Newsom’s Rocky Month Shows the Risks of Running on Style Over Substance

 

Gavin Newsom, the governor of California, and the presumptive front-runner in the Democratic presidential primary for 2028—I am biased because I’ve had to live under his tenure for six years—but I think you could make the argument he had the worst February of any major want-to-be candidate in modern memory, or surely the worst record of any governor in the last 30 days.

It wasn’t supposed to be that way. He has a new autobiography, and his problem there is he comes across as what he is: a child of privilege, a nepo baby, a person whose father was a close, intimate friend of Gov. Pat Brown, senior Gov. Pat Brown. He was a good friend and somewhat related to Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and former Gov. Jerry Brown. And of course, he was subsidized and helped in his business venture by the Getty family and their mega-oil fortune inherited from their father, who created Getty Oil. So, he wants to dispel that image.

So, when he talked about how he just ate white bread or he had all of these problems growing up—he said he had dyslexia. We’ll get to that in a minute. But the idea that Gavin Newsom was somehow parallel to former President Abraham Lincoln in a log cabin or Vice President JD Vance just doesn’t work.

Then he went over to Munich, German Democratic Republic, because, you know, he’s a California governor. He doesn’t have any foreign experience, and he thought he was going to impress the Europeans with their shared dislike of President Donald Trump. But it was a disaster.

He said something about you shouldn’t wear knee pads. He’s a vulgarian. He really is. He can’t keep his potty mouth clean. I don’t think anybody at that type of serious discussion of foreign policy wants some upstart California governor to come over and talk about people being on their knee pads. I suppose that’s a reference for a sexual act of submission.

Then he’s had this social media team, and their theory is that Donald Trump—with his capital letters, exclamation points, personal ad hominem attacks—has upped his popularity. And therefore, he’s going to imitate Donald Trump’s style with capital letters, the same format, but he’s going to use a constant level of pejoratives that are obscene, almost pornographic. And then, therefore, he will outtrump Trump. He has a fundamental failing, everybody, and you know that.

You will vote for Donald Trump because of his record and his courage and breaking existing norms and taboos and trying to do things that no one ever did. Like close the border, stop crime, deal with the Left, the Department of Government Efficiency, deal with the Iranians, deal with Venezuela. And the tweets in which he describes that are attacks of Robert De Niro or—that’s something that you will tolerate despite, not because of, those tweets.

Gavin Newsom got it all wrong. He thought, well, Trump is doing well because of his tweets, and I’m gonna be outtrumping Trump. And the result is he’s unleashed this unfortunate character. I think he’s called Izzy Gardon. I don’t know how you pronounce it, but my gosh, they’re full of expletives.

He’s in a tweet war with Sean Hannity. He used the F-word. He used the S-word. They come out of the mouth of the governor of California like they’re nothing. He’s really debased the office. He’s got one of the most foul mouths, Gavin Newsom, and now you’re putting it, if I could use that archaic term, in print, in these social media, daily outbursts.

You know, there was a simple reporter, Susan Crabtree. She has a very good reputation. She works for RealClearPolitics, and getting back to dyslexia, she says, all of a sudden, you’re emphasizing dyslexia. But we would like to know when he was officially diagnosed with this medical condition. And his social media, Gardon, Izzy, said F off to a reporter, which didn’t go down well.

As far as dyslexia goes, it’s very hard to find him credible. Not that he doesn’t have it, but when he says, “I can’t read,” I can’t believe that’s true, because not too long ago, he bragged to us, I think, that he was reading a 260-page book in an hour and a half, as if he was a speed-reader.

And my gosh, anybody who is a governor of a huge state like California, a governor of any state, gets page after page daily in memoranda and policy papers and speeches. So, when he says he can’t read, it wouldn’t convince most people.

And why did he say that he couldn’t read? Because he’s flailing, and he wants to have some sympathy. I think that’s the reason.

The same thing—he wants to be a pseudo-poor boy. When Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, said you were historically illiterate, and Newsom again fired from the hip and said that Trump had no historical precedent or right to bring in federal troops, that’s happened five or six times in our history. Civil War draft riots; World War I veterans marching for their bonuses they didn’t receive; Rodney King riots, where then-Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Colin Powell sent in, I think, 4,000 or 5,000 Marines on the order of then-President George H.W. Bush.

And so, Ted Cruz said, Gavin, you’re historically illiterate. And sure enough, he says, how dare you make fun of a person with a handicap because I’m—you’re saying that I’m illiterate because I can’t read. Of course, being historically illiterate means you’re able to read, you just don’t read history, or you would’ve not made such a blunder. And he confused that. Again, the subtext was, please feel sorry for me because otherwise I have no redeeming values as a candidate.

And then he made the faux pas of all mistakes. He got before an African American audience. And remember, every time a Democratic white elite gets in front of an African American audience, something happens. They either feel uncomfortable or they want to fake it like they’re somebody they’re not, or they’re condescending, or they—it just doesn’t work well.

Remember former President Joe Biden, when he wanted to attack former Sen. Mitt Romney. He said to a group of highly educated, professional blacks in the audience that Mitt Romney’s “gonna put you all [back] in chains.” He kind of did the accent. “Put you all in”—as if these capable people couldn’t protect themselves without Joe Biden. As if we were gonna go back to slavery.

When we had former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, remember, I tried so—“I didn’t come this far.” She was trying to imitate, I guess, the voice she thought Sojourner Truth or Harriet Tubman would’ve said, somebody like that. It was a disaster. Even former President Barack Obama, who’s half African American, always went into a different patois to condescend to his audience.

And that’s exactly what Gavin Newsom did, only it was worse because it was content, not just style. He was speaking very slowly and changed his cadence. But when he said to them, I am not—I’m just like you. Basically, I am illiterate, and I had a 960, and I’m not saying I had a 960 to make you out there in the audience have 940, that was an insult because he was saying to them: You are not very bright, and therefore, you should feel empathy with me because I’m claiming that I’m not very bright, but I really don’t believe it. And they don’t believe that he really meant that either. So, it was completely racist and insulting.

It’s up there with Joe Biden’s “Corn Pop” sagas, you know. Barack Obama’s the first black who’s clean and can articulate. It’s up there with his use of “boy” and “Negro.” As I said, all of these politicians have a checkered record when it comes to race, which is ironic because they pose as defenders of civil rights.

Finally, what’s the elephant in the room? All of what I talked about is a camouflage, a mask for the problem. And that is 300,000 people are leaving his state per year since he’s been governor. He’s taken paradise and turned it into purgatory. Whether it’s the fires, the high-speed rail boondoggle, the highest income taxes in the nation, the recent billionaires tax—it’s already driven $1 trillion out of the state.

We have the highest number of homeless people. We have one-third of all welfare recipients. We have the highest poverty rate, I think we’re 21% to 22%. We have no plans to assimilate a culture rate or integrate 27% of the population that was foreign-born. We have the highest number of illegal aliens. About one out of every three people that enters our now-bankrupt health system has diabetes. And Louisiana and Mississippi have higher test scores in their elementary schools than we do.

Add it all up, and he’s got only one campaign slogan. Gavin Newsom will have to run as “I want to do to the United States what I did to California.” We’ll see how that works out.

CNN Repeatedly Screws Up on Mamdani and 2 Muslims With Bombs

 On March 7, two teenaged Muslims were arrested for lighting and throwing improvised explosive devices at an anti-Islam protest outside Gracie Mansion, the home of New York’s Democrat Mayor Zohran Mamdani.

This provided the latest exhibit of how our elitist media seek to protect Muslims from the “Islamophobia” of conservatives. It’s fascinating that when the extremism and “phobias” run another direction—of Muslims being viciously antisemitic—it doesn’t outrage these people.

CNN has launched into an embarrassing week of false and insensitive coverage of these college-age jihadis. On Tuesday, CNN’s X account tweeted this narrative: “Two Pennsylvania teenagers crossed into New York City Saturday morning for what could’ve been a normal day enjoying the city during abnormally warm weather. But in less than an hour, their lives would drastically change as the pair would be arrested for throwing homemade bombs during an anti-Muslim protest outside of Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s home.”

Within hours, it had taken down the tweet, but it mirrored the lede of its original CNN.com article by reporters Taylor Romine and Gloria Pazmino. It inspired a wave of satires, framing the Lincoln assassination, Pearl Harbor, and other violent events into an idyllic frame.

Then, on Tuesday’s edition of “CNN NewsNight,” host Abby Phillip erroneously stated the bomb-throwers carried out “an attempted terror attack against New York’s mayor, Zohran Mamdani” while heading into a commercial break. She later apologized and blamed it on whoever put these words into her teleprompter.

CNN commentator Ana Navarro repeated this lie just moments later: “Supposedly some of these comments are as a result of the attempt against Mayor Mamdani in New York, who was raised Muslim, was he not?” He was, but he wasn’t targeted by these two Muslims.

On Wednesday, CNN reporter Edward-Isaac Dovere apologized on X after tweeting that Mamdani had messaged Democrat Gov. Josh Shapiro last year, “a fellow target of political violence.”

Then there were overly vague allusions leaving the impression that Mamdani was targeted. Wolf Blitzer announced on “The Situation Room” on Wednesday: “Investigators are digging into the background of the two terror suspects accused of throwing homemade bombs near New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s home.”

But according to a transcript search on Nexis, there’s been nothing on CNN about the vicious social media “likes” of Rama Duwaji, the mayor’s wife, celebrating the Oct. 7, 2023, mass murder in Israel, as reported by The New York Times on March 6. The only mention of her name came from Pazmino about the bomb incident: “I should mention that both Mayor Zohran Mamdani and the First Lady Rama Duwaji were safe. There were no injuries during this protest yesterday.”

After Mamdani’s victory last November, Pazmino did a puff piece celebrating Duwaji as “the first Muslim member of Gen Z to become first lady of New York City.” Behind the scenes, she “advised Mamdani on how to better use social media.” Oh, really?

This week, CNN was posting partisan attacks, like this one from political reporter Aaron Blake: “The GOP’s increasing blind eye to anti-Muslim bigotry.” That’s pretty funny, considering CNN’s blind eye on the celebration of genocide inside Israel. Blake even cited Rep. Brandon Gill, R-Texas, mocking Mayor Mamdani for eating rice with his hands, saying, “Go back to the Third World.”

CNN should find it more outrageous that someone would celebrate the slaughter on Oct. 7 than mockery of the eating habits of a Ugandan American. But that’s not how CNN rolls. Its Islamophilia led it into a cascade of Fake 

A MAGA Split Over Iran? What MAGA Split?

 

There’s a lot of talk about a Make America Great split among Trump supporters, and this originated here in context with the Iranian war. I’m speaking on a Monday, the 10th day of the war. And there’s talk in the air that the MAGA base may desert President Donald Trump because, after all, MAGA’s credo was no optional wars in the Middle East.

That came out of a disgust with the 20-year misadventure in Afghanistan and the skedaddle from Kabul that left billions of dollars of weapons, and, of course, the 8,000-plus dead and more casualties in the Iraq and Afghanistan war. But this is different.

This war is only conducted by air, and there’s certain characteristics of it that we haven’t seen before. It’s a top-down war.

We are targeting the leaders, not the military rank and file. We have been taking out, along with the Israelis, 50, 60, a hundred scientists, generals, mullahs, political leaders to decapitate, not try to organically destroy the entire Iranian military.

Second, they were all part of negotiations. We were negotiating with Iran and gave them a lot of options. Just don’t fund your terrorist proxies. Don’t create a bomb, knock it off. And they didn’t want to do it. It’s just like the prior Iran strike last year, where we gave them another option.

It’s very different. You can’t really change a regime, we’re told, if you don’t have ground troops. But maybe there’s something different about the modern age with the sophisticated satellite imagery and reconnaissance, that you know where individual people are by their GPS footprint, by their cellphone communications.

And then you couple that with these highly sophisticated missiles and drones where you can actually take something through a window and dispatch somebody at a meeting. We’ve never quite seen that before.

So, you don’t really need a sniper to take out a toxic Hitlerian-type of leader.

The other thing is that Donald Trump pretty much knows there’s three alternatives that we’ve talked about before. And none of them really require ground troops.

The most desirable obviously would be to get an interim government, maybe former dissidents, get expatriates back, depose the mullahs so that there are—or people in the army, depose them, and then you have elections. That would be wonderful, with the problem solved.

Or you could find somebody within the apparatus, the theocracy that was a dissident and felt that he had military backing, and he would, you know, pick the Venezuela solution. Sort of what we see in Venezuela. We’re not going to nation-build.

The worst scenario is not all that bad. We say stew in your own juice. You know, we mow the lawn and we can do it anytime we want.

We can come back in and destroy your new navy, your new missiles as long as we have a president, post-Trump, who’s willing to do that and ensure that they don’t become nuclear again, or they don’t build another missile fleet. And that’s reflected, getting back to my original point, in the MAGA so-called dissidents.

If you look at polls, and there were some released by CNN, Donald Trump has 87% support among Republicans. That is much higher than Joe Biden had among Democrats or even Barack Obama had among Democrats. And when you look at the MAGA base, the people who identify themselves as Trump Conservatives or Trump MAGA people, the support for the Iran war is over 90%.

And now why? How could that be, when they have told us that there’s a widespread civil war among the MAGA people? That’s what the Left is saying. But when you look at the people who are objecting, you know, it’s the Steve Bannon wing, the Tucker Carlson, Candace Owens, maybe Megyn Kelly, I don’t know.

And they’re saying that this is contrary to the MAGA philosophy of no optional wars. It would be if we insert ground troops, and we’re there for months.

I mean, if we end up bombing, as Barack Obama did, in Libya for seven months without congressional authority, one of the last things he did while in office was to bomb Libya, then that would be another matter.

But nobody has ever seen a war in which one side destroyed the entire air force of the enemy, the entire navy of the enemy, and has got pretty much 90% of its ballistic missile arsenal nullified and probably 85% of the drones and decapitated the entire command and control of the military. And now is looking at secondary targets where maybe Revolutionary Guard headquarters and regional areas, but there hasn’t really been any American losses of equipment.

We’ve had, tragically, seven people killed. But tragically and terribly as that is, in a war of 10 days with being that kinetic, it’s very rare to see such few casualties.

I mean, we’re looking at the Ukraine war. There’s been 1,200,000 Russians killed and probably another two million wounded, probably three or 400,000 Ukrainians. So, this isn’t comparable to what we’ve seen.

And I think the president understands that there is a deadline. And the deadline is going to be met. And the deadline consists of we do not want this war to drag on with the midterms coming up. And he wants to pivot back to the economy.

And the people on the MAGA base who are saying that the party is split in two, they don’t really have a constituency, as the polls, I just told you, illustrate.

They’re loud, they have audiences, and they make points that, you know, you can consider. But they don’t represent a constituency, at least not yet.

On the other side, this sort of, on-to-Cuba, Lindsey Graham wing of the party, I think that after Venezuela, which we didn’t lose anybody. We lost some wounded people that were hurt, but we have a Venezuela solution of a strong person there that will be an improvement over Nicolas Maduro and might lead to elections.

But we’re not going to go on the ground and insist that we’re going to create Carmel, California, in Venezuela.

And we have, as I said earlier, three choices and they’re all preferable to what’s there now in Iran, how the war in Iran ends.

And so, after that, I think the president will say, I’m going to concentrate on making sure that the Western Hemisphere is free, and it’s not captive to the cartels, and it doesn’t kill Americans.

And obviously Cuba might be a concern, but there’s no need now to go into Cuba or to bomb Cuba to do any of that. It’s falling. It’s dying on the vine. And the more pressure we apply, insidiously so, not kinetic or dramatic, it’ll soon, I think, deteriorate to a point where there’ll be a change of government.

But that’s something in the future.

Right now, I think the MAGA base and the Republicans are sticking with Trump because they don’t see oil prices spiking. They don’t see the economy in danger, and they don’t see the war dragging on for months and months like the Libyan fiasco or the misadventures in Afghanistan and Iraq.

What we’re looking at instead, I think, is a spectacular achievement of getting rid of the two worst governments that we were dealing with in Venezuela.

And if we don’t get rid of the one in Iran, at least it’s neutered or nullified so it doesn’t have the clout to subsidize terrorists, and it doesn’t have the wherewithal to threaten us or our allies in Europe, in the Middle East.

More importantly, the Gulf states are now openly hostile or at war with Iran, and they will not be subsidizing Hamas or Hezbollah or the Houthis to the same degree they were in the past, and Iran won’t be doing it at all.

I think people have absorbed that, and now it’s time, I think, to think of the midterms and if they can, they being the Trump people, can overturn the historical trends that the in party usually loses the first midterm, dramatically loses seats in the House and Senate. And maybe they can avoid that by having good economic news.

And with the deregulation, the tax cuts, the energy development, the foreign investment, the interest rates coming down. I think there’s a good chance by June or July, as I’ve said earlier, the economy will be strong and he can point to the foreign policy successes, and that is reflected in the overwhelming support that the recent polls show for the Trump agenda.

While Some Allies Hesitate, Israel Is Already in the Fight Against Iran

 

There’s been a lot of talk in connection with the ongoing Iran war about our allies. Specifically, people are suggesting that Israel has an inordinate role to play in our decision to attack the theocracy in Iran.

And there’s even posters going around of Israeli puppeteers and we’re the puppets, which is kind of ironic when we’re a country of 340 million people and Israel is tiny at 11 million, and they, of course, don’t direct American foreign policy.

But before I get to Israel, I’d like to talk about our other allies. Here we are in an existential fight with Iran, and remember, it’s a 47-year war.

They have attacked our embassies in Beirut, Kenya, Tanzania. They blew up our Marines, 241 deaths in Beirut. We’ve had Khobar Towers. They killed people. They’ve sent assassination teams all over the world. Killed a lot of Jewish people in Argentina. They tried to kill former national security adviser John Bolton, former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, and President Donald Trump.

It’s not true that they only killed 600 Americans with shaped charges. I think most people in the military that were acquainted with that … It’s more like 1,500, and thousands were maimed. And it was not just in Iraq. It was also in Afghanistan.

In other words, they sent shaped charges into the hands of Islamic militants who used them in a variety of ways, specifically IEDs, to kill Americans.

That went unanswered as well.

They’ve taken hostages. They killed 41 Americans, their surrogates, Hamas did, on Oct. 7. Of the 1,200 Israelis that were butchered—men, women, older people—41 were American citizens.

I could go on, but we’ve been in a 47-year war with this country since its birth in 1979.

And remember, it was birthed on one fact: It took over the American Embassy and took our diplomatic personnel as hostages. That was never really replied to.

And now they have bragged in the negotiations … They had an out. They had an out. Just don’t make a bomb. Don’t keep giving 50 million a month to Hezbollah, 50 million to Hamas, or 50 million to the Houthis. Just don’t do that. And they wouldn’t do it.

So, here we are in a war, and now we’re blaming many people in the United States, Israel, as the instigator.

But I’d like to talk, as I said, about our other allies.

First, Spain has already announced that we could not use the NATO base near Gibraltar—a key base that governs traffic in and out of the Mediterranean. We cannot use it for operations against Iran.

In other words, they’re saying that they don’t want any part in this war, and you the United States cannot use this base, which is supposed to be for NATO operations. And NATO has been on the record criticizing Iran and saying it should denuclearize.

This is kind of ironic.

Spain did the same thing, if you remember, in 1986. It told President Ronald Reagan, if you’re going to hit Libya, you cannot fly over our territory from bases in England. I think it cost them about 2,500. France did the same thing. Can’t fly over the Iberian Peninsula—2,500-mile detour for us to do that. They’ve been very vocal that they will not meet their 5% armament. They have barely, I don’t think they’ve quite met the 2% unless they did it recently.

Then we turn to France. France has already said from the very beginning that this was a dangerous war and basically wanted no part in it.

The most surprising though is the United Kingdom.

The United Kingdom, under Prime Minister [Keir] Starmer, has said that they cannot use that key base for long-range bomber operations in Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean. England has always allowed us to do that, but they said we can only use it for defensive operations.

What does that mean? What does it mean when you fly into Iran to stop them from shooting missiles at the Emirates or Israel? That’s an offensive operation? It was incoherent. And then, in addition, it decided it would keep away from … It wouldn’t really weigh in.

And then when it had a base in Cyprus that was hit, or was going to be hit, targeted, then all of a sudden, the U.K. said, well, we’ll send one destroyer. But we’re not even able to send it for the weekend because we don’t want to pay overtime pay.

What’s going on with our allies?

Does Mr. Starmer remember the 1982 Falklands Wars? Remember, Falklands. Argentina took it. Britain wanted to go halfway around the world. They didn’t have the wherewithal to do it.

We didn’t really want to offend Argentine, even though that was a dictatorship in Latin America, we were trying to create a solidarity in our backyard.

The dictatorship in Argentina was reprehensible, but not as reprehensible as the Iranian dictatorship.

And what did we do? Al Haig, our secretary of state, said we should triangulate. Reagan said no. Give them 2 million gallons of gas. They’re out of gas. They’ll be stranded. Give them satellite reconnaissance. Give them 200 Sidewinder missiles. Give them anything they want. If they lose a carrier, you give a United States Marine carrier and give it to them.

It was just a blank check to Margaret Thatcher.

Do they forget that? Because they’re going to remember it because we’re not going to do that again in extremis from what they have done.

Germany. Well, no need to talk about Germany. Chancellor [Friedrich] Merz was in the White House. He kind of had a hangdog look. He had a hangdog look because a week or two earlier, into a huge crowd in Germany, he was trashing the United States and Trump himself.

Then we get to Israel.

Besides that Israel is the only democratic consensual government in the Middle East that has been a lifelong friend of the United States that has provided essential intelligence to us about our enemies and the people who have been killing us, such as Hamas on Oct. 7 and Hezbollah for 40 years, we haven’t replied to them effectively.

We’ve sent some battleship shells under Reagan. We’ve done a few things. But they are the ones that have taken out our enemies.

And by the way, it’s very rare for the United States to have a capable ally. Israel is capable.

I’ll give you one example. If you count all of the planes that are ready to fly, jet fighters that Britain has, Israel has more. A lot more. A hundred more.

If you count all the planes that France does—200. Israel has 300.

If you count the planes that Germany has, 150, Israel has 300.

What I’m getting at is the so-called big powers of NATO themselves, with these huge populations of 80 million, 60 million, 55 million, they don’t have the air capability that tiny Israel does.

And right now, they are fighting side by side with us, and those 300 planes are being used every day to take out the ability of the Iranians to do what? Fund the people who’ve killed Americans—Hezbollah, Hamas, the Houthis. Make sure they do not send missiles toward Europe.

Remember Barack Obama? He gave missile defense away in 2012 in Seoul in that quid pro quo with the Russian government. That missile defense was aimed at protecting Europe from a potential ballistic missile attack from where? Iran.

In conclusion, we have a very strong ally in Israel. It’s one of the most capable countries in the world.

And we have some unreliable allies in our formal alliance. We should remember that before we start making accusations that the Jews or the Israelis are pulling the strings of American diplomacy and military decision making.

Iran Is Merely a Chess Piece in a Much Bigger Game

 

Let’s get real about what this latest iteration of the until-now endless Iran War is all about. There’s no imminent threat. That assertion is a pacifier to the weak-kneed and timid. Last June, we set the mullahs back years in their quest for nukes. They have a metric butt-load of ballistic missiles, rockets, and drones, but they weren’t going to fire them off unless we attacked them. After seeing Sulemani turned into sushi, and their nuclear weapons program neutered like a Bulwark job applicant in one fell swoop, they weren’t about to restart throwing fists as long as Donald Trump was in the White House. Note that the word is “restart,” not “start,” as the cynical liars and historical illiterates insist. We didn’t start this war. The pagan freaks started it 47 years ago when they took our people hostage, and continued it when they killed our Marines in Beirut, our embassy workers, our Air Force folks at Khobar Towers, our troops in Iraq, and so on and so on. They started this war; we’re merely finishing it.

But why are we finishing it now?

It’s simple. Donald Trump is resetting the entire global gameboard. He’s playing 4-D chess, with the Fourth Dimension being time. This is the long game, and we finally have a president playing to win.

And it’s not all Iran. Iran is merely one piece of a much bigger whole. Understand how momentous this undertaking is. President Trump is changing the world as we have known it for the last 50 years – scratch that. Make that the last 80 years. When he is finished – which comes after many of our major foes have been finished – the world will look very different, and we will be back on top as the undisputed unipower in a unipolar world. When this is done, Donald Trump will be the most consequential president since Ronald Reagan; it’s something to be tied with the Gipper, who reset the board by defeating the Soviet Union without a shot (at least, without an acknowledged shot between Americans and Russians). From what’s happening in Europe to what’s happening in the Middle East, and elsewhere, Donald Trump is changing the game. He is no longer kicking the can down the road. He’s going to kick the tails of our enemies (and, figuratively, our allies)by changing how the United States does business.

How has the United States done business for nearly a century? It has restrained itself and allowed itself to be restrained by others. Until now, it has never fully flexed its muscles. After World War II, the United States was a megapower. Yes, the Soviets had nuclear weapons, and that put them sort of on par with us, but they never had the strategic reach that the United States had. The Soviets could never move a half-million Americans and their heavy combat equipment to the other side of the world, then move it all into another country and wipe out its entire army (the fourth largest in the world) in 100 hours. I was part of that during Desert Storm. Nor did the commies have the economic power we had. As a reserve currency with an economy that dwarfed everyone else, we were it, the man, A-number one.

But we never used our power to its full extent. We were restrained. Part of it was voluntary. Our morally misguided ruling elite believed that, at some level, America was unworthy of its power and not trustworthy to wield it. They counseled restraint, and so we restrained ourselves. We allowed the Vietnamese communists to drag a war on for decades that we could have won in a year. We didn’t bomb Hanoi or mine its harbors (where the Soviet arms came in) until Christmas 1972. And when we did, we had a peace treaty by March 1973.

Of course, our trash foreign policy establishment and cultural left screamed about that. How dare Nixon do the thing that would win the war? After they got rid of Tricky Dick in the first iteration of Russiagate, they betrayed our South Vietnamese allies and let the North win – as our elite felt it should.

In Europe, we agreed to pick up the tab for defending Europe to get our allies back on their feet after WWII. That continued until Trump drew the line. The allies chose degeneracy, weakness, and to spend the money they saved, thanks to Uncle Sucker picking up the tab, on welfare and Third World invaders. Similarly, we never used our economic power. We gave trade deals that screwed our own producers to our allies – and others – to grow their economies. And we allowed ourselves to be restrained by international law, a mythical construction pushed by European globalists who were less interested in right and wrong than in making their lilliputian move by tying down the United States of Gulliver with rules and norms that bound only us.

Trump is not playing any of that. While the convoluted explanations and fake moralizing that attempt to justify hobbling the United States and preventing it from exercising its full power in the defense of its interest may appeal to the elite, normal Americans – of whom Trump is an avatar – don’t buy it, especially nearly a century after World War II ended when we nuked Japan (have you noticed how mad they get that we used that power to save hundreds of thousands of American lives?).

We took out Venezuela because it has been an enemy for a couple of decades and a thorn in our side, cooperating with our other enemies. We will soon take out Cuba for the same reason. No, they did not launch an overt attack at us lately for the same reason Iran didn’t. They are weak, and we are strong. So, what better time to attack? The usual suspects are making hilarious arguments that it’s wrong for us to attack weaker countries, as if this were some playground where we’re trying to steal their lunch money. Only an idiot fights fair; hitting them while they are weak, before they fix their defense systems, replenish their missile stocks, and build a hot rock is the best time to hit them.

It's another made-up “norm” that no one ever voted on that exists solely to restrain the United States from leveraging its power to promote its interests. When Iran goes, that deprives Russia of a key arms partner and lets us get our hands around China’s throat because the CCP’s oil comes largely through Iran. If you want peace, support regime change in Iran so we can control the fossil fuel spigot. China can’t invade Taiwan as long as we can turn off the gas.

Imagine the world that Donald Trump and his team imagine. The Europeans will start paying their own checks; maybe getting their allowance cut off will encourage them to get serious about preserving their culture. Even if they don’t, the fact that Trump did not even bother inviting them into the Iran fight shows they are totally irrelevant as far as actual power goes. We will have the Americas free of communist subversion for the first time since JFK shamefully wussed out at the Bay of Pigs, which additionally helps us domestically on drugs and immigration, while providing new markets for what we manufacture. In the Middle East, the regime that is the main force for destabilization in the region will be replaced by people who do not chant “Death to America!” and we can finally end the ‘forever wars” we hear so much tiresome whining about. We will never face a coterie of seventh-century savages with The Bomb atop a ballistic missile that can reach Kansas City – could you imagine that, because it was in the cards if the “adults in the room” had their way?. And Russia and China will have the military option taken off the table – no oil, no war. Then, when the delusion of conquest has dissipated, we can build a peaceful relationship.

Trump loves peace. That’s why he has gone to war. But more than that, he has totally rejected the perpetual cycle of failure and defeat that allows our enemies to persist for decades when we could have brushed them off our shoulders like dandruff. If you want peace, support Donald Trump and this war. If you want war, support the pinkos, traitors, half-wit podcast bros, and libertarians who support “peace.”