Tony Samuel

**Jason Hammer** (0:00)
We've said it once, we'll say it again. When you're talking about Indiana politics, it makes you drink. I'm Jason Hammer, Brian Alvey is here, and we bring in the hired gun to talk Indiana politics. We bring in Tony Samuel. He is our insider, he was part of Trump's presidential campaign in 2016
Tony, we'll talk some Indiana property tax stuff here in just a little bit, but we always start with a shot. And I was just told that those weeks that I was in Ireland, that no good rotten Nigel didn't provide any whiskey. Is that the case?

**Tony Samuel** (0:36)
Yeah, I almost left when I found out, but I stuck around. It was good.

**Brian Alvey** (0:41)
It was the only reason I came in that day.

**Jason Hammer** (0:43)
Right. All right. Well, I'll tell you what, everybody raise up your glass here. If you don't mind, let me make this toast. You got to bring to the greatest country in the world, celebrating 250, the United States of America. Absolutely.

**Tony Samuel** (1:00)
Yummy. That's smooth.
Thank you.

**Jason Hammer** (1:06)
I feel like Ric Flair.
All right. More on Indiana politics in just a little bit. We have been wanting to talk. I ran with you for a while. You had a close connection to President Trump. Again, back in 2016, his local campaign guy here. What do you think is going on behind closed doors right now at the White House? What's President Trump thinking about this Iran situation the more that it plays out?

**Tony Samuel** (1:38)
Well, I think President Trump realizes you can't trust this regime.
Like you guys were saying just earlier, you want to see it come to a conclusion, or I should say some folks do. And like Brian, you were saying, you have to wait it out because we don't know what's going on behind the scenes, and it doesn't happen overnight. So I agree again with both of those assumptions or assessments. But I think what the other thing Trump might be doing is, you went in early and you blew them out of the water early.

**Jason Hammer** (2:23)
Had success right away.

**Tony Samuel** (2:25)
Success right off the bat. You didn't finish the job then, you kind of put your foot on their neck and you said, give up and let's make these changes. You can't have nuclear weapons. You can't go about business the way you've been, terrorizing the region, terrorizing the world for the last 47 years. But he did give them a little bit of a chance here to change their ways. Now, I don't think you can ever trust that regime, and I don't think it's going to work. I think he realizes that. The other thing that might be going on, if you would have gone full blown and continued the fighting, two things were happening.
One was that the left was already coming out saying, it's Trump's war, why is he doing it?
There wasn't enough time because we had to take them by surprise to explain it really well. Well, now the world knows, the country knows, the world knows why we're doing it. They've been reminded of the nuclear ambitions of Iran, and the UN Secretary General has said, and others have said that they can't have a nuclear weapon, so it's not just Trump. It's the whole world seeing this. The other thing that I might point out is, we could have finished the job early on, but maybe you want to wait until after the America 250 celebration. Maybe you want to wait until after the 4th of July. What that does is it gives you time to show that you're giving them a chance, always better if this could be handled peacefully, and they would change their ways. I don't trust them. I don't think they can. But I think this shows that Trump is at least trying, and it educates everyone as to what the real problem is. And if they were to come to terms, great, I don't think they will. I think we're going to have to go in and do more militarily.

**Brian Alvey** (4:12)
I agree with you wholeheartedly. And one of the things that's not lost on me that maybe this slow step forward now, we set the tone and now we're taking slow steps forward so we don't overcommit and have to go further than we want to, like I said about putting boots on the ground with conventional forces.
Maybe they're just taking a costless approach to it and we're all watching it and it just seems like we're watching paint dry, but it's happening faster. We realize we're just not privy to all the inner workings.