Guests - Stephen Mundt, Joel Strabala, Rodney Glassman
Brigadier General Steve Mundt: Graham's Legacy, Iran's Last Stand, and the Taiwan Slow Burn
Retired Brigadier General Stephen Mundt, calling in from Herndon, Virginia, opened the show as he has done for months — as the show's resident military and geopolitical analyst — and began where the country was beginning: with Senator Lindsey Graham.
Darlene Graham Takes the Seat
The news as of Tuesday morning: South Carolina Governor Henry McMaster had appointed Darlene Graham — Lindsey's adopted sister — to fill the remaining months of her brother's Senate term. Mundt had watched her address to the Senate the day before and found himself moved. "If she, after yesterday, listening to her in that period of adversity and mourning and all the things she's going through, had that much composure to stand up and talk that way and basically tell her brother, Lindsey, I got it — maybe she doesn't have all these other credentials, but listening to her speak at that moment, I said, that's somebody I think I could vote for."
Winn offered the detail that made the adoption story more legally specific than simply a gesture of brotherly love: Graham adopted Darlene because as a sister, she would have been ineligible to receive his military benefits. As his daughter, those protections transferred legally. "He did it because he wanted to take care of his sister." Now she is returning the favor — honoring his legacy for the few months before South Carolina holds its special primary in August.
Both Winn and Mundt agreed that one of Graham's most important unfinished items was the federal SAVE Act — the national voter ID legislation he had been championing — and noted that Senate Majority Leader John Thune's visible emotionalism at news of Graham's death was itself meaningful. The hope: that grief, and the momentum Graham was building, might finally create the conditions for the SAVE Act to advance.
The one moment that crystallized Graham's public reputation for Mundt was the Brett Kavanaugh hearing. "That is the first time I've ever seen him mad like that. And that's what made it so distinct — calling out his fellow senators who he often reached across the aisle to. And telling them what they were doing was a sham." The fact that Graham had previously voted to confirm Sotomayor and Kagan gave his defense of Kavanaugh a moral authority no partisan could have mustered. "He said, say hello to him when you go back over there, because I voted for both of them by doing the right thing." That integrity is, in Mundt's telling, precisely what made his Kavanaugh defense so devastating to the opposition. "We have Lindsey Graham to thank for that."
His net worth at death: widely reported at under a million dollars, with some figures as low as $600,000. For a man with 33 years of military service and decades in the U.S. Senate, sitting with presidents, kings, and prime ministers, Mundt treated that figure as the definitive statement about his character. "He was not making money off of his job. He was doing what he believed was good for his state, for his family, for the country."
Ukraine: The Diplomatic Gap Graham Leaves
Graham had come home from Ukraine confident — as he told President Trump — that a workable path forward with Zelensky had been identified. Mundt's assessment: that intelligence almost certainly didn't stay in Graham's head alone. "I would be shocked if Lindsey had not been having conversations with other people about where he was going, what he was trying to do." Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner — the administration's active Iran and Middle East negotiators — would likely have visibility. The harder question is bandwidth. "They've got to handle two front wars. And if it's not a Lindsey, who is it that goes and does that?"
The answer requires someone both Ukraine trusts and Russia respects — a combination Graham had cultivated over decades through relationships that don't transfer to a successor. Ukraine is targeting military infrastructure, refineries, and logistics corridors inside Russia. Moscow and St. Petersburg now see billowing black smoke on their skylines regularly. Russia is losing an estimated 35,000 casualties a month while recruiting only about 26,000. The refinery strikes have cut Russia's domestic refining capacity significantly, squeezing oil revenue. The war's military math has turned. The diplomatic math, without Graham, is harder. "Everybody liked Lindsey. Israel liked Lindsey. Netanyahu came out and said good things. He was just who he was. And there was no pretense."
On Patriot missiles: Mundt was careful to manage expectations around President Trump's announcement about licensing production to Ukraine. "Just so your listeners know, that isn't going to happen overnight. If you look at the timeline, we may start it by 2028, have a production facility maybe by 2030. It is not going to solve this overnight." The longer-term concern remains an off-ramp that allows Russia to rebuild economically, rearm, and restart the conflict in three to seven years — under Putin or under whoever replaces him. "The problem is not with Putin necessarily. It's with the Russian system."
Iran: The Blockade, the Submarine Strike, and the IRGC Survival Calculus
The show's most immediate military news came from Iran. Around 20 hours before the broadcast, an F-15 had gone down near Kharg Island in the Strait of Hormuz — both pilots ejected safely. Iran had launched additional drone salvos overnight and attacked ships in the strait that morning. Mundt's read: the ceasefire terms were not being honored, and the administration had reached the end of its patience.
The current bombing campaign is deliberately targeted rather than comprehensive: submarine bases, UAS sites along the strait, military capacity and infrastructure. "If it was all in, you'd be going after all the different targets. It would not be the electrical grid. Our targets are very, very targeted." The blockade is squeezing Iran's oil revenues while simultaneously limiting the oil flow that Russia and China depend on from the region — creating economic pressure on all three simultaneously. Venezuela's oil, coming back online with U.S. assistance, provides partial replacement supply that reduces American leverage costs. "We have plenty of oil here in this country that we can mine and dig. When you supplement that with oil from Venezuela, we're not in a bad position."
The Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps remains the decisive variable. Mundt has said it in prior segments and returned to the same analysis: the IRGC is fighting for physical survival. If the regime falls, the population it has abused for generations will exact a reckoning. "In the case of them, they're just fighting for survival. They're not packing their briefcase full of money and leaving." What eventually exhausts that will to fight is the steady elimination of assets until there's nothing left to fight with. The question is timeline — Iran still believes it has enough capability to continue. "They launched more drones last night. They attacked ships in the strait this morning." Mundt's wry response: "At the end of a fireworks thing where they do the big finish — let's hope that's where we're at."
Taiwan: The Slow Burn Mundt Won't Stop Worrying About
Mundt offered an assessment on Taiwan that deviated from the dominant conservative framing in one significant way. He does not believe China will move militarily in the near term — and not primarily because it fears the U.S. response. He believes Taiwan is being absorbed through demographic and political infiltration rather than invasion. "They are slowly but surely settling more people there. Their support is for mainland China, communism, the whole rule. And my fear is someday in the foreseeable future, there will be a vote and there'll be enough communists in Taiwan that they will win the vote."
The resulting scenario is legally and morally complicated in a way that military deterrence doesn't resolve: if Taiwan's own electorate chooses political alignment with Beijing through a legitimate democratic process, the grounds for American intervention become unclear. "How does the U.S. intervene in something that the country itself voted on and approved?" He's not predicting it as inevitable, but he's watching the demographic trajectory more closely than the military one. As for China engaging directly in the Strait of Hormuz to defend Iran's oil pipeline — Mundt doesn't see it. "They want Taiwan. So they know if they do this, they're going to have other issues." China is playing a longer game than Iran's immediate survival fight, and picking a confrontation in the Gulf would complicate that game significantly.
Graham Plattner, Democratic Vetting Failures, and Republican Lessons
Before leaving the geopolitical frame entirely, Mundt weighed in on the Maine Democratic Senate primary collapse — and found himself grateful for it. "On the way out, he blew up his party that wouldn't give him money and wouldn't give him resources. And he stressed the fact that he got 70% of the vote. And oh, by the way, Democrats, you had an opportunity to vet this guy." The lesson he drew for Republicans: candidate quality matters more than enthusiasm, and both parties have fielded candidates whose personal conduct became the story. "I think both parties need to step back and look at the candidates they're putting up."
His parting concern: Zohran Mamdani in New York. "He's single-handedly going to destroy one of the greatest places in the world." And the larger pattern — straight-ticket voting is crowding out any real evaluation of individual candidates on either side. "You're not voting for it. You're just voting from memory or misplaced loyalty. We have to be so much smarter than that."
Joel Strabala: Today Is the Last Day to Mail Your Ballot
Joel Strabala, LD17 Republican chairman and Election Integrity Commission member, called in from the road — he was on his way to Ajo to observe the mobile voting center's first deployment of the week — with a single message that overrode everything else: today is the last day to mail your ballot and be confident it arrives before the 7 p.m. July 21st cutoff. Not tomorrow. Today.
The state of play as of Tuesday morning: roughly 13,000 ballots returned out of a potential universe Strabala estimated at 63,000 — meaning as many as 50,000 more ballots could still come in if the ground operation performs. LD19 continued to lead by percentage, LD17 by raw volume. Winn had spoken that morning with the Pima County Recorder, who confirmed that a significant number of voters who believe themselves on the Active Early Voting List are not — a confusion she traced directly to five consecutive all-mail Tucson city elections conducted over the past year. Those elections went to every registered voter regardless of AEVL status. Voters assumed that meant they were enrolled. Many were not. "They got ballots because of the all-mail-in elections. It did not matter if you were on the AEVL or not."
The DMV-voter registration coupling is the other contamination source. Under the 1997 Motor Voter Law, transactions at the Department of Motor Vehicles are tied to voter registration systems. Voters who register a vehicle, boat, or any other DMV-registered asset and click through the associated screens without carefully reading each prompt can inadvertently change their party registration to Pending and Declined (P&D) or Independent. The fix for this cycle's primary is not possible — the deadline to correct party registration passed before ballots were mailed. But voters who discover the problem now can correct it in time for the November general election, and doing so immediately is strongly encouraged.
The good news from inside the tabulation center: Strabala had been observing the previous night and reported that the recorder's office had completed tabulation on the first 78,000 returned ballots. The caveat: only 6,000 to 7,000 ballots are arriving daily — a rate that, if sustained, will leave a substantial portion of the 63,000 potential universe uncounted by election day unless the final-week turnout surge materializes.
Strabala walked through a voter's options for the remaining days. Anyone with a ballot in hand who doesn't mail it today should bring it to one of 18 active early voting centers across the county — not a drop box, but a staffed center where ID can be verified on the spot. The ID-verified drop-off process, new this cycle, eliminates the signature verification step and moves the ballot directly to tabulation, cutting the processing time from four to five days down to one to two days. A printed receipt is provided. Ballots dropped in an unattended box without ID still require signature verification and won't tabulate as quickly. Strabala made the operational implication plain: if you want your ballot to count on election night rather than two days later, choose the ID-verified option at a staffed center.
On election day observers: the deadline to sign up is Wednesday at 5 p.m. Observer training runs online Wednesday from 6 to 8 p.m. Observer slots remain open in central Tucson, east Tucson, northwest, southwest, the mobile voting center, and around-the-clock drop box monitoring. Slots are also open for signature verification, ballot processing, tabulation, and hand count observation. The sign-up process is at PimaGOP.org, under Elections 2026, with an interactive map to find the nearest vote center by supervisor district.
The Board of Supervisors meeting that evening, Strabala noted, included an unresolved question arising from a Steve Christie memo: there is no formal definition of "sufficient identification" in current statute, leaving election workers to rely on a one-page guidance document rather than codified law. A government-issued photo ID is generally accepted as sufficient. Non-photo alternatives exist but require supplemental documentation. The gap is a legitimate administrative concern that Winn connected to the broader legislative agenda a Republican governor and legislature could address in the next session.
Final reminder for District 5 voters: write in Jeff Rhodes — J-E-F-F R-H-O-D-E-S — and fill in the bubble. Both steps are required.
Rodney Glassman: The Closing Argument, In Person
Rodney Glassman, Republican candidate for Arizona Attorney General, came to the studio in person for his final pitch to primary voters — one week out from the July 21st election.
His opening frame: most Arizonans, when asked who the attorney general works for, say the governor. They're wrong, but they're not irrational. The governor appoints the federal attorney general; the state AG answers to the voters of Arizona. That confusion is itself an argument for why the race matters more than most voters realize. "When it comes to Arizona, we're one of 46 states where we elect our attorney general." The person elected next Tuesday will be responsible for enforcing Arizona's election laws during the 2028 presidential election. Not the secretary of state. The attorney general.
Glassman ticked through his case methodically. Kris Mayes has sued the Trump administration 44 times. She has never prosecuted a case. She came to office without prosecutorial experience and has used the AG's office as a fundraising and lawfare vehicle rather than a law enforcement one. The contrast Glassman presents: 17 years of military service, 33 years total including time as a JAG officer and judge, nearly 20 years of private sector legal practice as an attorney hired by private clients with their own money. He runs the active duty legal office at Luke Air Force Base, overseeing more than 25 JAGs, paralegals, and support staff. He recently prosecuted nine trials — more, he has said publicly, than his primary opponent has prosecuted in total.
The Davis-Monthan Air Force Base connection gives him a specific Tucson anchor. He served there and commissioned into the Air Force JAG Corps there. He's having lunch the day of the broadcast with the friend who introduced him to his wife, whom he has now been married to for nearly 20 years. His earliest political experience — a Democrat on the Tucson City Council at 23 — gave him relationships that have carried forward in unexpected ways. Kathleen Dunbar told him then, on a five-hour flight back from Washington, D.C.: "Rodney, you're a Republican. You just have to grow up and figure it out." He did.
The Sonny Borrelli endorsement is the one Glassman returns to most — not because of its institutional weight but because of what happened next. Borrelli, now a Mohave County supervisor, former Arizona Senate majority whip, and longtime Glassman friend from their shared Tucson days, texted his endorsement directly to the president of the United States. On June 14th — Flag Day, also President Trump's birthday — between breakfast and the UFC fight and the Iran deal, Trump reposted Borrelli's endorsement on Truth Social. "So I'm proud to have friends like Mojave County Supervisor Sonny Borrelli." Congressman Paul Gosar's formal endorsement followed.
On the clean elections debate that preceded the primary's final weeks: Glassman described it in terms his mother taught him. "If you wrestle with a pig, you're going to get mud on you. And then my friend pointed out that the pig likes it." What he found meaningful in the debate despite the dysfunction was the moderator's final question: if you don't win the Republican primary, will you vote for your opponent? "I'm the only Republican running that is committed to doing that." The point is not biographical. It's structural: the only outcome that matters in this race is defeating Kris Mayes in November. Unity after July 21st is a prerequisite for that. He is the only candidate who has said, in public, on record, that he will deliver it.
His closing ask was built around one question: which candidate would you hire to protect your own family? "Look at me as a human. I'm proud to be married to my law school sweetheart, Sasha. We've been married almost 20 years. We have two teenage daughters. I've worked in the private sector. We're raising our family here. This is the community where we live." The attorney general's office is the largest law firm in the state. It should be run by someone who has spent a career in courtrooms. RodneyGlassman.com.