If You Think the GOP Is Screwed Up, Check Out the Democrats

 

You may feel terrible about being a member of the Republican Party because it’s the stupidest party in American politics until you remember that the Democrat Party exists – and no, the Libertarian Party is not actually a party; it’s the motley crew of pot-addled sophomores holding forth in the dorm suite common area at 2 a.m. of American politics. For all the failures, foibles, and follies of the inept GOP, the current Democrat Party is much, much worse off. I mean, just look at them. They’re treading water in a swamp of narcissistic mediocrity, abandoned by former allies like the working class, controlled by over-credentialed echo-chamber neurotics, and in thrall to a coalition of sexually confused neo-Marxist weirdos, losers, and mutations.

You really gotta hand it to them – we couldn’t imagine a party more inept than the Republicans, but the Democrats have managed to prove us wrong. They’re coming off a disastrous last few years where they installed a human eggplant as their party leader, a president whose growing senility was built on a solid foundation of a half-century of being an idiot. This guy wrecked the economy, threw open the borders, and managed to get a bunch of Americans killed by some of the few remaining Third World savages that he hadn’t already invited into our country. Then, after four years of nonstop babbling about “Our Democracy,” the donkey politburo pulled his card following a disastrous debate where the best thing you could say about his performance was that he didn’t soil himself, at least as far as we know.

They replaced him with Kamala Harris, a woman of towering unaccomplishment who was so dumb that they wouldn’t even let her talk to the fawning media until they basically had to, at which point she demonstrated why they wouldn’t let her speak to the media in the first place. She blew her most important decision, selecting her running mate, by channeling Harvey Korman and not picking Josh Shapiro. Instead, she invited Tim Walz to prance out onto the national stage, purportedly because he could attract men, proving once again that context is everything.

The Democrat Party has become utterly feminized, its leadership a collection of Chardonnay-swilling, SSRI-gobbling, urbanized pinko crones – and that’s just the ones who identify as male. The allegedly female ones – let’s not even get started with the party’s bizarre trans obsession – are mostly middle-aged, naggy Karens with sour apple doll faces and the conviction that Gaia has instilled in them the duty to ensure that the manager hears about how America is misbehaving. The exception is the phony likes of Jasmine Crockett, whose transformation from articulate, educated young lady to finger-wagging, ghetto-fabulous stereotype is just plain embarrassing. It says a lot – and nothing good – that harpies like these run the Democrat Party.

Naturally, that repels anyone with descended testicles. The Democrats have now realized that they have a man problem, starting with the fact that they hate men – real men, the kind who like beer and guns and God and America. Like Hollywood is always trying to push glum, hefty shrews like Lena Dunham and Amy Schumer upon disgusted and appalled moviegoers, the Democrat Party seems obsessed with the idea of forcing flaccid phonies like Walz and Pete Buttigieg down our throats, thereby redefining manhood into something that has nothing to do with manhood. Just look at fey X influencer Harry Sisson; despite his fumbling online catfishing, he’s less a masculine role model than a sassy sidekick. They put David Hogg in as a DNC vice chair, at least for a little while, presumably to capture the loyalty of the key “males who yearn to be disarmed and neutered” demographic. As many men appeared at the polls to vote for “Shotgun Tim” Walz as Tim Walzes appeared for deployment. 

Stunningly, their femboy ploy has failed, and the Democrats remain utterly baffled by how to appeal to people with penises. Naturally, their bright idea is to throw money at the problem. They’re dunning the usual billionaires to pony up some cash to find themselves a comparable podcast voice to Joe Rogan and similar new media influencers, except you can’t buy authenticity. Cue visions of Steve Buscemi showing up to greet his fellow kids: “Young male-identifying persons, like you, I enjoy a hearty brew, video games, and sportsball.”

But it gets even better. According to the New York Times, the ace anthropologists of the Democrat Party have decided they need to perform an in-depth study of what makes men male and how to communicate with these backward primitives:

"The prospectus for one new $20 million effort, obtained by The Times, aims to reverse the erosion of Democrat support among young men, especially online. It is code-named SAM - short for 'Speaking with American Men: A Strategic Plan' - and promises investment to 'study the syntax, language and content that gains attention and virality in these spaces.' It recommends buying advertisements in video games, among other things."

They have tried this stuff before, with hilarious results. Say what you will about the Republican Party, but at least it’s not squandering its sweet, sweet cash on syntax studying – which is too bad because I totally would’ve taken its money and built that wine cellar I’ve been wanting. Oh well, I’ll give you the 411 for free, GOP: Don’t be sissies. 

Shhhh, do not share this valuable advice with the Democrats! 

Oh, go ahead. They won’t listen. In fact, their proposed solutions indicate that they don’t even understand the problem. They seek to find a lefty podcast superstar and “gain attention and virality” not to learn about what men actually want but to find better ways to tell men what to want. Here’s the challenge for the Democrats – they want to appeal to the people who their ideology has driven away without changing their ideology. They’re offering normals the same reeking dung as always, just polished up.

Have you ever heard a single Democrat explain which of their prized political positions they’re willing to compromise, much less abandon, in order to reach out to the people they’ve alienated? The voters they’ve lost didn’t wander away and head towards Trump because he’s shiny. They left because they don’t like the things the Democrats stand for. So, what do the Democrats propose to change to get them back? Are they going to moderate their jihad against babies? Are they going to keep naked dudes out of girls’ locker rooms? Are they going to start putting criminals in jail instead of back on the street? Will they quit trying to take our guns? Will they stop trying to steal our money to pay off the debts of blue-haired gender studies graduates? Will they cease their efforts to make us stop barbecuing and driving trucks in order to appease their angry weather goddess? Are they going to quit talking about how America sucks and how Americans are white nationalist racists of racism?

Of course not. Their offer is nothing. They’re not going to do any of these things because these are all sacred tenets in their secular pagan religion. To them, holding these stupid positions makes them good people. It’s what distinguishes them from the masses. To ask them to change is to ask them to give up their identity as well as the moral high ground, so their plan is to hector and pester more intensely so that normal people will submit. 

This brings us to the key difference between the current Republican Party and the current Democrat Party. It’s the difference between bottom-up and top-down evolution. The current Republican Party changed over the last 20 years in the direction that normal people wanted. The GOP base got sick of useless hacks like the Bushes and Mitt Romney, guys mostly concerned with gentlemanly managing decline and went with the guy who got the things they wanted done while owning the libs. But the Democrats did the exact opposite. The Democrat Party doesn’t want to be led by the voters; like all good communists, its leadership considers themselves the cadre who will lead the masses. The Democrats are finding out what happens when you give a revolution and nobody comes.

Fortunately for us, they can’t change direction anytime soon. They have dug themselves into a hole, and they’re still digging. We’ve seen it before. After their 1968 loss, the Democrats decided that the voters were wrong, and they should tack super-hard to the left. They were destroyed in 1972. After their 1980 loss, they decided the voters were wrong, and they should tack super-hard to the left. They were destroyed in 1984. After their 2024 loss, they will decide the voters are wrong and that they should tack super-hard to the left once again. They will convince themselves that it’s a great idea to nominate AOC or Buttigieg or some other spazzy clown who is extremely popular in Manhattan’s Upper West Side, Scat Francisco, and the Harvard faculty lounge (if there’s anything left of it when Trump gets finished with it) but who repels and disgusts normal people. They will get destroyed in 2028.

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And you know what? Good. Because the only way a party as stupid as the current establishment Republican Party can win is if it’s competing against a party as stupid as the current Democrat Party.

DEI Enthusiasts Allowed the Free Palestine Movement to Get This Far

 

Recently, two Israeli diplomatic employees in Washington, Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Milgrim, were shot. Apparently, the killer, Elias Rodriguez, emptied his handgun and fired off 21 rounds, killed them almost instantly, and then ran into the museum where they were working and started to act as if he was a victim until he shouted out “Free Palestine.”

And what are we to make of this? I think what we’re seeing throughout the United States right now is a lowering of the bar of what’s acceptable in terms of violence.

We saw that Luigi Mangione became a cult hero to the Left because he, in a premeditated fashion, killed a UnitedHealthcare executive, shot him down in cold blood on the specious excuse that they were overcharging people. But he became a hero.

And we saw that Kilmar Abrego Garcia—who beat his spouse, threatened to kill her, apparently, she thought he was gonna kill her; and was an illegal alien and had, at one time, deportation orders; and was a member, pretty clearly, of an MS-13 gang; and was engaged in human trafficking; and was deported—became a cult hero to the Left.

We had an incident in Texas where a young teenager stabbed another one and then he became a victim. No need to go into the details.

We had the two assassination attempts. And I think, if you collated the social media content of those two killers, it was pretty much, to the Left, kind of reminiscent of the shooter of Rep. Steve Scalise and the wounding of others who was a Sen. Bernie Sanders—what am I getting at?

There has been a general lowering of the bar, as I said, of what’s acceptable violence. And we saw that with the Tesla excuses and contextualization when somebody ran somebody off the road or destroyed a charging station or firebombed a station—even the media reports of the tragic deaths.

I was reading today an NPR account. And after about six paragraphs, they get uneasy describing the murder. And they just have to, they just have to put something in. And they do. And they say, “And this was during a period of tensions,” because of the people getting killed in Gaza. In other words—just a little bit—how can we get in there to justify this in some ways or contextualize it?

So, that is one thing that’s happening. And that makes violence more permissible. The other is this endemic antisemitism.

Let’s be honest. It’s not some cowboy in Wyoming in 1950 that doesn’t like Jews. We’re talking about two nexuses that come together and promulgate antisemitism. The one is wealthy people in the universities—many of them DEI, but not all—who feel that it’s either en vogue or, as DEI people, they cannot be criticized as victims for victimizing others, meaning foreign students from the Middle East.

And in that cauldron, it becomes permissible to say, “Globalize the intifada,” “River to the sea,” the eliminationist rhetoric about Israel, storm a library, chase Jews into a library, damage the president’s office, rough up a Jewish kid on campus. It was all acceptable. There were no consequences. That’s why those three college presidents either were fired or had to resign.

So, what we’re seeing is that the unhinged come out of the woodwork because the general climate rewards that type of behavior.

So, Rodriguez thought, A) If I use violence, in this case, bring a gun into Washington, D.C., from my home in Chicago, and I have good, firm left-wing credentials—his father was asked to be a guest at the Trump speech by a left-wing congressman, [Jesus] Garcia from Illinois. So, he comes in and he knows that if he shoots and murders someone, there’s going to be a lot of people who will praise him or at least excuse what he did, No. 1.

And No. 2, he’s killing Jews. So, he knows on campus that one of the Harvard Review people roughed up a Jew and was given a $65,000 honorarium scholarship from one of the groups that sponsors Harvard Law School.

Bottom line: This is gonna continue until somebody says, “We’re not gonna put up with it anymore. You’re not gonna be a foreign student and come over to the United States on a student visa and spout hateful rhetoric and torment Jews and make it uncomfortable. And you’re not gonna be one of these elite students who crashes into the president’s office at Stanford or crashes into a building at Columbia and thinks there’s no consequences.”

And that’s why President Donald Trump is trying to shock treatment to the universities to say: You don’t know what you’re doing. You’re a global embarrassment, that you permitted and you have fueled antisemitism. And the Left’s atmosphere, anyway, is to condone violence when it’s used for revolutionary purposes.

Add it all up and we get two wonderful people murdered in D.C.

The Truth About South Africa’s Anti-American Agenda

 

. We’ve had another “ambush” in the White House. Ambush, remember, means an unexpected attack on someone from a secretive place. That was not an ambush. Cyril Ramaphosa, the president of South Africa, wanted that meeting with President Donald Trump. He requested it. And when he came in, he was prepared to refute Donald Trump.

In fact, if you look at the media before the meeting, they didn’t use the word “ambush.” They were giddy. They thought, “Wow, he’s going to give Trump a bill of goods.” What he didn’t think was that Trump was ready for the bill of goods and had his own bill of goods.

But here’s the real backstory to the whole thing. Why did he want to meet Trump? He wanted to meet Trump because he had a free trade agreement with the United States with no tariffs placed on South African agriculture—everything, metals, everything. And he was running a $9 billion surplus. And in addition to that, he was getting $500 million in foreign aid from the United States.

And in addition to that, his ambassador had just been fired or expelled by Secretary of State Marco Rubio. Why? Because in a performance art fashion, he made a video and said Donald Trump was a white supremacist. This is the ambassador, just before this visit, not too long earlier. And then said that he was part of a white victimhood movement. So, they kicked him out. Was he embarrassed? No. He had a hero’s welcome when he went back.

And then we have the larger context of South Africa. It usually votes at the United Nations against the United States. It’s signed onto the International Criminal Court’s farce that was going to arrest Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as a war criminal. We had the video that was shown about the leader of the third-largest party in South Africa saying that they wanted to “kill the Boer, kill the farmer” to a big crowd.

And by the way, the year before—he said that in 2022—something called the South African Equality Court declared that “kill the Boer, kill the farmer” is not hate speech. I don’t know what hate speech is in South Africa if it’s not kill a designated minority.

And so, when you look at all of this, Donald Trump got sick of it. And he said, this country, we don’t have any problem with it. We don’t hate South Africa. But they’re not our friends. This is not Nelson Mandela. This is not the age of conciliation. This is not the South Africa with such promise 30 years ago. This is a racialist state. It’s one of the most violent countries in the world. And it’s one of the most anti-Western and anti-American.

And so, when Ramaphosa came to set Donald Trump straight, Donald Trump said: You know what? I don’t think you like us. So I’m not gonna give you $500 million in foreign aid. You know what? I don’t think you like us because you think I’m a white supremacist, so we’re not gonna give you free trade into our markets. We’re gonna charge 30% tariff. You know what, you know, your ambassador—all you guys come over here, you don’t like us, you think that the left-wing foundations, the left-wing media, the left-wing universities are running the country, the left-wing—but they’re not. They’re not. So, when you come over here and attack us and call us racist, maybe you shouldn’t come over here. You know, just have a little peace. Maybe all your foreign students, your green card holders, your visitor visa—maybe we should just have a little cooling off period.

And so, what Donald Trump was saying is that this is not the South Africa that we used to know. But it was running on the fumes of Mandelaism. At the United Nations, it’s hostile to the United States. It takes advantage of the free trade agreement to run up a $9 billion surplus. It gets $500 million in aid. And it shows no gratitude. It attacks us. It attacks us.

And then when we try to say that you have a law that is going to appropriate land without compensation, you deny that you’re doing it. That was the whole purpose of it. No compensation. You can say, “Well, it was for public domain,” but everybody knows that. So, everybody who confiscates land does it for the public, but they compensate people, except you.

And finally, you know, you want internet. You want internet like Ukraine has. You want internet like remote places in Asia and Africa have. And you want, therefore, Starlink. And you think that Elon Musk is a native son, so you’re going to invite him in and have Starlink. But you can’t even do that.

You say, “You can come in. We’ll give you the privilege to come into our market,” as if Elon Musk needs that. “But we’re gonna take a third of your company and your franchise here in South Africa. And it has to be staffed, partnered with people who are of a particular color, black people.”

And Elon Musk says, “I think I’ll pass on that nice invitation.” And then they get very angry. And now they’ll probably bend.

Final word, I think Ramaphosa will be—I don’t think Donald Trump will visit South Africa, but I guarantee you Ramaphosa will want another meeting, like Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy did.

And he will come in and he will say, “Please take away the 30% tariff. Please give us the $500 million handout in foreign aid. Please let all the South Africans, not just the 48 people—and who, by the way, whom he called cowards because they didn’t want to play the lottery whether they were gonna get killed or not—but let all of us come back in. Please. Please. Please. And we promise that we’ll not allow people to pack stadium, say, ‘Kill the Boer, kill the farmer,’ and say, ‘That’s not hate speech.’”

No-Fault Divorce: America’s Divorce Mill is Marxist-Leninist Democratic Party

When you ask most people, they will say it’s a mutual-consent process, or that it preserves privacy, or that it eliminates blame for the failure of the marriage.

Not many people will answer that it’s a lawsuit in which one party is suing the other party. And even fewer will know that it came from the Soviet Union.

Like previous divorce actions, no-fault divorce is still a lawsuit, which means that one party is invoking the state’s police powers against the other party. The main difference now is that the person filing for divorce no longer has to provide a reason for why they’re doing it. This type of lawsuit is unique; it’s the only type of legal action devoid of any ‘claim’ (complaint), and if the party being sued doesn’t know the complaint, then there’s no possibility of a defense.

As for the communist origins of no-fault divorce, a 1975 law review article by Donald M. Bolas entitled, “No Fault Divorce: Born in the Soviet Union?” explains how, after speaking with Russian lawyers, he stumbled upon how Soviet divorce law may have influenced our own laws.

Bolas explains that when the Bolsheviks took over in 1917, religious marriages were no longer recognized by the state. Marriage became a “state action” and divorce became merely an administrative process known as Russian Post Card Divorce. One spouse simply filled out the paperwork at city hall and the other party was then notified by mail that they were no longer married. Some people married twenty times. There was also a ‘free love’ bureau where people could sign up for partners.

The fact that this type of law increases the divorce rate is proven every day in the United States. Since the onset of no-fault divorce, the divorce rate doubled with one divorce granted for every two marriages that take place. In terms of sheer numbers, approximately a million divorces are finalized each year, translating into 3,000 divorces every day.

How coincidental that the U.S. divorce rate is among the highest in the world, vying only with Russia!

Another interesting fact about no-fault divorce is how strikingly similar its underlying thinking is to abortion law. In fact, laws dealing with both subjects were being drafted at the same meeting. This is how it all began.

History

In 1970, a national group of lawyers gathered for their annual meeting at the Colony Motor Hotel in Clayton, Missouri, just outside of St. Louis. At this meeting, two new ‘model’ laws were being drafted and debated. These laws would serve as ‘blueprints’ for state legislators around the country to enact as state laws. The purpose was to create more uniformity in state laws. One of these laws was called the Uniform Marriage and Divorce Act (UMDA) and the other was the Uniform Abortion Act (then, in 1973, Roe v. Wade overturned all state abortion laws).

A common theme found in both of these debates was the word viability and this word would be operative in rationalizing both of these laws.

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In the case of abortion, the discussion revolved around the viability of the human life, meaning its potential for survival outside the mother. The divorce debate was similar: a marriage could be terminated “on the basis that it no longer is a viable institution,” according to the transcripts that have been preserved from these debates.

Using viability as the operative term would soften the discussion on divorce, or abortion, making these new laws more palatable to the public. This way of thinking would also help cover up the truth so we wouldn’t have to ‘look’ at the reality: that both are really destructive acts. One act destroys the product of the one-flesh union while the purpose of the other act is to destroy the one-flesh union itself.

During a pregnancy, we now are able to ‘see’ the reality of life due to technical advances. However, in the case of marriage, there isn’t any test. One person’s word suffices. Judges and lawyers don’t check for vital signs in the marriages, which assumes they are all dead on arrival.

The label given to this new type of divorce is something of a misnomer. The term ‘no-fault’ came into the vernacular with the introduction of ‘no-fault’ car insurance. The rationale behind no-fault car insurance was to move cases more quickly into ‘settlements.’

The same is true for no-fault divorce because now the emphasis is on moving cases into mediation where settlements are supposed to be reached, conveniently skipping the step of determining viability. Once a petition for divorce is filed, the marriage is essentially doomed, since no one checks for any pulse.

The term “no-fault” has served masterfully to cover up something that is far more sinister. The idea that the State is forcing people out of their marriages is hard to fathom but because every divorce petition is granted, and none are ever denied, then there are certainly a few viable marriages that meet an untimely death.

Conciliation/Reconciliation

Before the onset of no-fault divorce there was a burgeoning activity around the country called the Conciliation Court Movement with the focus on marital reconciliation. This movement began in 1939 when California enacted its Children’s Court of Conciliation Law in order to:

… protect the rights of children and to promote the public welfare by preserving and promoting family life and the institution of matrimony, and to provide means for the reconciliation of spouses and the amicable settlement of domestic and family controversies.

By 1970, Conciliation Courts were operating in Alaska, Arizona, Hawaii, Illinois, Michigan, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Montana, North Dakota, Ohio, Oregon and Wisconsin, using a growing body of knowledge and techniques to help restore family life. But now, such lofty goals cannot be found anywhere in our statutes.

When no-fault divorce entered the picture, the emphasis in conciliation courts soon changed to ‘divorce with dignity.’ Settlement negotiations took place under the auspices of a mediator who assisted the courts in keeping the conveyor belt moving.

Is there another possibility? Can distressed spouses find ‘relief’ for their anguish? Could we create Marriage Support facilities that operate in the same way as the Pregnancy Support facilities that offer another answer than abortion? Marriage Support facilities could do the same thing by offering couples the help they need to stay together.

In many ways, the Church might be the perfect home for these facilities. Tribunal offices could incorporate the Conciliation Court model, summoning couples from the civil courts. At this time, spouses are typically directed to Catholic Charities, but this is not enough because the problem requires a blending of both legal and pastoral initiatives.

Also needed are skillful practitioners who are trained in multiple fields. Working with a dyadic relationship is much harder than working with one person individually. Not many practitioners can handle such a challenge without bringing their own biases into the work.

By all appearances we are a nation that wants to defend traditional marriage, as evidenced by the number of state constitutional amendments that have passed. The next step is to protect marriages from being destroyed in this country’s no-fault divorce mills.

Calm Down

 

Many of my fellow America First conservatives need to take a chill pill and calm the hell down. I get the frustration. I get the irritation. We’ve waited decades for justice. We’ve waited decades to use the power granted to us by the American people to reshape this country back into something like it was rather than the gross, formless blob of neo-commie failure it has become. But this Gramscian Rome wasn’t built in a day, and we’re not going to burn it down overnight, no matter how hard we fiddle. Start taking “Yes” for an answer, conservatives.

Let’s take some of the more common gripes, starting with the complaint that our Congress hasn’t passed anything. But, of course, Congress has passed several things. It passed the Laken Riley Act to keep Third World savages who are illegally here locked up. It just overturned the ridiculous California “no gas engines” law. So, the objection is not that the Republicans haven’t passed anything. It’s that the Republicans haven’t passed enough.

But there’s a structural fact that frustrated conservatives refuse to admit exists. This is why most of our actions must be taken via executive orders. Because of the Senate filibuster, we have to get 60 votes, but we have only 53 Senators. All the Democrats hang together, breaking the neck of our legislation. 

What is so amazingly difficult to understand about this? Do people not know what the filibuster is? Do they not care? Look, I get the anger. I’ve been a conservative longer than many of you people have been alive. I was a conservative in the 80s, faithfully reading America’s only right-wing outlet, National Review, before it became the Teen Vogue of conservatism. All the stuff we are trying to do today is stuff that we’ve been dreaming about for decades. But we’ve been lied to, spat upon, disregarded, persecuted, and generally treated like crap not only by the Democrats but our own Republican Party for as long as I can remember. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again – the Republican base is the abused spouse of American politics. We are naturally suspicious and looking for any reason to validate our gut instinct that we are about to get screwed over yet again.

That’s why we act like we do, but let’s not pretend it’s always rational. The fact of the filibuster is not an excuse for inaction; it’s the reason for it. Gravity is not an excuse why you can’t jump 50 feet high. The filibuster is a structural reality that we have to work around – unless we make the major decision to get rid of it. If you want to do that, make that argument. But don’t whine because Congress is not doing something it literally cannot do.

Yes, I know a lot of this is just emotional catharsis. I know it makes some of us feel better to complain incessantly about the failures of our Republican Party, and it doesn’t help that the Republican Party has given us sufficient material to complain incessantly for days without repeating ourselves. But that doesn’t change reality.

We should celebrate the Big Beautiful Bill, which can pass because of arcane Senate rules that get around the filibuster. But no. Cue the handwringing. Yes, it spends too much. Yes, it fails to cut many things that richly deserve cutting. No, it doesn’t include a bunch of things we want. Yes, it includes many things we don’t want, like the SALT increase. But you know what? It’s a compromise bill. With only a four- or five-vote majority in the House, all those blue-state Republicans have outsized leverage. You don’t have to like it, but you do have to recognize reality. They’ve got the power, and they’re using it to do what they think is best for their district and their reelection chances. This is called politics. That’s how it works. The idea that every politician must be a disinterested, economically rational person who happens to agree with every policy choice we prefer is silly. We can’t create a majority out of a minority. It’s better to have this bill passed than not to pass it, so we should pass it through the Senate if those chuckleheads can get their egos in check and get it done.

And then there’s the court. Liberal court judges are breaking the rules to keep Trump from governing. What are we doing about it? We are going through the appellate system and getting them overturned. Almost all of them will be. Is it frustrating? Yes. Shouldn’t we just ignore the court? Not if we want to avoid an entirely different fight that we might not win. We’re going to win doing what we’re doing. We should keep doing that.

And here’s another gripe. What did we want from the investigations of some of the key scandals of the last decade? We wanted to know the truth about Epstein, for example. We got good people to look at the evidence from the inside. I don’t know Kash Patel (people who say he’s squared away), but I do know Dan Bongino and trust him implicitly. These guys had a lot of credibility with our movement. Well, they looked at the facts about Epstein, and they’ve determined that he did kill himself, but some of us apparently didn’t get the answer we wanted.

I was under the impression that we wanted the truth. The whole thing about Epstein was exceedingly sketchy. Obviously, the Deep State has no default to our trust. But, when a guy like Dan Bongino takes a look at the relevant materials and tells us that there was no murder – it’s not unreasonable that a guy like him might not want to spend the rest of his miserable existence in an 8’ x 10’ concrete box – it’s weird to see people disappointed. We were looking for the truth, correct? What if the truth is this perv killed himself, aided by the entirely routine incompetence of government employees who failed to do their job, just like millions of other government employees fail to do their job every single day?

So, now Dan Bongino is “compromised?” Now, he’s a tool of the Deep State? Dan Bongino? Come on. There are only three real options. You could believe that somehow, he allowed himself to be corrupted. That’s ridiculous. You could believe the Deep State fooled him, but he is no amateur. The guy was a federal law enforcement officer and presumably knows what to look for. The final option is that he examined the relevant evidence and came to the conclusion that Epstein did kill himself. But the reaction of some people is disappointment, as if they wanted that perverted degenerate to have been killed within the web of some giant conspiracy. Of course, being familiar with and distinctly unimpressed by the kind of unaccomplished people who tend to control institutions, I tend not to believe in conspiracies because the alleged conspirators aren’t smart enough to pull them off.

In any case, it’s baffling that we would send one of our most trusted surrogates to wade into the swamp to find the truth and then get mad at him when the truth isn’t what we thought it was. I thought we wanted the truth, but some people want validation of what they already decided is true. Now, I think everything should be released, including any video of that creep offing himself.  We also need to see the non-perverted videos the FBI seized, as well as a full and complete list of his grody associates. But Dan Bongino has earned the benefit of the doubt through years of loyal service to the movement. It’s pretty crappy to start making accusations about him because the answers he has found are not the answers some people want.

Finally, there are complaints about prosecutions. I was a lawyer for 30 years. This stuff takes time. You want to do it once, and you want to do it right. Many people require accountability. In reality, we’re not going to be able to hold all of them to account. We don’t have the resources or the bandwidth; that’s another unpleasant reality we must accept. But for those we are going to hold to account, it takes time.

Trump’s been president for about four months. He’s got four years. I think Donald Trump has earned our trust over the last decade. I think we can give him the benefit of the doubt that what needs to get done is going to get done, even if it’s not right away.

That’s the bottom line. Do we trust Trump and our movement? Are we ready to accept that we’re not going to get everything we necessarily want? Are we prepared for answers that don’t fit our preconceived notions? 

Johnny Rotten Lydon observed that anger is an energy, but we can’t only run on anger. We must be ruthless. We must be cold. And for heaven’s sake, we must calm down.

Spiritual Revival Is Essential for America’s 250th Anniversary

Since his inauguration on January 20, President Trump has delivered more positive achievements for more of the American people than any other president serving an equivalent time in office. Yet, Trump has experienced more opposition, including assassination attempts, than any other president since the Civil War. In fact, 67 percent of all federal injunctions in the last 100 years have been issued against President Trump. 

When opposition and hostility to a national leader who is delivering major solutions for the people is so obviously irrational, it is imperative to understand what is at work to cause such division and hatred. With the 250^th anniversary of America’s founding only a year away,  we can start with identifying the one or two cultural variables that are dramatically different between the first 125 years and the last 125 years of American history that may explain this division, hatred, and decline. 

The two variables that have dramatically changed from America’s first half to its second half are:  1) the marginalization of God and Christianity; and 2) the rise of demonic influence and apocalyptic cults.

Because Christianity’s key tenets are forgiveness and love, we should never underestimate the consequences of secularization over the last century and accelerating into the present. With diminished Christian influence in culture, social and family relations, manners, civility, and honesty are markedly worse today than a century or two ago. With the declining influence of the Christian world view, paganism and the worship of nature have been on the rise, with many embracing apocalyptic cult group think—often linked to a negative impending doom. 

The 2012 Democratic National Convention removed any and all references to "God" from the party's platform, which was a 24,000-word plus mission statement. At the same time the Democrat Party has embraced false and apocalyptic views, like gender is fluid and man-made CO2 levels are dangerously high and the root cause of climate change. 

Now, with Donald Trump’s second term, the Democrats have gone into overdrive abandoning rational analyses and simply believing that whatever Trump does is a coming apocalypse that must be resisted and fought by any means whatsoever. 

In America’s first half, the rise of wholesale evil was mitigated because Christianity permeated the country’s culture—providing spiritual protection. The country’s founding came out of thirteen separate colonies, which had one important thing in common: a belief that Christianity was the basis for the cultural, social, and political order of each. In spite of denominational, ethnic, geographic, and linguistic differences between the thirteen colonies, each expressed a reverence for God in their respective state charters and constitutions, recognizing that Christianity was central to the moral order and social peace. 

With the Declaration of Independence in 1776, the thirteen colonies became independent states operating under a weak federal government based on the Articles of Confederation. It took another six years after the final defeat of the British at Yorktown in 1781, before the Constitutional Convention convened for the purpose of forming a new more effective government. There were 55 delegates to that convention, 95 percent of whom self-identified as Christian. The Constitution was shaped by Christianity, with the Bible being the most cited source in the debates in and around the Constitutional Convention. 

The framers dismissed any notion of establishing Christian theocratic state because it was contrary to God’s natural order of diversity. So they set about creating a system that protected individual rights and freedom -- including religious freedom – while also restraining government abuse of power and corruption through: 1) checks and balances between three branches of federal government; 2) a federal system that pitted state power against federal government power; and 3) the codification of frequent elections—to enable regular cleansing by voting out charlatans, corruption and abuse of power.    

America was the first nation in human history that was based on two simple axioms that government should protect the people’s unalienable God-given rights to be free, and protect the people from abuse of power and corruption that plagued all prior governments from the beginning of time. And while the U.S. government didn’t perfectly live up to its constitution on these two requirements, the American people thrived and the Unted States flourished, becoming “a city on a hill” and the greatest economic and military power in the world in just 125 years. 

America’s fate in the last century has taken a turn for the worse that is correlated to the marginalization of God and Christianity. In this regard, the first two presidents, George Washington and John Adams, were prescient about our present problems with incivility and ungovernability. Both agreed that a moral and religious people were necessary for the success of America's Constitutional Republic. Washington, in his Farewell Address, emphasized the importance of religion and morality as "indispensable supports" for political prosperity. Adams similarly stated that "our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other." 

The modern day prophet Jonathan Cahn, author of The Harbinger, which sold over two million copies and was a New York Times bestseller for two years,  explains that as America drove God out of its culture in the last half of the 20^th century right into the present, the protective hand of God and the Holy Spirit was diminished and removed, creating a sort of vacuum that allowed demonic spirits to occupy and influence America. 

Taking account of the past and present and arriving at a solution for the future, we can be sure that spiritual revival will be pivotal for our country’s turn-around. How that takes place may be unclear, but we can be sure that God has a plan if only we will listen and act.

Jake Tapper’s Own ‘Original Sin’

 

There’s a book that came out recently by Jake Tapper of CNN and Axios’ Alex Thompson called “Original Sin.” It’s about the cover-up, decline of former President Joe Biden and the disastrous choice of him choosing to run in 2024, until he was forcibly ejected from the ticket.

We all have problems with this. And it’s essentially Jake Tapper—it’s a co-authored book but it’s Jake Tapper. Jake Tapper is a CNN grandee. Seven-figure salary. Kind of an iconic figure in this left-wing media outlook. But my point is this, for the last four years, again and again and again, if anybody questioned the obvious mental decline of Joe Biden—his cognitive difficulties—Jake Tapper, and went on CNN, Jake Tapper tore them apart.

The locus classicus was Lara Trump, who said that he’s obviously—as early as 2020—in decline. And he suggested that she was berating him for a childhood stutter, which was absolutely ridiculous.

So, what is my point? Here is someone who promulgated the greatest cover-up in the history of the U.S. presidency—helped. And we were told that Joe Biden “was fit as the fiddle.” We had medical reports that obviously or mysteriously did not have one critical indicator that were apparent on the Trump and Obama presidential medical records releases. There was no PSA test, an indicator of the health or malignancy of one’s prostate. That was a cover-up too, as we’re starting to learn.

But my point is this, no one was more instrumental in berating—maybe Joe Scarborough, but other than he, Jake Tapper tore apart anybody who suggested that Joe Biden was as cognitive in decline as they saw with their own eyes and heard him. When The Wall Street Journal wrote in a definitive story, Jake Tapper wrote them off as Murdoch/Fox propagandists.

So, why are we here? Why did he write a book now? Well, the obvious answer is that Joe Biden has no power. And these media people in Washington are—they’re like moths to a flame. They gravitate to power. And when you don’t have power, you don’t have friends. And there’s no downside in telling the truth.

Why didn’t Jake Tapper write this a year ago? Because he knows what would’ve happened. Somebody in the White House would’ve called up and said, “Tapper, no one from CNN is gonna get a seat at a press conference. There’s not gonna be any CNN interview.” So he backed down.

And now in a very cowardly fashion, now he comes out and he is blaming the White House cover-up. But what he doesn’t tell us is the White House cover-up would have been impossible had not CNN, MSNBC, PBS, NBC, ABC, CBS all conspired with the White House staff to downplay—not just downplay Biden’s cognitive decline but attack people.

Bottom line: They had more interest in protecting this left-wing administration who was using this waxen effigy of Joe Biden and for someone’s purposes—we don’t know who was running the country, who was giving him the autopen executive orders. We have no idea who those people are. We have a suspicion that it was the Obama crowd.

But nevertheless, they didn’t care about that. They did not care about that. All they knew is that this was a left-wing agenda and it had to be preserved by any means necessary. And that included lying, lying, covering up, and worst of all, demonizing and attacking people who sought to tell the truth about Joe Biden.

And now, he wants to say—what? “I have a little humility. I may, may or not, I sort of, kind of was part of the cover-up. But now the real Jake Tapper is in this book, who’s now telling truth to power.” No, you’re telling truth to impotence.

Joe Biden has got cancer. He is written off. He’s in decline. The family is disgraced. It’s easy now to write about that. It was hard and would have required intellectual courage, moral fortitude to say this when he was the most powerful man in the world.

And so, Jake Tapper, you failed that test. And you should pay a penalty. CNN should look very carefully at whether they want to retain him because this is one of the greatest acts of duplicity, moral duplicity, I’ve seen in my entire life. And it joins a long, long, long list of collusion, capers, conspiracy, bogus, frauds, ruses.

Jake Tapper, you should go back and see what was your position on Russian collusion? What was your position on Hunter Biden laptop disinformation? What was your position on the Steele dossier? What was your position on the 51 intelligence authorities? And I think in every one of those cases, you failed the test of truth and you really did this time in the greatest cover-up in the history, as I said, of the American presidency.

And it’s not over yet because we’re gonna learn more and more, tragically, about Joe Biden’s medical condition and to see if not just whether the cognitive disabilities of Biden were covered up, but whether his prostate metastasized cancer contributed to that and that source was also covered up.

Are Some Racist Slurs OK?

One reason why the public turned on diversity, equity, and inclusion was its insistence that roughly 70% of the country was stereotyped as victimizers by virtue of their skin color. 

In contrast, the other “diverse” 30% were de facto considered the victimized. 

In such absurd binaries, the Left returned to the old “one drop” rule of the antebellum South, suggesting that anyone with any nonwhite ancestry was a minority victim. 

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And once that Marxist-inspired dichotomy was institutionalized, a corollary was established that the self-declared racially oppressed cannot themselves be racist oppressors. 

But human nature is universal and transcends race. 

One lamentable characteristic of our species is that we are all prone to excess and crudity if not deterred, especially once civilizational restraint is lost. 

We are now witnessing examples of what follows when anti-white stereotyping and racism are given a pass—as long as the purveyors can claim their victimhood entitles them to bias. 

Recently, WNBA basketball stars Angel Reese and Caitlin Clark got into one of their now-characteristic on-court rivalries. But this time around, Reese mocked Clark as a “White gyal (sic) running from the fade.” 

Reese assumes that her status as a black star grants her immunity from backlash—a privilege unlikely to be extended if the roles were reversed. 

Or is her crassness a simple reflection that 60 years after the civil rights movement, it is deemed cool or deservedly acceptable to use the word “white” derogatorily? 

After all, loose cannon Rep. Jasmine Crockett, D-Texas, in one of her accustomed racialist rants, recently went after her party’s big Democrat donors, who raised a record amount of money for Kamala Harris’ short-lived campaign. 

Crockett played the race card when claiming that Democrat insiders were already backing the next party nominee as the “safest white boy.” 

Her racist irritation is puzzling. After all, two out of the last four Democrat presidential nominees have been African Americans. 

Yet it is certainly easy to see why Crockett, who endlessly spouts off about race in congressional sessions, used the pejorative “white boy.” She knows that there are no repercussions given her race and, to a lesser extent, her gender and left-wing ideology. 

Recently, a past 2018 slur resurfaced from another House Democrat, Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn. She had falsely claimed, “I would say our country should be more fearful of white men across our country because they are actually causing most of the deaths in this country.” 

Omar’s stereotyped smear was not only racist but also factually incorrect. 

The FBI’s 2018 data on perpetrators of murder, when the race of the offender was known, reveals that 54.9% of the nation’s murderers that year were African American, who constitute about 13% of the population. 

And when the race of the murderer in rare interracial killings was known, blacks were more than twice as likely to murder whites as whites were to kill blacks. 

During recent controversies over leaks at the Pentagon, former U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice, during the Obama administration, injected race by smearing Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth. She leveled a trifecta race/gender/sexual orientation slur—all irrelevant to the issue at hand: “Well, if you’re a white male Christian cisgender macho MAGA man, you can be as dumb as a rock and be deemed qualified to serve as Secretary of Defense.” 

Rice still chafes that as a sometimes-official Obama administration spokeswoman, she serially and deliberately misled the country about the fatal 2012 terrorist attacks on the American consulate in Benghazi. 

In all these cases, there was no fallout from racial categorization and demonization. Again, we apparently accept the pernicious idea that those identifying as an oppressed group cannot themselves voice illiberal stereotypes. 

But while our political elites and celebrities seem fixated on using racial put-downs for career advantage and personal notoriety, the people increasingly ignore their entrenched and off-putting racism. 

For example, in a recent Rasmussen poll surveying public attitudes toward President Donald Trump’s first 100 days in office, 62% of Hispanics voiced approval (higher than the 49% of whites). And 39% of blacks agreed. 

One result of the 2024 campaign was that while Democrats seemed fixated on racial stereotypes, the public had moved on. 

Voters increasingly see class considerations transcending race. That fact may explain why exasperated and flailing Democrats and leftists desperately seek to resurrect racial polarization instead of finding a popular middle-class agenda. 

Historically, tribalism erodes a multiracial democracy. 

It did when white leaders in the past expressed racist attitudes toward blacks. And it will again if black elites simply flip the paradigm and do the same.

Kash Patel Shuts Down the Deep State’s Nerve Center

 

Recently, Kash Patel, who’s been under fire by the Left in a variety of ways, the new FBI director, he announced that he is shutting down the J. Edgar Hoover Building in Washington, D.C., where there’s about 1,500 employees, as I understand it.

There was a lot of outrage. But remember that this was not his original decision. It was the decision during the Biden administration of then-FBI Director Christopher Wray that this 50-year-old building was unsuitable. It was decrepit.

But what was more interesting, in addition to thinking he was going to shut down the building, we don’t know where he wants to relocate the headquarters.

I would prefer—I think some of you—if he put it in Kansas City or somewhere away from the proverbial deep state in Washington. He also said he didn’t understand, of the 35,000 employees, why a third were in Washington. Washington, as dangerous as it can be, does not account for a third of all crimes.

So, he’s trying to disperse or recalibrate the FBI. And are we going to lament the closure of that office and what it represents symbolically? I don’t think so.

Robert Mueller, a former FBI director, was the head of the Special Counsel’s Office. Remember that? And he had the dream team—the all-stars, a hunter/killer team—with the Left. He was almost giddy about that they were gonna get President Donald Trump on Russian collusion. Forty million dollars, 20 months later, they didn’t find anything.

We found all sorts of improprieties within that investigation. Andrew Weissmann and others cleaned their cellphones so that no one could see their text messages. We had Peter Strzok and Lisa Page dismissed from the investigation because of their notorious and now infamous tweets.

We had Robert Mueller go before the House Intelligence Committee and claim that he didn’t know what the Steele dossier was nor what Glenn Simpson’s Fusion GPS was. That was impossible. Those were the two catalysts that prompted his own appointment.

His successor was James Comey. He’s in the news right now for that weird tweet where he said he was walking on the beach and he saw “8647”—get rid of Trump; or maybe, you know, kill Trump; or whatever “86” can mean, it can mean a lot of stuff—and he didn’t understand it. But he’s also got a novel coming out right now about a supposed right-wing celebrity who threatens people and then something happens to the people he threatened. Was this a stunt for his book? I don’t know, but it’s in line with his character.

He went before the same House Intelligence Committee on 245 occasions. He pled either “I don’t know” or “I can’t recall” or “I don’t have that information” or “I shouldn’t give you that information.” Two hundred and forty-five times.

He was the one that set up Michael Flynn and bragged about how naive Michael Flynn was not to have an attorney when he sent agents in to ambush him on the Logan Act. My gosh, nobody ever invokes that.

He was the person who lied to Donald Trump and said, “We don’t have an investigation of you, Mr. President.” And then he went out and recorded that conversation. He did have an investigation. And then he had a third party leak it to The New York Times.

He was the one who hired Christopher Steele. He was an FBI contractor. They used the Steele dossier, which was fraudulent, to get FISA court warrants to, I think, unproperly and unlawfully spy on people like Carter Page. That same office gave us Kevin Clinesmith, the FBI lawyer who doctored a FISA email to spy on Carter Page.

That same office then gave us the successor to James Comey, interim Director Andrew McCabe. He lied four times, the inspector general said, to federal authorities and three of them were under oath, which was a basis for his firing.

He was followed by Christopher Wray. Why was he spying on parents at school board meetings? Why was he spying on what they called “radical-traditional Catholics”? Why did they go after abortion protesters, but not in the same way people who were protesting pro-life?

And why did they do the Mar-a-Lago raid? Why did they go in there with props and special files and scattered the files on the ground, where they were not there when they came, and then take pictures of them and add a little “classified”? Why did they take away 13,000 documents? And out of the 13,000 documents, they only found 102 that were classified, 0.007%. I could go on with Christopher Wray. This is what he gave us.

He had the chief counsel, James A. Baker, of the FBI working with Twitter and Facebook to suppress news of Hunter Biden’s laptop. The laptop was authenticated by Christopher Wray’s FBI. They kept it silent while 51 supposed intelligence authorities said that it was Russian disinformation. Why didn’t the FBI say, “No, it’s not. We’ve authenticated it for over a year”? Why? Why? Why?

Add it all up—Mueller, Comey, McCabe, Clinesmith, Christopher Wray, Strzok, Page—and I think it’s been a very good but overdue thing to close down that Washington office and close a sad chapter in the history of a once-great agency.

Trump’s Approach to Foreign Policy Draws Criticism, But Delivers Results

 

President Donald Trump just wrapped up a very successful tour of the Middle East Gulf states and touched upon the tense negotiations with Iran, touched upon the Russian/Ukraine war, in addition.

And he took that occasion of being overseas, quite irregular, to blast the prior administrations. I think he was talking specifically about the George W. Bush administration as a faulty foreign policy administration, in the sense that they were nation-building. He blasted neoconservatism. He said that they tried to interfere in the internal affairs of traditional societies.

There’s all an element of truth to that. But it elicited a lot of criticism. Elliott Abrams has been blasting Trump. Rich Lowry has been blasting Trump.

What is their criticism? Their criticism is that his traditional Jacksonian foreign policy—no better friend, no worse enemy; intervening on the behalf of allies; trying to win over neutrals; punishing enemies; not engaging in optional Middle East wars; retaliation only, as in the first term, get rid of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, get rid of Qassem Soleimani, get rid of the Wagner Group, etc., but not insert troops on the ground—that has morphed, according to his critics, now into a mercantile foreign policy where the chief element is to make money and not to have any idealistic element.

But I would say that just because Donald Trump didn’t mention idealism and that we were supporting democratic institutions, doesn’t necessarily mean he’s not doing that.

What he’s emphasizing is that there is a common bond in the world. And that common bond is in the heart of everybody. They want peace and they want prosperity and they want security. That’s not necessarily antithetical or exclusionary of freedom because, obviously, economic ability—the ability to make money and the ability to be secure—often has an element of what? Freedom.

And so, Donald Trump’s idea about foreign policy I think is the following: If you get people to agree on particular elements, barometers of peace, and you engage with them economically, then they will see that it’s to their advantage not to commit terrorism or war but to try to mutually profit.

And how does that work throughout the world in these conflicts?

One: In the Ukrainian war, he’s suggesting there be a DMZ between the two sides that are now fighting. They disengage. There’ll be a commercial corridor where foreign entities have concessions to mine rare earths and sanctions are lifted. And then Russia and Ukraine stop this insane war where there’s 1.5 million casualties and counting aggregate on both sides.

In the Middle East, he’s saying to the Middle East: Under the Abraham Accords, if you make a deal with Israel, it’s gonna be beneficial for everybody. You will tap into Israeli expertise, technology. Your oil money will be able to purchase artificial intelligence, biotech, genetic engineering, all of these wonderful things. And you have a Western country right near you.

And he is telling Iran—and this is where the criticism arises: We don’t have any preconditions. All you have to do is stop subsidizing a now-defunct Hezbollah and Hamas. That should be easy for you. You’ve lost your concession in Syria. The Houthis are now under duress. Just stop it. And you don’t need to enrich uranium because you have a hundred years’ supply of conventional fossil fuels for electricity production.

But he didn’t mention that the Gulf countries must reform. And they must democratize. And they must honor human rights. I think it’s implicit that he wants them to, but he didn’t say explicitly. And that’s where the criticism came.

But let me just finish by asking, I don’t believe in a Manichean foreign policy, but what’s the opposite of that?

We had then-President Joe Biden go over to Saudi Arabia and beg during the 2022 midterms that the royal family begin to pump oil. And why did he do that? Because he insulted them and said that they were basically “a rogue dictatorship” because of the incident where a person—they had a critic killed, Jamal Khashoggi, in the Turkish Embassy, etc.

What was the net result? Did we have better relations? Was there greater peace?

And he’s criticized the Netanyahu government—Biden did—and said that they had to have a coalition government, they were not democratic enough. What was the net result? Did that make us closer with Israel? Did it moderate Israel? Israel’s already a democracy.

And to be frank, Donald Trump has been much more critical of the Zelenskyy government than Biden and the Left have. Donald Trump has said the following: “You have outlawed a free press. You have outlawed habeas corpus, in most cases. You haven’t had free elections. And you’ve banned opposition parties. And yet you criticize Israel. And you make demands and try to remove the Netanyahu government.”

So, what am I getting at? The Left is not consistent in their advocacy of human rights because they give a complete pass to Ukraine.

What Donald Trump is trying to say is: Let’s just not get into politics. Let’s not get into offending foreign leaders. Let’s just start with a blank slate. And when we see hot spots around the world, we want to help our friends, win over our neutrals, punish our enemies if they won’t change. And one way that we can do that is not to lecture them but to create economic matrices, nexuses, in which people find that it’s in their vested interests to profit rather than to kill people.

Should he mention human rights from time to time? Yes. Should he say that the United States’ realist policy is more than just mutual property? Yes. But it doesn’t change the actual fact: He’s had more success getting to a ceasefire in Ukraine and more success in the Middle East than the prior administration under whose watch two theater wars broke out and we had the disaster in Afghanistan.

I don’t need to go back to prior administrations. But I don’t think people feel, in retrospect—even as a reaction to 9/11, which was needed—that the Afghan War and the Iraq War, in a cost-benefit analysis or humanitarian analysis for either us or for the people we tried to help, were a success.

Trump’s Approach to Foreign Policy Draws Criticism, But Delivers Results

 

And he took that occasion of being overseas, quite irregular, to blast the prior administrations. I think he was talking specifically about the George W. Bush administration as a faulty foreign policy administration, in the sense that they were nation-building. He blasted neoconservatism. He said that they tried to interfere in the internal affairs of traditional societies.

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There’s all an element of truth to that. But it elicited a lot of criticism. Elliott Abrams has been blasting Trump. Rich Lowry has been blasting Trump.

What is their criticism? Their criticism is that his traditional Jacksonian foreign policy—no better friend, no worse enemy; intervening on the behalf of allies; trying to win over neutrals; punishing enemies; not engaging in optional Middle East wars; retaliation only, as in the first term, get rid of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, get rid of Qassem Soleimani, get rid of the Wagner Group, etc., but not insert troops on the ground—that has morphed, according to his critics, now into a mercantile foreign policy where the chief element is to make money and not to have any idealistic element.

But I would say that just because Donald Trump didn’t mention idealism and that we were supporting democratic institutions, doesn’t necessarily mean he’s not doing that.

What he’s emphasizing is that there is a common bond in the world. And that common bond is in the heart of everybody. They want peace and they want prosperity and they want security. That’s not necessarily antithetical or exclusionary of freedom because, obviously, economic ability—the ability to make money and the ability to be secure—often has an element of what? Freedom.

And so, Donald Trump’s idea about foreign policy I think is the following: If you get people to agree on particular elements, barometers of peace, and you engage with them economically, then they will see that it’s to their advantage not to commit terrorism or war but to try to mutually profit.

And how does that work throughout the world in these conflicts?

One: In the Ukrainian war, he’s suggesting there be a DMZ between the two sides that are now fighting. They disengage. There’ll be a commercial corridor where foreign entities have concessions to mine rare earths and sanctions are lifted. And then Russia and Ukraine stop this insane war where there’s 1.5 million casualties and counting aggregate on both sides.

In the Middle East, he’s saying to the Middle East: Under the Abraham Accords, if you make a deal with Israel, it’s gonna be beneficial for everybody. You will tap into Israeli expertise, technology. Your oil money will be able to purchase artificial intelligence, biotech, genetic engineering, all of these wonderful things. And you have a Western country right near you.

And he is telling Iran—and this is where the criticism arises: We don’t have any preconditions. All you have to do is stop subsidizing a now-defunct Hezbollah and Hamas. That should be easy for you. You’ve lost your concession in Syria. The Houthis are now under duress. Just stop it. And you don’t need to enrich uranium because you have a hundred years’ supply of conventional fossil fuels for electricity production.

But he didn’t mention that the Gulf countries must reform. And they must democratize. And they must honor human rights. I think it’s implicit that he wants them to, but he didn’t say explicitly. And that’s where the criticism came.

But let me just finish by asking, I don’t believe in a Manichean foreign policy, but what’s the opposite of that?

We had then-President Joe Biden go over to Saudi Arabia and beg during the 2022 midterms that the royal family begin to pump oil. And why did he do that? Because he insulted them and said that they were basically “a rogue dictatorship” because of the incident where a person—they had a critic killed, Jamal Khashoggi, in the Turkish Embassy, etc.

What was the net result? Did we have better relations? Was there greater peace?

And he’s criticized the Netanyahu government—Biden did—and said that they had to have a coalition government, they were not democratic enough. What was the net result? Did that make us closer with Israel? Did it moderate Israel? Israel’s already a democracy.

And to be frank, Donald Trump has been much more critical of the Zelenskyy government than Biden and the Left have. Donald Trump has said the following: “You have outlawed a free press. You have outlawed habeas corpus, in most cases. You haven’t had free elections. And you’ve banned opposition parties. And yet you criticize Israel. And you make demands and try to remove the Netanyahu government.”

So, what am I getting at? The Left is not consistent in their advocacy of human rights because they give a complete pass to Ukraine.

What Donald Trump is trying to say is: Let’s just not get into politics. Let’s not get into offending foreign leaders. Let’s just start with a blank slate. And when we see hot spots around the world, we want to help our friends, win over our neutrals, punish our enemies if they won’t change. And one way that we can do that is not to lecture them but to create economic matrices, nexuses, in which people find that it’s in their vested interests to profit rather than to kill people.

Should he mention human rights from time to time? Yes. Should he say that the United States’ realist policy is more than just mutual property? Yes. But it doesn’t change the actual fact: He’s had more success getting to a ceasefire in Ukraine and more success in the Middle East than the prior administration under whose watch two theater wars broke out and we had the disaster in Afghanistan.

I don’t need to go back to prior administrations. But I don’t think people feel, in retrospect—even as a reaction to 9/11, which was needed—that the Afghan War and the Iraq War, in a cost-benefit analysis or humanitarian analysis for either us or for the people we tried to help, were a success.

Trump’s Approach to Foreign Policy Draws Criticism, But Delivers Results

 

There’s this controversy about the 747 airplane that Qatar gave to President Donald Trump. And there’s a lot of backstory, subtext to it that we haven’t really pondered.

The Left says that it’s unethical for the Trump Foundation to eventually get possession of it. But let’s just break it down very quickly.

Qatar has this huge 2013 747. It doesn’t seem to want it. It’s been on the market since 2020 and there were no takers. It gave its twin to Turkey, free of charge.

What I’m getting at is a 747 is an obsolete aircraft unless you’re the United States. And we have two, both of them nearly 40 years old. And we’re trying to build two new ones that Boeing is retrofitting.

But if you’re Qatar, the idea that you’re going to use this kind of older plane and get mechanics and the fuel costs, it’s not an economic viable plane. And they were trying to unload it to Turkey, which took it, and to us. Donald Trump is going to have the Air Force take it.

Here’s the other thing that’s important. Sen. Markwayne Mullin from Oklahoma has alleged that these negotiations about receiving the plane actually began during the Biden administration.

I don’t know if that was true. But it would be logical because the two Boeings that Donald Trump had authorized before he left office in 2021 were never really finished. Boeing sort of dragged on and on. The Biden administration didn’t press them. And they may not be done until Donald Trump is out of office.

So, what are we talking about? We’re talking about getting kind of a white elephant airplane from Qatar. It’s very elaborate. If we get it, we’ll probably have to spend the same cost as the Boeing. It would have to be updated with suitable communications, suitable security apparatuses, and refueling capability. Maybe it would be another $500 million to $1 billion to get this.

Will it be done before Donald Trump leaves office? I doubt it. So then it hinges on, well, what is Donald Trump going to do with it after he leaves office? He says his foundation is going to have it.

Remember when former President Ronald Reagan set up his library, his 707 that had been used, subsequently, by Presidents George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush and Bill Clinton was given to the Reagan library. And he didn’t use it. It was defunct at that point. And it’s there today as a museum piece.

Do people really think that when Trump leaves office this sort of white elephant 747 that looks like the interior of the Titanic is going to be flying the Trump family around? They already have a 757, this really expensive plane to maintain and to fuel. And it may or may not be retrofitted in time.

So, there’s only one ethical question, and that is, if the Trump Foundation really wants it, I don’t think it’ll be economically viable to use, but they should just announce in advance that it will be a museum piece and all of the controversy will be ended.

I’d like to end, though, on another aspect. The Left is really pressing the Trump family on conflict of interest: the cryptocurrency companies that they’re involved with; Jared Kushner’s dealings with some of the Gulf monarchies; the Trump companies cutting deals in the Middle East with golf courses, hotels, etc.

It would be very wise—because Trump is at a critical point in his administration where he cannot bleed anything—to have an informal ethics adviser, in my opinion. And just to reassure this predatory media—not that you have to cater them or not that you have to listen to them—but just someone in the administration, an ethics czar, that advises all of the Trump family and associates to make a firewall between them and presidential assistance.

And this is especially important because one of the reasons that Donald Trump was elected, he made a very convincing case that the Biden consortium was absolutely corrupt: the Burisma money to Hunter Biden; the laptop text that incriminated the entire family; the bogus checks that said “loan repayment”; the inexplicable three homes of former President Joe Biden; the $35 million that came from places as diverse as Ukraine, Romania, and China.

Given all that and how it hurt Biden, it would be wise for Donald Trump to make sure that the plane—which, again, is a white elephant—stays as a museum piece in his foundation when it’s turned over from the U.S. Air Force, if that’s going to happen, to the Trump Foundation.

And secondly, have someone in the White House just advise everybody that if they’re going to do business, it has to be separate from and distinct from the foreign policy initiatives of the administration.

Trump’s Middle East Strategy Is Ambitious but Also Dangerous

 

President Donald Trump this week had a historic tour of the Gulf monarchies in the Middle East, in general.

He went to Saudi Arabia and he met Mohammed bin Salman, the de facto leader of Saudi Arabia. And he cut a huge deal, which promised $600 million of Saudi investment in the United States and well over $130 or $140 million in Saudi purchase of American arms. And he sort of reset the relationship that had been tenuous during the Biden administration.

Then he went to Qatar—which is a rival of Saudi Arabia—and he met the emir. And he kind of topped the Saudi investment because they agreed to buy well over 200 Boeing 777 passengers and 787. That purchase alone could be $200 billion, with maybe a trillion dollars of investment.

At the same time, he met the de facto leader who’s emerging out of the disruption and disintegration of Syria, Ahmed al-Sharaa, who’s had, unfortunately, he’s had a history of terrorist activity. And he’d been associated with al-Qaeda, ISIS. Kind of a nebulous past.

And the subtext of all of these meetings were: We’re going to replace strife with money. We’re all gonna be profitable. And we have to bring the cause of all of this trouble, Iran, into the fold of the Middle East and drop the hostility to Israel.

Notice, of course, that he didn’t go to Israel, although he was trying to elicit support for the continuation of the Abraham Accords with Saudi Arabia and Qatar.

This is very ambitious but it’s also very dangerous. Donald Trump thinks he can cut a deal with Iran so that they would do essentially three things: They would give up their nuclear program; they would stop the subsidies to the terrorist surrogates of the Hezbollah, Hamas, and the Houthis; and they would liberalize their society and reenter the family of nations.

I don’t think that Shia theocracy feels that is their agenda. I think what they’re probably doing, given their prior history, they’re negotiating, drawing out, and hoping they can outlast the Trump administration while they get closer and closer to 90% enrichment.

And they don’t think that Donald Trump, given the MAGA agenda that frowns on unilateral or optional military engagements, especially in the Middle East, will be willing to sacrifice or endanger what has been a spectacular first 100 days, at least in economic terms.

And so, they feel that they’re going to, I think, string Donald Trump along and wait him out and then, maybe, with a Democratic administration, announce that they’ve reached 90% enrichment and have a few bombs.

So, what am I getting at? There’s a couple of fundamental issues here. One is that the MAGA agenda is kind of a neo-isolationist, that we don’t get involved. But Donald Trump himself—as we saw the first administration and as we saw with the Houthis when he bombed them—has a Jacksonian deterrent and foreign policy. And they’re coming into conflict. MAGA people do not want him to unilaterally stop the nuclear threat in Iran. They would prefer negotiations. But negotiations depend on that threat.

By the same token, he’s going to try to get the Saudis and the Middle East sheikhdoms to pump more oil. Pump more oil to not only bring down the price of oil worldwide but really, to be frank, to hurt Russian President Vladimir Putin’s only source of income. And he feels that these two conflicts may be connected.

If he can peel away the Middle East from China and Russia and bring down the price of oil, then Putin, who, rumors have it, increasingly is short men, manpower, and equipment, and wants to make a deal with Ukraine but doesn’t know how he’s going to explain to the Russian people how he lost over a million dead, wounded, and missing Russians—for what? Very little in return. Can he make that argument to the Russian people?

In conclusion, Donald Trump is facing dichotomies with the MAGA agenda and his Jacksonian foreign policy. He’s trying to get the Arab world to drop their hostility to Israel. At the same time, he’s trying to reason—if that’s the right word—with an unreasonable Iranian regime. And he wants oil to go down. I’m not sure that’s gonna help him in the United States. A lot of the frackers and horizontal drillers are—as the oil has dropped—they’re not at a very big profit margin. And yet, Trump wants them to spend more money and pump more and buy more rigs, etc.

So, there’s a lot of things going on. But one thing that’s not going on is we’re not being estranged from the Arab world. We’re not being estranged from Israel. This is not former President Joe Biden mouthing off about the Saudis or the Israelis. It’s a new type of approach that if everybody will just calm down, there’s a great opportunity to make money and be profitable. And that would include the disarmament, nuclearly, of Iran and the inclusion of Israel in the body politic.

Very ambitious.

The Real First 100 Days

 

Supporters talk of “flooding the zone,” believing President Donald Trump is making so many changes so quickly that his opposition is reduced to deer-in-the-headlights infancy.

They must be right when the nation suffers daily Democrat pottymouth videos, vandalism of Teslas, infantile meltdowns at congressional witnesses, rioting against federal agents to protect illegal alien felons, protesting on behalf of women beaters, M-13 gangbangers, human traffickers, and assaulters, and visa-holding violent students praising Hamas terrorists.

In contrast, opponents either claim that Trump’s first three months are either directionless chaos or a Hitlerian nightmare or both.

But what is really happening?

One, Trump is finally addressing the problems that proverbially “cannot go on forever, and so they won’t go on.”

When, if ever, would the Left have closed the southern border? After 10, 30, 50 million illegal aliens?

How many more criminal illegal entrants was the Biden administration willing to allow into American neighborhoods—500,000? One million? Three million?

How long was the world simply going to ignore the human destruction on the doorstep of Europe?

Would former President Joe Biden or former Vice President Kamala Harris have sought a ceasefire? Or would it have taken another 1.5, 3, or even 5 million more dead, wounded, and missing Ukrainians and Russians?

Nor did past administrations ever seek a solution to the massive national debt, much less the uncontrollable budget and trade deficits.

All prior presidents passed the day of judgment on to some vague future presidency, assured that their money printing would at least not blow up on their watch.

All moaned that China was piling up huge trade surpluses while denying its own population the usual modern safety net. They knew Beijing’s aim was to use the trillions of dollars in trade surpluses to build a new massive military, a greater arsenal of nuclear bombs, and a new imperial Belt and Road overseas empire.

Yet no administration did anything but greenlight American outsourcing and offshoring while ignoring Chinese trade cheating and technology theft.

Indeed, prior presidencies appeased and enriched China on the foolish belief that such indulgence would lead to Chinese prosperity, and with such Western-style affluence, soon a globalized, democratic, and supposedly friendly China.

In sum, we just witnessed all at once a 100-day, 360-degree effort to address all the existential challenges that we knew were unsustainable but were either afraid or incompetent to address.

Second, the administration apparently wants to confront the source of these crises and believes it is the progressive project.

The Left maintains real political power not by grassroots popularity, but rather by unelected institutional clout. The party of democracy uses antidemocratic means to achieve its ends of perpetual control.

It wages lawfare through the weaponization of the state, local, and federal courts.

It exercises executive power through cherry-picked federal district and circuit judges and their state and local counterparts.

The permanent bureaucracies and huge federal workforce are mostly left-wing, unionized, and weaponized by a progressive apparat. Their supreme directive is to amalgamate legislative, judicial, and executive power into the hands of the unelected Anthony Faucis, Jim Comeys, and Lois Lerners of the world—and thus to override or ignore both popular plebiscites and the work of the elected Congress.

Over 90% of the media—legacy, network, social, and state—are left-wing. Their mission is not objectivity but, admittedly, indoctrination.

Academia is the font of the progressive project. Ninety percent of the professoriat are left-wing and activist—explaining why campuses believe they are above the rules and laws of the Constitution, the Supreme Court, and the U.S. Congress.

Add into the mix the blue-chip Accela corridor law firms and the globalized corporate and revolving-door political elite.

The net result is clear: Almost everything the vast majority of Americans and their elected representatives did not want—far-left higher education, a Pravda media, biological men destroying women’s sports, an open border, 30 million illegal aliens, massive debt, a weaponized legal system, and a politicized Pentagon—became the new culture of America.

So, Trump is not just confronting unaddressed existential crises but also the root causes of why, when, and how they become inevitable and nearly unsolvable.

His answer is a messy, knock-down-drag-out counterrevolution to reboot the country back to the middle where it once was and where the Founders believed it should remain.

His right and left opponents call such pushback chaotic, disruptive, and out of control.

But the counterrevolution appears disorderly and upsetting, mostly to those who originally birthed the chaos; it certainly does not to the majority of Americans who finally wanted an end to the madness.

Biden’s Enablers Never Told Us Why They Did It

 

Let’s look at the border. President Joe Biden over four years destroyed it. He defanged Border Patrol and Immigration and Customs Enforcement. He stopped the congressionally approved wall. The result was 12 million people came in. They entered illegally. They resided illegally. And we have 500,000 of them suspected of criminal backgrounds. And almost every day there is a murder/rape.

But here’s the question. Everybody knows he did it but nobody asked why did he do it? Why did you do the most nihilistic thing in the history of the modern presidency?

I think we’re gonna live with this problem for 50 years. But why did he do it? Why did he say, “You can come in without a COVID-19 vaccination but we are gonna get rid of 8,500 of our U.S. citizens in the military who don’t want to be vaccinated”? Why did he say that you need a Real ID but you don’t if you’re in illegally? Why?

Was it that he wanted new constituents because the agenda didn’t appeal to 51% of the population? Did he think that under early and mail-in voting protocols inaugurated in 2020 that he was gonna be able to have these people vote very quickly? Did he want to grow government and then have a bigger entitlement? Higher taxes? Did he not believe in borders? Was he a globalist?

It was so nihilistic. It was so destructive that we need to know why. Just tell us why you did it. Was it just because you hated half the country and you wanted to destroy it? You hated MAGA? The garbage, semi-fascists? Is that it?

The same existential is why do all these reporters say now, “We were in on the deal, we covered up for Biden”? “The Biden staff did it.” “No, the media did it.” But they all agreed that he was non compos mentis. He was cognitively challenged when he was nominated, when they cleared the nomination field out. They got rid of Pete Buttigeig. They got rid of Sen. Elizabeth Warren. They got rid of Sen. Bernie Sanders. They all disappeared quickly. And then they used this waxen effigy as a veneer.

But why? That was very risky to do that. They all tell us they did it, but they don’t tell us why. Was the idea that good old Joe Biden from Scranton had some conservative remnant vestigial aura about him? And then they could use him and they could tell Jill, Joe, “You get to be president but we’re gonna run it.”

Or was it even worse than that? They thought, “This is what we’ve always been waiting for. This is what Barack Obama said when he wanted a third term and he could phone in a left-wing agenda from his basement without appearing in public.”

In other words, it wasn’t that they were stuck. They saw this as a wonderful opportunity. Use Joe Biden and just have him come in three days a week, stumble through stuff, and then push through the most left-wing, nihilistic, destructive, socialist agenda in history.

It really was, if you look at the border and crime and Afghanistan and two theater wars and the hyperinflation and the $7 trillion that he borrowed. Was that the reason why? Or were they just incompetent, they just didn’t know? They were just, “I don’t know. Who are we gonna nominate? Oh, Joe.” They didn’t think he was that bad.

But please, don’t tell us that you covered it up and think that’s a confession sufficient for the American people. Tell us why you did it. They never tell us why.

So, we had all these polls. They were wrong in 2016. They were wrong in 2020. They lost credibility. And then in 2024, they did it again. As I said earlier, the NPR/PBS poll of then-Vice President Kamala Harris had her winning four points on the night of the election. She lost by a point and a half. They were five and a half points off.

David Plouffe, one of the insiders of the Harris campaign, said he was kind of amazed that all the polls had her ahead when their internal polls—that have to be accurate because you work from them in your campaign strategy and you pay for—not one had her ahead.

So, why would they risk their reputation and lie again in 2024 and be discredited again and give Rasmussen, Insider Advantage, and Trafalgar more and more credibility as the accurate poll? I don’t have that answer.

Was it because they wanted to gin up momentum? They knew she was gonna lose. They thought if they lied, if the Des Moines Register said she was really winning when she lost by 12 points, they’d get more funding. People would say, “Gee-whiz, Trump’s gonna lose. I don’t wanna vote.” Is that the idea?

What was it? Why do they continue to lie? They have to tell us why. It’s not enough just to say, “Politics. We want power.”

What was the strategy to make you do something so egregious? So egregious to destroy the border and cause so much misery. So egregious to foist somebody who was not in control of his own cognitive powers as president with nuclear codes. So destructive to try to influence a campaign by repeatedly lying that the losing candidate—who was losing the whole time—was going to win. We just want to know why.

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Canada Missed Out on a Huge Opportunity

 

This week, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, who was newly elected as the prime minister with a majority of seats in the Canadian Parliament, is visiting Washington.

As I speak, he’s been holding sessions with President Donald Trump about the so-called trade war and Trump’s trolling of him about being a 51st state. Let me just address that first.

Donald Trump did not like former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who did not like Donald Trump. And he was so frustrated by the surpluses that Canada kept racking up and their unwillingness to spend the required NATO 2% of gross domestic product investment in munitions that he would troll Canada and say, “We’re the same language, the same people. We could do a lot better job than this guy.”

And of course, he took that very seriously. And then there was an election. Trudeau was a failure. Pierre Poilievre, the conservative candidate, had a 20-point lead. He lost it partly because Carney was the champion of Canadian nationalism and said, “We’re never gonna make a 51st state. Donald Trump has no business doing—”

It’s kind of like what Trump did with Panama and Greenland. It’s a way of “Art of the Deal.” We got China to the—we kind of made it a little bit more irrelevant in Panama. We’ve got some reforms going on. Same with Greenland. We were never going to invade either one.

We’re never gonna make Canada a 51st state. You need a majority vote of the Congress. The Congress is never going to vote to admit Canada because the Left would feel it was an infringement upon their sovereignty. We were imperialists, colonialists. The Right said, “Why do we want another New York or Colorado to screw up the country?”

So, it’s not gonna happen. And Carney knew that, but he ran on it. And he whipped up nationalism. And that was fine. That’s what politicians do. But now he’s in a conundrum. He’s got to come to the White House. Trump knows what he did. So, Trump is reminding him about the 51st state. But there’s two issues and they don’t look good for Canada.

No. 1 is, in 2014, all the NATO countries promised to spend 2% of GDP. And under Trump’s prodding during the first term and then the Ukraine war during President Joe Biden’s term, it has frightened most of them. And there’s only 8 of the 32 nations, about, that have not met their 2% obligation. Canada’s one of them. But it’s one of the least cooperative of the 32 nations.

In other words, it only spends 1.37% of its GDP on defense. It won’t kick in another $40 billion to help arm it. And you could make the argument that it depends on the United States. It looks that if there’s any hostile activity, cartels, they’re down there in Mexico with the United States between them. And nobody is going to proverbially mess with Canada when the United States has it under its nuclear shield, Alaska early warnings, you name it.

So, they know that. And they do not want to spend the money. And they’re shorting their other NATO partners. And they’re derelict and they’re culpable.

The other thing is, they’re running up $63 billion with their trade surplus with their partner. And most of it is because they have a thick, sulfurous crude oil that’s in the middle of the country. And it’s very convenient for them to go right across the border and sell it to us. And we like it. And we can refine it. We have the refineries that can deal with that type of difficult crude.

It’d be very difficult for them to send it all the way to their east or west ports and make the same profit. Ninety-five percent of their oil comes to us. We’re a good customer, in other words. Why would they not then say, “We’ll try to import more poultry, cheese, agricultural products. We can’t get down to zero but let’s—we can cut the trade surplus by $20 or $30 billion. You’re our neighbor”?

But they didn’t do that. And so, he instead whipped up—it was very successful to whip up Canadian nationalism. Very successful to win that election. But then where do you go from that? You go and see Donald Trump and you want to just say, “We’re not gonna be a 51 state. We’re not gonna be a 51 state”?

Does he really believe that the majority of people in Congress are gonna vote to admit Canada? Nobody wants to do that.

So, what am I getting at? He could have had a statesmanlike message both during the election and when he saw Trump. He could have said this: ”Donald Trump is trolling us. We’re friends with the United States. He’s trying to needle us so that we spend more money on NATO and we lower our surplus, which is growing very big. And we’re gonna do that. We’re gonna negotiate. Don’t take him serious. He’s just doing this like he did to Panama. We’re good friends. He kids us. We kid him.”

But he didn’t do that. He tried to whip it up. And it was successful. But once you whip it up and you get that hostility, then you’ve gotta go deal with him. And then you’ve gotta tell him, “I’m not gonna spend $40 billion on our defense. We’re going to subsidize you on defense. And we’re not gonna lower that.”

That’s not gonna work. It’s not gonna work. And so, I think that he can say, he’ll leave the meeting and say, “I told him we’re not gonna be a 51st.” That was an irrelevant misadventure. It was going nowhere and he knew it.

But the two issues that he knew were important—that they should man up and pay their 2% and help defend not only NATO but the North American continent, which they had done brilliantly in the past—he didn’t want to talk about. Or he’d say they’d do it in five years. “Five years, we’ll do it.” No, you’ve already been derelict for 11 years.

Or he could have said, “We don’t run up big surpluses with our friends. We’re not Mexico. We’re much closer to you. And we’re gonna work on this. And we’re gonna try to import. We’ll work it down. This is”—no. No.

He created his nationalist paradigm. It got him elected. And now he owns it. And it’s not gonna work with Donald Trump. I wish it would but it’s not because if you want to alienate the United States and you want to take seriously the “Art of the Deal” trolling and sort of laugh it off or, better yet, the Panamanians knew what they were doing. They were getting too close to China. They were surrendering partial sovereignty. And they backed off. And it’s going to be a beautiful relationship with us.

But Canada just couldn’t do that. And I think they will eventually.