Elon Musk Is Powering the American Renaissance

There’s a lot of controversy about Elon Musk. His reputation took a big hit, remember, right after the election, because half the country voted, roughly 48%, voted against Donald Trump. Elon Musk had flipped from a former Hillary Clinton supporter and Joe Biden supporter to a firm MAGA adherent and voted for Donald Trump in 2024.

As a result of that and his comments opposing illegal immigration, there were people who not only were demonstrating against [Immigration and Customs Enforcement], but attacking Tesla dealerships. Everybody said that Elon Musk’s brand had suffered accordingly, that Tesla was on the way down, that European and American [electric vehicle] makers, along with Chinese EV makers, would dominate the market, given the tarnishing of the Musk brand and in conjunction with the end of the federal subsidy for electric vehicles.

So, people were suggesting that the era of Elon Musk was over. He was very controversial, and he was outspoken on his own platform, X, on conservative issues such as illegal immigration, green energy, [artificial intelligence] in ways that infuriated the Left. And the Left, remember, was considered the natural consumer of electric vehicles.

So, are we watching the decline of Elon Musk? No. No, no, no. The exact opposite is happening. In the second quarter of 2026, Tesla had a rebound, and it captured 52% of all the EVs sold in the United States. It has a market capitalization of $1.2 trillion. The other “Big Three” automakers are beginning to exit the EV market.

China cannot send their EVs into the United States. Why did Tesla rebound? Was it because all of a sudden Elon Musk had a fight with Donald Trump for a while? No. Was it because he apologized to the Left? No. It’s because when you buy a Tesla and you drive it and you compare it with other brands of the Big Three in terms of distancing, acceleration, safety, appurtenances, it’s not just better, but it keeps getting better geometrically, at a geometric rate, not just an arithmetic.

It has the best program for self-driving. It’s the safest. It has the longest range. It’s the most fun to drive, and people like it regardless of their politics. If you move to SpaceX, 67% of all the satellites in low orbit around the world today are associated with Elon Musk’s SpaceX company—67%, over 12,000 satellites.

The market capitalization of SpaceX is well over $2 trillion—$2 trillion. SpaceX, with its various rockets, has saved a morbid, calcified, ossified NASA. It alone, with its rocketry and space vehicles, has put the United States not just back into the so-called space race and return to the moon and eventually to Mars, it’s made it preeminent over the Europeans, the Japanese, and the Chinese. More importantly, it’s given the United States enormous technological advances in rocketry, ballistic missiles, which have a definite military component to them.

When Elon Musk paid an exorbitant fee for X, people felt that he had made an enormous mistake, that it was overpriced. And yet, people were saying that users would abandon him and go elsewhere. In fact, that has not happened. That has not happened. There are 560 million users of X today. BlueSky, the alternative that was supposed to break X, has 3 million users. Three million versus 560 million users.

And remember that his Starlink satellite platform has captured 97% of all satellite internet usage. There are 12 million people who have a Starlink receiver and are subscribers in 160 countries. Most of the U.S. military and our allied militaries, including the Ukrainians and the Israelis, count on Starlink to guide their missiles and their drones, to protect them from incoming attack.

Let’s just put all of this in some kind of perspective. In terms of market capitalization, Elon Musk has well over $3.5 trillion in his various companies. SpaceX is the largest and it’s the most dominant, and it will either ensure that the United States is first in space exploration and satellite launching.

And, by the way, more satellites were launched on Elon Musk rockets last year than all of the satellites launched elsewhere put together. In addition to that, he created the electric vehicle market. It did not exist. He created the idea. Everyone said it would not work, that he was going to go broke, and he was finished.

He not only created the Tesla electric vehicle, he made it preeminent and dominant today. And he did it because, for the price and a cost-benefit analysis, it was unmatched. In terms of Grok, it is about third. About 16% of all AI platforms and chatbots use Grok. So, let’s just keep that in perspective.

The United States is preeminent today in social media, in artificial intelligence, in satellite launches, in the number of rocket launches in general, in electric vehicles. And all of that put together is due to one person, Elon Musk, who has been reviled and attacked by the Left as either treasonous or insane or cruel or whatever.

One man has combined the talents of Alexander Graham Bell, Thomas Edison, and Henry Ford all in one person, and he’s an American. In other words, much of the success of the United States’ current renaissance in digital media, in satellites, in electrical vehicles, in AI, in software is due to one person. One person can make a difference. In the case of Elon Musk, he made a big difference.

‘Unassimilated Immigrants Will Make a Failed State in the United States’

 

person 2: A 26-year-old sub-Saharan African, Benedict Chinedu Ogbodiegwu, I’m sure I’m saying that wrong, allegedly murdered a white man, 62-year-old Andrew Wimsatt, sitting on a bench, and he stabbed him to death and tried to behead him.

It turned out that Wimsatt was actually friends with Tyrus and Kat Timpf and others.

For whatever reasons, you know, he communicated with them, went to some of their local shows. So, he seems like a nice guy. They knew him. So, some of this news has gotten out, but otherwise, if he didn’t have friends in high media places, this seems to be another kind of story where a heinous black-on-white illegal immigrant—I think he’s an illegal immigrant, this dude—murder has happened, and gruesome.

Again, an attempt to saw off this guy’s head would have just passed in our media, as do so many shootings and murders in Chicago, for example. We don’t hear about this. Anyway, any thoughts on this beheading attempt, Victor?

person 1: Yeah, I mean, it was … The Left sees this as collateral damage.

So, they have a narrative that white supremacists and white rage hurt black people. And the reality is that 49% to 50% of all rapes, assaults, murders are committed by black males, who make up 2.5% of the population. That is a narrative that they do not want to discuss. They call this collateral damage to the narrative.

The narrative is anti-empirical; it’s deductive. It just says this: White people are racist, therefore, they must kill black people inordinately, even though, in rarer interracial crimes, depending on the violent act, it’s six to 20 times more common for a black person to hurt a white person. I think in the case of female crime—and please, listeners, correct me; I’m doing this by memory—but the data that I had looked at said that is even more egregious that black …

I don’t think there was a case last year of a white woman killing a black woman. But the reverse is certainly true. So, the second myth is that our immigrants, both legal and illegal, are more law-abiding. They always say that they’re more law-abiding than Americans are, and that’s not true if you look at the data, especially on illegal immigrants and especially on the recent generations of legal immigrants.

And that makes sense not because of racial differences, but because we are importing people. I say that because they look at it as—their home countries look at it as export for remittances. They are exporting people from some of the most violent places in the world, from the Sudan, from Somalia, from Venezuela, from Central America, some of the most violent places in the world, Mexico cartels.

And that behavior continues. And we always get back to the same truism, Jack, that if you bring people into the United States and you don’t have confidence that you’re going to assimilate, acculturate, and integrate them, and they have no desire to do that.

They did not come here to be Americans. They came here to be Syrians or Egyptians or Qataris or Venezuelans or Ugandans or Nigerians with greater prosperity and greater security, prosperity, and greater freedom.

That’s all they wanted. They did not want to integrate into the system. And if you do that, then why wouldn’t they retain the same characteristics, values, behaviors that made their countries failed states? And if, therefore, they do not acculturate and integrate, then they will—and their numbers are large enough—they will make a failed state within the United States.

And that’s just—that’s not racist. It’s not culturally chauvinistic. Right? If you look at one million Mexican nationals in Los Angeles County, and they’re not integrating or intermarrying and assimilating, then that million people will follow the same patterns of behavior that they did in Mexico, which collectively drove them out, and they voted with their feet and they said, I don’t want to live in Mexico because I don’t feel safe.

I don’t feel I have enough money. I don’t think I have freedom. I wanna go to the United States.

But part of the bargain, what they used to call the brutal bargain, was if you come here, you’re gonna be an American or not. It’s your choice. If you’re not, go back. And we haven’t done that, and they don’t want to.

You remember, right during the infancy of the [Abdul] El-Sayed candidacy, he had a hot mic and he was with his handlers, and he said right after the first day of the war on Feb. 28, he said, well, be careful. I don’t think my constituents in Dearborn are going to like the news that we killed the supreme leader of Iran, a terrorist leader who had just been responsible for butchering 30,000 to 40,000 of his own people.

So, what El-Sayed was saying is, I have a whole constituency that doesn’t integrate or assimilate and took an American city and took it over and feels more affinity with theocratic Iran than the country who welcomed them in. That’s a fact.

person 2: Well, some of these, you know, some of these documentaries that we’ve seen the last few days, I have, I assume you have and many of our listeners have, on 9/11 show these clips taken from not America, from some Arab countries, of joy in the streets.

person 1: Oh, yeah.

person 2: With the news. And then even more—

person 1: Handing out candies in Cairo.

person 2: Yeah. And more recently, of course, after Oct. 7, the dancing and thrill in Gaza over the slaughter of Jews. And so—

person 1: Did you see that? That one is making its rounds. It’s one of the sickest things I … I think her name was Shani Louk, and she was a German Israeli, and she was one of the first hostages that they sexually abused.

They stripped her, they crushed her limbs, and she’s in the back of that little truck, almost naked, and they’re pulling out her hair, the corpse, and they’re driving through Gaza, and everybody’s trying to get there to harm her, and a young kid comes up and spits on her. I think she was dead at the time that was taken, but the pictures show her 80% naked, suffering sexual trauma, and her limbs have obviously been broken and at angles that are sick.

And when you look at the crowd, there’s not one—I mean, everybody is in a state of ecstasy. Right? So, when I hear that Israel committed genocide, Israel said that they picked out 30,000 Hamas people of maybe the 45,000 or 50,000 that were killed that were collateral damage. But unless these … And that’s — I would just give one example.

It seems like all the people in Gaza after Oct. 7, if you took a poll, would say, 99%, I like the idea of butchering, dismembering, disfiguring, raping, beheading Jews.

person 2: Yeah. Well, you know, let me throw another immigration-y thing quickly here, Victor. I just saw it before we came on.

Maybe I said it before. [New York City Mayor Zohran] Mamdani announced that he is now going to sue the Trump administration over the administration’s new rule to deny green cards to foreigners who rely on welfare.

person 1: That used to be a law in most countries. It was a law here. You had to have proof of self-sustainability before you could get a visa. So, I don’t know what he’s talking about.

person 2: Yeah.

person 1: A green card.

person 2: Yeah. Well, fleecing the system, tapping into the system, not the opportunity for meritocracy, but the ability to draw a check on the taxpayers of the United States is truly now, everywhere you go, part and parcel.

person 1: Yeah, everybody should remember there’s this, there’s always this cycle with socialism. When it comes in on its body of lies, it is initially very successful for the first few months because it promises everybody free stuff. When they threw [Fulgencio] Batista out, people were in the streets praising Fidel [Castro]. Praising even Che Guevara, the psychopath, they were praising.

And it didn’t take them more than a year. Then they started going after especially the upper middle class, the bourgeoisie. And usually the very wealthy cut a deal with them. But they always go after the bourgeoisie first, and then the honeymoon was over when they broke the country, and that’s what’s gonna happen in New York.

Everybody’s happy. They’re gonna get free stuff. Some of the aristocratic rich people said, I can deal with him. I can buy him this. They’ll leave me alone. But you watch, month by month, he will target the upper middle class, and they will start leaving or they will start voicing their furor at him, and it’s already started because that’s who he is.

It’s the same frog and the scorpion. He can’t help it. He’s a socialist. That’s what socialists do. They have no choice.

person 2: You know, sometimes, Victor, we’re Eeyore, sometimes upbeat. Despair is a sin. And we’ll talk about this a little later. There’s an article from National Review about, are we entering a new age? And we talked recently about David Mamet’s piece, essay on kind of despairing.

But it’s hard not to despair. We love our country. We love everything it stands for. But significant pockets of it, and those are our major cities like New York, they’re circling the drain. And again, the other day in Providence. So, remember, we thought Providence had a whack-job mayor when those murders happened.

At Brown University. Well, he was defeated in a primary by a far greater whack job. So all of our major cities, one by one, seem to just be turning into—

person 1: And I think a lot of that is where we have 53 million people who were not born in the United States. Probably 20 million are exemplary legal immigrants, but 30 million of them are illegal and maybe more.

Seventeen percent of the population. The majority of those people live in cities. That’s why the British government wants to take illegal and legal immigrants from Third-World countries and take them out of Birmingham, Liverpool and London because they’ve already served the purpose. They have got majorities in there that get liberal politicians and Labour politicians elected.

Now they want to take them out in the country and disturb what they call, oh, these quaint little old white people out in their little shires. We’re going to screw that up. You just watch. And that’s sort of what is the subtext.

Why did the cities fall apart? Why did Los Angeles fall apart? One reason is we imported millions of people who could not support themselves, and they became wards of the Democratic Party, who basically has got 45% of the federal budget through distributions to the states and local municipalities for welfare of all sorts: education, food, shelter, legal, health.

And that enormously goes to people here, especially here illegally. And they live in cities, and they want blue representation. So, you say Mayor [Brandon] Johnson couldn’t possibly be reelected because he’s a racist. He’s broke. He has absolutely bankrupted the finances of Chicago, and he has increased the shootings by defunding and demasculinizing the police.

He couldn’t be elected. Well, he has a lot of people who feel that the welfare system is really great. They feel that teachers’ unions and all these people who are not subject to any audit are great. They get highly paid.

person 2: He’s gonna run again, you know.

person 1: He’s gonna win.

Did you hear that?

Yeah, he’s gonna win.

person 2: Yeah. Unless—

His work is not completed. He has more. He’s a—

person 1: Maybe we can get Lori Lightfoot back.

person 2: Oh, gosh. My gosh.

person 1: Karen Bass said she failed. She said, I didn’t … They ask her about all the fires and all the disasters, and the streets are not—they’re just … I just remember driving Los Angeles. There are huge—everywhere.

And she said, it’s not my fault. It’s not my fault. I’m only mayor.

I mean, the thing about—another thing about DEI is that if there’s no accountability, that’s the real secret of DEI. There cannot be accountability because the person is always in a protected species. They’re always a victim of a—

person 2: They’re victims, yeah.

person 1: —cosmic injustice generations ago, and therefore, they’re incapable of being culpable. And human nature being what it is, they understand that. And so, if you’re a DEI person and you’re driving down the road and the cop pulls you over, you’re going to badmouth the cop and say, you know, you basically want another George Floyd incident, and the cop will treat you in a way different than he would somebody else.

And if you’re an official in LA and you want to be water and power director, you might get 750,000, and nobody’s going to look at what you did when you were working for PG&E. No one’s going to look at the fact that half the fire hydrants in the Pacific Palisades area don’t work. Nobody’s going to look at the fact that a reservoir has been dry for months, critical to the safety of that neighborhood, because you’re a DEI person.

And the same thing with the mayor. If you phone in—the deputy mayor phoned in a bomb threat, nobody’s going to put you in jail for very long. You’ll just be at home. You’ll have a suspended sentence, maybe sent—I don’t know. And if you’re mayor, yeah, you can go on a junket to a wedding in Africa right during fire season, but because you’re a victim.

And so, add the number of victims and the victimhood scenarios, and you’re going to get an utter disaster in a complex society. It can’t work on anything other than meritocracy. It can withstand or it can accommodate some incompetencies.

You can have the old white-boy network where seven generations of policemen were heroic, and then finally in our age, they hire their son, and their son’s a total blank. Maybe the society can hire them.

Or you can have a whole family of billionaires that get their kids into Harvard, and one kid is a complete moron, and he gets in. But those are incidental. They’re not essential to the system.

But when you have blanket thousands of people who are being promoted on without demonstrable skills that are necessary for the job, and your society is not a hunter-gatherer society, but it’s a complex post-industrial society, you’re asking for disaster.

And that’s what we have now.

Mark Carney Is Leading Canada ‘Right Over the Cliff

 

I know we’ve talked a lot about the current Canadian-American trade dispute, but it involves larger issues of globalism versus nationalism versus North American relations versus the United States paradigm versus the EU paradigm, etc., etc.

And what’s happened is I would call it [Canadian Prime Minister] Mark Carney’s fantasy house, Mark Carney’s dream house, Mark Carney’s imaginarium. He has no … It doesn’t seem like he has any connection with reality. His economy has lost 41,000 jobs. It depends on exporting to the United States 72% to 76% of all of its products.

That is going to be very difficult. It is now difficult. It’s going to be almost impossible if he continues. He has to keep his oil wells going, and given the fact that other provinces have not been ready and willing to make pipelines to the rich tar sands of Alberta, he depends on a 4 million-barrel export a day to the United States.

Some of it is thick tar sands, some of it has been diluted and is marketable elsewhere, but it’s a very good deal for Canada. When you talk about cutting that off, you’re talking about cutting your nose to spite your face. This would be the most self-destructive thing. The fact that Canada even mentions it shows that they’re entering a period of delusional thinking.

This new relationship with China, they’re bringing in 48,000 low-tariff, I think it’s only 6%, EVs. They’re going to ruin what little they had left of the Canadian auto industry. But more importantly, that trade agreement is ushering in a whole set of new agreements, some of them military.

Does Canada know, does Mark Carney know, that if Canada negotiates a special military relationship with China and it’s on our borders and we have NATO relations, that will endanger the alliance and it will permanently wreck the relationship between Canada and the United States?

The other thing that’s very disturbing is right now, as we speak, the European Union model is under assault, not by America, but by Europeans.

They don’t believe the socialist model of open borders, illegal immigration, dismantling fossil fuels, not using fossil fuel resources, subsidized expensive green energy, de-arming, disarming, whatever term we use, low fertility, works. They used to have, about a quarter-century ago, the 470 million Europeans, they had about the same gross domestic product as the United States.

Now they’re $10 trillion at least smaller. So, why is Canada emulating the EU failed model? Forty-five percent of your population was not born in Canada or their parents weren’t born. Why are you subsidizing green energy and you’re not utilizing this rich resource in Alberta? Why are you disarmed?

Why won’t you meet your 2% commitments? You may or may not have done it just one year, but why do you repeatedly not do that when you have such a vast nation and it is so exposed in a very dangerous world, in the Arctic, in the Northwest Passage, and the airspace over North America?

And the answer is your economic model does not allow you much margin. Your immigration model does not allow you much margin of error to compensate for these decisions that you’ve made for a weaker, poorer, more disunited Canada. You feel you can’t arm yourself because the United States will protect you.

You feel that you need a $50 billion surplus because the United States is far wealthier and you’re in dire straits.

Next problem. You don’t express your disagreement or anger at the United States over trade policy by warming up to, and allying with China, which is the greatest trade violator in history with its patent theft, copyright theft, dumping product below the cost of production, currency manipulation, forced labor camps.

And you don’t win yourself national support when no other country except you and China have slapped counter-tariffs, not because they didn’t want to, not because they couldn’t do it, but because they realized they were running surpluses for years with the United States, and they could still make money with a more symmetrical trade agreement.

You apparently don’t think that. You think if you lose your special $50 billion surplus relationship, or you might have to rearm, the choices that you’ve made on energy and immigration and economic policy prevent you from being competitive, and you need to be thus indirectly subsidized.

But more importantly, you’re not going to win world sympathy, at least among the United States and other countries that are its allies.

Now you’re engaged in an anti-Israel boycott. So, any products that were produced in the West Bank, you’re not going to buy. I have a question for you, Mark Carney. Does that include products that come from China that were assembled by a forced million-person labor force, the Uyghurs? Does it come from Nigeria, where Christians are being slaughtered?

Does it come from parts of the Russian Federation before the boycott? You imported things from them. They treat their minorities very harshly. No, it’s completely asymmetrical.

And finally, do you think that that sets a good example when you alone of the Western world are assisting people to kill themselves and that results in over 5% of your deaths each year being government-aided at a time when people really don’t know all the causes of suicide or terminal disease or there’s medical breakthroughs?

You, in this weakened economic state, are still allowing assisted suicide, not allowing it, promoting it to such a degree that you are the capital of assisted suicide.

And finally, this was a disagreement between governments, between Mark Carney, the globalist, and Donald Trump, the nationalist. And Donald Trump wanted to seek parity with Canada.

It didn’t want to run up a surplus with Canada. It didn’t want to take over Canada. Those were trolling memes. What it wanted was basically no surplus on either side, Canada arming itself like every other member of NATO, North Americans getting along. But you, Mark Carney, turned this into a literal war.

Those are your words, not mine. You use the word battle and war, and then you whipped up Canadian national anger and venom to the petty level that you Canadians are now booing the Star-Spangled Banner. They’re talking about putting signs up at the border warning Americans. This idea of moral superiority.

Americans are oblivious to this until now. They didn’t … They were as critical of Donald Trump as anybody. You whipped up popular fervor against the United States. Donald Trump didn’t say to Americans: Get angry at what they’re doing to … because you only represent 10% to 15% of our trade. It doesn’t make much difference.

We’d like to treat people equitably. We like to have basically small surpluses and small deficits. You were the one that did this, and it’s very paradoxical and ironic that you take this high moral ground when in actuality you’re dealing with a murderous government in China and you’re adopting economic policies that make you poor and you blame that poverty on other people.

All you have to do is look in the mirror and say, “We can reform and open and deregulate the economy. We’re not going to be that naive to trust China. We know the Chinese agenda, and we’re going to take another look at various things culturally, like open borders, illegal immigration, mass euthanasia, that make us quite different.

“And we’re not going to blame our problems on the United States or suddenly decide very loudly and virtue signal that we’re not going to trade with any products that come from the West Bank under Israel’s occupation.”

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Kennedy Treated LBJ Worse Than Biden Treated Harris

 

person 1: Well, I was thinking about Zachary Taylor, and then, off the top of my head, I was going, I know the name for some reason, and I did have to look him up. It was the campaign down into Mexico.

person 2: Yeah, he was brilliant. Brilliant.

Winfield Scott was a brilliant strategist, but the best tactician on the battlefield was Zachary Taylor. He won an incredible battle at Monterrey and Palo Alto in Mexico. He was from a Virginia planter family that moved to Kentucky, I think.

He was only president for 16 months, from 1849 to 1850. It was a very tumultuous time that he came in. There was a gold rush in California that all of a sudden made this obscure place have more capital than most states because of the amount of gold and silver they were mining.

In addition to that, there was the height of the Mormon uprising, or so-called Mormon tensions, in 1850.

In addition to that, there were the vestigial remnants of the Missouri Compromise and the question of how you bring states into the Union. He was a Southerner who owned slaves and was originally from Virginia.

His 16 months were characterized by unity. I don’t know how he was nominated because he was up against Henry Clay in the Whig Party and Winfield Scott, his superior in the Mexican War, but he was very popular. He was known for humane conduct. He treated Mexican prisoners very well. That was all in the headlines.

He was 65 years old. He had problems with his stomach his whole life, and he died.

This was a period, if you look at it, Martin Van Buren, [James] Polk, Zachary Taylor, Millard Fillmore, James Buchanan. These five or six presidents were considered, with the exception of Polk, who was only there for one term, mediocre or a low point. People argue over who was the worst president in United States history: Millard Fillmore or James Buchanan.

But of those people, he was the most famous because he had single-handedly outfought the Mexicans and had won that war, and he was on everybody’s list of famous people. He was kind of just a caretaker.

Nobody knows much about him because he was there for, I think, the third-shortest presidency up to that time, and he died.

So, you can’t think of anything he did other than try to calm tempers down about the admission of states. As a Southerner, the North supported him because he did not demand that for every California or New Mexico admitted, there be a similar slave state. He kind of squashed the idea that they were going to let in Cuba. They wanted to let in Cuba as a slave state.

John F. Kennedy, who was president from 1961 to Nov. 22, 1963, the thousand days that the Left called Camelot, had three cycles of public attitudes toward him.

He was a senator for one term from Massachusetts. Joe Kennedy basically bought it all and put money into the campaign. Joe Kennedy Jr. was considered the brilliant one. He was killed in World War II on a weird experimental bombing mission involving a radio-transmitted bomber. He was supposed to pilot it, jump out, turn on a radio navigator, and it would be like a big cruise missile, but it blew him up.

Then JFK was almost killed in World War II on PT-109. He broke his back, swam to an island, and then he was rescued. So he was a war hero. He was up against, basically, Hubert Humphrey in 1960. Adlai Stevenson had lost twice to Eisenhower, so he was still running around, you know.

But Kennedy, people were suspicious of him in the Democratic Party because, remember, the Democratic Party was anchored by 11 segregationist states of the old Confederacy. So you had people like Strom Thurmond, [Herman] Talmadge, and all of those Southerners, and they didn’t trust a New Englander. So he appointed Lyndon Johnson as his vice president, and they just humiliated him. The Kennedys hated him.

Camelot meant that you were getting the brain trust from Harvard, so Robert McNamara and the Bundy brothers, etc., and they were going to use science and technology.

Basically, he had one great achievement, and that was he stared down the Russians, who tried to place nuclear-tipped intercontinental missiles in Cuba. He put up a blockade, and we came almost to a nuclear war, but they backed off.

What we didn’t know at the time was that they backed off not just because Kennedy stood up to them, but because he also said we’ll take all of our Atlas liquid-fueled rockets with nuclear tips out of the Turkish border. So, it was not quite what everybody thought.

Then he tried to advance civil rights, but he got very irritated with Martin Luther King because he was running in 1963. In November, he was less than a year away from reelection, and it wasn’t clear he was going to be reelected. He didn’t know what to do. So, he was always telling Martin Luther King, Slow down. I have all these Southerners. I need those 11 states.

Then he was killed.

So, he was kind of an ineffective president, very charismatic, good-looking, Jackie, and all of that. That first stage of people being suspicious of a Catholic or the Kennedy family when he was running … He had one of the narrowest races, and there were always accusations that Joe Kennedy had called up Mayor [Richard] Daley in Chicago and gotten an extra 100,000 votes that won Illinois for Kennedy.

They did the same thing in Texas and made Texas go for him, and he won in the Electoral College. He only won by about 100,000 votes.

person 1: Yeah. So, do you think that was true about Mayor Daley?

I don’t know. Wow.

person 2: I think it was more likely in Illinois than Texas, but I’m not sure. It’s part of American mythology that Joe Kennedy helped buy the election.

[Richard] Nixon was very magnanimous. He said it won’t work if you question the results. So, he bowed out and gave a concession speech immediately.

But other than the idea that he stood down communism and didn’t get us into Vietnam, he had about 20,000 advisors there. We don’t know whether he would’ve gotten us in or not. He was also big on space exploration. Those were his three things.

He was a different type of Democrat. He believed in capital gains tax and income tax reductions, so the economy wasn’t too bad. Then he got killed, and LBJ could get civil rights through because he went to all those buddies of his in Georgia, Alabama, North Carolina, and elsewhere and said, “You’re going to vote for civil rights, or you’re not going to filibuster if we have the votes.” That’s how it got passed, through Johnson.

But Johnson had been kind of a shady character. We’ll talk about him next time. None of the Kennedys in their right mind thought that when they put Johnson in there, he’d ever be president. He would never have been president after Kennedy’s second term. They wouldn’t have allowed that. He really was embittered.

There was a guy named Vaugh Meader who imitated Kennedy. You can’t have missiles in Cuba. No missiles in Cuba.

One of the jokes was, “Has anybody seen Lyndon around? Is Lyndon doing anything?” Ha ha ha.

They made fun of him. He was very bitter about that. But the Left came to like him because he got through all of the affirmative action and related programs from 1965 to 1967.

person 1: Yeah.

person 2: That was the beginning of the whole Great Society liberal 22 trillion-dollar redistributive program.

person 1: Yeah, it sounds like the Kennedys treated Lyndon Johnson kind of like the Bidens treated Kamala Harris, handing off impossible things.

person 2: Worse.

person 1: Worse? You think it was worse?

person 2: Yeah.

I mean, you mean making her space czar and border czar?

person 1: Border czar when the Left has no border policy whatsoever.

person 2: Well, when there’s no border, they make her border czar, and then when they neuter the space program, they couldn’t even get a … They abandoned those guys up in space.

person 1: Yeah.

person 2: Then you make her space czar, and she hires actors, little boy actors, to impress herself.

I don’t know how we … We’re very lucky. [Otto von] Bismarck said that only fools and drunks … He had a quote to the effect that he doesn’t understand how America gets out of its predicaments. Only fools and drunks could do that. And we always get into a crisis like Kamala Harris, and then we get out of it.

person 1: Yeah. The last thing, though. Kennedy’s campaign was famous for the Nixon-Kennedy debates. Did you watch those debates?

person 2: Yeah.

And the thing about them, there’s a theory, or it’s not really a theory because they took polls. The people who heard the debate on radio thought Nixon won. But Nixon had what they called a five o’clock shadow. He had black hair and white skin, and he had to shave three times a day. He was kind of a hunched-over guy. He looked like this, you know. Didn’t have much of a neck.

Kennedy actually looked kind of sickly, but he was not in great health. Kennedy had Addison’s disease, and he was yellow. He had a broken back and was very ill. He had suffered some venereal diseases. He was completely indiscreet. We know that he was having sexual relations with interns while he was president in the presidential bed. One staffer wrote about it.

He would’ve made Bill Clinton look like a rookie in terms of illicit sexual behavior.

But anyway, before the debate, he got his cortisone shot and his tan, and he looked great. Nixon looked like he had a five o’clock shadow and was hunched over.

If you listened on the radio, it was like, Formosa is a very complex question about the two islands, and we have a plan.

And then Kennedy would go …

But if you watched it on TV, Kennedy looked robust, even though he didn’t say much.

So now he’s in a period where people look back at it, especially on the left during “Me Too,” and ask, “Who was the most promiscuous, callous cad who was ever in the White House?” Probably one of the Kennedys, JFK.

Then you look at Teddy. Teddy didn’t do that legacy any good. He was a near alcoholic and a promiscuous cad himself.

So, I don’t know.

But I give Kennedy credit that [Harry] Truman and Kennedy, before Johnson, were more Cold War fighters. There was Adlai Stevenson, who was a radical leftist, but when you look at Kennedy and Truman, they hadn’t gone crazy yet.

person 1: He was the better man to have in that case? Is that what you’re saying?

If you had to have a Democrat …

person 2: Yeah. Nixon.

person 1: No, if you had to have a Democrat …

person 2: Oh, I would’ve voted for Nixon.

person 1: Yeah.

person 2: My grandfather was Swedish, my mother was a Democrat, and my father … I was like 7 years old, and my maternal grandfather liked Nixon because he said he was a great poker player. He was forced to vote for Kennedy by my parents, I think, because they were Democrats.

I was about 6 or 7 years old on my grandfather Frank’s birthday, and I said, “Hey, Grandpa Frank, who are you going to vote for, Nixon or Kennedy?”

My mom said, “Don’t ask him that. That’s rude.”

“Well, you know, I have something to say. I’m voting for Nixon. I’m a little worried that he’s not conservative enough, Victor. But he’s a very good poker player. He can play poker and cards, and he knows about the world. He’s not flashy. That’s my kind of guy.”

And my mom said, “Oh my God. Why’d you say that, Victor?”

“No. We were getting along fine.”

person 1: Yeah.

person 2: Then my mom said, “Frank, you’re going to vote for a Republican like Nixon? Tricky Dick?”

“Well, if he’s tricky, he knew things.”

I loved my grandfather. He was a great man.

Minnesota Is One State Among Many Pushing Gender Ideology on Its Students

 

College students at the University of Minnesota are faced daily with progressive gender policies that force behavior in conflict with personal conviction. These unconstitutional policies are not only a violation of free speech, but also come with the threat of university-imposed consequences if violated. But students of principle still remain and are pushing back against these insane campus rules.

One such policy is called the “Pronoun Policy.” It states, “University members and units are expected to use the names, gender identities, and pronouns specified to them by other University members” and “University members and units are also expected to use other gendered personal references, if any, that are consistent with the gender identities and pronouns specified by University members.”

This policy directly requires students and faculty members to refer to others in an ideologically loaded manner, even if it is against their personal convictions on sexuality. In contradiction with biological reality, the policy asks the students to adopt a certain set of values in practice, even if it is misaligned with not only their beliefs, but the factual truth. If they don’t adhere to the rules, students can be charged with violating the Board of Regents Policy: Student Conduct Code and/or the Administrative Policy: Discrimination, which could result in unspecified discipline. This information is found on the University of Minnesota’s website “Policy Library.” Various student testimonies from around the nation have also demonstrated harassment or disdain from professors and peers often accompanying their refusal to adhere to things like pronoun policies.

Unfortunately, this is not the only instance of publicly-funded universities forcing students and faculty to bow to progressive gender ideology. In 2023, student Daria Danley sued Montana State University (MSU), which charged her with “hate speech” and “discrimination.” It also gave her a “no-contact order” toward her sorority and recommended that it evict her from her sorority house. This was after she questioned Alpha Gamma Delta’s “insistence” that members identify themselves with preferred pronouns. A settlement was eventually reached in which MSU dropped the “no-contact order,” and Danley dropped the case. Fortunately, the national Alpha Gamma Delta reinstated her membership. The whole incident was, however, a gross violation of Danley’s First Amendment right to freedom of speech.

In 2018, philosophy professor Dr. Nicholas Meriwether filed a lawsuit against Shawnee State University Trustees. He had been accused of violating the university’s nondiscrimination policy and of creating a “hostile environment” by refusing to call a student by their preferred pronouns. However, he had offered to refer to the student by their last name. The university informed him that further refusal to use preferred pronouns could result in corrective actions, including suspension or termination. A federal judge initially dismissed the case, but it was eventually ruled in Meriwether’s favor by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit. The university settled for $400,000 in damages and legal fees and guaranteed that Meriwether would be safe in the future from using any student’s preferred pronouns. Yet, the university publicly stated that they “adamantly deny that anyone at Shawnee State deprived Dr. Meriwether of his free speech rights or his rights to freely exercise his religion” (Shawnee State University).

Yet another example is theater professor Richard Bugg at Southern Utah University (SUU). In 2022, he filed a lawsuit against SUU because he was charged with violating university policy for not using gender-neutral pronouns for one of his students. Bugg was accused of discrimination and harassment based on gender identity. SUU’s punishment required Bugg to take a class about gender-neutral pronouns, forcing him to use students’ preferred pronouns, and the looming threat of possible termination. In the end, the case was dismissed, but he continued in his position at SUU.

I grew up in the Minnesota public school system until the 10th grade. My parents decided to pull me out because of the woke ideology being taught at school. I am so grateful for this decision. I distinctly remember one moment when I realized progressive ideology was taking over. I was given a vocabulary test in my 9th-grade English class. Most of the test seemed normal, until I got to a question that asked me something along the lines of “President Trump makes women feel ____ when he looks ______ at them.” I was shocked, stunned, and unsure of how to answer. This was a turning point for me and should sound the alarm to all parents who want to protect their children!

The University of Minnesota is a government-sponsored institution, and its “Pronoun Policy” is in direct violation of the First Amendment. One current student said she “believe[s] freedom of speech is essential, but it can sometimes be manipulated to portray conservative viewpoints as inferior, particularly on college campuses.” Another student said that, “[a]s someone who has lived in the South my entire life, coming to freshman orientation and being told I had to introduce myself using pronouns was definitely a shock. And after reading the University of Minnesota’s pronoun policies, as a student, that is definitely not something I am proud to represent. Because of freedom of speech from the First Amendment, I have the right to call my peers by the gender pronouns that God created them to be, as well as remain silent when asked about my own pronouns.”

American universities have long been known to be indoctrination factories for young adults. This pattern of various University administrations imposing progressive rhetoric and labels on students and faculty is not only unconstitutional but also utterly disturbing. Upon celebrating the 250th birthday of our great nation, we must fight to preserve moral clarity and common sense not only in our educational institutions, but in the very fabric of our society. The next generation needs to be equipped and prepared to preserve truth and order so America can continue to flourish, not be destroyed by progressive ideologies claiming freedom. If our freedom of speech is taken away, as shown at the University of Minnesota, many other rights are sure to follow.

Ed Sheeran’s Bolshevik Confessional

 

I was not familiar with Ed Sheeran until he got wrapped around the axle following a dispute with another entertainer I wasn’t familiar with named Macklemore. The two men parted ways earlier this month following a string of anti-Israeli and pro-Palestinian outbursts by Macklemore during a concert tour in which Sheeran was the headliner. The Left immediately pounced on Sheeran after the split, resulting in him later crying on-stage as he apologized to concertgoers on September 19.

Sheeran seems like a decent enough fellow, but he strikes me as being woefully out of his depth when it comes to dealing with mobs of enraged Democrats flooding social media with a torrent of hateful things about him. Perhaps, in his apology, he succumbed to public pressure. His apology may have been a simple business decision. Either way, Sheeran was quickly denounced by others for having caved to the militant Left, which he surely did. But whether he or anyone else realized it, Sheeran simply fell prey to one of the organizational tenets of Bolshevism. The Russian word for it is samokritika.

Samokritika is a process used by early 20th century Bolsheviks, designed to ferret out counter-revolutionaries. A person, through intense peer pressure, interrogation, and ongoing attacks, would eventually publicly confess their political or ideological errors after a time of “self-criticism.” Vladimir Lenin liked it. Joseph Stalin, Mao Zedong and Ho Chi Minh did too. So does Xi Jinping, the man President Trump will meet this week in Washington, D.C. Samokritika has the communist stamp of approval, but it has nothing to do with honest introspection. It’s merely a coercive vehicle for obtaining agreement with the party because doing so is easier than suffering its ongoing hostility. It culminates in a humiliating act of contrition, one that satisfies authoritarian demands for submission, and Democrats use samokritika to this day in an attempt to keep their party members in line.

Pennsylvania Senator John Fetterman so far has resisted it. But Fetterman’s fellow Democrat, Rep. Seth Moulton (MA-6), could not. Moulton submitted and apologized last month for saying in 2025 that he didn’t want his daughters to be injured by boys competing in girls’ sports. But his exercise in samokritika failed. Moulton was crushed in his bid to win his party’s September 1 Senate primary, losing by an embarrassing 30-point margin to an 80-year-old career politician who won his first election in 1972.

High-profile confessions like Sheeran’s are not uncommon among celebrities. These beleaguered souls instantly become fodder for coverage by news media eager to support their ideological allies, holding up notables like Sheeran as an example of right-think for targeted political blocks, usually younger and more persuadable voters. In this most recent example, the message is clear: Ed Sheeran admits he was wrong, so be like Ed and agree with us.

But the principles of samokritika are not the sole province of politics or pop culture. Many Americans find themselves facing it in ordinary social or family settings. Beginning with activism promoted by former President Barack Obama to get in the face of friends and family members to support Obamacare and other pet issues, this push toward ideological submission has only increased. Fifteen-to-twenty years ago, the cause was socialized medicine. Today, it’s antisemitism, transgender ideology, and the agenda of the Democratic Socialists of America.

The reasons liberals use authoritarian tactics like this today are several. Firstly, it’s been taught to students of Marxism-Leninism, so they understand its utility in fomenting social discord and obtaining obedience. Secondly, and more to the point, they do it because it works. This is especially true at the grassroots level. When people we know or trust seek to force submission to an ideology through coercive means, it’s often easier to simply agree and avoid the risk of further abuse, slander, guilt and social ostracism.

Consider, for example, the plight of parents with a gender confused child who are asked by a medical professional whether they want a live son or a dead daughter. It’s a cynical ploy, rooted in Bolshevism’s samokritika, which compels parents to publicly admit the error of thinking their daughter is a girl. It’s also a cruel lie, particularly in light of new data analysis showing “no evidence that state prohibitions on surgeries, puberty blockers, or cross-sex hormones for minors with gender dysphoria have increased suicide rates.”

The increased prevalence and power of socialists among the slate of Democrats seeking office this election cycle, driven in large part by their increasingly radicalized base, suggest samokritika isn’t going away anytime soon. It’s a useful tactic for militants who are studied in the ways of Lenin, Marx, and others cut from that cloth. The best defense is to recognize it for what it is, and resist capitulating to this tool of repression.

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What’s Wrong With Our Schools?

 

uthor and activist Nikole Hannah-Jones published an emotional essay in The New York Times Magazine last week titled “In Fighting for Every Black Child, Did I Betray My Own?” In the piece, Hannah-Jones writes about the consequences of having deliberately selected a school for her daughter, Najya, that was “low-income and mostly Black” as a way of advancing “the collective good,” not Najya’s “individual advantage.”

Hannah-Jones and her husband thought they could improve conditions at the school. Indeed, there’s a video making the rounds on X that shows Hannah-Jones confidently asserting, “A New York Times reporter in a high-poverty school f*****g g changes the school, right? There are certain things that are just not gonna happen in that school. I can go to that school and say, ‘There’s a problem,’ and it gets fixed immediately.”

But it didn’t turn out that way. And Najya became progressively more unhappy as time went on.

In seventh grade, after seeing how low her school ranked — and fully understanding what that meant for her own future academic prospects — Najya asked her mother, “Did you know my school was bad like this when you decided to put me here?” When Hannah-Jones tried to explain the basis for the decision, Najya retorted, “So you had money to send me to one of the best schools, and you chose not to? Because other kids are disadvantaged, you didn’t want to put me in a great school?”

Well before Najya reached seventh grade, Hannah-Jones knew how poor her daughter’s education was. In first grade, Hannah-Jones visited Najya’s school — P.S. 307 — during lunch and was horrified to see Najya and her little classmates sitting at a table in the cafeteria with no lunch, as other children ran wild around the room hitting each other while the adults in the room did nothing.

Hannah-Jones admits that “all but one of the White children and nearly all the middle-class children” who had started pre-K with their daughter had already left. But the Hannah-Joneses were determined to stick it out.

Things did not improve. The principal was unresponsive. Najya’s third-grade teacher was often absent, and sometimes there was no substitute teacher. Her fourth-grade teacher never performed the required reading assessments. When Hannah-Jones checked Najya’s homework assignments, she discovered that neither her writing nor her math homework had ever been graded.

They switched schools. But Najya’s new school was little better. And when Hannah-Jones and her husband allowed Najya to select her own high school, she chose one with a reputation for rigor and discovered that she was wholly unprepared for the work required. Happily, private tutors and teachers who were willing to devote extra time helped Najya get caught up, and she is now flourishing. But the same cannot be said of other students in schools like the ones Najya left.

Hannah-Jones’ essay is poignant and heartfelt. She is honest about how the decision she and her husband made negatively affected their daughter. But she seems to be clinging to the same tired and painfully inadequate explanations for the problems in our schools.

For example, she continues to refer to the educational system as “segregated.” But no laws are keeping Black and white school children apart. Instead, Hannah-Jones blames school choice for the “segregation.” She witnessed firsthand the lack of standards — both academic and behavioral — that plagued the schools she and her husband had chosen for Najya. Despite their visibility, influence and money, they could not change things, and they ultimately realized that Najya deserved better. Does she think other parents should be forced to send their children to failing schools?

Hannah-Jones complains throughout the essay about lack of resources. But the public grade school Najya attended spends over $50,000 per student, annually. On average, New York City spends $44,000 per student per year. Those sums would pay for a year’s tuition at a good private college or university. And yet only 29 percent of the city’s eighth-grade students are proficient in reading. Only 23 percent are proficient in math.

New York City isn’t unique. Chicago spends more than $27,000 per student annually, and only about 25 percent can read at grade level; even fewer can do grade-appropriate math. Washington, D.C., spends more than $36,000 per student, and only 39 percent have proficiency in English; only 28 percent are proficient in math.

A new report was released this week showing the performance of 15-year-olds in math around the world. China was first. The United States came in at an embarrassing 27th. And if it weren’t for the existence of private schools, we’d probably be close to the bottom.

The problem with our schools isn’t money. It’s that we have eroded standards because a bunch of people wrote academic papers for tenure claiming that standards are “racist,” and educators went along with it because it was easier than addressing the actual issues.

By way of example, the state of Oregon eliminated its English, math and science literacy requirements for high school graduation three years ago because minorities disproportionately couldn’t pass the tests. Instead of having honest conversations about why certain students couldn’t pass the tests, they simply got rid of the tests. (New York is arguably worse; it eliminated the English literacy test — for teachers — because 56 percent of Hispanic teachers and 62 percent of Black teachers could not pass it.)

(Unsurprisingly, these practices — and the problems they do not solve — have moved up the academic food chain. In response to inadequate preparation in high schools, many colleges and universities have lowered their admissions standards; it then becomes necessary to provide remedial courses to accommodate students who arrive ill-prepared — or flatly unprepared — for college work.)

Behavioral standards are a foregone conclusion as well. Hannah-Jones was appalled to see children running amok in the cafeteria at P.S. 307. But that was mild compared to the violence that occurs with distressing regularity at schools across the country — attacks by students against fellow students as well as teachers and administrators.

The lowering or outright elimination of standards is touted as a way to address “systemic racism.” But as one of Najya’s teachers tearfully told Hannah-Jones, what is racist is the assumption that a child cannot behave, cannot perform academically, just because of the color or his or her skin.

The problem is cultural, not racial. Plenty of Black children do well in school, and plenty of white children do not. The reasons can be traced back not to their race but to their upbringing, the climate and culture at home, and the presence — or absence — of adults in their lives who hold them to account.

If parents will not impose standards, then educators must.

Refusing to do so is not “antiracist,” “compassionate” or “progressive.” On the contrary, it is demeaning, insulting and inexcusable. It is also arguably immoral, because it condemns huge numbers of American children to lives of poverty and economic struggle that are avoidable.

Najya Hannah-Jones’ parents ultimately demanded better for their daughter. We must do the same for children whose parents do not.

Vance: Trump Admin Booting 750,000 From Obamacare Over Fraud, Saving $2.2 Billion

 

The Trump administration will boot about 750,000 people who are accused of fraud from Obamacare, which should save taxpayers $2.2 billion, Vice President J.D. Vance said.

Vance leads a task force that aims to eliminate fraud. The Trump administration will ask for verification of another 419,000 people, he said. The administration will verify that these people are all legal residents and meet income requirements.

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Vice President JD Vance says the Trump administration is stopping Obamacare enrollment for roughly 750,000 people it believes are improperly enrolled, part of an effort he says will save $2.2 billion in taxpayer money.

“We’re actually making sure that the people receiving… pic.twitter.com/rJQ3GzipK6— CBS News (@CBSNews) September 22, 2026

The “common-sense” move follows relaxed eligibility requirements during the Biden administration.

The task force is led by HHS Secretary RFK Jr., Dr. Mehmet Oz, the Administrator of the US Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, and Andrew Ferguson.

The Biden administration incentivized brokers to enroll people into Obamacare while relaxing eligibility, which it wasn’t checking, Vance said.

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.@VP: We are stopping Obamacare enrollment for about 750,000 people who we believe are fraudulently enrolled in the program and doing additional verification checks on about 419,000 more to make sure they meet the requirements. https://t.co/mrv5PjG7f6 pic.twitter.com/S4IJq3ixc5— Rapid Response 47 (@RapidResponse47) September 22, 2026

“We’re actually making sure that the people receiving Obamacare subsidies are actually entitled to receive them,” Vice President JD Vance said Tuesday.

Vance said that the amount of fraud stopped would save 550,000 American children’s worth of healthcare that was going to fraudsters.

“This is what the fraud task force is all about: on the one hand, saving the American taxpayers’ money, and on the other hand, ensuring that these programs that are very important, that ensure that low-income kids can see a doctor, that ensure that our elderly Americans get the healthcare that they need. These programs, they are important, but they’re not going to exist unless we stop the fraud,” Vance said.

Trump officials plan to cut hundreds of thousands from Affordable Care Act, claiming ‘fraud’ — WaPo— NewsWire (@NewsWire_US) September 24, 2026

In one case, the fraud task force found a fraud ring that had 40 agents who had funneled 50,000 people into Obamacare fraudulently.

And many of them were NOT CITIZENS.

“Most of those people were not eligible either they didn’t meet the… pic.twitter.com/XLbJvSFu2M— Eric Daugherty (@EricLDaugh) September 22, 2026

“We had a system in this country that rewarded brokers that made people rich for enrolling fake people in programs that are meant to ensure that our fellow citizens have healthcare,” Vance said. “This was a scandal.

Medicare and Medicaid programs don’t work in a low-trust society, Dr. Oz said earlier this week. Grifters, drifters, and other bad apples sprinted to where the money was during COVID. From 2015-2020, Obamacare had 10 million enrollees.

During COVID, that number jumped to 22 million because the Biden administration weakened the guardrails. About 35 percent of people on Obamacare haven’t used the program by seeing a doctor or receiving prescription medicine, which means those accounts are likely fraudulent, Oz said.

This year, 1.1 million people entered Obamacare programs with no Social Security number, no ID numbers, and these people are getting “full freight” insurance, Oz said.

Maria Salazar, Trump’s Deportation Traitor, Got a Wake Up Call From Her Constituents

 

Rep. María Elvira Salazar (R-FL) has been among the more vocal GOP critics of the Trump White House’s deportation agenda. She released a new ad on the issue and pushed for amnesty last year. Maria is facing some bad polling data, as The Washington Post reports that her constituents remain pro-Trump and support his immigration agenda (via WaPo):

In South Florida, Rep. María Elvira Salazar’s latest campaign ad seems to be all voters can talk about.
The Republican’s video, released last week, was shot in front of the White House, not in the sun-blazed streets of Miami-Dade County. Though aimed at frustrated voters, it was framed as a direct appeal to President Donald Trump.
“Mr. President, some of your immigration enforcement efforts have gone too far,” Salazar says while looking directly at the camera. She goes on to tell Trump that his advisers are giving him bad advice, and that his immigration policies are weakening Republicans’ standing with the Latino voters who helped power GOP gains in 2024.
But many Latino voters in Salazar’s district said she has misread their sentiment and that their support for Trump has not wavered. Their support for their congresswoman, however, has waned, they said — and the ad did nothing to restore their confidence.
“She’s out of line,” said Hector Rubio, a resident of Miami’s wealthy enclave of Key Biscayne. Rubio, a longtime Republican voter who supported Salazar in the past three races, said in Spanish that Trump “is doing what he can, and he could do even more.” As he watched his wife shop in the neighborhood’s busy farmers market on Saturday morning, Rubio advised Salazar to stick close to Trump.
Even those who agreed with Salazar’s message seemed to find fault in it, with many saying the lawmaker should have made her appeal to Trump earlier.
[…]
Back in Salazar’s district, several Republican voters said that they approved of the Trump administration’s deportation efforts.
“The people who voted for Trump — the 70 or so million — one of the reasons was because they wanted to get all the illegal people out of here,” said South Miami resident Richard Santos, 80, in an interview outside of the city’s iconic Versailles restaurant. Santos said he voted for Salazar in the past but that he’s no longer supporting her because she challenged the president.
For many of the district’s Republicans, the calculus is very simple: You’

It Turns Out California Runs a Shadow Welfare System for Illegal Aliens

 While California Democrats continue to come up with ways to steal hard-earned money from the state’s taxpayers and punish billionaires, the state has a massive budget deficit that Gavin Newsom covered up with shady math. Perhaps California wouldn’t be in such dire fiscal straits if it stopped wasting money on high-speed rail boondoggles, questionable contracts for “free” baby diapers, and welfare for illegal aliens

Democrats insist that illegal aliens don’t qualify for welfare, which is funny because a bunch of Democrats are suing the federal government and demanding we allow welfare-dependent migrants into the country. They also admitted that illegal aliens get food stamps and Medicare/Medicaid, too. California is now spending $10 billion a year on a “shadow” welfare system for illegal aliens that gives them everything from free housing to car insurance, courtesy American taxpayers.


EXCLUSIVE: California has created a shadow welfare system for illegal aliens. Free housing, cash, healthcare, food, phones, college tuition, even car insurance—costing taxpayers more than $10 billion per year.

We went inside the system and exposed it all. pic.twitter.com/oJh0mpstzN— Christopher Rufo (@christopherrufo) September 23, 2026

Here’s more:

Local officials were remarkably transparent. In Glendale, we spoke to a welfare officer about California’s Cash Assistance Program for Immigrants (CAPI), a state-funded alternative to Supplemental Security Income that provides monthly cash assistance to low-income noncitizens who are elderly or disabled.
“If [you are] a citizen, you cannot get CAPI,” he said. “I don’t care about legal or not. Not being [a] citizen [is the key].”
In Los Angeles, we heard more of the same. We asked another welfare officer about the benefits available to illegal immigrants and their children. While some state programs are closed to illegals, we learned, they are open to those aliens’ U.S.-born children.
“If you were born here and the child was born here, you get money for two,” the officer said of CalWORKs, the state’s version of the federal Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program. “Because she is not and the child is, she only gets money for the child, and not for her.”
These benefits add up. In California, illegal immigrants can qualify for CAPI, public health insurance, and various tax credits. Their children qualify for others, including CalWORKs and, as in other states, Section 8 rental subsidies. All told, a family of five in California with two illegal-alien parents, two U.S.-born children, and one illegal-alien grandparent can receive public services worth more than $100,000 per year.

So while Democrats rail about affordability, they jack up our taxes to pay for $100,000 in benefits for illegal aliens.


Crazy that we DO have free healthcare except it’s for illegal immigrants only and not you, the American citizen who pays for their healthcare on top of yours.— Maddie Rowley (@Maddie_Rowley_) September 23, 2026

It’s absolutely maddening.
Add in free public schools, school busses, and free tuition at the UC of their choice— Peachy Keenan (@KeenanPeachy) September 23, 2026

Democrats do not care about American citizens.


How does someone carrying a $1,125 Balenciaga bag and driving a $110K Mercedes SUV qualify for public assistance?

We went inside a California welfare office to see it firsthand.

Fraud all the way down. https://t.co/0qOl9Vc2U3 pic.twitter.com/rccBloESSB— Austen Hufford (@austenhufford) September 23, 2026

And Democrats will say they don’t have the money to help Americans.

Keep it up, Chris. You’re exposing Newsom’s rot through and through. https://t.co/ku0YBsaUtZ— Mark R. Levin (@marklevinshow) September 23, 2026

We wonder how long before Newsom tries to arrest Rufo and his team for exposing the rot.


The Democrat Party is the largest criminal syndicate on the history of the world. https://t.co/27PRoZKW0g— Jesse Kelly (@JesseKellyDC) September 23, 2026

It’s hard to argue otherwise. Across the country, Democrats have created conditions that allow fraud to thrive while giving billions of our tax dollars to illegal aliens, regardless of our laws or basic decency. And Gavin Newsom wants to take these failed policies to the White House in 2028.

The Fantasy House of Mark Carney

 Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney now believes he is more than just the Western foil to President Donald Trump and his MAGA movement — he is the global one.

Accordingly, he seems determined to demonstrate to the world how to stand up to Trump, to force Trump to lose the midterms, and to hurt the U.S. economy to such a degree that Trump will never again bully other nations.

So, at the 11th hour, Carney stormed out of an apparently completed tariff deal with the United States that would have privileged Canada over almost all of America's other trading partners. Canada, we recall, has enjoyed a $50 billion goods trade surplus with the U.S. for years in a supposedly free and equitable North American trade zone.

Carney claimed that American proposals stripped away Canadian sovereignty and quashed Canadian culture, particularly French-Canadian culture. Yet he has not released the documents detailing the bilateral offers he rejected. Nor has he allowed his representatives to explain to the media why Canada blew up the negotiations at the last minute. Carney's ever-changing excuses, explanations, and invectives about what happened are incoherent and contradictory.

That said, analysts on both sides of the border now concede that American digital-media companies do not customarily pay special taxes, as Carney demands, to promote local, regional, and ethnic culture while operating in Canada — any more than Canadian companies would be taxed for those purposes in the U.S.

Canada and the U.S. both agree that China dumps cheap steel and aluminum into Canada, allowing Canadian manufacturers to use that cost advantage to export assembled vehicles to the vast U.S. market at prices below those of American vehicles. In that way, Canada's new partnership with China circumvents America's tariffs on Beijing. China will also send nearly 50,000 electric cars and trucks into Canada under a meager tariff, ensuring that the Canadian EV market is increasingly dominated by Chinese vehicles.

But Carney's ploy goes beyond helping the communist Chinese dictatorship gain trade leverage over his own NATO neighbor. He has eagerly concluded a comprehensive Chinese-Canadian pact involving travel, visas, food safety, energy, and public security. Carney has grandly described these new agreements with Beijing as part of a new paradigm in which "middle powers" like Canada play China against the U.S. (Canada's annual nominal GDP is roughly the size of New York State's).

How ironic that Carney attacks his neighbor, the U.S., for trade unfairness while warming to the communist dictatorship in China. Communist China, after all, is history's greatest violator of trade protocols — guilty of manipulating its currency, dumping products to secure market share, violating copyright and patent laws, and imprisoning a million Uyghurs.

Has Carney learned anything from Panama's misadventures after naively inviting in a Chinese omnipresence at the American-built Panama Canal? Does Carney recall that the American Monroe Doctrine originally was aimed at foreign intrusion into the North American West?

Canada's new partner is a totalitarian police state that infected the world with its manufactured gain-of-function COVID-19 virus, which killed more than 1.5 million North Americans. China stonewalled inquiries and never offered details about the pandemic's origins in its Wuhan lab. It has promised to conquer Taiwan and so terrified its democratic neighbors — Australia, Japan, the Philippines, Taiwan, and South Korea — that they have joined a defensive alliance with the U.S.

So what drives Carney's hubristic fantasies? Has Canada's natural wealth in oil, gas, timber, and minerals made it a military and economic dynamo, as it once was?

Hardly.

Canada's population is 11.8 percent of America's. Its economy is barely one-thirteenth the size of America's. Canadian GDP per capita is only 60 percent of America's.

Canada quietly relies on the U.S. military to deter foreign powers from North America, whether by fending off challenges to Canada's extensive Arctic claims — including its dubious claim of absolute sovereignty over the Northwest Passage — or by keeping Canadian skies free of foreign combat aircraft and missiles.

Canada's navy — once one of the world's preeminent surface fleets — has been reduced to fewer than 30 ships. Its 89 American-made jets are more than 40 years old.

Paradoxically, Carney's dreams derive not from confidence and strength but from insecurity and defensiveness. Carney and former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau nearly ruined the Canadian economy despite the country's treasure trove of natural resources. Canada has only half the GDP of California — a state currently decaying under neo-socialist governance — despite having roughly the same population.

Nearly 45 percent of Canadians are either foreign-born or the children of foreign-born parents. These often-impoverished immigrants impose gargantuan social-welfare costs that Canada's European-style socialist economy simply cannot support. While Carney lectures on "Canadian values," Canada's fertility rate of 1.25 is among the lowest in the Western world, while euthanasia accounts for 5 percent of all deaths, the highest rate in the West.

Nevertheless, Carney now claims, in passive-aggressive fashion, that the U.S. bullies Canada — even as Canada runs trade surpluses with America, relies on the American economy for 72 percent of its exports, and depends on the American military for its safety. That asymmetry indirectly subsidizes Canada's disastrous energy, immigration, defense, regulatory, and tax policies.

The Canadian energy industry depends on U.S. purchases of much of its tar sands oil, specialized U.S. refineries, and American pipelines. For over a decade, globalist Canada refused to meet its NATO commitment to invest 2 percent of GDP in defense, relying instead on American magnanimity to protect North America from foreign aggression.

No matter. Carney has melodramatically characterized his tiff with the U.S. as a "fight" and even a "war." Yet, oddly for such an anti-American Canadian hyper-nationalist, Carney is a globalist banker who, until he became prime minister, held citizenship in three nations.

Yet the Canadian prime minister who urges Canada's vulnerable working classes to decouple from America is himself — like thousands of Canadian grandees — deeply entwined with the United States. Some 91 percent of Carney's investments are in U.S.-based companies, and two of his four children, like their father, attended college in the United States. Both now reside in America, along with nearly one million other Canadians. Apparently, Carney is so eager for a veritable economic, cultural, and political war with the United States that 91 percent of his holdings remain invested in the homeland of his enemy.

But why, from a position of such hypocrisy and vulnerability, has Carney blown up the trade agreement, ginned up anti-American Canadian nationalism — and done so now?

Only in this way, Carney believes, can he stop autonomy referenda in Alberta and Quebec. And only in this way can he openly interfere in the U.S. midterm elections by targeting new tariffs at red and purple border states while working directly with left-wing Democratic politicians to help Democrats regain control of Congress and restore the prior status quo.

His anti-American screeds have certainly worked at home. Canadians now boo at the mere sound of "The Star-Spangled Banner." They brag of a new "elbows up" policy to stop U.S. "aggression." Their social media is flooded with braggadocio about new ways to hurt Americans. Some three-quarters of the country has bought into Carney's fantasies. Hating America is the new Canadian pastime.

But, sadly, this will not end well for Canada, for at least five reasons.

First, America certainly is not the cause of Canada's maladies, other than by subsidizing its suicidal domestic choices for years. Canada's self-destructive socialist and globalist policies are its government's doing alone.

The United States did not force Canada to adopt European-style socialist policies of mass unvetted immigration, subsidized green energy, near-disarmament, and unsustainable social-welfare spending. America did not urge Canadians to stop having children or enlist their government to help them kill themselves.

In truth, America prefers a militarily and economically strong Canadian partner, not a weak one lashing out from insecurity.

Second, the American public has so far been mostly indifferent to the spat. But now that the North American media has begun revealing the extent of Canada's anti-American venom, along with Carney's brinkmanship and disingenuous rhetoric, anger is rising at his cheap politicking and the animus he has fanned.

In sum, Carney has no idea that he is reframing the dispute not as a conflict with Trump but as an affront to the American people themselves — who have long memories.

Third, for all his globalist background and internationalist performance-art stunts, Carney is alone on the world stage. Europe may applaud his defiance, but it has no desire to join his anti-American campaign. When the United States finally insisted on symmetrical trade, only communist China and Canada — the latter enjoying the most generous entree into the American economy of any country in the world — slapped counter-tariffs on the United States. Apparently, other nations did not agree that Carney's perennial $50 billion surplus was his birthright.

Fourth, Canada is far more vulnerable than the United States if Carney's "war" continues. Canada relies on the United States for 72 percent of its exports, while America relies on Canada for only 15 percent of its own exports. Last month, even before the full effect of the new tariffs was felt, Canada lost 42,000 jobs while the United States gained 160,000. The damage will only grow, ever more asymmetrically, as tariffs mount on Canadian businesses.

Nearly a million Canadians reside in the United States, but only 350,000 Americans live in Canada. And it is easier for a Canadian to obtain an expedited U.S. work visa than for an American to do the same in Canada. Indeed, Canadians do not appreciate that they are nearly the only visitors in the world granted six months of residence in the United States without a visa.

Fifth, since Carney walked out at the last minute, it will be incumbent upon him to resume talks — especially as the damage he has done to Canadian workers and small businesses worsens. But should Carney seek to renew negotiations immediately after the Canadian provincial elections and the U.S. midterms, he will be exposed as a disingenuous politico who ginned up the fight to manipulate both Canadian and American balloting to benefit himself and his party.

If that happens, he may learn that the American friendship train has left the station. He will also discover that China treats obsequious outreach from Western "middle powers" as weakness to exploit, not magnanimity to reciprocate.

Carney's political disingenuousness will eventually earn the animus of Canadians and Americans alike — who may ironically unite in their distaste for Carney and his fantasy house.

How Are We Doing With the Midterms Seven Weeks Out?

 Look, I can’t tell you that everything is going to be OK for us patriots in the midterms. I think it will, but I’m not sure. Nobody knows for sure. What I do know is what the correlation of forces, to my mind, indicates. It indicates another 2022, a year when we Republicans were going to clean up against an unpopular, semi-conscious president. And we did OK. Not great. OK. And it looks to me, from where I sit, from who I’ve talked to, from what I’ve seen, and yeah, from my gut, that that’s the high-water mark for the Democrats. They might do OK. They might get the House by a few seats, and they might cut our lead in the Senate. That’s just my perspective, though. I’ve talked to well-placed optimists and doomers (one who, you know, says we lose the House and 50-50 in the Senate if we are lucky). But I don’t know. You don’t know. Nobody knows.

Let’s look at the big themes, then get down to specific cases. What do the Democrats have going for them? History, for one. History doesn’t necessarily repeat itself, but it often rhymes. The party in power, especially in a second term, tends to struggle in the midterms. People get tired of the status quo. The problems add up, the friction and the fog of war slow the progress, and people get bored. That gives Democrats another advantage: excitement and intensity. And boy, are they ever excited and intense about taking us out. They can’t wait to crawl out of their old folks’ homes, cat-overrun condos, moms’ basements, Hollywood mansions, university dorms, and perverted communes to vote out those wicked patriotic Americans of the Republican Party. They would crawl over broken glass to vote against us or at least hire illegal aliens to do the crawling over broken glass that American Democrats won’t do. Every single one of them is going to vote, probably several times.

That intensity leads to their third advantage: the polls. Negative polling can demoralize Republican voters. But to the extent the polls are not actively bent to support the Democrats (which some of them manifestly are), Democrat intensity skews the polls because Democrats actually answer them. Anecdotes are evidence of nothing but anecdotes, but I like to informally poll fellow Republicans about whether they ever respond to political polling. I never do. And they tell me they never do. I don’t know who the Republicans answering these polls are, but I haven't met one.

The polling is terrible for us if you take it at face value. It has us losing in places we have no business losing. But I just can’t make myself believe it. The polls don’t fit the fundamentals, and they’re too darn convenient for the opposition. Is that wishful thinking? It may be, but it’s wishful thinking based on polling’s track record of failure. Remember the famous 2024 Ann Selzer Iowa poll that had Kamala three points up on Trump? Trump ended up beating her by something like 13 points. And just a couple of weeks ago, Hasan Piker’s Hamas-diddling puppet Abdul in Michigan was supposed to win by double digits over his moderate (sic) Democrat opponent, but he ended up barely squeaking to victory by a point or so. The polls are wrong a lot, and always in one direction. When’s the last time you found a polling error that favored a Republican? That’s about as likely as finding leftovers in JB Pritzker’s fridge.

Of course, the polls could be right. I don’t think they are. Given the dire unanimity of the current polls, disbelieving them means betting on both the malice and the incompetence of the pollsters. I’ll take that bet, especially when so many are polls from outfits you’ve never heard of, like the “University of College/Pepsi Challenge Public Opinion Survey” or the “Geebo Strategies Online Solutions.”

What do we have in our favor? Well, we have a ton of money. That’s good. Plus, the folks in the know whom I’ve talked to like the strategy of waiting until after Labor Day to really start spending. Democrats have been spending for a while, but traditionally you spend early to create a positive image for your candidate and tear down the other guy. That used to work, but will it work now? This is a very partisan environment. If you’re a Democrat, we already know what we think of you, and all the ads with you and Mee-maw sitting on the porch talking about values you don’t actually believe in aren’t going to change your image as an avatar of a political party that supports crime, communism, castration, and open borders.

We also have Donald Trump, who’s good for turning out our voters. His ability to enrage the other side is already baked in, but he’s going to be out and about everywhere rallying our troops. That’s good. And while the convention was slammed for low ratings, it did what needed to be done. It set a positive tone and motivated our base.

This election is all about turning out our base. We now have a decade of experience getting the kind of voters in our coalition to come out and vote when Donald Trump himself is not on the ballot. We better turn them out. That we can’t is everyone’s big fear. But the base staying home because it’s mad seemed much more plausible when the Democrats were just annoying rather than a threat to our way of life. It’s easy to say, “Who cares?” when, at their core, both parties are composed of people who generally like America and want what’s best for it. But that’s not true with today’s Democrats. They want to flood us with Third World barbarians, mutilate our kids, take our guns, tax us into poverty, and outlaw normal people. Yeah, there’s an affordability problem, and there’s a crime problem, and there are lots of other problems, but the Democrats caused all those problems, and everyone knows that it’s not like they’re going to fix them. America has become vastly more partisan, and vastly more binary, and I’m thinking that very few Republicans are going to be able to swallow the idiotic notion that we need to show the dumb Republicans among us (and there are a lot of dumb Republicans among us) what-for by allowing the election of a bunch of communist pervert-enablers.

I just don’t think Republicans are going to stay home in droves, much less actually vote for Democrats. I do expect the polls to tighten as we get closer to Election Day, largely because that’s when pollsters have to start thinking about their reputations and will take at least a couple of their fingers off the scale. It always happens.

So, let’s look at the races. There’s just too much going on in the House to go through individually, but our maps will do a lot to limit any damage. The House is going to be tough because we only have a handful of seats in our majority, but some of the folks I’ve talked to were confident about it in private. These people have nothing to lose by telling me what they really think. You can take it or leave it. But while Team Black Pill will get all the regime media coverage, know that there are a lot of GOP guys out there who think we can do OK in the House.

The Senate remains our firewall. We have a 53-seat majority. Democrats need to net four seats to overcome JD Vance’s tiebreaker vote. Let’s ignore the wildcard scenarios, like whether Lisa Murkowski or John Fetterman might switch parties to ensure a majority. Let’s find those four seats, if we can. We’ll start with the seats Republicans are defending. Keep in mind, the polls are negative for Republicans in pretty much all of them.

I’ve talked about Texas and that blasphemous imp Talarico already this week, and for the reasons I set forth, I think we hold it.

With the guy with the Nazi tattoo having been replaced by the guy who has kids with his second cousin, Susan Collins has a very good chance of keeping her seat in Maine. It would be pretty wild for the Maple Syrup State to swap out the chair of the Appropriations Committee for a guy who makes family Thanksgiving dinners awkward with sexual tension. She’s likely to win.

North Carolina is probably the Republicans’ toughest fight, with Michael Whatley struggling against that state’s less masculine version of Abigail Spanberger. Roy Cooper is a straight-up leftist pretending to be a moderate, and North Carolina is a purple state. I think we lose that one, but we shouldn’t give up.

Dan Sullivan in Alaska has to contend with Dem dirty tricks like ranked-choice voting and a doppelgänger on the ballot. It will be tough. I think he holds – a lot of Alaskans depend on oil, and the Democrats want to end the industry. But it will take money and effort.

Jon Husted is allegedly struggling in Ohio against leftist retread Sherrod Brown. The same is true in Iowa, with Ashley Hinson against Josh Turek. Both of these are red states. It’s hard to toss out an incumbent like Husted, and Hinson is a strong candidate. It’s going to take money and work, but I think we pull it off and keep both seats. There is also some crazy talk about Democrats expanding the map to Kansas and Florida. That’s just not going to happen, and if it does, it’s such an apocalypse that nothing else is going to matter anyway.

Now, the best defense is a good offense. What states are we going to take from the Democrats? Jon Ossoff is getting the full-court press from the regime media in Georgia; he’s an even more beta Beto, but they do like young, glib, good-looking guys. He’s up against Mike Collins, who’s a good old boy, and who I’ve gotten to know a little from interviews. The dude is smart. He ran a trucking company. When you talk to him, he doesn’t talk to you in hack clichés. He talks about money, organization, getting out the vote, and what matters. Do not underestimate him the way a lot of people seem to. Governor Brian Kemp, who backed somebody else in the primary, just decided he wanted to remain a viable GOP candidate in 2028 or later and has endorsed Collins. Let’s see if he turns his formidable Republican machine out to snatch that Senate seat; if he does, that makes him viable in the future. If Kemp can’t help recapture the seat, what good is he? In any case, we have a decent chance in Georgia, but let’s be conservative and assume we don’t; though if we do, that destroys all the Democrats’ dreams once and for all.

In New Hampshire, John Sununu seems to have a decent shot at beating Chris Pappas, who’s another Spanberger Democrat who talks moderate but would vote left. New Hampshire is a purple state, and they do elect Republicans. The name Sununu still means something there. Again, my conservative nature tells me that it’s more likely than not that we lose, but if we win, oh boy.

In Minnesota, Michele Tafoya is running against a lunatic, pervert-loving communist woman in a state that elects lunatic, pervert-loving communist women of all genders. But enough about Tim Walz. We’re probably not going to win this one, but there’s that outside chance.

And then we come to Michigan, where Mike Rogers, a straight-up veteran patriot, is going up against Abdul El-Sayed, a straight-up Islamist communist who makes AOC look like William F. Buckley. Here we’ve got a real opportunity, and I think it’s more likely than not that the good people of Michigan are going to want to be represented by a resolutely normal guy rather than a guy who dreams of imposing socialist sharia on a country he despises. I think we win this one.

So let’s tally it up. I think we lose one we had, and I think we gain one we didn’t. I think we have a couple of other pickup opportunities in purple states, but it’s hard for me to see them picking up any in our red states. It could happen, but I don’t think it will.

So I put the Senate at 52 to 54 GOP.

This is just a snapshot just under seven weeks from the midterm election. That’s an eternity. Anything can happen. And anything probably will happen.