Once again, NATO is in crisis. It seems like this is happening every three or four years. It predates and will postdate President Donald Trump. We are engaged in a bombing campaign to disarm the Iranian theocracy that, for 47 years, has killed Americans in embassies and military installations.
It supplies the terrorists of Hezbollah, Hamas, and the Houthis. It funds and subsidizes terrorists in Europe, tried to kill President Trump—I could go on forever.
So, we decided enough is enough, because we felt that their ballistic missiles had a range that could harm Europe and soon us, and that was proven by its launching of two missiles toward Diego Garcia islands in the Indian Ocean.
And what was the result of our NATO allies when we said, “We don’t have to do it, we’ll do the heavy lifting along with Israel, you don’t have to do anything. I know we helped you in Ukraine. I know we helped you in Serbia. I know we helped you, French, in Chad. I know we helped you, British, when you went to the Falklands on that long adventure and you needed fuel and reconnaissance and resupplies and Tomahawks.
“We know all that, but we’re not asking that. All we want to do is land at the bases that we share with you on your soil under NATO.” So, Spain said, “Nope, can’t do it. You can’t fly through our airspace.” We said, “Well, maybe if we’re going from our base in Britain, we’ll go across France.”
Nope, can’t do that either.
“Well, how about when our bombers want to refuel in Italy?” No, you can’t do that. Can’t do that. “Well, how about Diego Garcia? We’ve used that before.” And Mr. [Keir] Starmer, “Not our war, not our war.”
I think somebody should have said the Falklands were not our war either. And 1939, 1940, it wasn’t our war either in 1941, 1942, but we came over there. But nevertheless, that was what they wanted to do.
So, the question is, what do we do? Well, we’ve almost finished the campaign in Iran. Apparently, we didn’t need those bases, because we’re still supplying them very well with bases we do have access to.
The Greeks have been wonderful. There’s a NATO base at Souda Bay, Crete, and they’re helping repair the new Gerald R. Ford aircraft carrier.
It seems to me that when they say they won’t do it, part of it is they can’t do it.
They have made a series of investments, policies, protocols that have paralyzed that entire continent. They have dreamed of utopia and the good life, and the result is their fertility rate is 1.3. They are shrinking. They are aging. They’re not competitive. So, they don’t have the manpower, even though they have a 450 million-person population. Europe is larger than us by 100 million.
And even though they have $22 trillion gross domestic product, which is the third largest, apparently they don’t want to invest that in their own defense , or they haven’t so far. They don’t want us to use it when we need it.
They have no energy to speak of. They went whole hog, a complete Green New Deal—solar, wind. We’re not going to use our natural gas reserves. We’re not going to drill for them. We’re going to be dependent on the Middle East and Russia.
So, we’re going to put you in an absurd situation, U.S.: You’re going to come over here to Europe to defend us from a potential [Russian President Vladimir] Putin invasion while we beg you not to sanction that oil. We need it. So, we want to give him money for the oil so he can use the money to buy arms to invade Ukraine and maybe us.
When Trump said it was crazy, they laughed at him.
It’s not just energy. It’s not just fertility. They have no borders, so to speak. They’ve had millions of people coming from a hostile Middle East and Arab world who had no intention of fully integrating, assimilating, and acculturating.
Under their systems of parliamentary democracies, those factions have some veto power over policy. But more importantly, they’re terrified of Islam. They’ve had so many terrorist incidents, they think the only proper way to deal with radical Islam is to appease it, and appeasing it is what they do.
Add all that up. They also have a utopian idea of defense. They had been pretty much unarmed until the invasion of Ukraine, and now they’re trying to catch up.
But when you have a continent that has been unarmed, that is shrinking in population, that has high-priced, limited energy, that has energy shortages, that doesn’t have the confidence to defend its own borders, and that has let in millions of people who don’t like their host, the result is it can’t defend itself.
And therefore, it creates an exegesis to explain that reality. And the exegesis is: We are morally superior to you. We have all these bases. We have the ability. We have fleets. You don’t. And we think, as morally superior people, we don’t want you using them, and we don’t think you’re protecting us on your unilateral crusade.
Yes, the missiles could hit us. Yes, they could be nuclear-tipped if you hadn’t intervened. But that’s not our problem. Our problem is you trying to use these bases for your misadventure in Iran.
Even though the Iran thing is going perfectly well, it’s a month into it. We’ve almost destroyed the war-making potential of Iran.
So, what’s the future? Do we get out of NATO? I don’t think we get out of NATO. I think we just let it die on the vine.
We just say, “You know what? We were a full NATO member. Oh, you want us to go into Ukraine again and defend you, but Ukraine’s not a NATO power. There’s no Article 5. This is your problem. This is on your doorstep.”
“Oh, you want us to go into Serbia and the Serbs are acting up again? That’s not a NATO problem either. They’re not attacking any NATO nation. I don’t remember Kosovo being in NATO.”
“Oh, you want to go into Africa to your old colonies and stop the Islamists from taking over Chad? That’s not our problem.”
“Oh, you think that Argentine government might want the Falklands back someday? That’s not our problem.”
That’s our attitude.
Meanwhile, we can have very productive bilateral, coalition-of-the-willing relationships. We can say to the Czechs, we can say to the Poles, we can say to any of them, “You know what, we’d like to have a base in the Azores, Portugal. What do you want to do?
“It’s up to you. You want a bilateral agreement because NATO doesn’t mean much anymore. But we will have a special relationship with you, and we will guarantee your territorial integrity and national security in exchange for a partnership.”
And I think we could find six or seven European powers that together would make ideal alliances with the United States. And then we can just go through the motions with NATO.
Don’t cause any more trouble with them. Just say, “You guys are wonderful, and we’re going to treat you like you treat us. We are one of 32 nations, and we’ll pay one-thirty-second of the budget.
“We’re tired. You guys have had two big world wars. You’ve been the birthplace of Western military dynamism. Go to it. Re-arm. We’ll just kind of lag along, half-walk, and we’ll tell you we’re a fine NATO power.”
We’ll be kind of like Canada. Canada pays about 1.5%. We’re on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean, like Canada. You love Canada. You don’t like us. We’re going to be your Canada.
We will expend as much effort and as much arms and as much intervention as Canada does, and that will be the new NATO.
Monday, April 13, 2026
‘We’ll Be Your Canada’: Brutal Reality Check for NATO Free Riders
Iran
Donald Trump recently outlined the end game for Iran. We’ve been there about a month, and he was saying in week five it would take two or three weeks, so maybe seven weeks total or two months. That got people very angry and said it’s an endless war.
And the people on the Left, remember, don’t want the war to work because they want to win the midterms. And they’re not, they haven’t been successful so far in hurting Trump, but they feel that if they can create a narrative that this is an Afghanistan-like withdrawal, which they oversaw that was a disaster, or a Vietnam or an Afghanistan or Iraq, maybe they can bring him down.
And history’s on their side—with the out party gaining seats—and winning the midterms and then impeach him. So their criticism is not empirical. It’s entirely political, but it’s infectious.
Recently we had a plane, an F-15 was shot down. One of the pilots was rescued. We don’t know yet, as I speak, the fate of the other one, but people just went crazy.
And after Trump’s speech, some of the commentators, Fareed Zakaria at Newsweek, said, “can you ever imagine a war that costs so much and did so little, obtained so little?” I thought, are you serious?
We’ve lost 13, maybe 14. That’s tragic, but 14 people attacking a country almost twice the size of Texas, one and a half times the size of Alaska, 93 million people, five weeks. And we’ve pretty much denuclearized it and destroyed its ability to make war.
It’s just a question of, do you want to go into the civilian infrastructure when you’re trying to help the Iranians stand up and have regime change? Because you can easily do that. You can take out their water, their electric, and you can send it back, as Trump said, to the Stone Age. So, the restrictions are all self-imposed.
People said, “How about the Strait of Hormuz?”
Donald Trump had a good point. He said the countries that use it and need it need to come in and patrol it. Now, we can help them. We can use our Warthogs or our Apaches or our tactical aircraft and make a sanitary corridor on the other side of the Iranian side of the strait. We can use some of our minesweepers and our naval craft to sweep it of mines. We might even escort some ships in.
But the countries that want the oil, they can do it. And by the way, there has been an implicit understanding before the war, before we ever bombed, that strait was politicized and under the control of Iran, had closed it in the past, and it had threatened to close it often. So there was a quid pro quo that if you are a nation that needs it, then you better temper your criticism of the theocracy.
And most of the European countries, and a lot of the Asians, did. They didn’t want to really talk about this regime. When it killed 30,000 to 40,000 of its own people, they were mum, because they were given a free pass.
So we can help reopen the Strait of Hormuz, either by doing it tactically or just giving them, as Donald Trump said, here’s a list of targets. It’s your decision. If you want this power plant … you don’t want it, tell us, because we’ll take it out. We’ll do it. Take it out.
What is the end game? A lot of people think that Russia, Zakaria said Russia’s a beneficiary.
Russia’s mired in Ukraine. It’s lost a million dead. It’s probably got a million and a half casualties. It’s completely broke. It’s been kicked out of the Middle East. Its Syrian proxy, the Assad regime, is over with. The price of oil is just a brief spike. They haven’t won anything. They’re out.
China, they’ve lost the Venezuelan discount on oil. They’re out of basically the Western Hemisphere. They don’t know what to do with Iran. They’re watching to see if it’s going to survive or not. They’re probably stealthily trying to supply it, but they’re not winners yet.
How does it end? There are three scenarios. Seems to me there’s Trump’s hinting that he was going to, in Curtis LeMay fashion, bomb them back to the Stone Age. He can do that. He can just at some point say, “You know what, we’re gonna be here for two or three weeks, but they don’t want to negotiate, and I’m going to lift all restrictions off their targets.
“And I hope that the people will revolt, stand up, have an insurrection against this horrible, wicked regime. And the moment I see them doing it in the next two weeks, I’ll stop. But if they’re not gonna do it, I’m gonna take out their bridges.”
And he started that. “I’m gonna take out the rail facilities. I’m gonna take out their oil facilities. I’m going to take out their power.
Just write down the list, and either one of two things will stop me. Either the people will come out and fight, and then I’ll stop and try to help them by not taking out the infrastructure they will inherit. Or if they come out to fight the regime, I will go after the regime more intensely.
Or in three weeks I’ll say that I did enough, and it’s up to you people. See, you wouldn’t want to be you.”
Or he can do the Venezuela solution. I think he’s trying to do that. In other words, he can find people, as he has, a speaker of the Iranian party to talk to. And yes, they are contaminated with the theocratic hard-liners, but maybe they want to break away, or maybe they can deliver the goods of an agreement.
Or maybe they can just say, “We’re not gonna build nukes for a while or ever.” But somebody you can talk to that would take over as a transitional government, and then they would probably have to accede to the demands of the people.
And while you’re talking to them, you can tell them, if you’re not being sincere, we’re gonna put you on the list. And the list is, go look at it. Anybody who’s on this list and the Revolutionary Guard or part of the theocratic government isn’t here anymore, because the Israelis know better than you and I where they are, and they’re going down the list.
If we put you on the list, who knows? But if you’re not on the list, the people who are opposing you are gonna be dwindling in numbers, and they’re gonna be held responsible after this war, and they’re probably gonna be at the mercy of the people, and you won’t be.
And you can have a Venezuela solution. Not the best in the world, but a way to create stability and end that awful regime.
And then finally, you don’t even have to talk to anyone. You just say, “These were what we wanted. Think about it. I don’t care who talks, but if I see we’re gonna have, we’re gonna keep bombing.
If I see that you are importing missiles, if I see that you are trying to rescue the nuclear material, if I see you’re killing your people, if Strait is not open, we’re not going to worry. We’re not gonna argue. We’re just going to take out your infrastructure, and we’re going to leave.”
And infrastructure—and that means there are no distinctions between civilians and military targets. And Trump, all he has to say is, “I’m gonna follow the Iranian theocratic model. You people, when you attack Israel, you aim for, you don’t even aim for necessarily electric plants or sewage or water or transportation. You go after residential.
“We’re not gonna do that. We’re not gonna go after hotels or airports the way you do, but we are gonna go after your infrastructure, your ability to maintain a sophisticated society. And then we’re gonna leave. And it’s up to you whether we come back.”
Either way, this war is not a disaster. It’s one of the few times in history where Western power has had very minimal losses, has had a huge country to subdue, and has done it very quickly and effectively.
Democrats’ Jungle Primary Boomerang Hits Swalwell Hard
in California, they’re having a primary coming up in June. Since 2010, by ballot initiative, they have jungle primaries, where the top two vote-getters, regardless of their party, face off in the November election. Because we have an overwhelming Democratic registration majority, the Democrats pushed this 2010 ballot initiative with the idea that you would only have Democrats in the general election. And that’s happened. That happened with Eric Swalwell.
So, I’m going to talk a little bit about Eric Swalwell. He’s been a six-term congressman from Northern California. He grew up in Dublin. He’s a lawyer. He was in the first jungle primary and he defeated the incumbent representative [Pete] Stark, I think his name was, and he’s been there for well over six terms now. https://playlist.megaphone.fm/?e=THEDAILYSIGNAL7164200674
Who is he? He was very controversial. He is sort of rambunctious. He cuts these commercials about himself as an athlete. He was very vocal on Russian collusion and he pounded that day after day that Donald Trump was a puppet of Vladimir Putin. He was on the House Intelligence Committee. He was an ardent foe of the chairman, Devin Nunes.
He, if you remember, allegedly got involved in a personal relationship with a Chinese consular official, or at least an ad hoc Chinese spy, political activist here in California. And he was on the House Intelligence Committee. Not only got involved with Fang Fang, as we knew her, but he hired one of her associates on his congressional staff.
So, he was under a lot of controversy. And finally, his partisanship and his dubious reliability to maintain secrets while on the House Intelligence Committee after having this relationship with Fang Fang of some sort, he was removed.
And now we see him, he’s back in the news and he’s running for governor. And he is polling either third or fourth. The top two, believe it or not, are Republican Steve Hilton and Chad Bianco, the sheriff from Southern California.
And then Eric Swalwell, in many polls, is third or he’s neck and neck with Hilton. And suddenly, the perceived favorite, Kathleen Porter, another House representative, has kind of imploded because of videos that showed her as a bully and screaming and yelling at various staff members and pretty much becoming on film an unsavory character.
So, what happened to Eric Swalwell? Well, on April 10, his world blew up because suddenly, out of the blue, some of his [former] congressional staffers, all female, came forward, and one of them said that she was raped by Eric Swalwell while intoxicated on two occasions.
Another one said she was sexually assaulted. Two or three others said he had a habit of forcing young congressional staffers, many women, many of them 20 years younger than he was, to sign nondisclosure forms so that they could not voice what he had done to them. And he had chronically, insidiously sexually harassed them.
Now the latest bombshell is people on his gubernatorial campaign staff have said that they believe that these charges are true, and some of them have resigned. And this made a—there were other—this made a great controversy the last few days in California.
There were other even more disturbing [allegations], and Anthony Weiner-style, there were women who had been receiving texts from Eric Swalwell, allegedly showing his genitalia, something like Anthony Weiner did that destroyed his congressional career.
There were also stories that he was using campaign funds for his own child care. He has been married twice. His second wife and he have three children. But reportedly, he was improperly using campaign funds.
Well, why did this come up right now? Why did this? Some of the stuff dates back to 2015 and 2016, and apparently, it was widely known among California politicos, both nationwide and in California, that he had been a serial sexual harasser, and yet no one came forward.
The answer is analogous to Joe Biden. People knew in 2020 that he was non compos mentis, but they used him as a waxen effigy because the other candidates were not viable. And once he was elected by staying in the basement, the Obama era of politicos took over his government, and we essentially had the most left-wing administration in modern history, and we called it the Biden administration.
Today, you can’t find any legitimate person who believes that Joe Biden was fit to serve. Then they said he was fit—fit as a fiddle and sharp as a tack.
What’s going on now? Eric Swalwell is threatening to break up the Democratic field. There are more viable Democratic candidates than Republicans. The Republicans really have only two viable candidates, and they are leading.
And the way that the primary voting looked like, we may see two Republicans only in the general election, a boomerang to the Democrats who dreamed up and pushed this jungle primary over a decade ago.
So, I imagine someone got together and said, “Is it Swalwell or Porter?” And they said, “Well, Swalwell has more baggage. Maybe it could leak out. He’s a loose cannon, and somebody began leaking this.”
But what my point is, if Eric Swalwell had been way ahead in the gubernatorial race, I don’t think that any of this would’ve surfaced. It would’ve been analogous to Joe Biden. He would’ve been a useful vessel and he would’ve won the governorship, and the Republicans wouldn’t have had a chance.
But once it became clear that he and Porter had split the vote, along with two other Hispanic candidates, [Antonio] Villaraigosa and [Xavier] Becerra, it looked like the fragmentation would give the gubernatorial race to a Republican. And so, then these leaks surfaced.
And they’re not just leaks. They come from a representative who was one of the most vocal critics of Harvey Weinstein, of all of these people who were caught up in the MeToo movement, and more importantly, of Judge [Brett] Kavanaugh. Eric Swalwell was very critical of Kavanaugh and said he was unfit to be in the Supreme Court. So, there’s a sense of nemesis, irony, karma in all of this.
But the wider point is that the Democratic Party, who brags that it doesn’t let democracy die in darkness and it’s the guardian, the protector, of democracy, has a bad habit when they feel that something is politically antithetical to their agenda.
We saw this when Joe Biden was told not to run again and Kamala Harris was effectively anointed without having won a single delegate. And this isn’t very democratic. She was the Democratic candidate for the presidency of the United States who had never won a single delegate. She was appointed because suddenly Joe Biden, after his disastrous debate performance, went from sharp as a tack to a buffoon and embarrassing, and he can’t be on the ticket.
Same thing is happening with Eric Swalwell. There was a decision made that some of the Democrats had to be thinned out, willed out, when, you know, got rid of, got kaput, and they chose Eric Swalwell. Once these allegations suddenly were untenable in their secrecy, they couldn’t suppress it anymore.
But the point is that I’m making, they knew about this. People in California are on record [saying] that Eric Swalwell had a reputation for being reckless in his personal life and untoward toward women’s staffers, very ironic given his advocacy for women’s rights and his MeToo activity.
And so, as the Democrats always do, they made a decision that he should go out. And as I speak, he’s being pressured to step aside and consolidate the Democratic vote, apparently, behind Kathleen Porter.
And it’s typical for the Democratic Party of today to talk about democracy but make these decisions—who candidates are, who will face the voters—on backroom politics.
GOP Rep Teased More Debauchery Involving Eric Swalwell Was Coming Before He Resigned
GOP Rep Teased More Debauchery Involving Eric Swalwell Was Coming Before He Resigned
AP Photo/Rich Pedroncelli
UPDATE: He’s o
BREAKING: Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-CA) announces he will resign from Congress. https://t.co/b5bwseFatz— Bill Melugin (@BillMelugin_) April 13, 2026
***Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-CA) is finished. He dropped out of his California gubernatorial campaign after credible accusations of sexual misconduct and rape were made against him. And now he’s decided to resign from Congress. It comes after four women claimed the congressman behaved inappropriately toward them, while the rape allegation from a former staffer has caught the attention of the Manhattan DA’s office. The woman alleges Swalwell attacked her twice, once in 2019 when she worked for him, and again during a 2024 charity event in New York City. He lost all his endorsements, and no one is supporting a man under investigation for rape.
It was quite the circus. In less than 72 hours, Swalwell’s career has collapsed. Will he resign or be expelled? That would’ve been up to Speaker Mike Johnson, who rightly considers due process before taking any political action. However, for those hesitant about appearing to be morality police or rushing the process, Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-FL) hinted that more details about the Swalwell case will be disclosed in the next 24 hours. That’s now moot given that Swalwell has decided to resign from Congress:
I am being told there will be more
disgusting stuff coming out on Swallwell in the next 24 hours. For the
members of Congress who are concerned about optics on expelling
Swalwell, I think after the information drops you will be thinking
otherwise.
Eric, why dont you tell us a…— Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (@RepLuna) April 13, 2026
I am being told there will be more disgusting stuff coming out on Swallwell in the next 24 hours. For the members of Congress who are concerned about optics on expelling Swalwell, I think after the information drops you will be thinking otherwise. Eric, why dont you tell us a little about who was filming the video of the female sex worker. The reference relates to a wild video where Swalwell is sitting on a bed with a purported sex worker, although it’s unclear whether it’s his home or a hotel room. Likely the latter, but there are two other people in the video: someone is filming him kissing the woman in a scene that looks like something out of Alien 3. The other person is on the bed with Swalwell. The alleged escort is sandwiched in between. You’re going to want to bleach your eyes.
Swalwell’s departure doesn’t mean these new details won’t be dropped. His enemies want him gone. They’re going to keep firing to ensure he’s dead.
Appeals Court Just Struck Down 158-Year-Old Nanny State Law
The New Orleans-based Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals on Friday delivered a significant victory against government overreach and nanny-state nonsense, ruling that the 158-year-old ban on homemade liquor is unconstitutional.
The ruling is the result of a lawsuit filed by the Hobby Distillers Association and four hobbyists who sought to make spirits at home for personal use. The panel held that Congress went too far by criminalizing home distillers under its taxing power.
The law did more than just regulate homemade spirits. It prohibited people from having distilled spirits plants in a home, a connected shed, a yard, or an enclosure. Those who violate the law could face up to five years in prison and a $10,000 fine.
Boys It’s finally legal to come out of the woods, pines and mountain
Yesterday, The New Orleans 5th Circuit of Appeals ruled in favor of 1,300 members of the Hobby Distillers Association saying that the 158yo federal ban on home distilleries is unconstitutional and is an… pic.twitter.com/AiEuc2D0ch— maxxhazzard (@maxxhazard) April 11, 2026
The law dates back to 1868, when Congress sought to protect federal excise-tax revenue on distilled spirits. However, Judge Edith Jones argued, “Not only do they prohibit at-home distilleries, but in so doing, they amount to an anti-revenue provision that prevents distilled spirits from coming into existence.”
The case hinged on a foundational constitutional question: Does Congress possess the authority to ban peaceful activity in the home to make it easier to tax it? The plaintiffs contended that Congress can tax distilled spirits, but cannot use that authority to eliminate home production of spirits before the taxable product even exists.
Y’all are way too excited over this.
Yes, it’s a major win — but this ruling applies only in Texas, Louisiana, and Mississippi (for the plaintiffs and Hobby Distillers Association members with standing).
We need this case (or a similar one) to go all the way to the Supreme… https://t.co/mljjgqow4J pic.twitter.com/TRySBhdcv4— Cassie Clark (@dogwoodblooms) April 12, 2026
The federal government argued that home distilleries could make it easier to conceal their activities or hide the strength of the spirits, making it harder to detect tax evasion.
However, the panel did not buy this argument. It noted that the law was not actually a tax measure. Congress’ power to impose taxes only allows it to raise revenue, not impose a ban that leaves citizens with no lawful options. “[U]nder the government’s logic, Congress may criminalize nearly any at-home conduct only because it has the possibility of concealing taxable activity,” Jones wrote in her opinion.
This ruling is a major win for liberty because it reaffirms that the federal government’s power over people’s personal conduct is limited. Congress should never be empowered to exercise police power over people’s private, personal lives if they are not violating the rights of others.
To put it simply, if a guy wants to make his own whiskey, it should be none of the government’s business. Laws like these only grant the state authority that it was never meant to have; it’s one of the reasons why our government has become so bloated that it can stick its nose into people’s private lives.
The ruling only applies to the federal law, meaning that state and local governments can still regulate home distilleries.