Today's Poll Question: When attacked, should the U.S. respond proportionally or overwhelmingly?

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Get ready to vote on today's daily poll question at smerconish.com.

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But first, Michael explains it for you right here.

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Welcome to The Smerconish Podcast from SiriusXM.

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For Independent Minds.

**Michael Smerconish** (0:14)
Hello, hello. Hi gang, today is Thursday. It's the 11th of June, 2026 Yesterday's poll result from smerconish.com, which would you rather watch, baseball or soccer? Today, the World Cup finally gets underway. As a matter of fact, on today's program, Andrew Giuliani, son of, who is the soccer czar for FIFA purposes, FIFA purposes, during the course of the World Cup, looking forward to that conversation. It airs in the second hour of today's program.
69.95% of the, just a tick under 30,000 who voted yesterday, said baseball, sticking with the national pastime, 30.05% going for soccer. I'm excited about the World Cup. I intend to watch a lot of it. I intend to go to a match or two. But, that's not the big sports story today. As a matter of fact, with the nation still at war with Iran, the Dow having taken a big tumble yesterday, I had my newsletter set. You know, I've got to make a decision as to what will be my lead story, no different than a newspaper. And initially, I had the roughly 700-point Dow decline yesterday, followed by the continued exchange of missiles between the US and Iran. And even though that gets to today's poll question, I had to redo the order of the poll, or pardon me, of the stories, and go with the Knicks. I mean, the Knicks pulled off the most. They were 29 down, 29 down. They pulled off the most improbable victory at Madison Square Garden last night to put them now one from the NBA title. And I had a funny experience because I was flying back from Boston and got delayed. You know, those summer storms, it just got delayed, delayed, delayed. I had a dilemma. I had a dilemma, which was at about 630 at night, I'm at the airport and my flight, they just put it back 45 minutes, an hour, then it's two hours. And I'm looking at the watch, but I'm already in the terminal and I'm like, should I just go rent a car? Waze told me that I would be home in six and a half hours. And that was at, yeah, 630, 630 at night at Logan. What time did I walk in the door at home? 1230, 1230 So the exact same time, would you rather drive it or let somebody else drive it, do your work? And I went with the ladder, flew home. And my point is, got to watch the Nick game the whole way home. And like everybody else, totally wrote them off. Totally wrote them off.
The New York Post coverage from, from 2 and to O-no-G, O-M-G. Wait, did I read that correctly? From 2 and to O-no, to O-G, to O-M-G.
Remember where you were, remember when you watched it, remember this feeling.
This will live in those special places, not just for Nick's lore, not just for NBA lore, but in sports lore. One of the greatest comebacks, 29 points, most in NBA finals history, in sports history, one of the greatest moments you're ever going to see. It really was extraordinary. Absolutely extraordinary. And now comes the World Cup.

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The Smerconish Podcast from SiriusXM.

**Michael Smerconish** (3:48)
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