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Lots of talk about affordability, or is there? I don't even hear a lot of talk about it anymore, but still, there's a lot of grumbling about it on the internet, there's a lot of people talking about it. And one of the things they're saying is, if you understood the mindset of young people, you would understand what the problem is. They're leaving Trump by the zillions, and they expect us to do something to help them. And so you have some people proposing sort of socialism-like. These are from so-called conservatives who become pseudo-conservers. The populists, of course, are all over this, because in many ways, they're the socialists. And so more government and more spending, despite the $40 trillion debt going to $50 trillion, and despite, at some point, the need to do something about Social Security and Medicare, Social Security in six years, say the trustees, is going to lose money and go broke, and in seven years, followed by Medicare. So Washington proposes what Washington's best at, spending more debt, redistribution of wealth, stealing from you and the private sector. So let's get into this. I want the Democrats, specifically, to answer a few questions, and the media hosts, particularly on these Sunday network magazine shows or news shows, maybe they'll try asking some actual questions when they have Democrat Party guests. Please specifically spell out your affordability agenda. You raised gasoline prices when Biden was president. How will you lower them when you raised them last time? You raised food prices when Biden was president. How will you lower them when you raised them last time? You raised inflation when Biden was president. How will you lower it when you raised it last time? You raised the cost of living for average Americans. How will you lower it when you raised it last time? You raised healthcare costs when Obama was president by passing Obamacare, not a single Republican voted for that. How will you lower it when you raised it under Obama by expanding it and calling it Medicare for all? Well, they don't have any answers, you know, they'll just say tax billionaires or something like that. But I want to take a little bit of a deeper dive here and talk some turkey with you. People talk about in the 1950s and '60s, people could afford a home, they could afford a car, they had modest incomes, not anymore, not anymore. We need to get back to that. So I looked, in the 1950s and '60s, young adults in their early 20s and 30s, well, they had lower average incomes, more family-based households and less access to credit. This meant that while they might have spent a larger share of income on certain categories, like cars or housing, the absolute dollar amounts that they spent were generally lower than today's young adults in their 30s and 40s. Young adults in the 1950s and '60s by today's age had lower total spending than today's young adults in their 30s and 40s due to lower incomes in different economic conditions. Core spending takes up the greatest share of income for the youngest and oldest generations. Core spending, that trend can be explained in part due to changes in income. Peak earning occurs in middle age, obviously not when you're just starting out and obviously not when you're retired or retiring. Even in the dollar value of household spending, that goes up as someone approaches middle age. The increase in household income on average outpaces the increase in spending. So when you're really kicking into your career or your business or whatever it is you're doing. Medical expenses are the smallest percentage of budgets for the youngest adult generation. So they're paying lower than any other generation when it comes to medical expenses. Young adults today are much more likely than their counterparts 30 years ago to be college graduates. But that comes with a cost. College tuition is expensive. Most students wanna live away from home and go to schools away from home. So in addition to tuition, you have room and board on top of tuition. That said, those with college degrees over the course of their lifetime, they earn significantly more than those without. Although for many at the start of their career, they have college loan debt and perhaps other debt they've acquired, such as cars and credit cards for eating out or vacations that put great pressure on their incomes. Again, when they're starting out, their incomes are those of junior employees. Young women have made greater gains at attending college than young men. From 1993 to 2023, the share of young women, ages 25 to 34, with at least a four-year college degree rose from 23 to 47%. And among young men, the increase was smaller, 24 to 38%. Therefore, the debt spending income scenario can be even more widespread among young women and especially among single women. So in other words, much of this has nothing to do with government, nothing to even do with government policies. These are lifestyle decisions. In other words, the benefit for many young people in going to college doesn't actually come until several years or even a decade or more after they graduate. They pay down both student debt and other expenses they've incurred. So in the long run, the degree is typically beneficial. In the short run, depending on lifestyle decisions and spending habits, it can create more financial difficulty. The 1950s and '60s, fewer Americans went to college. Young people started work early. They didn't make big purchases requiring lots of debt, no student loans, not new cars. They lived more modestly in the types of homes and vehicles they might buy. They ate home at home more often than going out to restaurants. They didn't travel as much, so they didn't use airlines. They didn't go to hotels and that sort of thing. Maybe they drive for a three-day vacation or something like that. Family expectations were different. In limited consumer goods were available. Goods like sugar and meat were still rationed in the early 1950s, and refrigerators were a luxury for some households. Colored TV didn't even exist for most households until starting in the early '60s and beyond. Leisure was often local and low cost. Kids played outside, not a whole bunch of computers and video games. Clothing was practical and modest. While the 1950s and '60s saw economic growth, many young people's lives were marked by modest living. And so some young people had brought these circumstances onto themselves. It's not the system, it's not capitalism. It's not even government. We have gotten so good at producing so many consumer products, leisure products, and so forth and so on, that people wanna partake of them. They wanna acquire them. But sometimes they outpace their income, particularly when they're young people, particularly if they go to college, particularly if they take out student loans, and they live away from home with tuition and board. And all those expenses pile up. It's a bigger percentage of young people than 30, 40, 50 years ago. And I wanna talk about gas prices. We're told that a gallon of gasoline, if we can get the price of gasoline down, we Republicans will win the midterm elections. Gas prices may feel like a record in 2026, but adjusted for inflation, they are not, writes Dr. Randall Olson. We're told gas is the most expensive it has been in years. The war headlines are everywhere. And he says the record gas prices, it's back in everyone's feed. The pump number stings, but adjust for inflation and the record evaporates. US gas costs more in 1981 than it does today. More in 2008 than it does today. Again, inflation adjusted. More in 2022 under Biden than it does today. The number on the pump is near an all-time high. What a gallon actually costs you in real money is nowhere near an all-time high. 2008 is still the one to beat, he writes. The real all-time high was June 2008 at $6.20 a gallon in today's money. 1981 was worse too. 1981 held the record before 2008, took it. March 1981, regular gas hit, again, inflation adjusted. Regular gas, $5.32 a gallon in today's dollars. Oh yes. Even in 2022, a few years back, the most recent peak is the one people remember. When Russia invaded Ukraine, the national average set an all-time record just above $5 a gallon in June 2022. That was the highest price ever at the pump in plain dollars adjusted for inflation. It works out to about $5.50 for a gallon of regular gasoline still above spring 2026 and still short of 2008. And if you live in California, my son, our son took a picture of the prices at the pump. They are unbelievable. You got 72 cents a gallon sales tax in California, the highest in the nation by far. Other expenses that they add on to gasoline and oil out there, it is nuts. And they want you to blame Trump and they want you to blame the Iran war and on and on and on. No, I've said it before and let me underscore it again. The prices for gasoline, the prices for everything when it comes to energy is higher due to what we call Democrats. What about housing prices? As of June 2026, the last information that is comparative, the inflation adjusted US home price index is 170.2 up from 169 in May of this year. But that's 3.8% below the highest May 2022. That was the record 176.9. This is the number they use to compare income to housing prices. So the highest it's been was in May 2022, 3.8% higher than it is today. That means that when stripped of inflation housing prices, they're still near an all time high. And by the way, for investors, they like that. For first time buyers, they obviously don't, but it's not at the peak that it was under Biden in 2022. I just told you that gasoline at its peak was higher in the 1980s and highest under Joe Biden. I just told you that housing prices were highest, highest under Joe Biden. But you don't hear this. You don't hear it anywhere really. The two highest points were 2006, the housing bubble and 2022, the post pandemic surge. Now there's no accounting for what Democrats do in these blue states and these blue metropolitan areas. Take Mondami, the Marxist Islamist. Oh yes, socialism he supports. Well, let's take rent control. What does rent control do? Let's think for a second. They lock in rent prices back to a given year or time. Now people who are renting and are older, they love it. They love it because they're gonna have a fixed rental price whether the landlord likes it or not, whether his or her expenses go up or not, whether utility prices and taxes go up or not, they don't care. It's just wonderland. We love socialism, rent control. But what does that do? It limits the number of units. You have to be nuts to be a developer and go in and say, you know what, I'm gonna build a whole bunch of new rental properties just so I can have rent control at some point. No, because if a government can put in rent control today it can put it in tomorrow. That's not Trump's fault. That's not Israel's fault. That's Mondami's fault. That's the fault of the socialists who drive up the cost of everything. And not only is affordability an issue, but availability is an issue. Okay, I wanna address another topic before we go to our guests and that is Iran. I wanna be very blunt about this. This is not a war between the United States and Iran or the United States and Israel versus Iran. This is a civilizational war. You see, we don't quite understand the enemy. We can't seem to get our heads around it. I'm afraid some of our generals can't, some of our advisors can't. This is a civilizational war, certainly from the perspective of the enemy. Khomeini in 1979, he was not interested merely in taking over a nation state, a country. He is spreading an ideology. He is spreading Islam. He seeks to conquer the West. He seeks to conquer obviously an entire Middle East. He and his followers. Israel is a big problem to that agenda because the Jews don't intend to go easily. In fact, they don't intend to go at all. They have a serious military, one of the most powerful on the face of the earth and certainly one of the most experienced on the face of the earth because they're facing enemies, they're surrounded day in and day out. We are war hardened too, but not in the same way. Not in the same way. My concern is this. We've heard from generals talking about off-ramps. We've heard generals say that we have limited munitions, whether they've said it anonymously or however, same with advisors who said the same thing. They're leaking to the media. We had an MOU that was never going to work. The enemy, you know, they have an agreement and two minutes later they violate it. So we're constantly looking for ways to negotiate our way out of this. You wanna end this war? I will give you my best thought on this. I want us to win. I want the administration to succeed. I want my friend, President Trump, to be the greatest president, including wartime president in American history. And what he's done so far is unparalleled. Seven prior presidents, you know, chose to do next to nothing. Some of them even subsidized the enemy. Some of them subsidized their nuclear program. The fact is that this president had to act, did act. He couldn't wait. The enemy told his envoy that we could make 11 nuclear bombs in 10 days. Our intelligence said we needed to act and it was imminent. But it is a civilizational war. You can't contain the enemy no matter what's negotiated if it's ever negotiated. The enemy will not comply. The enemy will not agree to anything. The enemy views us as a bump in the road. Whether it's the first tier, the second tier, the third tier, or the 10th tier of this regime. If we want to defeat this enemy, we've got to use all that's available to us to destroy it. That includes arming the Iranian people, as I've said for half a year, as was the Reagan doctrine. Now there may be generals and advisors telling the commander in chief, "No, the risk averse and so forth and so on." There is no effective off-ramp. Arming those people with the help of the Israelis, who we've sidelined, with the help of Mossad, working with the CIA, will make a huge, huge difference as it has in the recent past in other countries, among other things. There is no reason Karg Island is off the table in some of these other infrastructure facilities. I don't care what the Arabs say, ignore them. I don't care what Erdogan says, ignore him. This is a civilizational war that we must win. It is a righteous war. We have a courageous president. I don't think we'll see another one like him. It's now or never.

Transcribed automatically. Expect errors in names and numbers.

And we begin thinking long-term, not midterm. You know, we got five weeks from an election, we know that. Control of Congress is on the line, you understand that. Every politician in Washington knows it, every pollster is talking about it. This week, President Trump made clear his vision goes beyond November because he's trying to get things done in two years, which normally take two terms. - As president of the most extraordinary nation in history, I have no interest in leaving dangers to grow for another day. I do not believe in letting problems fester. They only become harder to solve. So while others have talked, I have acted. We are solving decades of intractable challenges, and we are settling years of unfinished business, and we're doing it well. - And I know it's driving some Republicans nuts, but that's his vision. Look, it has this approach at the border, for example. He's not waiting for comprehensive immigration reform. The guy has sealed the border. He's actually almost done with the wall. He's finding those people who broke the law, came here illegally. He is rounding them up, and it's giving some people heartburn, but that's what he promised to do. Come here illegally, and you gotta get scooped up. It shouldn't be okay, because Washington failed to fix the system. That's what he ran on. That's what he talks about. And he's taking the same approach to the Capitol itself. I don't know if you've been to Washington lately, but he's building that new ballroom. Every president talked about needing an event center. He's doing it. He's fixed 48 monuments in D.C., 22 fountains, 1,000-plus graffiti sites, and the reflecting pool, I understand, is finally getting fixed the right way. His mantra is clear. For problems big and small, he's gonna identify it. He's going to fix it, and he's gonna do it fast. He's gonna do it in a way to make it last when it comes to trade. Remember Liberation Day? The rollout was rocky, no question. The markets reacted. The critics, well, they pounced. But the bigger idea was more important. Restructure a trading system that Trump believes has shortchanged America since World War II. Not one tariff, not one country, the entire system. Since then, the administration has secured 20 new trade deals, 20. Something around like Canada, I think it'll get back on track. One is about to be done. Believe it or not, it's gonna be Mexico. And the one front and center this week is China. It's obviously the most important. Has every negotiation gone smoothly? No, but the aim isn't the headline for tomorrow or a quick fix today. It's changing the terms of trade for years to come, or restructuring while bringing manufacturing back. Then there's the biggest example of all, Iran. With the war dragging on, the pressure is building. Voters are worried about the cost than they should be. The price of oil, diesel, fertilizer, it's all going up. The midterms are right around the corner. And even some Republicans are saying it's time to bring the war to an end. The war with Iran needs to end, and end quickly. War is terrible and no one likes war. The war should end yesterday. Yep, Trump knows it. But as I told you, the election is in triving this decision. They're waiting to see how I do in the midterm election. I gave absolutely no credence and will not give credence to the election when it comes to Iran. It doesn't even enter my mind. The only thing that does is that Iran will never have a nuclear weapon. His position is that whether a deal comes before November or after November, the objective does not change. No nuclear weapon, no ability to fund terror proxies and intimidate neighbors. Trump is not looking to make this better for now. And I know he's driving Republicans crazy. He knows peace in the Middle East is a pipe dream with this Iran team empowered and emboldened. He's not managing Iran. He is squeezing them. He's trying to fix not for now, but forever. And what about munitions? We got to win wars with munitions. We keep seeing the headlines warning about the capacity of America's defense industrial base. But Trump is the one building up our arsenal. The cowards and traders would love to say the United States is low on munitions, but that's not true. We have more munitions than we could ever possibly even think of using, and we're building them at levels that we have never done before. In the very near future, massive munitions plants will be opening. There are 18 of them being built by the greatest defense companies in the world. Right now, 18 under construction. Yes, he's spreading them out. There used to be a big four, now there's 18. Not just for more missiles next month, the capacity to make more missiles for years, new systems. And that brings us to maybe the biggest long-term challenge of all, AI. The United States is racing China for this technology to transform our economy. It's also fueling our economy now. It's gonna transform our military. America, well, we're in the lead, about nine to 12 months in the lead. The question is whether we keep that lead. And at the same time, figuring out how to keep a technology this powerful from becoming a threat itself. And that can't be answered by a November poll. That's a debate that will outlive this election and this presidency. But when he hands off the Oval Office, you can be sure we will still be leading the world on artificial intelligence, or as he calls it, super intelligence. These aren't six-week problems, more like 60-year issues. And the president appears determined not to hand them to somebody else, Democrat or Republican, because this isn't just a midterm plan. It's not a reelection plan, it's an American plan. And joining us now is Fox News contributor from The Wall Street Journal, Kim Strassl. So Kim, I know you wrote a lot about this. You've been in a lot of personal briefings with the President of the United States. Do you see him thinking big picture like I just outlined? - Oh yeah, and Brian, by the way, this is why Americans voted for the guy, right? After decades of feeling as though they had politicians that said, "Oh, I'll solve this, I'll solve this," then nothing happens. They wanted someone who was gonna go in and break China. And by the way, just to add a couple of more things to the list that you laid out there, you know, just this week you had Vice President J.D. Vance come out, say they're taking more than 750,000 phantom accounts off of Obamacare. I mean, this is the fraud that's been sitting there in the United States government. For decades, nobody's done anything about. So it causes some disruption. I think it leaves some voters feeling unsettled, but stuff is getting done. - The other thing is rare earth. He's on a two-year plan to get another rare earth. He's gonna mine in this country. We never should have stopped, but environmentalists had a lot to do with that. But now he's cutting deals with Australia and the Far East and Central and South America. And I'll add something else. He's cleaning up our own hemisphere for the first time really in my lifetime. China and Russia are being pushed out. So is communism, Cuba's next. - Yeah, it's remarkable. On the rare earth, things also think they just netted that Greenland deal, which is one of the biggest sources of rare earths everywhere. And part of that deal says, "Hey, you can sell it to us, but you can't sell it to our adversaries." That was a big question mark, and that's done. - Yeah, I mean, this is one of those things that you've done this before. We're in the middle of a play-by-play and you think you understand a presidency. I think we're gonna understand his presidency a lot better two or three years out. But we're in the middle of it now. But let me just do something I just told you I wasn't gonna do. Let's drill down on November and midterms. And let's talk about Alaska. Mary Peltola, nine separate former staffers came out and says this woman's got a huge attitude problem, a rage issue, correct? - Right, and this is a problem for her. Look, I don't know how many committed Peltola voters are gonna care that much. But these are the kind of stories that come out and it says, "Complete mayhem among their staff, people quitting or being fired." It suggests a politician that has a lot of problems. And that matters a lot. You get some of these middle-of-the-road voters, they either decide they don't want that or they just decide they're not interested in going out to vote that day for her. So that's a real depressor when it comes to turn out for her. And I think is a boon for Dan S. Sullivan, the actual Dan S. Sullivan, the incumbent in the race. - I gotta read this to you. You're not gonna believe it. It's in your rival newspaper. It says, "This is what you said about Planned Parenthood. "One of her angry outbursts slurs and firings, "Tumult rocks a key Senate campaign is the headline. "Peltola also disparaged Planned Parenthood, "particularly one of its regional board members "running for reelection for the 2024 House seat. "Peltola was frustrated about the organization's scrutiny "of our deliberations over how to vote on a defense bill. "She said, quote, 'I hope Planned Parenthood knows "'that if we don't win, it's more their loss than ours.' "'F' those 'B's,' she later wrote in a text message "to her staff in January 2024 "that was viewed by the New York Times. "She also went on to say, 'Peltola, "'I hope she dies of a botched abortion.' "She also had a gay slur and made fun of people "with maybe who have mental issues." - Yeah, no, look, Mary Peltola has already had some issues up here. Remember, she briefly served as a House member representing Alaska, and that was because she won, essentially, because of Alaska's goofy rank choice system. So she essentially won by default. Now, this year, there is a nasty trick going on in Alaska, Brian, where there's this decoy Dan Sullivan candidate who has purely been put, clearly been put, on the ballot with help from Democrats to try to confuse voters and get them to draw votes away from the incumbent Dan Sullivan. But I think all of this adds up to show the desperation a bit of this campaign, and the problem she has, when she's trashing on kind of loyal Democratic outside groups, she's got a, it shows the frustration and the problems there. - Kim, I wanna get to Texas real quick, 'cause James Talarico is leading. If I look at the latest poll, he's up by six. That's a mayor's survey, real clear average, up by three over Ken Paxson. But with Talarico's doing a little bit different, he's changing all his views. He now says, I'm gonna work with Donald Trump on the border. I am for oil and gas. I wanna debate Ken Paxson on Fox News with Brett Baer as the moderator. And he's telling all his Democrats, don't come. I wanna act like a Republican. Does that, is that a strategy that could be successful in Texas when the others have failed Democrats? - Well, look, I think what's adding up here in Texas is, remember, this is a red state, by the way. And a lot of people who have moved to Texas too, because they want that kind of politics. So he's already facing an uphill thing. And I always question this, Democrats ran out and they recruited all these people. Oh, you know, here's a seminarian in Texas and we'll roll them out. Then people find out what his actual views are. So now he's trying to cloak those actual past views. Are Texans gonna buy it? I don't know. But one of the problems here too is, you know, Paxson's having trouble. There was a very messy primary down there and a lot of Republicans are still pretty bitter about that. So he's gotta motivate his base as well too. - He's getting like $200 million. They're gonna flood the system, see what happens. See what kind of debate that would be. Kim Strassle, always great to have you on. Thanks so much.

Transcribed automatically. Expect errors in names and numbers.

NATO has shaped Europe's security since 1949. But now tension between the U.S. and the rest of the alliance has grown as the Trump administration pushes a NATO 3.0 idea that Europe should take the lead on its own conventional defense. And the Department of War has launched a six-month review that could lead to the biggest U.S. drawdown in Europe since the 1990s. Today we head to Spain, one of the countries that's been a big Trump critic, to take stock of Trump's impact on NATO. To understand the friction between the U.S. and NATO, we travel to the capital of Spain, Madrid... Lost steps because this is the place where... And walk the historic halls of the Senate with Senator Fernando Gutierrez from the Conservative Party. And this is Christopher Columbus who... Gutierrez is a retired general who leads the parliamentary assembly delegation that advises NATO. He agreed to address President Trump's beef with Spain and other NATO allies, which began with Trump demanding they pony up more for their own security. Do you believe that his actions and rhetoric are reasonable or irresponsible? Well, I think his behavior is too aggressive sometimes. And that's what he presents, an aggressive posture. But the principles behind that aggressive posture are understood for everyone. Everyone understands that we have to share our responsibilities. There was an additional rift expressed by President Trump when he felt like he didn't get the support that he wanted with the action involving Iran. How do you view that? Because you are part of NATO, you have to do what I believe you have to do. It's not how NATO work. Here in Spain, U.S. taxpayers have poured billions of dollars into two military bases. But when the U.S. and Israel wanted to use them for refueling and strikes against Iran, Spain said no. President Trump accused Spain of freeloading while the U.S. does the heavy lifting. When the U.S. struck Iran in February with Operation Epic Fury, Spain was one of the strongest opponents. The nation's socialist prime minister, Pedro Sanchez, called the war illegal and unjustified. Spain actually said that we can't use their bases, and that's all right, we could use their bases. We want we could just fly in and use it. Nobody's going to tell us not to use it, but we don't have to. But they were unfriendly. And so I told him that we don't want to -- Spain has absolutely nothing that we need other than great people. They have great people. Trump hasn't limited his criticism to Spain. He's threatened to withdraw the U.S. from NATO entirely. Look, we went to NATO. I didn't ask very strongly. I just said, hey, if you want to help, great. No, no, no, we will not help. I said, that's all right. You don't want to help? Because I've always said NATO is a paper tiger, because they haven't helped at all. Just the opposite. They've actually gone out of their way not to help. They didn't even want to give us landing strips. In Washington, the United States breaks a 170-year-old tradition as it joins -- The U.S. helped create NATO in 1949 to counter Soviet expansion after World War II. In 2024, full measure got the rare chance to embed in live-fire NATO exercises in northeast Poland. U.S. forces led troops from Britain, Croatia, and Romania. Special Integrat Russia is about 60 kilometers to our north. U.S. withdrawal from NATO would be earth-shattering. It could trigger the collapse of the 77-year-old alliance, weaken Europe's security, and embolden Russia and China. In Spain, we don't agree with a war that doesn't have any support from the United Nations. There are international rules to follow. Vivian Ogou is a left-leaning member of Spanish Parliament. For sure, we don't understand the positions of Trump. Trump is generating diplomatic tensions worldwide, creating -- putting the sanctions. That's not how international community should be working. It's -- the United States is stopping to be a reliable partner and is generating a lot of tensions, economic tensions, political tensions that have an impact on markets, that have an impact on prices, that have an impact in people. President Trump's threats have generated backlash beyond Spain. Member of Parliament Alex Ballinger is a Royal Marine veteran in the U.K. and a member of the Democratic Socialist Labor Party. When looking at NATO and defense when it comes to the United Kingdom, what are your thoughts on President Trump saying something needs to change? I think there has been a bit of concern about Donald Trump's comments about walking away from NATO. Some things he's got right. We do need to invest more in defense, both in this country and in Europe, and countries are now doing that. There is an element of burden-sharing to do, but it is so much in both of our interests that I think there would be an expectation that we're better working together on this stuff rather than dividing ourselves at this very dangerous time. But amid the criticism, NATO Secretary General Mark Ruda has emerged as President Trump's strongest defender, most famously after Trump used an expletive when comparing Israel and Iran to two kids in a schoolyard. Let him fight for about two or three minutes, then it's easier to stop him. And then daddy has to sometimes do strong language to do that stuff. Yeah, he is strong language. Every once in a while you have to use a certain word. After that remark, Ruda's approach with Trump quickly became known as "Daddy diplomacy." There's one point even Trump's critics concede. Only because of his pressure, NATO allies met the target of spending at least two percent of their economy on their own military for the first time last year, and they've committed to five percent by 2035. Because I want to show you what this president was able to achieve. And let's start with this chart. This chart is about the Trump children. The Trump children shows you the increase Europeans and Canadians are paying into defense since you took office in 2017. Most say a full U.S. withdrawal from NATO is unlikely, but War Secretary Pete Hexeth has initiated a review called NATO 3.0. People see it as a threat to reduce or reposition American troops in Europe after the disappointing response on Iran. It will be designed to ensure that NATO is moving fast and irreversibly toward Europe leading, stepping up to take primary responsibility for the defense of Europe, stepping up to ensure our forces are postured for America's global needs, and stepping up to make sure that our access, spacing and overflight are clearly delineated and assured. The impact of President Trump on NATO has been what? Has been demanding, has been just because it was unbalanced, and we have to do more. So you're not mad at him? No. I think most of the negative comments coming to say that NATO is going to be dismantled, that the U.S. is leaving Europe abandoned, are coming from outside the United States. Who do you mean? I think it's coming from the Eastern countries. I think it's coming from Russia. Russia is interested in making the European Union citizens to believe that they are endangered to be abandoned and it's better if they just take the first step. If they are abandoning you, just abandon them. Europe is bolstering its defense spending thanks to Trump. The question is how flashpoints over issues like Iran will impact the long-standing NATO alliance. The Pentagon is expected to recommend what to change about U.S. forces in Europe to President Trump by November 6th, that could include cutting 25,000 troops, roughly a third of the force, or as many as 40,000 with Germany, Italy, and Spain most impacted.

Transcribed automatically. Expect errors in names and numbers.

A photograph of a printed newspaper page from The Epoch Times' Opinion section, dated Friday, Sept. 11, 2026. At the top are two smaller linked headlines with thumbnail photos flanking the "Opinion" masthead: "The Data Center Backlash Has a Practical Fix" by Howard Franklin (A18) on the left, and "We Spend a Lot More on Welfare Than Bombs" by David Harsanyi (A21) on the right, the latter thumbnail showing a road sign reading "THE NATIONAL DEBT $40 [TRILLION]". Below is a large photo of a hazy, smoke-filled cityscape (buildings, an unfinished concrete structure with rebar and ladders in the foreground) captioned "Smoke rises from the site of airstrikes in Tehran, Iran, on March 6, 2026." Below that is the main opinion column headlined "Iran Is Not Even Close to Winning the War" by Mike Fredenburg, with a small circular author photo, a pull-quote in italics, and body text in three columns arguing that despite domestic political criticism, Iran's military and economy have been severely degraded and it is not winning the war against the U.S./Israel/coalition forces. A subheading "Iranian Regime in Historically Bad Shape" appears near the bottom of the third column, with "Continued on A18" at the very bottom.

Text in image: Opinion THE EPOCH TIMES A17 FRIDAY, SEPT. 11, 2026 The Data Center Backlash Has a Practical Fix Howard Franklin | A18 We Spend a Lot More on Welfare Than Bombs David Harsanyi | A21 [thumbnail sign text: THE NATIONAL DEBT $40 [TRILLION]] Smoke rises from the site of airstrikes in Tehran, Iran, on March 6, 2026. Iran Is Not Even Close to Winning the War By Mike Fredenburg The airwaves and blogs are full of pundits and other self-proclaimed experts declaring that the United States has lost or is losing the war. Certainly, there is little doubt that the war has not gone as smoothly as the Trump administration expected it to. And if you believe that the United States' inability to wrap up a nice, clean win (super unlikely) before the November midterms is a significant win for the Iranian regime, you are correct. But does that really mean that Iran is winning the war, strategically or otherwise? History tells us that merely maintaining a limited capacity to lob missiles and drones at your opponent does not mean that you are winning. Neither does the ability to exert limited control over a waterway mean that you are winning. By any reasonable standard of military degradation, strategic isolation, economic collapse, and regional realignment, it is the United States that is winning this war that probably should have been fought after Iran's proxies, including the Hezbollah terrorist group, executed the 1983 truck bomb attack on the U.S. Marine compound, killing 241 U.S. servicemen. Consider the facts: U.S. forces have sunk or crippled the overwhelming majority of Iran's conventional navy. Retired Vice Adm. Robert Harward, a former deputy commander of U.S. Central Command, assessed that Iran has lost 80 percent to 90 percent of its naval capacity. With the vast majority of Iran's largest naval vessels having been crippled or destroyed, Tehran's ability to project meaningful naval power has been reduced to an ever-decreasing number of small Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps fast-attack boats of minimal capability. While the United States has not gained air dominance over all of Iran, it does have air superiority over significant portions, and the Trump administration has claimed that 1,500 strikes have destroyed some 80 percent of Iran's air defense system. Of course, as is the case with all wars, we won't know the real numbers until well after the war concludes, but there is little doubt that Iran's air defenses have been severely degraded. And given the dire economic circumstances the regime finds itself in, those systems will be very difficult to replace, and even if they can eventually do so, it will be many years—assuming that the regime lasts that long. On the industrial and infrastructure front, the campaign has been even more decisive. U.S. and coalition forces have struck more than 13,000 targets inside Iran, including 90 percent of Iran's weapons factories. While striking targets is certainly not the same as destroying them, Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Dan Caine has described Iran's defense industrial base as "shattered," with CENTCOM reporting that more than two-thirds of Iran's missile, drone, and naval production facilities and shipyards were damaged or destroyed, including nearly all Shahed drone production facilities and solid-rocket-motor production facilities—critical to the production of Iran's cheap but effective ballistic missiles. Satellite analysis has documented extensive damage to more than 50 Iranian military bases, including Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps headquarters, air bases, naval hubs, and ballistic-missile facilities. Iran has never suffered this level of damage, and with the most comprehensive economic sanctions seen in recent memory strangling Iran's economy, reconstituting this industrial capacity will take many years, and that assumes the extremely unpopular regime lasts that long. Beyond the battlefield, Iran's prestige and ability to wield influence in the Middle East have been severely degraded. Countries that once feared crossing Tehran publicly are now doing so, up to and including conducting air and missile strikes on military targets inside Iran. The United Arab Emirates has severed ties with Iran and has joined a self-defense pact that includes Turkey and Pakistan. Saudi Yes, the war is making a tough midterm even tougher, but to say that the United States is losing is just plain ludicrous. Arabia has participated in attacks on Iranian targets. And it genuinely looks like after decades of bullying by Iran, its neighbors, with the help of the bully of the Middle East—a major blow from which the regime will never fully recover. Iran's economy is in shambles, with point-to-point food and beverage inflation skyrocketing to between 113.8 and 128 percent, forcing essential groceries to more than double in cost over the past year. Overall inflation has soared above 60 to 80 percent, with food inflation in triple digits in many categories. Iran's currency, the rial, has collapsed, tens of thousands of factories and petrochemical plants being shuttered or damaged (estimates run to 20,000 industrial units affected), and oil revenues have dropped to a fraction of what they were. And with new sanctions coming online and a blockade it cannot lift, the Iranian regime is in dire straits, the likes of which it has not seen since overthrowing the shah. For some context, U.S. grocery prices have risen by only 2.7 percent over the past year, while overall U.S. inflation, bumped up by gasoline prices, stands at 3.5 percent. Adding to Iran's woes, when oil is not pumped from a well for an extended period, the well's future production is often severely degraded. The regime has been struggling to pay its troops and security forces on time; foreign bank accounts and financial channels have been severed or frozen. International Monetary Fund projections show a 6 percent gross domestic product contraction for 2026. And if the blockade stays in place, 2027 will be far worse. Iranian Regime in Historically Bad Shape When a government cannot pay its forces, the vast majority of whom are conscripts, keeping itself in power becomes much more difficult. Economic hardship, combined with the visible failure of the Islamic regime to Continued on A18

Described automatically. The words above are a machine's reading of the picture, not Trump's.

A screenshot of a newspaper/magazine opinion article continuation (marked "Continued from A17") headlined "Iran Is Not Even Close to Winning the War." The piece argues that despite setbacks, the U.S. and Trump administration are strategically winning against Iran, citing declining Iranian regime support, polling data, shipping route changes around the Strait of Hormuz, defense industrial base shortcomings, and media coverage framing. A pull-quote is set off in the middle column. An author bio at the end identifies the writer as Mike Fredenburg, who writes on military technology and defense matters.

Text in image: Iran Is Not Even Close to Winning the War Continued from A17 protect its own territory or deliver prosperity, has diminished the regime's support among the small minority of Iranians that actually supported it before the current conflict ramped up. Further, while precise polling is difficult to obtain given the level of repression and control exerted by the regime, reporting by the GAMAAN institute indicates that substantial portions of the population view the strikes as justified or at least as a necessary reckoning with a failed system. U.S. President Donald Trump is far more popular in Iran than the regime itself—about 44 percent support for Trump versus roughly 13 percent support for the Islamic republic. Iran's Ability to Affect the World Economy Is Diminishing Daily Each day sees the importance of the Strait of Hormuz diminished, as pipelines and tankers are being built to give the world the capacity to bypass it. In as little as six months, the necessity of transiting the Strait of Hormuz will have been reduced to a fraction of what it was at the start of the conflict, permanently weakening Iran. By any reasonable standard of military degradation, strategic isolation, economic collapse, and regional realignment, it is the United States that is winning this war. The extra cost per trip on the new routes, such as those going around the Cape of Good Hope, is only about 0.5 percent to 1 percent of the value of the oil carried; in other words, a small fraction of the price swings we have seen in oil prices. Record numbers of Very Large Crude Carrier ships are being ordered, with some 60 expected to be delivered in 2027 and many more in 2028 and 2029. This additional capacity will facilitate the use of alternative routes that bypass the Strait of Hormuz. Yes, the strait remains a vulnerability, but there is little doubt that its significance will be reduced as a consequence of this conflict. To be fair, the Trump administration has been overly optimistic at times. The war is almost certainly not going as planned. Further, it is clear that the administration had more confidence in what airpower alone could accomplish than was warranted, overestimated the effectiveness of our air defenses, and underestimated the effectiveness of Iran's drones and missiles. The conflict has also revealed major shortcomings in our defense industrial base, highlighted the Navy's failure to develop and field truly effective littoral combat ships in sufficient numbers, and has shown that the practice of spending millions of dollars on individual missiles is a loser that puts our national security at risk and needs to be immediately corrected if we are to have any chance against an opponent such as China. These are real problems that demand urgent attention, but they are problems inherited by the current administration, not created by it. Yet none of these problems and shortcomings change the fundamental strategic picture. Iran's navy is largely gone, its air force grounded, its factories and bases devastated, its economy collapsing, its regional influence shrinking, and its great-power allies unwilling to openly provide significant support. From a big-picture perspective, the ability to sporadically launch drones and missiles to harass shipping is a Pyrrhic victory that is incentivizing the world to lessen dependence on the Strait of Hormuz. Yes, the war is making a tough midterm even tougher, as the media have seized on it to divert attention away from the hundreds of Trump administration accomplishments that have made life better and safer for the average American, but to say that the United States is losing the war is just plain ludicrous. Mike Fredenburg writes on military technology and defense matters with an emphasis on defense reform. He holds a bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering and master's degree in production operations management.

Described automatically. The words above are a machine's reading of the picture, not Trump's.

welcome back America this is a man who is like super patriotic for this country and so forth and so on and understands the American people better than most people do what do you make of that I agree with you and when he does these things that are controversial but needed you it begs the question why didn't other presidents both Democrat Republican do things and what do I mean by that he why didn't somebody addressed the deterioration of monuments in Washington or the world's capital so to speak was not safe to walk in or the reflecting pool was a miasma or presidents had you know torn parts of the White House to put a bowling alley or basketball court or a swimming pool but they all said there's nowhere to there's nowhere to speak there's nowhere to hold a world class meeting and world-class banquet any of that lectures and he comes along and he does it but he doesn't do it I mean he doesn't do it in the sense that I'm going to be the first person to ever do it he does it because he says why hasn't this been done because we need it and so I think that's what's unusual about him he's always bragging about the US military he calls soldiers up he goes to the funerals he he wants the United States and this is what drives the left crazy because their idea was managed decline a globalist idea were just one of many or to paraphrase Barack Obama were no more exceptional in Greece or Great Britain is but he resented that idea he said we were always exceptional we have the only type of Constitution in the world where the freest people were the most powerful country how did that come across China has one China has four times the population that we do the EU has a hundred more p hundred million more people than we do and yet we have 10 trillion more of a GDP how's that possible so what his whole idea was we're going to be the first in space and they were and people said oh you know NASA is done with they haven't done anything in years he said no no no no we're going to get private enterprise and empower them and then the NASA will have to rise to the challenge and he really almost single-handedly reinvigorated the space race Elon Musk himself launched more missile satellites than the whole world combined last year and when you look at what he did with Silicon Valley he went to all these people who were left you know that the Andreessen's that sacks and all of these people the Elon Musk they all voted against him and he said to them we're in bad trouble we've got to rearm the United States we're short weapon we got to get into the drone racing race we've got to get satellite technology and use it to protect our country we need an iron dome sort of global dome over the United States and just like the war production board of World War Two Trump said I'm appealing to your patriotism not your politics if you will if I can enlist your talent I will protect you from EU censorship from Canadian digital media taxes with you neighbor I'm on your side as long as you're on our side and I define that as America side and it's really amazing when you look at these left-wing companies that opposed him I mean they were censoring news accounts of the the laptop fiasco and almost and they contributed to his defeat Mark Zuckerberg gave over 450 million dollars in 2020 through various surrogates to change helped to change balloting and yet he went back to these people and said you're very talented I'm going to allow you I'm not going to pick winners and losers like Biden wanted to do I'm going to open up I'm going to deregulate I'm going to give you energy I'm going to promote data centers for good or evil but you have to do one thing you have to use those energies and talents for the promotion of the common good and the preeminence of the United States that was very we hadn't seen that in decades somebody take that that type of argument to the opposition and the results are they're undeniable all of a sudden the United States is the greatest producer of oil and gas in history its satellites are preeminent I just looked at the software digital media bioengineering AI companies in terms of market capitalization and things like downloads of the top 10 companies globally in each of those categories the United States has eight or nine corporations in the top ten almost dominates every this is a period when they said you know mark they were saying and just a decade ago that China would have a greater GDP by now than we did and we're ten trillion dollars greater so it's amazing the book is and it is a great book the counter-revolution the fall and rise of Donald Trump and the MAGA movement I encourage you to get it amazon.com come Tuesday when it's released any major bookstore look how he's leading in what I call the next Industrial Revolution data centers you have dime store politicians who are looking at polls for objecting to it and so forth and so on it's local governments that make a determination where they are and how these buildings look and so forth but the president knows this is the next Industrial Revolution every single thing we use is related to AI I just think that's another example of his of his foresight we'll be right back welcome back America we're here with America's wise man that's what I call him because that's what he is the counter-revolution is his brand new book and comes out Tuesday I would pre-order on amazon.com that's the way I roll the fall and rise of Donald Trump and the MAGA movement there is so much in here that is so compelling because the man himself is compelling and the author is compelling Victor Davis Hanson well let's get a little bit into national security and foreign policy let's dig right in to Iran and what the president's been doing in Iran we have people who said he campaigned against this kind of thing and we we call a lot of those isolationists and so forth and so on but did he not also say peace through strength again that is sort of a Reagan phrase peace through strength and hasn't he also demonstrated as you demonstrate in your book a hesitance to use military power but if he feels it's necessary he will use military power explain yeah he never ran as an isolationist he never ran as a nation builder he ran as a Jacksonian his idea was don't tread on the United States where you'll have no better friend but you'll have no worse enemy if you do that and to carry out that policy we had to be have a preeminent military so he really in the first term tried to rebuild it but when he looked at Iran there were two kind of contrast or antithetical positions he had to guide he had to navigate between them one was given the misadventures in Afghanistan and Iraq we don't do well when we put thousands of troops on the ground we if we don't win very quickly and winnings very hard in those societies because you have to change the government and they have no experience with consensual rule and then on the other hand he said well seven prior prior presidents have said this is intolerable that this huge country that was once so pro-western and so powerful under the Shaw and earlier rulers now is using that 93 million population and all of its traditions and its resources with oil fourth largest reserve or third in the world for nefarious purposes and most of the problems in the Middle East come from Iran they bully the Arab Gulf exporters they have a ring of fire of terrorist appendages around Israel they subsidize terrorism all over Europe and the Western world but nobody has done anything so I'm gonna do something with one caveat I am NOT going to invade this country and try to overthrow the government and rack up a decade and casually then he hasn't done that I think people don't realize that he knew something had to be done because every year they were getting closer and closer to nuclear weapons and once they got them with that lunatic attitude whether genuine or contrived they had deterrence and with deterrence they could do almost anything and they would dominate the entire Middle East and prior administrations like the Obama administration said well maybe we can balance Iran and the Shia crescent Syria Lebanon's taken over there's Iran the Houthis Hamas and then we'll kind of play them against Israel in the Gulf States and we'll adjudicate that was a crazy idea but that was kind of US policy under Biden but especially under Obama so he said no no it's intolerable time has run out but I've got to find a way to squeeze them and disarm them without invading them and without trying to nation-build and he thought that the popular popular revolt might happen right after the Berlin Wall it took two years with Soviet Union to fall but it did fall it took many months for Eastern European governments so I think it's kind of a Civil War Union anaconda strategy now we're squeezing them economically financially they can't import goods they can't export oil the people are getting restive and I think his big worry right now is at what point will things get so terrible in Iran I think we're getting there how do you ensure that the people are not hurt by this awful regime that doesn't care about their own people and that's a concern I think he has and that that explains why some of us were surprised that we thought maybe at 38 days he should not have stopped or 40 days or 45 but I think he was thinking that if I destroy the entire infrastructure that regime it'll take a year or two for the people to rise up and you'll get mass starvation or something disease or so much chaos it'll be counterproductive so it's kind of a strategy right now to just say we can we can continue with American problems and issues and policies without being obsessed with Iran they are frozen they can't do anything we've got them in a stranglehold and all time is not on their side it's on our side and that I think is that the strategy right now and I think it will eventually work but boy he's taken a lot of criticism from people say the war is lost on no evidence I can't believe people on the conservative side even have said this was a fight fiasco it's destroyed his presence it hasn't at all if people give it time you will see radical changes in Iran for the first time in 50 years very very well put when we come back really I want to address two issues what comes post-Trump and also the president's really bold condemnation of antisemitism of antisemites some who used to be friends of his and so forth and so on let's see if we can address both of those because I think he's been quite the leader in trying to deal with with that and in the future of the Republican Party and so forth depending on who is capable of picking up the mantle and getting elected as a Republican do you think that they will share his principles and his belief systems and have the guts to say the kind of things that he says we'll be right back welcome back America tour de force the counter-revolution written by a great author of Victor Davis Hanson so Victor Davis Hanson what do you see in the future in terms of MAGA and what do you see in the future in terms of a Republican MAGA type candidate fighting antisemitism or gaslighting antisemitism yes well I we know that pumps been trolling and kidding around he's not gonna run for a third term I don't think he wants to we couldn't I think easily and he doesn't want to so the question is what's the MAGA movement I think it's irreversible the idea that we're gonna go back and allow China to dump product here below the cost of production or we're going to semi embrace the green agenda or we're gonna have open borders again as many Republicans did in the past I don't think that's gonna happen he's created a workers a working class middle class party and as I said earlier race is incidental not essential so he's trying to say that the black truck driver the Hispanic electrician the white sheetrock person and the suburban people like them they all have more in common and they're their enemies are not themselves but the East Coast liberal progressive establishment and that's not going to change and the question is who's going to succeed him I mean can you have sunlight without the Sun as one person put it and I think we have kind of an arbitrary divide between the Vance and Rubio even though Marco Rubio quite magnanimous Lee said he wouldn't run if JD Vance did JD Vance was selected contrary to all popular wisdom they said it well he's from Ohio and that's a red state they're gonna get it win it anyway in 24 and he's so he's a white male no diversity and yet Trump said well he's a masterful debater he's great on repartee and you better watch out media he's gonna destroy you and he did but I think his problem right now is that this mega movement that which I was talking about there are elements within it that want to be sort of a nationalist party in the sense of isolationism and they feel that Israel is a pernicious influence is dragging us into the two wars that are not in our interest etc etc and I'll go a little further I think a lot of the people in that movement want to deliberately be provocative to force JD Vance to say try to disown me and see what happens in 2028 so he's he feels he's in a dilemma but at some point I think that he'll do the right thing and I think he's gonna have anybody who's going to run for the office in 2028 is going to have to do two things as far as foreign policy they're gonna have to say whether you like it or not Israel has been the best friend that we've had in the Middle East in every sense of the way it's the only oasis of democracy of liberality of compassion and humanity and we're going to support it and number two people that are Jewish have a natural right to have an affinity with Israel's the historical home of the Jews there's no conspiracy they reflect the majority of our party and we're going to stop trying to demonize them we're not the left the left is completely anti-semitic it's completely anti-israeli they'll pay a price for that so we're not going to go there and for all of you who want to draw me in I think JD Vance will say and draw me in and try to make an artificial divide I'm gonna have to come out and say you don't represent the Republican Party values you don't represent the magma movement and you don't represent the legacy of Donald Trump and I think he can do it if he's the candidate but it's not just a D Vance any candidate who's nominated is gonna have to do that well I sit on the edge of my chair waiting for that I look forward to that very very much this is a fantastic book by Victor Davis Hanson the counter-revolution you get it at amazon.com any major bookstore starting on Tuesday Victor God bless you my friend you look good and healthy and you've written a real fantastic book thank you mark

Transcribed automatically. Expect errors in names and numbers.

of this one. Okay. The president Republicans most admire. It's Donald Trump. This is a historic comparison. A majority of Republicans say 53% say he's the Republican president they most admire. Ronald Reagan who traditionally has won that. Donald Trump nearly triples up on this. Reagan at just 18%. And then Abraham Lincoln who by most historic accounts is the greatest president of all time. But Republicans say that the president that they most admire by what is this this is six seven times as many Donald John Trump at 53% easily crushing a blink in at 8% and the Elon poll showed that he was the greatest president as well. Don feel like this slide might end up on a printout at his desk.

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This is a great interview, by the way. I'm really enjoying watching this. I love that the president makes time to do these great chemistry. I'm just enjoying it. I love hearing from the president. I love that he makes the time to talk endlessly with the press and talk directly to the American people about this. And if you notice, the socialist candidates always come for law and order first, and that's by design. They have to get rid of police. They have to get rid of ICE. They have to get rid of the guardrails that keep society safe so that they can push through their agenda. And what we've seen is a lot of these socialist candidates, they're pretty slick talkers, right? We've seen the mom donnies. We've seen some of these socialist candidates. They're real slick, but you notice the stance that they all distance from when they're pressed on it is law and order. Anytime they have passed comments about defund the police, they try to score them away for those because they don't want to have to own that because they know how unpopular that is with the American people. The president also mentioned Michigan, you know? He won Michigan in 2024. Yeah, he said that. And he did that partly, I just wanted, because it's so important, historic win for him. He won it partly by winning Arab American Democrats. He flipped the endorsement of the Democrat mayor in Hamlet track, Michigan, America leave. We think Al Sayed is going to be, you know, our guy. President Trump has given Republicans the playbook on how to keep Michigan. It's interesting. We talk about this whole thing where there's crime and the Democrats are, I mean, the Democrats have become because they'd love to, you know, as part of the agenda to show how much they hate things, right? Oh, we low, though, it's Israel. We hate this. And they've a lot of hatred for a lot of things. But when you start breaking the law, they start to fall back in love again, and it's just kind of a weird dynamic. Well, it's not a winning message to defund the police. And yet they keep resurfacing this message. What did the DSA platform say? We want to defund the police, defund ICE, but they have to keep coming back. People want safe cities. President Trump has brought crime down to historic lows since like 1900. We're at 126 year low trace and people want this. So the socialist agenda is going to further detach them from the Democrat establishment. And the Democrat establishments are going to have to start saying, yes, we want ICE. Yes, we want police. Yeah. I'm wondering, Elizabeth Pipko, what you think about the trend here, the Democratic Socialist of America and the candidates being backed by the DSA like Al Sayed, I'm wondering what your take on this. You know, a lot of people say, oh, you was the Tea Party and they kind of they were a big thing and then they kind of fell apart and there's still parts of it still moving. What is your thought on the growing, I guess the growing popularity of the DSA? Well, look, I think they're going to continue to grow. I think we're going to see that tonight. We're going to see that next week with the primary in Wisconsin. And we're going to see it with the demise ultimately of the Democrat Party, which I think is exactly what they deserve. Considering Donald Trump warned about the socialist takeover back in 2015, long before he was ever elected to the Oval Office, he was laughed at. He was told he was wrong by several senior leaders in the Democrat Party. And like with many other things, Trace, he was proven to be 100 percent correct. But again, in our country, socialism, which is the easy way out, will always lose. There is a reason that to our capitalist society, thousands of people try to come every single year because they know that in our country, hard work and big ideas will always win a toy. Donald Trump was admired long before he was ever president and that's why socialism will always lose out to those who want to make the world a better place.

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A screenshot of a Fox News broadcast showing a large curved video wall displaying a graphic titled "Trump Endorsement Tracker." On the left of the graphic is a photo of Donald Trump with a frowning/serious expression. To the right is a data table showing endorsement statistics for the 2026 primary season, broken down by office type (U.S. Senate, U.S. House, Governor) with columns for "Endorsed" and "Won," where the number won equals the number endorsed in each category. The Fox News Channel logo appears in the bottom left corner of the frame.

Text in image: TRUMP ENDORSEMENT TRACKER 2026 PRIMARY SEASON ENDORSED WON U.S. SENATE 9 9 U.S. HOUSE 101 101 GOVERNOR 8 8 FOX NEWS TRACKING FOX NEWS channel

Described automatically. The words above are a machine's reading of the picture, not Trump's.

And the Trump mega political obituary has been written more times than Billy Bob Thornton has been married. From The Guardian, the signals of Trump's waning influence are everywhere. Back in January, the lazy libs at the Washington Post were sure that the so-called GOP backlash over the Minnesota ICE operations had signaled a tougher landscape for Trump. Now first, most incumbent presidents face midterm headwinds. We know that, Bush, Obama, Biden, Trump, all of them. But as far as Trump losing influence, that's just more wishful thinking. Now they thought Trump was really on the ropes when Indiana state senators bucked him on redistricting late last year. Indiana Republicans just handed President Trump one of his biggest defeats yet. I'm proud of the Republican legislators who took a stand. Donald Trump thought that he could come into the Hoosier cafeteria and take lunch money and he and his crew left with the black eye. Yeah, who has the black eye now? Well, it was back in December when Trump had promised to support primaries against those renegade Republicans. And when all the votes were tallied last night, five out of the eight GOP incumbents in the Indiana Senate who bucked him on redistricting lost to the candidates Trump had endorsed. Another one still too close to call tonight. Of course, they all could have just asked Trump impeachment queen Liz Cheney, how did her primary turnout back in twenty twenty two? It turns out Trump is just better at politics than most of these people. And he knew Wyoming voters better than Liz did. Now this is really why the left hates Trump, by the way, because he wins. After all, liberals only love Republicans who cave and lose. These Republicans in Indiana, you probably don't agree with them on much. I don't agree with them on much in terms of their policies, but they knew what was coming if they stood up to Trump. They stood up to him anyway. And I just wonder how different you think our country and our politics could be if more Republicans had that in them. I do believe a different kind of politics is possible. Oh, a different kind of point. Yeah, that man, by the way, ran for president and will again. The beard doesn't help. Now, the truth is Trump vexes all of them because he doesn't play by their rules. He never did. He called it as he saw it. The establishment was an abject failure, both on the left and the right. And he took them all out. He refused to be their political roadkill. And he never stopped fighting. He still not stopped fighting. Now, Obama is the smartest one they have in the Democrat Party still. There's no one who touches him. And even he could not stop Trump. So now Obama is relegated to going on some of these B list talk shows and pining away for the old days when Republicans just essentially agreed with him on everything. I'm worried about the Republican Party, not just the Democratic Party. I'd love a loyal opposition. I'd love a Republican Party that was conservative in some ways, that didn't agree with me on a whole bunch of stuff, but believed in rule of law and judicial independence and science and wasn't constantly tapping into our worst impulses. And there has been a Republican Party like that in the past, and I want to see that return. OK. Obama's worried. Did he talk about the rule of law, by the way? Yeah, he's worried. He's worried that the DOJ will finally nail everyone who had a hand in Crossfire Hurricane and that Brennan and Clapper will finally spill their guts about Obama's role in it. That's what he's worried about. The nerve of him talking about the rule of law. His intel community spied on Trump and lied in their FISA applications, and he likes a loyal opposition. Now, come on, he wants that old party back, the old GOP. Yeah, the party that got shellacked in 2006, in 2008, and in 2012. The mask is off. A decade since he left office, Obama seems to think that the only way to beat Trump and MAGA is to go full socialist. You look at somebody like Mondami, who I think is an extraordinary talent. He wants people to be able to afford housing in New York. He also, not only does he talk like a normal person, but he lives a normal life, but he also, he names what is obviously wrong. Yes. I love seeing those two spoon with Mondani. Now, the truth is, liberalism, it's already failed. It's failed in New York, it failed in Chicago, failed in St. Louis, failed in Los Angeles, in San Francisco, in Oakland, in Portland, in Seattle. The list goes on and on. But the red states, they're booming. Their populations increasing. And Donald Trump remains the most powerful force in politics, not just here in the U.S., but worldwide. And anyone, and I mean anyone trying to diminish him or MAGA, is either willfully ignorant or just plain ignorant. And that's the angle. Here with his thought is Matt Towery, political analyst and pollster. Matt, I think you and I have done this segment far too many times. You think so? Right? How many times have we done this? This is like insane at this point. Over and over again. Right? Right? No. Okay. Again, established, as you've pointed out, that the midterms are always tough for the party in power. They just always are. However, people will write off, of course, what happened in Indiana last night by saying, well, it was a primary election, state Senate House, doesn't really matter. What do you say to that claim? Oh, goodness. I'm saying it again. Donald Trump is a force unequaled in the Republican Party. And let me just go to this point. There was about a month or so ago, I think we were talking about a month or so ago, you had a group of Republicans saying, oh, he's diminished. The war is killing him. It's taking his polling numbers away. His polling numbers among Republicans are the best they've ever been. There's the height. He has as much power now. And by the way, he's an incumbent now. So when he makes these endorsements in these midterms, they're a lot more powerful than in 2022. So I think Trump is just is exactly what we've said for the last few months. And that is he's on target. He's still strongly Republicans. And might I add something about Obama? I polled 2008 for Politico. I polled 2008 for Politico. OK, I know why Obama wants to have that old Republican Party. I know because he crushed it. That's why he doesn't want Donald Trump because they know Donald Trump's too tough to deal with. I mean, Obama was out there, Matt, with all those celebrities. And in 2016 and 2024, he did the whole thing, getting Biden off the ticket. He was doing all sorts of jiu-jitsu and they almost put Trump in jail. They tried to. Trump comes back and beats them all again. He is so bitter. OK, that should be the banner. Bitter Obama. That's it. Bitter Obama. He's jealous of Trump and he's bitter about Trump. That's it. He is bitter. He is bitter. I have one other thing about the polling. I want people to know right now, the polling that you're seeing come in on Trump is incorrect. The reason it's off is most of these polls do not correlate. They don't wait to his last election. Donald Trump has a floor, basically, of about 41, 42 if he has an absolute worst day. He has a ceiling of about 56 or 57 because the rest of the country is so polarized you can only go that far. But he's got a loyal 43 to 44 percent on any day of the month. And when he's doing well, he's got 50 plus and the pollsters are wrong. And I'm right. I guarantee I'm right about that. I mean, again, I said this before. I will say it again. He has not even started campaigning yet. Right. I mean, he hasn't even begun. That's going to start. The war is going to get wrapped up sooner, the better for that. But when he starts campaigning, I mean, no one touches him. I'm sorry. I'm so sick of these articles about Wither Trump, Wither MAGA. They're all stupid. Don't pay attention to them. Matt, I got to get to this redistricting, though, because this is important. Alabama, Louisiana. They're debating this mid-decade redistricting following that Supreme Court ruling last week. Do you think the results in Indiana will play into any of the results there and whether there will be any hesitant Republicans who sit on the sidelines? Well, it's sure better because today I saw where South Carolina, he's putting, lobbing in bombs in South Carolina and telling these guys who said they wouldn't consider redistricting, he wants them to do it as well. Now, South Carolina has their primary in June, but he's flexing his muscles. The Georgia legislature just sat on their rear end and did absolutely nothing. They could have taken Sanford Bishop out, as we talked about last week, in a heartbeat. They didn't do a thing and nobody's talking about it right now. I don't know what they're going to do. I believe that Trump has started something and he's going to finish it. I guarantee you he'll get the job done. Matt, he's carried this entire party on his back for a decade, honestly. I mean, one person, with the exception of a few people like Ron DeSantis. But he's carried the whole party on his back. And these people are clueless when it comes to actually winning and governing because politics is supposed to be about the art of winning, so you could put your policies in place. Matt, final word. Oh, absolutely. And he's the best at it. And he's proved it again. We saw it last night.

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>> Jim Hansen's a former U.S. Army Special Forces and Chief Strategist for the Middle East Forum. Jim, what do you think is going on today in Tehran? >> I think they are scrambling and anybody who says this fracture between the religious leadership and the military and their civilian political leadership is a bad thing doesn't understand how to break a tyrannical regime. Of course we want them arguing with each other and obviously I think the military will come out on top as you said they do have the guns but in the end they don't have much in the way of weapons left and anytime they poke any of those weapons out of their holes we destroy them. So they've got a very short window before they run out of money, they run out of the ability to pump oil, they already can't sell it and there's not any money coming in to run the regime. Anybody who thinks they're ahead in this game is not paying attention. >> So is it more of a negotiating tactic or is it them trying to consolidate power as they lead negotiations going forward? >> They want the world and anybody else to think that they are ahead. That's why you hear them say things like 26 ships broke the blockade, well no, 26 ships got turned back and the 27th got a free engine room redecoration courtesy of a U.S.S. destroyers five inch gun, free ventilation, that's not how you win. Next we take a tanker and now we've got 2 million barrels of free oil. They don't have any way to come out ahead in the blockade game. They're wrong if they can think they can wait President Trump out and if he has to start breaking some more of their stuff to emphasize the point, we have plenty of ways to do that. They have nothing but maybe an opportunity to attack a ship trying to transit the strait. >> And they don't have a lot of time left. You heard Bessin say these oil wells, they're going to fill up and they're going to have to shuttle production soon. Do you think the president waits and sees how things unfold inside Tehran or do you think he needs to give him a little nudge? >> Here's the thing. Anything the president blows up right now causes damage for the Iranian people and he's got the opportunity, there was a point there where I guess the defeat mongers thought they were going to convince the world that President Trump had to stop this because of the pressure. We can absorb some short term oil price jumps and the political pressure at home is not going to change President Trump's calculation. He can beat them at this game. The fewer things he blows up from here going forward, the better, but they shouldn't think for a second, he will not give them an object lesson in how to make the rubble bounce. >> And the United States and Israel have been accumulating so much intelligence over the last two weeks that whatever fighting does break out will end pretty quickly. Is that your understanding? >> Yeah, we've got all of their people identified. If we wanted to, we could take out another layer of their leadership again, but we need somebody to go ahead and quasi surrender whatever this ends up being. So if they want to try and I mean, they can't fight in the normal use of that word. They can cause damage, they can be a terrorist state breaking other people's things, but they can't take us on force. And if they want to go ahead and let the IRGC take a run at being the heads of a military as opposed to a theocracy, that will be a very short-lived event.

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A screenshot of a social media post (X/Twitter) from user "Joe Kernen" (@JoeSquawk, verified), posted 3:42 AM · Jan 23, 2026 with 178.8K views. The caption reads "Goodbye Switzerland. Great trip! #WEF". The attached photo shows two men standing and smiling in front of a "World Economic Forum" branded step-and-repeat backdrop with dark blue drapery/flag visible at left edge. The man on the left is an older man with light blond/white hair, wearing a dark navy suit, white shirt, and red tie. The man on the right, presumably Joe Kernen, is an older man with gray hair, wearing a dark suit, white shirt, and a dark red/maroon tie, holding a white paper cup.

Text in image: Joe Kernen @JoeSquawk Goodbye Switzerland. Great trip! #WEF WORLD ECONOMIC FORUM 3:42 AM · Jan 23, 2026 · 178.8K Views

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>> Breaking tonight, a Fox News exclusive. We have new information that appears to directly contradict the Biden administration's insistence it had nothing to do with the Justice Department investigations into then former President Trump's alleged retention of classified material and the subsequent raid on his Mar-a-Lago home. Correspondent David Spott has details tonight. Good evening, David. >> Brett, good evening to you. These emails obtained by Fox News paint a different picture of the relationship between the Biden White House and the Biden Justice Department. These two offices made it clear at the time, at least publicly, they were not connected and stayed away from any political interference. However, new emails obtained by Fox News from May 2022, three months before Mar-a-Lago was raided by the FBI illustrates coordination between the White House Counsel's Office and the DOJ regarding an interview of Walt Nada. Now remember, Walt Nada is a current White House aide to President Trump who was then former President Trump's aide in Florida. Nada was later charged alongside Trump by Special Counsel Jack Smith. The May 10th, 2022 email reads in part, coordination with DOJ and White House Counsel are in work to start the process to confirm and interview current administration employee Walt Nada. This event is dependent upon the timeline of President Biden's brief decision and coordination between White House Counsel and DOJ and in turn Evan Corcoran's position on the override of privilege assertion and whether or not he seeks an injunction to prevent access. That was written by an FBI agent and Evan Corcoran, of course, one of Trump's lawyers at the time. This coming August, Brett will mark four years since FBI agents raided Mar-a-Lago. A few days after that, then Attorney General Merrick Garland said this. I personally approved the decision to seek a search warrant in this matter. Second, the department does not take such a decision lightly. And we're getting new reaction to these emails. Judiciary chairman Jim Jordan in the house says in part, it's always worse than we thought. These newly released documents confirm that the Biden DOJ's raid on Mar-a-Lago was politically motivated. We're also hearing from Attorney General Pam Bondi. A.G. Bondi says the more we learn about the DOJ weaponization under the prior administration, the worse the story gets. And Brett, she says this right here, it's a key part. She says we will continue disclosing key evidence to our congressional partners to deliver the truth and bring those who committed crimes to justice. That coming from the Attorney General tonight, Brett.

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The CIA knew Hillary started the Russia collusion story and then went in and told Barack Obama all about it, that she was trying to link Trump with Russia to distract from her email scandal. Hillary Clinton's role in creating the Russia hoax, one declassified email exposes how she orchestrated the entire plot. Former House Freedom Caucus chair and Trump's former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows joined us last night to detail how Clinton's campaign is working with the Deep State. The CNN article from 2022, okay, it says Hillary Clinton personally approved plan to share Trump Russia allegation with the press in 2016 campaign manager says. So this is not some right wing conspiracy. This is not some Republican talking points. This is a CNN article from three years ago. So I think I wouldn't be surprised if she could be indicted and finally have to answer some of these questions about this Russia collusion narrative and this dossier. This idea that the Hillary Clinton campaign spent some $10 million to generate this fictitious documentation that they could then use to change an election, thank goodness it didn't work though. The documents contain emails allegedly from the senior vice president of the George Soros Open Society Foundation. He quotes a Clinton campaign adviser saying, quote, it will be a long term affair and to demonize Putin and Trump and adds that quote, later the FBI will put more oil into the fire, unquote. Other emails reveal Hillary Clinton approved the idea of tying Trump and Russia to election interference and that was a scheme hoping the allegations would distract people from her own email scandal. These documents provide clear evidence that Hillary Clinton's campaign was behind the Russia hoax and that the FBI knew what the Clinton team was up to acknowledging that the info they were receiving about the Trump campaign may have come from the Clinton camp. Despite this, the Obama intel community forged ahead with their 2017 assessment concluding that Russia aspired to help Trump win the election. A bombshell revelation that then CIA director John Brennan briefed President Obama in 2016 on a reported plan by the Clinton campaign to link Russian interference with the Trump campaign. I would firstly address the DNC data that was posted by WikiLeaks and that clearly showed evidence of a property called a file fat format file that's the file allocation table format meaning every time it's it's reading it's a program and software used to read data to a storage device, either a thumb drive or CD ROM, something like that. And as it does that, it changes the last modified time on each file to the nearest even second. Okay, it's just a function of that program. So when that occurs, all those times the last modified are changed on all the files. So when we looked at all the DNC emails from 23rd, 24th and 25th of May, all of them ended in even numbers. So and that was 500 probably a little more than that I didn't count also. But it that means that the random chance of that occurring would be one chance and two to the 500 power, in other words, one chance in a one followed by over 150 zeros. Meaning it's obviously that was a factor that proved that that program was used to do that in the program that does it is fat file allocation table formatting. So that that says that that data was downloaded to a physical device, either thumb drivers CD ROM, and then transported physically before WikiLeaks could publish it or put it on the web. So that that said to us that it wasn't it wasn't a hack from Russia. It was an inside job or somebody close in that downloaded the data to the to the to a storage device and then took it physically of DNC staffer Seth Rich, who was murdered last summer, a federal investigator telling Fox News that an FBI forensic report of riches computer showed he made contact with WikiLeaks through a former reporter and London based WikiLeaks director, Gavin McFadden. The investigator told Fox News Rich provided McFadden with more than 44,000 emails, nearly 18,000 attachments. Rich was murdered near his DC home on the morning of July 10. But his wallet, his cell phone, his watch not taken from a 2016 White House briefing by Brennan state that Clinton allegedly approved, quote, a proposal from one of her foreign policy advisors to vilify Donald Trump by stirring up scandal, claiming interference by the Russian security service. Handwritten notes list POTUS among those at the meeting. Former federal prosecutor John O'Connor told CBN News his global lane program. It proves it was the Clinton campaign, not the Trump team that worked with Russia to influence the election. And that's the irony of it, that we've spent three or four years talking about how Trump supposedly colluded with Russia, where it was all a complete hoax. It's exactly the opposite is true, and it's very profound. Critics of the Mueller investigation are pouncing on the revelations as evidence that it all amounts to massive abuse of power and potential criminal activity by the nation's intelligence and law enforcement agencies. Many are asking what then Vice President Joe Biden knew. The person in the campaign responsible for that is Hillary Clinton and the Democrats. Barack Obama knew about it as early as the summer of 2016. I think it's safe to say that Joe Biden knew about it as well. Dean Irakloff has also declassified a CIA memo that notes the Russians believed Hillary Clinton tried to stir up the scandal to distract the public from her use of a public email server. Well, what else did we find out from Durham? Well, we found out the FBI shut down two investigations into the Clintons. Two, first, three separate FBI field offices said, wait a second, the Clinton Foundation is a foreign money laundering scam. We should probably look into it. But Andy McCabe, you remember Andy, the guy married to the Clinton donor, he calls everybody in and says, guys, the Clinton Foundation is off limits. Second thing they shut down. The Hillary Clinton campaign was taking illegal contributions from overseas. FBI informants caught Hillary's campaign saying, yeah, we'll take your money. We don't care. Albania, Morocco, just send us the checks. So he runs it up the flagpole at the FBI headquarters and they said, shut it down. No investigation into Hillary Clinton's foreign campaign donors. We're not going to go there. We have to frame Trump as a traitor instead. So John Durham also found a few other funny little nuggets that squeaky clean James Comey couldn't wait to spy on the Trump campaign. He kept asking his underlings, have we started spying yet? Have we started spying yet? When could we start spying on Trump? Are the phones tapped yet? What a sicko. Also Comey's people told his people, don't put anything in writing. They're only going to get us in trouble. So the media loves to say, well, you know, this is just the FBI. This is just the Department of Justice. What they never tell you is this is the Obama administration preventing investigations into Hillary and greenlighting fake and illegal investigations into Donald Trump. But Barack Obama gets out there and he lies to us about the whole thing. I can guarantee that not because I give Attorney General Lynch a directive, that is institutionally how we have always operated. I do not talk to the Attorney General about pending investigations. I do not talk to FBI directors about pending investigations. We have a strict line and always have maintained it. I guarantee that there is no political influence in any investigation conducted by the Justice Department or the FBI, not just in this case, but in any case. So Barack Obama gets briefed by the CIA director with the FBI director on pending investigations into his political opponents. And then he just tells Fox, no, just lies to Fox. Don't you ever lie to Fox again. So in one week, Barack Obama's vice president was taking foreign bribes right under his nose and his Justice Department was illegally spying on the Republican presidential nominee and shutting down investigations, legitimate investigations into the Democratic presidential nominee. Mr. No scandals in my administration. And the meeting was colluding with the Clinton campaign on how to lay out the smears. Durham says the New York Times was having meetings with the Clinton campaign. Hey, Hillary, how does this draft look to you? Does this look all right to you? And Hillary's campaign was like, yeah, that looks good. You might want to add something signing off on it. Remember, the New York Times got polluters for this. So they get awards for fake stories and Hannity gets nothing for telling the truth. He doesn't get like a plaque or anything. And not only that, the Biden administration obstructed the Durham report. A bunch of FBI agents loyal to Joe Biden and Hillary and Barack refused to cooperate with Durham. They wouldn't even sit down with them. They're still hiding stuff from us, still obstructing justice. I thought you could get impeached for obstructing justice. Now the FBI is interfering with American elections and they're obstructing investigations into their actions about the election interference. Now I don't even know now who's worse, the CIA or the FBI. Everybody knows this thing's rigged. We're all busy investigating the investigators while Democrats are winning elections. We're out here waiting four years on a report. Meanwhile, the FBI and the CIA are meddling with our voting rights. They frame a guy as a Russian agent, Obama's in on it, the CIA's in on it, the FBI's in on it. Hillary starts it. They illegally spy on his campaign, fabricate evidence to get warrants. And then they do a two year investigation to cover up their crime and try to impeach them. But the worst part is this, they run it back in 2020 with the laptop. Same thing, CIA and FBI, even CNN says this is bad. Regardless, the report is now here. It has dropped and it might not have produced everything of what some Republicans vote for. It is regardless, devastating to the FBI and to a degree, it does exonerate Donald Trump. Durham had a huge investigation that took many months. What we're starting to see is the coordination that happened between the Clinton campaign, between those in the three letter agencies that we're all too familiar with. But I think the troubling thing that appears to be coming out is that over and over and over again, there was real pressure at the very top levels of these agencies to have a narrative out there that we knew was false. And Trump's Justice Department says this was all by design. How can you trust the government when they do this kind of thing? And they're charging Trump with that. He's had nothing but merciless attacks year after year. This whole thing about FISA warrants, the whole thing about Russia collusion, the whole thing about attacks and the Mueller report and the impeachment, the whole thing was set up by Hillary Clinton and an attempt to discredit him and to keep him from being elected. You've got those emails back and forth with Strzok and Page about how can we use the FBI to destroy him to keep him from getting elected. I mean, this kind of, they need to go to jail. I mean, that is bad stuff.

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For decades, the US has put it around 65% of NATO's bills, and we bailed them out during myriad military conflict. But when we started Operation Epic Fury, our allies dropped us like a bad date, and the president is not happy about it. Putin's not afraid of NATO. Putin's afraid of us, very afraid of us. And he's explained it to me a lot of times. I got to know him very well, I know him very well. NATO's a paper tiger. NATO is us. And when we needed them, we didn't need them, by the way. We didn't need them, obviously, because they haven't helped at all. Just the opposite. They've actually gone out of their way not to help. They didn't even want to... Just say it. NATO sucks. They give us landing strips. Think of it, and it's not just NATO. You know who else didn't help us? No, who else didn't help us? South Korea didn't help us. Oh, nice. Way to go, South Korea. You know who else didn't help us? Australia. Oh yeah, Australia. Thanks a lot. Didn't help us. Japan. We've got 50,000 soldiers in Japan to protect them from North Korea. Well, I wouldn't expect just a little more from Japan.

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All right, breaking tonight. We are learning that Bill Pulte, the director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, has a letter to the DOJ referring New York Attorney General Letitia James for a criminal referral over her insurance fraud. Now, the DOJ has confirmed they received that referral. We did reach out to Letitia James in our office for comment. We have yet to hear back with all the details. He is the founder, editor-in-chief, chief investigator, reporter, JustTheNews.com. John Solomon is here with the very latest. This is a blockbuster based on what I've seen with these documents. Yeah, the documents are very clear. The evidence is very strong. Some of it is court records. So Bill Pulte did his homework. New York's top cop is in a world of trouble. This is a very serious legal referral. If you remember last year, there was a referral made for mortgage fraud. It led to an indictment, but then the indictment got thrown out by a judge on the grounds that the U.S. attorney wasn't lawfully appointed there. That will not be the case where these two referrals are being sent. They're being sent to Chicago, where all state insurance is located, in Florida, where a second insurance company where Letitia James took out her homeowner's insurance was based. Both have sitting U.S. attorneys. Both have juries with a long history of sending politicians to prison when they believe they've engaged in corrupt acts. And both are getting referrals that have very specific information that Letitia James filled out insurance applications for her home in Virginia, claiming that it would not be occupied for five months of year. That probably got her a better rate. And in fact, the house was occupied around a year by a niece and a family member. And so the evidence is strong. The jurisdictions have a long history of convicting politicians if they think that they've done something corrupt. And both of the U.S. attorneys are confirmed by the Senate. So that's a big deal. By the way, the one in Florida is going to the same U.S. attorney that's doing the grand conspiracy case looking at weaponization, Jason Canones. That's another big thing. A lot of resources down in that office.

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