26 posts from Sunday, August 30, 2026

All right, let's start with this, a federal judge, again, blocking the postal service from implementing President Trump's mail ballot rule ahead of the midterms. Case could be appealed back to the Supreme Court. Of course, earlier this week the Supreme Court ruled that President Trump's effort to try to clean up the voter rolls was valid by using the post office to make sure that ballots are only delivered to actual voters who should be voting. Yeah, so this is basically a tracking system. Every company like FedEx and Amazon use these, and it's just a way of making sure that the person who's sending in the ballot is actually the voter because we know there's widespread fraud with, we know hundreds and hundreds and thousands of people are cheating, and the Democrats don't want it. They don't want to stop the fraud. Yeah, no, it is kind of amazing because I remember just a year or so ago, or a few years ago before COVID, Democrats, one thing that they could all agree upon was that the problem with mass mail-in balloting is that you have no control over who gets the ballots, you have no control over ballot custody. It was agreed that it was too dangerous because it's too fraught for corruption, but now it's become part of the Democrat strategy, apparently. Of course, and by the way, as you know, we just had new evidence that came in that hundreds and thousands of people across the country are cheating on this, and the Democrats don't want to stop it. Okay, next up, it is the year 2026, and Democrat politicians are still tearing down statues Democrats in Virginia, led by Virginia Governor Abigail Spanberger, who is the most unpopular Virginia governor in the history of polling, quietly took down the statue of a Civil War doctor, Hunter McGuire, from the grounds of state capital and Richmond. And what I think is so interesting about this abomination and attack on history is that Hunter McGuire was famous for being a Civil War doctor who revolutionized the way doctors and nurses are treated in wartime, protecting them so that they can do their jobs, helping people who are wounded on the battlefield. And his ideas later became the foundation of the Geneva Convention rules governing how medics and nurses are treated on the battlefield, yet Virginia politicians led by Abigail Spanberger tore down his statue because of their hurt feelings. He's a hero. This guy's a hero who has saved lives, potentially hundreds and hundreds of thousands of lives, relieve pain and suffering on the battlefield. And he deserves a medal. He deserves a statue. I'm proud as a person who's lived in Virginia that he was a Virginian, and yet because he has some connection with the Confederacy, they want to take it down. I mean, look, you know this. You lived in Virginia. They want to take out Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, anyone who is associated with our founding.

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Here to discuss all of this is former Trump Deputy National Security Advisor, KT McFarland. Always great to see you, especially great to see you, KT, on this particular story because it's right in your wheelhouse. I want to start with Venezuela. When you step back and you look at this deal, and I get, you know, there are all kinds of other questions about this, but it does kind of make you wonder if when President Trump's memoirs are written, the whole, this whole situation in Venezuela, where the US winds up gaining access to these reserves, wasn't the precursor to his decision to then go after Iran? Oh, I think it was. And I think they probably thought Iran might be easier than it turned out to be, but it didn't. It turned out to be harder, but we still won. And that's the difference. We've won that. We've won that war. Because why? Because the oil that was moving through the Strait of Hormuz, 20 million barrels a day, it's going differently. It's going through the Strait of Hormuz. Yeah, I'm probably 10 million barrels a day now because we've cleared the southern route. But a lot of that oil that used to move by tankers is now moving by pipeline. And it's not going to go back to tankers. And then some of the shortfall has been made up by American oil and natural gas that's moving out of the United States. So at the end of the day, we got rid of the nukes. And if they try to rebuild the nukes, well, we'll bomb those again. And as far as the importance of the Strait, it's going to be increasingly irrelevant, especially because of the Venezuela oil connection. We are now controlling a quarter of the world's oil and whoever controls the world's energy, the world's fossil fuels in the years ahead controls the future. You know, it's kind of amazing to think about, but for five decades, Iran has used their ability to put the squeeze in the Strait of Hormuz to get exact, you know, political things from other people. It's almost like they kind of pulled that bluff this time with the wrong dude, and it didn't work out for them. And they may have broken the one thing, the one lever that they've always had. You know, that's the point. They thought they were dealing with, you know, typical American president. They didn't realize it was Donald Trump and he plays by different games. And so they thought, okay, we're going to close the Strait of Hormuz just like we tried to do with President Reagan, just like we've tried to do many times before. But because Donald Trump already had the Armada prepositioned, he could then put a blockade on Iran. So for six months, no ships have gone into Iran. No ships have gone out of Iran. Their economy is spiraling. And yet at the same time, we've got this workaround of how to get oil to the world. You're going to see oil prices start to go down. I think pretty dramatically now that that shortfall of 20 million barrels a day, that's now getting to the producers. That's getting to the refineries. And it wasn't three weeks ago. It wasn't two months ago. Now it is. And so the price of oil should start coming down and hopefully the price of gasoline to follow. So not only is it significant in terms of American power in Venezuela, the U.S. having control of that. It also means that our enemies, our biggest rivals, whether it's a country like Cuba or a country like China, doesn't have access, free access for cut rate oil from Venezuela. Yeah, China had been all over South America trying to get their hands on Venezuelan and other other resources, oil as well. And now they're gone. They're out of there. They're not having any access to that. All China can get is that Iranian oil, which they're probably not getting that much of anyway. The genius of President Trump is that he realizes as a businessman, what's the best country solution you can have to all of your trade, all of your commerce, all of your manufacturing, all of your production to do it nearby. So we don't have to think about trans-specific trade or transatlantic trade. We're now going to have a Western hemisphere united at peace, trading with each other and under the United States leadership. The cheap goods that we've been importing from China for decades, they're going to now be made in South America. And because of the energy, particularly as we look to the future and the requirements of the data centers and artificial intelligence, and he's a lot more energy. Well, who's going to have all the energy? Us. Yes. Make the Western hemisphere great again. KT McFarland, as always, really appreciate it. Thank you so much.

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You know what Steve's important? I hear people say, you can't say everything's going great and expect people to believe. How about you just tell the truth about what's taking place in the economy because that's not happening. Go ahead. - Okay, let's start with the big one. The median household income in the United States, the people in the exact middle have an income of about $85,000 a year. That's incredible. I mean, in almost every other country in the world, $85,000 is considered rich. So we are doing much better in terms of income than any other family, any other country. Let's look at some of these other ones. How about the fact that we have, I know the stock market is not the economy, but the wealth that is being created in 401(k) plans, retirement plans, we have by far the best stock market. Everybody wants to invest in the USA under Donald Trump. And in fact, the investment numbers are just off the charts. Trump is right. We have trillions of dollars coming into the United States for the first time that is being invested here. We are in a manufacturing book. Did you know that, Mark? We are creating more manufacturing jobs than ever before. We have a construction boom in this country. In fact, if you ask manufacturers and construction companies, they're having a hard time finding the workers to fill all of the jobs. How about the fact that crime recently hit 50 year low in this country under Trump in major cities in the United States because he is a crime fighter? I mean, I could go on and on with these. How about the fact that there are more jobs available in this country, eight million, than there are people to fill them? That's a pretty good problem to have. And it's so true. And let me ask you this. Are Republicans, deaf, dumb, and blind, do they not know how to speak and see and hear? I don't understand. Some of them will be offended by what I'm saying, but they need three, four, five basic talking points. They need to be like a chorus line, like the Democrats and go out there and hit it out of the park. Am I wrong? They've got to celebrate the good news of this economy because we know in November, which is less than two months away, we're gonna be talking about, the whole issue is about affordability. And here's a situation where America, and look, people are angry about food prices and gas prices, I get that. But the overall picture of the US economy is very healthy. And by the way, the states that have the biggest affordability problem in a country, the highest cost of living, you know what states those are? They're Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey, California, Connecticut, states that are run by Democrats. The states with the lowest cost of living are states like Alabama and states like Oklahoma and states like Arkansas and Idaho and Utah, states that are run by Republicans. So if you're concerned about affordability, why would you put someone like Gavin Newsom in the White House that can't do anything right in California? - So if you're serious about affordability in the long term, you have to leave some of these states even though it's difficult. - Exactly. - And that's exactly what people are doing, isn't it? - Oh, this is the big story in America, that the center of gravity politically is leaving the Northeast, it's leaving California, it's leaving Washington and Oregon and where people are going to, they're going to the South. You're there in Florida, Florida has grown tremendously under the great leadership of your governor there, DeSantis. But now people are going to the Carolinas, they're going to Alabama. And you know what's really ironic about this, I just wrote a column on this, that it used to be, remember the old Beverly Hillbilly show where they, you know, the Clapits make all their money and they go to Beverly Hills. Now people are leaving California and they're going to Arkansas, Oklahoma, it's the reverse Beverly Hillbillies effect. - I would add one footnote to all this. These big blue states, California, New York, Illinois, you can name them, heavily populated. When you look at overall national numbers, they'd even be better. If these Democrats who drag down these states actually embraced capitalism and lower taxes and job growth and so forth, the entire country would benefit from it. So to say, oh, under the president, these things aren't happening, first things are, secondly, they'd be even better. But for these big states that are dragging us down. Steve Moore, I want to thank you, my friend. God bless you and keep up the great work. - Thank you, Mark.

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