'Mr. Miller was unable to get up from his seat'

On Jan. 3, 2020, the Trump administration conducted a drone strike near Baghdad International Airport, killing Iranian Major General Qassem Soleimani. Soleimani had a long record of waging surrogate wars against Americans, especially during the Iraq conflict and its aftermath. After the Trump cancellation of the Iran Deal, followed by U.S. sanctions, Soleimani reportedly stepped up violence against regional American bases—most of which President Donald Trump himself ironically wished to remove. A few days later, Iran staged a performance-art retaliatory strike against Americans in Iraq and Syria, assuming Trump had no desire for a wider Middle East war. So, Iran launched 12 missiles that hit two U.S. airbases in Iraq. Supposedly, Tehran had warned the Trump administration of the impending attacks that killed no Americans. Later reports, however, suggested that some Americans suffered concussions, while more damage was done to the bases than was initially disclosed. Nonetheless, this Iranian interlude seemed to reflect Trump’s agenda of avoiding “endless wars” in the Middle East while restoring deterrence that prevented, not prompted, full-scale conflicts. Yet in a second Trump administration, rethreading the deterrence needle without getting into major wars may become far more challenging. The world of today is far more dangerous than when Trump left in 2021. An inept Biden administration has utterly destroyed U.S. deterrence abroad through both actual and symbolic disasters: the Chinese dressing down of U.S. diplomats in Anchorage; the humiliating skedaddle from Afghanistan; the brazen flight of a Chinese spy balloon across the U.S.; the invasion of Ukraine by Russia; the Oct. 7, 2023 massacre of 1,200 Israelis; the serial Houthi attacks on international shipping in the Red Sea; the visible restraint of Israel from fully replying to Iranian missile attacks on its homeland; and renewed bellicosity on the part of both North Korea and China toward American allies such as Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan. Of course, a second-term Trump must radically reform the Pentagon and beef up the military while warning enemies of the consequences to follow from any unwise aggression. But if opponents believe such admonitions remain only vocal threats, then empty verbiage surely will erode deterrence further—such as President Joe Biden’s serial and empty braggadocio, “Don’t!” Biden’s past theatrical finger-shaking translated into aggressors like Russian President Vladimir Putin going into Ukraine, Iran sending missiles into Israel, and the Houthis serially hitting shipping in the Red Sea. Given the past messes of the Iraqi, Libyan, and Syrian interventions, and the catastrophic Biden humiliation in Afghanistan, Trump in 2024 is much more emphatic about the need to avoid such overseas dead-end entanglements or even the gratuitous use of force that historically can sometimes lead to tit-for-tat entanglements. Still, Trump’s selection of JD Vance as vice president, along with Tulsi Gabbard, RFK, Jr., and Tucker Carlson as close advisors, coupled with the announcements that former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and prior U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley will not be in the administration, may be misinterpreted by scheming foreign adversaries as proof of Trump neo-isolationism. Moreover, the U.S. is battered by an unsustainable $37 trillion national debt and a nonexistent southern border that saw 12 million illegal aliens enter with impunity. So, the use of force abroad is now often seen in a zero-sum fashion as coming at the expense of unaddressed American needs at home. Moreover, a woke, manpower-short military has not achieved strategic advantages from wars abroad, while disparaging and alienating the very working-class recruits who disproportionately fight and die in them. Recently, even as President-elect Trump’s inner circle emphasized an end to endless conflicts, Trump warned Putin not to escalate his attacks against Ukraine. Yet that advice was followed by a Russian massive drone onslaught against civilian Ukrainian targets. Putin no doubt wishes to encourage American enemies to test Trump’s deterrent rhetoric against his campaign’s domestic promises to mind America’s own business at home. Is there a way to square the deterrence circle? Trump will have to speak clearly and softly while carrying a club. And for the first few months of his administration, he will be tested as never before to make it clear to Iran and its terrorist surrogates, China, North Korea, and Russia that aggression against U.S. interests will be swiftly and quietly met with disproportionate and overwhelming repercussions. Yet Trump will likely have to rely on drones, missiles, and air strikes and not on major engagements, to deter enemies from aggression—and his domestic critics from claiming he turned into a globalist interventionist. He is not. Trump remains a Jacksonian. But such deterrence entails warning from time to time the reckless and adventurous abroad that our allies have no better friend than America and our adversaries no worse enemy. In other words, Trump must remind Americans only by periodically deterring enemies can he prevent endless wars.(C)2024 Tribune Content Agency, LLC. We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Daily Signal. The post Restoring Deterrence Will Prevent Endless Wars appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Dear Democrats, It is going to be OK. It really will. You’ll have the midterms in two years. There’ll be another presidential election in four years. Those of you reading this insisting there will be no more elections are no better than the idiots on my side who think 2020 was stolen and that if Kamala Harris had won, there would be no more elections. In 2004, you guys were pretty stunned by George W. Bush’s reelection. Within two years, you had Congress. In two more years, you had everything. And, again, many of you believed after 2004 that it was the end of all things. It was not. Now, please consider this. You lost, in part, because your side of the aisle engaged in a cover-up of the sitting president’s cognitive decline. His staff, Cabinet secretaries, members of Congress and senior members of the press with access to Biden told everyone he was fine. They lied, and Biden got exposed on a debate stage. If you are not willing to hold your own side accountable for engaging in a cover-up of the president’s decline, don’t expect Republicans to take you seriously about holding Donald Trump accountable. Your own team lied to you all and to the American people about Joe Biden. Those people set you up for failure last Tuesday night. Before you blame Americans for rejecting you, maybe identify and oust the people who made that rejection possible. They are both in politics and the press. If you are not willing to clean up your side, don’t expect Republicans to clean up theirs. It was not our side complicit in a cover-up of historic proportions. It was the voices in the press who assured us Biden was better than ever and the Democratic politicians and appointees who hid him, excused him and deflected for him. To rebuild trust, perhaps demand accountability. People can’t trust a party that says the economy is fine when they’re also saying the president is fine and everyone can see with their own eyes that he is not. Please consider this next point, though some of you might not want to. Many of you have become secular and do not have a profound theology. There is some interesting data out there that shows secular people and Democrats who go to church are more fearful than evangelicals. Couple that point about Democrats who go to church still being fearful with the data that shows progressive churches are more likely to preach on political topics. You can see that progressives are way more steeped in politics than evangelicals, even if that is hard for you to accept. The data is there. The data shows liberal Christians are more engaged in politics than conservative Christians. Your eschatology is that we must bring about a heaven on earth because heaven itself is not real. And politics harnesses power to bring that about. We see things differently, but my point is that you are as steeped in your worldview as I am in mine. However, I am more likely to encounter progressives in my daily life than you are to encounter people like me. Please understand it is not misinformation and disinformation that have convinced Trump supporters that they are suffering economically. It is their lived experience. Their costs really have gone up and their wages have not kept up. When you look at the map of red versus blue, understand that those red areas are areas that suffered more from inflation and cost increases than the blue areas. I’m a terribly flawed person, but I do believe God is real, and I do believe I’ve got to love my neighbor. You guys don’t have that divine admonition, but I’d suggest you give it a try. Love your neighbor, even if you disagree with him on the election. You just see the world differently because you’ve had different experiences, and you aren’t going to win your neighbor over any more than a Christian will convert someone by standing on their lawn with a bullhorn yelling, “Repent!” Democrats, y’all have become the street preacher with the megaphone yelling at people that the end is near and they must repent or burn in hell. Nobody likes that guy. COPYRIGHT 2024 CREATORS.COM We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Daily Signal. The post Democrats, It’s Going to Be OK appeared first on The Daily Signal.

When one considers Donald Trump’s Cabinet selections announced thus far, there are a few themes that emerge. One discernible theme, which has been the subject of constant teeth-gnashing all week, is the unorthodox or perhaps outright surprising nature of some of the picks. Tulsi Gabbard, tapped as our next director of national intelligence, is not a career spy. Pete Hegseth, Trump’s inspired choice to be our next secretary of defense, is not a company man who steadily worked his way up through the Pentagon’s labyrinthine bureaucracy. Robert F. Kennedy Jr., tapped to lead the Department of Health and Human Services, is a famously iconoclastic figure. And if you had consummate “Florida man” Matt Gaetz on your bingo card as Trump’s pick for U.S. attorney general, then you’re quite a bit more prescient than I am. But there is at least one other clearly discernible theme that emerges when one considers all those who Trump has picked to surround himself with: Many of these people are young. Gabbard is 43. Hegseth 44. Gaetz is 42. Rep. Elise Stefanik, R-N.Y., Trump’s pick for ambassador to the United Nations, is 40. Lee Zeldin, Trump’s pick for Environmental Protection Agency administrator, is 44. Vivek Ramaswamy, who will manage the newly announced Department of Government Efficiency alongside Elon Musk, is 39. Marco Rubio, Trump’s pick for secretary of state, isn’t exactly an old geezer at 53; ditto, his fellow Floridian Rep. Michael Waltz, Trump’s pick for national security adviser, who is 50. And lest we forget, Trump’s own running mate and soon-to-be vice president, JD Vance, just turned 40 a few months ago. That is a lot of high-ranking young—or at least comparatively young—people. And there are still many top positions in the second Trump administration that remain unannounced, raising the distinct possibility of even more young blood getting tapped for powerful leadership positions. What exactly is going on here? Trump, it seems, is not merely interested this time around in draining the swamp once and for all. He will not be content with just finishing the unfinished work of truly making America great again. Rather, he has a greater goal in mind: He is trying to foster an intergenerational legacy and solidify MAGA as America’s dominant early-to-mid-21st-century political movement. American history has often been defined by political movements that dominate not merely a singular eponymous presidency, but a broader epoch. There was the protectionist “American System” of Henry Clay. There was Jacksonian populism. There was the era of the welfare state, epitomized by Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal and Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society. There was the laissez-faire “Washington consensus” of the late-20th-century Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton presidencies. Now, Trump wants MAGA to be the defining political movement of our own era. And why not? Trump has already secured the most racially, ethnically, and religiously diverse winning presidential coalition in modern Republican Party history. He has made historical inroads with Hispanic voters, black men, and voters under the age of 35—the very groups that formed the core of Barack Obama’s own twice-victorious presidential coalition. He has managed to maintain an economic appeal to everyone from billionaire entrepreneurs like Musk to Sean O’Brien, the Teamsters president who gave a prime-time speech at this summer’s Republican National Convention. There are already numerous high-profile former Democrats, such as Gabbard and RFK Jr., who have been tapped for Cabinet-level posts. Obama’s one-time “coalition of the ascendant” has, in fact, descended. It has crashed and burned, and the modern Democratic Party is nothing less than vanquished. And what has risen in its stead? That would be the movement that delivered Republicans their first national popular vote win in two decades: MAGA. The more pressing question is: What exactly will MAGA actually be in the years—and decades—ahead? Above all, MAGA means nothing more than pragmatism—good old-fashioned common sense. It means an immigration policy that prioritizes cultural preservation and wage earners’ bank accounts—not corporate fat cats. It means a trade policy that prioritizes rejuvenating American manufacturing and reshoring—or at least “ally-shoring”—critical supply chains. It means a greater push toward reforming America’s sclerotic labor system, perhaps even abandoning it outright for European-style sectoral bargaining. It means a foreign policy laser-focused on soberly securing America’s national interest—not romanticizing democracy promotion or the pursuit of liberal universalism. Call it the commonsense coalition. But whatever you want to call MAGA, it’s young. It’s a generational, legacy-defining play for Trump, and it’s here to stay. And that is a very good thing for the future of these once-and-future-great United States. COPYRIGHT 2024 CREATORS.COM We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Daily Signal. The post Trump Is Poised to Make MAGA the Country’s Defining Political Movement appeared first on The Daily Signal.

FAFO of the Week: I Didn't Mean I'd *Kill*-Kill Trump Voters!

Too much coffee or booze may be the culprit.

All you need is a blacklight and enthusiasm.

Sit back, relax, and let’s Break It Down in episode 40...

The red panda’s death has been linked to fireworks-related stress.

Many classrooms across Oklahoma will soon be furnished with a Bible, thanks to the work of state Superintendent Ryan Walters.In a video posted to X on Thursday, Walters announced that more than 500 Bibles had been purchased to be placed in Advanced Placement government classrooms across his state. "The Bible is back in Oklahomas [sic] classrooms," read the message attending the video. "We are getting our kids back on track."Walters also hopes to expand the program and eventually place a Bible in every classroom. "We will not stop until we've brought the Bible back to every classroom in the state," he averred. — (@) Ever since Walters mentioned this summer the idea of incorporating the Bible back into the classroom, liberals have been howling and stomping their feet, insisting that doing so would violate the so-called "separation of church and state" in America.Though opponents have denounced putting Bibles in schools as some kind of civil rights violation, the state of Oklahoma is overwhelmingly Christian."The separation of church and state guarantees that families and students – not politicians – get to decide if, when and how to engage with religion," said Rachel Laser, president and CEO of Americans United."As a Christian, I’m appalled by the use of the Bible — a sacred text — for Superintendent Walters’ political grandstanding," railed Rev. Mitch Randall, a Baptist pastor in Oklahoma."This Bible mandate is a blatant power grab that violates state law and tramples the separation of church and state," added Daniel Mach, director of the ACLU Program on Freedom of Religion and Belief.Last month, dozens of Oklahomans — backed by leftist groups like the ACLU, Americans United for Separation of Church and State, and the Freedom From Religion Foundation — even filed a lawsuit against Walters for allegedly using "tax dollars for religious instruction" that "would violate the important constitutional principle of church–state separation."Not only is that phrase found nowhere in any of the country's founding documents, but Walters noted in his announcement Thursday that the Bible has had critical influence on American history and that keeping it out of classrooms on account of its religious content would deprive students of a well-rounded education.To demonstrate the Bible's place among other key documents, Walters' office promised to provide a Bible as well as a copy of "the Pledge of Allegiance, the Declaration of Independence, the Bill of Rights and the U.S. Constitution for every classroom in Oklahoma" as part of an ongoing effort to give students a complete understanding of their nation's history, KOCO reported.Thus far, the 500 Bibles have cost the state about $25,000, according to Walters' spokesperson, Dan Isett. In all, Walters is willing to spend as much as $6 million to make sure that each classroom is outfitted with its own Bible, the Oklahoman reported.Though opponents have denounced putting Bibles in schools as some kind of civil rights violation, the state of Oklahoma is overwhelmingly Christian. According to the Pew Research Center, fully 79% of residents living there identify as Christian.The Oklahoman noted that Walters' call for Bibles in classrooms has been "legally-challenged" and repeatedly emphasized Walters' support for President-elect Donald Trump. Such support, however, is in keeping with the state he serves since every Oklahoma county voted for Trump in 2024.Walters' name has been mentioned as a possible education secretary in Trump's second term.Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!