know earlier that um at the top of donlemon.com you don't have to show it any but if you go to donlemon.com donlemon.com at the top um tickets to see deal hugely and me because um the uh they're going the tickets are going mass
sailed this week with like radio promotions and all that stuff. So I wanted to give the Lemonheads, the Lemon Legends, the Lemon Nation a chance to get the tickets. You may as well show it, Andy, if you have it real quick. To get the tickets to see Dale Hughley and me around the country.
um and i know we all usually do that at the end but it's at the top of donlemon.com raleigh and the four three uh cleveland four four boston massachusetts 417 virginia 418. so before like those radio and whatever promotions start they told me to warn the lemon heads because they would go okay that's what they're telling me so i add to it and we got new merch which is also on lemon.com i love this shirt
Saw it this morning, ripped it out of the bag. What do you think? And that is on a little bit further down on the page to Don Lemon dot com on the merch page. And when the merch thing just click and you can get this. I didn't know. Tim is in charge of the merch store. He loves it. Tim is a salesperson. That's where he came from. Now he's well, he's still in sales.
And so you can grab this baby right here if you would like to. It's on thedonlemon.com. It's a long-sleeve tee. Okay? Under merch. So thank you for that. Okay, guys. Where are you? Team? Where are my producers, correspondents, analysts? I see Canada is here. Don, good morning from Canada. British Columbia in the house. Raleigh, North Carolina. I see Perth, Australia is checking in.
New Jersey is here. And I'm glad you guys like the shirt.
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Chapter 2: How are rising gas prices affecting American households?
Tim has great taste. Yeah, he is great. He runs it by me, but still.
NYC Ocala Florida how is it in Florida Chattanooga it's getting warm guys it's gonna be cold here next week though we got a warm little taste of summer Toronto is here Las Vegas oh my god I love it ah let's see Duvall Queen someone's in Queens hello Queens I lived in Queens I still live in Astoria Memphis Tennessee's in the house Chicago I can do this a central New York I can do this all day Buffalo
Love it, love it, love it. Albuquerque, New Mexico. I love Albuquerque. I used to go to Albuquerque to go skiing. Let me know if you know about Durango. We would go to Durango and ski. My friend had a house there, and it was right on Durango and the mountain there. Is it Sandia Mountain? And we would go to Durango. So it was really, really, really, really great. Okay, Nashville's here.
Okay, so listen, guys. I'm going to start you. Apex, North Carolina. Love it. Okay, so I'm going to start you with... a question for you before I get into what's happening. Because I think that I am a really good person. And so under normal circumstances, if someone asked me this, I know exactly what I would do. I'd be like, Louisville in the house, Denny of Florida. I know what I would do.
I would do the right thing. I would do the right thing. which I think would be to return such thing. But is that the right thing in this moment? And I'm gonna ask you, this is sort of a what would you do moment. What would you do? What would Jesus do? What would the Lemonheads do? WWLD, what would Lemon Nation do, okay? So pay close attention, you guys ready? You guys ready?
Are you ready Brighton, UK? You ready? Okay. Hi, Twitch. Hi, Substack. Okay, here we go. Roll it. All right, so we're outside Taco Bell, and my wife found this freaking wallet in the drive-thru. And it has a grip of cash in it. And we're trying to see, you know, see if we can find the address so we can take this freaking wallet back.
And me trying to do the freaking right thing makes me want to do the fucking wrong thing! A white privilege card is in there, okay? I'm keeping that for sure. That shit jumps everything. Members since birth. Good through death. Cardholder scar free. He's not getting shit back. I'm not going to say who this belongs to. But damn. I'm still going to do the right thing though.
What do you guys think, chat? What should I do? What should he do?
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Chapter 3: What is the political fallout of the war with Iran in America?
What would you do? What would you do? Someone said, what is the background noise, Don? The window's open and there's construction. What would you do? WTF. I want to know in the comments, Detroit, what would you guys do? Someone has a white privilege card in their wallet. I'm cleaning out the wallet, someone says. Give the wallet back. Can we do a poll? Give it back or keep it. What would you do?
the money reparations. I'm going to tell you at the end of the show what I would do. I'll tell you at the end of the show what I would do and you let me know if you think that it is the right thing. But that's a tough one considering what's going on.
okay so uh here's where we are this morning good morning thank you for joining us it was a little bit of a test for you um so again let me know um you know and make sure you hit the like and the thumbs up it affects the algorithm more people become aware of our channel and our conversation and they will um you know spread it the word for us okay so okay uh elimination
It didn't take much, but I want to tell you the truth about what's happening with the war in Iran that you maybe are not hearing on the mainstream or the corporate media. You might be hearing it in some places, but overall, the message from the White House is getting out. Are they accurate? Is it all real? The United States may have already lost this war.
I believe that the United States in this moment is losing this war. I don't think there's anything that's positive that's come out of this war. You know, short-term pain for long-term gain. That's what they're saying, short-term pain for long-term gain. Okay, but let's take it in the moment right now because the price of oil is about to go up indefinitely. We don't know.
Overnight, three oil vessels were struck near the Strait of Hormuz. And here's the part that tells you where this is going. None of those ships were American. The most severely damaged was owned by Thailand. That's according to a shipping company, that shipping company. Three crew members are reported missing and believed to be trapped in the engine room.
Two other ships received minor damage, one owned by Japan, the other by the Marshall Islands. No sailors on those ships have been killed. But here's the thing. If I am a shipping company, I don't feel safe sending a ship through there ever again. At least for now, I should say now or ever again. I don't know. It's tricky.
Remember, this comes after Iran started laying sea mines in the Strait of Hormuz as well. So look, this is where a lot of the oil comes from. Like some of it comes from pipelines, but a lot of it comes from ships, on ships. So the United States can strike Iranian mining vessels all at once, but it doesn't take many minds to create a crisis.
If even a few slip through, I mean, that's enough to make shipping companies think twice about sending tankers through one of the most dangerous choke points on earth. And that means the damage is done already.
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Chapter 4: Are Americans united or divided on the conflict with Iran?
And I think that the president has to focus very hard on solving these three issues. OK. That is on Fox News. And you see the host there. I don't know. That's not. Is that Kudlow? Is that his name? We don't want to hear this. We have been saying here from the very beginning. We've been talking about Iran's pain tolerance. It's higher than America's pain tolerance.
Because America is, look, let me tell you what's gonna happen if this goes on any longer. And I don't believe that it's gonna go on any longer, and I'll tell you why in a minute. But if this does happen to go on any longer, so we have lots of munition, lots of weapons, whatever. We've given lots of weapons to Ukraine.
Donald Trump is going to have to go hat in hand to Zelensky, possibly, and ask him for some of those munitions back after he insulted him in the Oval Office. Because it takes a while for the builders of such munitions to refill that stockpile of weapons. And so if they keep using them, right, they're going to run low on that. And Iran is waiting on a ground war. That's what they want.
So do not be fooled about we've got this and all this bluster that comes out every day and mine's bigger than yours and I can blast further and we've done this. That's all propaganda. Okay, what does that mean? You blow up some buildings, awful, people are getting hurt, whatever. But what Iran is trying to do is force us into a ground war because that's where they will win.
That's where American lives, more American lives, the most American lives will be lost. So their pain threshold, their tolerance, is a lot higher than America's. The Iranian government is filled with hardliners who have nothing to lose. As a matter of fact, the person that they put in is more of a hardliner than the one before him, who was his father.
Meanwhile, pro-democracy protesters could lose everything, and Americans hardly know anything about this war, other than it's making them pay more at the gas pump. And if you listen to Republicans, reopening the Strait of Hormuz isn't exactly their top priority. This is Senator Scott on that. Senator, if it were possible to do so safely at this point, why isn't the U.S.
Navy escorting ships through the Strait? I can't tell you the answer to that, but I think right now it's still a dangerous situation. It's going to take a while for us to get control over the Strait of Hormuz.
The most important thing we can do right now in our job right now is we'd love to get gas prices back down, but the most important thing is destroy Iran's ability to produce a nuclear weapon, destroy their military, their ballistic missile capability, and hopefully, right,
We end up with a country that wants to work with the world community and not be constantly destroying through all their proxies. So, I mean, we all want gas. Pause, please. Do you guys look at look at look at the gas prices? Look, look, look. I'm just going to say, just look at the gas prices. Do not believe the hype. About short term pain for long term gain.
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Chapter 5: What are the potential economic consequences if the war drags on?
They said that about tariffs. They said that about when the government was shut down. All of that. They've said the same thing. Give us time. And it never got better. It never gets better. So when are we going to stop falling for this? I never fell for it, but meaning Americans. I mean, look at gas prices. Hey, look, I'm flying around on a private jet.
I'm flying around on, well, not a private jet anymore. His family's around. He usually does flying around on that. He's flying around on a jet paid for by taxpayer money. which he is hauling his entourage, his posse, meaning all of the people, all of his advisors, they're all there. We're paying for it, including the people who have to cover him, the press who insults at every turn.
And so we're paying for it. He's flying around and living in government housing, our money, the people's house. They are, many of them as well. We're paying their taxes and they are making money. They can hold out. I'm saying we're paying their, I should say their salaries and for them to live there through our taxes. But they can hold out maybe on some short-term pain.
But can you, let's be honest, can you hold out for that? How long-term is your short-term or how short-term is your long-term? Because as far as I know, last time I checked, most Americans are living paycheck to paycheck. And so I think it's insulting not it's insulting to all Americans, but it is even more so insulting for the people who voted for him.
And if you I'm just going to be honest, if you look at them, many of them are poor working class people, not highly educated, no college degrees, high school dropouts. Not that there's anything wrong with that. Those are the facts. And he says we love the poorly educated. And so those are the people he's asking. for some short-term pain for long-term gain, the people who can afford it the least.
So am I taking some crazy pills here? Because this is the party that claims to care so much about prices and the economy, and yet they would rather go along. I'm sorry, was that soundbite finished, Andy? Sorry about that. Not 10 more seconds. Okay, let's listen to 10 more seconds, then I'll go on. Go ahead. He wants gas prices higher. This president doesn't want gas prices higher.
But we have to be realistic. If you believe that Iran was going to use nuclear weapons against us, we had no choice but to do this. And there are problems short term. Okay. If you believe Iran is going to use nuclear weapons against us, Iran did not have the capability for a nuclear weapon to reach the United States of America.
There's a thing called diplomacy, and also there are strategic things that you can do where you can pinpoint and target things without declaring war on an entire region. For something, according to all intelligence, that was not an imminent threat. There was no imminent threat that Iran was going to attack America, especially. Too far, not going to happen.
And no imminent threat that Iran was going to attack Israel. They said so many different things about this. Well, Marco Rubio said Israel was going to attack Iran, and then Iran was going to retaliate, and we had to stop the retaliation. So that means we're fighting Israel's war. That Israel is dictating our foreign policy. And in some ways, our domestic policy.
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Chapter 6: How does the U.S. strategy in Iran impact global oil markets?
I've read so much and then yesterday I was like, I'm going to stop reading because there's nothing. I'll pick this back up tomorrow and perhaps there will be some legitimate reason for them to go to war with Iran. And so I'll just wait. I'll just wait. Maybe that will come. Maybe they'll figure it out tomorrow. And then, okay, I open up the paper and I read, and it's not there.
It's the same old excuses. And then Donald Trump says it's one thing, and then the people go out, his folks, and they say it's another thing, and then he contradicts them. He goes, no, that's not it.
But this is a party that's supposed to care about prices and the economy, and yet they would rather go along with a Department of War, which should be the Department of Defense, as we know, a Department of Defense vanity project. so that Donald Trump can feel like a big man conducting regime change across the planet, even though they say it wasn't supposed to be about regime change.
That wasn't what it's supposed to be about. But then now, all of a sudden, it is about regime change. But the bill for that regime change, it's a fantasy. A bill for that regime change fantasy that has only delivered, what, more severe hardliners? More uncertainty in the Middle East? More uncertainty for the stock market? More uncertainty for gas prices? More uncertainty for product prices?
You are paying for it. You're paying for it. Andy, do you have the report from MSNOW where he went out to interview the people who are out on the streets? I think it was Florida. the Senate this morning. Okay, so this is what is happening. And when I say working class Americans, his constituents, the people who supported him, it's more of an insult to them because they can least afford it.
Out of India, all of the rich people who voted for him, supported him, said, I'm going to make you so rich. And all of the people like Besant and what's the other guy who was in the Epstein files? Why can't I remember his name? You guys know who I'm talking about. Lucknick. Lucknick. Howard Lucknick. All of those very rich people. Some of them close.
I mean, what you would call is almost a billionaire, I think, Besant. He's there, halfway there. All of those people can afford it.
rich people who support him but not his everyday core supporters and that's why it's so insulting are they waking up no i don't know watch this do you regret your vote right now well between him and her i thought he was the better choice but honestly i missed my uncle joe i was a nobody and i was balling then now i couldn't even tell you i couldn't even uh show you five dollars in my pocket
We spoke to Trump voters here in Florida who are ticked off. Ticked off about the fact that the gas prices in the state have gone up by an average of about 60 cents within just a week. I would just wish he'd keep up on his campaign promise and say he was going to put it under $3. He'd end that war so fast. But here it is, what, five years later? Helping his buddy out get his more money.
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Chapter 7: What are the key challenges faced by the U.S. in this conflict?
What's the term that I'm looking for? I guess it's just F-A-F-O. And it's just really rich right now that those people did not understand, some of them did not understand the moment. They did not read the room or read the country, their wallets, the bullshit that was being told by Donald Trump. They didn't read between the lines. so to speak, of what was happening in the manosphere.
The people were going, oh, great, great, great, great, great, great. And then he said, you heard what the first guy said. I thought that he would be better than her, meaning Kamala Harris, when they said, and what was the reason for that? Myriad reasons. But I think the reasons for that one, misogyny in this country, can't believe there can be a woman leader.
Look, my belief has always been, since I have been aware enough, is that if you want to get something done, hire a woman to do it. When I was at CNN, the people who ran my show, women. People I give most of the breaks to, women.
Because if you want to get it done, women of all different ethnicities understand pretty much what it is like to be discriminated against, what it is like to sit in a room and give ideas, and then a man comes in 30 seconds later, say the same thing, and do this, and they go, oh yeah. So women are like, I'm going to get this shit done.
One, they have a point to prove, and one, I just think that they are, pardon me, fellas. but I think they're the most evolved of the sexes. Sorry. I mean, I was the only boy, I grew up, women raised me. I think they're the most evolved of the sexes. Women are not knuckle-draggers for the most part. And so they believed that BS that was spread out there. And now you have the Republicans
are there right the ones who you saw in that report and then you have republicans in general meaning in the republican lawmaker leadership class they aren't willing to call the war what it is this is from the la times of republicans not willing to call the war what it is and this is from jonah goldberg he says look republicans aren't willing to call the war for it isn't scrolling just a little bit andy um because they're afraid
And obviously they're afraid. Oh, we're just going to read the top part of it. So let's state the obvious, this is. We're at war with Iran, even though the administration is saying it's not. My evidence, turn on the TV. US forces are working with Israel. They killed the supreme leader in Iran, of Iran, many of his top aides. We sunk Iran's navy and destroyed most of their air force.
We bombed thousands of military sites across the region. President Trump, the commander in chief, has deemed unconditional surrender from Iran. He routinely refers to it as a war. Pete Hexeth, who calls himself the secretary of war, also describes this as a war. daily, such as last week when he said we are set the terms of the war. The truth that we are at war is simple.
Only politicians and lawyers could make it seem complicated. And so and then he goes on to talk about. And so once you're at war. What does that mean? That there are certain things that you got to do in order to either to continue to facilitate that war, whether that's through. Well, first of all, you got to have some dough. And you have to have the weapons to be able to fight it.
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Chapter 8: What actions can Americans take in response to the war with Iran?
Roll it. which just seems so insane based on what he ran on. I mean, this is why a lot of people feel betrayed, right? He ran on no more wars and these stupid senseless wars, and then we have one that we can't even really clearly define why we did it. The Downloading Show is brought to you by the Freedom From Religion Foundation.
Now, I've said it before, and I believe it more than ever right now. Equality under the law only works when government stays neutral about religion. The First Amendment wasn't written to protect one religion. It was written to protect all of us, believers, nonbelievers, and everyone in between.
But that promise is under pressure right now from Christian nationalist groups who believe that their religious views should shape public policy and control how everyone else lives. That's where the Freedom From Religion Foundation comes in.
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Pay attention to how you feel. See if you wake up more rested. And here's the best part. BioOptimizers offers a 365-day money-back guarantee. That's a full year. Zero risk. So go to BioOptimizers.com slash Don Lemon. Use the code DON15 to get 15% off of any order. But it just seems so insane based on what he ran on. I mean, this is why a lot of people feel betrayed, right?
He ran on no more wars and these stupid senseless wars, and then we have one that we can't even really clearly define why we did it. Again, so that was Joe Rogan saying, and all of them now are like, wait, what is going on? They believe the hype. They should have known from the very beginning. Don't you guys? Let me know if you agree in the comments.
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